Eugene Schuyler - Dismissal From Turkey; Diplomat To Rome, Romania, Serbia and Greece

Dismissal From Turkey; Diplomat To Rome, Romania, Serbia and Greece

Schuyler's role in the liberation of Bulgaria greatly displeased the Ottoman Government, which protested to the U.S. Government. Secretary of State Hamilton Fish was also displeased with Schuyler, since Schuyler had acted without his knowledge or consent. He discussed withdrawing Schuyler from Turkey, but decided against it, since he did not want to appear to be unsympathetic to the Bulgarians. When a new President, Rutherford Hayes, took office, Schuyler was subjected to more attacks in the press, accused of bias toward the Bulgarians. On January 3, 1878, the Turkish Government demanded his recall: "The Porte regarded a continuance of Mr. Schuyler as consul-general at Constantinople as a serious injury to Turkey in its diplomatic relations and in the administration of its affairs in the provinces." On May 29, 1878, a State Department investigation of Schuyler found that "His sentiments and sympathies are strongly anti-Turkish" and that he "aided greatly to alienate British sympathy from Turkey in her struggle with Russia," and reprimanded him for his "unauthorized and self-imposed mission to Bulgaria." (4)

Schuyler was removed from Turkey and given the post of consul in Birmingham, England. While there he finished his translation of Tolstoi's The Cossacks, which was published in 1878. In August 1879, Schuyler became consul general in Rome, where he completed writing his book on Peter the Great, and began a new book on Catherine the Great. A year later, he became Chargé d'affaires in Bucharest, as the United States prepared to recognize the independence of Romania and Serbia. In Romania, he studied Romanian and became a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy of Sciences. In July 1882, he was appointed the first American Minister to Rumania and Serbia and to Greece, resident in Athens. In July 1884, he was out of a job again when the Congress, as an economy measure, abolished the post of minister to Greece, Romania and Serbia.

Schuyler left the diplomatic service to lecture at Johns Hopkins and Cornell University on diplomatic practice and the conduct of American diplomacy. His book American Diplomacy and the Furtherance of Commerce was published by Scribner's in 1886. In 1889, the Administration of President Benjamin Harrison nominated him as First Assistant Secretary of State. The nomination was withdrawn, however, after opposition within the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Instead, Schuyler took the post of diplomatic agent and consul general in Cairo, Egypt. While in Egypt, he contracted malaria, and died in Venice on July 16, 1890, at the age of fifty. Between the many curious things Schuyler found in Russian Turkistan is worth mentioning the figure of the iskatchi as it is/was frequent in Wales, (Great Britain), the person sprinkling salt and bread over a corpse at a funeral and eating later such bread to clean the deceased man of his sins, sometimes for a fee.