Nancy Heywood, Paula Richter, and the rest of the staff of the Essex Institute worked carefully and patiently with me during my stay in Salem and through the ensuing months of writing. I am deeply grateful.
The staffs of the New York Public Library, the National Archives and Library of Congress in Washington, Sterling Library at Yale University, the New-York Historical Society, and the New York Society Library all rendered invaluable assistance. I am especially indebted to Angie Speicer at the National Archives, who located obscure materials at a time when the Archives’ collections were in a state of confusion as a result of their being moved and photographed for microfilm.
Li Jing at Rice University, Huang Peiling at Columbia University, and Kan Liang at Yale University all provided timely translation services. Their renderings of classical Chinese were clear and of the utmost importance.
Perrin Wright and Katy Chevigny proved skilled research assistants, and I have always been impressed by their many talents. Lucy Hanbury in London was able to locate a group of critical documents on short notice, and I thank her.
Suzanne Gluck gave this project its first encouragement, and Ann Godoff gave it the green light, as well as the benefit of her sage advice. They have been more than agent and editor.
I am grateful to Linda Sykes at Photosearch, Inc., for helping me locate many images.
In the category of a new way to pay old debts, I wish to mention Donald Wilson, formerly of Friends Seminary, Reed Browning of Kenyon College, and Robert Scally of New York University, all of whom encouraged me to pursue my interests during difficult periods, and who helped me understand that an interest in history is not inseparable from a life in academia.
Finally, many people helped me keep body and soul together during the writing of this book. I wish in this connection to thank the rest of my family, as well as James Chace, Tom Pivinski, Rob Cowley, and especially Gwyn Lurie.
NOTES
PROLOGUE
1. one American soldier: Herman N. Archer, writing in the Feature section of the Boston Sunday Post, August 21, 1927.
CHAPTER I
1. an Englishman: Augustus F. Lindley, in his Ti-Ping Tien Kwoh: The History of the Ti-Ping Revolution (London: Day & Son, 1866), vol. 1, pp.71–72 (hereafter Lindley). Also taken from Lindley are the descriptions of the Taiping palaces and official ceremonies.
the Chung Wang: The best translation and edition of his brief autobiography, written quickly before his execution in 1864, was done by Charles Curwen in his Taiping Rebel: The Deposition of Li Hsiu-ch’eng (London: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p.114 (hereafter Curwen).
2. the Chung Wang: Curwen, p.115.
3. the Chung Wang: Curwen, p.115.
4. one British consular official: Thomas Taylor Meadows, in his The Chinese and Their Rebellions (London: Smith, Elder & Company, 1856), pp.307–308 (hereafter Meadows).
one Western missionary: the Reverend Dr. Bridgeman, quoted in Lindley, vol. 1, p.215.
5. one Western expert: Walter H. Medhurst, in his The Foreigner in Far Cathay (New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Company, 1873), p.180.
6. the Chung Wang: Curwen, p.111.
7. the Chung Wang: Curwen, p.116.
8. the Chung Wang: Curwen, p.116.
9. the Chung Wang: Curwen, p.118.
a pair of the emperor’s senior servants: Their memorial of June 26, 1860, is in the Ch’ou-pan I-wu shih-mo [A Complete Record of the Management of Barbarian Affairs] (Beijing, 1930). Volumes in this series are arranged by emperors; this quotation is in volume 52, covering the reign of Hsien-feng, on pages 15b–16. Future citations (including those for the Emperor T’ung-chih series, TC) will be abbreviated, in this case to IWSM, HF 52, pp.15b–16, June 26, 1860.
10. one early historian: Francis Lister Potts, in his A Short History of Shanghai (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, Ltd., 1928), p.19 (hereafter Potts).
11. one visitor: Laurence Oliphant, quoted in Potts, p.42.
12. drunken soldiers: North China Herald (hereafter NCH), May 26, 1860.
13. imperial corruption: NCH, January 28, 1860.
14. the rebel advance and executed spies: NCH, June 2, 1860.
15. Hsüeh Huan: NCH, July 21, 1860.
16. Wu Hsü: NCH, July 21, 1860.
Li Hung-chang on Wu: Stanley Spector, Li Hung-chang and the Huai Army: A Study in 19th Century Regionalism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964), pp.56–57.
Wu Hsü as a mouthpiece: NCH, July 21, 1860.
17. the British proclamation: reprinted in Andrew Wilson, The “Ever-Victorious Army” (London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1868), p.61 (hereafter Wilson).
18. the “grand national principle”: NCH, July 21, 1860.
19. the “Cinderella” settlement: Potts, p.63.
the American minister and the consul: John Ward to Lewis Cass, February 22, 1860, “Despatches from U.S. Ministers to China,” Record Group 59, microfilm 92, roll 21, U. S. National Archives.
20. Augustus A. Hayes: in his “Another Unwritten Chapter of the Late War,” in International Review, December 1881, p.521 (hereafter Hayes, “Chapter”).
21. Charles E. Hill and the “Troy dredging machine”: according to Daniel J. Macgowan, in his “Memoirs of Generals Ward, Burgevine, and the Ever-Victorious Army,” Far East, vol. 2 (1877), p.104 (hereafter Macgowan). one American official: George F. Seward, whose comments can be found in Senate Executive Documents, 45th Congress, 2nd Session, no. 48, pp.24–25 (hereafter SED 45:2:48).
Hill on his own dealings: part of his testimony in a later lawsuit against Wu Hsü, which can also be found in SED 45:2:48, p.29.
Hill on Yang Fang: SED 45:2:48, p.30.
22. Gough on Ward: as recalled by Wu Hsü, in the Wu Hsü tang-an chung ti T’ai-p’ing t’ien-kuo shih liao hsuan-chi (Selections of Historical Materials Concerning the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in Wu Hsü’s Archives) (Beijing, 1958), p.125 (hereafter WHTA).
CHAPTER II
1. one great-grandmother: Mary Harrod Northend, in her Memories of Old Salem, Drawn from the Letters of a Great-grandmother (New York: Moffat, Yard, 1917), p.50.
2. Robert S. Rantoul: in his “Frederick Townsend Ward,” Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, vol. 44 (1908), p.19 (hereafter Rantoul). The Essex Institute became the repository for the few of Ward’s personal effects that made it back to America and were not destroyed by his family. A library dealing with Chinese history and culture at the institute is named after Ward, following the terms of a bequest by his sister Elizabeth.
one history: Ralph D. Paine, in his Ships and Sailors of Old Salem (Boston: Charles G. Lauriat, 1924), p.422.
Macgowan: Macgowan, p.102.
3. Ward’s trip to Beverly: Rantoul, p.9.
4. Charles Schmidt: writing as P.C., Schmidt published “Memoirs of the Late General Ward, the Hero of Sung-Kiang, and of his Aide-de-Camp Vincente Macanaya” in Friend of China in 1863; this quotation is on p.2 (hereafter Schmidt, P.C.).
5. assessments by Ward’s peers: Rantoul, pp.16–17.
6. the Chinese tracts: John L. Nevins, trans., “A Death Blow to Corrupt Doctrines: A Plain Statement of Facts” (Shanghai, 1870), pp.11–13 (hereafter Nevins).
7. a British officer: J. Lamprey, in his “The Economy of the Chinese Army,” Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, vol. 11, no. 46 (1867), p.406.
8. one honest mandarin: Henry McAleavy, The Modern History of China (New York: Praeger, 1967), p.45 (hereafter McAleavy).
9. one official: McAleavy, p.46.
10. the Chinese on war with Britain: McAleavy, pp.49–50.
11. one American official: S. Wells Williams, quoted in Tyler Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia (New York: Macmillan, 1922), p.322.
12. one Chinese pamphlet: Nevins, pp.10, 18
Meadows: Meadows, p.121.
13. one Garibaldi biographer: Denis Mack Smith, in his Garibaldi (New York: Knopf, 1953), p.51.
14. Schmidt: Schmidt, P.C., pp.2–3.
15. Hung’s
rantings: Eugene Powers Boardman, Christian Influence Upon the Ideology of the Taiping Rebellion (New York: Octagon Books, 1972), p.13 (hereafter Boardman).
16. Issachar Roberts: Meadows, p.192.
17. anti-Manchu broadsides: McAleavy, p.71.
18. Hung: Boardman, pp.66, 79.
19. one anti-Christian pamphleteer: Nevins, p.36.
one modern Taiping expert: Boardman, p.126.
20. Richard Harding Davis: in his Real Soldiers of Fortune (New York: Scribner’s, 1906), p.202 (hereafter Davis).
21. “extravagant humor”: Edward Wallace, Destiny and Glory (New York: Coward and McCann, 1957), p.150.
Davis: Davis, p.202.
one deserter: Arthur Woodward, The Republic of Lower California, 1853–1854 (Los Angeles: Dawson’s, 1966), p.67.
22. Schmidt: Schmidt, P.C., p.3.
Rantoul: Rantoul, p.23.
23. Humphrey Marshall: Foster Rhea Dulles, China and America: The Story of Their Relations Since 1784 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946), p.49 (hereafter Dulles).
President Franklin Pierce: Dulles, p.50.
Marshall’s reverse: Dulles, p.51.
24. Ward on usurpation: This comment is contained in one of the two surviving letters from Ward to Anson Burlingame, American minister to China. This letter is dated August 16, 1862, and can be found among the Burlingame Papers in the Library of Congress.
one Canton official: Dulles, p.46.
the reply to McLane: Dulles, p.56.
25. Elizabeth Ward: Rantoul, p.24.
Hayes: in his “An American Soldier in China,” Atlantic Monthly, 57 (1886), p.195 (hereafter Hayes, “Soldier”).
26. William S. Wetmore: in his Recollections of Life in the Far East (Shanghai, 1894), p.33.
27. one British officer: Charles George Gordon, quoted in Richard J. Smith, Mercenaries and Mandarins: The Ever-Victorious Army in Nineteenth Century China (Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, 1978), p.85 (hereafter Smith, Mercenaries).
one English official: Chaloner Alabaster, in a memorandum enclosed in a dispatch from Consul W. H. Medhurst to Lord Russell, February 4, 1863. British Parliamentary Papers (hereafter BPP), vol. 63, 1864 (3295).
28. Ward on Lincoln and Davis, Ward on “the fate of war”: Ward to Burlingame, August 16, 1862, Burlingame Papers, Library of Congress.
CHAPTER III
1. at least one authority: Robert Harry Detrick, in his unpublished dissertation, “Henry Andrea Burgevine in China: A Biography” (University of Indiana, 1968), p.16 (hereafter Detrick).
2. Burgevine: Detrick, p.13.
Burgevine: Detrick, pp.14–15.
3. Macgowan: Macgowan, p.104.
Ward: Ward to Burlingame, August 16, 1862, Burlingame Papers, Library of Congress.
one contemporary Shanghai author: An anonymous author with an apparently detailed knowledge of Ward and his corps wrote The Suppression of the Taiping Rebellion in the Departments Around Shanghai (Shanghai: Kelly & Co., 1871), p. ii (hereafter Suppression).
4. Lord Elgin: quoted in John S. Gregory, Great Britain and the Taipings (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), p.80 (hereafter Gregory).
5. the Chinese request: as recalled by W. A. P. Martin and quoted in Marina Warner, The Dragon Empress (New York: Atheneum, 1972), p.48 (hereafter Warner).
6. John Ward: Dulles, p.60.
Ward the “tribute bearer”: Warner, p.49.
7. Tseng Kuo-fan: McAleavy, p.75.
8. one Westerner: Mary C. Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), p.74 (hereafter Wright).
Tseng: McAleavy, p.75.
9. the Herald: NCH, October 31, 1868.
10. Tseng: Smith, Mercenaries, p.47.
one American diplomat: George F. Seward, whose “Comments on Li Hung-chang” of September 21, 1894, can be found among his papers at the New-York Historical Society.
11. Alabaster: Medhurst to Russell, February 4, 1863, enclosed, BPP, vol. 63, 1864 (3295).
Schmidt: Schmidt, P.C., p.6.
12. one Ward biographer: Elliot Paul Carthage, Jr., in his unpublished dissertation, “The Role of Frederick Townsend Ward in the Suppression of the Taiping Rebellion” (St. John’s University, 1976), p.64.
13. anonymous: Suppression, p. i.
14. one observer: Suppression, p. ii.
15. one British observer: William Mesny, quoted in Hallett Abend, The God from the West (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1947), p.120 (hereafter Abend). Abend, a New York Times correspondent in China, had a journalist’s penchant for embellishment, and his biography of Ward must be used with care.
Schmidt: Schmidt, P.C., p.7.
one contemporary’s assessment: Suppression, p. i.
16. Albert L. Freeman: quoted in Richard J. Smith’s dissertation, “Barbarian Officers of Imperial China” (University of California at Davis, 1972), p.67 (hereafter Smith, Dissertation).
17. Hayes: Hayes, “Soldier,” p.196; Hayes, “Chapter,” p.520.
18. Wilson: Wilson, p.127.
one of Ward’s successors: Charles George Gordon, quoted in Smith, Mercenaries, pp.129–130.
19. Macgowan: Macgowan, p.105.
20. Macgowan: Macgowan, p.104.
Ward: Ward to Burlingame, August 16, 1862, Burlingame Papers, Library of Congress.
21. Schmidt: Schmidt, P.C., “Vincente Macanaya,” the second part of Schmidt’s pieces for Friend of China, p.3 (hereafter Schmidt, P.C., “Vincente”).
22. Meadows on execution: Meadows to Bruce, July 5, 1860, Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 228/291.
Meadows to Smith, Ojea: Enclosures 1 and 2, in Meadows to Bruce, July 5, 1860, FO 228/291.
23. Meadows to Bruce: Meadows to Bruce, July 5, 1860, FO 228/291.
24. Ward: Ward to Burlingame, September 10, 1862, Burlingame Papers, Library of Congress.
one expert: Prescott Clarke, in Prescott Clarke and Frank H. H. King, eds, A Research Guide to China Coast Newspapers (Cambridge, Mass.: East Asian Research Center, 1965), p.8.
25. the Herald: NCH, July 14, 21, 1860.
26. Ward: Ward to Burlingame, September 10, 1862, Burlingame Papers, Library of Congress.
27. Palmerston: see Kenneth Bourne, The Foreign Policy of Victorian England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp.274–275.
28. Lindley: Lindley, vol. 1, pp. vii–viii.
the Chung Wang: Curwen, pp.134–135.
Wilson: Wilson, pp.56–57.
29. Lindley: Lindley, vol. 2, pp.585–586.
30. one visitor: Suppression, p.17.
Lindley: Lindley, vol. 1, pp.345–346.
31. the Kan Wang: in Walter Lay, trans., The Kan Wang’s Sketch of the Rebellion (Shanghai: North China Herald Office, 1865), p.6 (hereafter Lay).
32. Wilson: Wilson, p.63.
33. Schmidt: Schmidt, P.C., pp.8–9.
34. the Chung Wang: Curwen, p.119.
J. F. C. Fuller: J. F. C. Fuller, Grant and Lee (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957), p.250.
35. Bogle: Rantoul, p.51.
36. “come on, boys”: This line may well be apocryphal, but it was commonly repeated and became standard in popular treatments of Ward’s life.
37. the Herald: NCH, July 21, 1860.
38. Lone expert: Curwen, p.14.
CHAPTER IV
1. John Hinton: Enclosure 4 in Bruce to Russell, May 23, 1861, “Deposition of John Hinton, May 2, 1861,” BPP, vol. 63, 1862.
2. one observer: quoted in William Sykes, The Taeping Rebellion in China:
3. Its Origin, Progress and Present Condition (London: Warren Hall & Co., 1863), p.56 (hereafter Sykes).
4. Macgowan: Macgowan, p.120.
Wu Hsü: WHTA, pp.138–141.
5. Macgowan: Macgowan, p.120.
Schmidt: in his “A Note on Ward’s Character,” which can be found in Dispatches of U.S. Consuls in Shanghai (hereafter DUSCS), microfilm 112, roll 5, record group 59, National Archives.
Macgowan: Macgowan, p.120.
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6. Schmidt: Schmidt, P.C., “Vincente,” p.2.
the Herald: NCH, August 4, 1860.
7. Consul Smith: enclosure 3 in Meadows to Bruce, August 6, 1860, FO 228/292.
Meadows: Meadows to Bruce, August 6, 1860, FO 228/292.
8. Wilson: Wilson, p.64.
9. the Chung Wang: Curwen, p.118.
10. Schmidt: Schmidt, P.C., “Vincente,” p.2.
11. Hayes: Hayes, “Soldier,” p.194.
12. the Chung Wang: NCH, August 18, 1860.
13. the Herald: NCH, August 18, 1860.
14. the Herald: NCH, August 25, 1860.
15. Hayes: Hayes, “Soldier,” p.195.
16. angry Westerner: NCH, August 25, 1860.
the Herald: NCH, August 25, 1860.
17. the Chung Wang: Lindley, vol. 1, p.283.
18. Bruce: Bruce to Russell, September 4, 1860, BPP, vol. 63, 1861.
19. letter: NCH, August 18, 1860.
20. Wu: enclosure in Meadows to Bruce, September 28, 1860, FO 228/292.
21. Meadows: Meadows to Bruce, September 28, 1860, FO 228/292.
22. the Herald: NCH, October 27, 1860.
23. Hsien-feng: Warner, p.51.
24. Manchu officials: Warner, p.53.
Prince Kung: McAleavy, p.100.
25. Gordon: Paul Charrier, Gordon of Khartoum (New York: Lancer, 1965), p.26.
26. Hsüeh Huan: Gregory, p.92.
27. Roberts on his trappings: NCH, September 7, 1861.
Lindley: Lindley, vol. 2, pp.566, 567.
28. Hope: Rantoul, p.42.
29. Hope: Gregory, p.97.
the Herald: NCH, March 2, 1861.
30. diary: Yao Chi, “Hsiao ts’ang-sang chi,” in Hsiang Ta, ed., T’ai-ping t’ien-kuo (Peking, 1952), vol. 6, p.245.