The first ten Seeretaries of State.
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THE FIRST TEN SECRETARIES OF STATE. By Sall1e E. Marshall Hardy. [. THE history of the state department is perhaps more interesting than that of the executive. Certainly the men who have been at its head are among the most eminent of American statesmen, which cannot be said with truth of all of those who have occupied the presidential chair. The service of the first ten secretaries of state covers a period of nearly half a century, and no other forty-two years since the United States became a nation have been more momentous. Well for us, then, that they were chosen from among our greatest men. Five of them were from Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Randolph, John Mar shall, James Madison and James Mon roe. Of the other five, Timothy Pickering was appointed from Pennsylvania; Robert Smith from Maryland; John Quincy Adams, from Massachusetts; Henry Clay, from Kentucky, and Martin Van Buren, from New York. All of them were lawyers, or, at least, had studied law. Half of them had measured their diplomacy with that of skilled Euro pean statesmen. Jefferson had negotiated treaties with the principal European coun tries and had been minister to France. John Marshall had been one of the special envoys to France to try to arrange our diffi culties with that country. Monroe had been minister to France and England. John Quincy Adams had represented the United States in Russia and England, and Henry Clay had been one of the commissioners, in 18 14, to negotiate a treaty of peace with England and had signed the treaty of Ghent. Five of them were afterward Presidents of the United States : Jefferson, Madison, Mon roe, John Quincy Adams and Van Buren,
and a sixth, John Marshall, became chief justice. The longest time any of them held the office was eight years, James Madison and John Quincy Adams; the shortest, one year, Edmund Randolph and John Mar shall. Timothy Pickering and James Mon roe each served six years, and Henry Clay and Martin Van Buren, two. The first secretary of state, Thomas Jef ferson, was appointed by President Wash ington, and served from 1789 to 1794. He was forty-six years old. He came of good Welsh stock on his father's side, and his mother was a Randolph, of the rich and prominent Randolph family of England. He was born April 2, 1743, and was one of nine children. He is said to have been very like his mother. and to have inherited his taste for literature from her. Certainly he owed to her the most of his training, for his father died before he was fourteen years old. Thomas Jefferson was slender and very tall, being six feet and two inches in height. When at twenty-four he began to practice law, it is said, " He did not gamble or drink, use tobacco or swear, in short avoided all the vices of the young Virginia gentry of that day." It was in 1767 that he was ad mitted to practice law at the Virginia bar. His diary shows he had sixty-eight cases the first year; one hundred and fifteen for 1768; one hundred and ninety-eight in 1769; one hundred and twenty-one in 1770; one hun dred and thirty-seven in 1771; one hundred and fifty-four in 1772; one hundred and twenty-seven in 1773, and only twenty-nine in the troublous days of 1774. He was not a good speaker, and his voice was very unpleasant. On New Year's day,
