Richard Olney (politician, 1835)

Richard Olney

Richard Olney (born September 15, 1835 in Oxford , Worcester County , Massachusetts , †  April 8, 1917 in Boston ) was an American politician and from 1895 to 1897 Secretary of State of the United States . Under President Grover Cleveland , he previously served as Minister of Justice .

Life

Olney studied law at Brown University and Harvard Law School before starting to practice law in 1859 and then attaining a high position within the legal profession. In 1874 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives for the Democrats .

In March 1893, Olney became US Attorney General. During the so-called Pullman strike in Pullman, near Chicago , in 1894, he ordered the district attorneys to obtain enforcement warrants from the federal courts in order to restrain workers from violent clashes. His actions set the precedent for a "governing with provisional order" ( government by injunction ). Olney also recommended the use of federal troops to quell the unrest, as the government must prevent any effects on mail and rail traffic between the states.

After the death of Foreign Minister Walter Q. Gresham , Olney became his successor on June 10, 1895. Shortly after his appointment, he declared the US missions abroad to be embassies , after they had previously been subordinate to protocol as delegations. This emphasized the claim to equality with the other world powers. Through his position in the border conflict between Great Britain and Venezuela and his correspondence with Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, he tightened the interpretation of the so-called Monroe Doctrine , which had declared the American continent to be the USA's sphere of interest.

After the end of President Cleveland's tenure in 1897, Olney returned to practice as a lawyer.

literature

• Alfred Castle: Richard Olney. In: Edward S. Mihalkanin (Ed.): American Statesmen: Secretaries of State from John Jay to Colin Powell . Greenwood Publishing 2004, ISBN 978-0-313-30828-4 , pp. 393-399.

Web links

• Richard Olney in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)