HAY, JOHN MILTON: 1838-1905.
Son of Charles and Helen Leonard Hay, John Milton Hay was born in Salem, Ind., on Oct. 8, 1838. The family soon moved to Warsaw, Ill., where Hay received his grammar school training. Later he attended Pittsfield Academy and took some work at college level in Springfield . He entered and was graduated from Brown University in 1858, studied law in Springfield-where he became acquainted with Abraham Lincoln–and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1861.
In the same year he became one of the private secretaries of Lincoln and later was appointed his adjutant and aide-de-camp, being breveted colonel of the U. S. Volunteers. At the end of the Civil War he was appointed secretary of the Paris legation and later of the legation at Madrid . He became charge d'affaires at Vienna and, in 1870, returned to the United States .
Taking up newspaper work, he became an editorial writer and night editor for the NEW YORK TRIBUNE and, in his spare time, began his literary career. His first book (and one of his best) concerned the middle western scene, from which he was now so long removed. It was his Pike County Ballads.
In 1874 he married Clara Stone of Cleveland , and the next year he gave up newspaper work to devote all of his time to literature. Some of his contributions to periodicals were particularly successful–notably his dialect sketch, "Little Breeches," which continued a standby of professional and amateur elocutionists for fifty years.
In 1879 he was appointed first assistant Secretary of State and served until 1881, when he returned to journalism to take over Whitelaw Reid's desk as editor of the NEW YORK TRIBUNE for six months. Taking up literature again, he is supposed to have written a novel, Breadwinners, which was published anonymously in 1884, and he joined with John G. Nicolay in writing their Abraham Lincoln, a History. This work was published serially in the CENTURY MAGAZINE in 1886 and 1887 and appeared in book form in 1890. It was enormously successful, selling, judging from the frequence of its appearance in second-hand book stores, to every literate Union veteran.
In 1897 John Hay was appointed Ambassador to the Court of St. James but was recalled the next year to become Secretary of State. He died in 1905 at Newbury, N.H.
The cause of literature would have prospered had John Hay been in less demand as a statesman. His writing is, at times, so clean cut and so brilliant that it gives promise, had it been followed more consistently, of an even higher quality than it possessed: and this is in no way derogatory to the quality of writing he did achieve–a quality usually as good as, and frequently better than, that of his best contemporaries.
Information from Who Was Who in America; and Kunitz and Haycraft–American Authors, 1600-1900.
page: 141[View Page 141]- Castilian Days: Sketches of Travel in Spain.
Boston, 1871.
- Jim Bludso of the Prairie Belie, and Little Breeches.
Boston, 1871.
- Little Breeches; a Pike County View of Special
Providence. New York, 1871.
- Pike County Ballads and Other Pieces.
Boston, 1871.
- Poems. Boston, 1871.
- The Pioneers of Ohio. An Address Delivered Before the
Pioneers' Association of the Western Reserve … August
27, 1879. Cleveland, 1879.
- Balance Sheet of the Two Parties.
Cleveland, 1880.
- Amasa Stone. New York, 1883.
- The Breadwinners; a Social Study. New
York, 1884.
- The Enchanted Shirt. Chicago,
1889.
- Abraham Lincoln, a History (withJohn G. Nicolay). New York, 1890.
- Complete Poetical Works of John Hay.
Boston, 1896.
- In Praise of Omar: an Address Before the Omar Khayyam
Club. Portland, Me., 1898.
- On Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
New York, 1898.
- Memorial Address on the Life and Character of William
McKinley. Washington, 1903.
- Addresses. New York, 1906.
- Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary. 3 vols.
New York. 1908.
- A Poet in Exile: Early Letters of John Hay (edited byTickenor). Boston. 1910.
- Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John
Hay; Selected … by Tyler Dennett. New
York, 1939.
