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...

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...

<p>Legal, good. Illegal, bad. That's the whole immigration mess summed up.</p> <p>I know I'm vastly over-simplifying things here, but I think it's time we see this issue for what it is: more heat than substance. The heat is that somehow a nation concerned with its borders has forgotten its past. It hasn't.</p>

Two Queens gang members were busted yesterday, accused of blowing away a female pal at a drug-laced party for the hell of it, law enforcement sources said. Ramiro Pineda, 20, and William Ramirez, 22, were slapped with murder charges in the shooting death of Maria Rubio early Tuesday in a College Point apartment, cops said. Sources gave a chilling account of the slaying, which occurred when Pineda and Ramirez, both of Flushing, were partying with Rubio and other men in a second-floor 130th St. pad. "Let's shoot the b----," one suspect said, and fired, hitting Rubio, a source said. "No,...