Burlingame, Anson

Born: 1820-11-14 New Berlin, New York

Died: 1870-02-23 Saint Petersburg, Russia

Anson Burlingame was a lawyer, state legislator, U.S. representative, and diplomat. Burlingame's family moved west when he was very young, settling in Seneca County, Ohio, and then Detroit, Michigan. He graduated from the Detroit campus of the University of Michigan in 1841 and received a law degree from Harvard University in 1846. Burlingame became a partner in a Cambridge, Massachusetts, law office and married Jane Cornelia Livermore in 1847, with whom he had three children. An anti-slavery advocate, Burlingame supported Martin Van Buren's Free Soil presidential bid in 1848. In 1852, he won election to the Massachusetts Senate and served as a delegate to the state's constitutional convention the following year. He joined the Free Soil coalition with the Know-Nothings and won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1854. Burlingame joined the Republican Party shortly after his arrival in Washington and remained in the House as a member of that party until 1861.

Following the caning of Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks, Burlingame gave a speech denouncing Brooks' actions and defending Massachusetts. Brooks responded by challenging Burlingame to a duel and Burlingame accepted. However, Brooks refused Burlingame's terms, making Burlingame a northern hero and leading supporter of John C. Fremont's presidential bid in 1856. Part of the reason Burlingame failed to win reelection in 1860 was because he so vigorously campaigned for Abraham Lincoln that year. In return for that support, Lincoln appointed Burlingame Minister to Austria in 1861. Burlingame had hosted Louis Kossuth during his time in the Massachusetts Senate, so the King of Austria objected to his appointment and Secretary of State William H. Seward reassigned Burlingame as Minister to China. Burlingame was the first American diplomat to reside in Beijing and worked to reform the "unequal treaty system" so as to give China more autonomy when dealing with the Western imperial powers. He remained as minister to China until November 1867.

David L. Anderson. "Burlingame, Anson" in American National Biography, ed. by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3:965-66; David L. Anderson, "Anson Burlingame: Reformer and Diplomat" in Civil War History 25 (1979): 293-308; Frederick Wells Williams, Anson Burlingame and the First Chinese Mission to Foreign Powers (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912), Gravestone, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA.