Caleb Cushing

Biography

Early life Cushing was born in Salisbury, Massachusetts, on January 17, 1800; he was the son of John Newmarch Cushing, a wealthy shipbuilder and merchant, and Lydia Dow, a delicate and sensitive woman from Seabrook, New Hampshire, who died when he was ten. The family moved across the Merrimack River to the prosperous shipping town of Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1802. He entered Harvard University at the age of 13 and graduated in 1817. He was a teacher of mathematics there from 1820 to 1821, and was admitted to practice in the Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas in December 1821; he began practicing law in Newburyport in 1824. There he attended the First Presbyterian Church.

On November 23, 1824, Cushing married Caroline Elizabeth Wilde, daughter of Judge Samuel Sumner Wilde, of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. His wife died about a decade later, leaving him childless and alone. He never married again.

State legislature Cushing served as a Democratic-Republican member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1825, then entered the Massachusetts Senate in 1826, and returned to the House in 1828. Afterwards, he spent two years in Europe from 1829 to 1831. Upon his return, he again served in the lower house of the state legislature in 1833 and 1834. Then, in late 1834, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives. John Canfield Spencer was chosen instead.

China mission In 1843, Cushing was appointed by President Tyler to be commissioner and United States Minister to China, holding this position until March 4, 1845. In addition to most favored nation status, Cushing made sure that Americans received extraterritoriality. In the following years American trade with China grew rapidly, thanks to the high-speed clipper ships which carried relatively small amounts of high-value cargo, such as ginseng and silk. American Protestant missionaries also began to arrive. The popular Chinese reaction was mostly hostile, but there was a favorable element that provided a base of support for American missionaries and businessmen. By 1850–1864, China was enmeshed in the Taiping Rebellion, a civil war which caused millions of deaths; foreign trade stagnated.

While serving as commissioner to China he was also empowered to negotiate a treaty of navigation and commerce with Japan.

Return to Massachusetts

Share of the Great European American Emigration Land Company, issued 2. October 1868, signed by president Caleb Cushing. In 1847, while again a representative in the Massachusetts state legislature, he introduced a bill appropriating money for the equipment of a regiment to serve in the Mexican–American War; although the bill was defeated, he raised the necessary funds privately. During the presidency Franklin Pierce, from March 7, 1853, until March 3, 1857, he was Attorney General of the United States. Cushing supported the March 1857 Dred Scott decision.

In 1858, 1859, 1862, and 1863 he again served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Also during this time, he founded the Cushing Land Agency in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. The building it was housed in, now known as the Cushing Land Agency Building, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

1860 and the Civil War In 1860 he presided over the Democratic National Convention, which met first at Charleston and later at Baltimore, until he joined those who seceded from the regular convention. He then presided also over the convention of the seceding delegates, who nominated John C. Breckinridge for the Presidency. The selection caught many off-guard, including Cushing himself. Radical Republicans in the U.S. Senate immediately challenged Cushing's loyalties on account of his earlier close personal rapport with Andrew Johnson and his alleged pre-Civil War Copperhead sympathies. Their feelings of distrust turned into all out opposition to his confirmation when a (non-political) letter that Cushing had written in 1861 to President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis was found and made public. As a result of rising furor, the nomination was withdrawn on January 13, 1874.

Death and legacy Cushing died in Newburyport on January 2, 1879, where he was laid to rest in the town's Highland Cemetery.

The United States Revenue Cutter Caleb Cushing was named after Cushing. The Caleb Cushing served during the American Civil War and was destroyed by Confederate raiders during the Battle of Portland Harbor on June 27, 1863.

Works To the members of the senior class, Harvard University (1821) An oration, delivered in Newburyport : on the forty-fifth anniversary of American independence, July 4, 1821 History and Present State of the Town of Newburyport, Mass. (1826) An oration delivered before the citizens of Newburyport : on the fifty-sixth anniversary of American independence (1832) An oration pronounced at Boston before the Colonization Society of Massachusetts : on the anniversary of American independence, July 4, 1833 Reminiscences of Spain (1833); Review, historical and political, of the late revolution in France, and of the consequent events in Belgium, Poland, Great Britain, and other parts of Europe, two volumes, (1833) Introductory discourse delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their fifth anniversary meeting, in Boston, August 1834 An oration pronounced before the literary societies of Amherst College, August 23, 1836 Oration on the Material Growth and Territorial Progress of the United States (1839) Life and Public Services of William H. Harrison (1840) Speech of Mr. Cushing, of Massachusetts, on the case of Alexander McLeod : delivered in the House of Representatives, June 24 and 25, 1841 An address, delivered at the laying of the corner stone of the new town hall, Newburyport 1850 Address. Delivered September 26, 1850, at Salem, before the Essex agricultural society Speech delivered in Faneuil Hall, Boston, October 27, 1857 : also, speech delivered in City Hall, Newburyport, October 31, 1857 Oration delivered by the Hon. Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, before the Tammany society, or Columbian order, at Tammany hall, on Monday, July 5th, 1858 The Union and the Constitution. Public meeting in Faneuil Hall, Boston, Dec. 8, 1859. Speeches of Hon. Levi Lincoln, Hon. Edward Everett, Hon. Caleb Cushing Speech of Hon. Caleb Cushing, in Norombega hall, Bangor, October 2, 1860, before the Democracy of Maine The Treaty of Washington (1873)