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Whitelaw Reid

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WHITELAW REID (1837-), American journalist and diplomatist, was born of Scotch parentage, near Xenia, Ohio, on the 27th of October 1837. He graduated at Miami University in 1856, and spoke frequently in behalf of John C. Fremont, the Republican candidate for the presidency in that year; was superintendent of schools of South Charleston, Ohio, in 1856-58, and in 1858-59 was editor of the Xenia News. In 1860 he became legislative correspondent at Columbus for several Ohio newspapers, including the Cincinnati Gazette, of which he was made city editor in 1861. He was war correspondent for the Gazette in 1861-62, serving also as volunteer aide-de-camp (with the rank of captain) to General Thomas A. Morris (1811-1904) and General William S. Rosecrans in West Virginia. He was Washington correspondent of the Gazette in 1862-68, acting incidentally as clerk of the military committee of Congress (1862-63) and as librarian of the House of Representatives (1863-66). In 1868 he became a leading editorial writer for the New York Tribune, in the following year was made managing editor, and in 1872, upon the death of Horace Greeley, became the principal proprietor and editor-in-chief. In 1905 Reid relinquished his active editorship of the Tribune, but retained financial control. He declined an appointment as United States minister to Germany in 1877 and again in 1881, but served as minister to France in 1889-92, and in 1892 was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for vice-president on the ticket with Benjamin Harrison. In 1897 he was special ambassador of the United States on the occasion of Queen Victoria's jubilee; in 1898 was a member of the commission which arranged the terms of peace between the United States and Spain; in 1902 was special ambassador of the United States at the coronation of King Edward VII., and in 1905 became ambassador to Great Britain. He was elected a life member of the New York State Board of Regents in 1878; and in 1902 he became vice-chancellor and, in 1904, chancellor of the university of the state of New York. In 1881 he married a daughter of Darius Ogden Mills (1825-1910), a prominent financier.

His publications include After the War (1867), in which he gives his observations during a journey through the Southern States in 1866; Ohio in the War (2 vols., 1868); Some Consequences of the Last Treaty of Paris (1899); Our New Duties (1899); Later Aspects of Our New Duties (1899); Problems of Expansion (1900); The Greatest Fact in Modern History (1906), and How America faced its Educational Problem (1906).