FOREWORD
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE MIKADO’S EMPIRE”
The first American teacher in Echizen (1870-1872) feels honored at the request of the first American teacher in Mito (1887-1891) to write for his revised and annotated edition of Hildreth’s “Japan” a few words concerning the author and his book and his most recent editor’s work. In the days of Townsend Harris and the premier Ii (1858), the feudal lords of Mito and Echizen, besides being blood relatives, had misunderstandings with the Yedo authorities, and, with unswerving loyalty to the Emperor and the most patriotic of motives, were linked together in strange experiences while manifesting a common desire to promote their country’s good.
After so long a time the pioneer American educator in Echizen salutes his fellow-worker who has done so much to make known to us the illustrious character of the lords of the house of Mito as patrons of literature and their unwearied devotion to the Imperial and national cause. I am sure that we are both proud of having been the servants of the Japanese people in helping to bring to pass that vision of Japan’s greatness, so tangible in A. D. 1906, to which Hildreth looked, yet died without ever seeing.
The personality of Richard Hildreth, the historian of the United States and the unquailing opponent of African slavery in America, was one of the very first that appealed to me when my own boyish literary aspirations were first awakened. His intensely powerful novel, “Archy Moore,” which had been published in 1837, reprinted in England and again republished in the United States in 1852, under the title of “The White Slave,” appeared just when Commodore Matthew C. Perry was making his preparations to sail for Japan. Philadelphia was agog with interest about the expedition, and many of her citizens were keenly interested, among them my father, John L. Griffis, who, like my grandfather, Captain John Griffis, had voyaged to the Philippines, China, and the Far East. He had built a platform in his coalyard, which directly adjoined the shiphouse and dock of the United States Navy Yard, wherein was building the United States steam frigate “Susquehanna,” which later in Japanese waters became the flagship of Commodore Perry. It is not so many miles from the upper waters of this noble river of the three States, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, that this “foreword” is written.
As a little boy, on the morning of April 6, 1850, at 8.35 A.M., I saw the graceful “Susquehanna” slide down the ways, float on the Delaware, and, like a bird of calm, “sit brooding on the charmèd wave.” I remember how, when sitting on my father’s knee, he put me down suddenly to rise and call for “three cheers for the future of the ‘Susquehanna.’” We could not then foresee what a noble part the frigate was to play in the annals of both peace and war. She bore the olive branch to Japan and she unchained her thunders in the destruction of slavery.
Richard Hildreth of Massachusetts, author, journalist, economist, and historian, was born in 1807. He graduated from Harvard College in 1826 and studied law in Newburyport, entering upon practice in Boston. He left the law for journalism, and, as an editor of the “Boston Atlas,” lifted up the moral world. In 1834, in poor health, he went South and, in order to get unbiassed ideas, lived on a slave plantation to study the workings of the system of unpaid African labor. It was during this time that he wrote his famous novel, “Archy Moore, The White Slave.” Returning North he became, with pen and voice, the tireless opponent of slavery. From 1840 to 1848 Hildreth lived in Demerara, British Guiana, editing two newspapers, in which he advocated the system of free instead of slave labor, writing there also his “Theory of Morals” and his “Theory of Politics.” In the perspective of history we can now note clearly that he was one of the potent forces in destroying human slavery in America, and in helping, as an ex-Confederate officer, now president of the first Woman’s College in the Southern States, told me a few days ago, “to emancipate eleven million white men.”
Hildreth’s “History of the United States,” though not of great literary interest, is an amazingly honest picture of the real character of the makers of the American Republic. He shows our fathers without transfiguration of their virtues or disguise of their faults or errors. How he came to write his book on Japan is told by him with sufficient fulness in his own introduction. Those who know his book best are those who appreciate it most.
It was while we were fellow-workers in the Imperial University in Tokio, from 1872 to 1874, that Mr. Edward H. House, who afterwards found a grave in the land he loved, gave me the details of Hildreth’s life and personality. Mr. House had been engaged with Mr. Hildreth on the staff of the “New York Tribune” from the completion of “Japan as it Was and Is” until the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. Instead of appointing Hildreth as Minister to Japan, Mr. Lincoln did but follow the precedents of political succession, since Perry, Harris, Van Valkenburg, and Depew (who declined) were all citizens of the Empire State, and hence nominated the Hon. Robert H. Pruyn of Albany. It was my own beloved professor in Rutgers College, Dr. David Murray, also a native of New York State, later chief adviser to the Educational Department in Japan, who in Tokio first loaned me a copy of Hildreth’s valuable compilation, and I studied it with care. Notable among the many benefits which made the volume a boon to foreign students was the discovery, with its aid, in May, 1872, by Mr. James Walter of Yokohama, of the tomb of Will Adams at Yokosuka (p. 139).
Hildreth’s scarcely veiled satire on the ignorance of the Americans of 1852 concerning Japan in his “advertisement” is keen. None knew more than he how steadily the Hollanders had maintained commercial relations with the Japanese, had fertilized their minds for over two centuries, and had finally paved the way for American success.
In gratitude to Professor Clement for his unwearied researches and for his work as editor in this new presentation of the perennially interesting volume of Hildreth, in commendation of the publishers for issuing this uniquely valuable work, and in the faith that in its new dress “Japan as it Was and Is” will receive a warm welcome at the hands of the American public, we raise our cheer at this hopeful launch on the waters of literature. How the spirit of Hildreth must rejoice at free America and free Japan, with slavery and feudalism gone forever and the two nations in mutually beneficial rivalry for the uplifting of mankind.
WM. ELLIOT GRIFFIS.
Ithaca, N. Y., July 15, 1906.