Huntington Wilson

Last updated
Huntington Wilson Huntington Wilson.jpg
Huntington Wilson

Francis Mairs Huntington Wilson (December 15, 1875-December 31, 1946) was a United States diplomat and author who served as United States Assistant Secretary of State from 1909 to 1913.

Contents

Biography

Huntington Wilson was born in Chicago, the son of Benjamin Mairs Wilson and Frances (Huntington) Wilson. Wilson was educated at Yale University, receiving an A.B. in 1897.

After college, Wilson joined the United States Consular and Diplomatic Service, becoming a Second Secretary at the United States Legation in Tokyo. He was promoted to First Secretary in 1900 and then to Chargé d’Affaires in 1901. He married Lucy Wortham James in 1904. The couple would divorce in 1915.

Wilson returned to the United States in 1906, becoming Third Assistant Secretary of State in Washington, D.C., and the Chairman of the Board of Examiners of the Consular and Diplomatic Service.

With the outbreak of the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt named Wilson Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Ottoman Empire. He was also sent on a mission to Argentina.

Returning to the U.S. again in 1909, Wilson became the United States Assistant Secretary of State during the Taft administration, which at the time was the second-ranking position in the State Department, after Secretary of State Philander C. Knox. Knox, in addition to being ignorant of foreign affairs, was very lax about his official duties, and Wilson was, in his own words, "frequently left in charge of the Department for months at a time." [1] In this capacity, Wilson was responsible for drawing up and implementing a reorganization of the United States Department of State. Wilson attempted to retire due to factors inside the State Department but was persuaded to remain for another two years. [2]

Wilson retired from government service in 1913 and settled in Philadelphia. There, he wrote for the Public Ledger and the Evening Bulletin . He also began writing books at this time, with his published titles including Stultitia (1914), The Peril of Hifalutin (1918), Money and the Price Level (1932), and Memoirs of an Ex-Diplomat (1945). He became an hereditary member of the Rhode Island Society of the Cincinnati in 1908. He married his second wife, Lucille O'Hara Powell, in December 1915; they were divorced in 1917. [3] [4]

He worked briefly for the National City Bank in New York City, before becoming president of a Waterbury, Connecticut, company that made signaling devices. He then returned to Philadelphia, serving as director of the Philadelphia Commercial Museum from 1928 to 1932. Wilson married his third wife, Hope Butler of New York City, in 1925.

Wilson died in New Haven, Connecticut, on December 31, 1946.

Works by Huntington Wilson

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Lansing</span> American politician and diplomat (1864–1928)

Robert Lansing was an American lawyer and diplomat who served as Counselor to the State Department at the outbreak of World War I, and then as United States Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson from 1915 to 1920. A conservative pro-business Democrat, he was a strong advocate of democracy and of the United States' role in establishing international law. He was an avowed enemy of German autocracy and Russian Bolshevism. Before U.S. involvement in the war, Lansing vigorously advocated freedom of the seas and the rights of neutral nations. He later advocated U.S. participation in World War I, negotiated the Lansing–Ishii Agreement with Japan in 1917 and was a member of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace at Paris in 1919. However, Wilson made Colonel House his chief foreign policy advisor because Lansing privately opposed much of the Treaty of Versailles and was skeptical of the Wilsonian principle of self-determination.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oscar Straus (politician)</span> American politician and diplomat (1850–1926)

Oscar Solomon Straus was an American politician and diplomat. He served as United States Secretary of Commerce and Labor under President Theodore Roosevelt from 1906 to 1909, making him the first Jewish United States Cabinet Secretary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry White (diplomat)</span> American diplomat

Henry White was a prominent American diplomat during the 1890s and 1900s, and one of the signers of the Treaty of Versailles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jefferson Caffery</span> American diplomat (1886–1974)

Jefferson Caffery was an American diplomat. He served as U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador (1926–1928), Colombia (1928–1933), Cuba (1934–1937), Brazil (1937–1944), France (1944–1949), and Egypt (1949–1955).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William J. Harris</span> American politician (1868–1932)

William Julius Harris was a United States senator from the state of Georgia. He was a great-grandson of Charles Hooks, who had been a Representative from North Carolina, and son-in-law of Joseph Wheeler, Confederate General and Representative from Alabama.

Dollar diplomacy of the United States, particularly during the presidency of William Howard Taft (1909–1913) was a form of American foreign policy to minimize the use or threat of military force and instead further its aims in Latin America and East Asia through the use of its economic power by guaranteeing loans made to foreign countries. In his message to Congress on 3 December 1912, Taft summarized the policy of Dollar diplomacy:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Larz Anderson</span> American diplomat

Larz Anderson was an American diplomat and bon vivant. He served as second secretary at the United States Legation to the Court of St James's, London; as first secretary and later chargé d'affaires at the United States Embassy in Rome; as United States Minister to Belgium; and then briefly as the Ambassador to Japan. He also unsuccessfully sought appointment as Ambassador to Italy.

Herman Jay "Hank" Cohen is an American diplomat who served as United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1989 to 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rogers Act</span>

The Rogers Act of 1924, often referred to as the Foreign Service Act of 1924, is the legislation that merged the United States diplomatic and consular services into the United States Foreign Service. It defined a personnel system under which the United States Secretary of State is authorized to assign and rotate diplomats abroad. It merged the low-paid high prestige diplomatic service with the higher paid, middle class consul service. The act provided a merit-based career path, with guaranteed rotations and better pay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Polk</span> American diplomat (1871–1943)

Frank Lyon Polk was an American lawyer and diplomat, who was also a name partner of the law firm today known as Davis Polk & Wardwell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lewis Einstein</span> American diplomat and historian

Lewis David Einstein was an American diplomat, historian апd art collector.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry M. Hoyt (Solicitor General)</span> American lawyer (1856–1910)

Henry Martyn Hoyt Jr. served as Solicitor General of the United States from 1903 to 1909. His father, also named Henry Martyn Hoyt, served as governor of Pennsylvania from 1879 to 1883.

Leonard Frederick Walentynowicz (1932–2005) was United States Assistant Secretary of State for Security and Consular Affairs from 1975 to 1977; a Republican lawyer and the long-time executive director of the Polish American Congress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ray Atherton</span> American diplomat

Ray Atherton was a career United States diplomat, who served as Ambassador to Greece, Bulgaria, and Denmark. He also served the role of Head of Mission as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary (Canada) (1943–48). Whilst in his last post, his role was reclassified and he became the first United States Ambassador to Canada. As Head of the State Department's Division of European Affairs he received notification from the German Embassy of their declaration of war on December 11, 1941.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chandler Hale</span> American government official

Chandler Hale was a United States diplomat who served as Third Assistant Secretary of State from 1909 to 1913.

Francis Hallett Johnson was an American career diplomat and ambassador to Costa Rica. He served in the United States Foreign Service for 36 years.

Charles Lyon Chandler was an American consul and historian of Latin America–United States relations. A Harvard graduate who came to South America in the Consular Service, he became a student and proponent of Pan-Americanism. His pioneering 1915 book Inter-American Acquaintances proposed a new, Pan-American origin for the Monroe Doctrine. After being denied a permanent diplomatic appointment he worked for the Southern Railway and the Corn Exchange Bank; at the same time he became a respected independent scholar who helped found the Hispanic American Historical Review. Beside many articles on early inter-American relations, he co-authored an unpublished biography of Joel Roberts Poinsett. During World War II he worked in Brazil for the U.S. government, and before retirement he taught at Haverford, Georgetown and Ursinus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John B. Jackson</span> American lawyer and diplomat

John Brinckerhoff Jackson was an American lawyer and diplomat who spent most of his career in Europe and the Middle East.

Harold Hilgard Tittmann, Jr. was an American diplomat and expert on Fascist Italy who served as Franklin D. Roosevelt's representative to the Vatican City during World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William W. Russell</span> American diplomat

William Worthington Russell Jr. was an American diplomat who served under five presidents.

References

  1. Schoultz, Lars (1998). Beneath the United States: a history of U.S. policy toward Latin America ([Fourth printing]. ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University: Harvard University Press. pp.  206–207. ISBN   0-674-92276-X.
  2. Huntington-Wilson, Francis (7 March 1911). "Letter from Francis Mairs Huntington-Wilson to William Howard Taft, March 7, 1911". Other Correspondence.
  3. "Huntington Wilson Weds". New York Times. Dec 21, 1915.
  4. "Huntington Wilson Married in Zurich". New York Times. September 29, 1925.
Government offices
Preceded by Third Assistant Secretary of State
July 2, 1906 December 30, 1908
Succeeded by
Preceded by United States Assistant Secretary of State
March 5, 1909 March 13, 1913
Succeeded by