biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1835–1917)
|
| biography:
| Lawyer and cabinet member, born in Oxford, Massachusetts, USA. A brilliant if forbidding Boston lawyer (1859–93), he was President Grover Cleveland's attorney general (1893–5), best known for ending the Pullman strike led by Eugene Debs, but he did go on to support the rights of organized labour. As secretary of state (1895–7), he settled the boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana, and defended the rights of American nationals in Cuba and China. He then retired to his law practice. He remains best known for setting forth (in 1895) what has become known as the Olney corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, namely, that ‘the United States is practically sovereign on this continent’ (of South America). |
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