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JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 6th PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
AND THE CHINESE OPIUM TRADE

johnADAMS, JOHN QUINCY (1767-1848).

Sixth President of the United States. Manuscript Letter Signed, “John Quincy Adams.”

One page, octavo. One page, quarto.

“Department of State, Washington,” May 1, 1822. Traces of mounting on verso, else very fine condition. To “Benjamin C. Wilcocks, Esq., Consul of the United States, Canton.” Headed “Duplicate.” Adams writes:

“Sir, Mr. Philip Ammidon, who was the Supercargo of the ship President Adams, belonging to Citizens of the United States, which is stated to have been wrecked about ten years ago upon a small Island, called Fumo Chow under the jurisdiction of the Vice Roy of Canton, and to have been then robbed of much money and property by Chinese subjects, goes to Canton for the purpose of seeking the indemnity to which the owners of this vessel and property think themselves entitled; and he carries with him a letter from the President of the United States to the Emperor, and one from this Department to the Vice Roy of Canton, soliciting, in behalf of the claimants, the measure of justice to which, as citizens of a friendly state, they are entitled from the subjects of the Celestial Empire. I accordingly recommend Mr. Philip Ammidon to such good offices as are proper and it may be in your power to render him, in the execution of his Commission, and am with much respect, Sir, your obedient servant, John Quincy Adams.”

This letter from President Adams demonstrates how powerful an opium smuggler Philip Ammidon was, who was an original Brahmin. This letter reveals how complicit even the highest office of this country was in justifying and enforcing the illegal smuggling of opium into China. More money leads to more connections, power, and . . more money.

U.S. GOVERNMENT AGENT was  ILLEGAL DRUG SMUGGLER

 

ORIGINS OF AMERICAN OPIUM TRADE

In the decade following the War of 1812, the American opium trade, although less than a quarter of the size of Britain’s, was a source of great profit for businessmen willing to take great risks, both fiscal and physical.

As early as 1804, Philadelphia merchants based out of Canton, China were trading heavily in the very profitable narcotic. Among the first figures of any consequence in the trade were two brothers, James and Benjamin C. Wilcocks.

Benjamin Wilcocks, U.S. Counsul at Canton beginning in 1812, carried out his duties as consul religiously, successfully keeping his superiors in the American government unaware of his drug trafficking. Yet, under this upstanding exterior, Wilcocks profited greatly from the trade of Indian opium in China during the war. After the war between the U.S. and Great Britain ended, Wilcocks opened maritime trade routes once again, using the privileges of his governmental position to keep suspicious Chinese magistrates off his ships and away from his cargo (Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company, III).

While the Wilcocks brothers controlled a large segment of the profitable American opium trade in China, there were countless other merchants involved as well. Among these men was Philip Ammidon, who began speculating in the drug in the days before the war just like the Wilcocks family. In the coming years, Ammidon would reap rewards far greater than the losses he suffered with the sinking of his opium laden ship the President Adams in 1812, (“American Merchants and the China Opium Trade, 1800-1804,” The Business History Review, Winter, 1968).

In 1824, he would leave his position at Brown & Ives, a major Providence trading firm also invested in the trade, to found Russell & company with Samuel Russell; within three years, the two would control the majority of the booming Indian opium market. An intriguing document that brings together two of the most powerful American merchants involved in highly profitable Chinese opium trade.

Genealogical and Personal Memoirs / Google Books
The Ammidons

NOTES & REFERENCES

Samuel Russell – Co-Founder of Russell & Company in 1824
Philip Ammidon – Co-Founder of Russell & Company in 1824

Samuel Russell and Phillip Ammidon came to Canton in 1824, Russell having first been there in 1818 as a business representative for a merchant house out of Providence R.I. Ammidon went on to India to serve as the firm's opium buyer. In "a series of accidents and coincidental decisions" Russell & Company acquired a "virtual" monopoly on the American portion of the trade in the 1830's.

Jonathan Russell, the Ammidons, and Russell & Co. - the Mendon connection

Jonathan Russell (1771-1832) was appointed U.S. chargé d'affaires in Paris in 1810 by President James Madison, and in London in 1811. He was U.S. Minister to Sweden and Norway from 1814 to 1818. He was one of the negotiators of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, along with former President Adams' son and future president John Quincy Adams, James A. Bayard, Henry Clay and Albert Gallatin. Russell was a US Congressman from Massachusetts from 1821-23. (Russell, Jonathan. From Martha Mitchell’s Encyclopedia Brunoniana.) James Asheton Bayard Sr. (1767-1815) was a Congressman from Delaware from 1897 to 1812, and the ancestor of Thomas F. Bayard, S&B 1890.

Also See

Before Skull and Bones

Nullification Crisis

Tariff of Abominations 1828