Background
Richard Rush was born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second son and third child of the celebrated physician, Benjamin Rush, and Julia (Stockton) Rush. The boy grew up in a cultivated household.
(Leopold Classic Library is delighted to publish this clas...)
Leopold Classic Library is delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive collection. As part of our on-going commitment to delivering value to the reader, we have also provided you with a link to a website, where you may download a digital version of this work for free. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. Whilst the books in this collection have not been hand curated, an aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature. As a result of this book being first published many decades ago, it may have occasional imperfections. These imperfections may include poor picture quality, blurred or missing text. While some of these imperfections may have appeared in the original work, others may have resulted from the scanning process that has been applied. However, our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. While some publishers have applied optical character recognition (OCR), this approach has its own drawbacks, which include formatting errors, misspelt words, or the presence of inappropriate characters. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with an experience that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic book, and that the occasional imperfection that it might contain will not detract from the experience.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VRL4WNC/?tag=2022091-20
(Excerpt from Occasional Productions, Political, Diplomati...)
Excerpt from Occasional Productions, Political, Diplomatic, and Miscellaneous: Including, Among Others, a Glance at the Court and Government of Louis Philippe and the French Revolution of 1848 Lear and his lottery-tickets, 58 Takes a House at German town - Encloses to 001. Lear, at Georgetown, a Power of At torney, in his own Handwriting, to vote on his Shares in the Potomac Company, 59; Extreme Prudence in Money Mat ters, 60; Sale of his Produce - Is relieved from O?ice - Mouut Vernon - His Old Sergeant Cornelius, 61 Again called to the Public Service, 62; 001. Lear, his Military Secretary, 63; Message from Lord Cornwallis, governor-general of India, 64 Author's re?ections upon Washington's Familiar Letters Explanation of his Character for Reserve - Analysis of some of his Moral Qualities, 64 - 69; St. Clair's Defeat - Wash ington's Reception of the N ewe - His self-command and subsequent Outburst of Passion, 69-72; J e?'erson's Opinion of Washington, as he gazed on a Constellation on the Rim of the Blue Ridge, 73; Washington's Method and Order and Kindness of Heart as Head of a Family, 74; His Industry, 75; The Interior of his Character as seen in these Letters, 75 - 78; Account, at his own dinner-table, of Arnold's Treason, 78-85 Three Letters published in full, 85-89. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1334102937/?tag=2022091-20
Richard Rush was born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second son and third child of the celebrated physician, Benjamin Rush, and Julia (Stockton) Rush. The boy grew up in a cultivated household.
At the age of fourteen he was ready for entrance into the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), from which his father and his maternal grandfather had graduated. In college he was the youngest member of his class, and, while not a distinguished student, showed great interest and ability in debating. After finishing his course he studied law in the office of William Lewis, a well-known legal luminary of Philadelphia
Rush was admitted to the bar in December 1800. His early years of practice were not particularly brilliant, but during them Rush met many interesting persons who came to his father's house, and read widely in law, history, government, and literature. His reputation as a speaker began to be established when in 1807 he made an eloquent speech on the sinking of the Chesapeake at a public meeting in the State House yard in Philadelphia.
In 1808 he defended William Duane, the editor of the Aurora, against the charge of libel for an attack upon Gov. Thomas McKean of Pennsylvania, and thus made his first important political contacts. He refused, however, to be a candidate for Congress at this time. In January 1811, he was appointed attorney-general of Pennsylvania, the beginning of nearly twenty years of uninterrupted office-holding. An ardent Republican, he warmly opposed the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States, and in November, having attracted the favorable attention of President Madison, to whom he long remained devoted, he became comptroller of the treasury.
On July 4, 1812, the administration put him forward to defend the war with Great Britain in an address at Washington. Rush's temperament, in general, was not belligerent, and the cool and objective character of his mind was ill-suited to whipping up the war-spirit. The speech is almost apologetic in tone, far too argumentative to be a great war speech, but it seemed to be well received, and encouraged him to more political pronouncements, which helped to make him better known.
In February 1814, he was offered the choice of the offices of secretary of the treasury, or of attorney-general, and chose the latter. In this post he was charged with the duty of editing the Laws of the United States from 1789 to 1815 (5 vols. , 1815), which he performed in authoritative fashion. On the inauguration of Monroe, Rush was made secretary of state, pending the return of John Quincy Adams from Europe to assume that office. In this capacity, he negotiated the famous Rush-Bagot convention (Apr. 28, 1817).
On October 31, 1817, he was appointed minister to Great Britain. Rush was undoubtedly amongst the most efficient and amongst the best liked of American ministers to the Court of St. James's. A man of high breeding, emphatically a gentleman, he moved with ease in the British society of the period, and his genuine regard for the British people, coupled with wide intellectual interests and a tact that was almost unfailing, gave him a wide measure of success. He was confronted with a great variety of difficult problems at the very outset, a number of important disputes with Great Britain left over by the War of 1812 not having yet been liquidated. These included the fisheries question, the matter of compensation for the slaves carried off by the British in the war, and the troublesome problem of the northwestern boundary.
The convention of October 20, 1818, did not really settle all of these, only the question of the slaves being put in the way of a final solution. In 1819 he dealt with great wisdom with the issue raised by Andrew Jackson's recent invasion of Florida, and the execution of two British subjects, Ambrister and Arbuthnot. British public opinion was exceedingly inflamed, and Lord Castlereagh, the foreign secretary, afterwards told the minister that war might have been brought about if he had but lifted a finger (Memoranda of a Residence at the Court of London, 1845, p. 152). In his conversations with Castlereagh, Rush set forward the American point of view with remarkable candor, and yet without offense. His description of his interview with Castlereagh on this occasion may be regarded as a model of diplomatic manners. Rush played an important role in the diplomatic negotiations which led up to the enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine.
In the summer of 1823, French troops had invaded Spain, and George Canning, the British foreign secretary, had received certain intimations from Sir Charles Stuart, the British minister in Paris, with regard to a projected congress on the affairs of South America. Suspecting that such a congress might pave the way for the re-conquest of the Spanish colonies, Canning asked if it might not be possible for Rush to join him in a joint prohibition of such action. Rush had, of course, no instructions. After carefully pondering the matter, he decided that he could not accept the proposal, barring British recognition of the independence of the colonies. When Canning stated his inability to act on this basis, Rush, despite new and pressing overtures from Canning, refused to commit himself. The dispatches which he wrote in August and September 1823 were an important factor in persuading James Monroe and John Quincy Adams to take the strong stand which they assumed in the memorable message of December 2.
The message was not well received in England. In particular, that part of it (directed against Russia in the northwest, and not concerned with the Spanish colonies) which forbade new colonization by European powers in the American hemisphere, was most unacceptable to Canning. Rush had to do what he could to defend it, and, acting under instructions, he brought it forward in the new discussions on the northwest question which took place in 1824. He did not, however, succeed in persuading the British commissioners to acquiesce in it.
In the course of his long stay in England, Rush examined many different aspects of British institutions. He made a special study of the British navy, and it was his desire, when John Quincy Adams became president in 1825, that he might become secretary of the navy in the new administration. At Adams' insistence however, he accepted the office of secretary of the treasury, and discharged the duties of this post with extraordinary fidelity, never having been absent from office a single day in the course of four years, except for one week's illness.
In this period of his life he was a protectionist, though of a rather mild type. He was no doubt partly influenced by the opinion of his state, and also apparently by the infant industry argument. He desired, however, to institute a warehouse and drawback system, not unlike that which existed in Great Britain. He played no prominent part in connection with the tariff of abominations in 1828, but does not seem to have been hostile to that measure.
In 1828 he accepted a place on the ticket with John Quincy Adams, as a candidate for vice-president, but went down to crushing defeat with the rise of the Jacksonian Democracy. At this period came one of Rush's rare lapses from the urbanity which was characteristic of him. On his appointment to the Treasury, he had been the object of a slashing attack by John Randolph, who stigmatized his appointment as the worst since Caligula had made his horse a consul (Powhatan Bouldin, Home Reminiscences of John Randolph, of Roanoke, 1878, p. 317). Rush was stung by this, and other attacks, into publishing under the pen name of Julius an attack upon Randolph, splenetic in the extreme. He declared his willingness to avow his authorship, and accept a challenge to a duel, if Randolph cared to take the pains to look into the matter (Julius, John Randolph, Abroad and at Home, 1828, p. 13).
For some years after 1828 Rush was in private life. In 1829 he was sent abroad by the towns of Georgetown and Alexandria and the city of Washington to negotiate a loan of one and a half million dollars for the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. Received with considerable coolness in Great Britain, despite his many personal friendships there, he finally succeeded in getting very favorable terms from the Dutch bank of the Crommelins. His efforts were not as gratefully received as he thought they should have been by those who sent him. In the Anti-Masonic agitation Rush took a prominent part, and he was the first choice of the new political group for the presidency. He declined to run, however.
The struggle over the Bank in 1832 brought him back into the Democratic party. He sympathized strongly with President Jackson on this issue. In 1835, together with Gen. Benjamin Chew Howard of Baltimore, he was commissioned to settle a boundary dispute between the states of Ohio and Michigan, which threatened to result in an appeal to force. He succeeded in preventing an armed clash, though not in settling the question. In the summer of 1836 he sailed for England to secure the Smithson bequest to the United States. James Smithson, an Englishman, had died without issue, and had left the whole of his estate, on the death of a nephew, to the United States. The estate had become tied up in the chancery court, however, and it required much time and patience to liquidate the matter. Rush conducted his mission with efficiency and patience, and made use of his stay in Great Britain to resume many old connections, and to make new ones (Occasional Productions, Political, Diplomatic, and Miscellaneous, 1860, pp. 219-57).
He was also extremely successful in disposing on very favorable terms of the British securities which composed the Smithson estate, and, in August 1838, brought back to this country in English gold coin the sum of upwards of $104, 000, which was used to establish the Smithsonian Institution. He always retained a great interest in this establishment, of which he was elected a regent, a post which he held to his death (Cyrus Adler, "The Relation of Richard Rush to the Smithsonian Institution" in Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. LII, 1910, pp. 235-51).
The next public service to which this interesting man was called (March 3, 1847) was that of minister to France, in the administration of President Polk. From 1838 to 1847 he had lived quietly on his estate outside of Philadelphia, but though now sixty-seven years old, he cheerfully accepted political office once more. He arrived in France in the closing days of the July monarchy, and was a witness to the stirring events of the February revolution, which he described with much skill (Occasional Productions, pp. 355-82). After a brief period of reflection, he decided to recognize the republic then set up, without waiting for instructions from Washington, and despite the reserve of all the other members of the diplomatic corps. He followed with obvious mistrust the course of the red republican revolt of July, but seems to have witnessed without extravagant regret the election of Louis Napoleon as president in December 1848.
He was recalled with the entry of the Whigs into power in 1849. This was Rush's last political office. He lived for ten years more, and still entertained an interest in public affairs. He approved the compromise measures of 1850, but was, in general, sympathetic with the attitude of the Democratic party towards slavery. He much feared the dissolution of the Union, censured the extravagance of the antislavery agitation, and voted for Buchanan in 1856. He died in Philadelphia on July 30, 1859.
Of the men of the second rank who played a role in politics in the Middle Period, Richard Rush is decidedly one of the most attractive. He no doubt betrays a certain conventionality of mind, in the general character of his political thought, but he was by no means unwilling to accept personal responsibility, or to act on his own initiative when the occasion required. He had singularly few enemies; indeed, outside of the feud with the acid Randolph, and one youthful political altercation in Pennsylvania, his life was remarkably free from personal controversy. Laborious to a degree, of judicious mind, of wide intellectual interests, and of engaging manners, he played worthily every role to which he was called. A certain fastidiousness may have had something to do with the limited character of his political success, as compared with that of other men decidedly his inferiors in capacity. In appearance he was distinctly impressive. He had remarkable eyes, a broad and high forehead, and an air of scholarship that was decidedly attractive.
His writings are not literary master-pieces, but they are usually interesting, and reveal a keen observer of men and things. The most important are his Memoranda of a Residence at the Court of London, the first edition of which (1833) covered only two years, a second edition (1845) comprising the rest of his mission; and Occasional Productions, Political, Diplomatic and Miscellaneous, published by his executors in 1860.
(Excerpt from Occasional Productions, Political, Diplomati...)
(Leopold Classic Library is delighted to publish this clas...)
Rush had married Catherine E. Murray on August 29, 1809. They had ten children.