Class VIII Unit-2 On Telling a Tale-The Enchanted Shirt (Ballad)

John Hay

John Milton Hay was an American statesman, diplomat, author, journalist, and served as the private secretary and assistant to Abraham Lincoln. Hay's highest office was serving as United States Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.
Hay was born in Salem, Indiana,[1] of Scottish ancestry, the third son of Dr. Charles Hay and Helen Leonard from Middleborough, Massachusetts,  He was educated first at the private school of the Reverend Stephen Childs, an Episcopal clergyman. In 1851 John went to an academy at Pittsfield in Pike County, where he met an older student, John G. Nicolay, with whom he would later work as private secretary to Abraham Lincoln. In 1852 John Hay went to the college at Springfield, (later known as Carthage College) and in 1855 was sent to Brown University, where he joined Theta Delta Chi. At Brown, he developed an interest in poetry. He left Brown in 1858 before receiving his diploma and went home to Warsaw to study law with his uncle, Milton Hay.
Abraham Lincoln's law office was next door to the law office of Milton Hay, John's uncle, and Lincoln thus became acquainted with John Hay. When Lincoln won election as president, his secretary, John G. Nicolay, recommended John Hay to Lincoln as assistant private secretary. Thus, at age 22 he began a lifelong career in government, except for a stint in journalism from 1870–78. Though technically a clerk in the Interior Department, he served as Lincoln's secretary until 1864. 
Hay was present when Lincoln died after being shot at Ford's Theatre. Hay and Nicolay wrote a formal 10-volume biography of Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln: A History, 1890) and prepared an edition of his collected works.
Portions of Hay's diaries and letters from 1861–1870, published in the book Lincoln and the Civil War, show Lincoln in a far more intimate light.
In 1870 he left government and worked for 6 years as an editor for the New York Tribune under Whitelaw Reid.

In August 1898, Hay was named by President McKinley as Secretary of State and helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris of 1898, which ended the Spanish–American War. Hay continued serving as Secretary of State after Theodore Roosevelt succeeded McKinley, serving until his own death in 1905.