John Hay

Despite the heavy workload—Hay wrote that he was busy 20 hours a day—he tried to make as normal a life as possible, eating his meals with Nicolay at Willard's Hotel, going to the theatre with Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, and reading Les Misérables in French. Hay, still in his early 20s, spent time both in barrooms and at cultured get-togethers in the homes of Washington's elite. The two secretaries often clashed with Mary Lincoln, who resorted to various stratagems to get the dilapidated White House restored without depleting Lincoln's salary, which had to cover entertainment and other expenses. Despite the secretaries' objections, Mrs. Lincoln was generally the victor and managed to save almost 70% of her husband's salary in his four years in office.

Hay served for almost seven years as Secretary of State, under President McKinley, and after McKinley's assassination, under Theodore Roosevelt. Hay was responsible for negotiating the Open Door Policy, which kept China open to trade with all countries on an equal basis, with international powers. By negotiating the Hay–Pauncefote Treaty with the United Kingdom, the (ultimately unratified) Hay–Herrán Treaty with Colombia, and finally the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty with the newly independent Republic of Panama, Hay also cleared the way for the building of the Panama Canal.

Secretary Hay was at The Fells when McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, on September 6 in Buffalo. With Vice President Roosevelt and much of the cabinet hastening to the bedside of McKinley, who had been operated on (it was thought successfully) soon after the shooting, Hay planned to go to Washington to manage the communication with foreign governments, but presidential secretary George Cortelyou urged him to come to Buffalo. He traveled to Buffalo on September 10; hearing on his arrival an account of the President's recovery, Hay responded that McKinley would die. He was more cheerful after visiting McKinley, giving a statement to the press, and went to Washington, as Roosevelt and other officials also dispersed. Hay was about to return to New Hampshire on the 13th, when word came that McKinley was dying. Hay remained at his office and the next morning, on the way to Buffalo, the former Rough Rider received from Hay his first communication as head of state, officially informing President Roosevelt of McKinley's death.

In 1923 Mount Hay, also known as Boundary Peak 167 on the Canada–United States border, was named after John Hay in recognition of his role in negotiating the US-Canada treaty resulting in the Alaska Boundary Tribunal. Brown University's John Hay Library is named for him as well. Hay's New Hampshire estate has been conserved by various organizations. Although he and his family never lived there (Hay died while it was under construction), the Hay-McKinney House, home to the Cleveland History Center and thousands of artifacts, serves to remind Clevelanders of John Hay's lengthy service. During World War II the Liberty ship SS John Hay was built in Panama City, Florida, and named in his honor. Camp John Hay a United States military base established in 1903 in Baguio, Philippines was named for John Hay, and the base name was maintained by the Philippine government even after its 1991 turnover to Philippine authorities.

Privately, and in correspondence with others, they were less generous: Hay grumbled that while McKinley would give him his full attention, Roosevelt was always busy with others, and it would be "an hour's wait for a minute's talk". Roosevelt, after Hay's death in 1905, wrote to Senator Lodge that Hay had not been "a great Secretary of State ... under me he accomplished little ... his usefulness to me was almost exclusively the usefulness of a fine figurehead". Nevertheless, when Roosevelt successfully sought election in his own right in 1904, he persuaded the aging and infirm Hay to campaign for him, and Hay gave a speech linking the administration's policies with those of Lincoln: "there is not a principle avowed by the Republican party to-day which is out of harmony with his [Lincoln's] teaching or inconsistent with his character." Kushner and Sherrill suggested that the differences between Hay and Roosevelt were more style than ideological substance.

The 1904 Republican National Convention was in session, and the Speaker of the House, Joseph Cannon, its chair, read the first sentence of the cable—and only the first sentence—to the convention, electrifying what had been a humdrum coronation of Roosevelt. "The results were perfect. This was the fighting Teddy that America loved, and his frenzied supporters—and American chauvinists everywhere—roared in delight." In fact, by then the sultan had already agreed to the demands, and Perdicaris was released. What was seen as tough talk boosted Roosevelt's election chances.

Seeing that the Americans were likely to build a Nicaragua Canal, the owners of the defunct French company, including Philippe Bunau-Varilla, who still had exclusive rights to the Panama route, lowered their price. Beginning in early 1902, President Roosevelt became a backer of the latter route, and Congress passed legislation for it, if it could be secured within a reasonable time. In June, Roosevelt told Hay to take personal charge of the negotiations with Colombia. Later that year, Hay began talks with Colombia's acting minister in Washington, Tomás Herrán. The Hay–Herrán Treaty, granting $10 million to Colombia for the right to build a canal, plus $250,000 annually, was signed on January 22, 1903, and ratified by the United States Senate two months later. In August, however, the treaty was rejected by the Colombian Senate.

In December 1902, the German government asked Roosevelt to arbitrate its dispute with Venezuela over unpaid debts. Hay did not think this appropriate, as Venezuela also owed the U.S. money, and quickly arranged for the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague to step in. Hay supposedly said, as final details were being worked out, "I have it all arranged. If Teddy will keep his mouth shut until tomorrow noon!" Hay and Roosevelt also differed over the composition of the Joint High Commission that was to settle the Alaska boundary dispute. The commission was to be composed of "impartial jurists" and the British and Canadians duly appointed notable judges. Roosevelt appointed politicians, including Secretary Root and Senator Lodge. Although Hay was supportive of the President's choices in public, in private he protested loudly to Roosevelt, complained by letter to his friends, and offered his resignation. Roosevelt declined it, but the incident confirmed him in his belief that Hay was too much of an Anglophile to be trusted where Britain was concerned. The American position on the boundary dispute was imposed on Canada by a 4–2 vote, with the one English judge joining the three Americans.

Hay accompanied McKinley on his nationwide train tour in mid-1901, during which both men visited California and saw the Pacific Ocean for the only times in their lives. The summer of 1901 was tragic for Hay; his older son Adelbert, who had been consul in Pretoria during the Boer War and was about to become McKinley's personal secretary, died in a fall from a New Haven hotel window.

Little thought was given to the Chinese reaction to the Open Door note; the Chinese minister in Washington, Wu Ting-fang, did not learn of it until he read of it in the newspapers. Among those in China who opposed Western influence there was a movement in Shantung Province, in the north, that became known as the Fists of Righteous Harmony, or Boxers, after the martial arts they practiced. The Boxers were especially angered by missionaries and their converts. As late as June 1900, Rockhill dismissed the Boxers, contending that they would soon disband. By the middle of that month, the Boxers, joined by imperial troops, had cut the railroad between Peking and the coast, killed many missionaries and converts, and besieged the foreign legations. Hay faced a precarious situation; how to rescue the Americans trapped in Peking, and how to avoid giving the other powers an excuse to partition China, in an election year when there was already Democrat opposition to what they deemed American imperialism.

By the time Hay took office, the war was effectively over and it had been decided to strip Spain of her overseas empire and transfer at least part of it to the United States. At the time of Hay's swearing-in, McKinley was still undecided whether to take the Philippines, but in October finally decided to do so, and Hay sent instructions to Day and the other peace commissioners to insist on it. Spain yielded, and the result was the Treaty of Paris, narrowly ratified by the Senate in February 1899 over the objections of anti-imperialists.

Secretary Sherman had resigned on the eve of war, and been replaced by his first assistant, William R. Day. One of McKinley's Canton cronies, with little experience of statecraft, Day was never intended as more than a temporary wartime replacement. With America about to splash her flag across the Pacific, McKinley needed a secretary with stronger credentials. On August 14, 1898, Hay received a telegram from McKinley that Day would head the American delegation to the peace talks with Spain, and that Hay would be the new Secretary of State. After some indecision, Hay, who did not think he could decline and still remain as ambassador, accepted. British response to Hay's promotion was generally positive, and Queen Victoria, after he took formal leave of her at Osborne House, invited him again the following day, and subsequently pronounced him, "the most interesting of all the Ambassadors I have known."

During his service as ambassador, Hay attempted to advance the relationship between the U.S. and Britain. The United Kingdom had long been seen negatively by many Americans, a legacy of its role during the American Revolution that was refreshed by its neutrality in the American Civil War, when it allowed merchant raiders such as the Alabama to be constructed in British ports, which then preyed on US-flagged ships. In spite of these past differences, according to Taliaferro, "rapprochement made more sense than at any time in their respective histories". In his Thanksgiving Day address to the American Society in London in 1897, Hay echoed these points, "The great body of people in the United States and England are friends ... [sharing] that intense respect and reverence for order, liberty, and law which is so profound a sentiment in both countries". Although Hay was not successful in resolving specific controversies in his year and a third as ambassador, both he and British policymakers regarded his tenure as a success, because of the advancement of good feelings and cooperation between the two nations.

Hay spent part of the spring and early summer of 1896 in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in Europe. There was a border dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana, and Cleveland's Secretary of State, Richard Olney, supported the Venezuelan position, announcing the Olney interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. Hay told British politicians that McKinley, if elected, would be unlikely to change course. McKinley was nominated in June 1896; still, many Britons were minded to support whoever became the Democratic candidate. This changed when the 1896 Democratic National Convention nominated former Nebraska congressman William Jennings Bryan on a "free silver" platform; he had electrified the delegates with his Cross of Gold speech. Hay reported to McKinley when he returned to Britain after a brief stay on the Continent during which Bryan was nominated in Chicago: "they were all scared out of their wits for fear Bryan would be elected, and very polite in their references to you."

The same panic that nearly ruined McKinley convinced Hay that men like himself must take office to save the country from disaster. By the end of 1894, he was deeply involved in efforts to lay the groundwork for the governor's 1896 presidential bid. It was Hay's job to persuade potential supporters that McKinley was worth backing. Nevertheless, Hay found time for a lengthy stay in New Hampshire—one visitor at The Fells in mid-1895 was Rudyard Kipling—and later in the year wrote, "The summer wanes and I have done nothing for McKinley." He atoned with a $500 check to Hanna, the first of many. During the winter of 1895–96, Hay passed along what he heard from other Republicans influential in Washington, such as Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.

An ongoing dispute between the U.S. and Britain was over the practice of pelagic sealing, that is, the capture of seals offshore of Alaska. The U.S. considered them American resources; the Canadians (Britain was still responsible for that dominion's foreign policy) contended that the mammals were being taken on the high seas, free to all. Soon after Hay's arrival, McKinley sent former Secretary of State John W. Foster to London to negotiate the issue. Foster quickly issued an accusatory note to the British that was printed in the newspapers. Although Hay was successful in getting Lord Salisbury, then both Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, to agree to a conference to decide the matter, the British withdrew when the U.S. also invited Russia and Japan, rendering the conference ineffective. Another issue on which no agreement was reached was that of bimetallism: McKinley had promised silver-leaning Republicans to seek an international agreement varying the price ratio between silver and gold to allow for free coinage of silver, and Hay was instructed to seek British participation. The British would only join if the Indian colonial government (on a silver standard until 1893) was willing; this did not occur, and coupled with an improving economic situation that decreased support for bimetallism in the United States, no agreement was reached.

Hay and Nicolay accompanied Lincoln to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for the dedication of the cemetery there, where were interred many of those who fell at the Battle of Gettysburg. Although they made much of Lincoln's brief Gettysburg Address in their 1890 multi-volume biography of Lincoln, Hay's diary states "the President, in a firm, free way, with more grace than is his wont, said his half-dozen lines of consecration."

Hay was an early supporter of Ohio's William McKinley and worked closely with McKinley's political manager, Cleveland industrialist Mark Hanna. In 1889, Hay supported McKinley in his unsuccessful effort to become Speaker of the House. Four years later, McKinley—by then Governor of Ohio—faced a crisis when a friend whose notes he had imprudently co-signed went bankrupt during the Panic of 1893. The debts were beyond the governor's means to pay, and the possibility of insolvency threatened McKinley's promising political career. Hay was among those Hanna called upon to contribute, buying up $3,000 of the debt of over $100,000. Although others paid more, "Hay's checks were two of the first, and his touch was more personal, a kindness McKinley never forgot". The governor wrote, "How can I ever repay you & other dear friends?"

The published work, Abraham Lincoln: A History, alternates parts in which Lincoln is at center with discussions of contextual matters, such as legislative events or battles. The first serial installment, published in November 1886, received positive reviews. When the ten-volume set emerged in 1890, it was not sold in bookstores, but instead door-to-door, then a common practice. Despite a price of $50, and the fact that a good part of the work had been serialized, five thousand copies were quickly sold. The books helped forge the modern view of Lincoln as great war leader, against competing narratives that gave more credit to subordinates such as Seward. According to historian Joshua Zeitz, "it is easy to forget how widely underrated Lincoln the president and Lincoln the man were at the time of his death and how successful Hay and Nicolay were in elevating his place in the nation's collective historical memory."

In 1884, Hay and Adams commissioned architect Henry Hobson Richardson to construct houses for them on Washington's Lafayette Square; these were completed by 1886. Hay's house, facing the White House and fronting on Sixteenth Street, was described even before completion as "the finest house in Washington". The price for the combined tract, purchased from William Wilson Corcoran, was $73,800, of which Adams paid a third for his lot. Hay budgeted the construction cost at $50,000; his ornate, 12,000 square feet (1,100 m) mansion eventually cost over twice that. Despite their possession of two lavish houses, the Hays spent less than half the year in Washington and only a few weeks a year in Cleveland. They also spent time at The Fells, their summer residence in Newbury, New Hampshire. According to Gale, "for a full decade before his appointment in 1897 as ambassador to England, Hay was lazy and uncertain."

The Bread-Winners, one of the first novels to take an anti-labor perspective, was published anonymously in 1883 (published editions did not bear Hay's name until 1916) and he may have tried to disguise his writing style. The book examines two conflicts: between capital and labor, and between the nouveau riche and old money. In writing it, Hay was influenced by the labor unrest of the 1870s, that affected him personally, as corporations belonging to Stone, his father-in-law, were among those struck, at a time when Hay had been left in charge in Stone's absence. According to historian Scott Dalrymple, "in response, Hay proceeded to write an indictment of organized labor so scathing, so vehement, that he dared not attach his name to it."

In Washington, Hay oversaw a staff of eighty employees, renewed his acquaintance with his friend Henry Adams, and substituted for Evarts at Cabinet meetings when the Secretary was out of town. In 1880, he campaigned for the Republican nominee for president, his fellow Ohioan, Congressman James A. Garfield. Hay felt that Garfield did not have enough backbone, and hoped that Reid and others would "inoculate him with the gall which I fear he lacks". Garfield consulted Hay before and after his election as president on appointments and other matters, but offered Hay only the post of private secretary (though he promised to increase its pay and power), and Hay declined. Hay resigned as assistant secretary effective March 31, 1881, and spent the next seven months as acting editor of the Tribune during Reid's extended absence in Europe. Garfield's death in September and Reid's return the following month left Hay again on the outside of political power, looking in. He would spend the next fifteen years in that position.

After Lincoln's death, Hay spent several years at diplomatic posts in Europe, then worked for the New-York Tribune under Horace Greeley and Whitelaw Reid. Hay remained active in politics, and from 1879 to 1881 served as Assistant Secretary of State. Afterward, he remained in the private sector, until President McKinley, for whom he had been a major backer, made him Ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1897. Hay became Secretary of State the following year.

On December 29, 1876, a bridge over Ohio's Ashtabula River collapsed. The bridge had been built from metal cast at one of Stone's mills, and was carrying a train owned and operated by Stone's Lake Shore and Michigan Railway. Ninety-two people died; it was the worst rail disaster in American history up to that point. Blame fell heavily on Stone, who departed for Europe to recuperate and left Hay in charge of his businesses. The summer of 1877 was marked by labor disputes; a strike over wage cuts on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad soon spread to the Lake Shore, much to Hay's outrage. He blamed foreign agitators for the dispute, and vented his anger over the strike in his only novel, The Bread-Winners (1883).

By 1873, Hay was wooing Clara Stone, daughter of Cleveland multimillionaire railroad and banking mogul Amasa Stone. The success of his suit (they married in 1874) made the salary attached to office a small consideration for the rest of his life. Amasa Stone needed someone to watch over his investments, and wanted Hay to move to Cleveland to fill the post. Although the Hays initially lived in John's New York apartment and later in a townhouse there, they moved in June 1875 to Stone's ornate home on Cleveland's Euclid Avenue, "Millionaire's Row", and a mansion was quickly under construction for the Hays next-door. The Hays had four children, Helen Hay Whitney, Adelbert Barnes Hay, Alice Evelyn Hay Wadsworth Boyd (who married James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr.), and Clarence Leonard Hay. Their father proved successful as a money manager, though he devoted much of his time to literary and political activities, writing to Adee that "I do nothing but read and yawn".

By the time President Grant ran for reelection in 1872, Grant's administration had been rocked by scandal, and some disaffected members of his party formed the Liberal Republicans, naming Greeley as their candidate for president, a nomination soon joined in by the Democrats. Hay was unenthusiastic about the editor-turned-candidate, and in his editorials mostly took aim at Grant, who, despite the scandals, remained untarred, and who won a landslide victory in the election. Greeley died only weeks later, a broken man. Hay's stance endangered his hitherto sterling credentials in the Republican Party.

With his success as an editorial writer, Hay's duties expanded. In October 1871, he journeyed to Chicago after the great fire there, interviewing Mrs. O'Leary, whose cow was said to have started the blaze, describing her as "a woman with a lamp [who went] to the barn behind the house, to milk the cow with the crumpled temper, that kicked the lamp, that spilled the kerosene, that fired the straw that burned Chicago". His work at the Tribune came as his fame as a poet was reaching its peak, and one colleague described it as "a liberal education in the delights of intellectual life to sit in intimate companionship with John Hay and watch the play of that well-stored and brilliant mind". In addition to writing, Hay was signed by the prestigious Boston Lyceum Bureau, whose clients included Mark Twain and Susan B. Anthony, to give lectures on the prospects for democracy in Europe, and on his years in the Lincoln White House.

Hay remained disaffected from the Republican Party in the mid-1870s. Seeking a candidate of either party he could support as a reformer, he watched as his favored Democrat, Samuel Tilden, gained his party's nomination, but his favored Republican, James G. Blaine, did not, falling to Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, whom Hay did not support during the campaign. Hayes's victory in the election left Hay an outsider as he sought a return to politics, and he was initially offered no place in the new administration. Nevertheless, Hay attempted to ingratiate himself with the new president by sending him a gold ring with a strand of George Washington's hair, a gesture that Hayes deeply appreciated. Hay spent time working with Nicolay on their Lincoln biography, and traveling in Europe. When Reid, who had succeeded Greeley as editor of the Tribune, was offered the post of Minister to Germany in December 1878, he turned it down and recommended Hay. Secretary of State William M. Evarts indicated that Hay "had not been active enough in political efforts", to Hay's regret, who told Reid that he "would like a second-class mission uncommonly well".

Unemployed again, in December 1868 Hay journeyed to the capital, writing to Nicolay that he "came to Washington in the peaceful pursuit of a fat office. But there is nothing just now available". Seward promised to "wrestle with Andy for anything that turns up", but nothing did prior to the departure of both Seward and Johnson from office on March 4, 1869. In May, Hay went back to Washington from Warsaw to press his case with the new Grant administration. The next month, due to the influence of his friends, he obtained the post of secretary of legation in Spain.

Initially happy to be home, Hay quickly grew restive, and he was glad to hear, in early June 1867, that he had been appointed secretary of legation to act as chargé d'affaires at Vienna. He sailed for Europe the same month, and while in England visited the House of Commons, where he was greatly impressed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Benjamin Disraeli. The Vienna post was only temporary, until Johnson could appoint a chargé d'affaires and have him confirmed by the Senate, and the workload was light, allowing Hay, who was fluent in German, to spend much of his time traveling. It was not until July 1868 that Henry Watts became Hay's replacement. Hay resigned, spent the remainder of the summer in Europe, then went home to Warsaw.

According to Kushner and Sherrill, "Lincoln's death was for Hay a personal loss, like the loss of a father ... Lincoln's assassination erased any remaining doubts Hay had about Lincoln's greatness." In 1866, in a personal letter, Hay deemed Lincoln, "the greatest character since Christ". Taliaferro noted that "Hay would spend the rest of his life mourning Lincoln ... wherever Hay went and whatever he did, Lincoln would always be watching".

Hay did not accompany the Lincolns to Ford's Theatre on the night of April 14, 1865, but remained at the White House, drinking whiskey with Robert Lincoln. When the two were informed that the President had been shot, they hastened to the Petersen House, a boarding house where the stricken Lincoln had been taken. Hay remained by Lincoln's deathbed through the night and was present when he died. At the moment of Lincoln's death, Hay observed "a look of unspeakable peace came upon his worn features". He heard War Secretary Edwin Stanton's declaration, "Now he belongs to the ages."

In July 1864, New York publisher Horace Greeley sent word to Lincoln that there were Southern peace emissaries in Canada. Lincoln doubted that they actually spoke for Confederate President Jefferson Davis, but had Hay journey to New York to persuade the publisher to go to Niagara Falls, Ontario, to meet with them and bring them to Washington. Greeley reported to Lincoln that the emissaries lacked accreditation by Davis, but were confident they could bring both sides together. Lincoln sent Hay to Ontario with what became known as the Niagara Manifesto: that if the South laid down its arms, freed the slaves, and reentered the Union, it could expect liberal terms on other points. The Southerners refused to come to Washington to negotiate.

In April 1863, Lincoln sent Hay to the Union-occupied South Carolina coast to report back on the ironclad vessels being used in an attempt to recapture Charleston Harbor. Hay then went on to the Florida coast. He returned to Florida in January 1864, after Lincoln had announced his Ten Percent Plan, that if ten percent of the 1860 electorate in a state took oaths of loyalty and to support emancipation, they could form a government with federal protection. Lincoln considered Florida, with its small population, a good test case, and made Hay a major, sending him to see if he could get sufficient men to take the oath. Hay spent a month in the state during February and March 1864, but Union defeats there reduced the area under federal control. Believing his mission impractical, he sailed back to Washington.

After the death of Lincoln's 11-year-old son Willie in February 1862 (an event not mentioned in Hay's diary or correspondence), "it was Hay who became, if not a surrogate son, then a young man who stirred a higher form of parental nurturing that Lincoln, despite his best intentions, did not successfully bestow on either of his surviving children". According to Hay biographer Robert Gale, "Hay came to adore Lincoln for his goodness, patience, understanding, sense of humor, humility, magnanimity, sense of justice, healthy skepticism, resilience and power, love of the common man, and mystical patriotism". Speaker of the House Galusha Grow stated, "Lincoln was very much attached to him"; writer Charles G. Halpine, who knew Hay then, later recorded that "Lincoln loved him as a son".

Milton Hay desired that his nephew go to Washington as a qualified attorney, and John Hay was admitted to the bar in Illinois on February 4, 1861. On February 11, he embarked with President-elect Lincoln on a circuitous journey to Washington. By this time, several Southern states had seceded to form the Confederate States of America in reaction to the election of Lincoln, seen as an opponent of slavery. When Lincoln was sworn in on March 4, Hay and Nicolay moved into the White House, sharing a shabby bedroom. As there was only authority for payment of one presidential secretary (Nicolay), Hay was appointed to a post in the Interior Department at $1,600 per year, seconded to service at the White House. They were available to Lincoln 24 hours a day. As Lincoln took no vacations as president and worked seven days a week, often until 11 pm (or later, during crucial battles) the burden on his secretaries was heavy.

Hay was not a supporter of Lincoln for president until after his nomination in 1860. Hay then made speeches and wrote newspaper articles boosting Lincoln's candidacy. When Nicolay, who had been made Lincoln's private secretary for the campaign, found he needed help with the huge amounts of correspondence, Hay worked full-time for Lincoln for six months.

Born in Indiana to an anti-slavery family that moved to Illinois when he was young, Hay showed great potential, and his family sent him to Brown University. After graduation in 1858, Hay read law in his uncle's office in Springfield, Illinois, adjacent to that of Lincoln. Hay worked for Lincoln's successful presidential campaign and became one of his private secretaries at the White House. Throughout the American Civil War, Hay was close to Lincoln and stood by his deathbed after the President was shot at Ford's Theatre. In addition to his other literary works, Hay co-authored with John George Nicolay a multi-volume biography of Lincoln that helped shape the assassinated president's historical image.

Hay enrolled at Brown in 1855. Although he enjoyed college life, he did not find it easy: his Western clothing and accent made him stand out; he was not well prepared academically and was often sick. Hay gained a reputation as a star student and became a part of Providence's literary circle that included Sarah Helen Whitman and Nora Perry. He wrote poetry and experimented with hashish. Hay received his Master of Arts degree in 1858, and was, like his grandfather before him, Class Poet. He returned to Illinois. Milton Hay had moved his practice to Springfield, and John became a clerk in his firm, where he could study law.

Hay's involvement in the efforts to have a canal joining the oceans in Central America went back to his time as Assistant Secretary of State under Hayes, when he served as translator for Ferdinand de Lesseps in his efforts to interest the American government in investing in his canal company. President Hayes was only interested in the idea of a canal under American control, which de Lesseps's project would not be. By the time Hay became Secretary of State, de Lesseps's project in Panama (then a Colombian province) had collapsed, as had an American-run project in Nicaragua. The 1850 Clayton–Bulwer Treaty (between the United States and Britain) forbade the United States from building a Central American canal that it exclusively controlled, and Hay, from early in his tenure, sought the removal of this restriction. But the Canadians, for whose foreign policy Britain was still available, saw the canal matter as their greatest leverage to get other disputes resolved in their favor, persuaded Salisbury not to resolve it independently. Shortly before Hay took office, Britain and the U.S. agreed to establish a Joint High Commission to adjudicate unsettled matters, which met in late 1898 but made slow progress, especially on the Canada-Alaska boundary.

John attended the local schools, and in 1849 his uncle Milton Hay invited John to live at his home in Pittsfield, Pike County, and attend a well-regarded local school, the John D. Thomson Academy. Milton was a friend of Springfield attorney Abraham Lincoln and had read law in the firm Stuart and Lincoln. In Pittsfield, John first met John Nicolay, who was at the time a 20-year-old newspaperman. Once John Hay completed his studies there, the 13-year-old was sent to live with his grandfather in Springfield and attend school there. His parents and uncle Milton (who financed the boy's education) sent him to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, alma mater of his late maternal grandfather.

John Milton Hay (October 8, 1838 – July 1, 1905) was an American statesman and official whose career in government stretched over almost half a century. Beginning as a private secretary and assistant to Abraham Lincoln, Hay's highest office was United States Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Hay was also an author and biographer, and wrote poetry and other literature throughout much of his life.