The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXIV, Part 1-2, 1976 - Khamkoo

60 Benjamin A. Batson
be salaried; when the expected successor failed to arrive Virgin wrote to
Seward asking to be named consul himself, 7° but without result.71
In October of 1864 one A. Wood had accepted appointment as
Bangkok Consul. Almost immediately another consul was named, and
the available records give no hint as to why Wood failed to fill the post.
Wood was from Auburn, New York, which, perhaps not by coincidence,
was also the home of Secretary of State Seward.72
The mysterious Wood was followed by James M. Hood. Hood had
been born in Massachusetts, was appointed from Illinois, and had never
been in Siam. Hood bore the title of colonel, and was the first of six
consecutive post-Civil War American Consuls in Bangkok who bad the
rank of either colonel or general. He was also the first American Consul
to receive a salary ($2,000), and the first who was not also in business
or missionary work.73 Hood arrived in Bangkok in September of 1865,
and the following July he sent the Department of State a long despatch
denouncing his predecessors :74
I am truly sorry to trouble the Department with complaints
but my duty compels me to say that, since Mr. Mattoon left
the Consulate, there has not been one of his successors who
has commanded the least personal respect either from the
Siamese Government or from the Foreign Officials here ....
King Mongkut, he reported, had decided that the United States was
not really a major power because American warships seldom visited,
and because, "the character of the Representatives of that Nation at his
Court had not been such as to lead him to believe it a great nation."
Hood then went on to criticize Chandler, Westervelt, and Virgin in turn.
But Hood himself was soon a target of the internecine factionalism of
the American community in Siam. J.M. McCormick, an ex-acting
United States Marshal, wrote to Washington accusing Hood, "such an
ignoramous," of "malepractices [sic], peculation, and extortion."75
70) Virgin variously described himself as vice-consul or acting consul.
71) BanglwkDespatches, January 11, 1865, and May 19, 1865.
72) Bangkok Despatches, October 31, 1864.
73) Bangkok Despatches, December 24, 1865.
7 4) Bangkol~ Despatches, July 26, 1866.
7 5) Bangkok Despatches, August 20, 1866.