Thomas Larkin Thompson was a United States editor, congressman, and diplomat.
Background
Thomas Larkin Thompson was born in Charleston, Va. (now W. Va. ), in 1838. He was the son of Robert Augustine and Mary (Slaughter) Thompson. His father and grandfather, Philip Rootes Thompson, were both members of Congress. His great-grandfather, John Thompson, was an Irish Presbyterian minister who came to America in the eighteenth century.
Education
At twelve the boy went to work in the office of the West Virginian at Charleston. In 1853-54 he attended Buffalo Academy in Putnam County.
Career
He went to San Francisco, where he worked on the San Francisco Herald until 1858, except for an interlude in 1855-56 when, at the age of seventeen, he established the Petaluma Weekly Journal and Sonoma County Advertiser at Petaluma, Cal. The two years following he worked in the San Francisco post office.
Thompson published the Sonoma Democrat (Santa Rosa, Cal. ) from 1860 to 1868, and the Solano Democrat (weekly) and the Vallejo Daily Independent at Vallejo, Cal. , for the ensuing five years. In 1871 he again purchased the Sonoma Democrat and in 1873 settled permanently in Santa Rosa. He was a delegate to the Democratic national conventions of 1880 and 1892. From 1882 to 1886 he was secretary of state of California. He was elected in 1886 to the Fiftieth Congress, where he served on the rivers and harbors and invalid pensions committees. In 1893 Thompson was appointed by President Cleveland envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Brazil.
On his arrival at Rio de Janeiro, August 25, a diplomatic situation of the most difficult kind confronted him. The capital of the four-year-old republic was seething with revolutionary ferment, which burst into actual civil war when the Brazilian navy revolted on Sept. 6 and threatened to bombard the city. American property and lives were jeopardized, and South Americans and Europeans jealously watched for evidence of interference in the internal politics of Brazil by the United States.
Thompson determined to protect American interests and to preserve as impartial an attitude as possible. During the six months that elapsed before the surrender of the revolutionists the United States minister, working in harmony with other members of the diplomatic corps, maintained a friendly attitude toward the national government without allowing himself to become committed to its support. He refused to become involved in the revolutionary movement even to the extent of announcing American neutrality, which would have given the revolting party the status of belligerents. At the same time, through his cooperation with United States naval officers, American commerce was protected and continued with practically no interruption throughout the whole period. Disastrous shelling of the capital was also prevented.
A less rigidly maintained position on the part of the minister might have resulted in a different outcome of the conflict, but the announced intention of the revolutionists to establish a monarchy precluded either popular or official sympathy in the United States. As it was, many of the leading American newspapers of the day wrongly accused Thompson of favoring the revolutionists. Many evidences of good will for the United States in Brazil followed the termination of the naval revolt; in connection with the presidential inauguration ceremonies on November 15, 1894, the cornerstone of a monument to the memory of James Monroe and the Monroe Doctrine was laid in Rio de Janeiro. Thompson resigned in 1897, but before his return home he had negotiated and signed an extradition treaty for the United States with Brazil (ratified 1903).
For many years he had been suffering from an ear infection, and following his return to his home in Santa Rosa, Cal. , his health failed rapidly. On February 1, 1898, while temporarily deranged, he took his own life. His wife and all five of his children survived him.
Achievements
Connections
In 1859 he married Marion Satterlee, daughter of Judge William Satterlee of San Francisco; of this union one son and four daughters were born.