Lot 425

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Secretary of State Daniel Webster Thanks Consul-General in Egypt for Resolving Diplomatic Affair with "firmness and prudence"
Secretary of State Daniel Webster Thanks Consul-General in Egypt for Resolving Diplomatic Affair with "firmness and prudence"
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Secretary of State Daniel Webster Thanks Consul-General in Egypt for Resolving Diplomatic Affair with "firmness and prudence"

DANIEL WEBSTER, Letter Signed, to Daniel S. Macauley, April 20, 1852, Washington, D.C. 2 pp., 8ʺ x 13ʺ. Expected folds; some edge tears on folds.

Complete Transcript:

No 13 Department of State
Washington, 20th April 1852.
D. Smith McCauley, Esqre
Consul General at Alexandria.
Sir:
I have now to acknowledge the receipt of your dispatch No 35 of the 16th ulto, announcing the successful termination of your protracted controversy and negotiations with the Egyptian Government on the subject of the "Barthow Affair." The final settlement of this claim and your assertion and vindication of the rights and dignity of the American flag, in which you displayed both firmness and prudence, have relieved this Department from considerable embarrassment. The flag of the Consulate being now rehoisted and harmony restored, it is sincerely hoped that nothing will occur in future to render it necessary for you to resort again to so extreme a measure as that to which you have been impelled in striking the U.S. flag, and interrupting friendly intercourse with a power with which it is our interest and desire to cultivate a good understanding.
In consequence of what you state concerning the impaired condition of your health, your request for leave of absence from your Consulate for the space of three months is granted, and you are at liberty to proceed to Trieste, as you propose, to avail yourself of the benefit of the German baths. You will not quit your post, however, unless satisfied that you may do so without injury to the public service, and you will hold yourself in readiness promptly to return to it if any occasion should require your presence there. The Vice Consul, Mr Moore, will of course keep you constantly advised of all that transpires at Alexandria during your absence.
In reply to that part of your dispatch No 31, which relates to your losses on bills of exchange, I refer you to a letter addressed to you by the 5th Auditor, on the 6th Octr 1851,– two days after your dispatch was received at this Department.
I am, Sir, respectfully,
Your Obedt Servant,
Danl Webster

Historical Background
Francis Barthow (d. ca. 1840) had a mysterious background, and various sources claimed that he was French and born in Santo Domingo or that he was an officer in the U.S. Navy, but there are no records of him in that position. He apparently successfully claimed American citizenship, and he arrived in Egypt around 1804, when the British destroyed Napoleon Bonaparte’s fleet at the Battle of the Nile, stranding the French army in Egypt. Barthow became a trader on the Red Sea just when Egypt was beginning to open to outsiders. Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali, who seized power in 1805, modernized Egypt and welcomed Europeans and European ideas. For the next forty years, he stabilized the country, expanded trade, and increased agricultural production and exports.

In the decades after 1805, Francis Barthow became a dragoman—an interpreter, guide, and purveyor—for European and American traders and explorers. In 1820, Barthow bought a bakery in Alexandria from an Austrian and expanded its operations to include mills, granaries, and machinery. He also married and had two sons. In 1844, his son Victor Barthow (d. 1872) requested a renewed American passport from the American consulate at Alexandria. In 1846, Victor Barthow contacted the American consulate because the Egyptian government planned to destroy a portion of the Barthow bakery to widen the street. However, the bakery was established on a permanent endowment from the Egyptian government. Barthow complained that the Egyptian government had compensated a French bakery in similar circumstances and asked the consulate to petition the American ambassador at Constantinople to deal with the issue.

The dispute between Victor Barthow and the Egyptian government had been underway for three years when Consul General Daniel S. Macauley arrived in February 1849. Barthow appealed to Macauley for assistance. Macauley considered the incident an affront to the American government because Barthow was a subject of the United States. At one point, the Egyptian government offered Barthow $6,000 for his bakery, but McCauley did not think it was enough. He ordered the American flag lowered at the consulate in Alexandria, until the Egyptian government responded appropriately. By March 10, 1852, Macauley’s demands had been met, and the American flag was re-hoisted on March 11 with a salute of 21 guns and a united display of all the flags of the European powers represented in Egypt.

On March 16, 1852, Macauley wrote to Secretary of State Daniel Webster that he had "informed the Minister of Foreign Affairs that should the case not meet a satisfactory conclusion within three weeks I should suspend the display of the American flag at Alexandria and await your instructions." He also explained the outcome and the re-raising of the American flag to the relieved Secretary of State. 

Daniel Webster (1782-1852) was born in New Hampshire, graduated from Dartmouth College in 1801, and admitted to the bar in 1805. He represented New Hampshire in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1813 to 1817. As a preeminent attorney, he argued 223 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, winning about half, and playing a key role in eight of the Court’s most important constitutional law cases decided between 1801 and 1824. (Chief Justice John Marshall accepted Webster's arguments in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), finding that a state’s grant of a business charter was a contract that the state could not impair; in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), finding that a state could not tax a federal agency (specifically, a branch of the Bank of the United States), for the power to tax was a “power to destroy”; and in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), finding that a state could not interfere with Congressional power to regulate interstate commerce). Webster represented Massachusetts in the House of Representatives from 1823 to 1827 and then in the Senate from 1827 to 1841 and again from 1845 to 1850. His 1830 reply to South Carolina’s Robert Y. Hayne is considered one of the greatest speeches ever delivered in the Senate. Webster’s oratorical abilities made him a powerful Whig leader, and he served as Secretary of State, first from 1841 to 1843 under Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, and again from 1850 to 1852 under President Millard Fillmore. His support of the Compromise of 1850 may have postponed a civil war, but it cost him politically in his increasingly abolitionist home state of Massachusetts.

Daniel Smith Macauley / McCauley (1798-1852) was born in Philadelphia and served as a midshipman in the U.S. Navy, beginning in February 1814. He remained in the navy after the end of the War of 1812, rising to the rank of lieutenant. He married Sarah Yorke in 1824, and they had three children before her death in 1830, including future Rear Admiral Edward Yorke Macauley of the U.S. Navy. Daniel Macauley married Frances Ann Jones of North Carolina on October 24, 1831, in Philadelphia. A week later, they sailed for Tripoli, to which Macauley had been appointed as the U.S. Consul. He served in that position until 1848, when President James K. Polk appointed Macauley as Consul-General to Egypt at Alexandria. Macauley transferred to Alexandria and died there in October 1852.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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