Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was born into the Virginia planter elite of colonial America. He graduated from the College of William and Mary and studied law in Williamsburg, where he was also a member of the House of Burgesses. A delegate to the Second Continental Congress, he drafted the Declaration of Independence in 1776, when he was just 33 years old, and for more than three decades served his country. Returning to the Virginia legislature, he drafted a bill for religious freedom and in 1779 was elected governor. In 1783 he returned to Congress, where he helped develop plans for incorporating new lands ceded by Britain in the Treaty of Paris, called the Northwest Territory. His time there was brief, since Congress, recognizing the importance of commercial treaties, sent him to Paris on a diplomatic mission. While there Jefferson succeeded Benjamin Franklin and was appointed minister to France, where he witnessed the beginnings of the French Revolution. 

In 1789 the newly inaugurated President George Washington called Jefferson home to make him the nation’s first secretary of state under the new Constitution, which had been ratified the previous year. Jefferson was shortly at odds with Alexander Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury whose economic policies aimed at consolidating national power and favored commercial interests over agriculture. When Britain and France went to war in 1793, Jefferson and Hamilton clashed again. While President Washington declared that the United States would remain neutral, Jefferson favored closer ties to France, which had supported the United States during the Revolution, while Hamilton favored Britain as the nation’s most important trading power. Tension within Washington’s cabinet prompted the emergence of early political parties, Jefferson’s allies as the Democratic-Republicans and Hamilton’s as the Federalists. In 1793, Jefferson resigned.

A candidate for president in 1796, Jefferson came in second and so—according to the constitutional arrangement of the time—served as President John Adams’s vice president. In 1800 Jefferson ran again and won. From 1801 to 1809, his two terms were marked by domestic accomplishments, notably the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, which secured navigation rights on the Mississippi River and doubled the size of the country. The three-year Lewis and Clark Expedition mapped the new lands and brought back specimens of plants and animals that Jefferson delighted in. In foreign affairs, Jefferson sent U.S. warships to the Barbary States on the coast of North Africa to protect American ships from seizure and hostage-taking. But the president had little success in sustaining neutrality in the ongoing war between Britain and France. Both sides seized American ships and even its citizens and the 1807 Embargo Act, which sought to apply economic pressure by prohibiting trade with either, was a failure. It crippled the U.S. economy and left the nation ill-prepared for the war against Great Britain that began in 1812.  

In 1809 Jefferson retired to Monticello, the mansion of his own design near Charlottesville, and spent most of his remaining years planning the University of Virginia. It was what he said he wanted to be remembered for, together with the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

Edmund Jennings Randolph (1753–1813) was born into a leading Virginia family. Like Jefferson, he graduated from the College of William and Mary, studied law, and began practicing law in Williamsburg. When the Revolutionary War began, he broke with his loyalist father and immersed himself in revolutionary politics. He rose in prominence to become governor of Virginia and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. President George Washington appointed Randolph the nation’s first attorney general in 1789 and then, in 1794, secretary of state. 

During the ongoing war between France and Great Britain, Randolph attempted to continue Thomas Jefferson’s preference for close relations with France and to minimize Alexander Hamilton’s influence over President Washington. He objected to Jay’s Treaty with Great Britain (ratified in 1795) on the grounds that its commercial provisions would disrupt trade with neutral countries, particularly France. Hoping to neutralize Randolph’s opposition, the British government gave his opponents intercepted French documents that falsely implied Randolph was open to a bribe. Though he was innocent, he lost Washington’s confidence and resigned. 

Shortly thereafter, however, Randolph’s work on negotiating a treaty with Spain resulted in success. The 1795 Treaty of San Lorenzo secured the opening of the Mississippi River to U.S. navigation and fixed boundaries between Spanish possessions and the United States. Randolph returned to Virginia to practice law.

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Timothy Pickering (1745–1829) graduated from Harvard College and practiced law before joining the Continental Army during the Revolution. He impressed General George Washington as a confident and skilled negotiator. Early in his administration, President Washington sent Pickering on special diplomatic missions to negotiate a peace agreement with the northeastern Indian tribes. Washington then appointed him, in succession, postmaster general, secretary of war, and secretary of state. 

The war between Great Britain and France continued to dominate American foreign policy. Pickering followed a pro-British agenda, and the 1795 Jay Treaty achieved many of his aims since it gave preferential treatment to Britain in matters of trade. But these terms angered the French, who regarded them as a violation of the 1778 treaties of alliance and commerce and began seizing U.S. merchant ships. President John Adams sent peace commissioners to renegotiate trade treaties, but they were not received by the French ministry. Instead, lower-level French diplomats demanded bribes before negotiations could begin in a scandal that became known as the XYZ Affair. Relations deteriorated further, and for the next two years U.S. and French ships attacked each other in an undeclared war, the so-called Quasi War. Pickering’s protests of Adams’s decision to send another commission to France led to his dismissal.

The Convention of 1800 ended the Quasi-War as well as the French alliance from 1778. In 1803 Pickering was elected senator from Massachusetts, and he later also served in the U.S. House of Representatives. A Federalist firebrand, he led the movement for New England secession during the War of 1812. 

John Marshall (1755–1835) was raised on the Virginia frontier. He fought in the Revolutionary War, serving as a captain in the Continental Army, and studied law at the College of William and Mary before beginning a lifetime of public service. 

Marshall began his diplomatic career in 1797. He was one of three envoys sent to Paris by President John Adams and negotiated trade treaties with the French. His mission was made all the more important by French attacks on neutral U.S. shipping. The mission failed, however, when lower-level French diplomats demanded bribes before negotiations could begin. The XYZ Affair, as it was called, increased tensions between the two countries. Each side attacked the other’s ships in what contemporaries described as a Quasi-War. But for Marshall, who had reported about the scandal, the XYZ Affair turned a diplomatic failure into a personal triumph, as his reputation soared at home. Two years later, Adams appointed him secretary of state. In this position for only a year, he was able to help negotiate a settlement with the French—the Convention of 1800 that ended the undeclared war and established terms for trade.

Just before he left office, President Adams appointed Marshall as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, the role for which he is best known. In the next 35 years Marshall led decisions that vastly increased the authority of the judiciary, making it a truly co-equal branch of government with Congress and the presidency. Most notably, in Marbury v. Madison (1803), he established the right of judicial review, that is, the power to declare a law passed by Congress unconstitutional.

James Madison (1751–1836) was born near Port Conway, Virginia, into the planter class. He received an excellent education from private tutors and then studied at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). He served in the Continental Congress and the Virginia House of Delegates, where, with Thomas Jefferson, he drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. He represented Virginia at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and his Virginia Plan, with three branches of government and a system of checks and balances, was largely adopted. For his role he is recognized as “The Father of the Constitution.” Madison then, with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, penned the Federalist Papers, a series of influential essays that helped build support for the ratification of the new U.S. Constitution. When the new government went into operation in 1789, Madison was immediately elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he sponsored the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights. Opposed to Hamilton’s economic program and efforts to strengthen the power of the central government, Madison aligned with Thomas Jefferson to form the Democratic-Republican Party. After Jefferson won the 1800 presidential election, he appointed Madison secretary of state. 

As secretary, Madison cooperated closely with President Jefferson. He helped organize negotiations with France that led to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, doubling the size of the United States. Madison also supported Jefferson’s decision to launch a naval war against the Barbary States of North Africa to protect American shipping from state-sponsored piracy. The most critical foreign policy issue of Madison’s term, however, was the continuing war between Great Britain and France. Although as early as 1793 the United States, under President George Washington, had proclaimed neutrality and an intention to trade freely with both warring counties, each side continued to attack U.S. commercial ships. When diplomatic talks broke down, Madison and Jefferson adopted the Embargo Act of 1807, which prohibited trade with all countries, and the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, which prohibited trade with just Britain and France. But the prohibitions backfired, harming the U.S. economy, especially after European powers reciprocated with their own trade limitations.

Madison became president in 1809, and his two terms were dominated by the continuing war between Great Britain and France. In 1812 he led the United States into war against Great Britain, not only because of continuing trade violations and attacks but especially because of the British practice of impressment—seizing American sailors off American vessels and forcing them to serve in the British Navy. In 1814 the British invaded the Chesapeake Bay, marched on Washington, and burned government buildings in the city. But already a peace commission was meeting in Ghent, Belgium, and a peace treaty was signed at the very end of the year. 

Madison was determined to rebuild the capital in the City of Washington, and the White House, which had nearly been destroyed by fire, was almost completed when his term ended. He retired to his Virginia mansion, Montpelier.

Robert Smith (1757–1842) was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After serving briefly in the Continental Army during the Revolution, he graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), studied law, and began practicing in Baltimore. He also served in the Maryland legislature. Recognizing Smith’s knowledge of maritime law, President Thomas Jefferson appointed him secretary of the navy in 1801, a position he held until he became secretary of state in 1809.

Smith had actually been President James Madison’s second choice for secretary of state, and Madison did not trust him. Having been secretary of state himself, Madison redrafted many of Smith’s diplomatic notes. It was a tense time, as the United States attempted to maintain neutrality in the continuing war between Great Britain and France, hoping to trade freely with both countries. But neither Britain nor France recognized U.S. neutrality, and both countries seized American ships suspected of trading with the other country. 

Advised by Madison, Smith entered into negotiations with the British minister in Washington, hoping to secure neutral trading rights. They formed a tentative agreement that would end hostilities between the United States and Britain. But, their success turned to disappointment, when their agreement was rejected by the British prime minister in London because it did not commit the United States not to trade with France. Madison sought to dismiss Smith, offering him the post of minister to Russia, but Smith resigned and did not return to government service. Frustration over the agreement’s failure helped propel Britain and the United States into the War of 1812.

James Monroe (1758–1831) was born to a plantation family in Westmoreland County, Virginia. He studied at the College of William and Mary. In 1775 he enlisted in the Third Virginia Infantry and fought under General George Washington’s command during the Revolutionary War. Following the war, he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, then the U.S. Senate, and then as governor of Virginia.

Monroe served on several diplomatic missions that addressed the most critical threats facing his generation. President George Washington appointed him minister to France in 1794, but tensions over the Jay Treaty between the United States and Great Britain strained diplomatic relations and he was recalled in 1796. Monroe returned to France in 1803, to assist with the Louisiana Purchase negotiations, which doubled the size of the United States. He then went on to London, where he served as minister to Britain from 1803 until 1807, a period complicated by disputes over U.S. neutrality rights during the long war between Britain and France. Not only was each warring nation attacking U.S. shipping, but the British were seizing sailors off U.S. ships and forcing them to serve in the British Navy, a practice called impressment. Monroe tried to negotiate a halt to the practice, but failed. During this time he also traveled to Spain, hoping to gain recognition of West Florida as a U.S. possession as part of the Louisiana Purchase, but was unsuccessful.

Appointed secretary of state by President James Madison, Monroe became convinced that war against Great Britain was necessary. Congress passed a declaration of war on June 17, 1812. Although the United States did win some naval battles, the war—known as the War of 1812—went badly, and when the secretary of war resigned, President Madison asked Monroe to also take on the post as acting secretary. In August 1814 British troops marched into Washington and burned government buildings in the city. Meanwhile peace talks were under way in Ghent, Belgium, and a treaty that restored the status quo was signed in December of that year. The news had not yet arrived, however, when in January 1815 General Andrew Jackson defeated the British in New Orleans. The great victory launched a period of national pride.

In 1816, Monroe was elected president, ushering in what was known as the Era of Good Feelings. Federalist opposition to the war proved such an embarrassment that the party faded away, and when Monroe ran for president again in 1820 he ran unopposed. His administration was notable for foreign policy successes, including the acquisition of Florida in 1819 and the issuance of the Monroe Doctrine, crafted by his influential secretary of state, John Quincy Adams. In his annual address to Congress in December 1823, Monroe warned the imperial powers of Europe not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere, where former colonies of Spain had just won independence. In turn, Monroe stated that the United States would not interfere in wars between the nations of Europe. This Monroe Doctrine guided U.S. foreign policy for a century.

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), the son of John and Abigail Adams, was born in Braintree, Massachusetts. His diplomatic career began at age 10, when he accompanied his father on a diplomatic mission to France, and then to Holland and London. At age 14, conversant in French, he traveled to Russia as private secretary to the U.S. minister, Francis Dana. Young Adams also served as secretary to his father during the peace negotiations for the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War in 1783. In 1787 Adams graduated from Harvard College and began practicing law in Boston.

Soon Adams became a diplomat in his own right. President George Washington appointed him U.S. minister to the Netherlands in 1794. Three years later, he became U.S. minister to Prussia, appointed this time by his father, President John Adams. The younger Adams returned to the United States to serve as senator from Massachusetts from 1803 to 1808. In 1809 President James Madison appointed John Quincy Adams U.S. minister to Russia, where he served until 1814, when Madison sent him to Belgium, to the neutral city of Ghent, to lead the peace commission negotiating an end to the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain. Adams next served as minister to Great Britain, starting the negotiations to disarm the Great Lakes that culminated in the Rush-Bagot Pact of 1817. He also guided the progress of the Convention of 1818, which set the boundary between the United States and British North America (later Canada) from the Lake of the Woods to the crest of Rocky Mountains and stipulated the joint occupation of the Oregon Country. In 1817 President James Monroe called Adams home to be secretary of state.

As secretary, Adams’s brilliant diplomacy led to the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819, by which the United States acquired Florida from Spain, which also gave up its claim to the Oregon Country. But Adams is most famous for the Monroe Doctrine, which reflected his views, and was first  announced publicly by President Monroe during his annual address in 1823. Monroe warned the imperial powers of Europe not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere, where former colonies of Spain had just won independence. In turn, Monroe stated that the United States would not interfere in wars between the nations of Europe. The United States went on to recognize the new Latin American republics and thereafter assumed a protective role over them.

In 1825 Adams became president following a disputed election. Supporters of his opponent, Andrew Jackson, did not make his time in office easy. Defeated in 1828, Adams returned to Massachusetts, which soon sent him back to the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington. There he served until his death in 1848, an opponent of the expansion of slavery. In 1839 he successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that the Africans who had mutinied aboard the Amistad were free and should not be returned to Spain.

Henry Clay (1777–1852) was born in Hanover County, Virginia. He read law and moved to Kentucky in 1797. An eloquent speaker, he represented Kentucky in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate for most of the rest of his life. Clay’s appointment as secretary of state was controversial.

Clay had run for the presidency in 1824, but there were multiple candidates and he came in fourth. As there was no clear majority in the electoral college, the top three candidates were to be voted on in the House of Representatives, where Clay held influence as Speaker. Clay lent his support to John Quincy Adams, bypassing Andrew Jackson, who had come in first, and when Adams won the presidency, he immediately named Clay his secretary of state, a position that had often, in the past, led to the presidency. Jackson’s supporters called the arrangement a “corrupt bargain.” 

Clay did have diplomatic experience. A decade earlier he had been one of the commissioners in Ghent who negotiated a peaceful conclusion to the War of 1812 with Britain. As secretary, he oversaw the settlement of twelve commercial treaties and developed economic ties with the newly independent Latin American republics. Although he encountered setbacks in disputes with Mexico over Texas—the remote Mexican province where Americans were settling—and with Britain over Oregon, his emphasis on U.S. economic expansion was a forerunner of modern U.S. diplomacy. 

After his tenure, Clay returned to the U.S. Senate from 1831 to 1842 and from 1849 to 1852. His fame as “The Great Compromiser” came from his political success in working out settlements in the Missouri Compromise of 1820–21, the Compromise Tariff of 1833, and the Compromise of 1850 that attempted to settle the issue of slavery in the territories.

Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) was born in Kinderhook, New York. He attended village schools, studied law, and entered politics. He was New York attorney general, U.S. senator, and governor, a position he resigned to join Andrew Jackson’s cabinet as secretary of state. Over time, he became one of Jackson’s closest advisers.

As secretary, Van Buren opened U.S. trade in the British West Indies and in regions around the Black Sea, and he secured promises from the French that they would pay for U.S. property seized during their wars against Great Britain earlier in the century. But he failed to establish a commercial treaty with Russia, to persuade Mexico to sell Texas, and to settle a boundary dispute in Maine with Great Britain. 

In a shake-up of Jackson’s cabinet, Van Buren resigned and was appointed U.S. minister to Great Britain in 1831, but the U.S. Senate rejected his nomination. He returned to the United States and joined Jackson’s reelection campaign as vice president. In 1836 Van Buren was elected president. Shortly after he entered office the U.S. economy took a severe downturn, and his term was marred by hardship. Tensions with Mexico over Texas and with Great Britain over the Maine boundary remained, and he lost his bid for reelection. Van Buren sought the Democratic nomination in 1844 but lost to James K. Polk. In 1848 he ran for president again as the nominee of the Free Soil Party, which opposed the extension of slavery in the western territories. The party made a strong showing for a third party, winning 10 percent of the vote, but after 1848 Van Buren retired from active politics. 

Edward Livingston (1764–1836) was born on his family’s estate at Clermont, New York. He studied at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and opened a law practice in New York City. With the support of his older brother Robert, who had been secretary of foreign affairs during the Articles of Confederation government, Livingston entered politics. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives and as mayor of New York before moving to New Orleans, where he was aide-de-camp to General Andrew Jackson in the famous battle at the end of the War of 1812. In the 1820s Livingston represented Louisiana in both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, and in 1831 President Jackson appointed him secretary of state.

Livingston inherited, and could not resolve, the tensions with Mexico over Texas and with Britain over the boundary dispute in Maine. Negotiations during his tenure secured commercial agreements with Naples, Muscat, Russia, Siam, and Turkey. But despite the Monroe Doctrine’s warning that the Americas were no longer open for European colonization, Livingston did not prevent Britain’s seizure of the Falkland Islands, off Argentina. 

On the day of Livingston’s resignation as secretary of state, President Jackson appointed him U.S. minister to France, where he was able to advance repayments for decades-old claims over the seizure of U.S. ships and cargo during France’s war with Great Britain. Payment finally came in 1836, after Livingston’s departure and death.

Louis McLane (1786–1857) was born in Smyrna, Delaware. He served as a midshipman in the U.S. Navy from 1798 to 1801 and attended Newark College (now the University of Delaware). After reading law, he embarked on a career in politics, serving five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives before being elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1829, President Andrew Jackson named McLane minister to Great Britain. His diplomacy in opening U.S. trade to the British West Indies likely impressed Jackson, and soon McLane returned to Washington, D.C., to become the secretary of the treasury from 1831 to 1833. In 1833 Jackson named McLane secretary of state. 

Like his predecessors, McLane tried but was unable to resolve the Maine boundary dispute with Great Britain or Mexican claims regarding Texas. But he did settle U.S. claims against Spain for property seized during the Napoleonic Wars. France was still refusing to make payments for its wartime damages, and McLane resigned from office in frustration. 

McLane later returned to diplomacy in 1845 when President James K. Polk appointed him minister to Great Britain.

John Forsyth (1780–1841) was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and in his boyhood moved with his family to Augusta, Georgia. He graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), studied law, and entered politics, gaining a reputation as a powerful debater. In the next twenty years he represented Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and also served as his state’s governor. Between 1819 and 1823, Forsyth was U.S. minister to Spain, helping to secure the Adams-Onís Treaty, which ceded Spain’s claim to East and West Florida. While in Congress, Forsyth supported President Andrew Jackson’s policies, including Indian Removal Act of 1830, which started the forced migration of thousands of Native Americans out of Georgia and states in the Southeast to lands west of the Mississippi River. In 1834, Jackson named Forsyth secretary of state.

As secretary, Forsyth worked to secure the payments France had promised for damages inflicted on U.S. commerce during its wars against Great Britain. When Jackson threatened to seize French property, France severed diplomatic relations but eventually made a payment of $5 million in exchange for reducing the import duty on French wines. Forsyth also coordinated with President Jackson on U.S. recognition of the Republic of Texas in 1837, newly independent following the Texas Revolution against Mexico the previous year.  

Forsyth stayed on as secretary of state under President Martin Van Buren, overseeing many of the same issues, such as the status of Texas and the Maine border dispute. In the Amistad case, in which a slave mutiny had put the United States in the difficult position of deciding what to do with the mutineers, Forsyth supported the government’s position that they should be returned to Spain as property. But John Quincy Adams argued against the government’s position in the U.S. Supreme Court, which determined that the mutineers were not slaves but free Africans, who should be released from custody. 

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) was born into a family of frontier farmers in Salisbury, New Hampshire. He graduated from Dartmouth College and studied law. His gift for oratory made him an influential attorney, and he became involved in a number of landmark Supreme Court cases. Moving to Boston, he represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives and then the U.S. Senate, where his speeches defending the Union made him one of the greatest statesmen of his time. He served as secretary of state to three presidents, from 1841 to 1843 and again from 1850 to 1852.  

First appointed by President William Henry Harrison, Webster stayed on in the cabinet after Harrison died a month after his inauguration, but he was not always in agreement with President John Tyler. Webster’s major accomplishment was the landmark Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, which settled the long-standing Maine boundary dispute with Great Britain and renewed peaceful relations between the two nations. The treaty defined the boundary with Canada all the way to the Lake of the Woods in Minnesota, agreed that both nations would share use of the Great Lakes, and promised cooperation in the suppression of the international slave trade. The next year, Webster resigned from his position, likely due to financial difficulties, but he also disapproved of Tyler’s policy toward Texas.

In 1845 Webster returned to the U.S. Senate and in 1850 he was again appointed secretary of state, this time by President Millard Fillmore.

Abel Parker Upshur (1791–1844) was born into a planter family in Northampton County, Virginia. He attended Yale College and the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), then studied law and began a political career. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates and as a justice in the Virginia General Court before being appointed secretary of the navy by President John Tyler, a longtime friend. As secretary, Upshur worked to modernize and expand the navy, believing it played a vital role in securing the nation’s interests. When Secretary of State Daniel Webster resigned, Tyler asked Upshur to be secretary of state, confident of his interest in westward expansion.

As secretary, Upshur reopened negotiations that led to the annexation of Texas in 1845. He also worked to settle a border dispute with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory, resulting in the Oregon Treaty of 1846 that ended the joint occupation and extended the border at the 49th parallel around Vancouver Island all the way to the Pacific. But Upshur did not live to see these initiatives realized. In February 1844, while aboard the new warship, USS Princeton, on the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., he was killed by an accidental explosion of one of the ship’s guns. 

John Caldwell Calhoun (1782–1850) was born in Abbeville County, South Carolina, to a prosperous farming family. He graduated from Yale College and practiced law before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1810. In 1817 President James Monroe appointed Calhoun secretary of war. He served as vice president to both President John Quincy Adams and President Andrew Jackson. Calhoun resigned in 1832 and was elected to the U.S. Senate from South Carolina, serving 11 years. Following Secretary Upshur’s unexpected death, Calhoun became the next secretary of state, a position he held for just a year.

As secretary, Calhoun supported Tyler’s efforts to annex Texas. He submitted the treaty crafted by President Tyler and former Secretary Upshur to the U.S. Senate, but it was defeated by those who were opposed to adding another slave state to the Union. President Tyler lost his bid for reelection in 1844, but, just days before he left office in 1845, Congress approved Texas annexation by means of a joint resolution, which required only a majority vote of both houses instead of a two-thirds majority in the Senate. Calhoun also continued Secretary Upshur’s efforts to resolve the dispute with the British over the Oregon Territory. During Calhoun’s tenure the United States signed the Treaty of Wanghia, its first commercial treaty with China.

In 1845 Calhoun returned to South Carolina, which returned him to the U.S. Senate, where he served until his death.

James Buchanan (1791–1868) was born near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Dickinson College and entered politics, and in 1820 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson made Buchanan minister to Russia. Returning after two years in St. Petersburg, Buchanan was elected to the U.S. Senate. He hoped to be the Democratic nominee in the presidential election of 1844, but the nomination went to James K. Polk, who appointed Buchanan secretary of state in return for his support during the election. 

Both Polk and Buchanan promoted westward expansion and believed in Manifest Destiny—the idea that the nation should expand all the way to the Pacific—and this goal was accomplished during Polk’s administration. The 1846 Oregon Treaty partially achieved this aim by settling the long-standing boundary dispute with Britain at the 49th parallel and bringing the Pacific Northwest into the United States. President Polk also signed the joint resolution that formally brought Texas into the United States and then pursued a border dispute with Mexico that led to the Mexican-American War. Following U.S. victory in 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo brought California and New Mexico Territory (today parts or all of Arizona. Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming) into the United States. Buchanan thought that Baja and the northern provinces of Mexico should have been included as well, but Polk directed most aspects of U.S. foreign policy during his presidency, allowing Buchanan little control. Buchanan again sought the presidency in 1852 but failed and was appointed by President Franklin Pierce as minister to Great Britain, where he continued his interest in U.S. expansion. With the U.S. ministers to France and Spain, he drafted the so-called Ostend Manifesto that detailed the rationale for the purchase or even the seizure of Cuba from Spain. The manifesto proved to be an embarrassment to the Pierce administration but seems not to have damaged Buchanan’s reputation, as he won the Democratic nomination in 1856 and was elected president. His administration was notable primarily for its failure to prevent the Civil War.

John Middleton Clayton (1796–1856) was born in Sussex County, Delaware. He graduated from Yale College, practiced law, and entered politics in 1824, when he was elected to the state legislature. In 1828 he was elected to the U.S. Senate and later served as chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court. In 1849, President Zachary Taylor appointed Clayton secretary of state.

Clayton was a supporter of U.S. commercial expansion. His key achievement as secretary was the 1850 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which pledged cooperation with Great Britain in the building of a future canal through Central America, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. 

Clayton resigned upon the death of President Taylor in July 1850 and in 1853 was returned by voters of Delaware to the U.S. Senate, where he served until his death.

Daniel Webster had been in the U.S. Senate in 1850 during the debates over slavery in the new territories gained from Mexico following the Mexican-American War. After he assumed the office of the secretary of state for a second time, he continued to work for the passage of what would become known as the Compromise of 1850. His interest in foreign relations focused on trade. In the Pacific, the expedition of Commodore Matthew C. Perry opened Japan to trade, and Webster also negotiated trade agreements with Latin American nations, at the same time discouraging British influence.  

Webster became ill in 1852 and died at his farm in Massachusetts while still serving as secretary of state.

Edward Everett (1794–1865) was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College and combined an academic career with politics. Everett taught Greek literature and eventually became Harvard’s president. He was also a pastor in the Unitarian church. He served several terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and in 1836 was elected governor of Massachusetts. In 1841 Secretary of State Daniel Webster appointed Everett, his friend, minister to France, a position he held for four years. This diplomatic experience proved valuable in 1852, when Webster died while serving as secretary of state, and  President Fillmore appointed Everett to take Webster’s place. 

Everett’s time as secretary was brief, just four months, but he facilitated the opening of Japan to American trade. In addition, he recognized Peru’s rights to the Lobos Islands, even though the United States had pursued an interest in its rich guano deposits that could be used as fertilizer and in explosive materials. Everett also shaped U.S. policy toward Cuba, rejecting a proposal from Britain and France that the United States join in guaranteeing Spanish control of the island. Instead, Everett stated that the United States would not enter into alliances but would maintain an interest in Cuba.

A respected orator and writer, Everett returned to the U.S. Senate at the end of Fillmore’s term and is perhaps best known for his two-hour-long oration at the dedication of the Gettysburg military cemetery in 1863, preceding President Abraham Lincoln’s two-minute and justly famous Gettysburg Address.

William Learned Marcy (1786–1857) was born to a farming family in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Brown University, studied law, and opened a practice in Troy, New York. He was a U.S. senator from New York and governor of the state before President James K. Polk named him secretary of war. In 1853 President Franklin Pierce appointed Marcy secretary of state.

As secretary, Marcy negotiated the 1854 Gadsden Treaty with Mexico, a purchase of land just south of New Mexico that was wanted for a transcontinental rail route. Marcy also oversaw the drafting of the Ostend Manifesto, a document that detailed the rationale for the purchase or even the seizure of Cuba from Spain. The manifesto proved an embarrassment to the Pierce administration, criticized at home as well as abroad for its support of the expansion of slavery. In 1855, Marcy negotiated a treaty with Great Britain over reciprocal fishing rights in Canada.

Marcy died in New York shortly after the end of President Pierce’s term.

Lewis Cass (1782–1866) was born to a farming family in Exeter, New Hampshire. After serving in the War of 1812 and attaining the rank of general, he was appointed governor of the Michigan Territory. In 1831 President Andrew Jackson appointed Cass secretary of war and later as minister to France, a position he held for six years. Cass represented Michigan in the U.S. Senate for 12 years, twice running unsuccessfully for president. In 1857 President Buchanan appointed him secretary of state.

President Buchanan was himself an experienced diplomat who had also served as secretary of state, and during his administration he largely directed Cass in matters of foreign policy, especially related to Latin America. Seeking to limit British influence in Latin America, Cass negotiated the final settlement of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which pledged cooperation in the building of a future canal through Central America, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. 

Following the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Cass, though a Democrat, began to voice his long-held disagreements with the Buchanan administration over slavery and sectionalism, and he resigned in the last days of 1860.

Cass supported the Union during the Civil War and lived to see Union victory.

Jeremiah Sullivan Black (1810–1883) was born in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He studied law under a famous lawyer in the state and took over the practice, and went on to serve for many years on the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. President James Buchanan appointed him attorney general, and in the final months of his term, secretary of state. Black served for three months. 

The nation was in crisis. Following Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency, southern states began to secede from the Union. President Buchanan declared the act of secession unconstitutional, based partly on former Attorney General Black’s legal arguments. Black’s role as trusted adviser to the president changed little with his new appointment. As secretary of state he instructed U.S. diplomatic representatives abroad to caution their respective governments against recognizing the Confederacy.

Before he left office, President Buchanan nominated Black to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the nomination lapsed and Black was named reporter of decisions, a position he held for two years before returning to his private law practice in his home state of Pennsylvania.

William Henry Seward (1801–1872) was born in Florida, New York. He graduated from Union College and began practicing law in Auburn, New York. He served in the New York Senate and was governor of New York before being elected to the U.S. Senate, where he became an opponent of slavery. Seward was the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860, but his antislavery speeches struck some party members as too radical. The party instead selected the more moderate Abraham Lincoln, whose victory in the general election led to the secession of states in the South and the formation of the Confederate States of America. With other political leaders, Seward tried to resolve the crisis during the winter of 1861 but was unsuccessful. 

Lincoln named his rival as secretary of state, and Seward became a loyal friend to Lincoln. As secretary, Seward was able to prevent recognition of the Confederacy by other nations, especially Britain, although a diplomatic crisis arose when the U.S. Navy arrested Confederate envoys headed for Europe. Since envoys were afforded diplomatic protections, especially during wartime, many feared that Britain might intervene in the conflict unless the envoys were released, which Seward did. Seward and the U.S. minister in London, Charles Francis Adams, the son of President John Quincy Adams, put an end to Britain’s building of ships for the Confederates after one of them, the Alabama, was launched to attack Union merchant and naval ships.

Immediately after the Confederate surrender, Seward was a target of the same conspiracy that assassinated Lincoln. He was attacked in his home, and his son Frederick, assistant secretary of state at the time, was seriously wounded, but both recovered.

Seward retained his position during the administration of Andrew Johnson. He is perhaps best known for his negotiations with Russia that led to the purchase of Alaska in 1867. His efforts to purchase the Danish West Indies (today the U.S. Virgin Islands) and other islands in the Caribbean were unsuccessful, but in 1867 he did force the French to withdraw from Mexico, where—with the United States distracted by the Civil War—they had established a new Mexican government under the Austrian archduke Maximilian, in 1864. Seward also negotiated the 1868 Burlingame-Seward Treaty with China that gave the United States favorable terms for trade and eased restrictions on Chinese immigration.

Seward was disappointed not to be named secretary of state in the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, and he returned to Auburn. 

Elihu Benjamin Washburne (1816–1887) was born in Livermore, Maine. He attended Harvard Law School and settled in Galena, Ohio, where he practiced law. As a friend of President Ulysses S. Grant, he accepted the position of secretary of state as a temporary measure, until he could be appointed minister to France, two weeks later. His tenure as secretary of state was the shortest.

Washburne arrived in Paris shortly before the Franco-Prussian War broke out. He was there when France was defeated and the people of Paris rebelled against the French government to establish the Paris Commune, a short-lived government between March and May in 1871. More than 20,000 were killed in the turmoil. While other diplomats left Paris, Washburne remained behind to help American citizens, even visiting imprisoned Americans and identifying their bodies. Following the collapse of the Commune, Washburne continued to serve as U.S. minister to France until 1877.

After his service, Washburne returned to Galena and supported Grant’s bid for a third term as president at the Republican Convention that eventually nominated James A. Garfield.

Hamilton Fish (1808–1893) was born in New York. He graduated from Columbia University, became a lawyer, and entered politics. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives, as governor of New York, and then in the U.S. Senate. President Ulysses S. Grant nominated Fish to be secretary of state. 

As secretary, Fish successfully resolved claims related to the British-built Confederate warship Alabama when an international arbitration tribunal awarded the United States $15.5 million, against $2 million in damages paid by the United States for illegal Union blockade practices. Like some of his predecessors, Fish sought new territories for the United States, trying, unsuccessfully, to acquire a part of the Dominican Republic and lands controlled by Hudson’s Bay Company, which the British government instead sold to Canada in 1870. Fish maintained U.S. interest in Cuba, pressuring Spanish officials to consider granting Cuba independence following a revolt against Spanish rule in 1868. He also pushed for an end to slavery on the island, but Spain did not respond. Raids along the Mexican border were a problem that would escalate under his successor.

At the end of the Grant administration, Fish returned to his law practice in New York.

William Maxwell Evarts (1818–1901) was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale College, studied at Harvard Law School, and practiced law in New York City, earning a reputation as one of the country’s top lawyers. During the Civil War, Evarts was dispatched on missions to Great Britain and France, to help prevent recognition of the Confederacy and the construction of Confederate warships. After the war he helped arbitrate the Alabama claims, made against Great Britain for the Confederate warship built there. President Andrew Johnson retained Evarts as his counsel during the impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate. After Johnson was acquitted, he appointed Evarts attorney general. A decade later, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Evarts secretary of state.

As secretary, Evarts grappled with the decision of whether to recognize the new Mexican government led by Porfirio Díaz. Breaking with tradition, he placed several conditions on recognition, in particular the right of U.S. troops to cross the Mexican border in pursuit of raiders. When Díaz’s government condemned the conditions, Evarts extended recognition. But the increasing U.S. interest in Latin America can also be seen in Evarts’s attempt to negotiate peace among Chile, Peru, and Bolivia during the War of the Pacific.

Despite the Burlingame-Seward Treaty’s easing of restrictions on Chinese immigration, anti-immigration forces on the West Coast increased their demands and in 1880 Evarts sent a committee to China to negotiate new limits. Two years later Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act that ended Chinese immigration and stated that Chinese immigrants were not eligible for citizenship.

James Gillespie Blaine (1830–1893) was born in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Washington College (now Washington and Jefferson) and moved to Maine, where he worked as a teacher and newspaper editor. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served as Speaker. He subsequently represented Maine in the U.S. Senate. President James A. Garfield appointed Blaine as secretary of state. 

As secretary in the brief Garfield administration, Blaine advocated commercial expansion and increased naval power. He also encouraged peaceful relations within the Americas and, like his predecessor, tried to negotiate peace in the War of the Pacific. He also attempted to arbitrate a border dispute between Mexico and Guatemala. Blaine’s diplomatic work in the planning of a Pan-American Conference was cut short in September 1881, when President Garfield died after being shot by an assassin. Blaine remained in office until Chester Arthur, the new president, selected a replacement for him.

Blaine lost his bid for president in 1884 but was named secretary of state again in 1889, when Benjamin Harrison began his term as president. 

Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen (1817–1885) was born at Millstone, New Jersey. He graduated from Rutgers University. A lawyer by training, he served as New Jersey attorney general and in 1866 was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he represented his state for almost a decade. He worked in a private law practice until he was appointed secretary of state by President Chester Arthur. 

As secretary, Frelinghuysen inherited a number of diplomatic issues related to the expansion of U.S. power. While he mediated a peaceful settlement to the War of the Pacific among Chile, Bolivia, and Peru, he withdrew from further actions in Latin America, concerned that the United States was not viewed favorably. He canceled the Pan-American Conference that his predecessor had planned and refused to arbitrate a dispute between Venezuela and Britain over Guyana’s western border in South America. Nevertheless, despite the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, he tried to secure for the United States exclusive rights to construct and control a canal between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, but the U.S. Senate failed to ratify the treaty. In 1844, when German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck called a conference in Berlin to mediate the European scramble for colonies in Africa, Frelinghuysen declined to participate but sent observers, who accepted the conclusions of the conference. Frelinghuysen also secured a trade treaty with Korea.

Frelinghuysen died shortly after the end of President Arthur’s term.

Thomas Francis Bayard (1828–1898) was born in Wilmington, Delaware. He studied law and practiced in Delaware. He represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate from 1869 to 1885, when President Grover Cleveland appointed him secretary of state.

As secretary, Bayard appointed diplomats known for their skill and expertise rather than their political loyalty. He attempted to settle disputes over fishing rights and the hunting of fur seals with Canada, Newfoundland, and Britain, but the issue would not be solved until 1903. With a focus on Pacific affairs, in 1887 Bayard oversaw the Senate’s ratification of the renewal of a reciprocity treaty with Hawaii. That same year he hosted a conference to de-escalate tensions among Germany, Great Britain, and the United States over Samoa. In 1889 Bayard signed an agreement with Japan that provided for the gradual abolition of special protections for American traders living in Japan. Despite the recent U.S. treaty with Korea, Bayard declined to interfere with British occupation of islands off that nation’s coast.

After his tenure as secretary of state, Bayard served as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom until 1897.

When James Gillespie Blaine became secretary of state for a second time, appointed by President Benjamin Harrison, he oversaw the Pan-American Conference that he had envisioned during his first term. The conference addressed trade, communication, and legal issues, and eventually led to the establishment of the Pan-American Union. He also continued to try to diffuse tensions with Germany and the United Kingdom over Samoa and to negotiate fur seal hunting rights in the Bering Sea. 

Blaine’s resignation in 1892 caught everyone, including President Harrison, by surprise, and  he died not long afterward.

John Watson Foster (1836–1917) was born in Pike County, Indiana. He graduated from Indiana University and attended Harvard Law School. He practiced law until he joined the U.S. Army during the Civil War, rising to the rank of colonel. He worked to build support for the reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872 and was named by Grant as minister to Mexico. There he sought to secure U.S. recognition of the government of Porfirio Díaz and to resolve border issues. Foster subsequently served as minister to Russia, where he advocated for the rights of Jewish U.S. citizens living there, and as minister to Spain, where he tried to secure trade agreements for the Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico. In 1892 President Benjamin Harrison named Foster secretary of state.

As secretary, Foster was involved in negotiations for trade agreements with nations in Latin America. He attempted to counter the expansion of British imperialism in the region and to negotiate a 99-year lease for a naval base in the Dominican Republic. His efforts to annex the Kingdom of Hawaii were unsuccessful.

After leaving office Foster represented the United States in arbitration of seal-hunting rights in the Bering Sea. At the time of his death, in 1917, his son-in-law Robert Lansing was secretary of state. His grandson, John Foster Dulles, would be secretary of state later in the 20th century.

Walter Quintin Gresham (1832–1895) was born in Harrison County, Indiana. He attended Indiana University and studied law. He served in the state legislature, then in the Union Army during the Civil War, rising to the rank of brevet major general. After the war he was a district judge in Indiana until appointed postmaster general and then secretary of the treasury by President Chester A. Arthur. Although Gresham ran in the Republican Party presidential primaries in 1884 and 1888, he grew dissatisfied with the party’s direction, and he accepted the invitation of President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, to be secretary of state, an offer Cleveland made as a bipartisan gesture. 

As secretary, Gresham opened an investigation into the failed U.S. attempt to annex Hawaii and uncovered the direct involvement of U.S. diplomats in the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani, whose reign pro-American sugar planters wished to end. Although President Cleveland hoped to restore Native Hawaiian political power, the U.S. Senate declined. Gresham also worked to counter British influence in the Americas, especially during an 1895 royalist Brazilian coup attempt, but he also coordinated with Britain to protect commercial trade in an area that is now Nicaragua. The U.S. policy of nonintervention in European affairs was challenged by the treatment of U.S. citizens by the Ottoman Empire but Gresham rejected calls by missionaries for a U.S. naval base in Smyrna.

Gresham’s tenure as secretary of state was cut short by his death in 1895.

Richard Olney (1835–1917) was born in Oxford, Massachusetts. He graduated from Brown University and Harvard Law School, serving in the Massachusetts legislature before being appointed attorney general by President Grover Cleveland. Following the death of Walter Gresham, Olney was named secretary of state. 

Olney came to office at a tense time. The Cuban War of Independence against Spanish colonial rule was gaining strength. The U.S. government tried to halt shipments by Cuban sympathizers and exiles from Key West and other U.S. ports but also faced public pressure to intervene on behalf of the rebels. Tensions over Cuba would eventually ignite the Spanish-American War the year after Olney left office in 1897. Elsewhere in Latin America Olney played a significant role in arranging for an arbitrated settlement to the boundary dispute between Venezuela and the British colony of Guyana, thus enhancing the role of the United States as a power player in the Western Hemisphere. 

Olney left office at the end of Cleveland’s second administration and resumed his law practice. He continued to write about international relations. 

John Sherman (1823–1900) was born in Lancaster, Ohio, a brother of the well-known Civil War general, William Tecumseh Sherman. He studied law and entered politics, being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and to the U.S. Senate, where he served from 1860 to 1877. President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Sherman secretary of treasury, and during his tenure he helped author the Sherman Antitrust Act before returning to the Senate to serve another 16 years. While in the Senate, Sherman ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination three times. In 1897, President William McKinley selected Sherman to serve as his secretary of state.

Sherman’s tenure as secretary was marked by the tension with Assistant Secretary of State William R. Day, who, with the support of President McKinley, often replaced Sherman at cabinet meetings. Sherman was influential in matters of international commerce, but Assistant Secretary Day was the one who negotiated the annexation of Hawaiian Islands and managed U.S. policy toward Spain over the question of Cuban independence. War broke out with Spain in 1898, and Sherman resigned in protest four days later.

Though his health was failing, Sherman continued to comment on political matters and opposed the acquisition of Puerto Rico and the Philippines that came with the treaty ending the war.

William Rufus Day (1849–1923) was born in Ravenna, Ohio. He graduated from the University of Michigan and began a law practice in Canton, Ohio, where he became friends with another lawyer, the future president William McKinley. Following his election, President McKinley chose Day to serve as assistant secretary of state, and in this position he took over the duties of the increasingly alienated secretary, John Sherman. When Sherman resigned, Day succeeded him as secretary.

Congress had just declared war against Spain following the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, but the explosion, which was later understood as an accident, was not the only reason for war. The U.S. public had long been stirred to sympathy with the rebels in the Cuban independence movement, and U.S. businesses sought to protect their interests in Cuba. The conflict, which lasted four months, ended in a decisive U.S. victory. Day vacated his position to lead the peace commission in Paris. By its terms, Spain ceded its colonies of Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico to the United States for $20 million. Cuba was guaranteed its independence. During the war, in July 1898, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution annexing Hawaii. Within a year the U.S. had become an imperial power, with overseas possessions for the first time. 

Shortly thereafter President McKinley appointed Day to the U.S. court of appeals. In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he served for two decades.

John Milton Hay (1838–1905) was born in Salem, Indiana, and his family later moved to Illinois. He attended Illinois State College and Brown University and then read law in his uncle’s office, in Springfield. After helping in Abraham Lincoln’s campaign for the presidency, Lincoln asked Hay to be one of his private secretaries. Hay’s 10-volume study of Lincoln, written with the other private secretary, John Nicolay, is a classic. Following the Civil War, Hay served at diplomatic posts in Paris, Vienna, and Madrid. President William McKinley appointed him ambassador to Great Britain and then, in 1898, secretary of state. 

With possessions in the Pacific—the Philippines and Hawaii—Hay amplified U.S. interests in the region. When the United States joined an international effort to suppress the anti-foreigner Boxer Rebellion, Hay promoted an “Open Door” policy that protected China’s integrity while assuring equal access to China by all its trading partners. Hay also secured the settlement of the Alaska-Canada boundary controversy. When President McKinley was assassinated, Hay stayed on as secretary of state to serve under President Theodore Roosevelt. Although the new president wielded greater influence over foreign policy than had his predecessor, Hay helped secure, by a 1903 treaty, the right for the United States to construct and defend the Panama Canal. 

Hay died in office in 1905.

Robert Bacon (1860–1919) was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard University, where he befriended future president Theodore Roosevelt. He was a banker and businessman before Roosevelt named him assistant secretary of state in 1905, and in 1909 he served briefly as secretary of state during the last months of Roosevelt’s term.

As secretary, Bacon worked diligently to ratify treaties between Colombia, Panama, and the United States regarding the Panama Canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He also convened an environmental conference that addressed the conservation of natural resources in North America.

Bacon served as ambassador to France from 1909 to 1912. During World War I he joined the staff of General John J. Pershing.

Philander Chase Knox (1853–1921) was born in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Mount Union College in Ohio, studied law, and rose to prominence as a corporate attorney. In 1901, President William McKinley appointed him attorney general, and he continued in this position during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt. Knox represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate from 1904 to 1909, when he was appointed secretary of state by President William Howard Taft. 

As secretary, Knox encouraged and protected U.S. investments abroad, practicing “Dollar Diplomacy,” as it was called, in using trade to promote democracy and stability in Asia and Latin America. He successfully negotiated an end to the Bering Sea controversy over the hunting of fur seals in a treaty signed by the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia in 1911. It was the first international treaty for wildlife conservation. Within the Department of State, Knox established regional divisions and extended the merit system for selection and promotion in the Consular and Diplomatic Service. 

After President Taft lost his second presidential bid in 1912, Knox resigned his position and returned to Pittsburgh. He continued to practice law until he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1916, where he served until his death in 1921.

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) was born in Salem, Illinois. He graduated from Illinois College and Union College of Law (now Northwestern University) and practiced law in Illinois prior to moving to Lincoln, Nebraska. Bryan won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1890 and served two terms, promoting Populist causes such as the free coinage of silver, national income tax, and direct election of senators. He returned to Nebraska and edited the Omaha World-Herald. In the 1896 presidential race, Bryan secured both the Populist Party and the Democratic Party nomination but lost the election to the Republican candidate, William McKinley. It was at the Democratic National Convention that he delivered his famous “Cross of Gold” speech, attacking East Coast monied interests. The Democratic Party nominated Bryan again as its candidate for president in 1900 and 1908, but he lost both elections. Following the 1912 election, President Woodrow Wilson selected Bryan as his secretary of state.

Bryan’s major accomplishment as secretary was his negotiation of peace treaties that pledged the 30 signatories to refrain from hostilities during arbitration of disputes. He also negotiated the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty in 1914 (ratified in 1916) that permitted the United States to construct a canal across Nicaragua and secured rights to build naval bases in the region. Following the outbreak of World War I, Bryan hoped to negotiate a peace settlement but his position on the rights of neutrals placed him at odds with President Wilson, who did not at first recognize that submarine warfare—especially the German practice of attacking without warning—would make it impossible to protect U.S. citizens traveling in a war zone. When a German submarine sank the British passenger liner Lusitania in May 1915, killing 128 U.S. citizens, Wilson sent a strongly worded protest to the German government. But his refusal to warn Americans not to travel on British ships caused Bryan to resign.

Following his resignation, Bryan remained active in politics, advocating for the eight-hour day, minimum wage, women’s suffrage, and Prohibition. Famously, in 1925 he defended the Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution in the trial of John Scopes. Scopes was convicted under the law, and Bryan died suddenly, five days later.

Robert Lansing (1864–1928) was born in Watertown, New York. He graduated from Amherst College and practiced law, becoming an authority on international law. He often represented the United States in arbitration and negotiations, including the treaty regarding the hunting of fur seals in the Bering Sea. President Woodrow Wilson appointed Lansing secretary of state in 1915.

During World War I, Lansing supported neutrality while advocating for the principles of the freedom of the seas and the rights of neutral nations. But Germany’s practice of unrestricted submarine warfare—attacking even passenger ships without warning—convinced him to support U.S. participation in World War I. After the Armistice he accompanied President Wilson to Europe as one of the lead U.S. negotiators at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. As secretary Lansing also signed the Treaty of 1916 for the purchase of the Danish West Indies and the Lansing-Ishii Agreement of 1917, pledging with Japan to uphold the Open Door Policy in China while recognizing Japan’s special interests in China. Due to disagreements over the League of Nations and President Wilson’s inability to perform his presidential duties following a stroke, Lansing resigned in 1920.

Lansing returned to his law practice in New York. He was the son-in-law of former Secretary of State John W. Foster and uncle to a later secretary, John Foster Dulles.

Bainbridge Colby (1869–1950) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a prominent New York family. He graduated from Williams College before studying law at Columbia University and New York Law School. A successful lawyer, he served in the New York State Assembly and in various positions during the Woodrow Wilson administration, including secretary of state, appointed in 1920.

Despite Colby’s efforts, the U.S. Senate refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty ending World War I on account of its clause regarding membership in the League of Nations, the international organization Wilson had created for maintaining world peace. Colby denounced the communist regime in the new Soviet Union, successor to the Russian Empire following the Revolution of 1917, and he described the threat international communism posed to existing governments. In Latin America, he promoted goodwill, touring on behalf of the president to promote hemispheric cooperation. He also worked to restore diplomatic relations with the Mexican government following the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and a decade of political instability and military revolts. 

Colby left office at the end of the Wilson administration in 1921 and returned to private practice. 

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) was born in Glen Falls, New York. He graduated from Brown University and became a noted anti-corruption attorney before being elected governor of New York in 1906. President William Howard Taft appointed Hughes to the U.S. Supreme Court, from which he resigned in the summer of 1916 to run for president against incumbent Woodrow Wilson. Hughes lost but reentered public life when President Warren G. Harding appointed him secretary of state. Hughes stayed on in this position after Harding’s death in 1923, serving in the administration of Calvin Coolidge until 1925. 

Hughes came to the office of secretary after the U.S. Senate had refused to join the League of Nations, the international organization President Woodrow Wilson had created to prevent future wars. Hughes helped negotiate separate peace agreements with Germany and the other Central Powers, officially ending World War I. Although the mood of the country called for isolationism, a turning away from political involvement with other nations, Hughes favored international cooperation. He directed the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–22, setting ratios of naval strength among the world’s five largest naval powers and achieving the world’s first disarmament agreement. He also increased U.S. prestige in Latin America by arbitrating disputes between countries in the Western Hemisphere, recognizing the new government in Mexico, and compensating Colombia for the 1903 revolt in Panama, which the United States had supported to help secure the right to build the Panama Canal. In the Department of State, Hughes worked to improve morale and increase the level of talent by supporting the 1924 Foreign Service Act, known as the Rogers Act, which helped build a professional, highly trained Foreign Service.

After Hughes resigned in 1925, he returned to his law practice. In 1930, President Herbert Hoover nominated him as chief justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, where he served until 1941.

Henry Lewis Stimson (1867–1950) was born in New York. He graduated from Yale College and then Harvard Law School. As a lawyer, he rose to prominence in the law firm of Elihu Root, who had been secretary of state during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt. Stimson was secretary of war during the William Howard Taft administration and then served in the U.S. army during World War I. Between 1918 and 1926 he was an occasional envoy to Latin America, mediating disputes. In 1927 President Calvin Coolidge appointed Stimson governor general of the Philippines, a post he held until 1929, when President Herbert Hoover named him secretary of state.

As secretary, Stimson continued the effort to reduce armaments in international conferences in London and Geneva, but Japan eventually withdrew from the agreements made at the London Naval Conference in 1930. He protested Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in 1931, articulating what became known as the Stimson Doctrine—that the United States would not recognize states created by aggression. He also attempted, unsuccessfully, to limit the economic effects of war debts. Throughout his tenure he tried to preserve the Kellogg-Briand Pact, but by 1933 he observed that “the situation in the world seemed to me like the unfolding of a great Greek tragedy, where we could see the march of events and know what ought to be done, but seemed to be powerless to prevent its marching to its grim conclusion.”

Stimson retired but was recalled to government service by President Franklin Roosevelt, who appointed him secretary of war in 1940. He served until 1945, overseeing the expansion and supplying of the U.S. military during World War II. He directed the atomic bomb project after 1943 and advised President Harry S Truman on the bombings of Japan.

Cordell Hull (1871–1955) was born in 1871, near Byrdstown, Tennessee. He graduated from the Cumberland School of Law and served in the Tennessee legislature before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1906 and then, in 1930, to the U.S. Senate. In 1933 President

Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Hull as secretary of state. He would be the longest-serving secretary in the nation’s history.

President Roosevelt was actively involved in U.S. foreign policy and typically represented the United States at the major conferences with Allied leaders during World War II. Nevertheless Hull had many notable achievements. Among them was his strong support for President Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor” policy toward Latin America. At the December 1933 meeting of the International Conference of American States in Montevideo, Uruguay, he announced that the U.S. government would henceforth observe a policy of “nonintervention” in the affairs of its neighbors in the Western Hemisphere. Hull believed that free trade promoted international peace and prosperity, and in 1934 he helped secure passage of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA), which gave the president the authority to personally negotiate bilateral tariff reductions. Most notably, Hull also championed the creation of the United Nations, and his staff drafted its charter. For these efforts Hull was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945.

Edward Reilly Stettinius Jr. (1900–1949) was born in Chicago, Illinois. He studied at the University of Virginia, then rose in the ranks at General Motors and U.S. Steel. During the 1930s he worked in defense-related agencies, and in the early 1940s served as director of Lend-Lease aid and special assistant to the president. In 1943 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Stettinius under secretary of state, and in 1944, secretary.

Stettinius accompanied President Roosevelt to the Yalta Conference in February 1945, where they met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin to discuss the Pacific War with Japan and the future political status of Eastern Europe and Germany, following its expected surrender. Stettinius also chaired the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Conference, held in San Francisco in the spring of 1945, which brought together delegates from 50 Allied nations to create the United Nations.

Stettinius resigned his position in 1945 to become the first U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The following year he was named rector of the University of Virginia.

James Byrnes (1882–1972) was born in Charleston, South Carolina. He worked in a law office where he received excellent instruction from several judges and was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1903. Byrnes practiced law and then represented South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated him to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1941, but after the start of World War II asked him to serve in the Executive Branch, as director of the Office of Economic Stabilization and then the Office of War Mobilization. In 1945, President Harry S Truman appointed Byrnes secretary of state. 

Byrnes accompanied President Truman to the Potsdam Conference, meeting with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (until he was replaced by Clement Attlee) to decide on the administration of defeated Germany and discuss the postwar world order. In August 1945, Byrnes advised Truman in the use of atomic bombs against Japan. Relations with the Soviet Union began to deteriorate, and it was also during Byrnes’s time as secretary that the deputy chief of mission in Moscow, George Kennan, warned of Soviet expansionism and recommended a policy of “containment,” laying the foundations for U.S. policy during the Cold War between the superpowers.

Byrnes resigned in 1947 and continued to practice law. In 1951 he was elected governor of South Carolina.

George Marshall (1880–1959) was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Virginia Military Institute and had an extremely successful military career, serving in both World Wars and rising to the rank of five-star general in 1944. During World War II, as U.S. Army chief of staff, Marshall transformed a small peacetime army into a strong wartime force while also coordinating Allied operations. After the war President Harry S Truman relied on Marshall’s expertise to navigate postwar diplomacy and appointed him secretary of state in 1947.

Marshall’s primary achievement as secretary was the European Recovery Program, known by his name—the Marshall Plan—that rebuilt the war-torn regions and industries of Europe, whether of allies or former enemies. The program promoted trade among these nations as a precursor to the European Union and prevented the spread of communism. Under Marshall’s leadership, the United States also negotiated the first U.S. defense treaties in the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Marshall resigned in 1949 and became president of the American Red Cross. In 1950–51 he returned to the Truman cabinet as secretary of defense. For his work in restoring the economy of Europe, Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.

Dean Gooderham Acheson (1893–1971) was born in Middletown, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale College and Harvard Law School, practicing law until appointed under secretary of the treasury by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. In 1941, Acheson began his career at the Department of State, serving as assistant secretary and under secretary before he was appointed secretary of state by President Harry S Truman in 1949.

As secretary, Acheson played an important role in shaping U.S. policy during the early Cold War. He supported the containment of communism, recognizing that the Soviet Union, as an ideological opponent, was a challenge to U.S. interests in the world. He supported the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, a defensive alliance to counter Soviet expansionism in Europe. During Acheson’s tenure the threat of communism grew, with the Soviets detonating their first atomic bomb, the fall of mainland China to communist forces in 1949, and communist North Korea’s invasion of democratic South Korea, igniting the Korean War.

At the end of the Truman administration Acheson returned to his private law practice, but he continued to influence U.S. foreign policy. He was called back to serve on the Executive Committee created by President John F. Kennedy to address the Cuban Missile Crisis and later as an adviser to President Lyndon B. Johnson on the Vietnam War.

John Foster Dulles (1888–1959) was born in Washington, D.C., to a family of diplomats. His grandfather, John Watson Foster, and uncle, Robert Lansing, had both served as distinguished secretaries of state. He graduated from Princeton University and George Washington University Law School. His practice, in New York, focused on international law, and he worked in government agencies, in Paris for the Peace Conference following World War I, and during World War II as a lawyer on the War Trade Board. He served briefly in the U.S. Senate. President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed him secretary of state in 1953. 

As secretary, Dulles worked to contain the spread of Soviet communism. The Korean War ended in a truce but not a treaty. Meanwhile, tensions in Indochina were on the rise, particularly after French control was defeated and Vietnam was partitioned into a communist North and a democratic South as Korea had been. Increasingly, regions formerly colonized by European nations became flashpoints for tensions between the democratic West, led by the United States, and the communist East, led by the Soviet Union. Cold War foreign policy often involved trying to suppress regional conflicts lest they ignite a world war. In his work Dulles had the close cooperation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was run by his brother, Allen Dulles. He was the first secretary of state to be directly accessible to the media, holding the first Department of State press conferences. He resigned just weeks before his death.

Christian Archibald Herter (1895–1966) was born in Paris, France, to American parents, who later returned to New York. He graduated from Harvard University and studied architecture at Columbia before joining the diplomatic corps and attending the Paris Peace Conference following World War I. From 1919 to 1924, he was the personal assistant to Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. Herter served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1931 to 1943 and in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1943 to 1953, where his proposals for economic aid to war-torn Europe were an impetus for the Marshall Plan. Herter was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1953. When his two terms ended he returned to the Department of State as the under secretary. Upon John Foster Dulles’s resignation, Herter became secretary of state.

As under secretary and then secretary, Herter helped oversee U.S. diplomacy during continuing Cold War crises—in Lebanon, where a Soviet-inspired coup overturned the pro-Western government, and in Taiwan, an island off the coast of China with a pro-Western, democratic government although the Chinese communist government still claimed the island. A proposed summit meeting with the Soviet Union was canceled when the Soviets shot down a U-2 U.S. spy plane and captured the pilot.

Herter’s role in the international arena did not end with the Eisenhower administration. He also served on councils and commissions in both the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations and was a special representative for trade negotiations.

David Dean Rusk (1909–1994) was born in Cherokee County, Georgia. He graduated from Davidson College and won a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford in England. In 1940, he enlisted in the army, serving in administrative positions in the Department of War and thereafter in several positions in the Department of State. Rusk headed the Rockefeller Foundation until 1961, when President John F. Kennedy appointed him secretary of state.

As secretary, Rusk saw his role as being an adviser. He supported President Kennedy’s 1961 Cuban Bay of Pigs Invasion, although Rusk had misgivings about it, and the attempted overthrow of the island’s communist leadership ended in failure. A believer in “dignified diplomacy,” Rusk worked to establish civility and communication between the United States and the Soviet Union. This helped defuse tensions during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the planned installation of Soviet missiles on the island of Cuba threatened nuclear war. To avoid such incidents in the future, Kennedy and Rusk secured the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty the following year. For the new nations in regions that had been formerly colonized, Rusk argued that providing technical and humanitarian assistance would speed them toward modernity and democracy.

Rusk stayed on in the cabinet after President Kennedy’s assassination. During the Johnson administration his focus was primarily on Vietnam. Believing it was important to stop the spread of communism, Rusk supported the president’s increasing military involvement to prop up South Vietnam in its resistance to incursions by communist North Vietnam. But at home the war grew increasingly unpopular, and Rusk was a target of public criticism. 

Following the end of the John administration, Rusk returned to Georgia to teach international law at the University of Georgia.

William Pierce Rogers (1913–2001) was born in Norfolk, New York. He graduated from Colgate University and received a law degree from Cornell University. He practiced law, served in the navy during World War II, and held a variety of positions in the U.S. Senate before becoming attorney general to President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957. Between 1961 and 1968, Rogers returned to private practice but also took on public service assignments until he was appointed secretary of state by President Richard M. Nixon.

As secretary, Rogers signed the 1973 Vietnam peace agreement, as U.S. troops gradually withdrew from that regional conflict. He also addressed tensions in the Middle East, seeking to broker a lasting peace settlement among Israel, its Arab neighbors, and the Palestinian refugees, but ultimately his “Rogers Plan” was unsuccessful. Rogers brought the State Department into the electronic age by ordering the installation of a computerized system to store diplomatic documents and information. 

During the administration of Ronald Reagan, Rogers came out of retirement to lead the investigation into the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

Henry A. Kissinger (1923–) was born as Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Germany. After the Nazis seized power and threatened the status of Jews, his family immigrated to the United States and settled in New York. Kissinger’s name was changed to Henry. During World War II, Kissinger became a naturalized citizen and served in the U.S. Army as a German interpreter. After the war, he attended Harvard University, received a PhD, and joined the faculty as a distinguished professor in government and foreign relations. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he served as a consultant to several government agencies. In 1969, President Richard M. Nixon appointed Kissinger as national security adviser, and in 1973 made him also secretary of state.

Kissinger entered the State Department just two weeks before Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel. This October War of 1973 occupied much of Kissinger’s attention, especially as its aftermath included an oil embargo against the United States by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). After a UN-sponsored ceasefire, Kissinger began a series of “shuttle diplomacy” missions, in which he traveled between various Middle East capitals. His efforts produced a disengagement agreement and contributed to OPEC’s decision to lift the oil embargo. Kissinger also supported Nixon’s policy on the Cold War, known as détente, or a “relaxation of tensions” with the Soviet Union and the establishment of diplomatic relations and trade with the communist People’s Republic of China.

In 1974, the Watergate scandal forced President Nixon to resign, but Kissinger stayed on in his dual roles under President Gerald Ford until 1975, when he continued as secretary of state only. Together Ford and Kissinger maintained Nixon’s approach to Cold War diplomacy, achieving the August 1975 Helsinki Accords, an agreement signed by 35 countries that promised to improve relations between East and West. In September 1975, Kissinger helped conclude a second disengagement agreement between Egypt and Israel that moved both countries closer to a peace agreement.

After he left office Kissinger taught classes on international studies and continues to serve as an adviser to government agencies and Republican presidents.

Cyrus Roberts Vance (1917–2002) was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia. He graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School. He served in World War II and practiced law before joining the Department of Defense, where he became deputy secretary. During the early 1970s Vance returned to practicing law until 1977, when President Jimmy Carter asked him to be secretary of state.

As secretary, Vance emphasized negotiations over military confrontation and shared with President Carter a belief that human rights should be central to U.S. diplomacy. Vance worked on arms control issues with the Soviet Union, diplomatic relations with China, and helped negotiate two important treaties: the Panama Canal Treaty of 1977, which relinquished U.S. control of the Canal Zone, and the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty of 1979, the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab neighbor. He also achieved a settlement among political factions in Zimbabwe that allowed for majority rule. In 1979, during the political turmoil over Americans held hostage in the embassy in Tehran by Iranian student militants, Vance resigned rather than support the military operation for their rescue. 

Although Vance returned to private law practice, he frequently served as a special envoy in diplomatic missions, most notably as the UN special envoy to Bosnia in 1993.

Edmund Sixtus Muskie (1914–1996) was born in Rumford, Maine. He graduated from Bates College and Cornell University and practiced law before serving in World War II. After holding a series of local offices, Muskie was elected to the Maine House of Representatives for three terms before becoming the governor in 1955. In 1958 Muskie was elected to the U.S. Senate, serving until 1980, when President Jimmy Carter asked him to be secretary of state following the resignation of Cyrus Vance.

As secretary, Muskie conducted the first high-level meeting with the Soviet government after its December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. He also assisted President Carter in implementing the “Carter Doctrine,” which aimed to limit Soviet expansion into the Middle East and Persian Gulf. Finally, under Muskie’s leadership, the State Department negotiated on behalf of the American hostages still held in Tehran. Minutes after Ronald Reagan took the Oath of Office as president, they were released.

Following the end of the Carter administration, Muskie practiced law in Washington, D.C. 

Alexander Meigs Haig Jr. (1924–2010) was born and raised in Philadelphia. He studied at the University of Notre Dame and, graduating from the U.S. Military Academy, began a long career in the military, serving in Korea and Vietnam and working in the Department of Defense. Haig was chief of staff for Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford and then became supreme allied commander in Europe. In 1981 President Ronald Reagan selected him to be secretary of state.

As secretary, Haig faced continuing Cold War challenges, including the Soviet presence in Afghanistan and disputes with China over trade and Taiwan. In the Middle East a new round of conflict among Israel, Lebanon, and Syria made peaceful settlements seem impossible. Haig was able to stabilize relations with China and to strengthen NATO, but his efforts to broker diplomatic resolutions to the disputes between Argentina and Great Britain over the Falkland Islands did not succeed. Unable to fully control the administration’s diplomatic process, Haig resigned.

Haig continued to be active in Republican Party politics and briefed subsequent secretaries of state.

George Pratt Shultz (1920–) was born and raised in New York City. He graduated from Princeton University before serving in World War II. He then completed a PhD in industrial economics and taught at MIT and the University of Chicago until President Richard M. Nixon appointed him secretary of labor in 1969, then director of the Office of Management and Budget, and then secretary of the treasury. Shultz was teaching management and public policy at Stanford University when President Ronald Reagan asked him to be secretary of state. 

During his lengthy six and one-half year tenure in office, Shultz played a crucial role in guiding U.S. diplomacy. He focused his efforts on resolving the conflict in the Middle East, negotiating an agreement between Israel and Lebanon. In Latin America, he managed increasingly tense relationships and helped to broker agreements regarding Nicaragua’s civil war. He defused trade disputes with Japan and stabilized relationships with China. But his greatest achievements came in crafting U.S. responses to the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and the new Soviet policies of perestroika (restructuring the economy) and glasnost (opening to the West). Shultz drafted and signed landmark arms control treaties and other agreements that helped to diminish U.S.-Soviet antagonism. Under Shultz’s leadership, U.S. diplomacy helped to pave the way for the end of the Cold War.

Following the Reagan administration, Shultz remained active in Republican politics, offering support and advice to President George W. Bush.

James A. Baker (1930–) was born in Texas, graduated from Princeton University, and served in the Marines. With a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin, he practiced law and became involved in politics. Baker was President Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff and then secretary of the treasury. In 1989, he became President George H. W. Bush’s secretary of state. To this position he brought almost two decades of experience in politics, both behind the scenes and in key administrative positions.

As secretary, Baker successfully oversaw U.S. foreign policy during the end of the Cold War, as the nations of Eastern Europe repudiated communist governments and the Soviet Union broke apart. Baker was also the driving force behind creating a coalition of nations to repel Saddam Hussein and Iraq from Kuwait during the First Persian Gulf War.

Baker continues to play a role in U.S. diplomacy and international affairs. He has served as a special envoy and as the Republican co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, tasked with assessing America’s policy toward Iraq.

Lawrence Sidney Eagleburger (1930–2011) was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin, served in the U.S. Army, and entered the Foreign Service. He held a number of positions in the Department of Defense and Department of State before President Jimmy Carter appointed him ambassador to Yugoslavia. Eagleburger was later under secretary of state and deputy secretary of state, and when President George H. W. Bush asked him to be secretary of state, his career service enabled him to bring valuable experience and knowledge to U.S. diplomacy.

Most notably, Eagleburger served as President Bush’s primary adviser during Yugoslavia’s disintegration following the demise of communism in Eastern Europe. He also played a key role during the First Persian Gulf War.

In his retirement, Eagleburger remained a strong voice on international and political issues and continued to comment on U.S. policy toward the Middle East.

Warren Minor Christopher (1925–2011) was born in Scranton, North Dakota. He graduated from the University of Southern California and Stanford University Law School. As a lawyer, he consulted on and helped negotiate numerous international treaties for the United States. He was deputy attorney general in the administration of Lyndon Johnson and deputy secretary of state in the administration of Jimmy Carter. President Bill Clinton appointed Christopher secretary of state. 

As secretary, Christopher preferred negotiation over confrontation. He encouraged Israel, the Palestinians, and Jordan to sign peace treaties, resulting in the 1993 Oslo Accords and the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of 1994. Christopher promoted the Partnership for Peace Program, which advocated the expansion of NATO eastward into the former Soviet bloc nations. In 1995 he convinced President Clinton to officially restore diplomatic relations with Vietnam, which had been unified under communist rule. Later that year, Christopher conducted negotiations between Serbia and Bosnia that ended the conflict in the region.

In retirement Christopher continued to serve on boards related to national security and foreign policy, and he taught a seminar on international affairs at UCLA.

Marie Jana Korbelová (1937–) was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. After the communist coup in 1948, her family immigrated to the United States. She Americanized her name to Madeleine Korbel, became a U.S. citizen in 1957, and later took the last name of her husband, Joseph Albright. She graduated from Wellesley College and earned a PhD in public law and government from Columbia University. She served on the staff of Senator Edmund Muskie, in the Jimmy Carter White House, and on the National Security Council. President Bill Clinton appointed her ambassador to the United Nations and then secretary of state. Madeline Albright was the first woman to hold this position.

As secretary, Albright continued promoting the expansion of NATO eastward into the former Soviet bloc nations and sought to keep nuclear weapons owned by the former Soviet Union from getting into the hands of terrorists or rogue nations. During the 1999 humanitarian crisis in Kosovo, in Southeastern Europe, she successfully pressed for military intervention by NATO. Generally, Albright supported the expansion of free-market democracies and the creation of civil societies in the developing world, furthering the normalization of relations with Vietnam. Addressing concerns for the environment, she favored the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on Global Climate Change.

Following the end of the Clinton administration, Albright continued to serve on boards and committees related to foreign relations, world justice, and the empowerment of women. 

Colin Luther Powell (1937–) was born in New York City, the son of Jamaican immigrants. He attended City College of New York, and through the Reserve Officer Training Corps was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. During his 35 years in the army, he served two tours in Vietnam and was stationed in West Germany and South Korea. He was President Ronald Reagan’s deputy national security adviser and then, promoted to the rank of general, was appointed by President George H. W. Bush as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this position he oversaw multiple  crises, including Operation Desert Storm in 1991, which pushed Iraq under Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. After his retirement in 1993, he founded America’s Promise, an organization that helps at-risk children. President George W. Bush called Powell back into service as secretary of state, and he was the first African American to serve in this position.

Powell began his term by reaffirming diplomatic alliances throughout the world. He reinvigorated U.S. diplomacy through reforms in the Department of State’s organizational culture and an infusion of resources for personnel, information technology, security, and facilities. But after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he supported taking swift military action against al-Qaeda, the organization harbored by Afghanistan that was responsible for the attacks. When it became suspected that Saddam Hussein in Iraq was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, Powell pressed to have UN inspectors investigate but advised against President Bush’s preemptive military action. Even as these new wars in Afghanistan and Iraq demanded his attention, Powell also worked to improve relations with Russia and China, advocated for an international initiative against AIDS, and sought to halt the nuclear weapons programs of North Korea and Iran. He continued to believe that Middle East stability required a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by means of an independent Palestinian state.

Following his resignation, Powell returned to the private sector and continued his work with America’s Promise. 

Condoleezza Rice (1954–) was born in Birmingham, Alabama. She earned a BA and PhD in international studies from the University of Denver. She taught at Stanford University, rising to the position of provost. She also served on the National Security Council and was appointed the national security adviser by President George W. Bush before being named secretary of state. She was the first African American woman in this position.

As secretary, Rice supported the expansion of democratic governments and championed “transformational diplomacy,” which sought to redistribute U.S. diplomats to areas of severe social and political trouble, addressing such issues as disease, drug smuggling, and human trafficking, and reemphasizing aid. She helped negotiate several agreements in the Middle East and focused on finding a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. She worked actively to improve human rights issues in Iran but also sought to curtail its nuclear program and that of North Korea. One of her most successful negotiations was an agreement that allowed civil nuclear trade between India and the United States. 

Rice has returned to teaching at Stanford and serves as head of the Hoover Institution.