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Lodge, Henry Cabot, 1850-1924

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This article is about Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924), a U.S. politician in the early twentieth century.
For his grandson, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (1902-1985), a U.S. politician in the mid-twentieth century, see Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr..
Henry Cabot Lodge
Henry Cabot Lodge

United States Senator
from Massachusetts
In office
March 4, 1893– November 9, 1924
Preceded by Henry L. Dawes
Succeeded by William M. Butler

1st United States Senate Majority Leader
In office
1920 – 1924
Preceded by None
Succeeded by Charles Curtis

Born May 12, 1850(1850-05-12)
Boston, Massachusetts
Died November 9, 1924 (aged 74)
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Political party Republican
Spouse Anna

Henry Cabot Lodge (May 12, 1850 – November 9, 1924) was an American statesman, a Republican politician, and noted historian.

Biography

Lodge was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the great-grandson of Senator George Cabot. In 1876, he became the first student of Harvard University to graduate with the first Ph.D. in political science ever awarded by Harvard. [1] At Harvard he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and the Porcellian Club.

In 1871, he married Anna Cabot Mills Davis, the daughter of Admiral Charles Henry Davis and grand-daughter of U.S. Senator Elijah Hunt Mills. His wife's maternal aunt was married to mathematician Benjamin Peirce and the mother of Charles Peirce.[2] Henry and Anna had two sons, the noted poet George Cabot Lodge and John Ellerton Lodge, an art curator. He also graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1874 and was admitted to the bar in 1875. Lodge represented his home state in the United States House of Representatives from 1887 to 1893 and in the Senate from 1893 to 1924.

In 1901, Henry Cabot Lodge proposed a bill in the Senate that would ban the use of alcohol to minors. He was one of four Republicans to rotate in the office of Senate president pro tempore from 1911-1913, holding the seat for just one day.

As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he led the successful fight against American participation in the League of Nations, which had been proposed by President Woodrow Wilson at the close of World War I. He also served as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference from 1918 to 1924. During his term in office, he and another powerful senator, Albert J. Beveridge, pushed for the construction of a new navy.

Lodge maintained that membership in the world peacekeeping organization would threaten the sovereignty of the United States by binding the nation to international commitments it would not or could not keep. It should be noted that Lodge did not object to the United States interfering in other nation's affairs—he was a proponent of imperialism (see Lodge Committee for further explanation). In fact, Lodge's key objection to the League of Nations was Article X, the provision of the League of Nations charter that required all signatory nations to deploy troops to repel aggression of any kind. Lodge felt that an open-ended commitment to deploy soldiers into conflict regardless of it being relevant to the national security interests of the United States was unacceptable. Lodge was also motivated by political concerns, Lodge strongly disliked Woodrow Wilson and was eager to find an issue for the Republican Party to run on in 1920.

Senator Lodge argued in [1919] against the League:

The United States is the world's best hope, but if you fetter her in the interests and quarrels of other nations, if you tangle her in the intrigues of Europe, you will destroy her powerful good, and endanger her very existence. Leave her to march freely through the centuries to come, as in the years that have gone. Strong, generous, and confident, she has nobly served mankind. Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance; this great land of ordered liberty. For if we stumble and fall, freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin.[1]

The League of Nations was established without U.S. participation in 1920. With headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, it remained active until World War II. After the war, it was replaced by the United Nations, which assumed many of the League's procedures and peacekeeping functions; however it lacked the function of Article X that was present in the League of Nations. Ironically, Lodge's grandson and namesake served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1953 to 1960.

Lodge was also a vocal supporter of immigration restrictions. The public voice of the Immigration Restriction League, Lodge argued on behalf of literacy tests for incoming immigrants, appealing to fears that unskilled foreign labor was undermining the standard of living for American workers. In 1907-1911, he served on the Dillingham Commission, a joint congressional committee established to study the era's immigration patterns and make recommendations to Congress based on its findings. The Commission's recommendations led to the Immigration Act of 1917.

Lodge died in 1924 of stroke at the age of 74. He was interred in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Trivia

  • When President Wilson delivered his war message to a joint session of Congress on April 2, 1917, Senator Lodge was punched in the face by a pacifist as he entered the Capitol building. Lodge responded by striking back at the pacifist before his assailant was led away by U.S. Cavalry providing security.
  • Lodge was close friends with President Theodore Roosevelt and Senator Albert J. Beveridge, all three men were members of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.

Lodge was named after his father.

See also

  • George Cabot Lodge, poet, son of Henry Cabot Lodge
  • Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., politician, grandson of Henry Cabot Lodge
  • Lodge Committee
  • His wife, Anna, known as "Nannie," had a long-term love affair in the 1880s-90s with Washington insider and future Secretary of State John Hay.

Notes

  1. ^ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wilson/peopleevents/p_lodge.html
  2. ^ Adams, Henry. The Life of George Cabot Lodge. pg. 4-5. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1911

Sources

External links

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Preceded by
Henry B. Lovering
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Massachusetts's 6th congressional district

March 4, 1887 - March 3, 1893
Succeeded by
William Everett
Preceded by
Henry L. Dawes
United States Senator (Class 1) from Massachusetts
1893 – 1924
Served alongside: George F. Hoar, Winthrop Murray Crane, John W. Weeks, David I. Walsh
Succeeded by
William M. Butler
Preceded by
Augustus O. Bacon
President pro tempore of the United States Senate
May 25, 1912
Succeeded by
James P. Clarke
Preceded by
Jacob Harold Gallinger
Dean of the United States Senate
August 17, 1918–November 9, 1924
Succeeded by
Francis E. Warren
Preceded by
Gilbert M. Hitchcock
Chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
1919–1924
Succeeded by
William E. Borah
Preceded by
None
United States Senate Majority Leader
1920–1924
Succeeded by
Charles Curtis

This biographical information was gathered from the Henry_Cabot_Lodge page, courtesy of the Wikipedia project.

Books

The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece
The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III
Daniel Webster
George Washington, Volume I
George Washington, Volume II
Hero Tales from American History

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