Lodge, Henry Cabot (1850-1924), led Republican members of the Senate in a successful fight to keep the United States from joining the League of Nations after World War I. He opposed President Woodrow Wilson, the chief planner of the League. Lodge, who was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, fought the League because he felt it would involve the United States too deeply in European affairs.
Lodge was born on May 12, 1850, into a wealthy Boston family. He graduated from Harvard University and served from 1873 to 1876 as an editor of an influential magazine, the North American Review. He was a noted historian before being elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1886. As a Republican senator from 1893 until his death, Lodge pioneered in civil service law and helped draft the federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906. He died on Nov. 9, 1924.
