mained in the War Department, for the sake of which he had refused to
consider the Vice-Presidency, and strove for order in the Philippines,
in Cuba, and in the United States Army itself. John Hay, as Secretary of
State, continued his correspondence with the Powers over the Chinese
revolt, without a break.

Only Seward and John Quincy Adams can rival John Hay as successful
American Ministers of Foreign Affairs. Born in the Middle West in 1838,
Hay served in Lincoln's household as a private secretary throughout the
Civil War. He held minor appointments after this and alternated
diplomatic experience with literary production. The monumental _Life of
Abraham Lincoln_ was partly his work. His graceful verse gained for him
a wide reading. His anonymous novel, _The Breadwinners_, was an
important document in the early labor movement. McKinley sent him to
London as Ambassador in 1897, following the tradition that only the best
in the United States may go to the Court of St. James, and had recalled
him to be Secretary of State in the fall of 1898. The Boxer outbreak in
China in 1900 gave the first opening to the new diplomacy of the United
States, broadened out of its insularity by the Spanish War and
interested in the attainment of international ideas. Hay led in the
adjustment which settled the Chinese claims, opened the door of China
to the commerce of the world, and prevented her dismemberment. He was
still engaged in this correspondence when President McKinley was
murdered by an anarchist, and Theodore Roosevelt became President of the
United States, September 14, 1901.

In the hurried inaugural ceremony held in the Buffalo residence in which
McKinley died, Roosevelt declared his intention to continue the term as
his predecessor had begun it. He insisted that all the members of the
Cabinet should remain with him, as they did for considerable periods. He
took up the work where it had been dropped, and for some months it was
not apparent that a change had been made from a party administration to
a personal administration. The suave and cordial tolerance of McKinley
was succeeded by the aggressive certainty of his successor. Through John
Hay's skillful hand this new tone made a deeper impression on the
politics of the world than had that of any President since Washington
gave forth the doctrine of neutrality.

Cuba was a pending problem. The American army, under General Leonard
Wood, had cleaned up the island. The medical s