Free Republic

John Hay was President Lincoln's personal secretary, a position that began nearly five decades of public service. A diplomat who served multiple Administrations from Lincoln to Roosevelt, he was a central figure in defining the U.S. foreign policy that would be the basis of the United States role on the world stage in the twentieth century.This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As very few images of the actual event are available in the Public Domain, images of similar objects and events are used for...

The Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, and the Constitution of the United States of America—those were the three texts in the blue pamphlet I found on the table in front of me as I took my seat at a conference at Princeton. On the cover was the logo of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, an influential organization whose boardmembers include former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse, controversial Obama judicial nominee Goodwin Liu, former New York governor Mario Cuomo, former solicitors general Drew Days and Walter Dellinger, and former attorney general Janet Reno. The...

Despite the U.S. declaring an “Open Door Policy” in support of China’s sovereignty, U.S. Marines on May 31, 1900 invaded China to help defeat the Boxer Rebellion. With imperial Great Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Japan, and Russia trying to carve China into colonies, Secretary of State John Hay in the fall of 1899 declared the United States would honor an “Open Door Policy” that respected Chinese territorial and administrative integrity and allowed equal trading privileges for all nations. Nineteenth-century imperialists had forced China’s ruling Qing Dynasty to accept foreign dominance over much of China’s economic affairs. Two Opium Wars with...