82 Facts About Elihu Root

Elihu Root was an American lawyer, Republican politician, and statesman who served as the 41st United States Secretary of War under presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt and the 38th United States Secretary of State under Roosevelt.

Elihu Root served as a United States Senator from New York and received the 1912 Nobel Peace Prize.

Elihu Root was a leading New York City lawyer who moved frequently between high-level appointed government positions in Washington, DC, and private-sector legal practice in New York.

Elihu Root headed organizations such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the American Society of International Law.

Elihu Root favored a paternalistic approach to colonial administration, emphasizing technology, engineering, and disinterested public service.

Elihu Root helped craft the Foraker Act of 1900, the Platt Amendment of 1901, and the Philippine Organic Act.

Elihu Root modernized the Army into a professional military apparatus with a general staff, restructured the National Guard, and established the US Army War College.

Elihu Root returned to the Roosevelt administration as Secretary of State from 1905 to 1909.

Elihu Root modernized the consular service by minimizing patronage, maintained the Open Door Policy in China, promoted friendly relations with Latin America, and resolved frictions with Japan over the immigration and treatment of Japanese citizens to the West Coast of the United States.

Elihu Root negotiated 24 bilateral international arbitration treaties, which led to the creation of the Permanent Court of International Justice.

Elihu Root supported Wilson's vision of the League of Nations but with reservations along the lines proposed by Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge.

Elihu Root was born on February 15,1845, in Clinton, Oneida County, New York, to Oren Root and Nancy Whitney Buttrick, both of English descent.

Elihu Root's father was a professor of mathematics at Hamilton College.

Elihu Root joined the Sigma Phi Society and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa society.

Elihu Root enrolled at New York University School of Law and earned money teaching American history at elite girls' schools.

At the time, most law students in the United States applied for admission to the bar after one year of study, but Elihu Root stayed on for a second year, essentially a private tutelage under Professor John Norton Pomeroy.

Elihu Root graduated in 1867 with a Bachelor of Laws and was admitted to the bar on June 18,1867.

In March 1869, Elihu Root was hired to reorganize the bank to acquire a state charter.

Elihu Root was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1881.

In 1889, Elihu Root advised Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Thomas Brackett Reed on his controversial efforts to revise the House rules.

On January 19,1898, Elihu Root was elected a member of the executive committee of the newly formed North American Trust Company.

Around that time, Elihu Root was elected the 38th president of the American Bar Association.

Tweed retained eminent defense counsel led by David Dudley Field; Elihu Root joined the case on behalf of Tweed's co-defendant James Ingersoll, a furniture manufacturer who stood accused of fraudulently billing the city government for millions of dollars.

Elihu Root took a minor role in the proceedings, examining jurors and occasionally cross-examining the prosecution witnesses.

Three of Tweed's attorneys were fined for contempt of court; Elihu Root was not among them.

Elihu Root took a more active role in the Ingersoll defense, successfully appealing a jurisdictional issue to the New York Court of Appeals.

Early in his legal career, Elihu Root joined the Union League Club, where he met a number of young New York Republicans.

Elihu Root avoided political office personally, believing that it would obstruct his legal career.

Elihu Root expanded his involvement at the Union League Club, where his father-in-law was an active member.

In 1879, Arthur and Alonzo B Cornell persuaded Root to stand for the Court of Common Pleas.

Elihu Root viewed the campaign as hopeless given the city's Democratic reputation, took no part in the campaign, and was relieved to lose the election.

In 1881, Elihu Root encountered another future President: Theodore Roosevelt, who was elected to the State Assembly from Elihu Root's district.

Elihu Root actively supported the young Roosevelt's career by signing Roosevelt's nomination papers, aiding in efforts to sideline a rival candidate, and speaking on behalf of his 1886 mayoral campaign.

The role was part-time, with Elihu Root devoting his mornings to the Attorney's office and his afternoons to his private practice.

Elihu Root prosecuted two cases for violation of United States neutrality laws against vessels for aiding Haitian and Colombian insurgents and defended the government in the Head Money Cases, a challenge to the Immigration Act of 1882 on grounds that it conflicted with international treaties with the Republic of the Netherlands.

For six weeks, Elihu Root devoted his full attention to the case, including the deposition of former President Grant, who died before a verdict was reached.

Just before his resignation, Elihu Root successfully won an indictment of Fish's co-conspirator, Ferdinand Ward.

Elihu Root quietly submitted his resignation to President Grover Cleveland on July 1,1885.

Two other members of the conspiracy were later prosecuted, and Elihu Root returned from private life to assist with the prosecutions.

Elihu Root resigned from the cabinet on February 1,1904, and returned to private practice as a lawyer.

Elihu Root's immediate focus was reforming military administration, which he viewed as a prerequisite for success in territorial administration or any future military campaign.

Elihu Root worked closely with Adjutant General Henry Clark Corbin and William Harding Carter.

Elihu Root proposed the establishment of a General Staff led by the office of Chief of Staff of the United States Army.

Elihu Root changed the procedures for promotions and devised the principle of rotating officers from staff to line.

Elihu Root worked out the procedures for turning Cuba over to the Cubans, ensured a charter of government for the Philippines, and eliminated tariffs on goods imported to the United States from Puerto Rico.

Elihu Root established the island's first republican form of government under the command of Leonard Wood.

In 1900, Elihu Root guided the establishment of the Philippine commission, led by William Howard Taft, as a move toward autonomous civil government.

Elihu Root repeatedly refused efforts to draft him as the Republican candidate for Governor in the 1904 election; instead, he focused on securing Roosevelt's nomination to a full term at the national convention, where he delivered the opening speech.

Elihu Root maintained the Open Door Policy in the Far East.

Elihu Root worked with Japan to limit emigration to the United States and on dealings with China.

Elihu Root worked with Great Britain in arbitration of issues between the United States and Canada on the Alaska boundary dispute, and competition in the North Atlantic fisheries.

In January 1909, Elihu Root was elected by the legislature as a US Senator from New York, serving from March 4,1909, to March 3,1915.

Elihu Root was a member of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

In 1912, as a result of his work to bring nations together through arbitration and cooperation, Elihu Root received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Elihu Root promoted the Preparedness Movement to get the United States ready for actual participation in the war.

Elihu Root was a leading advocate of American entry into the war on the side of the British and French because he feared the militarism of Germany would be bad for the world and for the United States.

At the Republican National Convention, Elihu Root reached his peak strength of 103 votes on the first ballot.

In June 1917, at age 72, Elihu Root headed a mission to Russia sent by President Wilson to arrange American co-operation with the Russian Provisional Government headed by Alexander Kerensky.

Elihu Root remained in Petrograd for close to a month and was not much impressed by what he saw.

Elihu Root was the founding chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, established in 1918 in New York.

The United States never joined, but Elihu Root supported the League of Nations and served on the commission of jurists which created the Permanent Court of International Justice.

In 1922, when Root was 77, President Warren G Harding appointed him as a delegate to the Washington Naval Conference as part of an American team headed by Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes.

Elihu Root was a presidential elector for Calvin Coolidge in the 1924 presidential election.

Elihu Root worked with Andrew Carnegie in programs for international peace and the advancement of science, becoming the first president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Elihu Root was among the founders of the American Law Institute in 1923 and helped create The Hague Academy of International Law in the Netherlands.

Elihu Root served as vice president of the American Peace Society, which publishes World Affairs, the oldest US journal on international relations.

Elihu Root would remain an active opponent of feminism for the rest of his career.

In 1870, Elihu Root accompanied his brother Wally, with whom he had lived in his early days in New York, on a European voyage.

Towards the end of the trip, Elihu Root had to carry his brother in his arms.

In 1878, Elihu Root married Clara Frances Wales, the daughter of prominent New York Republican Salem Howe Wales.

Elihu Root married Alida Stryker, the daughter of Hamilton College president M Woolsey Stryker.

Elihu Root shared a love of western big game hunting with President Roosevelt.

Elihu Root served as president of the New York City Bar Association from 1904 to 1905.

Elihu Root became the president of the National Security League in 1917, succeeding his mentor Joseph Hodges Choate.

Elihu Root spoke in favor of war and in opposition to women's suffrage as head of the league.

Elihu Root was a member of the American Philosophical Society.

Elihu Root died in 1937 in New York City, with his family by his side.

Elihu Root was the last surviving member of the McKinley Cabinet and the last Cabinet member to have served in the 19th century.

Professor Alfred McCoy argues that Elihu Root was the first "foreign policy grandmaster" in American history and that Elihu Root more than any other figure is responsible for transforming America into a world power.

Elihu Root helped to ensure that powerful business interests and the intellectual elite supported an interventionist foreign policy.

Root joined the Empire State Society of the Sons of the American Revolution in 1895, based on his descent from Lieutenant Elihu Root who was an officer in the Continental Army from Massachusetts, and was the second cousin twice removed of the publisher Henry Luce.

In 1912, Elihu Root was elected as an honorary member of the New York Society of the Cincinnati.