The Foreign Service Journal, May 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2020 53 The Posting to Martinique Mr. Prentis’ posting to Martinique was borne out of a bureaucratic muddle within the context of the old patronage system that governed consular appointments. In 1900 Pren- tis was serving in Rouen, France, when, for reasons that are unclear, he began to seek another assignment, this time in a tropical setting. It is possible that health reasons were a factor. Prentis had a heart condition, which he had developed while in active military service in the Union Army during the Civil War. He had served as a sharpshooter with the 2nd Regiment out of Vermont. Although the exact nature of his heart condition is lost to history, its effects were enough to merit his discharge, on health grounds, from the U.S. Army in September 1864. In any event, Prentis was seeking a change, and had a powerful ally in Massachusetts Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, who began actively lobbying Secretary of State John Hay on his constituent’s behalf. What followed was an interesting correspondence—documented in the September 1954 issue of The New England Quarterly —between Lodge and Hay as the latter diligently tried to secure a posting for Prentis. Hay first offered Iquique; but when he subsequently informed Lodge that the city was in faraway Chile (and not in Mexico, as the senator first believed), and that the “fees are so very little better than Rouen that the increase would, I should think, not compensate for the expenses of the journey and the remote- ness of the place,” Lodge advised Prentis against pursuing the assignment. On May 1, 1900, Hay informed Lodge that the president would nominate Prentis for Batavia, Java, instead. After a brief respite in America, Prentis departed for Batavia on August 14, 1900, via France, where he reportedly attended the Paris Exposition. At some point in the journey, he was joined by an adult son, also named Thomas, who would accompany him to Batavia and take a position there with the Standard Oil Com- pany. But there was a mix-up: Secretary Hay was not aware of it, but President McKinley had already appointed another man—a Mr. Rairden—as consul to Batavia. On learning of this, the Secretary transferred Prentis to Martinique, without seeing fit to alert Senator Lodge. Lodge was understandably upset when he eventually learned of the turn of events, but Secretary Hay assured him that Martinique “is a much better place than Batavia in all respects, and I did not dream it would be objectionable to Mr. Prentis or his friends … and certainly see no hardship in giving Mr. Prentis the promotion, whether you call it a promotion from Batavia with a salary of $1,000, or a promotion from Rouen with no