American · 1850–1924
Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924) was an American politician and historian from a prominent Boston family. He studied at Harvard under Henry Adams and in 1876 received one of the first PhDs in history the university awarded, then edited the North American Review and wrote a run of biographies and histories, including lives of Alexander Hamilton, Daniel Webster and George Washington for the American Statesmen series, and a short history of the English colonies in America. Elected to the House of Representatives in 1886 and to the Senate in 1893, he represented Massachusetts for more than thirty years and became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Republican leader. A close friend and ally of Theodore Roosevelt, he championed an assertive foreign policy and immigration restriction. He is best remembered for leading the Senate opposition that defeated the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and kept the United States out of the League of Nations.