Russell C. Leffingwell

A Centurion colleague says of “RCL” that he “was all of a piece, a great gentleman whose courtesy was bred in the bone.” He was as American as any we have; his tree goes back to the Connecticut wilderness of 1637 where Thomas Leffingwell was a friend of Indians and their beneficiary. Mohegan Sachem Uncas gave Thomas a grant in perpetuity of the entire town of Norwich as a reward for smuggling food to him when he was besieged by the hostile Narragansetts. On the other side, RCL came from nine generations of American Cornells.

Russell Leffingwell was a lawyer, a banker, and a public servant. In the First World War he combined the talents which made him a leader in all three activities: he financed the war. When President Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of fiscal affairs, he set up the Liberty Loans and organized the nation’s effort to raise the money; he also arranged the War Loans to our Allies.

He was born in New York in 1878, graduated from Yale in 1899, and took his law degree at Columbia in 1902. He began the practice of law with the firm of Guthrie, Cravath and Henderson, and later became a partner in the firm’s successor, Cravath, Henderson, Leffingwell and de Gersdorff. After his work in international finance in the war, he was invited to become the partner of Centurion J. Pierpont Morgan (the second) and remained with J. P. Morgan and Company and the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company all his life. From 1923 to 1948 he rose to chairmanship of the firm, succeeding Centurion Thomas Lamont.

At the bar, Russell distinguished himself in general corporate law. Perhaps he is best remembered for his handling of the intricate Reading case, in the early 1920’s, after the Supreme Court had ordered the railroad to divest itself of its coal properties.

His interest in the ramifications of international finance led to his becoming a charter member of the Council on Foreign Relations. From 1927 he served on its Board of Directors; he was the Council’s President in 1944, and two years later became Chairman of the Board.

He did not come often to the Century, but he came consistently through the years, and he was a faithful attendant at the dinners of the Economic Group. He loved the Century and was a Centurion for exactly half of his long life. He was elected when he was forty-one; he died at eighty-two.

Roger Burlingame
1961 Century Association Yearbook