The Chinese love to trade with our people and sell them tea and silk for which our people pay silver and sometimes other articles. But if the Chinese and Americans will trade there should be rules so that they shall not break your laws or our laws. Our minister, Caleb Cushing, is authorized to make a treaty to regulate trade. Let it be just. Let there be no unfair advantage on either side. Let the people trade not only at Canton, but also at Amoy, Ningpo, Shanghai, Fushan and all such other places as may offer profitable exchanges both to China and the United States, provided they do not break your laws or our laws. We shall not take the part of the evil doers. We shall not uphold them that break your laws. Therefore we doubt that you will be pleased that our messenger of peace, with this letter in hand, shall come to Pekin and there deliver it, and that your great officers will, by your order, make a treaty with him to regulate the affairs of trade, so that nothing may happen to disturb the peace between China and America. Let the treaty be signed by your own imperial hand. It shall be signed by mine, by the authority of the great council, the Senate.
And so may your health be good and may peace reign.
Written at Washington this twelfth day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-three.
Your good friend,
John Tyler,
President.
Mr. Cushing accordingly negotiated our first treaty with China on the 3d of July of the following year, and his ability at that time, as well as thereafter, won for him, irrespective of party affiliations, an enviable place in the history of American diplomacy. He was sent upon his mission to Spain in 1874 by the party which he had opposed from its first organization, and his diplomatic erudition was indispensable to the State Department during the Grant administration.
Certain events in the career of Mr. Cushing serve to recall the days of Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Pierce, whose lives were clouded by a grief that saddened the whole of their subsequent career. A short time before Pierce's inauguration, the President-elect with Mrs. Pierce and their only son, a lad of immature years, were on their way to Andover in Massachusetts, when the child was accidentally killed. Mrs. Pierce never could be diverted from her all-absorbing sorrow, and I shall always remember the grief-stricken expression of this first Lady of the Land. Her maiden name was Jane Means Appleton, and she was the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Jesse Appleton, President of Bowdoin College. During the Pierce administration, Judge John Cadwalader, the father of the present John Cadwalader of Philadelphia, was a member of Congress. The son was then a mere lad, but he bore such a strong resemblance to the President's son that one day when Mrs. Pierce met him she was completely overcome. After this boy had become a man and had attained exceptional eminence at the bar, he feelingly alluded to this touching incident of his earlier days.
I was very intimately acquainted with Elizabeth and Fanny MacNeil, President Pierce's nieces, who were occasional visitors at the White House. They were daughters of General John MacNeil, U.S.A., who had acquitted himself with distinction in the War of 1812. Elizabeth married, as before stated, General Henry W. Benham of the Engineer Corps of the Army, and Fanny became the wife of Colonel Chandler E. Potter, U.S.A. Dr. Thomas Miller was our family physician for many years. He came to Washington from Loudoun County, Virginia, and married Miss Virginia Collins Jones, daughter of Walter Jones, an eminent lawyer. During the Pierce administration he was physician to the President's family.