While writing is a solitary pursuit, research is not, and I owe thanks to my wife, Margaret, and our Parkside Pub regulars, particularly Jann Gumbiner, Katherine Jacobs, and Laura McFarland, who’ve exhibited remarkable patience as I’ve talked through this project; in-laws Joe and Helen Mercier, who let me use their attic space in Greece, New York, as a writing garret in the summer of 2012; my parents, Walter and Dorothy Martelle, for infusing me with a love of books and writing; James R. Wils, who provided research help at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina; Ray and Annie Herndon, Marc Midan, and Janine Lanza, who did valuable legwork for me checking Parisian archives (and a special thanks to Ray for some much-needed translation help); Cedric Guhl, Edouard Musy, and Karin Schindler of the extended Horace Porter family in Switzerland, who shared with me unpublished family papers; the staffs in the Library of Congress Manuscript Reading Room and the Newspaper Reading Room, two irreplaceable resources; the staffs of the National Archives in Washington, DC, and College Park, Maryland, particularly David Langbart and Richard Peuser, for their patience and guidance; longtime friend and former colleague Ivan Roman for his research help at the Navy Department Library, Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, DC; and archivist James Allen Knechtmann, for his assistance to both Ivan and me. Thanks, too, go to Sarah Hartwell of Baker-Berry Library, Dartmouth College; Paul Mercer, Senior Librarian, Manuscripts and Special Collections, New York State Library; and James Cheevers, US Naval Academy Museum, Annapolis, who all provided crucial confirmations of stray facts. Also to Richard H. Owens, who shared his hard-to-find book Vigilance and Virtue: A Biography of General and Ambassador Horace Porter, 1837–1921 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002), and to Susan Noftsker, a descendant of John Sherburne, for her help in deciphering some family lore. Obviously enough, their assistance does not carry a burden of blame; any errors in this work are mine and mine alone.
Thanks are also due to my editor (and author in his own right), Jerome Pohlen, as well as Mary Kravenas, publicist Meghan Miller, and the rest of the team at Chicago Review Press; and most of all to agents Jane Dystel and Miriam Goderich of Dystel & Goderich—it’s good to have you two in my corner.
Finally, it’s fitting that since these acknowledgements began with my wife, Margaret, they shall end with her, too, as my first and best reader. You’ve made this a better book and, to paraphrase a line from a movie, you’ve made me a better man.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. Details drawn from “Honors to Paul Jones,” Washington Post, January 25, 1913; “Crypt Now His Tomb,” Washington Post, January 27, 1913; and “Final Resting Place of John Paul Jones, and Persons Attending Ceremony,” Washington Times, January 25, 1913.
1. JONES: A HERO DIES
1. Details of Jones’s last days are drawn from a letter by Samuel Blackden to Jones’s sister, Janet Taylor, in Scotland, August 9, 1792, reprinted in John Paul Jones, Life of Rear-Admiral John Paul Jones (New York: American News, 1883), 388; and The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris (New York: Charles Scribner’s Son, 1888), vol. 1, 555, vol. 2, 45–46.
2. See Samuel Eliot Morison, “The Empty Wineskin,” chapter 21 in John Paul Jones: A Sailor’s Biography (Boston: Little, Brown, 1959).
3. Details are drawn from later reports after the body was recovered, reprinted in Charles W. Stewart, John Paul Jones: Commemoration at Annapolis, April 24, 1906 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1907).
2. A NEW PRESIDENT
1. “Weather Conditions,” Washington Post, March 5, 1897.
2. Details drawn from Elsie Porter Mende’s biography of her father, Horace Porter, An American Soldier and Diplomat (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1927), 168–69, and contemporary media accounts, including “March Down the Avenue,” New York Times, March 5, 1914, and “President McKinley,” Washington Post, March 5, 1914.
3. R. Hal Williams, Realigning America: McKinley, Bryan, and the Remarkable Election of 1896 (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2010), 170.
4. Mende, An American Soldier, 5–6.
5. Mende, An American Soldier, 9. This and Horace Porter Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, are the main sources for details about Porter’s pre-Civil War life.
6. Richard H. Owens, chapter 1 in Vigilance and Virtue: A Biography of General and Ambassador Horace Porter, 1837–1921 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002). My thanks to Owens for sharing with me a manuscript draft of his hard-to-find book.
7. Details on Porter’s West Point days are drawn from box 1, 1854–1860, West Point Grades, Appointment Papers, Horace Porter Papers.
8. Mende, An American Soldier, 16–17. Unless otherwise noted, the details of Porter’s Civil War years are drawn from Mende, Owens’s Vigilance and Virtue, and the Horace Porter Papers at the Library of Congress.
9. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (New York: Century, 1897), 2.
10. Mende, An American Soldier, xviii; Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 478.
11. William Baumer Jr., Not All Warriors: Portraits of 19th Century West Pointers Who Gained Fame in Other Than Military Fields (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1941; repr. 1971); see the last chapter, “Horace Porter, Diplomat.”
12. Mende, An American Soldier, 157.
13. Porter to Century magazine, November 16, 1896, box 2, Letter Book, Letters Sent, Horace Porter Papers.
14. The Elite of New York, Society List and Club Register, published annually by Elite of New York.
15. “General Horace Porter,” Bismarck Daily Record, May 16, 1896.
16. “Gen. Porter Was Host,” New York Times, June 1, 1895.
17. Lewis L. Gould, ed., American First Ladies: Their Lives and Their Legacy (New York: Routledge, 2001), 189.
18. Williams, Realigning America, 106–108.
19. Ibid., 42–43.
20. Porter to Strong, October 21, 1896, and October 28, 1896, box 2, Letter Book, August 5, 1896–October 28, 1896, Horace Porter Papers.
21. Ibid.
22. “Greatest of Parades,” New York Times, November 1, 1896.
23. “News at Headquarters,” New York Times, November 4, 1896.
24. Porter to Col. A. A. Woodhull of Denver, Colorado, December 30, 1896, box 2, Letter Book, October 28, 1896–January 16, 1897, Horace Porter Papers.
25. Porter to Colonel H. H. Prettyman in London, Ohio, November 12, 1896, box 2, Letter Book, October 28, 1896–January 16, 1897, Horace Porter Papers.
26. Porter to Woodhull, December 30, 1896, box 2, Letter Book, October 28, 1896–January 16, 1897, Horace Porter Papers.
27. Porter to George M. Smalley of New York City, February 18, 1897, box 2, Letter Book, January 18, 1897–April 2, 1897, Horace Porter Papers.
28. Porter to Gen. W. M. Osborne of Boston, Massachusetts, January 30, 1897, box 2, Letter Book, January 18, 1897–April 2, 1897, Horace Porter Papers.
29. Margaret Leech, In the Days of McKinley (New York: Harper, 1959), 116–120.
30. Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States (Washington, DC: U.S. General Printing Office, 1989), 101–10.
31. Details drawn from contemporary news accounts primarily in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune.
32. McKinley official inauguration program, Frank Mt. Pleasant Library of Special Collections and Archives, Leather by Libraries, Chapman University, Orange, California.
3. MCKINLEY, GRANT, AND AN AMBASSADORSHIP
1. Porter to Winslow, March 26, 1897, and April 2, 1897, box 2, Letter Book, January 18, 1897–April 2, 1897, Horace Porter Papers.
2. Geoffrey C. Ward, A Disposition to Be Rich (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 218; Jean Edward Smith, Grant (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 623–627.
3. Mende, An American Soldier, 144; for a full overview of Grant’s last days, see Thomas M. Pitkin, The Captain Departs: Ulysses S. Grant’s Last Campaign (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973).
4. �
�Tribute to E.F. Cragin,” Chicago Tribune, April 20, 1897.
5. Cragin, both an activist supporting Cuban rebels and a future investor in a group that sought to build a canal through Nicaragua rather than Panama, had a final exchange of letters and telegrams with Porter just after the dedication ceremony. Cragin’s half of the conversation is lost, but Porter’s papers include an April 26, 1897, response that implied Cragin had accused Porter of taking more credit for the fundraising than he deserved. “Both telegrams received. Deeply disappointed that commemoration [illegible word] miscarried. You should have come anyhow. Please recall your first dispatch. It is not like you. My address contains full public acknowledgement of your valuable services. You should have trusted me.” But transcripts of Porter’s address in newspapers did not include any mention of Cragin.
6. Details drawn from period maps and photographs, including reproduction no. LC-D4–12680, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
7. “Shipping and the Mails,” New York Times, May 5, 1897.
8. William Henry Flayhart III, The American Line, (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), 137–144, 174; “America’s Largest Vessels,” New York Times, September 16, 1894; “The New Ocean Steamers St. Louis and St. Paul,” Scientific American, August 11, 1894.
9. Flayhart, The American Line, 141.
10. Mende, An American Soldier, 176.
11. “Manton Marble, Publicist, Dead,” New York Times, July 25, 1917.
12. “Dazian’s,” New Yorker, October 8, 1932.
13. Nelson A. Miles, Military Europe: A Narrative of Personal Observation and Personal Experience (New York: Doubleday and McClure, 1988), 4–7; “Prominent People Sail for Europe,” New York Times, May 6, 1897.
4. JONES: THE SCOURGE OF ENGLAND
1. Life and Correspondence of John Paul Jones, Including the Narrative of the Campaign of the Liman, Drawn from Letters and Papers Kept by His Sister, Janet Taylor (New York: A. Chandler, 1830), 13–14. This is the collection of Jones letters published by his niece.
2. There have been many biographies of Jones, and many conflicting versions of key moments in his life. Unless otherwise noted, I rely mostly here on Morison’s John Paul Jones.
3. Jones’s version is included in Life and Correspondence of John Paul Jones, 18–22.
4. Jones’s version is included in a letter to Benjamin Franklin written in March 1779 as Jones was in France outfitting the Bonhomme Richard for battle. See Appendix B in Mrs. Reginald de Koven’s The Life and Letters of John Paul Jones, vol. 2 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913).
5. See “Ships of the Continental Navy,” Naval History and Heritage Command, www.history.navy.mil/wars/revwar/contships.htm.
6. Life and Correspondence of John Paul Jones, 65.
7. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, Saturday, June 14, 1777.
8. Morison, John Paul Jones, 101.
9. Ibid., 100–110.
10. Jones’s report to Congress is contained, among many other places, in Life and Correspondence of John Paul Jones, 82–83.
11. See the Ranger’s doctor’s account in Ezra Green, Diary of Ezra Green, M.D. (Boston: private reprinting, 1875).
12. Additional details drawn from contemporary newspaper accounts collected in Don C. Seitz, John Paul Jones: His Exploits in English Seas During 1778–80 (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1917).
13. Letter from Jones to Countess Selkirk, May 8, 1778.
14. Entry dated July 27, Green, Diary.
15. Fanning’s Narrative, Being the Memoirs of Nathaniel Fanning, ed. John S. Barnes, included in Publications of the Naval History Society 2 (1912): 23. Fanning’s then-anonymous memoirs first appeared in 1806.
16. Morison, John Paul Jones, 223.
17. For details of a long string of such abusive behavior, see Fanning’s Narrative.
18. Fanning’s Narrative, 45.
19. Pearson’s report to the Lords of Admiralty, October 6, 1779.
20. Fanning’s Narrative, 42.
5. THE AMBASSADOR ARRIVES
1. Mende, An American Soldier, 175–177.
2. Jane C. Loeffler, The Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America’s Embassies, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), 14–16; Mende, An American Soldier, 176–182, including endnotes.
3. Porter to Winslow, April 29, 1897, box 2, Letter Book, January 18, 1897–April 2, 1897, Horace Porter Papers.
4. Porter to Vignaud, April 20, 1897, box 3, Letter Book, May 24, 1897–November 10, 1902, Horace Porter Papers.
5. Porter to Sherman, July 16, 1897, record group 84, Records of Foreign Service Posts, Diplomatic Posts, France, volume 0185, National Archives, College Park, Maryland.
6. Porter to Cornelius Bliss, August 10, 1897, box 3, Letter Book, May 24, 1897–November 10, 1902, Horace Porter Papers.
7. Porter to Mark Hanna, July 13, 1897, box 3, Letter Book, May 24, 1897–November 10, 1902, Horace Porter Papers.
8. Mende, An American Soldier, 182.
9. Sims to his mother, July 8, 1897, Personal Correspondence, box 4, folder JL-DE 1897, William S. Sims Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
10. Porter to Hanna, July 13, 1897, box 3, Letter Book, May 24, 1897–November 10, 1902, Horace Porter Papers.
11. Jeremy D. Popkin, A History of Modern France, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2001), 132–139; Colin Jones, Paris: The Biography of a City (New York: Penguin, 2005), 328–330.
12. “A History of the Commune,” Literary World; a Monthly Review of Current Literature, March 21, 1896, from a review of Thomas March, The History of the Paris Commune 1871 (London: Swan Sonnenshein, 1896).
13. Susan Dyer diary, November 24, 1897, box 21, folder D, George Leland Dyer Papers (#340), Special Collections Department, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina.
14. Dyer diary, December 21, 1897.
15. Sims to his mother, May 30, 1897, Personal Correspondence, box 4, folder FE-JE 1897, William S. Sims Papers.
16. Porter to Hanna, July 13, 1897, box 3, Letter Book, May 24, 1897–November 10, 1902, Horace Porter Papers.
17. Michael Burns, Dreyfus: A Family Affair, from the French Revolution to the Holocaust (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 171–72.
18. For a deeply researched and highly readable look at the European colonization of Africa, see Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa: White Man’s Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912 (New York: Random House, 1991). For details on King Leopold’s crimes against humanity, see Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (New York: Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt, 1998).
19. Porter to Hanna, July 13, 1897, box 3, Letter Book, May 24, 1897–November 10, 1902, Horace Porter Papers.
20. For a good discussion of the religious and class tensions in Paris at the time, see Geoffrey Cubitt, “Martyrs of Charity, Heroes of Solidarity: Catholic and Republican Response to the Fire at the Bazar de la Charité, Paris 1897,” French History 21, no. 3 (2007): 331–352.
21. Details from Edwin O. Sachs, “The Paris Charity Bazaar Fire,” reprinted in Red Books of the British Fire Prevention Committee (London: British Fire Prevention Committee, 1899), 16.
22. Elsie Porter Mende diary entry, October 25, 1897, private collection of granddaughter Karin Schindler.
23. For detailed analyses of the forces that led to the Spanish-American War, see David F. Trask, The War with Spain in 1898 (New York: Macmillan, 1997) and Philip S. Foner, The Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism, vols. 1 and 2 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972).
24. Trask, War with Spain, 3–7.
6. OF WAR AND HEROES
1. Porter to Sherman, July 13, 1897, box 3, Letter Book, May 24, 1897–November 10, 1902, Horace Porter Papers.
2. Porter to Bliss, August 10, 1897, box 2, Letter Book, May 24, 1897–November 10, 1902, Horace Porter Papers.
3. Dyer letter to his wife, August 18, 1897, box 13, folder B, George Leland Dyer Papers (#340).
4. “Canovas Murdered,” New York Times, August 9, 1897.
5. Porter to Sherman, August 19, 1897, box 3, Letter Book, May 24, 1897–November 10, 1902, Horace Porter Papers.
6. Trask, War with Spain, 17.
7. Unless otherwise noted, the source for Elsie Porter’s quotes are her diaries.
8. For a good overview of the time, see chapter 24 in James McGrath Morris, Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power (New York: Harper, 2010).
9. Mende diary entries for March 4, 1898, and March 6, 1898.
10. Mende diary entry March 8, 1898.
11. These details are drawn primarily from Trask, War with Spain, and Foner, Spanish-Cuban-American. Also see Evan Thomas, The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898 (New York: Little, Brown, 2010).
12. “Dewey Praised by President,” New York Times, May 3, 1898.
13. “Take Ship at Home,” Chicago Tribune, May 3, 1898.
14. Details are drawn from the National Historic Landmark application for the gravesite, available at National Park Service, www.nps.gov/nhl/Spring2012Nominations/FarragutGravesite.pdf.
7. JONES: THE FALL
1. For more details on that fascinating escape, see Fanning’s Narrative, 72–76; and chapter 14 in Morison, John Paul Jones. Unless otherwise noted, Jones’s life as depicted here is drawn from these two works.
2. Fanning’s Narrative, 79–80.
3. Ibid., 112.
4. For a good overview of the history of the bust, see chapter 7 in Charles Henry Hart and Edward Biddle, Memoirs of the Life and Works of Jean Antoine Houdon (Philadelphia, printed for the authors, 1911).
5. Morison, John Paul Jones, 296.
6. Fanning provides details on these stories, but Morison, finding no other mention anywhere that they had transpired, disbelieved that they had happened.
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