page_title: Henry L. Stimson
section_title: Early life and career
hierarchical_section_title: Henry L. Stimson / Early life and career
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Henry L. Stimson with a cat, painted by the subject's aunt. An early work while the artist studied with William Merritt Chase; she herself later became the subject of a Chase portrait.
context_page_description: Henry Lewis Stimson was an American statesman, lawyer, and Republican Party politician. Over his long career, he emerged as a leading figure in US foreign policy by serving in both Republican and Democratic administrations. He served as Secretary of War under President William Howard Taft, Secretary of State under President Herbert Hoover, and Secretary of War under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.
  The son of the surgeon Lewis Atterbury Stimson, Stimson became a Wall Street lawyer after he had graduated from Harvard Law School. He served as a United States Attorney under President Theodore Roosevelt and prosecuted several antitrust cases. After he was defeated in the 1910 New York gubernatorial election, Stimson served as Secretary of War under Taft. He continued the reorganization of the United States Army that had begun under his mentor, Elihu Root. After the outbreak of World War I, Stimson became part of the Preparedness Movement. He served as an artillery officer in France after the United States entered the war. From 1927 to 1929, he served as Governor-General of the Philippines under President Calvin Coolidge.
context_section_description: Henry Lewis Stimson was born in Manhattan, New York City, the son of Lewis Atterbury Stimson, a prominent surgeon, and his wife, the former Candace Thurber Wheeler. When he was nine, his mother died of kidney failure, and he was then sent to boarding school.
  He spent summers with his grandmother Candace Wheeler at her Catskills country house and played with his nephew Dunham Wheeler, who was almost the same age, in "the Armory," which was their nickname for one corner of a large room in the house. Roaming the Catskill Mountains, he grew to love the outdoors and would become an avid sportsman. 
  He was educated at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where he gained a lifelong interest in religion and a close relationship with the school. He later donated Woodley, his Washington, DC, real estate to the school in his will (the property is now the Maret School). He was an honorary lifetime member of Theodore Roosevelt's Boone and Crockett Club, North America's first wildlife conservation organization.  He was a Phillips trustee from 1905 to 1947 and served as president of the board from 1935 to 1945. He then attended Yale College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He joined Skull and Bones, a secret society that afforded many contacts for the rest of his life. He graduated in 1888 and attended Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1890. He joined the prestigious Wall Street law firm of Root and Clark in 1891 and became a partner in 1893. Elihu Root, a future Secretary of War and Secretary of State, became a major influence on and role model for Stimson.
  In July 1893, Stimson married the former Mabel Wellington White, a great-great granddaughter of one of the Founding Fathers, Roger Sherman, and the sister of Elizabeth Selden Rogers. An adult case of mumps had left Stimson infertile, and they had no children. The couple honeymooned in Kyoto, Japan, a voyage that would prove critical in Stimson's decision not to drop a nuclear bomb on that city's exemption during the Second World War.
  In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Stimson U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where Stimson made a distinguished record prosecuting antitrust cases. He later served from 1937 to 1939 as president of the New York City Bar Association, where a medal honoring service as a U.S. Attorney is still awarded in his honor.
  Stimson was defeated as Republican candidate for Governor of New York in 1910.
caption: Young Stimson with Mimi, the cat, portrait by Dora Wheeler Keith.
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