Scope and Content Note
The papers of Albert Jeremiah Beveridge (1862-1927) document his career from 1890 to 1927, beginning with his law practice in Indianapolis, Indiana, prominence as an acclaimed orator and two terms in the United States Senate, war correspondent in Europe during World War I, and later achievement as a historian and biographer of John Marshall and Abraham Lincoln. The collection spans the years 1788-1943, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1886-1927. Major correspondents include George Horace Lorimer, George W. Perkins, David Graham Phillips, Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), John C. Shaffer, and Albert Shaw. Beveridge's senatorial career covered the period of political insurgency that led to the rise of the Progressive Party. He was one of the original Progressive Republicans, and in 1912 went into the Progressive Party with Theodore Roosevelt, making the keynote address at the Chicago Progressive Convention the same year. In 1916 he re-entered the Republican Party. The collection is organized into eleven series: Office Files, General Correspondence, Lincoln Correspondence, Speeches and Articles, Miscellaneous Notes and Manuscripts, Biographical Material, Philippines Speech, Scrapbooks, Miscellany, and Book File, and Addition.
At the request of his wife, Catherine Eddy Beveridge, Albert Beveridge's drafts of articles that appeared first in Collier's Weekly and later in his book, What Is Back of the War, (published in 1915 as a result of his European trip) were identified, annotated, and arranged as part of the Book File series. Included were Beveridge's correspondence of the period, his diary notes, and a few photographs as well as records of interviews, many of them used in his book, with such individuals as Henri Bergson, Viscount Edward Grey of Fallodon, Gabriel Hanotaux, Gilbert Parker, Bernard Shaw, Alfred von Tirpitz, and William II, Emperor of Germany. Most of the interviews were sent to the persons interviewed for comments or corrections, and the responses contain unique material organized with related documentation and supplementary printed matter.
Also in the Book File is material relating to Beveridge's biographies of John Marshall and Abraham Lincoln, including notes, transcripts drafts, galleys, and other background files. Other topics of importance in the collection, in addition to the rise of Progressivism and his role in it, include Indiana politics, his call for empire and defense of imperialism, support for annexation of the Philippines, advocacy before the First World War of the construction of a new navy, and championship of national child labor laws and other reform legislation.
The Addition, 1898-1943, consists primarily of photographs of Beveridge and speeches, writings, and notes of Beveridge. Included in the speeches and writings are a speech given in 1912 by Beveridge at the Progressive National Convention in Chicago, Ill., a speech to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity in 1926 discussing the merits of the election primary versus the party convention, and an introduction written by Beveridge about Robert W. McBrides's book Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, by a Member of His Bodyguard, Rober W. McBride. Two telegrams in the general correspondence relate to the founding of the Progressive Party and there is also correspondence relating to Beveridge's book Abraham Lincoln. Also featured in the addition are a notebook and related papers documenting Beveridge's trip to the Philippines in 1899 prior to taking his seat in the Senate.