Diplomatic memoirs

Front matter

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Contents

I. How I ENTERED THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE . 3

II. The Mission to Mexico 15

III. Social Life in Mexico 26

Chapter I How I Entered The Diplomatic Service

The spirited political campaign of 1872 closed with the triumphant reelection of General Grant as President of the United States. Indiana was classed as one of the doubtful States, and the result of the October election was looked forward to with anxiety by both political parties as indicating the trend of public sentiment. Oliver P. Morton, the leader of his party in the State and one of the foremost statesmen of his day, was a candidate for reelection to the Senate of the United States, and he felt that his political life was at stake in the contest.

As Chairman of the Republican State Committee, I conducted the campaign which resulted in the choice of a Republican majority in the legislature, and pointed unmistakably to the success of President Grant. Senator Morton was greatly pleased, and when the returns were all in, he invited Mrs. Foster and myself to a private dinner at his residence in Indianapolis. When it was concluded, I accompanied the Senator to his private office, and he at once said that to me more than any one else was due the decisive party victory, and that he personally felt under great obligations to me which he desired to discharge. He told me to take the "Blue Book" (the register of federal officers of the United States) and select the office I wanted, and that without further trouble on my part he would see that it was given me. I replied that I had not entered on the campaign for the purpose of securing an office, and that I must take time to consider the matter ; that, however, he had indicated to me great liberty of choice ; and that I might select a position for which I was not fitted or which he might not be able to secure for me. He answered that he had entire confidence in my ability, and as to securing the office I need give myself no concern on that score. The latter assertion was no vain boast on his part, for at that time there was no man in the country upon whom President Grant depended more strongly or whom he was more willing to favor.

After canvassing the matter fully with my wife, we decided that, with our young family, a brief residence in Europe would be both pleasant and useful ; and I informed the Senator that if it could be had I should be gratified to receive the appointment of Minister to Switzerland, which was in the lowest grade of our diplomatic service. It will thus be seen that thirty years and more ago the diplomatic service presented the same allurement to inexperienced but ambitious young men as it seems to possess at the present day.

Upon learning my choice, the Senator approved of it and assured me that I might count on receiving the appointment soon after the re-inauguration of the President, and that I might shape my business arrangements accordingly. But during the course of the ensuing winter I received a telegram from Senator Morton asking me to come to Washington. Upon my arrival at the capital I was informed by him that he had encountered some difficulty in securing the Swiss Mission for me ; that the President had promised the friends of the incumbent that he might continue in the office during the coming term ; but that he had offered to appoint me to the Mexican Mission.

I was bewildered by the proposition. It was with much misgiving as to my fitness for the office I had chosen the Swiss Mission, one of the lowest and most unimportant of the diplomatic posts ; and now I was tendered the highest and most difficult mission on the American hemisphere. I frankly told the Senator that I very much doubted the wisdom of accepting such a post with my entire inexperience in diplomacy. I at the time spoke no foreign language, had never been out of my own country, and had only a text-book knowledge of international law. But the Senator only smiled at my hesitation, reasserted his confidence in my ability, and said I was much better fitted than most of those who were appointed to our diplomatic service. He asked me to go with him that evening to call on the President, who, he said, retained pleasant recollections of his army acquaintance with me. Our call at the White House was an agreeable one. General Grant alluding with interest to some incidents of our military intercourse, but no reference was made to my appointment. I returned to my home in Indiana, and in the first diplomatic nominations sent to the Senate after the President entered on his second term my name was included as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Mexico.

Before I left Washington an incident occurred which offered an entirely different turn to my diplomatic career. Senator Morton informed me that President Grant had decided to appoint Hon. John A. Bingham of Ohio Minister to Japan, and that Mr. Bingham had requested him to ask me if, with the President's approval, I would be willing to change places with him and allow him to go to Mexico, the two positions being of the same rank and emoluments. I asked the Senator why Mr. Bingham desired the change and was told that he, being an old man, feared that, Japan being so far away and a country with which we had so little intercourse, he would be forgotten by his friends and constituents at home. Upon reflection it occurred to me that the reason had more force with a young man who looked forward to a career in his own country, and I excused myself from the proposal.

Mr. Bingham was a man of marked ability and had enjoyed a long and honorable public service. In the Congress of the United States just closing he had supported the law known as the Salary Bill, which not only increased the pay of members of Congress, but was retroactive in its effect. It proved an unpopular measure, was in the campaign termed the " Back-Pay Grab," and contributed to the defeat of Mr. Bingham and many other congressmen who supported it. His standing was so high with his party and in the country that the President's action in appointing him Minister to Japan was generally commended. He remained in that position for about twelve years, during a most important epoch in that country's history. He was enabled to render both to the United States and Japan valuable service, and was recognized by the Japanese as a wise counselor and constant friend.

During my visit to Washington in preparation for my journey. Senator Morton manifested a warm interest in my mission and so continued up to the time of his death in 1878, regarding with personal pride whatever success I attained. I was greatly grieved at his death, as I was more intimate with him than any other of our great men. He was truly one of our greatest statesmen and patriots. Senator Hoar has recorded in his " Autobiography" that " Morton as a great party leader had no superior in his time, save Lincoln alone." President Roosevelt, nearly thirty years after his death, in a public address, said, " When history definitely awards the credit for what was done in the Civil War, she will put the services of no other civilian, save alone those of Lincoln, ahead of the services of Governor Morton."

As I now recall my hesitation to assume the duties of such a responsible and untried position as the mission to Mexico, I see that I was not without some preparation, and that I possessed an experience of the world and of pohtical affairs which was second only in value to actual diplomatic service. I had the benefit of a worthy ancestry, which should always exercise an important influence upon character and ability. My paternal grandfather was an English farmer, who during the industrial depression occasioned by the Napoleonic wars sold his small possessions and emigrated to America early in the last century, bringing his family, among them my father, then in his boyhood. The latter at the age of seventeen left the temporary home in the Mohawk Valley, New York, and on foot and alone started for the great Western country, in search of a suitable location where lands could be obtained from the Government, on which to provide a home for his aged parents and build up his own career.

After traversing, with knapsack on his back, the intervening country as far as St. Louis, Missouri, he decided upon a location in southern Indiana, returned to New York, and brought out the family to the new home, where he had secured an eighty-acre tract of land in the virgin wilderness. There in a log cabin built with their own hands the family began their new life. My father soon became a large farmer, and collecting together his products and those of his neighbors he floated them down the White, the Wabash, and the Ohio rivers, tributaries of the Mississippi, and thence to New Orleans, and in the days before steamboats were common brought back the proceeds in Spanish gold coin on foot to his Indiana home, a distance of twelve hundred miles.

This employment led into mercantile life and his location at Evansville, then a growing town, now a city of no mean proportions. He acquired such knowledge of law as led his neighbors to make him a county or probate judge ; he was active as councilman, bank du-ector, church and school trustee, and in all movements for the betterment of his community. Before he left England he had served an apprenticeship in a book-store, besides which his education was only such as he gained in the scanty leisure of his hardy life. He was a great reader, his favorite books being the Bible, Shakespeare, and Burns, much of which he freely recited from memory. He became an intense American and was active in politics, especially in the anti-slavery crusade

My maternal great-grandfather served in the Virginia contingent of the Revolutionary army. My grandfather migrated from Kentucky to Indiana soon after it was organized as a Territory, acted as secretary to its first governor, General Harrison, participated with him in the Tippecanoe campaign against the Indians, was a member of the convention which framed the first constitution of Indiana, and served frequently as a member of the State Legislature. My mother died in my childhood, but not until her devotion, her gentleness, her intelligence, her deeply religious life had been indelibly fixed in my memory. Among such associations and fed upon the narrative of the experiences of such an ancestry I grew up to manhood.

My collegiate education was pursued at the State University of Indiana, from which I graduated as valedictorian of my class in 1855, at the age of nineteen, I attended the Harvard University Law School for one year, spent one year in a law office at Cincinnati, was admitted to practice law at the age of twenty-one, and located at my home in Evansville, Indiana. In the first years of my profession I was associated as partner with Conrad Baker, one of the leading lawyers of the State, a man of the highest qualities of citizenship, afterwards Governor of the State and senior partner of Thomas A. Hendricks. Something of the character of the man may be seen when I state that, while serving his term as governor, he was offered by his party adherents in the legislature the post of United States Senator, which he declined, on the ground that the people of the State had elected him governor and it was his duty to fill out the term.

The slavery agitation was the burning political question during my college days and early manhood. My home district, bordering on Kentucky and settled largely from the slave States, sjonpathized with the pro-slavery cause ; but, following my father's views, in college I was so ardent an anti-slavery advocate that I was ranked as an "abolitionist," a term of opprobrium in that day and in that community. In the Fremont presidential campaign, I participated as actively as I could as a minor, and in the exciting Lincoln campaign of 1860, I gave much of my time to the organization of the Republican party, — then largely in the minority in my section, — and in addressing the people at political meetings.

My whole soul was enlisted in the anti-slavery cause, and when the Civil War, following the inauguration of President Lincoln, burst upon the country, my first impulse was to join the army of the Union, but for a few months I was constrained in my action. The rush of volunteers was much greater than the allotment in Indiana. I had just established myself in a little home, and it required a most grave necessity to have me leave my young wife and child. Besides I had no special taste for soldiering. But when the President's call for three hundred thousand men for three years' enlistment came, I saw that the rebellion meant a serious conflict and that the call was loudest upon those who had professed devotion to the anti-slavery cause. I enlisted in the army for three years, and without any solicitation on my part Governor Morton, who knew of my service in the Lincoln political campaign, sent me a commission as major of the Twenty- Fifth Indiana Volunteers. During my service of three and a half years I participated in many important engagements, commanded three different Indiana regiments, was brigade and district commander, and at the close of my service was at the head of a division of cavalry. I served under and was brought into personal contact and acquaintance with Generals Grant, Sherman, Thomas, Burnside, and other department and corps commanders. My military life greatly enlarged my knowledge of men and gave me fuller confidence in myself.

My early participation in party affairs had given me a taste for politics, and at the close of the Civil War I was naturally led to take a deep interest in the reconstruction questions which agitated the country. Yielding to this inclination, I became the editor of the leading newspaper of my section of the State. Such a position affords one an excellent opportunity to study the various political questions which arise in the country, and their editorial discussion tends to broaden and clarify one's ideas of public affairs. In the years succeeding the war I continued to give some attention to party organization, and, as stated, in the presidential campaign of 1872 I was at the head of the Republican State Committee.

Through the management of the State campaign I was brought into personal contact with many prominent men of national reputation. Among these were, from my own State, 0. P. Morton, R. W. Thompson, Schuyler Colfax, Beni. Harrison ; from other States, John Sherman, Henry Wilson, Geo. F. Boutwell, John A. Logan, John M. Harlan, B. H. Bristow, Wm. P. Frye, Zach. Chandler, Carl Schurz, Fredk. Douglass, Robert G. Ingersoll.

My acquaintance with Jamee G. Blaine which continued to the close of his life began in this campaign, as will be seen from the following characteristic letter to me : —

Augusta, Me., 10th Nov. 1872.

My dear Sir:

I cannot allow this great campaign to pass out of fresh memory without extending to you my very cordial congratulations upon the masterly manner in which you organized Indiana.

With fourteen years' experience as Chairman of our own Committee I naturally observe somewhat closely the tides and currents in other States, and I know from my own. observation and from what others told me that your work was done with wonderful thoroughness. It was my great desire to have got into your State and participated in your canvass and especially to have had the pleasure of making your personal acquaintance, but when I reached Ohio, they simply drafted me for the campaign vi et armis and I could not get away.

If you visit Washington during the coming winter, I beg that you will do me the honor to call at my house — 821 15th St., where you will find the latch-string out and on pulling it will meet a Western welcome.

Very truly yours,

J. G. Blaine.

Hon. Jno. W. Foster.

I called on Mr, Blaine in Washington the next winter, was very cordially received by him in the Speaker's Room, and invited to dine with him the same evening, saying there would be a company of gentlemen at his table whom he thought I would be pleased to meet.

I cannot refrain from narrating an incident of that dinner. When Mr. Blaine went home from the Capitol he told Mrs. Blaine he had invited an additional number of gentlemen, among them the Secretary of the Navy, George M. Robeson, and that she must be sure to serve some Madeira, as that was the Secretary's favorite wine ; to which she replied that there was not a bottle in the house. " Well," he said, " send to the grocer and get some, as we must have it."

The Speaker was m his best humor that evening, and as he looked down the table when the Madeira was being served, he saw the Secretary testing its aroma, whereupon he arrested the conversation of the guests by addressing the Secretary in a voice which attracted general attention: "Robeson, I hope you will like that Madeira, for it has a history " ; and then he proceeded to invent a story of how it belonged to a cask of a choice vintage which had made a trip around the world in a sailing-vessel to temper its quality, had been brought to Washington by a European diplomat, had been bought, at the sale of his effects when he left the country, by a retired commodore of the Navy, and lain in his cellar in Philadelphia for years, and that he, Blaine, had received from his friend the commodore, a few bottles, and this they were now drinking was the last of it. Secretary Robeson, who was a great connoisseur of wine, listened with marked attention, and responded that he knew from its delicate aroma and delicious taste it must have a history, and proceeded to praise it in extravagant terms. Mr. Blaine never omitted an opportunity when he found his friend in congenial company to tell the story on him.

The brief review which I have given of my life up to my appointment as Minister to Mexico shows, I trust, that, while I had no personal knowledge of diplomatic service, I was not without some preparation for the new and important duties which I was about to assume. My training as a lawyer, my early participation in the discussion and settlement of one of the most momentous questions which ever agitated a people, my army service, my editorial work, my activity in pohtics and intercourse with public men, all tended to prepare me for the untried service upon which I was then to enter. Had I begun my career after college graduation by appointment as a Secretary of Legation, for instance, and risen by long service and merit to the mission to Mexico, I would have been free from the misgivings and trepidation which marked my acceptance of the appointment, for I would have been thoroughly versed in the routine duties ; but I might not have possessed that strength of character and ability to meet men in the discussion of weighty matters which I had acquired by the experiences through which I had passed.

I am a strong advocate for the establishment of a regular career for the diplomatic service of the United States; I would have all Secretaries of Legation enter the service through a competitive examination ; continue in office during good behavior ; and, as they should prove worthy, have them promoted to Ministers. But I doubt whether the time will ever come when our Government will think it wise to confine the appointment of Ministers and Ambassadors entirely to promotions from the posts of Secretary. It has never been so in the Governments of Europe where the regular diplomatic career has long been an established system. Many of their most useful and distinguished diplomats have been those who never entered the service through a competitive examination, but who were appointed from other branches of the public service or from private life.

After I received official notice of my nomination I had the usual experience of newly-appointed Ministers. I went to Washington to pay my respects to the President, make the acquaintance of the Secretary of State and his subordinates, and to receive my instructions. My first visit to the Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, could not have been more satisfactory or reassuring. I shall have occasion to refer again to this useful and distinguished statesman.

During this visit to Washington I had my fii'st experience of a diplomatic dinner. Sefior Don Ignacio Mariscal was then the resident Mexican Minister. He had been almost continuously in the service of Mexico at Washington since 1863 and was one of the best-known and most useful diplomats at the Capital. He received me on this visit with the utmost kindness and did everything possible to prepare for me a hearty welcome at the City of Mexico. Before leaving the city he gave a dinner in my honor, to which he invited a number of Latin-American and European diplomats. As I had never before been in such society, I confess to a feeling of considerable awe and strangeness, where insignia and decorations of nobility and orders were conspicuous, and where Spanish and French were the languages most used, with both of which I was then unfamiliar.

In this visit to Washington I had a foretaste of the duties

A. I which occupied much of my time and occasioned me no small embarrassment during my official residence in Mexico. I was waited upon by various American citizens or their attorneys, who sought to enlist my interest in claims against the Government of Mexico, growing out of injuries alleged to have been sustained to their persons or property and for which they maintained that Government was responsible. Among these callers was General B. F. Butler, then a member of Congress, a political and Civil War celebrity. When a law student at Harvard University I had frequently seen him in the Boston courts in contests with Ruf us Choate and other prominent lawyers. The reputation he had then of being a very shrewd but not over-conscientious individual had followed him through life, and was confirmed in the somewhat lengthy interview I had with him about his claim, which grew out of a contract which a company, of which he was the most prominent member, had with the Government of Mexico for the colonization of Lower California. After some years the Mexican Government annulled the contract on the ground that the company had failed to comply with its conditions and that it was really a filibustering scheme to annex Lower California to the United States. The General and his company gave the Department of State much trouble, but they were never able to fix any responsibility on the Mexican Government.

Chapter II

While in Washington, receiving the instructions for my mission, I renewed my acquaintance with General Wilham T. Sherman, then General-in-Chief of the Army of the United States. Early in the war I was under his immediate command and in daily association with him at Benton Barracks, St. Louis, when he was under a cloud, being regarded as having an unbalanced mind, because he first of all our leaders realized the magnitude of the rebellion and had the courage to make known his views to the authorities at Washington. I afterwards served under him at the battle of Shiloh and in the advance on Corinth, as also later in East Tennessee. He received me in Washington with the hearty hospitality which characterized him, and at one of our meetings he inquired by what route I expected to go to Mexico. At that period the only regular communication from the Atlantic States was by steamer sailing from New York once in three weeks for Vera Cruz, via Havana and intermediate ports, the journey occupying about fourteen days. I told the General I should have to take that route. " That will never do," he said. " I will speak to Robeson [Secretary of the Na\y] and have a man-of-war sent to New Orleans to take you to Vera Cruz." And he was as good as his word, for in a few days I had official notice from the Navy Department that a naval vessel would be at New Orleans at a date to be agreed upon to carry me to Mexico.

New Orleans in those days was seeking to recover its commercial prestige, diminished by the war and the reconstruction era, and was looking hopefully to Mexico for new avenues of trade. The Chamber of Commerce, anticipating my arrival, had prepared for me a reception, at which speeches were exchanged, in which on both sides were expressed great hopes of the early development of an intimate and profitable commerce between that city and the Mexican Gulf ports — hopes fondly cherished and repeatedly expressed in later years, but not yet realized. A committee of the Chamber of Commerce conducted myself and family in a commodious steamer to the mouth of the Mississippi, where we were to meet the naval vessel, and entertained us en route with a sumptuous lunch, which proved a preparation ill fitting us for our first journey on the sea.

When we reached the mouth of the great river, a stiff breeze was blowing and the man-of-war lay at quite a distance outside the bar, and to her we had to be transferred in small boats. This passage in the rough sea was too much for us landsmen. I was barely able to receive the honors which the punctilious commodore had prepared for the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, and when they were over I "went below," not to reappear till we were in sight of the harbor of Vera Cruz.

On my arrival in the City of Mexico I was welcomed at the railway station by my predecessor, Hon. Thomas H. Nelson, and every needed courtesy extended to me by him, even the unusual one of accompanying me to the National Palace and introducing me to the President, at the ceremony of the presentation of my credentials. He might have felt justified in treating me with cold civility, as we were both citizens of the State of Indiana and acquaintances of several years' standing. He desired to remain in the service, had been longer prominent in politics than I, and might have pleaded greater services to the party. When the Mexican Mission was suggested to me by Senator Morton, I expressed a reluctance to its acceptance because an Indianian and a friend held the post, but the Senator said the President had decided upon a change, and it would be filled by another if I did not

take it.

Mr. Nelson had for six years previous to his appointment to Mexico served as Minister to Chili. He was thoroughly patriotic, an ardent American, distinguished as an orator, of genial manners and convivial habits which made him popular in social and diplomatic circles. He was not a student, and hence failed to master the subjects he had in hand ; added to which a certain triviality of temperament possibly led to his retirement from the service. In diplomacy, as in most other pursuits of life, strict devotion to duty and a mastery of the matters one has in hand usually lead to success.

I was fortunate in finding in charge of the Mexican Department of Foreign Affairs an accomplished scholar and a cultivated gentleman. Seiior Don Jose M. Lafragua, Minister or Secretary of the Foreign Office, was a lawyer by profession, of high literary attainments, an historian, and a statesman of much experience. He was a fine type of the old Spanish hidalgo, courtly in his manners, always dressed in a black broadcloth suit, with a stiff stock about the neck, and wore colored spectacles. The following, somewhat abbreviated, was the introductory part of our first meeting and conversation. I was accompanied to the Foreign Office by the Secretary of the Legation, who spoke Spanish fluently. After being presented and seated, the Minister addressed me an inquiry in Spanish.

The Secretary interpreted it: "The Minister says he hopes Your Excellency is well."

I replied: "Tell the Minister that I am in perfect health."

The Secretary to the Minister: "His Excellency requests me to say that he is in perfect health."

Another inquiry from the Minister in Spanish which the Secretary interpreted: " The Minister desires to be informed as to the state of health of Seiiora de Foster."

I replied : ''Say to the Minister that I am pleased to inform him that Mrs. Foster is very well."

The Secretary to the Minister : " His Excellency says he is pleased to inform the Minister that Mrs. Foster is very well."

Another question from the Minister interpreted by the Secretary: "The Minister asks respecting the health of His Excellency's children."^

I answered : " Kindly assure the Minister that my children are in good health."

The Secretary to the Minister : " His Excellency asks me to assure the Minister that his children are in good health."

The Minister then drew from a side-pocket a beautiful cigarette-case, opened it, and, extending it to me, said in Spanish interpreted by the Secretary, "Will His Excellency do me the favor to accept a cigarette? "