VIII
AMERICA IN CHINA
Where the Happy Valley Road branches off, one part leading to the Royal Golf Club, and the other to the Mohammedan, Parsee and European cemeteries, and Wong Nei Chong valley, Hongkong, on a spot where Secretary William Henry Seward stood in 1869, there is a monument which has particular interest for Americans and Britons, and possibly it is a prophecy of their united work in the future in developing China. The monument tells its own story of brothers in arms in the dangers of the Far Eastern seas in lonely days as follows:
Erected by the officers and crews of the
United States steam frigate Powhatan
and
H. B. M. steam sloop Rattler,
in memory of
their shipmates who fell in a combined attack on a
fleet of piratical junks off Kuhlan (Kowloon)
August 4, 1855.
Killed in the action:
Powhatan.
John Pepper, seaman.
James A. Halsey, landsman.
Isaac Coe, landsman.
S. Mullard, marine.
B. F. Addamson, marine.
The first American treaty is dated 1844 when Caleb Cushing and Daniel Webster’s son, Fletcher, went to Hongkong, Canton, Macao, etc., but American trade began at a still earlier date, when the Empress of China, Captain Green, Purser Samuel Shaw, sailed from New York on Washington’s birthday, 1784. The ship Alliance sailed from Philadelphia in 1788 without charts. The ship Massachusetts sailed from Boston in 1789, armed with twenty six-pound guns, and half the cargo being useless furs for the southern Chinese! The old Philadelphia merchants interested in the China trade were of the Archer, Girard and Rulon families. The Boston merchants who despatched regular packet ships to Canton were of the Forbes, Perkins, Cabot, Sturgis, Russell, Cushing and Coolidge families. The first American consuls lived at beautiful Macao. Major Shaw, purser of the Empress of China was consul in 1786, Samuel Snow in 1794, and Edward Carrington in 1804. On November 16, 1856, just before the “Arrow” war, Captain Armstrong, U. S. S. Portsmouth, attacked the Canton (Bogue) forts. This was the only time America attacked China, except at Peking in 1900. When all Europe hesitated to befriend the northern states, China issued this edict to viceroys in 1863: “Keep a careful and close oversight, and if the Confederate steamer Alabama, or any other vessel of war, scheming how it can injure American property, shall approach that part of the coast of China under your jurisdiction, you are to prevent all such vessels entering our ports.”
The American representatives in China were first trade commissioners, and afterward diplomats, and the tendency now, at least with the British and Germans, is to have both commissioners and diplomats. The American officials were the following:
Caleb Cushing, commissioner, 1844 (first treaty).
Alex. H. Everett, commissioner, 1846 (died, Canton, 1847).
John W. Davis, commissioner, 1847.
Humphrey Marshall, commissioner, 1852.