Elihu Root was born in 1845 in Clinton, New York, the son of a mathematics professor, and studied law at New York University, staying an extra year for private tutoring when most students rushed to the bar. Early work for the Bank of North America on its charter reorganization led him into the Tammany Hall trials, where he helped defend James Ingersoll and later worked on the defense of Boss Tweed, drawing a warning from Judge Noah Davis about conscience. President Chester A. Arthur made him U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he prosecuted the Grant and Ward fraud and won a 10 year sentence for James C. Fish. He went on to represent J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and the Havemeyer sugar interests.

In 1899 William McKinley made him secretary of war to govern Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Root abolished the post of commanding general after clashing with Nelson A. Miles, created a general staff and the Army War College, and with adviser Charles Edward Magoon developed the incorporated and unincorporated territory framework behind the Insular Cases. As Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary of state from 1905 he reformed the consular service and negotiated arbitration treaties, winning the 1912 Nobel Peace Prize. He died in 1937 at 91.

• William Randolph Hearst’s papers later falsely claimed Root had inherited Tweed’s fortune.
• Root spent six weeks auditing Marine National Bank ledgers and deposed a dying Ulysses S. Grant at home.
• As chairman of the 1912 Republican convention he secured the nomination for Taft over his old friend Roosevelt.
• On his 1917 mission to Russia he told the Kerensky government, in effect, no fight, no loans.
• He opposed women’s suffrage from the 1894 New York constitutional convention onward and became founding chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations.