AMERICAN RELATIONS WITH COREA.
America became a commercial rival to Chō-sen as early as 1757, when the
products of Connecticut and Massachusetts lay side by side with Corean
imports in the markets of Peking and Canton. Ginseng, the most precious
drug in the Chinese pharmacopœia, had been for ages brought from
Manchuria and the neighboring peninsula, where, on the mountains, the
oldest and richest roots are found.
The Dutch traders, at once noticing the insatiable demand for the famed
remedy, sought all over the world for a supply. The sweetish and
mucilaginous root, though considered worthless by Europeans, was then
occasionally bringing its weight in gold, and usually seven times its
weight in silver, at Peking, and the merchants in the annual embassy
from Seoul were reaping a rich harvest. Besides selling the younger and
less valuable crop in its natural condition, they had factories in
which the two-legged roots—which to the Asiatic imagination suggested
the figure of the human body they were meant to refresh—were so
manipulated as to take on the appearance of age, thus enhancing their
price in the market.
Suddenly the Corean market was broken. Stimulated by the Dutch
merchants at Albany, the Indians of Massachusetts had found the fleshy
root growing abundantly on the hills around Stockbridge in
Massachusetts. Taking it to Albany, they exchanged it for hardware,
trinkets, and rum. While the Dutch domines were scandalized at the
drunken revels of the “Yankee” Indians, who equalled the Mohawks in
their inebriation, good Jonathan Edwards at Stockbridge was grieving
over the waywardness of his dusky flock, because they had gone wild
over ginseng-hunting.
The Hollanders, shipping the bundled roots on their galliots down the
Hudson, and thence to Amsterdam and London, sold them to the British
East India Company at a profit of five hundred per cent. Landed at
Canton, and thence carried to Peking, American ginseng broke the
market, forced the price to a shockingly low figure, and dealt a heavy
blow to the Corean monopoly.
Henceforth a steady stream of ginseng—now found in limitless quantities
in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys—poured into China. Though far
inferior to the best article, it (Aralia quinquefolia) is sufficiently
like it in taste and real or imaginary qualities to rival the root of
Chō-sen, which is not of the very highest grade.
Less than a generation had passed from the time that the western end of
Massachusetts had any influence on Corea or China, before there was
brought from the far East an herb that influenced the colony at her
other end, far otherwise than commercially. Massachusetts had sent
ginseng to Canton, China now sent tea to Massachusetts. The herb from
Amoy was pitched into the sea by men dressed and painted like the
Indians, and the Revolution followed.
The war for independence over, Captain John Greene, in the ship Empress
of China, sailed from New York, February 22, 1784. Major Samuel Shaw,
the supercargo, without government aid or recognition, established
American trade with China, living at Canton during part of the year
1786 and the whole of 1787 and 1788. Having been appointed consul by
President Washington in 1789, while on a visit home, Major Shaw
returned to China in an entirely new ship, the Massachusetts, built,
navigated, and owned by American citizens. At Canton he held the office
of consul certainly until the year 1790, and presumably until his death
in 1794. This first consul of the United States in China received his
commission from Congress, on condition that he should “not be entitled
to receive any salary, fees, or emoluments whatever.”
Animated by the spirit of independence, and a laudable ambition, the
resolute citizen of the New World declared that “the Americans must
have tea, and they seek the most lucrative market for their precious
root ginseng.” [38]
It was ginseng and tea—an exchange of the materials for drink, a barter
of tonics—that brought the Americans and Chinese, and finally the
Americans and Coreans together.
Cotton was the next American raw material exported to China, beginning
in 1791. In 1842 the loaded ships sailed direct from Alabama to Canton,
on the expansion of trade after the Opium War.
The idea now began to dawn upon some minds that it was high time that
Japan and Corea should be opened to American commerce.
The first public man who gave this idea official expression was the
Honorable Zadoc Pratt, then member of the House of Representatives from
the Eleventh (now the Fifteenth) Congressional District of New York. As
chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs, he introduced in Congress,
February 12, 1845, a proposition for the extension of American commerce
by the despatch of a mission to Japan and Corea as follows:
“It is hereby recommended that immediate measures be taken for
effecting commercial arrangements with the empire of Japan and the
kingdom of Corea,” etc. (Congressional Globe, vol. xiv., p. 294).
The Mexican war was then already looming as a near possibility, and
under its shadow, the wisdom of sending even a part of our little navy
was doubted, and Mr. Pratt’s bill failed to pass.
None of the American commanders, Glyn, Biddle, John Rodgers, or even
Perry, seem to have ventured into Corean waters, and Commodore Perry
has scarcely mentioned the adjacent kingdom in the narrative of the
treaty expedition which he wrote, and his pastor, the Rev. Francis L.
Hawks, edited. In truth, the sealed country was at that time almost as
little known as that of Corea or Coreæ, which Josephus mentions, or
that province of India which bears the same name.
The commerce which sprang up, not only between our country and China
and Japan, but also that carried on in American vessels between
Shanghae, Chifu, Tien-tsin, and Niu-chwang in North China, and the
Japanese ports, made the navigation of Corean waters a necessity.
Sooner or later shipwrecks must occur, and the question of the humane
treatment of American citizens cast on Corean shores came up before our
government for settlement, as it had long before in the case of Japan.
When it did begin to rain it poured. Within one year the Corean
government having three American cases to deal with, gave a startling
illustration of its policy—with the distressed, kindness; with the
robber, powder and iron; with the invader, death and annihilation.
On June 24, 1866, the American schooner Surprise was wrecked off the
coast (of Whang-hai?). The approach of any foreign vessel was
especially dangerous at this time, as the crews might be mistaken for
Frenchmen and killed by the people from patriotic impulses.
Nevertheless Captain McCaslin and his men with their Chinese cook,
after being first well catechised by the local magistrate, and secondly
by a commissioner sent from Seoul, were kindly treated and well fed,
and provided with clothing, medicines, and tobacco. By orders of
Tai-wen Kun, they were escorted on horseback to Ai-chiu, and, after
being feasted there, were conducted safely to the Border Gate. Thence,
after a hard journey via Mukden, they got to Niu-chwang and to the
United States consul. A gold watch was voted by Congress to the Rev.
Père Gillie for his kindness to these men while in Mukden.
From a passage in one of the letters of the Corean Government, we
gather that the crew of still another American ship were hospitably
treated after shipwreck, but of the circumstances we are ignorant. Of
the General Sherman affair more is known.
The General Sherman was an American schooner, owned by a Mr. Preston,
who was making a voyage for health. She was consigned to Messrs.
Meadows & Co., a British firm in Tien-tsin, and reached that port July,
1866. After delivery of her cargo, an arrangement was made by the firm
and owner to load her with goods likely to be saleable in Corea, such
as cotton cloth, glass, tin-plate, etc., and despatch her there on an
experimental voyage in the hope of thus opening the country to
commerce.
Leaving Tien-tsin July 29th, the vessel touched at Chifu, and took on
board Mr. Hogarth, a young Englishman, and a Chinese shroff, [39]
familiar with Corean money. The complement of the vessel was now five
white foreigners, and nineteen Malay and Chinese sailors. The owner,
Preston, the master, Page, and the mate, Wilson, were Americans. The
Rev. Mr. Thomas, who had learned Corean from refugees at Chifu, and had
made a trip to Whang-hai on a Chinese junk, went on board as a
passenger to improve his knowledge of the language. [40]
From the first the character of the expedition was suspected, because
the men were rather too heavily armed for a peaceful trading voyage. It
was believed in China that the royal coffins in the tombs of Ping-an,
wherein more than one dynasty of Chō-sen lay buried, were of solid
gold; and it was broadly hinted that the expedition had something to do
with these.
The schooner, whether merchant or invader, leaving Chifu, took a
west-northwest direction, and made for the mouth of the Ta Tong River.
There they met the Chinese captain of a Chifu junk, who agreed to pilot
them up the river. He continued on the General Sherman during four
tides, or two days. Then leaving her, he returned to the river’s mouth,
and sailed back to Chifu, where he was met and questioned by the firm
of Meadows & Co.
No further direct intelligence was ever received from the unfortunate
party.
The time chosen for this “experimental trading voyage” was strangely
inopportune. The whole country was excited over the expected invasion
of the French, and to a Corean—especially in the north, where not one
in ten thousand had ever seen a white foreigner—any man dressed in
foreign clothes would be taken for a Frenchman, as were even the
Japanese crew of the gunboat Unyo Kuan in 1875. An armed vessel would
certainly be taken for a French ship, and made the object of patriotic
vengeance.
According to one report, the hatches of the schooner were fastened
down, after the crew had been driven beneath, and set on fire.
According to another, all were decapitated. The Coreans burned the wood
work for its iron, and took the cannon for models.
During this same month of August, 1866, the Jewish merchant Ernest
Oppert, in the steamer Emperor, entered the Han River, and had secret
interviews with some of the native Christians, who wrote to him in
Latin. Communications were also held with the governor of Kang-wa, and
valuable charts were made by Captain James. One month later, in
September, the French war-vessels made their appearance.
The U. S. steamship Wachusett, despatched by Admiral Rowan to inquire
into the Sherman affair, reached Chifu January 14, 1867, and is said to
have taken on board the Chinese pilot of the General Sherman, and the
Rev. Mr. Corbett, an American missionary, to act as interpreter.
Leaving Chifu January 21st, they cast anchor, January 23d, at the mouth
of the large inlet opposite Sir James Hall group, which indents
Whang-hai province. This estuary they erroneously supposed to be the Ta
Tong River leading to Ping-an city, whereas they were half a degree too
far south, as the chart made by themselves shows.
A letter was despatched, through the official of Cow Island, near the
anchorage, to the prefect of the large city nearest the place of the
Sherman affair, demanding that the murderers be produced on the deck of
the Wachusett. The city of Ping-an was about seventy-five miles
distant. The letter probably went to Hai-chiu, the capital of the
province. Five days elapsed before the answer arrived, during which the
surveying boats were busy. Many natives were met and spoken to, who all
told one story, that the Sherman’s crew were murdered by the people,
and not by official instigation. [41]
On the 29th, an officer from one of the villages of the district
appeared, “whose presence inspired the greatest dread among the
people.” An interview was held, during which Commander Shufeldt
possessed his soul in patience.
To the polished American’s eye, the Corean’s manner was haughty and
imperious. He was utterly beyond the reach of reason and of argument.
In his person he seemed “the perfect type of a cruel and vindictive
savage.” The Corean’s impressions of the American, not being in print,
are unknown.
It is unnecessary to give the details of the fruitless interview. The
American could get neither information nor satisfaction; the gist of
the Corean reiteration was, “Go away as soon as possible.” Commander
Shufeldt, bound by his orders, could do nothing more, and being
compelled also by stress of weather, came away.
In 1867, Dr. S. Wells Williams, Secretary of the Legation of the United
States at Peking, succeeded in obtaining an interview with a member of
the Corean embassy, who told him that after the General Sherman got
aground, she careened over, as the tide receded, and her crew landed to
guard or float her. The natives gathered around them, and before long
an altercation took place between the two parties, which soon led to
blows and bloodshed. A general attack began upon the foreigners, in
which every man was killed by the mob. About twenty of the natives lost
their lives. Dr. Williams’ comment is, “The evidence goes to uphold the
presumption that they invoked their sad fate by some rash or violent
act toward the natives.” Dr. Williams also met a Chinese pilot, Yu
Wautai, who reported that in 1867 he had seen the hull of a foreign
vessel lying on the south bank of the river, about ten miles up from
the sea. The hull was full of water. A Corean from Sparrow Island had
told him that the murder of the Sherman’s crew was entirely the work of
the people and farmers, and not of the magistrates or soldiery.
Still determined to learn something of the fate of the Sherman’s crew,
since reports were current that two or more of them were still alive
and in prison, Admiral Rowan, in May, 1867, despatched another vessel,
which this time got into the right river. Commander Febiger, in the U.
S. steamship Shenandoah, besides surveying the “Ping Yang Inlet,”
learned this version of the affair:
A foreign vessel arrived in the river two years before. The local
officials went on board and addressed the two foreign officers of the
ship in respectful language. The latter grossly insulted the native
dignitaries, i.e., “they turned round and went to sleep.”
A man on board, whom they spoke of as “Tony, [42] a Frenchman,” used
violent and very impolite language toward them. The Coreans treated
their visitors kindly, but warned them of their danger, and the
unlawfulness of penetrating into, or trading in the country.
Nevertheless, the foreigners went up the river to Ping-an city, where
they seized the “adjutant-general’s” ship, put him in chains, and
proceeded to rob the junks and their crews. The people of the city
aroused to wrath, attacked the foreign ship with fire-arms and cannon;
they set adrift fire-rafts, and even made a hand-to-hand fight with
pikes, knives, and swords. The foreigners fought desperately, but the
Coreans overpowered them. Finally, the ship, having caught fire, blew
up with a terrific report.
This story was not of course believed by the American officers, but
even the best wishers and friends of the Ping-an adventurers cannot
stifle suspicion of either cruelty or insult to the natives. Knowing
the character of certain members of the party, and remembering the
kindness shown to the crew of the Surprise, few of the unprejudiced
will believe that the General Sherman’s crew were murdered without
cause.