Note 1 — Chapter XLVIII · THE YEAR OF THE TREATIES.

Commodore B. W. Shufeldt was born in Dutchess County, New York, in 1822, and entered the navy in 1839, serving ten years on foreign stations and in the coast survey. One cruise to the west coast of Africa interested him in the negro colony of Liberia, in which he has ever since felt concern. From 1850 to 1860, our navy being in a languishing state, he was engaged in the mercantile marine service, and in organizing a transit route across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. In 1860 an article of his on the slave trade between the Island of Cuba and the coast of Africa, drew the attention of the government to him, and led to his appointment of Consul-General at Havana. The slave-trade was soon effectually broken up, and through the trying period of the first half of the civil war, he was occupied in his civil duties, at one time going to Mexico on a confidential mission to President Juarez, passing unrecognized through the French lines. He was on blockade duty during the last two years of the civil war. In 1865 he went to China, as flag-captain of the Hartford, and commanding the Wachusett visited Corea. In 1870 he organized a party for the survey of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, his report being made the basis of Captain Eads’ ship-railway project. The official history of the semi-diplomatic cruise of the Ticonderoga round the world (1878–1880) has been written, but has not yet been published. ↑