Albert J. Beveridge: Imperialist Senator Turned Pulitzer Biographer

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Albert J. Beveridge was born in Ohio in 1862, grew up in Indiana working on farms and as a logger, and put himself through Indiana Asbury University, now DePauw, graduating in 1885. He passed the bar in 1887 and built a national reputation as an orator, campaigning for James G. Blaine in 1884. In 1899, at 36 and without prior elected office, he was chosen for the U.S. Senate from Indiana. He championed annexation of the Philippines and a larger Navy with Henry Cabot Lodge, and as chair of the Committee on Territories from 1901 he admitted Oklahoma while blocking statehood for Arizona and New Mexico, which he considered unfit because of their Hispanic and Native American populations.

In his second term Beveridge became a progressive ally of Theodore Roosevelt. He drafted the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 after Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, pushed national child labor laws, backed postal savings banks and the Mann-Elkins Act, and broke with William Howard Taft over the Payne-Aldrich Tariff. He turned down the 1908 vice presidential nomination, lost his seat in 1910, gave the keynote at the 1912 Progressive convention, and lost races in 1912, 1914, and 1922. In 1923 he called for abolishing half of all federal boards and commissions. His four volume life of John Marshall won the 1920 Pulitzer Prize, and he died in 1927 while writing a Lincoln biography.

• In 1901 he met Leo Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana and had film of the meeting destroyed to protect his political image.
• He blocked Arizona and New Mexico by keeping their statehood bills from reaching the Senate floor.
• He opposed the Payne-Aldrich Tariff as a hidden tax that raised prices on everyday goods.
• He distrusted Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations as a threat to American sovereignty.
• The American Historical Association, where he served as secretary, created the Beveridge Award in his memory.