Sheppard, Eli T.

Diplomat and lawyer.

BIOGRAPHY

Eli T. Sheppard, whose papers form a large portion of this collection, was a diplomat and lawyer; American consul at Tientsin, China (1871-1876) and advisor in international law to Japanese foreign office (1876-1880).

Biography

When the distinguished professor of history of the University of California at Berkeley, Henry Morse Stephens, returned some letters he had borrowed from Eli Taylor Sheppard, he wrote the former American Consul to China, "May I beg you to see that this most interesting correspondence...is preserved in some safe place, -I dare not suggest the Bancroft Library, -on account of its very real historical value." Fifty-four years later, the Bancroft Library, through the generous gift of Mrs. William S. Hilbert was indeed to receive the fascinating and rich collection of Papers of her grandfather, Eli Taylor Sheppard.

Eli Taylor Sheppard, lawyer and diplomat, was born in Belmont County, Ohio, on September 26, 1842, and spent his early years on his father's farm. By 1858, he had begun teaching in the nearby Pumpkin Ridge county school. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted with the 85th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, serving until April 1863. Encouraged by Mr. John A. Bingham in his desire to read law, Sheppard entered the Union Law College in 1864, graduating with honors in March 1865. His early practice with the firm of Bingham, Stanton and Lewton led to his appointment as Proctor in Admiralty in the Circuit and District Courts of the United States, and in 1867 as Register in Bankruptcy.

Soon after the visit in 1868 of the first Chinese Ambassador to the United States, the commercial exchanges between the two countries necessitated the sending of American officials to China. At the instigation of Anson Burlingame, who had been instrumental in the development of relations with China, Sheppard, eager to apply his knowledge of international law, applied for, and obtained an appointment as U.S. Consul to China in April of 1869. He took up residence in Chinkiang for two years, after which he was transferred, with the title of U.S. Consul for North China, to the port of Tientsin.

Throughout these years, Mr. Sheppard gained a reputation for dealing with firmness and tact in such varied matters as his intervention in the case of the persecution of an American missionary at Chimi near Chefoo. His friendly relations with the metropolitan viceroy, Li Hung Chang, the real ruler of China, were instrumental in Sheppard's ability to adjust differences between China and the treaty powers, especially in the Formosan difficulty with Japan in 1873, and later in disputes arising between China and Japan concerning Korea and the Lew Chew Islands.

At this time, however, his mentor, Mr. Bingham, now minister to Japan, urged Sheppard to come to Japan as Advisor in International Law. Upon his arrival in Japan in 1877, he found the country to be undergoing exciting changes in its transition from insular feudalism to the mainstream of international life, responsive to outside aid, and generally more in touch with the West than was China. Here Sheppard assisted in establishing a consular service modeled on European and American systems, worked in clarifying rights and duties of foreigners residing in China and Japan in relation to treaty revisions and extraterritoriality. Other legal questions to be untangled included the nature of the rights of foreign vessels in offshore Japanese waters, issues of naturalization, etc.

Suffering from ill health, Sheppard decided to abandon his post, returning to California in 1881. He settled down temporarily in Napa, then near Sonoma, growing grapes at the Madrone Vineyards which he later sold to Senator George Hearst in 1889. After traveling in Europe, he resumed his law practice in San Francisco in 1890. He travelled to Mexico and Washington D.C., lectured at the University of California, Berkeley on international law and on the American Consular Service, and from 1912 spent his remaining years in Oakland, where he died in 1927.