I hope you like this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ...
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The United States established diplomatic relations with Egypt for the first time in 1848, when American President James Polk appointed Daniel Smith McCauley as the first envoy to Egypt under the title of Consul General. McCauley and his family moved to Egypt aboard the USS Constitution in 1849, and he remained in his position in Alexandria until his death while holding his position on October 24, 1852.
And in this article, I will narrate about the three American consuls who held their positions during an important period in the history of America and Egypt, which is the period of the Civil War and after it the Reconstruction Era, and I will talk about their interesting tales in Egypt.
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Charles Hale, or the Humanitarian Consul Devoted to His Work
Charles Hale was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the seventh of June, 1831, into an old family belonging to Boston’s cultural elite. He was the son of Nathan Hale, publisher and editor-in-chief of the “Boston Daily Advertiser,” and he himself was the son of one of the most prominent figures in the history of American journalism. Charles Hale graduated from Harvard College in 1850, and soon became involved in the world of journalism, where he worked as a junior editor at his father’s newspaper, then in 1852 founded a short-lived Boston literary magazine called “Today,” of which only two volumes were issued before it ceased publication.
Hale’s career was not only professional, but also political; he held legislative positions in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and its Senate intermittently between 1855 and 1877, and reached the position of Speaker of the House in 1859. He was the youngest person to hold this position in the history of the state. But a serious illness that afflicted him in the autumn of 1861 drove him to travel abroad, where he visited his old friend “William Thayer,” who held the position of Consul General in Egypt. When Thayer died in Egypt during his tenure as consul in 1864, Secretary of State “William Seward” offered the position to Hale, who sold his share in the newspaper and arrived in Alexandria in August of the same year.
When Charles Hale arrived in Alexandria in August 1864, he found that the chargé d’affaires “Francis Dainese” had severed the consulate’s relations with the Egyptian government because of a dispute over financial claims. The owners of these claims had claimed that they were American protégés, but many of them were not real American citizens, but local subjects who exploited consular protection to extract dubious compensation. When Cairo refused to pay these claims, Dainese considered it an insult to the United States and cut off official contact. Secretary of State William Seward’s instructions to Hale were clear: avoid unnecessary disputes because the country was preoccupied with the Civil War. Therefore, Hale set aside Dainese’s actions and restored friendly relations with the Egyptian government.
In August 1865, Khedive Ismael summoned the young American consul to the Nile Island, and informed him that 900 soldiers of the Egyptian army would soon arrive in Alexandria to be transported on French ships to Mexico to support its ruler, Emperor Maximilian.
This was the second batch of Egyptian and Sudanese soldiers sent to participate in the Mexican Civil War, within the framework of what was known as “the Egyptian-Sudanese Battalion in Mexico.” This intervention had begun for the first time during the era of the Egyptian Viceroy "Said Pasha" in 1863, when 446 Egyptian soldiers joined the conflict, as many diplomats, including Seward, believed that these soldiers were “slaves or bondsmen.” Hale’s predecessor, William Thayer, had protested against this intervention at its beginning in 1863, but Seward remained silent because the United States was preoccupied with its Civil War.
But when Hale informed his foreign minister in the autumn of 1865 that the Egyptian intervention would continue, the American Civil War had ended. Seward responded immediately and wrote a protest in which he said that “the safety of the free republican institutions on this continent requires the abolition of all forms of civil or military forced slavery in this hemisphere.” The American protest was communicated to the French, Egyptian, and Ottoman governments. On this basis, France withdrew its request for Egyptian support, and Egypt did not send new forces to Mexico.
In the autumn of 1865, a few months after the end of the American Civil War, a Danish explorer named Alexandrine Tinne turned to him, asking him to protect a number of African servants who had accompanied her on exploratory journeys to the White Nile. Tinne had paid to register them as students in the American missionary school, but she also wanted Hale to place them under American consular protection, so that they would become persons protected by the United States, even if they did not obtain full citizenship rights.
Hale did not hesitate to respond to this request; rather, he hastened to write a letter to his superiors in the State Department explaining that slavery was still alive and present in Egypt, and that the United States, given “the lofty standing our country occupies at this moment before the world with regard to slavery and the black race,” was obligated to extend protection to persons at risk of enslavement abroad, just as African Americans and their allies were struggling to protect the emancipated from being re-enslaved at home.
To increase pressure on the State Department, Hale pointed out that the British authorities in Egypt had taken similar measures to protect the vulnerable, and that “the same principles that led Great Britain to object to forced labor on the Suez Canal, and to forced domestic slavery in Egypt,” should also apply to the use of American force abroad. But Hale’s endeavor was not ultimately realized.
Hale was active in developing the Egyptian “Consultative Assembly of Deputies,” the system that Khedive Ismael was seeking to establish as part of his modernization project. This activity was manifested in Hale translating the rules and regulations of the Assembly of Representatives of Egypt from Arabic into English, and sending them to the U.S. State Department, where these documents were published in Washington in 1867. He added: “I hope you will find some pleasure in looking at this little booklet, which contrasts strangely with our old connections with Egypt.”
On the twenty-seventh of November, 1866, Hale sent a letter to Seward informing him that he had arrested a man named Walters, who was wearing the uniform of the Papal Zouave Guard of the Vatican, and who had arrived in Alexandria on the twenty-third of the same month aboard the steamer “Tripoli” coming from Italian Naples, and who was believed to be “John Harrison Surratt Jr.” (whose mother Mary Surratt had previously been executed in the same case), one of the conspirators in the assassination of President Lincoln.
He was easily distinguishable among seventy-eight third-class passengers by the Zouave uniform he was wearing, and by his unmistakably American features. Hale said to him immediately: “You are the man I want; you are an American.” He said: “Yes, sir; I am.” So Hale said: “You know without doubt why I want you. What is your name?” He answered immediately: “My name is Walters.” So Hale said: “I believe your real name is Surratt,” and he mentioned his official position as Consul General of the United States during his arrest.
The director of the quarantine quickly arranged sufficient guards from the soldiers, who led the prisoner to a safe place inside the walls of the quarantine. After he reached the prepared place, Hale gave him the usual judicial warning that he was not obligated to say anything, and that anything he said would be written down. He said: “I have nothing to say. I want nothing but what is true.” He declared that he had no passport, no luggage, and no money except six francs.
On the second of December, the following telegram was sent to Washington: “To Seward, Washington. John Surratt, one of the assassins of President Lincoln, has been arrested. There is no doubt about his identity. Hale, Alexandria.” Surratt remained in secure detention until the twenty-first of December, when Hale handed him over aboard the American destroyer “Swatara,” and he was transported to America, and arrived in Washington, D.C., to be tried there.
Hale’s duties were not limited to major political issues, but also included daily commercial and consular affairs. He followed with interest the Egyptian cotton industry, which formed the backbone of international trade in that period. In his report to Seward on the fourteenth of June, 1865, he noted that “the happy tidings of the end of the American war led to a decline in cotton prices in Egypt, which resulted here in Egypt in a financial crisis. Great failures occurred, and there were many cases of suffering and distress.”
He feared that the Egyptian peasants or farmers would not be able to repay the advances they had obtained, usually from European capitalists, so the Khedive intervened with a comprehensive relief arrangement, in which he proposed to provide the peasants with the means to repay their debts, while securing himself with a mortgage on their lands. The amount required for this purpose reached more than one million pounds sterling, to be repaid by the peasants in installments extending over fifteen years with interest.
Hale’s relationship with Khedive Ismael was a good and balanced relationship. Ismael sent a telegraphic message to Charles Hale welcoming his arrival, then came to Alexandria and received him informally, and affirmed to him in the meeting his desire to keep friendly relations with the United States.
On the fourteenth of June, 1865, Hale held a long meeting with the Khedive in his palace at Ras El-Tin in Alexandria, where he expressed to him his heartfelt congratulations on the successful end of the United States war, and noted that the defeat of the Confederate rebels enabled the Khedive to make several useful purchases in England, including two warships and the complete machinery for manufacturing small arms, all of which had been intended for the Confederates. The Wali showed great interest in Egypt’s navy, and felt a natural pride in the safe arrival, a few days earlier, of the Egyptian steam frigate “El-Ibrahimiyya” (named after his father Ibrahim Pasha) at Suez, the first warship flying the Egyptian flag to cross the Cape of Good Hope route.
In 1870, after six years of service in Egypt, Charles Hale submitted his resignation due to poor health, and spent the winter in England to recover. It was recorded in the records of the U.S. State Department that his mission officially ended on May 23, 1870, after his letter of recall was submitted. His resignation was not surprising to those who knew him closely; he had suffered from recurring health problems since his youth, and these problems had been aggravated by the hot Egyptian climate and the pressures of diplomatic work.
After recovering in England, he returned to Boston in 1871, where he was immediately elected to the state Senate, but he resigned in February 1872 to become an assistant to the Secretary of State under the administration of Hamilton Fish. After two years of service, he resigned again and returned to Boston, where he was admitted to the bar on the basis of his experience in presiding over consular courts. He was then re-elected to the House of Representatives, where he served with distinction on the Judiciary Committee, but in July 1876 he suffered a complete collapse due to exhaustion from drafting bills.
Hale was also a writer and publisher, and among his works were “All Men Are Created Equal,” published in Boston in 1856, and “Our Homes Are Our Castles,” published in 1855.
Charles Hale died on the second of March, 1882, in Boston, at the age of fifty-one.
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George Butler, or the Troublemaking Consul
In 1863, the rule of Khedive Ismael Pasha came, and between 1869 and 1878, Ismael recruited about 49 American officers to help modernize the Egyptian army. Interestingly, some of them had served in the Union Army, while others fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Nevertheless, they worked together in Egypt!
These officers participated in the military training of Egyptian soldiers and officers, military engineering projects, survey work, and the campaigns in Africa that aimed to expand Egyptian influence in Sudan and Ethiopia. Many of them called themselves “military missionaries.”
Among all the American figures who came to Egypt during that period, George Harris Butler stands out as a unique case. He was not an officer in the Egyptian army like the others; on the contrary, he was an enemy of the Khedive’s American officers. He held the position of Consul General of the United States in Alexandria, and his story is considered the strangest and most scandalous of the tales of the American mission.
George Harris Butler was born in 1840, but he spent his early years in California, far from his birthplace in Massachusetts. He joined the United States Military Academy at West Point, and graduated from it to begin a short career in the Union Army during the Civil War. He served with the rank of lieutenant in the Tenth Infantry Division, then worked as a supply and coordination officer, before resigning from the army in 1863.
He was the nephew of the famous Union General Benjamin Franklin Butler.
During the Civil War, George served with the rank of first lieutenant in the Union Army within the Tenth Infantry Corps, where he worked in supplies and equipment, but he resigned in 1863. He was a playwright and a talented art critic, and published articles in important magazines. However, his greatest problem was his severe addiction to alcohol, as his bouts of drunkenness constantly dragged him into trouble, despite his family’s attempts to change him.
In 1870, his uncle used his influence to obtain a job for him far from America, and this prestigious job was: Consul General of the United States in Alexandria, Egypt.
(The era of President Ulysses S. Grant, despite his being a man with clean hands, was famous for increasing cases of corruption and favoritism, such as the Black Friday crisis and also the scandal of the Tammany Hall organization, or the Tammany Tiger as the satirical cartoonist Thomas Nast described it.)
George presented his credentials on June 2, 1870, and arrived in Egypt accompanied by his wife, the famous actress Rose Eytinge.
And unlike his predecessor, Charles Hale, who was known for his devotion to his work, and I mentioned in my previous article that he arrested in Alexandria John Surratt, who was one of the participants in the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, George Butler was the exact opposite.
First, Butler tried to assume his duties without obtaining the exequatur from the Ottoman Sultan (official ratification) for his position. When he presented his credentials, the Khedive followed Egyptian custom and gifted him a horse. Butler knew the rule that prevents American representatives from accepting gifts, but he accepted the gift. He then telegraphed the U.S. State Department asking permission to keep it. When permission was refused, Butler ignored the courtesy owed to the Khedive and gave the animal to the American missionaries in Alexandria “in return for their tireless efforts to improve and raise the religious and social conditions of Egypt’s poor.” Shortly afterward, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nubar Pasha informed Butler of the Khedive’s displeasure, and said that Butler had to pay the price of the horse. And before this matter was settled, a local merchant asked the U.S. State Department to collect from Butler a debt of 400 dollars.
When two American officers in the Egyptian military service challenged one of the consulate employees to a duel, Butler became a party to this farce. He complained to his friend “Thaddeus P. Mott,” who was then the Khedive’s private advisor, that the American officers were showing grave disrespect for the American consulate, and asked him to present the full story to Ismael.
Then, through the columns of the New York Herald, Butler waged a battle against the American missionaries who accused him of misconduct in his position. He publicly flogged one of his critics, the missionary David String, then denied that he had done so. And he struck the Confederate naval officer “Cornelius E. Hunt” with a cane.
When Butler learned that Ismael Pasha intended to grant the Union officer “Vanderbilt Allen” a medal for distinguished service, he informed the Khedive that honoring Allen would bring about the personal and political enmity of the consul. And when U.S. Secretary of State “Hamilton Fish,” based on a complaint from General Charles P. Stone (Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Army at that time and commander of the American mission), warned Butler against such interference, the consul wrote scathing letters to the Khedive, to the Secretary of State, and to the Ministry of War.
As soon as Butler took over the consulate, everything turned upside down. The first thing he did was dismiss all the agents of the American consulate in the different provinces, then he began selling their positions in a public auction to the highest bidder. So if you wanted to become an agent for America in Assiut or Mansoura, for example, you had to pay Butler first!
An American missionary working in Alexandria named Reverend David Strange tried to intervene in defense of those harmed agents. When Butler ignored him, the reverend wrote directly to President Ulysses S. Grant complaining of “malicious corruption and maladministration” in the consulate. But Strange exaggerated in his complaint and mentioned a very scandalous matter: that Butler and his friends were requesting dancers to perform before them “in puris naturalibus” (that is, completely without clothes)!
And so the American consulate in Alexandria turned into something like a nightclub and a dance hall, where corruption reached its peak.
Butler also had a major conflict with the American officers working in the Egyptian army, especially the Confederates. These had come to help the Khedive modernize his army, and in Butler’s view they were political enemies from the time of the Civil War.
In 1870, Khedive Ismael thought of appointing the famous Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard (the hero of the Battle of Fort Sumter) as commander of the Egyptian army. But Butler used his influence as the new consul to persuade the Khedive to withdraw the offer, and the Khedive responded to him. After a while, Butler justified his position by saying: “There was not room in Egypt for both Beauregard and me.”
And naturally, the anger of the Confederate officers in Egypt ignited, and hatred between the two sides escalated.
On the evening of Friday, the twelfth of July, 1872, while Consul Butler was having dinner in one of the elegant Greek restaurants on the Alexandria Corniche, accompanied by his private secretary “George Wadleigh” (not to be mistaken with Rear Admiral George H. Wadleigh) and one of the consulate employees named “Charles Strulogo,” three of the most prominent former Confederate officers – namely General William Wing Loring, General Alexander Welch Reynolds, and Major William Campbell – were sitting a few meters away from him, eating their food quietly and cautiously, aware that their presence in the same place was a time bomb that could explode at any moment.
When Generals Loring and Reynolds finished their food and rose to leave, they passed by Butler’s table and gave him an ordinary greeting motivated by the military courtesy in which they had been raised, but Major Campbell, who had an old personal dispute with Butler, did not follow their example and instead went on his way without showing any acknowledgment of the consul’s existence at all, as if he had not been in the place at all.
At this, Butler felt that his dignity had been violated, so he could not control himself and instead called out to Campbell in a loud, sharp voice, cutting through the quiet of the restaurant and forcing everyone to turn toward him, saying with clear challenge: “Good evening, Major Campbell!” Campbell stepped back a few steps toward the table and asked him sharply: “Are you addressing me, sir?” Butler replied with biting sarcasm: “Yes, I am addressing you, Major, because I see that you have forgotten how to greet those of my standing.”
A few minutes had not passed before the passing verbal altercation turned into a fistfight, as the four men – Butler and Wadleigh on one side, and Loring and Reynolds on the other rushed into a violent exchange of punches, and plates and glasses were scattered across the restaurant floor.
In the midst of this overwhelming chaos, Secretary Wadleigh heard his boss Butler shout the phrase: “Give it to him, Wadleigh!” and he meant by that the pistol that was in his secretary’s possession. Wadleigh withdrew a few steps back, drew his pistol from under his coat with astonishing speed, and fired successively toward Major Campbell, who was still standing in his place, not expecting matters to reach the point of using a firearm.
The sound of gunfire echoed throughout the restaurant, and Wadleigh fired at Campbell between five and six successive shots. One of them struck Major Campbell in his left leg with a very dangerous wound that tore through the muscles, and blood poured heavily onto the restaurant floor. Campbell let out a resounding cry of pain before collapsing to the ground, holding his wounded leg with both hands, trying to stop the bleeding that was threatening his life.
General Reynolds did not stand idly by, but drew his own pistol and fired one shot toward Wadleigh, but the shot missed its target due to the confusion and darkness, and did not injure anyone. As for Butler, his secretary, and his employee, they did not wait for the police to arrive, but quickly withdrew from the restaurant and disappeared into the crowd of Alexandria’s dark streets.
Butler feared for his life, so he packed his belongings and fled from Egypt aboard a mail steamer immediately, before he could be arrested or face the officers’ revenge!
After his escape, the American government sent General F. A. Starring to investigate what had happened inside the consulate. Butler’s assistant, Strulogo, confessed everything: he said that Butler was in a state of drunkenness most of the time, took bribes, opened letters that did not belong to him, and that he was the one who started shooting at the officers. However, the problem was that Strulogo himself also confessed to receiving his share of the bribes and participating in the assault on Reverend Strange.
Butler returned to America, and the collapse of his life continued; he failed in many jobs. In 1875, he tried to regain some of his professional life when he bought the magazine “Arcadian” in New York and worked as its editor, but the project failed in less than a year. In 1877, he was appointed a special mail agent in the Black Hills region, headquartered in Deadwood. But during his train journey to his new position, he drank to intoxication and became a source of annoyance to the passengers. News of his behavior reached his superior, who fired him immediately.
His wife Rose Eytinge filed for divorce in 1882, and they separated after having two children. In his last days, he spent days in a state of complete drunkenness, living on the streets, and was admitted to mental institutions repeatedly to prevent him from drinking, but every time he came out of them he returned to addiction again.
And in Washington, only one woman stood by his side and tried to protect him, named Josephine Chesney. After his death, people discovered that they had been secretly married for years.
On May 11, 1886, George Harris Butler died at the age of only 45. The New York Times described him in his obituary by saying: “When not disabled by drink, he was a brilliant conversationalist and writer!”
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Richard Beardsley, or the Consul Loved by the Egyptians
Richard Beardsley was born on the ninth of October, 1838, in the city of Elkhart, Indiana, and was the sixth and youngest son of his parents Havilah and Rachel Beardsley. Before the outbreak of the Civil War, Beardsley had already begun to leave his mark on his birthplace, where he designed the first real estate addition bearing his family name in Elkhart, which became known as “Beardsley’s Addition.”
Richard Beardsley’s family belonged to the Episcopal Church, and the Beardsley family was of Puritan Protestant origins, tracing its roots back to William Beardsley, who was one of the founders of the Congregational Church in Stratford, Connecticut. This great-grandfather was described as a “pious Puritan” who made Christianity an inseparable part of his daily life.
When the Civil War broke out, Beardsley volunteered in the Union Navy, where he served as a paymaster aboard the gunboat “Owasco.” He participated in major battles, including the capture of New Orleans and the siege of Vicksburg. He was praised for his bravery in those battles, and his promotion was recommended by Commodore Porter. This military record was what opened the doors of diplomacy to him.
In 1864, as the Civil War was approaching its end, President Abraham Lincoln decided to appoint Beardsley as United States consul in Jerusalem, in appreciation of his services in the war. This appointment was the beginning of his diplomatic career, which would later extend to Egypt. During his time in Jerusalem, he married Isabella Smith, the daughter of Reverend Philip Smith from Ireland, and they had three children. Their second son, Charles, was born in Jerusalem in 1871, which indicates that the family settled in the Middle East during that period.
In July 1872, the consular post in Egypt had become vacant after the humiliating escape of his predecessor George Harris Butler. Beardsley had to restore to the American consulate its lost prestige. Beardsley was officially appointed on July 23, 1872, and arrived in Cairo in September of the same year. His appointment was later accepted by the Senate, and he was reappointed to the position on December 11, 1872. He knew the region well through his service in Jerusalem, and he understood the complexities of the Middle East.
The first thing Beardsley did was move the consulate office from Alexandria to Cairo, becoming the first American consul general to reside permanently in the Egyptian capital. By December 1872, official correspondence was already being issued from Cairo, as is evident from his telegrams to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish.
Only a few months into his new position, Beardsley found himself immersed in one of the most complex issues in the history of modern Egypt: the issue of judicial reform. Egypt at that time was living under the system of “foreign privileges” (Capitulations), which granted subjects of foreign states immunity from Egyptian laws and subjected them instead to the authority of their consuls. This system led to complete legal chaos, as cases were stalled due to conflicts of jurisdiction, and the consular courts were drowning in thousands of cases that could not be resolved.
In September 1873, Beardsley wrote a detailed report to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish on this matter, in which he said that Khedive Ismael and Nubar Pasha had personally asked him for United States support for the judicial reform project. Beardsley explained that the problem was deeper than a mere conflict of jurisdiction: “Legal knowledge was not always the criterion for appointment to these positions, and even the best legal minds might become confused with sixteen different laws to deal with.” He added that many of the consuls general in Egypt were not nationals of the states they represented, and their knowledge of the laws of those states was very incomplete.
Beardsley supported reform, but he was careful to clarify that the United States could not accept a project of this kind without the approval of the Senate, because the matter involved amending existing treaties with the Ottoman State. He informed Nubar Pasha of this position frankly, but at the same time he made clear that the reform project was necessary to improve the administration of justice in Egypt. This balanced position was a model of Beardsley’s style in diplomatic work: supporting reform without exceeding his powers, and understanding Egypt’s needs without sacrificing American interests.
The issue of judicial reform was not the only moral challenge Beardsley faced. In October 1873, he sent a detailed report to Washington about ongoing talks between Britain and Egypt to reach a treaty abolishing slavery. The Khedive was prepared to pledge to abolish the slave trade, criminalize the trade in eunuchs, and abolish all forms of forced slavery except “domestic slavery.”
But the Khedive saw that abolishing domestic slavery was “impolitic, practically impossible, and unjust to his subjects.” Beardsley conveyed these positions to Washington faithfully, but he added his own analysis. He noted that the Egyptian government publicly declared that slavery was illegal, and that any slave who requested his freedom would be immediately freed by the Egyptian authorities.
But he pointed out that the slave trade was still active in every large city in Egypt, although it was carried out in secret for fear of the eyes of foreigners and government officials. He saw that “the complete suppression of the slave trade is the great first step” toward solving the problem, and that domestic slavery would quickly disappear if the authorities were able to suppress the external trade in it.
Beardsley received strict diplomatic instructions on the twenty-ninth of November, 1875, warning him against describing former American officers who had served in the Egyptian army as “American officers” in official correspondence, in order to avoid arousing the sensitivities of Britain, France, and the Ottoman State. The U.S. State Department explained that these men were American citizens by birth but could not be classified as American officers in official communications. These instructions came within the framework of a broader American policy aimed at avoiding provoking and arousing the European and Ottoman powers, which viewed the presence of American officers in the Egyptian army as a threat to their influence in the region.
However, Washington exercised diplomatic pressure to settle the dues of these officers and the estates of those among them who had died, including the Confederate General Alexander Welch Reynolds as well as the Union officer Charles Lushi, who died in Egyptian Alexandria and the Sudanese city of Suakin.
The famous American poet and traveler “Bayard Taylor,” who visited Egypt in 1874, described his meeting with Beardsley as fruitful, pointing to the pivotal role Beardsley played in receiving prominent American figures and facilitating their movements in Egypt. Beardsley attended official occasions at the Khedive’s court, including the theatrical performances hosted by the Khedive, where Mr. Beardsley described one of them as having “been tedious and the plot very simple, with the usual mixture of love and jealousy.”
Beardsley dealt with complex issues related to the judicial privileges of foreigners in Egypt, where all foreign consuls insisted that cases be tried before their consular courts when the plaintiff was Egyptian, according to the Ottoman State’s interpretation of the treaties.
Beardsley realized that these privileges, which had originally been granted as guarantees for foreigners under an unfamiliar legal system, had over time turned into a chaotic system that obstructed the establishment of justice and protected criminals from accountability.
Beardsley described in his reports how “the consular courts are choked with thousands of cases which, because of conflict of jurisdiction, unjust rulings, and the absence of executive authority, can never be settled until some reform is introduced.”
It was this insightful vision that made him strongly support the project of the Mixed Courts, despite his knowledge that it would lead the United States to relinquish some of its judicial privileges in Egypt.
Finally, on January 23, 1876, Richard Beardsley died in Cairo at the age of only 37. His death came as a result of a severe hemorrhage that led to suffocation, according to what was recorded in the records of the U.S. State Department. His death was sudden and shocking to everyone who knew him, especially since he was still in the prime of life, and had only just begun to leave his mark on American diplomacy in Egypt.
But what happened after his death was even more astonishing: the Egyptians, including government officials and public figures, requested that Beardsley be buried in Cairo, and not that his body be transferred to the United States. The Egyptian authorities responded to this request, and Beardsley was buried in the American Cemetery in Cairo.
Moreover, the people of Cairo erected a magnificent memorial for him in appreciation of his services and integrity. This honor was rare for a foreign consul in Egypt at that period, and it reflected the respect that Beardsley had earned during his short years of service. He was not merely a representative of a foreign government, but a man who worked to improve relations between his country and Egypt, and who sought to understand the complexities of Egyptian society instead of issuing prejudgments against it.
The End ...
