1884-1924
Guide to the Microfilm Edition
Abstract
This collection consists of approximately 2,500 letters, notes, telegrams, and speeches exchanged between Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt.
Biographical Sketch
Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924) was a historian and U.S. senator, the son of John Ellerton Lodge (b. 1807) and Anna Cabot (1821-1900). He graduated from Harvard in 1871 and, later that year, married Anna "Nannie" Cabot Mills Davis (1850-1915). The couple had three children: Constance Davis Lodge (b. 1872), George "Bay" Cabot Lodge (1873-1909), and John Ellerton Lodge (1876-1942). The Lodge family made their homes in Nahant, Mass. and Washington, D.C.
After his marriage to Nannie Davis and their subsequent honeymoon travels in Europe during 1871-1872, Henry Cabot Lodge was editor of the North American Review from 1873-1876. He graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1874 and, in 1876, earned one of the first Ph.D. degrees in history and government given by Harvard University. From 1876-1879, Lodge was a lecturer on American history at Harvard. He was subsequently elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1880, a position he kept until 1881. After many unsuccessful campaigns, Lodge was elected as a Republican U.S. representative from Massachusetts in 1887, and he served in that capacity until 1893, when he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He remained a senator until his death in 1924.
Lodge was close friends with Theodore Roosevelt for more than four decades.
Collection Description
The microfilm edition of the Lodge-Roosevelt correspondence consists of 10 microfilm reels containing approximately 2,500 letters, notes, telegrams, and speeches exchanged between Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt. Topics include their families, friendships, and personal lives, as well as careers, politics, and world events. The correspondence details Roosevelt's career as a politician, statesman, popular leader, naturalist, soldier, orator, and historian. Included are letters written by Roosevelt from Cuba during his days with the Rough Riders and letters from his African expedition of 1909-1910, periods when he corresponded almost exclusively with Lodge and his wife, Edith Kermit Roosevelt. Other topics include the Alaskan Boundary Tribunal, the Panama Canal, the Colombia Treaty, President Woodrow Wilson and his administration, World War I, and national politics, in particular the elections of 1908 and 1916 and the Republican, Democratic, and Progressive Parties. Some letters from Lodge to Roosevelt are typescript copies. Others are photocopies of originals, presumably part of the Theodore Roosevelt papers at the Library of Congress.
The collection also contains correspondence between Roosevelt and Lodge's wife, Anna "Nannie" Cabot Mills Lodge; correspondence between Lodge and Roosevelt's wife Edith dating primarily from 1919 to 1924 and relating to Lodge's work on the publication of their correspondence; a small number of letters pertaining to civil service scandals, 1890-1907, withheld by Lodge's grandson, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., until 1978; and the edited manuscript of Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge (1925).
Acquisition Information
Gift of Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., 1981.
Other Formats
Approximately half of the letters in this collection were published in Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925; reprinted by DaCapo Press, 1971). Excerpts from the correspondence were published in the Boston Globe, daily from 6 Jan.-25 Mar. 1925.
Detailed Description of the Collection
I. Lodge-Roosevelt correspondence, 1884-1924
Arranged chronologically.
This series contains unpublished and published letters filed together. Included are notes indicating letters published entirely or partly in Selections; photoreproductions of letters too faint to read; typed transcriptions of particularly illegible letters; and annotations (presumably by Lodge) on a few photostatic copies of letters. In those cases, both the photostat and the original have been filmed. Other letters may exist as photostats only.
Undated correspondence
1884-1895
1896-1898
1899-1902
1903-1905
1906-1909
1910-1915
1916-1924
II. Edited manuscript of published correspondence, [1924]
Arranged chronologically.
This series contains an edited manuscript of Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge (New York: Charles Scriber's Sons, 1925). The book was edited by Lodge and (after he became ill) by his secretary Charles F. Redmond.
1884-1899
1900-1907
1908-1918
Preferred Citation
Lodge-Roosevelt correspondence, Massachusetts Historical Society.
Access Terms
This collection is indexed under the following headings in ABIGAIL, the online catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related persons, organizations, or subjects should search the catalog using these headings.