Henry Cabot Lodge
Henry Cabot Lodge (May 12, 1850 – November 9, 1924) was an American politician, historian, lawyer, and statesman from Massachusetts. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the United States Senate from 1893 to 1924 and is best known for his positions on foreign policy. His successful crusade against Woodrow Wilson's Treaty of Versailles ensured that the United States never joined the League of Nations and his penned conditions against that treaty, known collectively as the Lodge reservations, influenced the structure of the modern United Nations.[3][4]
This article is about the U.S. politician Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924). For his grandson (1902–1985), see Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
Henry Cabot Lodge
Position established
Augustus Octavius Bacon
Edward Avery
John Marlor[2]
May 12, 1850
Beverly, Massachusetts, U.S.
November 9, 1924 (aged 74)
Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
3, including George
Harvard University (AB, LLB, AM, PhD)
Lodge received four degrees from Harvard University and was a widely published historian. His close friendship with Theodore Roosevelt began as early as 1884 and lasted their entire lifetimes, even surviving Roosevelt's bolt from the Republican Party in 1912.
As a representative, Lodge sponsored the unsuccessful Lodge Bill of 1890, which sought to protect the voting rights of African Americans and introduce a national secret ballot. As a senator, Lodge took a more active role in foreign policy, supporting the Spanish–American War, expansion of American territory overseas, and American entry into World War I. He also supported immigration restrictions, becoming a member of the Immigration Restriction League and influencing the Immigration Act of 1917.
After World War I, Lodge became Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the leader of the Senate Republicans. From that position, he led the opposition to Wilson's Treaty of Versailles, proposing 14 reservations to the treaty.[3] His strongest objection was to the requirement that all nations repel aggression, fearing that this would erode congressional powers and erode American sovereignty; those objections had a major role in producing the veto power of the United Nations Security Council. Lodge remained in the Senate until his death in 1924.
Early life and education[edit]
Lodge was born in Beverly, Massachusetts. His father was John Ellerton Lodge of the Lodge family. His mother was Anna Cabot, a member of the Cabot family,[5] through whom he was a great-grandson of George Cabot. Lodge was a Boston Brahmin. He grew up on Boston's Beacon Hill and spent part of his childhood in Nahant, Massachusetts, where he witnessed the 1860 kidnapping of a classmate and gave testimony leading to the arrest and conviction of the kidnappers.[6] When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Lodge's father wanted to ride into battle at the head of a cavalry regiment he had personally put together, but his father missed the chance, possibly due to a bad knee from a riding injury, and in September 1862, Lodge's father suddenly died.[7] He was cousin to the American polymath Charles Peirce.
In 1872, he graduated from Harvard College, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon, the Porcellian Club, and the Hasty Pudding Club. In 1874, he graduated from Harvard Law School, and was admitted to the bar in 1875, practicing at the Boston firm now known as Ropes & Gray.[8]
Historian[edit]
After traveling through Europe, Lodge returned to Harvard, and, in 1876, became one of the earliest recipients of a Ph.D. in history from an American university.[9][10] Lodge's dissertation, "The Anglo-Saxon Land Law," was published in a compilation "Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law," alongside his Ph.D. classmates: James Laurence Laughlin on "The Anglo-Saxon Legal Procedure" and Ernest Young on "The Anglo-Saxon Family Law." All three were supervised by Henry Adams, who contributed "The Anglo-Saxon Courts of Law".[10][11] Lodge maintained a lifelong friendship with Adams.[12]
As a popular historian of the United States, Lodge focused on the early Federalist Era. He published biographies of George Washington and the prominent Federalists Alexander Hamilton, Daniel Webster, and his great-grandfather George Cabot, as well as A Short History of the English Colonies in America. In 1898, he published The Story of the Revolution in serial form in Scribner's Magazine.
Lodge was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1878.[13] In 1881, he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society.[14] He was also a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and served as its president from 1915 to 1924.[15] As such, Lodge penned a preface to The Education of Henry Adams (which had been written by Adams in 1905 and printed in a private edition for family and friends) when this classic autobiography was posthumously published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in September 1918.
In 1871, he married Anna "Nannie" Cabot Mills Davis,[47] daughter of Admiral Charles Henry Davis. They had three children:[48]
On November 5, 1924, Lodge suffered a severe stroke while recovering in the hospital from surgery for gallstones.[51] He died four days later at the age of 74.[52]
He was interred in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[53]
