Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution
(Originally published in 1913. This volume from the Cornel...)
Originally published in 1913. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.
Elihu Root was an American statesman, lawyer who served as the Secretary of State and as Secretary of War under President Theodore Roosevelt
Background
Elihu Root was born, the third of four brothers, at Clinton, New York, United States, where his father and older brother, both named Oren but known to generations of students as "Cube" and "Square" Root, successively served as professors of mathematics at Hamilton College from 1849 to 1907. His mother, Nancy Whitney Buttrick, was the granddaughter of the John Buttrick who at Concord Bridge gave the order to fire the "shot heard round the world. " The Roots were simple people of plain English stock who first came to America in 1639, settling in Connecticut and gradually moving westward through Massachusetts to the Mohawk Valley region in central New York. The grandfather, also named Elihu, settled as a farmer in the town of Vernon and kept an inn. The father, Oren, growing up as a farm boy, educated himself and turned to a life of teaching. Elihu Root grew up in a scientific atmosphere pervaded by a love of nature which remained a strong influence throughout his life.
Education
After some desultory local schooling and instruction by his father and older brother, he entered Hamilton College, where he was the valedictorian of the class of 1864. He decided to become a lawyer. After a year of teaching in the Rome Academy, some ten miles from his home, he had saved enough money to go to New York City, where, largely through Hamilton College connections, he got a job teaching at a fashionable girls' school and enrolled in the New York University Law School. Graduated in 1867
Career
Graduating in 1867, he was admitted to the bar, and after a year's apprenticeship in the leading law firm of Mann and Parsons, he started his own firm with John H. Strahan. Through other contacts, cases began to come his way, and within two years he was able to begin sending money home to help his father--his five-thousand-dollar income in 1869 being five times his father's professorial salary. Thus began a legal career which made Root the acknowledged leader of the American bar. He began his practice in the post-Civil War period, which was marked by a dismally low standard of business and political ethics. In New York City it was the heyday of the notorious Tweed Ring. When Tweed was brought to trial in 1873, Root was a successful but unimportant young lawyer. Tweed retained a battery of eminent counsel, one of whom employed Root as an assistant. Root was also retained by a friend to handle one of the cases against James H. Ingersoll, a Tweed codefendant. The minor part which he played in these cases was of no current moment, though when Root subsequently became a leading political figure it was greatly magnified by his detractors, especially the Hearst press after Root's withering denunciation of Hearst in the New York gubernatorial campaign of 1906. Root's practice developed principally in cases involving banks, railroads, wills, and estates, and cases involving municipal government in New York City. Court work was his specialty. His success was due to a phenomenal memory, capacity for hard work, mastery of detail, logical conciseness and clarity of argument, and ever-present wit. In the pattern of the times, again, no opprobrium attached to his representing large corporate interests such as the Havemeyers of Sugar Trust fame or the traction interests controlled by William C. Whitney and Thomas F. Ryan , though these aspects of his practice were also played up in later years by the opposition press so that the label "Wall Street lawyer" followed him like a shadow in his period of great political prominence. Root's associations and inclinations drew him into close contact with conservative Republicans. He early joined the Union League Club, the citadel of this group in New York, and took an active part in local politics, which he considered a citizen's duty, but he was usually in opposition to the state Republican machine led by Senator Thomas C. Platt. He was a friend of President Arthur, but his political activities were local rather than national until 1899. In 1894 Root had charge of the general management and control of the New York State constitutional convention, of which Joseph H. Choate was president; Root was to fill the latter position with great distinction in the next such convention, in 1915. He emerged from the convention with an enhanced reputation as a political strategist, an able organizer, and a forceful and effective speaker. Root first encountered Theodore Roosevelt when he supported that lively young New Yorker in his unsuccessful bid for mayor in 1886. As legal adviser to the mayor Root worked with Roosevelt again when the latter was police commissioner in 1895. But it was in 1898 that Roosevelt learned to rely heavily on Root's friendship and advice. That year Root probably saved Roosevelt's candidacy for governor at the Republican convention by explaining away Roosevelt's Washington residence which he had technically established to avoid New York taxes. As governor, Roosevelt frequently drew ideas from Root, especially on trusts and franchise taxes. In 1899 President McKinley asked Root to become Secretary of War. Root had earlier declined a place on the commission to negotiate the peace treaty with Spain, for which he said he was not qualified, but he accepted the cabinet position when told that McKinley wanted a lawyer to direct the government of the former Spanish islands, which became an American responsibility, under the administration of the War Department, on the close of the war. As it happened, the post gave him the opportunity not only for an outstanding achievement in colonial administration but for a fundamental reform of the army itself. Of the conquered territories, Puerto Rico was a less difficult problem than Cuba or the Philippines since the island was peaceful and had not been ravaged by war. Recognizing that economic prosperity could come only through exemption from the United States tariff, Root persuaded McKinley, in the face of the prevailing protectionism, to recommend to Congress that Puerto Rican products have free access to the mainland markets. Because ninety per cent of the Puerto Ricans were illiterate, Root recommended a highly centralized system of government with negligible popular participation. The Foraker Act of 1900, which he helped to draft, gave the Puerto Ricans more popular representation than he had recommended but imposed only a temporary tariff on imports at fifteen per cent of the Dingley Tariff rates. The Cuban problem was much more difficult. The Teller Amendment and the peace treaty both looked to the early end of the military occupation. Root believed that the United States must hand Cuba over to the Cubans with a sound governmental system, with as much rehabilitation as could be accomplished, and with due regard to the protection of American interests. His selection of General Leonard Wood as military governor was most fortunate; the two worked closely together, and Wood's regime remains a model. In 1901 Wood convened a constitutional convention, to be chosen by an electorate limited almost entirely to the literate. Root insisted that the Cubans should include in the constitution proper safeguards for United States interests, and this was accomplished through the incorporation of the requirements laid down in the Platt Amendment (1901), most of which was drafted by Root though introduced in Congress by Senator Orville H. Platt. Root succeeded by tact and honest argument in dispelling most Cuban fears about these conditions, which were finally adopted. Meanwhile, the program of sanitation, school-building, and the like had progressed rapidly. The objectives which Root had in mind were accomplished when the Cuban flag replaced the Stars and Stripes in 1902. In that era it was a signal achievement. The Philippine problem was again different. When Root took office, the Filipinos under Aguinaldo's leadership had been in violent revolt for six months. Only 21, 000 United States troops were in the islands, and the enlistments of most of these were about to expire. Within a year Root had repatriated the existing force and under new congressional authorizations had put 74, 000 men in the archipelago. Remembering the total inefficiency of the American army's logistics in the war with Spain, this was an astounding achievement; but two years more of guerilla fighting took place before peace was established. During this time there were atrocities on both sides, and the anti-imperialists bitterly attacked Root for not eliminating them from the American side. Root understood the provocation to which the American soldiers were exposed in this cruel jungle warfare and won the love of the service for his defense, but he took vigorous disciplinary steps against individual offenders. Before Root took charge, McKinley had sent a commission to the Philippines under President Jacob Gould Schurman of Cornell. Root awaited the report of this commission, which held that the islanders were not ready for self-rule, before making any proposals concerning the government of the islands. In 1900 a second commission, under Judge William Howard Taft, was sent out to supplant the military regime. Root wrote the instructions which President McKinley signed; reaffirmed by Congress in the Organic Act of 1902, they remain in substance and in form a model prescription for colonial administration. Root's program - largely inspired by his reading of British colonial history - stressed material improvements and did not contemplate rapid progress toward independence (to which in this case the United States was not committed), but it was notable for its firm guarantee of individual liberties and for its insistence upon developing local institutions instead of trying to transplant American ones. Supported by McKinley and subsequently by Roosevelt, Root and Taft worked together on Philippine problems in a team as effective as the Root-Wood combination in Cuba. Although Root had not taken office with the idea of reorganizing the army, the situation which he found demanded action. Entrenched bureaucracy crippled efficiency, and there was no organization responsible for the planning and execution of over-all military policy. Root secured authorization from Congress for a minimum of 60, 000 and a maximum of 100, 000 men. He induced Congress to transform the National Guard of the several states into the organized militia of the United States. He put an end to permanent staff jobs in Washington, establishing the principle of rotation from staff to line. He created the Army War College and introduced the general staff principle, although the full system was not developed until later. These reforms were accomplished over the bitterest opposition from the politically influential bureau chiefs, from General Nelson A. Miles who held the title of commanding general of the army and who had presidential ambitions, and from many others who attacked Root's attempt to "Prussianize" the United States. There is now general agreement, both within and without army circles, that, in the words of Newton D. Baker a later Secretary of War, Root's work was "the outstanding contribution made by any Secretary of War from the beginning of history. " Root's ability to carry through these accomplishments was due in large part to the skill with which--in sharp contrast to his close friend and fellow cabinet member John Hay - he established and maintained friendly contact with congressional leaders in both houses.
Root insisted on resigning from the cabinet in 1903, largely because of Mrs. Root's eagerness to exchange the official life of Washington for the congenial family circle, though partly because his own health had suffered from his strenuous labors. He was temporary chairman of the Republican National Convention which nominated Roosevelt for the presidency in 1904 and could himself have been elected governor of New York in that year had he yielded to the pleadings of his friends, but the task was not congenial to him. He likewise refused to be chairman of the Republican National Committee. The presidential bee never lodged in his bonnet. Even when he finally permitted a group of his friends to boom him for the presidency in 1916 his heart was not in it. As for 1908, Roosevelt had long wavered between Root and Taft as his choice for his successor; had Root been governor of New York, the choice would probably have fallen on him. But meanwhile John Hay had died in 1905, and Roosevelt, as Hay wished, had called Root back to Washington as Secretary of State, a call Root could not refuse. Perhaps Root's principal achievement as Secretary of State was to reestablish friendly relations with the republics of Latin America, which had not been cultivated since the earlier efforts of Clay and Blaine and which after Root's time again retrogressed until Cordell Hull and the era of "the Good Neighbor. " Root made a tour of South America in 1906, eliciting praise even from previously hostile newspapers in those countries. He established friendly contacts with a number of individual Latin-American diplomats, secured Latin-American participation in the Second Hague Peace Conference, and cooperated with Mexico in mediating troubles in Central America. Although he had supported the Roosevelt corollary of the Monroe Doctrine and Roosevelt's "taking" of the Panama Canal Zone, and although during his South American trip the United States was forced into a temporary intervention in Cuba, his policy was free from the "dollar diplomacy" of the Taft-Knox era and of the patronizing moral superiority of Wilson's policy toward Mexico. On the other side of the world, Root devoted himself to establishing friendly relations with Japan. He played no part in Roosevelt's peace-making at Portsmouth, and it was Roosevelt who decided to send the new American navy around the world. But Root shared with Roosevelt in adjusting the difficulties raised by the San Francisco school segregationists and negotiated the Gentlemen's Agreement by which Japan undertook to control emigration to the United States, thus fending off obnoxious exclusion laws. Through the Root-Takahira agreement in 1908 and an arbitration treaty in the same year, a friendly understanding between the two countries was established at a time when Washington and even more the European capitals were genuinely concerned about a possible Japanese-American war. In a broader field, Root concluded a series of arbitration treaties, overcoming Roosevelt's objections, which had blocked similar efforts by John Hay. For his contribution to peace in the Western Hemisphere, his work for arbitration and the sanctity of treaties, and his achievements in setting up an enlightened colonial system, Root received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912. Root also settled the long-drawn-out controversy over the North Atlantic Coast fisheries and, aided particularly by the British ambassador, Lord Bryce, set Canadian-American relations in a new pattern of friendly adjustment. Unlike his outstanding reorganization of the War Department, he did not accomplish great reforms in the State Department, although he did make important progress in taking the consular service out of politics and establishing a career service on a merit basis. Root resigned from the cabinet again in 1909 and accepted election by the New York legislature to the United States Senate. His six years there were not characterized by the outstanding qualities which he had displayed in the cabinet. He was now sixty-four years old, and even his very great physical vigor was impaired by his years of government service. Though conservative, Root was not a reactionary, and he saw eye-to-eye with Rossevelt on many of his domestic policies - much more so than Root's opponents would believe. He could not, however, support his old friend on a matter which seemed to him so fundamentally wrong as the recall of judicial decisions, and he had little sympathy with Wilson and his New Freedom. It was during Root's senatorial period that the great breach developed between Roosevelt and Taft. Root tried desperately to heal the breach and to restrain his impetuous former chief, but to no avail. Before Roosevelt, against Root's advice, threw his hat in the ring, Root was committed to Taft. Sorrowfully but doggedly he accepted what he considered the duty of presiding over the Republican National Convention of 1912, where the nomination of Taft was followed by the Bull Moose bolt. The passions of that period lasted long, and dispassionate judgments by the actors in the scene are few, but it seems correct to say that Root fairly applied the rules as they existed, and that it was the established rules of the convention rather than any skulduggery of the Taft group which ensured Taft's selection. Roosevelt, however, never forgave Root, and although there were later attempts to restore the old intimacy, they were not really successful. Root harbored no ill-will but much sorrow. In his relations with President Wilson, Root as Senator gave valuable support in the fight to repeal the tolls exemption provision of the Panama Canal Act (passed during the Taft administration over Root's opposition - one of the rare occasions when he felt obliged to split with his party on a major issue), but he opposed all other important administration measures. After the World War broke out in 1914, Root, as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, felt impelled to maintain for some time a neutral attitude. It was not until he returned to private life in March 1915 that his antagonism to Wilson and to his neutrality policy became bitter. Old feelings of distrust of Germany and friendship for England made him accept fully and uncritically the Allied position. When the United States entered the war in 1917 he preached and worked for support of the President. In April 1917 Wilson appointed him head of a mission to Russia, then passing through the first stages of its revolutionary turmoil. The Root mission was dramatic but foredoomed to failure. Wilson paid no attention to the commission's recommendations and treated its members with scant courtesy upon their return. By the time Wilson was confronted with the choice of a delegation to the Paris Peace Conference his distrust of Root was clear, and he paid no heed to those who urged that Root be included. In the fight over the League of Nations the Republicans constantly turned to Root, who consistently took the position that the treaty should be accepted with reservations. He objected to the famous Article X, which Wilson described as "the heart of the Covenant, " largely because he believed that as a permanent commitment it represented a stand which the United States would probably not support when the test came. He was quite willing to accept it as a temporary guarantee during the period of the liquidation of the war, in which he felt the United States was obligated to help. For a time he worked closely with his old friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge , but they parted ways when Root felt that Lodge, instead of working for the ratification of the treaty with reservations, was intent upon defeating it. In 1920 Root supported Harding without enthusiasm and was a signer of the famous letter of the Thirty-One Republicans who urged Harding's election as the best path to entering the League with appropriate safeguards. Root was insistent upon the need to strengthen and develop international law and to improve international judicial processes. As a private citizen he accepted appointment to the League's commission of jurists which framed the statute for the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1920, working out, with Lord Phillimore of Great Britain, some of its key provisions. In subsequent years he played a leading part in advocating American membership in the Court, but he declined to be considered for a position on it. Throughout his later years Root was regarded as the elder statesman, wise in counsel, skilled in advocacy. As friend and adviser of Andrew Carnegiehe helped to establish a number of the Carnegie benefactions and served as president or chairman of the board of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Carnegie Institution in Washington for the advancement of pure science, and the Carnegie Corporation. Up to the last he remained active in matters affecting the bar, and he was chairman of the board of trustees of Hamilton College from 1909 until his death.
(8 pp., plus 2 double-fold maps of these sections of river...)
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Politics
He early joined the Union League Club, the citadel of this group in New York, and took an active part in local politics, which he considered a citizen's duty, but he was usually in opposition to the state Republican machine led by Senator Thomas C. Platt
Membership
chairman of the Republican National Convention;
chairman of the board of trustees of Hamilton College;
Personality
He was quite willing to accept it as a temporary guarantee during the period of the liquidation of the war, in which he felt the United States was obligated to help.
Quotes from others about the person
in the words of Newton D. Baker, a later Secretary of War, Root's work was "the outstanding contribution made by any Secretary of War from the beginning of history. " Root's ability to carry through these accomplishments was due in large part to the skill with which - in sharp contrast to his close friend and fellow cabinet member John Hay - he established and maintained friendly contact with congressional leaders in both houses.
Connections
In 1878 Root married Clara Frances Wales, daughter of Salem H. Wales, a wealthy and respected man in New York City. They had three children, Edith, Elihu, and Edward Wales. It was a devoted family, and his solicitude for Mrs. Root's health and preferences was one of the factors which made political office distasteful to Root in subsequent years.
He succumbed to an attack of pneumonia at his home in New York City a week before his ninety-second birthday.
Awarded Nobel Peace Prize for 1912. Roosevelt medal for Administration of Public Office, 1924. Woodrow Wilson Foundation medal and prize, 1926, for championship of Court of International Justice.
Dodge lecturer, Yale, 1907. Stafford Little lecturer, Princeton, 1913. Temporary chairman Republican National Convention, 1904, and temporary and permanent chairman, 1912.
Chairman New York Republican State convs., 1908, 10, 13, 14, 16, 20, 22. President New York College of Presidential Electors, 1925. President New York Constitutional Convention, 1915.
Chairman trustees Carnegie Institution of Washington, since 1913, Hamilton College, since 1912. Trustee New York Public Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Federation of Arts, New York State Charities Aid Association President of New England Society in New York, 1893-1895, Union League Club (New York), 1898-1899, and 1915-1916, Association Bar City of New York, 1904-1905, American Society International Law, since 1906, New York State Bar Association, 1910, American Bar Association, 1915. President New York Law Institute.
Member Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence. Honorary member Institute of Advocates of Brazil. Honorary president Pan-American Conference, Rio de Janeiro, 1906.
Honorary president American Institute International Law, National Security League, New York Association for the Blind, National Society for Prevention of Blindness. President Century Club, New York, since 1918. Correspondent fellow British Academy, since 1916.
Honorary member Institut de Droit International. Honorary member American International Assurance, New York Chamber of Commerce, Society of the Cincinnati. Member American Philosophical Society, American Academy Arts and Letters.
Correspondent fellow Massachusetts History Society. Fellow American Academy Arts and Sciences. Chairman United States Government War Savings Investments Society, January since 1918.
Honorary president and member of council American Law Institute Delaware and honorary president New York State Convention, 1933, to act on Repeal of 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution Grand Cordon de l’ordre de la Couronne of Belgium, 1919. Grand commander Royal Order of George the First (Greece), 1923.
Awarded Nobel Peace Prize for 1912. Roosevelt medal for Administration of Public Office, 1924. Woodrow Wilson Foundation medal and prize, 1926, for championship of Court of International Justice.
Dodge lecturer, Yale, 1907. Stafford Little lecturer, Princeton, 1913. Temporary chairman Republican National Convention, 1904, and temporary and permanent chairman, 1912.
Chairman New York Republican State convs., 1908, 10, 13, 14, 16, 20, 22. President New York College of Presidential Electors, 1925. President New York Constitutional Convention, 1915.
Chairman trustees Carnegie Institution of Washington, since 1913, Hamilton College, since 1912. Trustee New York Public Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Federation of Arts, New York State Charities Aid Association President of New England Society in New York, 1893-1895, Union League Club (New York), 1898-1899, and 1915-1916, Association Bar City of New York, 1904-1905, American Society International Law, since 1906, New York State Bar Association, 1910, American Bar Association, 1915. President New York Law Institute.
Member Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence. Honorary member Institute of Advocates of Brazil. Honorary president Pan-American Conference, Rio de Janeiro, 1906.
Honorary president American Institute International Law, National Security League, New York Association for the Blind, National Society for Prevention of Blindness. President Century Club, New York, since 1918. Correspondent fellow British Academy, since 1916.
Honorary member Institut de Droit International. Honorary member American International Assurance, New York Chamber of Commerce, Society of the Cincinnati. Member American Philosophical Society, American Academy Arts and Letters.
Correspondent fellow Massachusetts History Society. Fellow American Academy Arts and Sciences. Chairman United States Government War Savings Investments Society, January since 1918.
Honorary president and member of council American Law Institute Delaware and honorary president New York State Convention, 1933, to act on Repeal of 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution Grand Cordon de l’ordre de la Couronne of Belgium, 1919. Grand commander Royal Order of George the First (Greece), 1923.