John Watson Foster (March 2, 1836 – November 15, 1917) was an American military man, journalist and diplomat. Born in Petersburg, Indiana, and raised in Evansville, Indiana, he was first a lawyer and then served as a colonel for the Union in the American Civil War. Following the war he worked as a journalist, editing the Evansville Daily Journal from 1865 to 1869. Thereafter he was the U.S. Minister to Mexico (1873–1880), to Russia (1880–1881) and to Spain (1883–1885). In the Benjamin Harrison Administration he served as a State Department "trouble shooter" before replacing James G. Blaine who had succumbed to what became a fatal attack of Bright's Disease. He served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison in 1892 and 1893. He also helped the Qing Dynasty in drafting t