John milton hay

John Milton Hay (Salem, Indiana, October 8, 1838 - Newbury, New Hampshire, July 1, 1905) was an American politician, writer, historian, poet, journalist, and Hispanic scholar. Secretary of State between September 1898 and July 1905, during the presidencies of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.

Biography

He studied at Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island). In 1858 he went to work at his uncle's law firm in Springfield, Illinois. During the Civil War he served from 1860 to 1865 as an assistant to his friend John Nicolay, Abraham Lincoln's private secretary. Together they accumulated materials to later write the biography of the president. Later he served in the American embassies, being secretary of the one in Paris (1865-7) and that of Madrid (1867-8), and in charge of affairs in Vienna (1868-70). From 1870 to 1876 he was editor of the New York Tribune; in this period he also published travel books, such as Castilian Days (1871) about his experiences in Spain, and Ballads of Pike County (1871); then he was first Assistant Secretary of State under President Rutherford B. Hayes from 1879 to 1881; he then drew up the materials for the two great works of his on President Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln: A History (10 vols., 1890) and Abraham Lincoln, Collected Works (1894). He was then ambassador to the United Kingdom for two years (1897-1898) and, from 1898 until his death, Secretary of State for the United States, first under President William McKinley and then under Theodore Roosevelt. In this position he played an important role in the negotiations to achieve the construction of the Panama Canal and, on the other hand, to enter into peace negotiations with Spain (1898) after the war. He advocated a program of free trade with China against Russia and Japan (1899) and, during the Boxer Rebellion, declared that his country would support the territorial and administrative integrity of China. Its policy of friendship with England made it recognize the influence of the United States in Panama and Alaska, which was verified through the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, signed in 1901 with the British ambassador to the United States, Lord Julian Pauncefote, by the one that allowed the construction of the Panama Canal to the US, with the help of other complementary treaties: the Herrán-Hay Treaty (1903) and the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty (1903); Since after the defeat in 1898 Spain had renounced the government of the Philippine Islands in the hands of the United States, it was possible to consolidate the dominance of the United States in the Pacific Ocean. In all, Hay negotiated over fifty treaties during his political career.

Martín García Mérou dedicates one of his American Studies (F. Lajouane, 1900) to him and he appears as a character in Ian Gibson's novel La berlina de Prim (2013)

Works

• Abraham Lincoln: A History (with John G. Nicolay), 1890, 10 vols.
• The Breadwinners (1883)
• Castilian Days ("Spanish Days", 1875)
• Pike County Ballads and Other Poems ("Baladas of Pike County and Other Poems," 1871)
• Poems (1890).
• Abraham Lincoln Edition, Complete works (2 vols., 1894).