Ohio’s John A. Bingham in Meiji Japan: The Politician as Diplomat

Abstract

Ohio’s John Bingham was a well-known and successful political figure at the middle of the nineteenth century.1 Despite losing his congressional seat in the wave of Democratic victories in 1862, he was reelected two years later and became a prominent participant in prosecuting Lincoln’s assassins and in drafting the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Moreover, 2018 marked the 150th anniversary of his role in the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson. Yet Bingham, who served eighteen years in Congress, also had a notable diplomatic career that lasted a full dozen years, two-thirds as long as his better-known political one. In this regard, his career would anticipate a number of later ambassadorial postings of prominent politicians to Tokyo such as Mike Mansfield (1977–88), Eugene Mondale (1993–96), and Howard Baker Jr.