While I recommend these two persons to the notice of the President I beg leave to accompany the recommendation, with the highest expression of my high and respectful consideration.
Sam’l L. Mitchill.
Armed with the Mitchill letter and dressed in the finest of silks and brocades, Punqua Wingchong journeyed to Washington and no doubt created a stir of excitement throughout the city, where visitors from the Orient were not a common sight. Unfortunately, or perhaps otherwise, Wingchong and his companion, Mr. Palmer, found they could not deliver the letter to the President in person. Mr. Jefferson had left the city for a rest at Monticello.
The Mitchill letter was then forwarded to Monticello along with a note signed by Punqua Wingchong “praying permission to depart” from the United States with his retinue and his belongings in a vessel of his own choosing.
President Jefferson was moved by Wingchong’s appeal. Not only did he feel sympathy, but he felt the situation presented an opportunity to establish better relations between his government and the rulers of China, which was becoming an increasingly important customer in foreign commerce. On July 25, the President wrote to Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin saying:
Dear Sir:
... Punqua Wingchong, the Chinese Mandarin, has, I believe, his headquarters at New York, and therefore his case is probably known to you. He came to Washington just as I had left it and therefore wrote to me praying permission to depart for his own country with his property in a vessel to be engaged by himself.... I consider it as a case of national comity, and coming within the views of the first section of the first Embargo Act. The departure of this individual with good disposition may be the means of our making our nation known advantageously as a source of power in China to which it is otherwise difficult to convey information. It may be a sensible advantage to our merchants in that country. I cannot therefore but consider that a chance of obtaining a permanent national good should outweigh the effect of a single case taken out of the great field of the embargo. The case too is so singular that it can lead to no embarrassment as a precedent....
(signed) Th. Jefferson.
Gallatin detected an odor of intrigue in the situation because Wingchong requested permission to make the trip to China in the Beaver, a “full-bottomed ship of 427 tons with a capacity for 1,100 tons of cargo,” and the Beaver had been constructed especially for John Jacob Astor. Gallatin was well aware of the fact that scarcely a month had passed since Astor had been denied permission for a Canton voyage. But Jefferson had issued his instructions and Gallatin was a loyal lieutenant.
On August 3, 1808, Gallatin wrote to David Gelston, Collector of Customs in New York City, ordering him to make an exception and lift the embargo. His letter said in part: