Henry Lewis Stimson (September 21, 1867 - October 20, 1950) was an American politician.

Stimson was born in New York City and graduated from Yale in 1888. After graduate work and law school at Harvard, he entered the law firm headed by Elihu Root in 1891 and two years later became a partner.

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Here he made a distinguished record prosecuting antitrust cases. After defeat as Republican candidate for governor of New York in 1910, Stimson was appointed Secretary of War in 1911 under President William Howard Taft. He continued the reorganization of the Army begun by Elihu Root, improving its efficiency prior to its vast expansion in World War I.

Following the outbreak of war, he was a leader in the American effort to aid the stricken people of Belgium. After the United States became a belligerent, he served in France as an artillery officer, reaching the rank of Colonel in August 1918.

In 1927, Stimson was sent by President Calvin Coolidge to Nicaragua for civil negotiations. Stimson wrote that Nicaraguans "were not fitted for the responsibilities that go with independence and still less fitted for popular self-government." Later, after he was appointed Governor-General of the Philippines (succeeding General Leonard Wood), an office he held from 1927 to 1929, he opposed Filipino independence for the same reason.

From 1929 to 1933 he served as Secretary of State under President Herbert Hoover. In 1929 he shut down MI8, the State Department's cryptanalytic office, saying, "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail." (He later reversed this attitude.)

From 1930 to 1931 Stimson was the Chairman of the U.S. delegation to the London Naval Conference. In the following year, he was the Chairman of the U.S. delegation to the Geneva Disarmament Conference. That same year, the United States issued the "Stimson Doctrine" as a result of Japanese invasion of Manchuria: the United States refused to recognize any situation or treaty that limited U.S. treaty rights or was brought about by aggressive action (formally, action contrary to the Kellogg-Briand Pact).

Returning to private life at the end of Hoover's administration, Stimson was an outspoken advocate of strong opposition to Japanese aggression. In 1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt returned him to his old post at the head of the War Department, and he skillfully directed the tremendous expansion of the Army to the force of over 10,000,000 men which was successful in World War II.

During this period he advised both Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman on the use of atomic weapons, encouraged allowing something short of unconditional surrender for the Japanese, and later supported the use of the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Stimson retired from public office on 21 September 1945. He died at the age of 83 in Huntington, New York and is buried at Memorial Cemetery near Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. The United States Navy submarine USS Henry L. Stimson was named after him.

Publications

• American Policy in Nicaragua, 1927.
• The Far Eastern Crisis, 1936.
• Autobiography: On Active Service in Peace and War, 1948 (reprinted 1971).

External links

• The Henry L. Stimson Center (http://www.stimson.org/)

Preceded by: Frank B. Kellogg	United States Secretary of State 1929-1933	Succeeded by: Cordell Hull
Preceded by: Jacob M. Dickinson	United States Secretary of War 1911-1913	Succeeded by: Lindley M. Garrison
Preceded by: Harry H. Woodring	United States Secretary of War 1940-1945	Succeeded by: Robert P. Patterson