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‘All the English-Speaking Race is in Mourning’: the Assassination of President Garfield and Anglo-American Relations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Mike Sewell
Affiliation:
Selwyn College, Cambridge

Extract

From the pageantry and elaborate stage-management of embassies in the early modern period to ping pong or panda diplomacy, policy-makers have used public rituals to dramatize or make statements about international relationships. For most of the nineteenth century the United States refused, in the name of republican simplicity, to sanction the wearing of court dress or the sending and receiving of ambassadors. Congress steadfastly refused to compromise with the standards of European monarchies on these symbols of American exceptionalism. Historians of diplomacy have neglected such phenomena, but concentration on them may allow a bridging of the gulf which Bernard Porter has lamented between their field and other sub-disciplines, commenting that the former remained ‘Newtonian survivals in the age of Einstein’.

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

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30 Hale to Lowell, 25 Sept. 1881, Lowell papers, bMS Am 1659, Harvard; James Bryce wrote to Gladstone that the Garfield mourning had completed a shift in American opinion begun with the Alabama claims settlement, letter of 31 Oct. 1881 sent from Los Angeles, Bryce papers, MS Bryce, vol. II, Bodleian Library, Oxford.

31 Lowell to Forster, 21 Sept. 1881, Lowell papers, bMS Am 765, Harvard.

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38 Comments to this effect were made at the time, The Times, 27 Sept. 1881, Whitby Gazette, 1 Oct. and 8 Oct. 1881 quoting the Chicago Tribune.

39 The Times, 4, 5, July, 21 and 22 Sept. 1881 shows the speed with which detailed accounts were disseminated.

40 For examples of such discussion, Consul King (Birmingham) to State Dept., 27 Feb. 1880, no. 20, RG59, N.A.; Imports of wheat and flour into Britain’, American Miller, IX (1881), 7, 279Google Scholar; Waring, G., Some things in America (London, 1880), pp. 13, 72–8Google Scholar.

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42 Lady Gwendolen Cecil makes the point that Salisbury's activities were influenced by the depression, ‘Lord Salisbury in private life’, in Blake, and Cecil, , Salisbury, p. 38Google Scholar. Although economic historians have cast doubt on the severity and breadth of depression in British agriculture in this period, the concern at the time was genuine, especially around 1880.

43 Report of the royal commission on the depression in agriculture (Parl. Papers, 1880, XV), QQ. 758–73, 810–25, (P.P. 1881, XVIII), passim, (P.P. 1882, XIV), 12–18, 278–95; Bonamy Price, a member of the Commission, wrote to Lowell on 11 June 1880: ‘nothing looms so large before us as your country.’ Lowell papers, bMS Am 1659 Harvard; compare Potter, T. Bayley to Evarts, William M., 07 1879, ‘You hold the key of the position. Europe must have your food’Google Scholar. Evarts papers, container 23, Library of Congress (L.C.), Washington, D.C.

44 The Times, 3 June and 8 Dec. 1880; reports from 1879 and 1880 by Finlay Dun were reprinted as American farming and food (London, 1881); see also Harold, J., Farming and railroad interests in America (London, [1880])Google Scholar, reprinted from Railway News; Hatton, J.England's commercial decline’, Tinsley's Magazine, XXIV, 3 (1879), 256–65Google Scholar; W. C. Miller, ‘Our commercial relations with the United States’, ibid. XXVI, 2 (1880), 116–24; Hatton, commented on the ubiquity of references to America in British political discourse, Today in America (2 vols. London, 1881), 1, ix–xvGoogle Scholar.

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48 Yarnall, C., Forty years of friendship. As recorded in the correspondence of John Duke, Lord Coleridge and Ellis Yarnall (London, 1911), p. 203Google Scholar; also Coleridge to Lowell, 15 Nov. 1883, bMS Am 1659, no. 48, Lowell papers, Harvard.

49 Reports of consuls in Newcastle, 18 June and 25 Sept. 1877 and Sheffield, 2 Oct. 1877 to State Dept., RG 59, N.A.; Packard, J. F., Grant's tour around the world (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1880), 1, 73–7, 91–5Google Scholar; Young, J. R., ‘Around the world with President Grant’, Quarterly Review, 150, (1880), 205–42, especially 223–4Google Scholar.

50 Packard, , Grant's tour, pp. 71–3Google Scholar; clippings from Washington National Republican quoting the Syracuse Journal, and other newspapers enclosed with Thornton to Derby, no. 172, 5 June 1877, P.R.O. FO5/1577, whether the phrase ‘more perfect’ was a conscious or unconscious allusion to the Constitution, it is nonetheless a significant one; Grant wrote to former secretary of state, Hamilton Fish, of his ‘remarkable reception…very much as it was in the United Sates in '65…indicative of a present very good feeling toward the U.S.’, quoted in Nevins, A., Hamilton Fish. The inner history of the Grant administration (New York, 1937), pp. 893–4Google Scholar.

51 On the tourist industry see Dulles, F. R., The American tourist (New York, 1956)Google Scholar; Perkins, E. J., ‘Tourists and bankers. Travelers' credits and the rise of American tourism’, Business and Economic History, 8, (1979), 1628Google Scholar; on specific contacts see, for example, the huge American correspondence of James Bryce, Bodleian Library; the list of English guests to the opening of the Northern Pacific, Evarts papers, box no. 60, L.C. includes an earl, two judges, two privy councillors and eleven M.P.s as well as Bryce and others; British familiarity with the United States by 1880 was in marked contrast to the strangeness reported in accounts of the prince of Wales' 1860 visit.

52 The Daily Telegraph, 25 Aug. 1881 claimed that without American food Britain would face famine.

53 The Times, 21 Sept. 1881.

54 The visit can be followed through the extensive reports in The Times 9 Oct. to 31 Oct. 1860 and New York Times, 1 July to 22 Oct. 1860.

55 American case (P.P. 1872, LXIX), Q. 9.

56 Thornton to Clarendon, no. 55, 12 Feb. 1870, P.R.O. FO5/1191; Thornton to Granville, no. 160, 11 Mar. 1872, P.R.O. FO5/1362.

57 Thornton to Tenterden, 1 June 1875, P.R.O. FO363/4, Tenterden papers.

58 Thornton to Derby, no. 194, 10 July 1877, P.R.O. FO5/1539.

59 Thornton to Granville, private, 4 May 1880, P.R.O. FO933/108, Thornton papers; Lord Dufferin to Sir Alexander Mackenzie, 23 Jan. 1878, Mackenzie papers, Public Archives of Canada (P.A.C.), Ottawa, fos. 1840–1, and his successor's remarks about how militia visits reflected improved feelings, Marquis, of Lorne, , Memories of Canada and Scotland (London, 1884), pp. 209–12Google Scholar; Evarts, remarks at the battle of Bennington centennial, clipping with C. K. Williams to Evarts, 16 Feb. 1878, Evarts papers, vol. 12, L.C.

60 Thornton memorandum 26 Apr. 1880, P.R.O. FO5/1721; Thornton to Granville, 8 June 1880, Knaplund, and Clewes, , ‘Private letters’ p. 102Google Scholar.

61 Report of Welsh's, arrival, The Times, 12 12 1877Google Scholar; on events connected with the arrival of Lionel Sackville West in the United States (1881) and Edward J. Phelps in Britain (1885), Morton papers, scrapbook 4B p. 5, N.Y.P.L.; West to Granville, 8 Nov. 1881, no. 331, P.R.O. FO5/1756; Phelps to Bayard, 5 June 1885, Thomas Francis Bayard papers, L.C. vol. 76 and the reply of 27 June, letterbooks vol. I, Ibid.; Smalley, , London letters, pp. 264–7Google Scholar.

62 Admiralty to Foreign Office reporting Capt. Commerell's remarks, 1 March 1870, P.R.O. FO5/1207; see also Adm. to F.O., 8 Feb. 1870, Ibid., Thornton to Clarendon, no. 55, 12 Feb. and no. 86, 28 Feb. 1870, P.R.O. FO5/1191, and Consul Murray (Portland) to Clarendon, 29 Jan. and 14 Feb. 1870, P.R.O. FO5/1200.

63 Salisbury to Chamberlain, 4 March 1899, Chamberlain Papers, Birmingham University Library, JC5/67 no. 110.

64 The Prince of Wales, Lord Rosebery, Chamberlain, Churchill, Bryce, Northcote, Harcourt, and Curzon head the list of Britons who either paid extended visits or married Americans and who held high government office. Such contacts amongst the ruling class were unprecedented; on the belief in their impact, Russell, of Killowen, , Diary, introduction, pp. 68Google Scholar.

65 Correspondence in P.R.O. FO5/1643, ‘America, centennial exhibition’ especially Northcote to Tenterden, private, 15 Aug. 1874, and Owen to Richmond, 6 Jul. 1875; for evidence of American appreciation of the efforts, Richmond to Derby, 17 March 1876 and Sandford report of same date; also The Times, 2 Nov. 1881.

66 Thornton to Clarendon, 12 Feb. 1870, no. 55, P.R.O. FO5/1191; Thornton to Granville, 4 May, 10 May, 18 May 1880, Granville to Thornton, 22 May 1880, Knaplund, and Clewes, , ‘Private letters’, pp. 93–8Google Scholar.

67 Drummond to Granville, 1 Nov. 1881, Ibid. p. 151; also West to Granville, 22 Nov. 1881, no. 338, P.R.O. FO5/1756.

68 See Lowell, to Frelinghuysen, , and enclosures, 2 02 1884, no. 139, FRUS 1884, p. 215, and reply, 21 Feb. p. 216Google Scholar; The Queen to the president, telegram, 21 July 1884 no. 176. Ibid. p. 253; Frelinghuysen, to Lowell, , 3 03 1885, no. 316, FRUS 1885, p. 446Google Scholar and Lowell to Bayard enclosing correspondence with Granville, 4 Apr. 1885, no. 317, pp. 447–8, Ibid.; for public comment see the protectionist Iron Age, 28 Feb. 1885.

69 Bennington Address, Evarts papers, container no. 16, L.C.; see also Lorne's, address to a Canadian review which included a troop of New York militia, 24 05 1879, Memories, pp. 209–12Google Scholar.

70 The Times 1 Oct. 1881; the passage was reprinted in the Whitby Gazette, 8 Oct. 1881; in The Times 21 Sept. references to the English-speaking race were augmented by allusions to Anglo-Saxon kinship, community, brotherhood, and the inseparable unity of the two nations which belonged to one race. In addition, there were references to close commercial contacts, and to Garfield's puritan antecedents, his biblical studies, his interest in English etymology, membership of the Cobden Club, and his ‘great “pluck”’. References to hands grasped in friendship across the sea, even over the grave, abounded at this time.

71 Two good examples from diplomatic documents are Plunkett to Derby, no. 165, 5 June 1877, P.R.O. FO5/1577 discussing Russian annoyance at the cordiality of ‘the two great Anglo-Saxon communities’ during Grant's British tour; and West to Granville, no. 338, 22 Nov. 1881, P.R.O. FO5/1756, conveying Blaine's remarks about Yorktown.

72 Lorne, , Memories, pp. 279–80Google Scholar; speech by Dufferin in clipping, Morton papers, scrapbook no. 2, pp. 7–8, N.Y.P.L.; account of the welcome to Sackville West by President Arthur, ibid, scrapbook no. 4B, p. 5; Packard, , Grant's tour, pp. 73, 95, 117Google Scholar.

73 The Times, 1 Oct. and 21 Oct. 1881; Drummond, to Granville, , no. 289, 3 10 1881, with enclosure from New York Herald, 30 Sept. P.R.O. FO5/1756Google Scholar; see also comments in ‘The American centennial’ and the essay on the historiography of loyalism in Bailyn's, BernardThe ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, Mass., 1975)Google Scholar.

74 Consul Farrell (Bristol) to Hitt, no. 29, 27 Sept. 1881 and enclosed clipping, RG59 N.A.; The Times, 26 and 29 Sept. 1881; Blaine, to Lowell, , 14 11 1881, reported in The Times 29 Dec. 1881 used such expressions as ‘the tie of common blood’ in responding to British sympathyGoogle Scholar.

75 A letter to The Times, 24 10 1881 quoted Weed's, Thurlow allusion in the New York Evening Post to ‘the Queen of our hearts’Google Scholar; welcoming Sackville West, Blaine gave the toast to the queen and spoke of a hundred million English-speakers united in loyalty to Queen Victoria, , ‘the first ruler of England that has been popular and beloved throughout the whole realm of the Anglo-Saxon people’, reported in The Times, 7 11 1881Google Scholar; also West to Granville, no. 331, 8 Nov. 1881, P.R.O. FO5/1756.

76 Richardson, , Messages and papers, VIII, 37Google Scholar; also despatches from Drummond and West, P.R.O. FO5/1756.

77 For example, Thornton reported favourable comment about Disraeli's Suez policy to Tenterden, 28 Dec. 1875, P.R.O. FO363/4, Tenterden papers; see also Commercial and Financial Chronicle, 29 Dec. 1881, p. 628 and Iron Age 9 Apr. 1885, p. 16, on Egypt. Such remarks were part of a wider tendency towards interpreting British imperialism as a force for civilization.

78 Solomon, B., Ancestors and immigrants (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), pp. 610CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Higham, J., Strangers in the land. Patterns of American nativism (New Brunswick, 1955), pp. 132–49Google Scholar.

79 Lodge is quoted in Faithfull, E., Three visits to America (Edinburgh, 1884), pp. 346–7Google Scholar; Godkin, E. L., ‘Living in Europe and going to it’, in his Reflections and comments (New York, 1895), pp. 274–86Google Scholar; also Editor's easy chair’, Harper's Monthly Magazine, (American edn) 79, 9 (1889), 633–4Google Scholar; see material in box 21, Cyrus W. Field papers, N.Y.P.L. on the André monument, ‘a token of those better feelings which have since united two nations, one in race, one in language, and one in religion’ and describing an Irish nationalist attack on it.

80 Flick, A. C., Samuel Tilden (New York, 1939), pp. 419–21Google Scholar; vol. 8 of the Morton papers, N.Y.P.L. traces his family to Norman times, giving biographical and heraldic details; W. J. Menzies to Blaine, 11 Sept. 1890, James G. Blaine papers, container no. 19, L.C. On the ‘ancestor cult’ generally see comments in ‘The American Centennial’ and Vivian, H. H., Notes of a tour in America (London, 1878), p. 208Google Scholar.

81 T. Rowley Hill (M.P. for Worcester) to Lowell, 3 March 1881, Lowell papers, bMS Am 1484 nos. 99 and 144, Harvard.

82 Resolution, Ibid. no. 99.

83 Morton papers, box no. 15, ‘Constellation Relief Fund’ (of which Morton was a Trustee), N.Y.P.L. includes numerous transcripts from the New York Herald; also New York Times, 5 Feb. 1880.

84 Marble to William Martin Conway, 5 Oct. 1890, Conway family papers, Cambridge University Library, Add MSS 7676, Box G, no. 41.

85 Archibald speech, W. M. Archibald papers box no. 1, p. 13, P.A.C.

86 Lowell, , ‘Garfield’, p. 46Google Scholar.

87 Russell, of Killowen, , Diary, pp. 113–14, 144–5 on American dislikeGoogle Scholar; SirGriffin, L., The great republic (London, 1884)Google ScholarPubMed for old-fashioned condescension and effortless abuse of American democracy.

88 It should be noted that this was not the case when comparisons were being made between either ‘sister country’ and other nations. In those instances similarities tended to spring easily to mind, see Mulvey, C., Anglo-American landscapes (Oxford, 1983), chs. II, VIII and XIVGoogle Scholar.