The facts underlying this apparent attempt of the enterprising Yankee to open trade with the United States so early in the history of the country seemed to be these. Captain Stewart, an American in the service of the Dutch East India Company, having made his first voyage from Batavia to Nagasaki in 1797, was sent again the following year, 1798. An earthquake and tidal wave coming on, his ship dragged her anchors and the cargo, consisting chiefly of camphor, was thrown overboard. The vessel would have become a total wreck but for the ingenuity of a native. He “used helps undergirding the ship,” floating her. Then taking her in tow of a big junk, he drew her into a safe quarter. For this, the Japanese was made a two-sworded samurai. Stewart was sent back to Batavia. Thence he fled to Bengal, where he most probably persuaded the English merchants to send him in a ship to Japan with a cargo, to open trade for them under the name of Americans.
A few days after Stewart had left, Captain Torry, the accredited agent of the Calcutta Company, came to Nagasaki, to open trade if possible. Torry had sent Stewart before him, the Japanese not daring, he thought, to refuse Englishmen after allowing Americans to trade. Torry was, however, sent away as being in league with Stewart, and left after obtaining a supply of water.
In 1807, as Hildreth in his Japan, states, the American ship, Eclipse, of Boston, chartered at Canton, by the Russian American Company for Kamschatka and the north-west coast of America, entered the harbor of Nagasaki under Russian colors, but could obtain no trade and only provisions and water. The Dutch flag being driven from the ocean, the annual ships from Batavia to Nagasaki in 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803, and at least one of the pair in 1806, 1807 and 1809, were American bottoms and under the American flag, so that the Japanese became familiar with the seventeen-starred flag of the United States of America.
The brilliant and successful foreign policy of President Andrew Jackson in Europe, has been already noted. Even Asia felt his influence. Mr. Edmund Roberts[[21]], a sea captain of Portsmouth, N. H., was named by President Jackson, his “agent” for the purpose of “examining in the Indian ocean the means of extending the commerce of the United States by commercial arrangements with the Powers whose dominions border on those seas.” He was ordered, January 27, 1832, to embark on the United States Sloop-of-war, Peacock, in which he was rated as captain’s clerk. On the 23rd of July, he was ordered “to be very careful in obtaining information respecting Japan, the means of opening a communication with it, and the value of its trade with the Dutch and Chinese.” Arriving at Canton, he might receive further instructions. He had with him blanks. On the 28th of October, 1832, Edward Livingstone, the United States Secretary of State, instructed him that the United States had it in contemplation to institute a separate mission to Japan. If, however, a favorable opportunity presented, he might fill up a letter and present it to the “Emperor” for the purpose of opening trade. Roberts was successful in inaugurating diplomatic and commercial relations with Muscat and Siam, but, on account of his premature death, nothing came of his mission to Japan. He died June 12, 1836, at Macao, where his tomb duly inscribed, is in the Protestant cemetery.
Commodore Kennedy in the Peacock, with the schooner Enterprise, visited the Bonin Islands in August 1837, an account of which was written by Doctor Ruschenberger,[[22]] the fleet surgeon.
The sight of the flowery flag of “Bé-koku” or the United States, became more and more familiar to the Japanese coasting and ship population, as the riches of the whaling waters became better known in America. The American whalers were so numerous in the Japan seas by the year 1850, that eighty-six of the “black ships” were counted as passing Matsumaé in twelve months. Perry found that no fewer than ten thousand of our people were engaged in this business. Furthermore, the Japanese waifs blown out to sea were drifted into the Black Current and to the Kurile and Aleutian islands, to Russian and British America, to Oregon and California, and even to Hawaii.
The necessity of visiting Japan on errands of mercy to return these waifs became a frequent one. Reciprocally, the Japanese sent the shipwrecked Americans by the Dutch vessels to Batavia whence they reached the United States. This was the cause of the “Morrison’s” visit to the bay of Yedo and to Kagoshima in 1837. This ship, fitly named after the first Protestant English missionary to China, whose grave lies near Roberts in the terraced cemetery at Macao, was despatched by an American mercantile firm. Included among the thirty-eight persons on board were seven Japanese waifs, Rev. Charles Gutzlaff, Dr. S. Wells Williams, Peter Parker, Mr. King, the owner, and Mrs. King. They sailed July 3d. The vessel reached Uraga, bay of Yedo, July 22d, and Kagoshima in Satsuma August 20, but was fired on and driven away. The name of “Morrison Bluff” on the map of Japan is an honor to American Christianity, as it is a shame to Old Japan.
The proposition to open commercial relations with the two secluded nations now came definitely before Congress. On February 15th 1845, General Zadoc Pratt, chairman of the select committee on statistics introduced the following resolution in Congress to treat for the opening of Japan and Corea. “Whereas it is important to the general interests of the United States that steady and persevering efforts should be made for the extension of American commerce, connected as that commerce is with the agriculture and manufactures of our country; be it therefore resolved, that in furtherance of this object, it is hereby recommended that immediate measures be taken for effecting commercial arrangements with the Empire of Japan and the Kingdom of Corea,[[23]] for the following among other reasons.” Then follows a memorandum concerning the proposed mission.
Captain Mercator Cooper, in the whale ship Manhattan, of Sag Harbor, returned twenty-two shipwrecked Japanese early in April 1845, from the island of St. Peters to Uraga in the bay of Yedo, where he lay at anchor four days obtaining books and charts. When the Japanese embassy of 1861 reached New York, one of the first questions asked by them was, “Where is Captain Cooper?”
Our government authorized Commodore Biddle, then in command of the East Indian squadron, to visit Japan in the hope of securing a convention. He left Chusan July 7th, and, on the 20th of July 1846, with the ship of the line, Columbus, 90 guns, and the sloop of war, Vincennes, he anchored off Uraga. Application for trade was made in due form, but the answer given July 28th by the Shō-gun’s deputy who came on board with a suite of eight persons, was a positive refusal. Commodore Biddle being instructed “not to do anything to excite a hostile feeling or distrust of the United States,” sailed away July 29, in obedience to orders.