The Anson Burlingame collection, compiled by Elliot C. Cowdin, holds correspondence, a photograph, an engraving, a pamphlet, and ephemera related to the life and death of Burlingame.
Several letters in the Correspondence series are personal letters Burlingame wrote to Cowdin, a friend, during his diplomatic career; on October 13, 1866, for example, Burlingame described his recent trip from New York to Shanghai, via California, the Sandwich Islands, and Japan. A number of items relates to a dinner Cowdin gave in June 1868, honoring Burlingame and his success in trade negotiations with China. These include a May 23, 1868, letter from a number of prominent residents of New York City, urging the diplomat to attend the banquet; several letters signed by those invited, either accepting or declining the invitation; and Burlingame's own acceptance (May 30, 1868). Other correspondents mentioned their own appointments with Burlingame, often set up by Cowdin, and their esteem for his accomplishments. On January 31, 1870, Burlingame told his friend of his imminent departure for Russia; a month later, he died there, and many of the later letters concern personal grief over his death, as well as to Cowdin's tribute to Burlingame's memory. Among other remembrances, Cowdin wrote a letter to his own wife on April 21, 1870, describing Burlingame's funeral.
The Photograph and Engraving series contains a cartes-de-visite photograph of Anson Burlingame, and an autographed engraving of Elliot C. Cowdin.
The Pamphlet is entitled Banquet to His Excellency Anson Burlingame And His Associates of the Chinese Embassy by the Citizens of New York On Tuesday, June 23, 1868.
The Ephemera series contains calling cards for Mr. and Mrs. Anson Burlingame, and a menu for Burlingame's honorary banquet, given on June 23, 1868.
Anson Burlingame was born in New Berlin, New York, on November 14, 1820, and graduated from the University of Michigan's Detroit campus in 1841. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1846, he joined a Boston law firm. An ardent Free Soiler, he served in the Massachusetts Senate and in the United States House of Representatives (1855-1860), and received an appointment from Abraham Lincoln to be a diplomat to Austria, though the Austrian government refused to accept him because of his associations with Hungarian nationalists. In 1862, he was reassigned as the United States minister to China, where he oversaw alterations in trade policies between China and the major European economic powers. Following his 1867 resignation, he negotiated the Burlingame Treaty (1868) between the United States and China, with positive consequences for China's trade and emigration policies. He died in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 23, 1870, while attempting to forge a similar treaty between Russia and China. He and his wife, Jane Cornelia Livermore, had three children.
Elliot C. Cowdin was born in Jamaica, Vermont, in August 1819, and received his education in Boston, where he lived until moving to New York City in 1852. In New York, he founded the importing firm of Elliot C. Cowdin & Co., and became involved in the Union League Club shortly after the beginning of the Civil War. He also served as a member of the New York City Chamber of Commerce, and spent time in France and Germany during the Franco-Prussian War. A close friend of Anson Burlingame, he organized a celebratory banquet for the diplomat in 1868, and spoke at a memorial service held in Burlingame's honor in 1870.
