John Barrett wa an American diplomat, publicist, and head of the Pan American Union.
Background
He was born on November 28, 1866, in Grafton, Vermont, the second son and second of three children of Charles and Caroline (Sanford) Barrett. His father, an artist and town official, served in the state legislature; the Barretts traced their New England ancestry to colonial Massachusetts. John had deep roots in Grafton, and extensive travel later did not sever ties which bound him to family and to place.
Education
He attended Vermont Academy, was graduated from Worcester (Massachussets) Academy in 1884, and entered Dartmouth College, from which he received an A. B. degree in 1889, having spent the first semester of his senior year at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
Honorary degrees were awarded him by Dartmouth, Tulane, the University of Southern California, the National University of Bogot , and Panama National University.
Career
Following his graduation Barrett went to California to teach, but he soon turned instead to journalism. After working on several west coast newspapers he became in 1891 associate editor of the Portland (Oregon) Evening Telegram. His support of Cleveland in 1892 and his travel to and articles on Asia led to his appointment, at the age of twenty-seven, as United States minister to Siam (1894 - 98). Traveling widely in the Orient, he urged Americans, in reports and magazine articles, to take more interest in the Pacific area, writing officially in 1897 that "American material interests in the far East [should] be built up from Japan to Java. One of the greatest opportunities of the world is here. "
At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War he resigned his post in Siam and went to Manila as a newspaper correspondent. While there he became an adviser to Admiral George Dewey, of whom he wrote a highly eulogistic biography, published in 1899. Returning home, he continued to speak and write in advocacy of a strong United States policy in the Far East. In 1901 Barrett was appointed one of five American delegates to the Second International Conference of American States, in Mexico, and his attention soon afterwards was focused on Latin America, about whose prospects he became even more enthusiastic than he had been earlier about Asia's. He served as United States minister to Argentina, 1903-04, and then as the first permanently assigned minister to Panama, 1904-05. President Theodore Roosevelt's letters reveal that he was not satisfied with Barrett's performance in Panama, but he nevertheless appointed him minister to Colombia in 1905.
Barrett was on good terms with President Rafael Reyes, and his diplomacy helped to ease the tension caused by United States actions during the Panama revolt and the creation of the Canal Zone. Probably at the suggestion of Elihu Root, in 1907 the governing board of the International Bureau of the American Republics elected Barrett as its director-general. It was as head of the Pan American Union (the name Barrett preferred became official in 1910) that he labored longest and most effectively in the vineyard of inter-American relations.
He wrote several books and many articles on Latin American subjects. During his thirteen and a half years as director-general, the Pan American Union expanded its functions significantly and gave important continuity and focus to Pan Americanism in practice. Among the accomplishments in which Barrett took special pride was the raising of the necessary funds, from the various republics and especially from Andrew Carnegie, for the construction of the Pan American Union Building in Washington, D. C. Barrett resigned from his post in 1920 (by his own account because of "material necessities"), though he continued as an officer in the Pan American Society, which he had founded.
An active supporter of his fellow-Vermonter Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Barrett for a time sought the Republican nomination for United States Senator from Vermont in that year, but withdrew before the primary.
Personality
Six feet tall, optimistic, self-assured, an able speaker, writer, and organizer, Barrett was not a profound analyst of inter-American political problems, but he gave wholly of his great energy and enthusiasm to become an outstanding advocate of increased Pan-American understanding for the advancement of "peace, friendship, and commerce" - particularly commerce.
Connections
On November 5, 1934, he married Mrs. Mary Elizabeth (Tanner) Cady, of Burlington, who died in 1937.