The Foreign Service Journal, May 2009

During his time in Constantinople, Schuyler helped the new Bulgarian leadership draft their country’s first constitution. He also hosted various high-ranking American officials, in- cluding former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, who visited in March 1878. It should come as no surprise that the Ottoman Empire declared Schuy- ler persona non grata in the spring of 1878. Expelled from Constantinople, Schuyler became consul in Birming- ham, where he completed the first U.S. translation of Tolstoy’s The Cos- sacks (1878). In the summer of 1879, Schuyler became the U.S. consul gen- eral in Rome. But his achievements in the Balk- ans were never forgotten. On April 4, 1879, Exarch Antim I, the president of the first Bulgarian National Assembly, wrote Schuyler the following note upon Bulgaria’s independence: “The free Bulgarian nation hastens to thank you heartily for your great services, and to assure you that your honored name will hold an enviable place in the his- tory of the liberation of our nation.” Schuyler’s next assignments were as chargé d’affaires in Romania (1880- 1882) and then as the first U.S. minis- ter to Greece, Romania and Serbia (1882-1884), based in Athens. But in July 1884, Schuyler was forced to leave the U.S. Consular Service when bud- get cuts eliminated his new position as minister. (He was not interested in working in Washington, D.C.) Final Years Schuyler returned to the United States in November 1884 to teach at both Johns Hopkins and Cornell uni- versities. During his time in academia, Schuyler turned his lectures into one of the very first published studies of the U.S. diplomatic and consular serv- ices: American Diplomacy and the Furtherance of Commerce (1886). As early as 1881, Schuyler became a vocal advocate for the merger of the two services — a reform that eventually took place with the Rogers Act of 1924, which created the modern U.S. For- eign Service. Because his wife had a particular fondness for Italy, the couple moved to Alassio on the Italian Riviera in March M A Y 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 39 While Leo Tolstoy finished his work on War and Peace , Schuyler helped reorganize his library.