It became necessary, however, in the spring of this year, for the President to recall Mr. Randolph and to select his successor. In those days, the public men of the country did not propose themselves for such appointments. The first intimation that reached Mr. Buchanan of the President’s wish to make him Minister to Russia, came to him in a letter from a confidential friend of the President.
Where are you, and what doing? I cannot tell, having heard nothing from you since the adjournment of Congress. That you are doing well, though, I have no doubt and earnestly hope.
I introduce myself to you now at the request and by the direction of the President. The Mission to St. Petersburg is expected shortly to become vacant. It will afford the President pleasure to confide this trust to you, if it shall suit your convenience to accept it. He desires me to make known his wishes to you and to solicit an answer. It is at the present an important and a highly interesting part of the world. For reasons not material now to be explained, the President desires that you will consider this communication entirely of a confidential character.
I received your letter last evening, offering me, “by the direction of the President,” the Mission to St. Petersburg. I feel with the deepest sensibility this pledge of the kindness of the President, and the recollection of it shall ever be engraven on my grateful memory. My attachment for him, both personal and political, has been of the warmest character, and he has now engrafted upon that feeling a strong sense of individual gratitude.
There is but a single circumstance which induces me to doubt whether I ought to accept the Mission. I wish to be placed in no public station in which I cannot discharge my duty with usefulness to the country and honor to the administration of General Jackson. Ignorant as I now am of the French language, I doubt whether I could acquire a sufficient knowledge of it in proper time to enable me to hold that free communion with the political circles in St. Petersburg which I consider essential to the able discharge of the duties of a foreign minister. I have much business now on hand which I could not immediately leave without doing serious injury to individuals who have confided in me. Will you be so kind as to inform me at what time the President would think the public interest required me to leave the country in case I should accept the Mission?