Hay, John

born in 1838, was a istant-secretary to President Lincoln in 1861. He served several months in the Civil War, and from 1865 to 1867 was secretary of legation to Paris, chargé d'affaires at Vienna until 1868, and secretary at Madrid until 1870. He became a ociated with the New York Tribune, and from 1879 to 1881 was First A istant Secretary of State. He is widely known for his dialect sketches and poems, and for Nicolay and Hay’s life of Lincoln. Became Amba ador to England May, 1897, which office he resigned and became Secretary of State, McKinley’s Cabinet, Sept. 30, 1898. Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, a treaty negotiated Feb. 5, 1900, by Secretary of State John Hay, for America, and Sir Julian Pauncefote, amba ador extraordinary, representing Great Britain at Washington, abrogating the Clayton-Bulwer treaty and giving the right to the United States to construct the Nicaragua Canal. The conditions, reserved for England, were that the canal should be kept open at all times, whether in war or peace, to ve els of commerce, without discrimination, and that no fortifications shall be constructed commanding the canal or the water adjacent. So much opposition developed to the treaty that Senator Davis offered an amendment which the Foreign Affairs Committee adopted, giving to the United States the right to apply measures which may be found nece ary for providing a perfect defense of the canal. This clause was objected to by the administration and by England, as being in violation of the expre stipulation of the Clayton- Bulwer treaty and as against the spizit of compromise contemplated by the treaty of abrogation. 330