in and there
to deliver this letter. He will have with him secretaries
and interpreters.

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 A