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Henry Adams and 1905: Prolegomena to The Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Charles Vandersee
Affiliation:
University of Virginia (University of Leeds, 1968–69)

Extract

We know precisely what Secretary of State John Hay was doing on 7 January 1905, and it had nothing to do with government affairs. Sixtyseven years old, and not in the best of health, Hay had an engagement that took him away from his comfortable Washington mansion on Lafayette Square, across from the White House. His destination was New York—the Italian Renaissance building at 7 West 43rd Street occupied by the Century Club. The New York Tribune duly noted his checking-in at the Wolcott Hotel, but it carried no notice of his mission, which for the moment was secret. Hay had once lived in New York, thirty years before, as an editor of the Tribune, after serving as Lincoln's secretary during the Civil War. While there he had also published his celebrated little book of western dialect poems called Pike County Ballads (1871). He had then gone on, with John Nicolay, to write a scholarly ten-volume History of Abraham Lincoln, and in 1897 had been appointed American minister to England. Now, with neither fanfare nor ambition behind him, he was in his seventh year as Secretary of State and at the apex of his career, having arranged the Open Door to Chinese trade and having negotiated several important Latin American treaties.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

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