John Moors Cabot

John Moors Cabot
Born	December 11, 1901 Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	February 24, 1981 (age 79) U.S.
Education	Harvard University (1923)
Occupation	Diplomat, U.S. Ambassador
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Lewis (m. 1932)
Children	Lewis Cabot
Parent(s)	Godfrey Lowell Cabot Maria Moors Cabot

John Moors Cabot (December 11, 1901 – February 24, 1981) was an American diplomat and U.S. Ambassador to four nations during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administration. He also served as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs.

Early life

Cabot was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was Godfrey Lowell Cabot, founder of Cabot Corporation and a philanthropist. His mother was Maria Moors Cabot. Two of his siblings were Thomas Dudley Cabot (b. 1897), businessman and philanthropist, and Eleanor Cabot of the Eleanor Cabot Bradley Estate.

Cabot graduated from Buckingham Browne & Nichols in 1919. He would go on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1923, and from Oxford University with a degree in Modern History.

Career

Cabot was a U.S. Ambassador to Sweden from 1954 to 1957, Colombia from 1957 to 1959, Brazil from 1959 to 1961, and Poland from 1962–1965, during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administration. He was also commissioned to Pakistan during a recess of the Senate, but did not serve under this appointment. From 1953-1954, he also served as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. There is a 27 page transcript from an interview of Cabot, discussing the Alliance for Progress, Bay of Pigs invasion, Cold War, foreign policy, and international relations during the Kennedy administration, archived in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

In December 1954, Cabot, in his role as U.S. ambassador to Sweden, attended the Nobel banquet and read the acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded that year to Ernest Hemingway who was not present due to ill health.

Following his retirement from the U.S. Department of State, he taught at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. In 1981, Tuft's John M. and Elizabeth L. Cabot Intercultural Center was named in honor of Cabot and his wife.

Writings

• The Racial Conflict in Transylvania: A Discussion of the Conflicting Claims of Rumania and Hungary to Transylvania, the Banat, and the Eastern Section of the Hungarian Plain, 1926

Personal life

In 1932, he married Elizabeth Lewis. They had four children: John G.L. Cabot, Lewis P. Cabot, Marjorie (Cabot) Enriquez, and Elizabeth T. (Cabot) van Wentzel.

References

Government offices
Preceded by Edward G. Miller, Jr.	Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs March 3, 1953 – March 1, 1954	Succeeded by Henry F. Holland
Diplomatic posts
Preceded by W. Walton Butterworth	United States Ambassador to Sweden 1954-1957	Succeeded by Francis White (diplomat)
Preceded by Philip Bonsal	United States Ambassador to Colombia 1957-1959	Succeeded by Dempster McIntosh
Preceded by Ellis O. Briggs (1899-1976)	United States Ambassador to Brazil 1959-1961	Succeeded by Lincoln Gordon
Preceded by Jacob D. Beam	United States Ambassador to Poland 1962-1965	Succeeded by John A. Gronouski