Elihu Root

Elihu Root (born Feb. 15, 1845, Clinton, N.Y., U.S.—died Feb. 7, 1937, New York, N.Y.) was an American lawyer and statesman, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1912.

Root received his law degree from New York University in 1867 and became a leading corporation lawyer. As U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York (1883–85) he came into close contact with Theodore Roosevelt, then a leader in New York Republican politics, and became Roosevelt’s friend and legal adviser.

As secretary of war in President William McKinley’s (and, after McKinley’s assassination, Roosevelt’s) cabinet (1899–1903), Root worked out governmental arrangements for the former Spanish areas then under U.S. control as a result of the Spanish-American War. He was the primary author of the Foraker Act (1900), which provided for civil government in Puerto Rico. He established U.S. authority in the Philippines and wrote the instructions for an American governing commission sent there in 1900. He also effected a reorganization of the U.S. Army, established the principle of rotation of officers from staff to line, and created the Army War College in 1901.

Root left the cabinet in 1904 but returned as secretary of state the following year during Roosevelt’s second term and remained until 1909. On a tour of South America (1906) he persuaded Latin-American states to participate in the Second Hague Peace Conference, and he negotiated agreements by which Japan undertook to control its immigration to the United States and to arbitrate certain kinds of disputes. With the Japanese ambassador to the United States, Takahira Kogoro, Root negotiated the Root-Takahira Agreement (1908), under whose terms Japan promised to respect the Open Door Policy in China. Root also concluded treaties of arbitration with more than 20 nations. Later, as chief counsel for the United States before the Hague Tribunal, he settled the controversy between the United States and Great Britain over the North Atlantic coast fisheries. For these and other contributions to peace and general world harmony he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

From 1909 to 1915, as a Republican senator from New York, Root sided with the William Howard Taft wing of the party. After the outbreak of World War I in Europe, he openly supported the Allies and was critical of President Woodrow Wilson’s policy of neutrality. He was a leading Republican supporter of international law and served on the commission of jurists that established the Permanent Court of International Justice (1920–21). President Warren Harding appointed him one of four U.S. delegates to the International Conference on the Limitation of Armaments (1921–22). In his later years Root worked closely with Andrew Carnegie on programs for international peace and for the advancement of science.