Sherburne Hopkins

Sherburne Gillette Hopkins (October 5, 1867 – June 22, 1932) was an American lawyer and influential lobbyist in Washington, D.C. His clients included oil tycoon Henry Clay Pierce, financier and "father of trusts" Charles Ranlett Flint, Guatemalan President Manuel Estrada Cabrera, and Mexican President Francisco I. Madero among others.

While establishing himself as a lawyer in his father's practice, Hopkins married Hester Davis in 1891, with whom he had two children, Sherburne Philbrick on December 3, 1891, and Marjorie on August 5, 1894.

Their son, Sherburne, later also a lawyer in the family firm, briefly became a social star when he married Margaret Upton, better known as Peggy Hopkins Joyce, a famous stage actress.

In the effort to force the British to release the cargo Hopkins had strong support from the State Department as well as from the German Foreign Office.

As the commander of the District of Columbia Naval Militia, Hopkins seemed to have stayed put while Admiral George Dewey defeated the Spanish on the other side of the world.

The law firm showed its unparalleled manipulative might when it single-handedly shaped Central American history in the following years.

After a skirmish between Honduras and Guatemala in 1906, the two countries and El Salvador had concluded the so-called friendship pact that isolated Nicaragua.

In the spring of 1907 Nicaragua invaded Honduras in an attempt to unseat President Manuel Bonilla, a puppet of United Fruit Company.

Virtually a protectorate of the United States with marines occupying Bluefields on the Atlantic side of the country, Nicaragua invaded Honduras in 1908 to install a new, less hostile government there.

Despite the official support for intervention of the U.S. government, Hopkins and his international clients worked behind the scenes to contain the Nicaraguan Dictator José Santos Zelaya.

Apparently, Hopkins leaked crucial information on the impending U.S. intervention to unseat Zelaya to Otto Fuerth, a director of Ethelburg.

As Hopkins managed to cancel the loan and American mercenaries began attacking the capital of Managua, the Nicaraguan dictator left.

The banana fleets of United Fruit and Pierce transported weapons and ammunition to the Central American republics.

The main U.S. port from where tramp steamers sailed was New Orleans, a hot bed for mercenaries, revolutionaries, and intrigue of all kind.

On the one hand, American investors, especially Hopkins' client Henry Clay Pierce, wanted to unseat British oil tycoon Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray and his Científico puppets.

Hopkins received a retainer of $50,000 (over $1 million in today's money) payable upon successful completion of Diaz' overthrow.

[15] Showing how much his connections were worth, Hopkins successfully interceded with his friend, Secretary of State Philander Knox, to allow munitions to pass unchallenged from El Paso to Ciudad Juárez to aid revolutionaries.

[16] Once the Maderos apparently put the well-connected lawyer in charge of the U.S. representation of their efforts, Hopkins had to find personnel quickly.

Henry Clay Pierce thought that as president Madero would create a more favorable political environment for his corporate interests than Díaz, so that he supported him.

Not a single document could be found where Hopkins corresponded with Colonel Van Deman, the de facto head of the M.I.D.

Informed like no one else, Hopkins had to be handled with one caveat aptly defined in 1920 by Major Montague of the Military Intelligence Division.

The scandal had its origin just around the beginning of May, the time when Felix A. Sommerfeld and Hopkins shuttled between New York and Washington, trying to sideline Carranza, and arranging the finance for the final push against President Huerta.

According to Sherburne Hopkins, burglars entered his Washington, D.C., offices at the Hibbs building on 725 15th Street, NW in the middle of the night and "stole a mass of correspondence from his desk."

Hundreds of letters between Hopkins, Carranza, Flint, and Pierce told a story of foreign interests using the Constitutionalists for their own ends.

The Hopkins papers revealed the extent to which American investors fronted by Pierce and Flint had been involved in the Mexican Revolution.

Hopkins, Pierce, Flint, Carranza, Luis Cabrera Lobato, José Vasconcelos, Lind, Lindley Miller Garrison, and William Jennings Bryan all voiced public denials of ever having known anyone or dealt with anyone of the group.

Only two parties smiled through the show: Senators Smith and Fall who loved to see the Wilson administration tumble, and Huerta's representatives in Niagara who only had to gain from the revelations.

Suddenly, all the rumors and suspicions voiced for years in newspapers and Senate investigations lay on public display as fact.

Hopkins' carefully crafted lobbying schemes, his financing of select revolutionary factions in Mexico, the pushing of his clients' interests while hurting their competitors, and his intricate network of whole layers of government that operated on a system of favors – all of it had broken to pieces.

When Hopkins died on June 22, 1932, The New York Times ran an obituary of the Washington lawyer who had revolutionary chieftains move at his behest like marionettes.