Albert Jeremiah Beveridge

Background

Albert Beveridge was born on October 6, 1862, on a small farm at Sugar Tree Ridge, Ohio, United States, the son of Thomas H. and Frances (Parkinson) Beveridge. In 1865 the father, after the loss of his property, moved the family to a farm in Illinois. Young Beveridge's early life was one of privation and hardship. He was a plowboy at twelve, a railroad hand with a section gang at fourteen, a logger and teamster at fifteen.

Education

Before sixteen Albert managed to enter a high school. His yearning for knowledge led him to determine to go to college, and with a loan of $50 from a friend, in the fall of 1881, he entered Asbury College, now DePauw University, at Greencastle, Indiana. There he developed great talent as an orator and became an active member of the Republican Party. During his college course, he won the inter-state oratorical honors and prizes sufficient to provide for two of his college years. He graduated in 1885 with a Bachelor of Philosophy, a Master of Arts in 1888, and a Doctor of Laws in 1902.

Career

After graduating, Beveridge worked as a law clerk and reading clerk for the Indiana legislature and was admitted to the Indiana State Bar in 1887, where he practiced law for twelve years. Meanwhile, he had become well known in his state as a political orator. In every campaign for fifteen years, beginning while yet a college boy, still an undergraduate, he won local renown as a political orator, stumping for Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine in 1884, he had stumped the state from end to end.

In 1898, Beveridge gained national fame as a persuasive advocate of the United States colonial expansion following the Spanish-American War. A few months prior to taking his Senate seat, he traveled to the war-torn Philippines to witness conditions first-hand. In a deadlock among the leading senatorial candidates in 1899, the Republican legislative caucus turned to him as a compromise candidate, and he was elected to the United States Senate at the age of thirty-six, being among the youngest members ever to sit in that body. He quickly became an important voice in American foreign policy, gaining far more attention than most freshman Senators.

In 1905 he was re-elected without opposition within his party to the United States Senate.

But in 1911, chiefly because of party schism, he was defeated for a third term.

Albert Beveridge was nominated by the Progressive Party of Indiana as its candidate for governor in 1912, after the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment he was nominated by the Indiana Progressives as their candidate for the United States Senate in 1914, and in 1922 Albert was nominated for the United States Senate by the Republicans of Indiana in a state-wide popular primary, but all these times he was defeated by his opponents. Albert Beveridge's career as a state employee was over.

In the early 1900s, Beveridge took a trip to Siberia and Russia, during the Japanese and Russian struggle in order to satisfy himself as to the situation, the outcome of which was The Russian Advance, published in 1903. In 1905 he brought out The Young Man and the World, in 1906 The Bible as Good Reading, in 1907 Meaning of the Times, in 1908 Work and Habits and Americans of Today and Tomorrow, - volumes intended especially for young men and women. In 1915, while spending a year as a war correspondent in Germany he produced his What Is Back of the War, which was regarded in America as distinctly pro-German, and brought the author some unpopularity. Beveridge's greatest work, however, was his biography of Chief Justice John Marshall, designed as a historical and political interpretation of the Supreme Court and of Marshall's Part in giving that court its place in American history. This task he accomplished in a way that gained the universal approval of scholars and critics.

Achievements

• Beveridge was even more distinguished as a historical writer than as a politician. Beveridge was an intellectual leader of the Progressive Era. After his political career, he dedicated his time to writing historical literature and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Biography with his four-volume book set “The Life of John Marshall”, published from 1916-1919.
  
  Albert J. Beveridge first rose to fame in 1898 as a fervent exponent of American expansion overseas.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Russian Advance

    (This work has been selected by scholars as being cultural...)

    1903
  • In Support of an American Empire

    (In this speech, Albert Beveridge argues that it is the du...)

    1900
  • The Philippine Situation: Testimony and Statement of Witnesses, American and Foreign 1902
  • The Young Man and the World 1905
  • The Reed Smoot Case 1907
  • Employment of Child Labor 1907
  • The Bible as Good Reading 1907
  • Americans of Today and Tomorrow 1908
  • The Meaning of the Times, and Other Speeches 1909
  • Pass Prosperity Around 1908
  • What is back of the war 1915
  • The Life of John Marshall 1919
  • Work and Habits 1908
  • Sons of the Revolution 1921
  • The state of the nation 1924
  • Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1858 1928

Politics

By age 30, he was considered one of the leading political orators in the United States.

Beveridge worked in the Senate to revise tariff laws and bolster the Interstate Commerce Commission's power to fix railroad rates. Over time, Beveridge evolved into a critic of America's political and business elites, joining with like-minded Republican reformers to help spearhead the Progressive movement of the early 1900s.

The twelve years of his senatorial service were a period of agitation, of party revolt and insurgency, leading to the rise of the Progressive Party. Beveridge was one of the Senate "insurgents," one of the original Progressive Republicans. He supported the Roosevelt policies, such as equal industrial opportunities, prevention of trust abuses, government regulation of public service corporations, a strong navy, the meat inspection law (which he drafted), conservation of national resources, and extension of nominating primaries. He was outstanding and effective in his opposition to injurious child labor, proposing an amendment (to a pending bill on child labor in the District of Columbia) prohibiting interstate commerce in the product of factories and mines where children under fourteen years of age were employed. His speech on this amendment, occupying parts of three days, was a notable contribution to the controversy. He favored a tariff commission, to be conducted on non-partisan lines, in the hope of taking the tariff out of politics and thus sparing the country from the business uncertainty resulting from frequent revisions.

It was on the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act, in the first year of President Taft's administration (1909) that the disruption in the Republican Party occurred. Beveridge was at the forefront of the insurgent senators in opposition to this party bill. He believed that the "Old Guard" leaders cared nothing for the well-being of the masses but were working constantly for the protection of selfish interests and that the Aldrich tariff was a "revision upward" and was, therefore, a betrayal of party pledges. Because of the independence of his party, the "stand-pat" Republicans in Indiana helped the Democrats to defeat him for the Senate in 1911.

With this senatorial experience and his democratic disposition, it was easy and natural for him to go with Roosevelt into the Progressive (or "Bull-Moose") Party in 1912. In the Progressive National Convention in Chicago in that year, it was Beveridge, as temporary chairman, who sounded the "keynote" in a campaign address, entitled "Pass Prosperity Around."

During the same year, he was nominated by the Progressive Party of Indiana as its candidate for governor. He received 10, 000 more votes than the Republican candidate, but was defeated by the Democratic candidate, Samuel M. Ralston. In 1914, after the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment, the Indiana Progressives nominated Beveridge as their candidate for the United States Senate, but Progressive support had fallen away, and he came in third in the popular vote.

In 1916, together with Roosevelt, he rejoined the Republican Party, and supported Charles E. Hughes for the presidency.

In 1922 he was nominated for the United States Senate by the Republicans of Indiana in a state-wide popular primary, defeating Harry S. New, the sitting senator, but in the ensuing election, he was again defeated by Samuel M. Ralston, the Democratic nominee. After that, Albert Beveridge never again held public office. This closed his political career.

In Beveridge’s early service in the Senate, he already showed an overwhelming desire to get information at first hand, even traveling to the Philippines in order to make a personal investigation of the Philippine problem, as well as to Siberia and Russia (during the Japanese and Russian struggle).

Views

Over the course of his political career, Beveridge became a supporter of progressive social policies, working to enact pure food, child labor, and tariff reform laws. His later work as a historian won him wide acclaim.

Quotations: "Shall we turn these people back to the reeking hands from which we have taken them?" "Shall we save them from these nations to give them the self-rule of tragedy? It would be like giving a razor to a babe and telling it to shave itself." - 1898 "March of the Flag" speech

Membership

Albert Beveridge was a member and secretary of the American Historical Association.

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  American Historical Association , United States

• Indianapolis Literary Club , United States

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  American Academy Arts and Letters , United States

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "At all times, in every circumstance, Beveridge had a sense of responsibility for the United States, concern that it should be well managed, care that no ill should befall it." - Mark Sullivan, journalist.
  
  "He was an eager young man. His ambition was obvious and sometimes a bit ridiculous, but always innocent and shameless like a child's indecencies. His was a warm personality, gentle, kindly." - William Allen White, journalist.

Connections

Albert Beveridge was married twice: in 1887 to Katherine Langsdale of Greencastle, Indiana, who died June 18, 1900; in 1907 to Catherine Eddy of Chicago. He has two children.

Father:

Thomas H. Beveridge

Mother:

Frances (Parkinson) Beveridge

Spouse:

Catherine (Eddy) Beveridge

Spouse:

Katherine (Langsdale) Beveridge

Son:

Albert Jeremiah Beveridge

Daughter:

Abby Spencer Beveridge

Ally, collegue:

Theodore Roosevelt