SENDING
THE NEWSPAPERS “THE CORRESPONDENCE
BETWEEN QUEEN VICTORIA & MYSELF FOR PUBLICATION”
JAMES
BUCHANAN. Autograph Letter Signed as President to James
Gordon Bennett, Washington, DC, 11 July 1860. 1½ pages, 8"
x 6¼".
The
President arranges for major newspapers to publish the exchange of letters
with Queen Victoria in which he invited the Prince of Wales to make
his historic visit to the U.S.
James
Buchanan had served as the American minister to Great Britain in the
years just before his election to the Presidency in 1856. In June 1860,
when he learned that the Prince of Wales planned to visit Canada, the
President wrote Queen Victoria extending an invitation for her son to
tour the U.S. as well, assuring her that he would receive a cordial
welcome. In her letter of reply the same month, the Queen approved the
idea, provided the Prince’s visit was considered a private one.
Here,
Buchanan writes to James Gordon Bennett, the influential founder and
editor of The New York Herald, explaining that he is forwarding
copies of this correspondence for publication. In a letter marked “Private
& Confidential,” Buchanan explains, “I send
you by this afternoon’s mail a copy of the correspondence [not
present] between Queen Victoria & myself for publication in
the Herald. I shall deliver copies of it to the Constitution & Intelligencer
this evening so that it will appear simultaneously in New York &
this City tomorrow morning. I at first doubted whether it ought to be
published on account of its private character,” Buchanan
adds, “but this doubt has been removed in a conversation with
Lord Lyons,” the British minister to the U.S. In a postscript,
Buchanan notes that the copies he is forwarding “are in Miss
Lane’s handwriting,” referring to his niece and ward,
Harriet Lane, who acted as First Lady for the bachelor President.
The visit
of Albert Edward, the future King Edward VII, was the first by a member
of the British royal family to the U.S., and it was a triumph. In a
month of travel in the fall of 1860, the Prince went from Detroit to
Chicago, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh, then to Washington and Mount Vernon
(where the great-grandson of George III planted a tree by the tomb of
George Washington), then north to Philadelphia, New York, West Point,
and Boston. During his stay in Washington, the Prince was a guest at
the Executive Mansion and the center of a whirlwind of social activities.
The 18-year-old Prince charmed the American public which greeted him
enthusiastically, and the warm reception given him in Washington has
been credited with helping to forestall England’s recognition
of the Confederacy during the Civil War.
In July
1860, when Buchanan sent this letter, his political fortunes and popularity
were sagging badly, given the ever-widening sectional divide, an economic
depression, corruption within his administration, and a badly-fractured
Democratic party. The President may well have thought that the publication
of his correspondence with the Queen, providing the news that the Prince
of Wales would be visiting the U.S., would give his administration a
rare bright spot in the news. Whatever his reasons, this personal letter
to a major newspaper publisher is interesting evidence of a very direct
and open relationship between the President and the press.
The letter
is in very good condition.
Buchanan’s
Presidential letters are uncommon, and this one has fine associations.
$4000.00
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