The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2004

Sewards on and not survived. John C. Myers, sent to China in 1876 as consul general, had noticed that George Seward lived above his means, and communicated his suspi- cions to State. He was promptly sent home. G. Wiley Wells, an ex-con- gressman from Mississippi, had met a similar fate when he demonstrated excessive zeal in matters pertaining to George Seward. As Mosby awaited a reply to his letter to Fred Seward, he began to look harder at his fellow consuls in the Orient. Among ship captains, the name of David B. Sickels, U.S. consul at Bangkok, was often mentioned pejorative- ly. Sickels, in fact, no longer even lived in Bangkok: he had moved to Singapore, leaving the consulate under the charge of a former Hong Kong vagrant named Torrey. In March 1879, Mosby wrote to General T.C.H. Smith, a Hayes intimate, urging the president to act on the matter. “Nearly all the American consulates out here have a horrible reputa- tion,” he explained to Smith. The American consuls, he said, were a “scaly set,” and a “disgrace to the country.” He felt “humiliated every day,” he wrote, at being obliged to deal with them. “If the president does not clean out this Augean sta- ble,” Mosby told Smith, “it will be the subject of congressional investi- gation. Better let his administration get the credit of it than the Democratic Party.” Apparently Fred Seward ignored Mosby’s letter: Bailey was con- firmed as consul general in China and George Seward escaped impeachment. Mosby confided to G. Wiley Wells, according to the New York Sun of Oct. 7, 1879: “I am in for the war, and intend either to purge the public service of these scoundrels or go out myself.” Mosby was unlikely to be removed from his post, being far more dangerous prowling about congressional corridors than bottled up on Hong Kong Island. But efforts were made to silence him, and this brought the press out. “The [new] consul,” noted the China Mail in July 1879, “has evidently made up his mind to place things consular upon an entirely new platform.” Colonel Mosby, said the Mail , was “a man amongst men,” and a “consul among consuls.” The Press Turns Up the Pressure Back home, the press had begun to run with the story of consular corrup- tion andMosby’s efforts to stop it. The National Republican noted in Septem- ber 1879: “The latest revelations in the matter of Bailey … only emphasize the unfortunate position in which the State Department is placed by its efforts to shield Seward and Bailey.” The Republican added pointedly: “It is very strongly charged that the department shields Bailey because Minister Seward must stand or fall by the former.” The Hartford Evening Post of Sept. 29 suggested that the State Depart- ment would have to ease up onMosby. It had come to light that the ex-guer- rilla was being censured less for the substance of his charges than for his refusal to observe channels of authori- ty, and especially for his new insistence upon writing directly to President Hayes. Mosby, argued the Post , could not be dismissed for such infractions. “If Mosby should be turned out because of his activity in the matter,” said the paper, “it would incline people to think that he was sacrificed because of his zeal in pursuit of a corrupt offi- cial. … People would honor Mosby for the course he has taken, and, com- ing home with a fistful of facts, he would become an exceedingly trou- blesome customer for the Seward family.” Not all of Mosby’s growing press coverage was supportive. He was ridiculed in a letter published in the National Republican for having “orga- nized himself into a widespread smelling committee,” to sniff through all the consular corners of the East. He was accused of trying to make a reputation out of a “cloud of fragrant scandal.” It was alleged, according to the Cincinnati Commercial of Oct. 2, 1879, that he had annoyed the presi- dent to the point that Hayes had told him he was “no longer engaged in the 62 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 Other U.S. diplomats in the Orient had taken the Sewards on and not survived. John Singleton Mosby during his service in Hong Kong. Reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.