DULLES, JOHN FOSTER
John Foster Dulles served as U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE from 1953 to 1959. A prominent New York City attorney, Dulles participated in international affairs for much of his legal career. His term as secretary of state occurred during the height of the COLD WAR and was marked by his strong anti-Communist policies and rhetoric.
Dulles was born in Washington, D.C., on February 25, 1888, at the home of his maternal grandfather, John W. Foster, secretary of state under President BENJAMIN HARRISON. Dulles was raised in Watertown, New York, where his father, the Reverend Allen M. Dulles, served as a Presbyterian minister. Known as Foster, the young Dulles was a precocious student, graduating from high school at age fifteen and attending Princeton University at age sixteen. He graduated in 1908 and then entered GEORGE WASHINGTON University Law School. Again, he worked quickly, and graduated in two years.
Through the efforts of his well-connected
grandfather, Dulles joined the New York City
law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, which has
been called the greatest corporate law firm of the
early twentieth century. In 1919 family friend
and international financier Bernard M. Baruch
invited Dulles to be his aide at the Paris Peace
Conference. This conference, which was con-
vened to negotiate the terms of peace to end
WORLD WAR I, stimulated Dulles’s interest in
international politics and diplomacy.
In the 1920s Dulles quickly moved ahead at
Sullivan and Cromwell. In 1926, at the age of
only thirty-eight, Dulles was made head of the
firm. Representing many of the largest U.S. cor-
