(b. Clinton, New York, 15 Feb. 1845; d. 7 Feb. 1937) US; Secretary of War 1899 – 1904, Secretary of State 1905 – 9, US Senator 1909 – 15 The son of a college professor, Root graduated BA from Hamilton College in 1864, LL B from New York City University in 1867, and was that same year called to the New York bar. He became a lawyer specializing in corporate law. He was appointed district attorney for New York Southern district, 1883 – 5. Thereafter he returned to private practice whilst assuming an active role in the Republican Party of New York City.

It was in 1899 that Root became a prominent national political figure and began a career in international diplomacy, when he was appointed Secretary of War by President McKinley. He remained in post when Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt assumed office after McKinley's death. Root briefly returned to his private law practice in 1904 but by 1905 returned to the public service as Roosevelt's Secretary of State. In 1909 he gained election to the US Senate where he became an influential member of the prestigious Foreign Relations Committee. He declined to stand for re-election in 1915, returning instead to practising law.

Root remained an influential voice within the American foreign policy élite and served on numerous national and international bodies. In 1917, as President Wilson's ambassador extraordinary, he headed a diplomatic mission to Russia, tasked with trying to persuade Russia to stay in the war. As chairman of the Republican Party national convention in Chicago in 1912, it was Root who presided over the historic division of the party that year, which led to the formation of the Progressive Party.

Root was noted for his brilliant analytical mind and a remarkable faculty for solving complicated problems of law, politics, and international affairs. His services in the cause of international peace were recognized in 1912 when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He is the author of several books including: Experiment in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution (1913); Russia and the United States (1917).

(1845–1937), Wall Street lawyer, secretary of war, secretary of state, U.S. senator

Root was a Wall Street lawyer, familiar with corporate reorganization and international law, when President William McKinley appointed him secretary of war in 1899. In the wake of the Spanish‐American War, McKinley wanted a secretary who could handle the complexities of administering the new overseas possessions in the Caribbean and Pacific and also reorganize and modernize the War Department following the chaotic mobilization of 1898.

This conservative Republican proved to be not only a competent administrator of Colonial policy in the Philippines and Cuba, but also a reformer who propelled the U.S. Army into the twentieth century. The “Root Reforms,” accomplished while he was secretary of war (1899–1904) under Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, mark him as one of the most important secretaries of war in United States history. Responding to modernizers in the officer corps, Root expanded the army's postgraduate schools, organized them into a coherent system, and established the Army War College in 1900. He also enlarged the peacetime army to meet overseas responsibilities; rotated officers assigned to the War Department's staff bureaus to freshen departmental administration; and helped modernize the National Guard according to federal standards. Finally, he led the legislative campaign for the General Staff Act to provide for central army direction and planning, which Congress approved in 1903.

He later served as Theodore Roosevelt's secretary of state (1905–09), as Republican senator for New York (1909–15), and as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1910–25), winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912. He was a delegate (1921–22) to the conference that led to the Washington Naval Arms Limitation Treaty and an advocate of the World Court.

Bibliography

• Phillip C. Jessup, Elihu Root, 2 vols., 1938.
• Richard W. Leopold, Elihu Root and the Conservative Tradition, 1954

Root, Elihu (1845-1937) secretary of state, secretary of war and Nobel Prize winner, born in New York. Root was a successful trial lawyer who served the financial and social elite of his time. He befriended Theodore Roosevelt in 1886 during Roosevelt's unsuccessful run for the New York mayoralty. In 1899 President William McKinley named him secretary of war, largely to support the economic development of America's colonial possessions. He resigned in 1904 but returned to Washington as Roosevelt's secretary of state in 1905. In that post he improved U.S. relations with the nations of Latin America but had more difficulty in stabilizing U.S. relations with Japan. He received the 1912 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to improve colonial administration and to achieve world peace. From 1909 to 1915 Root served in the Senate, where he sided with old-guard Republicans against Roosevelt, for which Roosevelt never forgave him, and opposed President Woodrow Wilson's attempts to maintain U.S. neutrality in World War I. He supported the concept of a League of Nations but advocated preserving America's right to decide when to support the territorial and political independence of other nations.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Elihu Root (1845-1937), a U.S. secretary of war and secretary of state and a senator from New York, was the most constructive conservative of his times.

Elihu Root was born at Clinton, N.Y., on Feb. 15, 1845. His father was a college professor of old New England stock. Elihu attended Hamilton College during the Civil War, graduating as valedictorian in 1864. After taking a law degree at New York University in 1867, he went into private practice in New York City. He married Clara Frances Wales in 1878; they had two daughters and a son and were a devoted family.

Root was a junior counsel to William Tweed during the notorious boss's trial in 1873. A decade later Root served briefly as U.S. attorney for the district of southern New York. An astute and resourceful legal counselor, he afterward became one of the nation's preeminent corporation lawyers. He advised the Havemeyer Sugar Trust on the reorganization that enabled it to gain control of 98 percent of the market, and he represented the Whitney-Ryan traction interests and numerous other combines. "It is not a function of law," he explained, "to enforce the rules of morality."

Root opposed the encroachment of government upon individual rights, especially those involving property, but he never pursued the implications of corporate political and economic power. As he confessed in 1906, "The pure lawyer seldom concerns himself about the broad aspects of public policy… . Lawyers are almost always conservative…. Through insisting upon the maintenance of legal rule, they become instinctively opposed to change."

Secretary of War

Root accepted President William McKinley's urgent request in 1899 that he head the mismanaged War Department. His administration of the territories wrested from Spain was at once realistic and enlightened. In Puerto Rico, where the illiteracy rate was 90 percent, he instituted a highly centralized administration virtually devoid of popular participation. At the same time, he pushed public health measures and persuaded McKinley to exempt the colony from American tariff restrictions. In Cuba, Root arranged for almost immediate civil government but insisted that the United States maintain control of its foreign relations. This was accomplished through the Platt Amendment, which he drafted.

In the Philippines, Root also pushed civil government, including extension of the Bill of Rights. He formed the army that suppressed Emilio Aguinaldo's independence movement and was so sensitive to the honor of American troops that he failed to act promptly against American atrocities. Satisfied with the Philippine government that President William Howard Taft created under his broad direction, Root was unsympathetic in later years to the Democrats' insistence that it be liberalized in order to prepare the Filipinos for full independence.

Meanwhile Root reorganized the general staff, created the Army War College, and established the Joint Army-Navy Board. President Theodore Roosevelt valued him for his calm, incisive, and eminently practical judgment, and when Root resigned in 1904, the President wrote, "I shall never have, and can never have, a more loyal friend, a more faithful and wiser adviser."

Secretary of State

In 1905 Root returned to government service as secretary of state under Roosevelt. Continuing to complement Roosevelt admirably, he pacified the Senate, promoted friendly relations with Latin America, kept a wary eye on Germany, and otherwise comported himself with patience, tact, and cordiality. He supported the Second Hague Conference and worked hard and skillfully to maintain amicable relations with Japan. His crowning achievement was the negotiation of 24 bilateral arbitration treaties. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912.

Senator from New York

Root seemed unable to understand the nature or aims of the Progressive movement, and his 6 years (1909-1915) as a U.S. senator were among the least productive of his life. He disapproved much of the reform legislation under President Taft, and all of it under Woodrow Wilson. His attacks on Wilson's Mexican policy were also unfair and simplistic. Concluding that World War I was a struggle for "Anglo-Saxon" liberty, he was a strong proponent of American entry. In 1917 he headed an ineffective and imperceptive mission to Russia designed to keep the provisional government in the war.

During the fight over the League of Nations, Root was caught between his general approval of the League, his strong nationalistic strain, and his own and his party's partisanship. He tried, but failed, to play a constructive role by advocating American entry with nationalistic reservations. Root came out of retirement in late 1921 to serve on the American delegation to the Washington Conference. He also gave freely to the movement to adhere to the World Court and further invested himself in service to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and other Carnegie benefactions. He died on Feb. 7, 1937.

A charming, witty man in the company of intimates, Root lacked charisma in public. Aside from his obvious achievements in the War and State Departments, he is remembered for his embodiment of that which was wisest and most constructive in the conservative tradition.

Further Reading

Eight volumes of Root's writings and addresses up to 1923 were edited by Robert Bacon and James B. Scott and published between 1916 and 1925. The official biography is Philip C. Jessup, Elihu Root (2 vols., 1938), a full if somewhat adulatory account. It should be supplemented by Richard W. Leopold, Elihu Root and the Conservative Tradition (1954), a dispassionate work that benefits from recent scholarship. Considerable material on Root is contained in Julius W. Pratt, America's Colonial Experiment: How the United States Gained, Governed, and in Part Gave Away a Colonial Empire (1950), and in the biographies of Roosevelt, Taft, and other contemporaries.

Additional Sources

Leopold, Richard William, Elihu Root and the conservative tradition, Boston, Little, Brown 1954.

Root, Grace McClure Dixon (Cogswell) 1890-, Fathers and sons Clinton N.Y., 1971.

For more information on Elihu Root, visit Britannica.com.

1845–1937, American cabinet member and diplomat, b. Clinton, N.Y. Admitted to the bar in 1867, he practiced law in New York City, became prominent in Republican politics, and was appointed (1883) U.S. attorney of the southern district of New York. He soon returned (1885) to his private practice, in which he gained distinction as a corporation lawyer. As U.S. Secretary of War (1899–1904) under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, Root improved the efficiency of the War Dept., made drastic reforms in the organization of the army, introduced the principle of the general staff, and established the Army War College. He helped direct U.S. policy in the areas acquired as a result of the Spanish-American War and was largely responsible for the Platt Amendment (see under Platt, Orville Hitchcock) regarding Cuba. He also fostered the establishment of civilian governments in Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Root became Secretary of State under Roosevelt in 1905, serving until 1909. He improved relations with Latin America somewhat, after much criticism had been leveled at U.S. activities in Panama, and he concluded (1908) the Root-Takahira agreement with Japan, by which both nations agreed to maintain the status quo in the Pacific and to uphold the Open Door Policy in China. He also negotiated a series of arbitration treaties. Although reluctant to run for public office—partly because his opponents made much of his having been defense attorney for William M. Tweed in 1873—he accepted appointment in 1909 as U.S. Senator from New York and served until 1915. In 1912 he was chairman of the Republican national convention, and in the break between Roosevelt and William Howard Taft he adhered to the conservative Taft faction. He was a member of the Hague Tribunal (Permanent Court of Arbitration) and was prominent (1910) in the North Atlantic Coast Fisheries Arbitration. Root received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912 in recognition of his efforts toward international peace. He advocated U.S. entry into the League of Nations and helped to bring the World Court (Permanent Court of International Justice) into existence.

Bibliography

See biographies by P. C. Jessup (1938) and R. W. Leopold (1954).

Quotes:

"Men do not fail; they give up trying."

"We all know of course that we cannot abolish all the evils in this world by statute or by the enforcement of statutes, nor can we prevent the inexorable law of nature which decrees that suffering shall follow vice, and all the evil passions and folly of mankind. Law cannot give to depravity the rewards of virtue, to indolence the rewards of industry, to indifference the rewards of ambition, or to ignorance the rewards of learning. The utmost that government can do is measurably to protect men, not against the wrong they do themselves but against wrong done by others and to promote the long, slow process of educating mind and character to a better knowledge and nobler standards of life and conduct. We know all this, but when we see how much misery there is in the world and instinctively cry out against it, and when we see some things that government may do to mitigate it, we are apt to forget how little after all it is possible for any government to do, and to hold the particular government of the time and place to a standard of responsibility which no government can possibly meet."

"Politics is the practical exercise of the art of self-government, and somebody must attend to it if we are to have self-government; somebody must study it, and learn the art, and exercise patience and sympathy and skill to bring the multitude of opinions and wishes of self-governing people into such order that some prevailing opinion may be expressed and peaceably accepted. Otherwise, confusion will result either in dictatorship or anarchy. The principal ground of reproach against any American citizen should be that he is not a politician. Everyone ought to be, as Lincoln was."

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