|
Anson Burlingame Anson Burlingame was born November 14, 1820 in New Berlin, Chenango County, New York. In 1823 his parents (Joel Burlingame, a Methodist lay minister, and Freelove Angell) took him to the "Western Reserve" of Ohio, and about ten years afterwards to the (then) Territory of Michigan where he entered the Detroit Academy. Between 1838 and 1841 he studied in one of the branches of the University of Michigan at Detroit, and went through the regular course, making an impression by his oratorical powers. He entered the Harvard University Law School, under Justice Joseph Story; took the degree of L.L.B. in 1846, and opened an office at the Old State House, Boston, the firm being Briggs & Burlingame, the Mr. Briggs being a son of the late Governor Briggs of Massachusetts. On June 3, 1847 Burlingame married Jane Cornelia Livermore (b. August 23, 1825), the second of four children of Hon. Isaac Livermore, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their three children were born in Cambridge: Edward Livermore (b. May 30, 1848), Walter Angelí (b. December 3, 1852), and Gertrude (b. July 13, 1858). Anson practised law in Boston, and won a wide reputation by his speeches for the Free Soil Party in 1848. From 1853 to 1854 he was sent to the Massachusetts Legislature as Senator from Boston and Cambridge, and beginning in 1855 served six years as a member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts' 5th District. He was elected for the first term as a Know Nothing and afterwards as a member of the new Republican Party, which he helped to organize in Massachusetts. During his Congressional career he spoke but little, but always to the point, as the record will testify. During the exciting political campaigns of 1856 to 1860 he canvassed the whole country, speaking in almost every State, and addressed many literary societies on the great topics of the day. Pres. Abraham Lincoln on March 22, 1861, not quite three weeks after his March 4 Inauguration (and about as long before the bombardment of Fort Sumter which started the Civil War), tendered Burlingame the mission to Austria. Austria refused to receive him, however, because he was instrumental in raising the mission to Sardinia from the second to the first class, thus recognizing that great idea of Count Cavour's, "the unification of Italy." This act of Austria might have been questioned, but as the United States had a war at home to settle, it was thought better to transfer Burlingame to China, and attend to Austria at a more convenient time. On June 14, 1861 Lincoln appointed Burlingame as our second Envoy Extrordinary and Minister Plentipotentiary to the Qing Empire. He arrived in China in that October, and entered upon residence in Peking in the summer of 1862. In 1865 he returned to the United States on leave, probably with the expectation of resigning his post and re-entering politics, but he was persuaded to return to China. Burlingame reached Peking to begin the second part of his sendee in the latter part of 1866, after an absence of fifteen months. A year later on November 21, 1867, he resigned "in the interests of my country and civilization." He had accepted the position of envoy of the Empire to all of the Western powers then having treaties with China. He was the first representative ever sent by China to Europe or America. Some of the European powers did not favor the idea that an American should be selected for so extraordinary a mission. With two Chinese associates and a retinue of thirty people he set out for the United States. Mr. Burlingame left Peking on the morning of November 25, 1867. He was escorted to the gates by all the foreign residents, including his colleagues in the diplomatic body. In his suite were J. Mcleary Brown, the late Secretary of the British Legation; M. Deschamps, a French gentleman lately holding a high office in the Maritime Customs; Chih-kang and Sun Cnia-ku, a Manchu and a Chinese officer, each wearing the red ball on his cap which indicates an official of a rank next to the highest in the empire; six attachés selected from the new college at Peking, and some twenty others. The party was compelled to stop at a village about forty-five miles from Peking, and send to that city for an armed escort to protect them from a formidable band of robbers which was scouring the district. Fortunately, they were not attacked. The embassy arrived at Shanghai on December 10, 1867, and sailed from there on February 25, 1868. Before leaving, Burlingame made a visit of courtesy to the Viceroy, resident at Nanking. Prior to and during his absence the official proclamation of the creation of the mission and the appointment of Mr. Burlingame was issued, and, during his stay at Shanghai, the high mandarins and government officials in the region round about Shanghai made official calls upon Mr. Burlingame, known in Chinese as Pu Anchen, and manifested in every way the extreme respect and awe in which they held him in consequence of the position in which he had been confirmed, and the unprecedented dignity conferred upon him. It was found impossible to prevent them from prostrating themselves before Mr. Burlingame, and he could only remain passive and receive their attentions. The mission, at last, arrived in the United States at San Francisco on March 31, 1868. There the embassy was most cordially welcomed by both the American and Chinese mercantile communities. A formal dinner was on April 28. The members proceeded, via New York, to Washington which was reached in May, 1868. The embassy was treated with much distinction at the American capital. No American statesman was so capable and disposed to enter cordially into its objects as the Secretary of State at that time, the Hon. William H. Seward, whose mind had long apprehended the great features of the policy which American and foreign nations should pursue in relation to the Chinese empire. Burlingame entered on June 18 into negotiations for a treaty with Seward. Eight additional articles to the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin (Reed Treaty) were specified. On the 4th of July, the treaty was signed in Washington; on the llth it was transmitted to the Senate, which on the 16th ratified it, with but few and slight modifications. Formal friendly relations between the two countries were established, with the United States granting China Most Favored Nation status. During the stay of the Embassy in the U. S., Burlingame and the Chinese princes were the recipients of grand ovations. Burlingame then discovered that the Empire of China had no flag. He was ingenious enough to make one out of the "dragon," the Chinese mark of empire, and some yellow cloth, the imperial color. The treaty: * Recognized China's right of eminent domain over all her territory; * Gave China the right to appoint consuls at ports in the United States, "who shall enjoy the same privileges and immunities as those enjoyed by the consuls of Great Britain and Russia"; * Provided that "citizens of the United States in China of every religious persuasion and Chinese subjects in the United States shall enjoy entire liberty of conscience and shall be exempt from all disability or persecution on account of their religious faith or worship in either country"; and * Granted certain privileges to citizens of either country residing in the other, the privilege of naturalization, however, being specifically withheld. The treaty with China opened its ports favorably to American trade. Burlingame's speeches did much to awaken interest in, and engender a more intelligent appreciation of, China's attitude toward the outside world. (There were over 100,000 Chinese in the U.S in 1868, and this treaty encouraged Chinese immigration to the United States. Burlingame then departed for London. He secured from Lord Clarendon, who had recently returned to the Foreign Office with the first Gladstone Ministry, an agreement which, while not so formal as a treaty, nevertheless fully answered his purpose. Thus strengthened by his successful negotiations with the United States and Great Britain, Burlingame moved on to the Continent visiting Paris, and then Stockholm and Copenhagen in October, and Berlin in January, 1870. He next went to the capital of the Russian Empire, St. Petersburg, almost 400 miles/644 km north of Moscow and just south of Finland. Between February 4 and 16 the mission was received by the Tsar, Alexander II. On February 23, 1870, Hon. Anson Burlingame died suddenly not quite fifty years old in St. Petersburg after contracting pneumonia in the severe Russian winter. He was later buried in Cambridge, MA. (The headship of the mission was then assumed by Chih-kang; and, after visiting Brussels and Rome, the mission returned to China in October, taking the newly opened route by the Suez canal.) Opposition in Congress to Chinese immigration led President Rutherford B. Hayes to authorize James Burrill Angell to renegotiate the treaty in 1880. The treaty was amended to suspend, but not prohibit, Chinese immigration, while comfirming the obligation of the United States to protect the rights of those immigrants already arrived. The treaty was reversed in 1882 by the Chinese Exclusion Act. 3 Burlingame's Family and Friends Sarah Wells sailed for China to marry her husband-to-be, Thomas W. Stillman, in 1862. Rich correspondence documents Sarah Wells Stillman's life in China, and the progress of the Civil War back in America. While sailing to China, Sarah Wells met and became a close friend of Jane C. Burlingame, who was sailing for Shanghai to join her husband, Anson Burlingame, Minister to China in the Cabinet of President Lincoln. The Cornell University Library's collections now also include letters between Jane and Sarah. Jane Cornelia Livermore Burlingame died on August 19, 1888, in Greenwich, Conn. Eldest son Edward Livermore, born in Boston on May 30, 1848, had entered Harvard University, but left before graduation to go to China as private secretary to his father, travelling in China and Japan. In 1867, he left for Heidelberg, Germany, where, after 2 years' study, he obtained a Ph.D. He later studied at Berlin and traveled extensively in Europe. In 1871 he served on editorial staff of the New York Tribune; from 1872-76, he was associated with the revision of Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography; in 1879, he became associated with Charles Scribner's Sons, and was editor of Scribner's Magazine from its start in 1886 until his retirement in 1914. Edward died in New York on November 15, 1922. The 1100 acre ranch, which Anson Burlingame had purchased in San Mateo on the western edge of San Francisco Bay and to which he had planned to retire after his China mission, retained his name and was eventually developed after his death. Now, in the spring of 1866 thirty-year-old Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens was commissioned by the Sacramento Union to write a series of letters that would report the life, trade, agriculture, and general aspects of the Kingdom of Hawai'i group. He sailed in March, and his four months in those delectable islands remained always to him a golden memory -- an experience which he hoped some day to repeat. He was young and eager for adventure then, and he went everywhere -- horseback and afoot -- saw everything, did everything, and wrote of it all for his paper. His letters to the Union were widely read and quoted, and, though not especially literary, added much to his journalistic standing. He was a great sight-seer in those days, and a persevering one. His open-air life on the river and in the mining-camps had nerved and hardened him for adventure. He was in his physical prime. Clemens had been in the islands three months when one day Anson Burlingame arrived there, en route to his post as minister to China. In June 1866 in Honolulu, Burlingame met and befriended Clemens, inviting him to come and stay with him in Peking. With him was his eighteen-year-old son, Edward, and General Van Valkenburg, minister to Japan. Young Burlingame had read about Jim Smiley's jumping frog and, learning that the author was in Honolulu, but ill after a long trip inland, sent word that the party would call on him next morning. But Mark Twain felt that he could not accept this honor, and, crawling out of bed, shaved himself and drove to the home of the American minister, where the party was staying. He made a great impression with the diplomats. It was an occasion of good stories and much laughter. It was only a few days later that the diplomats rendered him a great service. Report had come of the arrival at Sanpahoe of an open boat containing fifteen starving men, who had been buffeting a stormy Hornet of New York, which, it appeared, had been burned at sea. Presently eleven of the rescued men were brought to Honolulu and placed in the hospital. Mark Twain recognized the great importance as news of this event. It would be a splendid beat if he could interview the castaways and be the first to get their story in his paper. There was no cable, but a vessel was sailing for San Francisco next morning. It seemed the opportunity of a lifetime, but he was now bedridden and could scarcely move. Then suddenly appeared in his room Anson Burlingame and his party, and, almost before Mark Twain realized what was happening, he was on a cot and, escorted by the heads of two legations, was on his way to the hospital to get the precious interview. Once there, Anson Burlingame, with his gentle manner and courtly presence, drew from those enfeebled castaways all the story of the burning of the vessel, followed by the long privation and struggle that had lasted through forty-three fearful days and across four thousand miles of stormy sea. All that Mark Twain had to do was to listen and make notes. That night he wrote against time, and next morning, just as the vessel was drifting from the dock, a strong hand flung his bulky manuscript aboard and his great beat was sure. The three-column story, published in the Sacramento Union of July 9, gave the public the first detailed history of the great disaster. The telegraph carried it everywhere, and it was featured as a sensation. Mark Twain and the Burlingame party were much together during the rest of their stay in Hawaii, and Samuel Clemens never ceased to love and honor the memory of Anson Burlingame. Burlingame had one day said to him: "You have great ability; I believe you have genius. What you need now is the refinement of association. Seek companionship among men of superior intellect and character. Refine yourself and your work. Never affiliate with inferiors; always climb." This, coming to him from a man of Burlingame's character and position, was like a gospel from some divine source. Clemens never forgot the advice. It gave him courage, new hope, new resolve, new ideals. See also here. 4 |
|
1
Robert........in Sta.Cruz, bonsaiTALK.com,
http://www.bonsaitalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9920; Castle, John "Golden State Bonsai Federation Golden State Bonsai Collection - North in Oakland California," http://web.archive.org/web/20071010150211/http://www.bonsai-wbff.org/nabf/newsletter8/8.htm; Now a furrowed and hollow trunk quote from Roche, D.M. "Oakland's Bonsai Park -- Life and Death among Little Trees," New California Media Online, January 14, 2000, http://web.archive.org/web/20001209121300/http://www.ncmonline.com/arts-and-culture/2000-01-14/bonsai.html, originally accessed 07/06/01, archival access 11/19/10; Conversation with Kathy Shaner by RJB, June 19, 2010, at Rocky Mountain Bonsai Society show in Denver, CO. See also May 19 Book of Days listing, http://www.phoenixbonsai.com/Days/DaysMay.html; Compare the above natural old sabamiki (hollow trunk) with this older natural one, a five-needle white pine (Pinus parviflora), and then this recent man-made one, a Bird's Nest Spruce (Picea abies 'Nidiformis'). 2 Lawrence, James B. China and Japan, and a voyage thither: an account of a cruise in the waters of the East Indies, China, and Japan (Hartford: Press of Case, Lockwood & Brainard; 1870), pg. 228 et al; Treat, Payson Jackson Japan and the United States: 1853-1921 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company; 1921), pg. 78; Perkins, Dorothy Japan Goes to War: A Chronology of Japanese Military Expansion from the Meiji Era to the Attack on Pearl Harbor (1868-1941) (Diane Books Publishing Company; 1997), pg. 38; Jansen, Marius B. Sakamoto Ryōma and the Meiji restoration (New York: Columbia University Press; 1994, 1961), pp. 239-240; When the report came out on March 20, 1863, Pres. Lincoln was involved with this; Williams, Frederick Wells Anson Burlingame and the First Chinese Mission to Foreign Powers (Kessinger Publishing; 1912. Reprint ©Bibliolife), pg. 56. 3 Speer, William The Oldest and the Newest Empire: China and the United States (Pittsburgh, PA: Robert S. Davis & Co.; 1877), pg. 410; Larned, Josephus Nelson and Augustus Hunt Shearer The New Larned History for Ready Reference, Reading and Research, Volume 2 (Springfield, MA: C.A. Nichols Publishing Company; 1922), pg. 1685; Cohen, Warren I. America's response to China: a history of Sino-American relations (New York: Columbia University Press; Fourth Edition, 2000), pg. 29; The American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1868, Volume VIII; (New York: D. Appleton and Company; 1869), pg. 113; Wallace, Lew and Halstead, Murat Life and public services of Hon. Benjamin Harrison, President of the U.S (Edgewood Publishing Co.; 1892), pg. 336; Shuck, Oscar Tully The California Scrap-Book: a Repository of Useful Information and Select Reading (San Francisco: H. H. Bancroft & Company; 1869), pg. 219; "Anson Burlingame," Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anson_Burlingame; "Brief account of his life and career from Harper's Weekly, May 30, 1868, pages 344-346 (Illustrated Article)," http://www.china1900.info/menschen/burlingame.htm; "Imperial Students, Section II," http://www.yale.edu/cusy/imperialstudents.htm; Dennett, Tyler Americans in Eastern Asia: A Critical Study of the Policy of the United States with reference to China, Japan and Korea in the 19th Century (New York: The Macmillan Company; 1922), pg. 368; Jones, Frederick Thomas and Robert James Belford (eds.) A History of the United States in Chronological Order from A.D. 432 to the Present Time (New York: The World; 1888), pg. 223; Anderson, David L. Imperialism and idealism: American diplomats in China, 1861-1898 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press; 1986), photo of Burlingame and two Chinese on pg. 17, http://books.google.com/books?id=y2NrAQVuNxwC&pg=PA17&dq=Anson+Burlingame+%2BSan+francisco+%2BMarch+1868&lr=&cd=48#v=onepage&q=Burlingame&f=false; Morse, Hosea Ballou, LL.D. The international relations of the Chinese empire, Volume 2, the Period of Submission, 1861-1893 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co.; 1918), pp. 198-199, http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA199&dq=&id=sFFxAAAAMAAJ#v=onepage&q&f=false; "Anson Burlingame," Find A Grave,http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7500072. It is possible that James Burrill Angell, the man who renegotiated Burlingame's treaty, was, in an ironic twist of fate, a distant relative of Burlingame's mother, Freelove Angell. Image of Burlingame from here. 4 "Anson Burlingame," Burlingame Historical Society, http://www.burlingamehistorical.org/main/Anson_Burlingame/page191.htm; "A Short History of Burlingame," Burlingame Historical Society, http://www.burlingamehistorical.org/main/History_of_Burlingame/page181.htm; "Burlingame, Anson," S9.com, http://www.s9.com/Biography/Burlingame-Anson w/photo; "Anson Burlingame," Virtual American Biographies, http://famousamericans.net/ansonburlingame/; Liu, Haiming "Chinese Exclusion Laws and U.S.-China Relationship," http://www.csupomona.edu/~jis/2003/Liu.pdf; Thwing, Walter Eliot The Livermore Family of America (Boston: W. B. Clarke Company; 1902), pg. 238; Leonard, John W. (ed.) Who's Who in New York City and State (New York: L.R. Hamersly & Company; Third Edition, 1907), pg. 219; "Anson and Edward L. Burlingame Family Papers," http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awmss5/male_diplo.html; A list of papers and correspondence relating to Anson Burlingame can be found here. Paine, The Boys' Life of Mark Twain, "XXV. Hawaii and Anson Burlingame," http://www.authorama.com/boys-life-of-mark-twain-25.html; Mark Twain Project, "Letter to Anson Burlingame," http://www.marktwainproject.org/xtf/view?docId=letters/UCCL00194.xml;style=letter). |