Raising the Flag by Peter D. Eicher

Author:Peter D. Eicher [Eicher, Peter D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL010000 Political Science / History & Theory, POL011010 Political Science / International Relations / Diplomacy, HIS036000 History / United States / General
ISBN: 978-1-64012-038-9
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 2018-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

In the fall of 1843, Porter’s remains were carried home aboard the USS Truxtun. He was laid to rest with military honors at the Philadelphia Naval Asylum, more appreciated in death than in life.

Sultan Abdel Meguid continued his reign as a reformer, trying with limited success to drag his empire out of the past to claim its place as a modern power. Despite the significant transformations that he brought about, Turkey remained subject to incessant meddling by the European powers. The Ottoman Empire staggered on for another seventy-five years, finally collapsing in the aftermath of World War I.

William Hodgson went on to a successful and varied career. After his secret mission to Egypt, he worked briefly at the U.S. legation in London and then at the State Department. Hodgson was appointed consul to Tunis in 1841, the same position once held by William Eaton, who led the overland attack on Tripoli in 1805. On his way there Hodgson stopped in Paris, where he met and became engaged to a southern belle, the daughter of the governor of Georgia. He resigned his consular commission without proceeding to Tunis and settled with her in Savannah, overseeing the family’s plantations from there. Hodgson became one of the state’s leading intellectuals. He mastered thirteen languages, published papers on subjects as varied as ethnography and geology, and was elected curator of the Georgia Historical Society.

Porter’s son David Dixon Porter and his adopted son, David Farragut, became the greatest American naval heroes of their era, winning renown especially for their exploits in the American Civil War. They were the first two Americans awarded the rank of admiral. Both of them first went to sea as midshipmen under Porter’s command. Porter’s five other sons, whom he seldom saw, all died in military service, four in the navy.

John Porter Brown served at the American legation in Constantinople for almost forty years, until his death in 1872, as dragoman, secretary of legation, and from time to time as chargé d’affaires. As chargé during the American Civil War, he kept a close watch to ensure that no Confederate envoys were received at the Porte. Brown became fluent in Turkish, Farsi, and Arabic and is sometimes regarded as the State Department’s first “regional specialist.” As a result of his lifetime of service, he died so poor that his widow could not afford to buy a ticket home. The sultan, out of respect for Brown, paid her passage to the United States.

David Porter’s relaxed stewardship over the American legation in Constantinople stands in sharp contrast to the activist roles adopted by many of his contemporaries as American diplomats. Most of the men whose lives are recounted in this book dove headfirst into great power politics and strained to increase American fortunes and influence. Porter, despite his reputation as a naval commander who was energetic to the point of rashness, was an extraordinarily subdued diplomat. Unlike Joel Poinsett, Daniel Clark, or so many others that he certainly knew personally, Porter was strangely detached from the great events unfolding around him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.