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

64 Benjamin A. Batson
IV.
Vicissitudes
If the first period of American relations with Siam was less than a
triumph of diplomacy, the next two decades were to be even more
controversial, well justifying the reported remark of a Secretary ofState
that "the Bangkok Consulate bad been a thorn in the side of the Government."91
Hood's successor as American Consul in Bangkok was General
Frederick W. Partridge. Partridge had been born in Vermont in 1824
of a family with Revolutionary War forebearers, and had studied at
Dartmouth and in the law office of Franklin Pierce. He headed the
Harrisburg Military Academy from 1846-1847. In 1847 he was appointed
a special commissioner by President Polk and sent on a mission
to Mexico, but lacking credentials he was intercepted and held
by United States' troops. After this failure he resigned from the army
and took up farming and further law study in lllibois. He returned to
the military in the Civil War, and was made a colonel for gallantry at
Lookout Mountain and was brevetted brigadier-general for his exploits
at Missionary Ridge. After the war he practiced law in Illinois and
then served in Bangkok from 1869 to 1876, the longest term of any
American diplomat in Siam in the nineteenth century.9 2 He was a
pensions examiner in Indiana and Ohio from 1882 to 1889, and died at
his home in Sycamore, Illinois, in 1899.93
Partridge arrived in Siam to general approbation94 and left on bad
terms with practically everyone. After a few months in Bangkok he
reported to the Department of State that, "I think most of my Difficulties
arise from the carelessness and incompetence of my predecessors;" in
fact he found that except for the missionaries, the Americans in Bangkok
91) Bangkok Despatches, March 2, 18 8 5. The remark was allegedly made in May
1880, when the Secretary of State was William M. Evarts.
92) Hamilton King, who came to Siam in 1898, served until his death in 1912.
93) Information on Partridge, as on other American representatives, has been
taken from standard biographical reference works.
94) Bradley noted in his Journal, October 2, 1869: "Called on our new Consul
and his wife at Mr. MacDonald's and saw nothing to forbid the hope that he
will do honor to our country."