Albert J. Beveridge

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Albert J. Beveridge

United States Senator from Indiana
In office March 4, 1899–March 3, 1911
Preceded by	David Turpie
Succeeded by	John W. Kern

Born	October 6, 1862 Highland County, Ohio
Died	April 27, 1927 aged 64 Indianapolis, Indiana
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Catherine Beveridge

Albert Jeremiah Beveridge ( October 6, 1862 – April 27, 1927 ) was a historian and United States Senator from Indiana. He was born in Highland County, Ohio, admitted to the Indiana bar in 1887 and practiced law in Indianapolis. He graduated from Indiana Asbury University (now DePauw University) in 1885, with a Ph.B. degree. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He was known as a compelling orator, delivering speeches supporting territorial expansion by the U.S. and increasing the power of the federal government.

In 1899, Beveridge was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican and served until 1911. He supported Theodore Roosevelt's progressive views and was the keynote speaker at the new Progressive Party convention which nominated Roosevelt for U.S. President in 1912.

Beveridge is known as one of the great American imperialists. In a speech delivered January 9, 1900, he showed support for the annexation of the Philippines:

“

The Philippines are ours forever.... And just beyond the Philippines are China’s illimitable (limitless) markets. We will not retreat from either. We will not repudiate our duty in the archipelago. We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient. We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee under God, of the civilization of the world. The Pacific is our ocean... . Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography answers the question. China is our natural customer...The Philippines give us a base at the door of all die East...No land in America surpasses in fertility the plains and valleys of Luzon. Rice and coffee, sugar and cocoanuts, hemp and tobacco...The wood of the Philippines can supply the furniture of the world for a century to come. At Cebu the best informed man on die island told me that 40 miles of Cebu's mountain chain are practically mountains of coal...I have a nugget of pure gold picked up in its present form on the banks of a Philippine creek...My own belief is that there are not 100 men among them who comprehend what Anglo-Saxon self-government even means, and there are over 5,000,000 people to be governed. It has been charged that our conduct of the war has been cruel. Senators, it has been the reverse...Senators must remember that we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals.

”

On the other hand, after Beveridge's re-election in 1905 to a second term, he became identified with the reform-minded faction of the GOP. He championed national child labor legislation, broke with President William Howard Taft over the Payne-Aldrich tariff, and sponsored the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906, adopted in the wake of the publication of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

He lost his senate seat when the Democrats took Indiana in the 1910 elections; in 1912, when former president Theodore Roosevelt left the Republican party to found the short-lived Progressive Party, Beveridge left with him, and ran campaigns as that party's Indiana nominee in the 1912 race for governor and the 1914 race for senator, losing both. When the Progressive party disintegrated, he returned to the Republicans with his political future in tatters; he eventually ran one more unsuccessful race for Senate in the 1922 primary against Harry S. New, but would never again hold office. [1]

As his political career drew to a close, Beveridge dedicated his time to writing historical literature. He was a member and secretary of the American Historical Association (AHA). His four-volume set The Life of John Marshall, published from 1916 to 1919, won Beveridge a Pulitzer Prize. He also wrote two volumes on Abraham Lincoln which were published in 1928, the year after his death. That same year the AHA established the Beveridge Award in his memory, through a gift from his wife, Catherine Beveridge and donations from members.