Elihu Root
Elihu Root (
February 15,
1845 –
February 7,
1937) was an
American lawyer and statesman and the 1912 recipient of the
Nobel Peace Prize.
Root was born in
Clinton, New York, the son of Oren Root and Nancy Whitney Buttrick. His father was professor of mathematics at
Hamilton College, where Elihu attended college; there he joined the
Sigma Phi Society, later becoming its national mentor and spiritual leader. After graduation, Root taught for one year at the
Rome Academy. In 1867, Root graduated from the Law School of
New York University. He went into private practice as a lawyer. While mainly practicing corporate law, Root was a junior defense counsel during the corruption trial of
William "Boss" Tweed. Root also had private clients including
Jay Gould,
Chester A. Arthur,
Charles Anderson Dana,
William C. Whitney,
Thomas Fortune Ryan, and
E. H. Harriman.
Root was appointed
United States Attorney for the
Southern District of New York by President
Chester A. Arthur.
Root married Clara Frances Wales (died in 1928), who was the daughter of Salem Wales, the managing editor of
Scientific American, in 1878. They had three children: Edith (married
Ulysses S. Grant III), Elihu, Jr. (who became a lawyer), and Edward.
He served as the
United States Secretary of War 1899–
1904 under
William McKinley and
Theodore Roosevelt. He reformed the organization of the
United States Army. He was responsible for enlarging
West Point and establishing the
U.S. Army War College as well as the
General Staff. He changed the procedures for promotions and organized schools for the special branches of the service. He also devised the principle of rotating officers from staff to line. Root was concerned about the new territories acquired after the
Spanish-American War and worked out the methods of how Cuba would be turned over to the Cubans, wrote the charter of government for the Philippines, and eliminated tariffs on goods imported to the United States from Puerto Rico.
In 1904, Root left the cabinet and returned to private practice as a lawyer.
In 1905, President Roosevelt named Root to be the
United States Secretary of State. As secretary, Root placed the consular service under the
Civil Service. He maintained the
Open Door Policy in the Far East. On a tour to Latin America in 1906, Root persuaded those governments to participate in the Hague Peace Conference. He worked with Japan in emigration to the United States and in dealings with China. He worked with Great Britain in resolving border disputes between the United States (Alaska) and Canada and also in the North Atlantic fisheries. He supported arbitration in resolving international disputes.
He served in the
United States Senate (
Republican –
New York) from
1909 to
1915, and did not seek reelection. He served as President of the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from
1910 to
1925. In that capacity, he helped created the
Hague Academy of International Law in the
Netherlands.
In 1912, as a result of his work to bring nations together through arbitration and cooperation, he received the
Nobel Peace Prize.
At the outbreak of
World War I, Root opposed President
Woodrow Wilson's policy of neutrality. He did support Wilson once the United States entered the war.
In June 1916, Root sought the Republican presidential nomination. However, Root reached his peak strength of 103 votes on the first ballot. The Republican presidential nomination went to
Charles Evans Hughes, who lost the election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
In June
1917, at age 72, he was sent to
Russia by President Wilson to arrange American co-operation with the new revolutionary government. A large party of well-known people accompanied the Senator, and they traveled from
Vladivostok across
Siberia in the
Czar's former train. Root remained in
Petrograd for close to a month, and was not much impressed by what he saw. The Russians, he said, "are sincerely, kindly, good people but confused and dazed." He summed up his attitude to the Provisional Government very trenchantly: "No fight, no loans." Which referred to the current conflict with
Germany in
World War I.
After World War I, Root supported the
League of Nations and served on the commission of
jurists, which created the
Permanent Court of International Justice. In 1922, President
Warren G. Harding appointed him as a delegate to the International Conference on the Limitation of Armaments.
Root worked with
Andrew Carnegie in programs for international peace and the advancement of science. He was the first president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was among the founders of the
American Law Institute in 1923.
Root died in 1937 in
Clinton, New York, with his family by his side. He is buried at the
Hamilton College Cemetery [
1].
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Root was awarded the Grand Cordon of the
Order of the Crown (Belgium) and the Grand Commander of the
Order of George I (Greece).
Elihu Root was the second cousin twice removed of
Henry Luce through
Elihu Root (1772-1843).
Citizen's Part in Government. Yale University Press, 1911.
Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution. Princeton University Press, 1913.
Addresses on International Subjects. Harvard University Press, 1916.
Military and Colonial Policy of the United States. Harvard University Press, 1916.
Miscellaneous Addresses. Harvard University Press, 1917.
Men and Policies: Addresses by Elihu Root. Harvard University Press, 1925.
"About half of the practice of a decent lawyer is telling would-be clients that they are damned fools and should stop." - Elihu Root
"The trouble is that lawyers necessarily acquire the habit of assuming the law to be right.... As a rule, the pure lawyer seldom concerns himself about the broad aspects of public policy which may show a law to be all wrong, and such a lawyer may be oblivious to the fact that in helping to enforce the law he is helping to injure the public. Then, too, lawyers are almost always conservative. Through insisting upon the maintenance of legal rules, they become instinctively opposed to change, and thus are frequently found aiding in the assertion of legal rights under laws which have once been reasonable and fair, but which, through the process of social and business development, have become unjust and unfair without the lawyers seeing it." - Elihu Root
The National Cyclopædia of American Biography. (1939) Vol. XXVI. New York: James T. White & Co. pp.1-5.
*
Nobel Biography*
Elihu Root*
About Elihu Root*
State Department Biography *
Free ebook of Elihu Root at
Project Gutenberg See Page 22. Gillers, Stephen.
Regulation of Lawyers, 7th ed., Aspen, 2005. ISBN 0-4355-5256-8
See Jessup, Phillip C.
Elihu Root, 1938. Found on Page 289 of
The Quotable Lawyer, Revised Edition, New England Publishing Associates, Inc., 1998, Frost-Knappman, Elizabeth and Shrager, David, editors. ISBN 0-8160-3778-7
