The Foreign Service Journal, November 2011

It was not a good time for Bailey’s hon- esty to be brought into question and, as Mosby knew, it was never a good time to tangle with the Sewards. Other U.S. diplomats in the Orient had taken the Sewards on and not sur- vived. 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 ex- cessive zeal in matters pertaining to George Seward. While Mosby awaited a reply to his letter to Fred Seward, he began to look harder at his fellow consuls in the Ori- ent. Among ship captains, the name of David B. Sickels, U.S. consul at Bang- kok, was often mentioned pejoratively. 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 J.W. Torrey. In March 1879, Mosby wrote to General T.C.H. Smith, a Hayes inti- mate, urging the president to act on the matter. “Nearly all the American consulates out here have a horrible reputation,” he explained. The Amer- ican 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 stable,” Mosby told Smith, “it will be the subject of congressional investigation. Better let his adminis- tration get the credit of it than the Democratic Party.” Apparently Fred Seward ignored Mosby’s letter. Bailey was confirmed as consul general in China and George Seward escaped impeachment. Mos- by confided to G. Wiley Wells, accord- ing 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 danger- ous prowling about congressional cor- ridors than bottled up on Hong Kong Island. But efforts were made to si- lence 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 con- N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 49 Other U.S. diplomats in the Orient had taken the Sewards on and not survived.