Background
Hiram Bingham was born on November 19, 1875, in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, the son of Hiram Bingham and Minerva Clarissa Brewster, missionaries to the Gilbert Islands who had been forced by ill health to retire to Hawaii.
Hiram Bingham was born on November 19, 1875, in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, the son of Hiram Bingham and Minerva Clarissa Brewster, missionaries to the Gilbert Islands who had been forced by ill health to retire to Hawaii.
Hiram attended the Punahou School in Honolulu from 1882 to 1892 and in preparation for a missionary career spent two years at Phillips Andover Academy and four years at Yale. At the university he tutored and did odd jobs to finance his education. He graduated from Yale with the B. A. in 1898. Turning to the study of history, Bingham enrolled in the graduate program of the University of California at Berkeley, from which he received the M. A. in 1900. Later he earned another M. A. and a Ph. D. in the then relatively unexplored field of South American history.
Bingham returned to Honolulu and became superintendent at the Palama Chapel Mission. Unhappy with this work, he resigned after eight months and was employed briefly as a chemist for an American sugar company. In 1905 Bingham became a preceptor in the tutorial program instituted by Woodrow Wilson at Princeton. He taught only one year, however. Ambitious and restless, he secured leave in order to follow the 1819 march of Bolívar across the northern coast of South America in preparation for a biography. The difficult and dangerous journey from Caracas to Bogot was described in Bingham's first book, The Journal of an Expedition Across Venezuela and Colombia (1909).
Upon his return in 1907, Bingham took a position as lecturer in South American history and geography at Yale. He became assistant professor of Latin American history in 1910 and was professor from 1915 to 1924. The Binghams built an imposing mansion in New Haven. Teaching at Yale did not quench Bingham's urge to explore. Secretary of State Elihu Root named him a delegate to the first Pan-American Scientific Congress, held at Santiago, Chile, from December 1908 to January 1909. Bingham used the opportunity to undertake a six-month trek, retracing the old Spanish trade route from Buenos Aires to Lima. He chronicled the adventure in Across South America (1911).
In 1911 Bingham organized and directed the Yale Peruvian Expedition to search for the last Inca capital and to map an uncharted area of the Andes. Yale and the National Geographic Society jointly sponsored further expeditions in 1912 and in 1914-1915.
Soon after the outbreak of World War I, Bingham again left Yale. He joined the Connecticut National Guard as captain of artillery in 1916. Determined to learn to fly, he won his pilot's wings the next year at the age of forty-two. Promoted to lieutenant colonel, he served as chief of the Air Personnel Division of the Air Service in Washington and with the Allied Expeditionary Forces in France. An Explorer in the Air Service (1920) recorded his experience as commanding officer of the Allied flying school at Issoudon.
After the war, Bingham turned to politics. In 1916 he had served as alternate at large at the Republican convention. In the early 1920's, however, he sought a more active political role. Whereas in 1913 he had advocated the repudiation of the Monroe Doctrine as an "obsolete shibboleth, " in 1920 he reversed his position. Six feet four, silver-haired, a famous explorer, aviator, author, and speaker, Bingham seemed an ideal candidate to J. Henry Roraback, the conservative Republican chairman and undisputed "boss" of Connecticut. Aided by Roraback, Bingham secured the nomination as lieutenant governor in 1922 and was elected. In 1924, after the incumbent Republican governor had incurred Roraback's displeasure, Bingham was nominated for governor. On a ticket headed by Coolidge, he secured the highest plurality in Connecticut history. He served in that office for only one day, however. During the campaign, on October 14, Frank Brandegee, the Republican senator from Connecticut, had committed suicide. Two months later, a special election was held to fill Brandegee's unexpired term. Following Roraback's wishes, the Republicans nominated the governor-elect.
While the first campaign of 1924 had been exciting for Bingham, the second was ugly. He won, but with less than one-third his previous majority. Two years later he ran for a full term and was elected handily. During his eight years in the Senate, Bingham served on the President's Aircraft Board in 1925 and drafted the Air Commerce Act of 1926, the first attempt at federal regulation of civil aviation. He chaired the Committee on Territories and Insular Affairs, visited China, and headed the Samoan Commission. In September 1929, when the Senate Finance Committee was drafting the Hawley-Smoot tariff, Bingham, a committee member and representative of a state with many protected industries, consulted Charles L. Eyanson, a lobbyist of the Connecticut Manufacturers Association, as a tariff expert. He placed Eyanson on the Senate payroll as a clerk and took him into closed sessions of the Finance Committee.
When Eyanson's role was revealed, Bingham acknowledged misjudgment but neither wrongdoing nor malicious intent. A subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, chaired by George Norris of Nebraska, investigated and submitted a resolution of censure. On November 4, after four hours of debate and the inclusion of an amendment exonerating Bingham of "corrupt motives, " the resolution passed 54 to 22 with 18 abstentions. It condemned Bingham's behavior as "contrary to good morals and senatorial ethics" and as tending "to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute. " Bingham's conservatism and lofty, sometimes combative style of speaking irritated his midwestern Progressive colleagues, and the vote divided along strict sectional and partisan lines. All the northeastern Republicans supported the Connecticut senator. Within two days Bingham rejoined the tariff debate on the Senate floor. In the Democratic sweep of 1932 Bingham lost his seat to Augustine Lonergan. He remained in Washington, however.
Bingham became a director of banks and corporations and continued to write, including a biography, Elihu Yale, the American Nabob of Queen Square (1939). During World War II he lectured on the Pacific Islands at naval officer training schools. In 1951 President Truman invited Bingham, whose long absence from government had not made him less conservative, to head the Loyalty Review Board of the Civil Service Commission. At Bingham's suggestion the basis for dismissals was changed from a finding of "reasonable grounds" of "disloyalty" on the part of the employee to a finding of "reasonable doubt" of "loyalty. " The shift produced a series of rulings unfavorable to employees and led to the controversial dismissals of John Stewart Service and John Carter Vincent from the State Department. With the inauguration of Eisenhower in 1953, Bingham lost his position. He died in Washington, D. C.
Hiram Bingham's major achievement was discovery of the ruins of Machu Picchu in 1911 while leading the Yale Peruvian Expedition. During this expedition he also rediscovered and correctly identified both Vitcos and Vilcabamba, which he deemed the final Inca bases, and made the first ascent of 21, 000-foot Mt. Coropuna. The discoveries in Peru laid the foundation for a series of popular lectures, articles, and books, including Vitcos, the Last Inca Capital (1912), Inca Land (1922), Machu Picchu, a Citadel of the Incas (1930), and Lost City of the Incas (1948). The latter became a bestseller. Bingham has been cited as one possible basis for the Indiana Jones character.
(Excerpt from In the Wonderland of Peru: The Work Accompli...)
( A special illustrated edition of Hiram Bingham's classi...)
(In 1911 Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham discovered the l...)
(South American Wars of Independence and for biographies o...)
Bingham's commitment to states' rights, federal economy, high tariff, and strong defense made him a staunch Old Guard Republican. He served as United States Senator
from Connecticut from 1925 to 1933.
Bingham was president of the National Aeronautic Association (1928 - 1934).
On November 20, 1900, Hiram Bingham and Alfreda Mitchell were married; they had seven sons. In 1937 the Binghams, who had long been estranged, were divorced, and Bingham married Suzanne Carroll Hill.