Caleb Cushing

American politician and diplomat

• Born: January 17, 1800
• Birthplace: Salisbury, Massachusetts
• Died: January 2, 1879
• Place of death: Newburyport, Massachusetts

Cushing enhanced the power and status of the U.S. attorney general’s office through his legal opinions, his writings on the historical development and function of that cabinet post, and his recommendations for reform of the federal judiciary.

Early Life

Caleb Cushing was the firstborn and only surviving son of John Newmarch Cushing, a merchant and shipowner, and Lydia Dow. A duty to serve his country came from his grandfather namesake, Judge Caleb Cushing, a representative in the Massachusetts General Court for twenty-seven years, and his uncle, Benjamin Cushing, who had fought in the American Revolution. His father’s shipping trade with India influenced Cushing’s promotion of U.S. trade to Asian markets.

Cushing received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1817. He then entered Harvard Law School and served a three-year apprenticeship under Ebenezer Moseley in Newburyport before being admitted to the bar in 1822. In November, 1824, he advanced his legal career by marrying Caroline Elizabeth Wilder, the daughter of a Massachusetts Supreme Court justice. The couple had no children, and Cushing never remarried after his wife’s death in August, 1832.

Ambitious, intelligent, and tireless, Cushing quickly became a prominent resident of Essex County, Massachusetts, through his legal and literary accomplishments. By 1826, he was arguing cases before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and had been commissioned a justice of the peace. In addition, Cushing received much acclaim for his articles on law, nature, history, philosophy, and science that were published in the North American Review, U.S. Literary Gazette, Annual Register, Boston Monthly Magazine, and Boston Lyceum. He also gained notice for his translation of French jurist Robert-Joseph Pothier’s Supplément au Traité du contrat de louage: Ou, Traité des contrats de louage maritimes (1764; A Treatise on Maritime Contracts of Letting to Hire, 1821), his discussion of the tariff in A Summary of Practical Principles of Political Economy (1826), and his historical scholarship in The History and Present State of the Town of Newburyport (1826).

Influenced by Federalism’s strong roots in Essex County and modeling himself after statesmen-scholars Edward Everett and Daniel Webster, Cushing entered politics in 1824 as a supporter of John Quincy Adams. He won election as a representative to the Massachusetts General Court and two years later became a state senator. In 1826, Cushing sought the North Essex District congressional seat. He lost the contest to pro-Andrew Jackson candidate John Varnum in a campaign marked by excessive mudslinging, which influenced Cushing’s opposition to abolitionism. After serving three more terms in the general court, Cushing was elected to the House of Representatives in 1834 as a member of the anti-Jackson Whig Party.

Life’s Work

Cushing served four consecutive terms in Congress (1835-1843). A staunch Whig during the first three terms, Cushing supported his party’s economic programs—a protective tariff, internal improvements, reestablishment of the national bank, and distribution of proceeds from the sale of public lands among the states. He distinguished himself by leading Whig opposition against the financial policies of presidents Jackson and Martin Van Buren, particularly the Independent Treasury Bill. Furthermore, he resisted southern efforts to suppress the reading of antislavery petitions in Congress (the “gag rule”).

As a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Cushing exhibited an Anglophobia and ardent support for U.S. territorial and commercial expansion that became quite evident. He demanded Great Britain’s withdrawal from the disputed Aroostook Valley in northern Maine and urged an end to the agreement with Britain to jointly occupy the Oregon territory. Cushing also supported the annexation of Texas to check British interests there. Finally, he promoted trade with China to challenge British supremacy in the Pacific.

Cushing’s dislike of Senator Henry Clay and his preference for territorial expansion advocated by the Democratic Party led him to abandon the Whigs. He supported William Henry Harrison rather than Clay as the party’s standard-bearer in the presidential election of 1840. Following Harrison’s death in April, 1841, Clay pushed his economic program in an unsuccessful attempt to catapult himself into the White House in 1844. Cushing defended President John Tyler’s vetoes of Clay’s national bank and tariff bills as consistent with Tyler’s southern states’ rights principles. He thus became the leading member of the president’s “Corporal’s Guard,” a small group of staunch Tyler Whigs in the House of Representatives.

Irate Whigs rejected Cushing’s assertion that he had opposed Clay on patriotic grounds and ignored him throughout the remainder of the Twenty-seventh Congress. Cushing decided not to seek a fifth congressional term after learning that his support of Tyler had been unpopular with many of his constituents and that Massachusetts Whigs had already declared their intention to support Clay in the next presidential contest. Tyler repaid Cushing for his loyalty by nominating him for secretary of the treasury in March, 1843. The Senate, however, rejected the appointment three times in one evening as both Democrats and Whigs questioned Cushing’s political convictions.

Despite this embarrassment, Tyler remained determined to reward Cushing for his loyalty. In May, 1843, Tyler took advantage of a congressional recess to appoint Cushing envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to China with instructions to negotiate a commercial treaty. In July, 1844, Cushing concluded the Treaty of Wanghia, the first Sino-American trade agreement. The treaty increased U.S. trade with China by opening Canton, Amoy, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai to U.S. merchants. It also granted the United States most-favored-nation trade status with China, established commercial and tariff regulations, and included the principle of extraterritoriality.

After returning from China, Cushing associated himself with southern Democrats. He became more adamant in demanding the annexation of Texas and supported the acquisition of Cuba. His aversion to abolitionism increased as he accepted the states’ rights defense of slavery. One of the few northern politicians to support the Mexican War, Cushing organized the First Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment with his own money. Known for his discipline and strict adherence to regulations, he attained the rank of brigadier general but did not participate in any battles.

Massachusetts Democrats nonetheless recognized Cushing’s military service by nominating him for governor in 1847 and 1848, but he lost both elections. In 1851, Cushing became mayor of Newburyport. The following year he was appointed associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. There Cushing won the respect of his colleagues with his fairness and legal brilliance. In 1852, Cushing, a delegate to the National Democratic Convention, helped manage the party’s nomination of Franklin Pierce as a compromise candidate for president. After winning the election, Pierce appointed Cushing attorney general of the United States.

As the first full-time attorney general, Cushing enhanced the prestige and influence of the office. At the request of Secretary of State William L. Marcy, Cushing assumed responsibility for judicial appointments, extradition cases, pardons, and official correspondence between department heads. His study of the function of the attorney generalship became the standard description of the office. His official opinions clarified jurisdiction between federal and state power and defined the administration of executive power. Finally, despite his failed effort to reform the federal judiciary and organize a law department, his recommendations shaped the creation of the Department of Justice in 1870.

Cushing’s advancement of the Pierce administration’s pro-southern domestic and foreign policies, however, overshadowed his accomplishments as attorney general. He advocated the strict enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, discouraged any union between Democrats and Free-Soilers (a third party that advocated free homesteads, free speech, and a higher tariff), and favored the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) and proslavery territorial legislature in Kansas. Furthermore, Cushing aggravated the slavery debate by supporting the Gadsden Purchase (the 1853 purchase of a strip of Mexican land by the United States) and endorsing the Ostend Manifesto, which advocated the purchase of Cuba from Spain.

Cushing’s love for the Union led him to join the Republican Party during the secession crisis of 1860-1861. While he expected the South to defend slavery at all costs and had supported southern extremists in nominating John Breckinridge for president in 1860, Cushing deemed secession illegal and deserted southern Democrats once South Carolina left the Union. He supported President Abraham Lincoln against General George B. McClellen in the presidential election of 1864. Cushing later strengthened his standing within the Republican Party by assisting Senator Charles Sumner and Congressman Thaddeus Stevens in writing the Fourteenth Amendment.

After the American Civil War, presidents Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant benefited from Cushing’s legal and diplomatic reputation and skill. Under Johnson, Cushing chaired a commission that revised and codified the statutes of the United States. In 1868, Cushing continued a lifelong commitment to expanding U.S. commerce by negotiating a treaty with Colombia for a canal across the Isthmus of Panama . Three years later, Grant appointed Cushing counsel for the United States before the Geneva Tribunal of Arbitration on the Alabama Claims . Cushing’s knowledge of international law, linguistic skill, persistence, and patriotism helped his government secure a $15,500,000 settlement.

Despite these achievements, Cushing’s allegiance to the Republican Party continued to be questioned. When Grant nominated him as chief justice of the United States in 1873, Republicans uncovered a letter from Cushing to Jefferson Davis written in March, 1861, recommending a former clerk in the Ordinance Department in Washington, D.C., for a job in the Confederacy. This attack on Cushing’s loyalty to the Union forced him to withdraw his name from consideration for the post. He then served as minister to Spain from 1874 to 1877.

Significance

Cushing’s tenure as attorney general and his diplomatic success in China, Colombia, Spain, and Geneva, Switzerland, would rank him as a prominent figure in nineteenth century U.S. politics had he not supported the states’ rights defense of slavery during the 1840’s and 1850’s. Although Cushing was not an apologist for slavery, his blind attachment to rational, legalistic procedure prevented him from understanding the moral dilemma of slavery addressed by abolitionists.

Although Cushing recognized the political threat that slavery posed to the Union, his overemphasis in applying reason to politics led him to embrace policies (territorial expansion, states’ rights, and enforcement of federal law) that exasperated the slavery debate. Cushing’s support of these policies and the use of force to maintain the Union led to two major political shifts during his public career that left him vulnerable to charges of being a political opportunist. This criticism cost him the ultimate achievement of his legal training, the office of chief justice of the United States, and a place alongside his mentors Edward Everett and Daniel Webster as an eminent statesman-scholar in U.S. history.

Bibliography

Belohlavek, John M. “Race, Progress, and Destiny: Caleb Cushing and the Quest for American Empire.” In Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansionism, edited by Sam W. Haynes and Christopher Morris. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1977. Cushing’s arrogant and aggressive application of social Darwinism in promoting U.S. expansion before the American Civil War is addressed through an examination of his writings and speeches on U.S. nationality. Contains valuable notes.

Dennett, Tyler. Americans in Eastern Asia: A Critical Study of United States’ Policy in the Far East in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Macmillan, 1922. Reprint. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1963. Includes five chapters covering the foundations of U.S. policy in Asia during the first four decades of the nineteenth century, preparations for the Cushing mission to China, and the negotiation of the Treaty of Wanghia. Comprehensive bibliography.

Donahue, William J. “The Cushing Mission.” Modern Asian Studies 16 (April, 1982): 193-216. Donahue praises Cushing as an “able diplomat” for the commercial success of his mission to China but recognizes that throughout the nineteenth century the United States followed Britain’s lead in acquiring trade concessions from China. Includes extensive notes and an abbreviated version of the Treaty of Wanghia.

Fuess, Claude M. The Life of Caleb Cushing. 2 vols. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1923. Reprint. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1965. Fuess defends Cushing’s political shifts by presenting him as a man of honest convictions, moral courage, and principle who helped preserve the Union and defended the nation’s honor as a member of Congress, attorney general, and diplomat. Based on exhaustive use of the Caleb Cushing Papers, it is the most complete biography of Cushing.

Gara, Larry. The Presidency of Franklin Pierce. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991. Gara’s examination of Pierce’s presidency includes information on Cushing’s work as attorney general and minister to China.

Hodgson, M. Michael Catherine. Caleb Cushing: Attorney General of the United States, 1853-1857. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1955. This study focuses on Cushing’s efforts to strengthen the office of attorney general as well as his influence on the foreign policy of the Pierce administration. Includes appendixes and a bibliographical note.

Nichols, Roy Franklin. Franklin Pierce: Young Hickory of the Granite Hills. Rev. ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1958. Nichols criticizes Cushing as Pierce’s worst cabinet appointment because of his lack of political principles and common sense. Discusses Cushing’s role in helping Pierce secure the Democratic party presidential nomination in 1852 and his strong voice in the cabinet on both domestic and foreign affairs. Extensive notes and bibliography.