LODGE, HENRY CABOT (1850–1924)

A Harvard-trained lawyer who also earned the Ph.D. degree in history, Henry Cabot Lodge was elected three times to the house of representatives and six times to the United States senate from Massachusetts. He was a close friend of President theodore roosevelt and a national leader of the Republican party.

During his second term in Congress Lodge introduced a bill that would have provided for federal supervision of elections in order to protect the voting rights of black citizens in southern states. But he was wary of such Progressive innovations as women's suffrage and the direct election of senators. He advocated the constant expansion of the United States through the annexation of Hawaii and other island territories, and he supported the Spanish American War because it promised to lead to annexation of the Philippine Islands. During Roosevelt's administration Lodge was a leading congressional supporter of the Panama Canal project.

In 1918, Lodge used his position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to lead the fight against the Treaty of Versailles. He based his opposition to the League of Nations, a key element of the treaty, on the unconstitutionality of commiting American military forces to combat without the express consent of Congress.

Lodge was known during his lifetime as "the scholar in politics." His vision of an American constitutionalism that was both conservative and nationalistic was presented, in part, in his biographies of george washington, alexander hamilton, and daniel webster.

Dennis J. Mahoney
(1986)

Bibliography

Garraty, John A. 1965 Henry Cabot Lodge: A Biography. New York: Knopf.