pointed out that the most threatening danger to his country was from Russia, and that it should abandon its seclusion and look for friends among the Western nations as well as China and Japan. Of these nations, he said, the one most friendly to Asiatic countries was the United States, and he urged the king to secure its friendship by a treaty. The memorial reached the capital at a favorable time, as a change of administration had brought liberal advisers into power. On the return of the author to Seoul, delegates were sent to Tientsin to confer with the viceroy Li Hung Chang, who at that time was directing the foreign policy of China. That shrewd statesman readily saw that Korea could not maintain its policy of seclusion, and he encouraged the plan of a treaty with the United States.
The failure of the ill-advised expedition of 1871 had not discouraged the government at Washington, and it still cherished the hope of securing a commercial foothold in the kingdom. In 1878 Senator Sargent, of California, introduced a resolution requesting the President to "appoint a commissioner to represent this country in an effort to arrange, by peaceful means, … a treaty of peace and commerce between the United States and the kingdom of Corea." In a speech which he made on this resolution the senator justified the action of the Koreans respecting the General Sherman, and condemned the attacks upon the forts by the navy in 1871. Although no formal action was taken on the resolution, the following year Commodore R. W. Shufeldt was dispatched in a naval vessel to the China seas, with instructions to make, if possible, a treaty with
