page_title: John Hay
section_title: Assessment and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: John Hay / Assessment and legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: John Hay bust (1915-17) by J. Massey Rhind, inside the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial in Niles, Ohio
context_page_description: John Milton Hay was an American statesman and official whose career in government stretched over almost half a century. Beginning as a private secretary and assistant to Abraham Lincoln, Hay's highest office was United States Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Hay was also an author and biographer, and wrote poetry and other literature throughout much of his life.
  Born in Indiana to an anti-slavery family that moved to Illinois when he was young, Hay showed great potential, and his family sent him to Brown University. After graduation in 1858, Hay read law in his uncle's office in Springfield, Illinois, adjacent to that of Lincoln. Hay worked for Lincoln's successful presidential campaign and became one of his private secretaries at the White House. Throughout the American Civil War, Hay was close to Lincoln and stood by his deathbed after the President was shot at Ford's Theatre. In addition to his other literary works, Hay co-authored with John George Nicolay a multi-volume biography of Lincoln that helped shape the assassinated president's historical image.
context_section_description: In 1902, Hay wrote that when he died, "I shall not be much missed except by my wife." Nevertheless, due to his premature death at age 66, he was survived by most of his friends. These included Adams, who although he blamed the pressures of Hay's office, where he was badgered by Roosevelt and many senators, for the Secretary of State's death, admitted that Hay had remained in the position because he feared being bored. He memorialized his friend in the final pages of his autobiographical The Education of Henry Adams: with Hay's death, his own education had ended.
  Gale pointed out that Hay "accomplished a great deal in the realm of international statesmanship, and the world may be a better place because of his efforts as secretary of state ... the man was a scintillating ambassador". Yet, Gale felt, any assessment of Hay must include negatives as well, that after his marriage to the wealthy Clara Stone, Hay "allowed his deep-seated love of ease triumph over his Middle Western devotion to work and a fair shake for all." Despite his literary accomplishments, Hay "was often lazy. His first poetry was his best."
  Taliaferro suggests that "if Hay put any ... indelible stamp on history, perhaps it was that he demonstrated how the United States ought to comport itself. He, not Roosevelt, was the adult in charge when the nation and the State Department attained global maturity." He quotes John St. Loe Strachey, "All that the world saw was a great gentleman and a great statesman doing his work for the State and for the President with perfect taste, perfect good sense, and perfect good humour".
  Hay's efforts to shape Lincoln's image increased his own prominence and reputation in making his association (and that of Nicolay) with the assassinated president ever more remarkable and noteworthy. According to Zeitz, "the greater Lincoln grew in death, the greater they grew for having known him so well, and so intimately, in life. Everyone wanted to know them if only to ask what it had been like—what he had been like." Their answer to that, expressed in ten volumes of biography, Gale wrote, "has been incredibly influential". In 1974, Lincoln scholar Roy P. Basler stated that later biographers such as Carl Sandburg did not "ma[k]e revisions of the essential story told by N.[icolay] & H.[ay]. Zeitz concurs, "Americans today understand Abraham Lincoln much as Nicolay and Hay hoped that they would."
  Hay brought about more than 50 treaties, including the Canal-related treaties, and settlement of the Samoan dispute, as a result of which the United States secured what became known as American Samoa. In 1900, Hay negotiated a treaty with Denmark for the cession of the Danish West Indies. That treaty failed in the Danish parliament on a tied vote.
  In 1923 Mount Hay, also known as Boundary Peak 167 on the Canada–United States border, was named after John Hay in recognition of his role in negotiating the US-Canada treaty resulting in the Alaska Boundary Tribunal. Brown University's John Hay Library is named for that prominent alumnus. Hay's New Hampshire estate has been conserved by various organizations. Although he and his family never lived there (Hay died while it was under construction), the Hay-McKinney House, home to the Cleveland History Center and thousands of artifacts, serves to remind Clevelanders of John Hay's lengthy service. During World War II the Liberty ship SS John Hay was built in Panama City, Florida, and named in his honor. Camp John Hay a United States military base established in 1903 in Baguio, Philippines was named for John Hay, and the base name was maintained by the Philippine government even after its 1991 turnover to Philippine authorities.
  According to historian Lewis L. Gould, in his account of McKinley's presidency,
  One of the most entertaining and interesting letter writers who ever ran the State Department, the witty, dapper, and bearded Hay left behind an abundance of documentary evidence on his public career. His name is indelibly linked with that verity of the nation's Asian policy, the Open Door, and he contribut
caption: Posthumous bust of John Hay (1915–17), by J. Massey Rhind, inside the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial
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