An American Globalist - Cordell Hull - WW2 Biography Special

by Panzer
Secretary of State Cordell Hull has led the Americans in negotiations with Japan in 1941,
but it seems like it will all be for nothing.
A Pacific War is around the corner.
Welcome to a World War Two in real time Bio special, where I take a closer look at the
major or interesting figures of the war, today featuring Cordell Hull.
Cordell Hull is born October 2, 1871, in Overton County, Tennessee.
He’s already politically active from a young age.
He gives his first public speech at only 16 during the 1888 presidential election, speaking
in support of Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland.
In 1890, Hull, now 18, is selected to be the chairman of the Democratic County Executive
Committee for Clay County.
And then in 1892, having graduated the previous year from Cumberland School of Law in Lebanon,
Tennessee, Hull is elected to the Tennessee State Legislature.
He goes on to serve two terms in the Tennessee House of Representatives in his 20s, from
1893-1897.
Hull decides not to run for a third term in the 1896 election, instead choosing to practise
law full time.
But this is soon interrupted by the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, where
he signs up as a captain of the Fourth Regiment of the Tennessee Volunteer Infantry.
His company doesn’t actually see any combat, arriving in Cuba only after the war has ended.
Hull spends five months in Cuba, though, and is primarily in charge of the legal department
of Santa Clara province.
Back in America, he serves as a local judge in Tennessee’s Fifth District from 1903
– 1907, after which he is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, representing
Tennessee’s Fourth District in 1907.
He will serve in Congress for most of the next 25 years.
It is here that he will develop a defining foreign policy belief of his career.
Tariffs on trade have always been a pretty big issue in American politics.
Hull has been consistently in favor of low ones ones, but he has now come to see that
as not only beneficial for American citizens but also world peace.
He will later write in his memoirs: "Unhampered trade dovetailed with peace; high tariffs,
trade barriers, and unfair economic competition, with war…
I reasoned that, if we could get a freer flow of trade… the living standards of all countries
might rise, thereby eliminating the economic dissatisfaction that breeds war."
Following his career in the House, Hull serves in the United States Senate from March 1931
until March 1933.
Here he speaks out against the high tariff policy of the Hoover administration.
He also rejects the isolationism of the time and writes of his disappointment with America's
reluctance to join the League of Nations.