John Milton Hay (8 October 1838-1 July 1905) was US Secretary of State from 30 September 1898 to 1 July 1905, succeeding William R. Day and preceding Elihu Root.
Biography[]
John Milton Hay was born in Salem, Indiana to an abolitionist family that moved to Illinois when he was young, and he graduated from Brown University in 1858 and read law in his uncle's Springfield office. He worked for his uncle's neighbor Abraham Lincoln's successful 1860 presidential campaign and became his military secretary at the White House, and he was close to the President during the American Civil War; he stood by his side as he lay on his deathbed in April 1865 following his shooting. After the war, Hay and John George Nicolay wrote a multi-volume biography of Lincoln, and he worked as a diplomat in Europe and for the New-York Tribune. From 1879 to 1881, he served as Assistant Secretary of State, and then as ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1897 to 1898 and as Secretary of State from 1898 to 1905. He negotiated China's "Open Door Policy" and treaties with the United Kingdom, Colombia, and Panama that cleared the way for the construction of the Panama Canal, and he died in office in 1905.