Scope and Content Note
The papers of Elihu Root (1845-1937) consist of correspondence, letterbooks, reports, memoranda, notes, speeches, subject files, maps, invitations, financial papers, calendar and appointment books, printed matter, newspaper clippings, and portfolios containing maps and photographs. The collection spans the years 1863-1937, with the bulk dated between 1899 and 1937. The papers are arranged in seven series: General Correspondence, Special Correspondence, Letterbooks, Subject File, Other Related Material, 2019 Addition, and Oversize.
Topics of importance include the League of Nations, Cuba, tariff legislation, Nicaraguan affairs preceding the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty, the Carnegie Institute and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, National Academy of Science, the World Court, Portuguese arbitration (1913-1930), Corporation Tax Amendment (1909), Niagara Falls, North Atlantic Coast Fisheries, Canadian reciprocity, migratory game birds, immigration, Panama Canal, the Red Cross, Mexico, National Security League, Ship Purchase Bill, Interstate Commerce Commission, the Alaskan boundary dispute, World War I and neutrality, and the Hudson River. There is considerable correspondence and related material concerning pensions, applications to military academies and post offices, and appointments of judgeships.
The correspondence and letterbooks dominate the papers and concern Root's service as secretary of war; member of the Alaskan Boundary Commission, 1903; secretary of state; senator from New York; counsel for the United States in the North Atlantic Fisheries Arbitration at the Hague, 1910; president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1910-1925; chairman of the Republican National Convention, 1912; chairman of the Board of Trustees, Hamilton College, 1912-1937; president of the Hague Tribunal of Arbitration between Great Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal concerning church property, 1913; chairman of the Board of Trustees, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1913-1937; president of the New York Constitutional Convention, 1915; ambassador extraordinary at the head of a special diplomatic mission to Russia during the Russian Revolution, 1917; member of the Commission of International Jurists, which on invitation of the Council of the League on Nations, reported a new plan for a new Permanent Court of International Justice, 1921; commissioner plenipotentiary for the United States at the International Conference on Limitation of Armament and on Far Eastern and Pacific Questions that met at Washington, D.C., 1921; and as a member of the League of Nations committee of experts to revise the World Court Statute, 1928-1929. There is little material relating to his legal career or his family and personal life. There is, however, considerable correspondence between Elihu Root and his son, Elihu Root (1881-1967).
The Special Correspondence and Letterbooks feature Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924), Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), William H. Taft, and Leonard Wood. Of particular significance in the Correspondence series are a letter to Will H. Hays, March 29, 1919, in which Root gives his views on the proposed Covenant of the League of Nations; correspondence between Root and Chandler P. Anderson, with reference to the North Atlantic Fisheries Arbitration at the Hague, 1909-1912; and a draft of the Platt Amendment in the 1901 file under Cuba. A file of memoranda and reports in the Other Related Material series contains a letter and memorandum relating to the Battle of Wounded Knee.
The 2019 Addition primarily consists of outgoing correspondence from Root. It also includes letters sent by his wife, Clara Root. There are a number of letters to family friend Margaretta Farrar-Smith (née MacVeagh) from both Elihu Root and Clara Root. In addition, this series includes a campaign button from Root’s first senate run, pictures of Root, and postcards with images of Root’s homes.
Other prominent correspondents include Henry T. Allen, Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Newton Diehl Baker, Mabel Thorp Boardman, Charles J. Bonaparte, William Edgar Borah, William Jennings Bryan, Viscount James Bryce, Nicholas Murray Butler, Andrew Carnegie, Joseph Hodges Choate, Bainbridge Colby, Calvin Coolidge, George B. Cortelyou, Josephus Daniels, George W. Davis, Charles Dick, Grenville Mellen Dodge, Sir Eric Drummond, Walter E. Edge, George Augustus Finch, Nathaniel Foote, Lindley M. Garrison, Carter Glass, A. W. Greely, Lloyd Carpenter Griscom, Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Hermann Hagedorn, Warren G. Harding, John Hay, Will H. Hays, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edward Mandell House, Manley Ottmer Hudson, Charles Evans Hughes, Cordell Hull, Philip C. Jessup, J. J. Jusserand, Frank B. Kellogg, Frederick P. Keppel, Philander C. Knox, Franklin K. Lane, Robert Lansing, William Loeb, John Davis Long, Seth Low, W. G. McAdoo, Charles Follen McKim, William McKinley, John Bassett Moore, Baron Walter G. F. Phillimore, Thomas Collier Platt, Orville Hitchcock Platt, Redfield Proctor, Thomas Fortune Ryan, Wm. Carey Sanger, James Brown Scott, Leslie M. Shaw, John Sherman, Francis Lynde Stetson, Henry L. Stimson, Oscar S. Straus, James Wolcott Wadsworth, Henry White, George W. Wickersham, Henry Lane Wilson, Huntington Wilson, James Wilson, Woodrow Wilson, and Bronson Winthrop.