Background
Knox was born on May 6, 1853 in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, one of nine children of Rebecca (née Page) and David S. Knox. His father was a banker and his mother was active in philanthropic and social organizations.
Knox was born on May 6, 1853 in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, one of nine children of Rebecca (née Page) and David S. Knox. His father was a banker and his mother was active in philanthropic and social organizations.
Knox attended local schools and was graduated in 1872 from Mount Union College in Ohio.
Having successfully trained himself for the bar in a law office in Pittsburgh, Knox in 1876 became assistant district attorney for western Pennsylvania. He resigned the next year, however, to form the law partnership of Knox and Reed, to which he devoted his next 25 years, serving mostly steel and railroads clients. In 1897 he was elected president of the Pennsylvania Bar Association. Two years later, a long-time friend, President William McKinley, offered him the post of Attorney General of the United States, but Knox refused, being engrossed in the organization of the Carnegie Steel Company. When early in 1901 the cabinet post was proffered again, Knox accepted and after McKinley's assassination continued to serve under Theodore Roosevelt. Despite the Attorney General's closeness to large business interests, he alone of the cabinet was taken into Roosevelt's confidence before institution of the famous suit against the Northern Securities Company in 1902. Knox prosecuted the Hill-Morgan combine successfully under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1903 and the next year won confirmation of the government's case before the Supreme Court. In June 1904, Knox was appointed to fill a vacancy in the Senate from Pennsylvania. Elected to a full term in 1906, Knox was prominent in the Panama Canal Tolls debate. He resigned from the Senate in 1909 to become Secretary of State in the new administration of his close friend, William Howard Taft. Knox skillfully reorganized the State Department and directed its policies toward "dollar diplomacy, " a program that sought to unite American commercial and foreign-policy interests. Knox's efforts in the Far East and Central America largely failed, but his policies were later adopted and implemented by the Wilson administration, which had begun by attacking them. Knox returned to private practice in Pittsburgh from 1913 until 1916, when once again he ran successfully for the Senate. There he became an important leader of the fight against ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. He drafted the "round robin" with which Republican senators attacked Wilson's League of Nations before the end of the peace conference and later originated many of the Senate "reservations. " As early as June 1919 Knox proposed a resolution for a separate peace with Germany. His desire for such a peace was realized by joint resolution enacted by Congress shortly before his death on October 12, 1921.
While serving President Roosevelt, Knox worked hard to implement the concept of Dollar Diplomacy. As Secretary of State, he reorganized the Department on a divisional basis, extended the merit system to the Diplomatic Service up to the grade of chief of mission, pursued a policy of encouraging and protecting American investments abroad, declared the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, and accomplished the settlement of controversies related to activities in the Bering Sea and the North Atlantic fisheries.
Member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, member of the Duquesne Club
In 1880, Knox married Lillian "Lillie" Smith, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Darsie Smith. Her father was a partner in a steel company known as Smith, Sutton and Co. The company eventually became a part of Crucible Steel. Knox and his wife had several children, including Hugh Knox. His extended relatives include a nephew, "Billy" Knox.