Galena's Protector General

"I shall deem it my duty therefore to remain at my post," wrote Elihu B. Washburne from the Siege of Paris.

Remember Joseph Russell Jones and Elihu B. Washburne?  Both men were friends of General Ulysses S. Grant, contributing money to purchase Grant's home on Bouthillier Street in Galena, Illinois.  When Grant became president, he paid them back by appointing Jones and Washburne as ministers to Belgium and France respectively.  

Were these nominations just another case of venal patronage or did Grant perceive the significance of these appointments for the future?  Perhaps in Jones' case you could argue that such patronage was graft, but Washburne certainly proved to be the man in the right place (Paris) at the right time (Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871).

As we drove east to Chicago on a rainy Sunday to meet Tim's flight back to Washington, D.C., I began to read a new chapter in the book I'd brought along and then delightedly read it aloud to Tim and Norma, too, since it told the story of Washburne's term in France.  (I also was inwardly kicking myself for not snapping a photo of the Elihu B. Washburne home on our way out of Galena, despite the rain.  Luckily, I found this photo on Flickr.)

Elihu B. Washburne Home, 908 Third Street, Galena, IL
Photo courtesy of Fitzgene's photostream on Flickr

I highly recommend the book, The Greater Journey: Americans In Paris, written by American historian, David McCullough.  "Not all pioneers went west" during the mid-to-late 1800s is McCullough's theme.  Because schools of medicine and art had not yet developed in our country, many prominent, wealthy Americans sent their children to Paris to study those disciplines, with the expectation that their offspring would return home to share their knowledge with their fellow countrymen.

Among the pioneers who went east to Paris was Elihu Benjamin Washburne; however, he was sent by his good friend, President Ulysses S. Grant as the United States' Minister to France.  

Elihu B. Washburne
Photo courtesy of  Allen Gathman

For sixteen years from 1853 to 1869, Elihu Benjamin Washburne had served as the representative from northwest Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives, oddly enough at the same time three of his brothers were also serving in Congress, but that's another tale.  

Washburne had no diplomatic experience and little to recommend him as the ambassador to France.  He didn't even speak the language, but his wife, Adele Gratiot Washburne, was of French descent and spoke French fluently, thanks to the French nuns who taught at the St. Louis seminary where she attended school. 

"He goes as minister to France," stated The Nation, a weekly news magazine at that time, "a post for which he may have some qualifications, but what they are would be difficult to say."

Yet, when Prussian soldiers marched on Paris, cutting off all roads into the city on September 18, 1870 in order to lay siege to Paris, Washburne was the only ambassador from a major power who refused to leave.  The British, German, Italian and Spanish envoys quickly bolted from the city, but not Washburne.  

"However anxious I might be myself to get away, I would deem it a species of cowardice to avail myself of my diplomatic privilege to depart and leave my nationaux [fellow Americans] behind me to care for themselves," Washburne wrote in a letter to then Secretary of State Hamilton Fish.

In the weeks leading up to the siege after the ambassador from Germany, fearing for his life, had fled, Washburne found himself responsible not only for the safe departures of any Americans visiting in Paris, but also for the Germans immigrants who had been ordered to leave the country.  Most of the German population of Paris at that time were menial laborers such as garbage collectors or laundresses; all too poor, uneducated and saddled with numerous children to be able to negotiate their way out to safety.  So Washburne oversaw their exodus, working 18 hours a day to issue safe-conduct passes and arrange for special trains to carry these Germans eastward from the Gare du Nord.  

Each day 500 to 1,000 desperate people would congregate outside Washburne's apartment in hopes of gaining a safe-conduct pass.  Washburne sent more than 20,000 German Parisians to safety and saw all the Americans who wished to depart Paris on their way before the Prussians encircled the city.  

As the siege stretched over four months, food grew scarce.  People resorted to eating anything they could find--horses, mules, dogs, cats, birds and even rats.   

Still, Washburne stood in the gap and refused to leave his post.  "Were it not for Mr. Washburne, who was brought up in the rough-and-ready life of the Far West, instead of serving an apprenticeship in courts and government offices, those who are still here [in Paris] would be perfectly helpless," wrote Henry Labouchere, a correspondent for London's Daily News.

The Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck permitted Washburne's letters to pass through the lines, in appreciation for Washburne's care of the Germans who fled the siege.  Washburne's communications and the daily log he kept are now our clearest picture of what Parisians experienced during those awful 131 days of siege before Paris surrendered on January 27, 1871.  

"There is universal approbation for your course from Americans," wrote Secretary of State Hamilton Fish in a reply to Washburne, dated December 8, 1870.  "Nothing has been omitted [by you] that ought to have been done and what has been done, has been done well.  I think you have earned the title 'Protector General.'"

That's high praise for a Galena man whom everyone thought had few credentials to recommend him for his post!  No wonder Galena today is so proud of this hero.

(Thanks for reading this post all the way to the end!  Poor Tim and Norma!  They had no such choice as my captive audience in the car last Sunday.)