Historic signature of Henry Cabot Lodge on typed sentiment: "Very truly yours, Panama Canal" H. C. Lodge. Henry Cabot Lodge (May 12, 1850 November 9, 1924) was an American statesman, a Republican politician, and a noted historian. U.S. representative/senator, historian; born in Boston, Mass. After obtaining his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard (1876), he joined the faculty and published several historical studies, including Alexander Hamilton (1882) and George Washington (1888). Active as a Republican in Massachusetts, including a term in the Massachusetts legislature, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives (188793) and then in the U.S. Senate (18931924). A champion of civil service reform and retaining the gold standard, he also helped secure the adoption of treaties allowing the construction of the Panama Canal. Although a conservative in many ways--he opposed women's suffrage and the direct election of senators--he was also a close associate of the progressive Republican Theodore Roosevelt. But he is remembered in history because, as chairman of the Senate Foreign relations Committee, he led the opposition to the acceptance of the peace treaty after World War I and specifically President Woodrow Wilson linking it to the U.S.A.'s entry into the League of Nations. Lodge was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of John Lodge and Anna Cabot. His great-grandfather was former Senator George Cabot. Lodge grew up on Boston's Beacon Hill. In 1872 he graduated from Harvard College. At Harvard he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and the Porcellian Club. He also was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club and took part in an early show. After traveling through Europe, Lodge returned to Harvard where he became the first student of Harvard University to graduate with a Ph.D. in History. His teacher and mentor during his graduate studies was Henry Adams; Lodge would maintain a lifelong friendship with Adams. Lodge wrote his dissertation on the ancient Germanic origins of Anglo-Saxon government. In 1871, he married Anna Cabot Mills Davis, the daughter of Admiral Charles Henry Davis and granddaughter of U.S. Senator Elijah Hunt Mills. His wife's maternal aunt was married to mathematician Benjamin Peirce and the mother of Charles Peirce. Henry and Anna had two sons, the noted poet George Cabot Lodge and John Ellerton Lodge, an art curator. He also graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1874 and was admitted to the bar in 1875. Lodge represented his home state in the United States House of Representatives from 1887 to 1893 and in the Senate from 1893 to 1924. Lodge was early on associated with the conservative faction of the Republican Party. He was a staunch supporter of the gold standard, vehemently opposing the populists and the silverites, who were led by the left-wing Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Lodge was a strong backer of U.S. intervention in Cuba in 1898, arguing that it was the moral responsibility of the United States to do so: Of the sympathies of the American people, generous, liberty-loving, I have no question. They are with the Cubans in their struggle for freedom. I believe our people would welcome any action on the part of the United States to put an end to the terrible state of things existing there. We can stop it. We can stop it peacefully. We can stop it, in my judgment, by pursuing a proper diplomacy and offering our good offices. Let it once be understood that we mean to stop the horrible state of things in Cuba and it will be stopped. The great power of the United States, if it is once invoked and uplifted, is capable of greater things than that. Following American victory in the Spanish-American War, Lodge came to represent the imperialist faction of the Senate, those who called for the annexation of the Philippines. Lodge maintained that the United States needed to have a strong navy and be more involved in foreign affairs. He was a staunch advocate of entering World War I on the side of the Allied Powers, attacking President Woodrow Wilson's perceived lack of military preparedness and accusing pacifists of undermining American patriotism. After the United States entered the war, Lodge continued to attack Wilson as hopelessly idealistic, assailing Wilson's "Fourteen Points" as unrealistic and weak. He contended that Germany needed to be militarily and economically crushed and saddled with harsh penalties so that it could never again be a threat to the stability of Europe. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lodge led the successful fight against American participation in the League of Nations, which had been proposed by President Woodrow Wilson at the close of World War I. He also served as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference from 1918 to 1924. During his term in office, he and another powerful senator, Albert J. Beveridge, pushed for the construction of a new navy. History from Wikipedia and OldCompanyResearch.com (old stock certificate research service).