BURLINGAME: a 19th century American diplomat, a treaty and a couple of cities named after him, a victim of 9/11, his sister, a high school, an author

Anson Burlingame was born in 1820 and died in 1970, and is most famous for being the US minister (a 19th century equivalent of ambassador I think) to China during the Lincoln administration, and author The Burlingame Treaty, which gave China most favored nation status for trading and gave the Chinese many of the same rights of immigration and status that were enjoyed by some of the European powers. He served from 1961 until his death, he managed to be in China during the civil war. That must have been weird for him. Burlingame had, before serving the newly formed Republican party, been a Free Soiler and then a Know Nothing in the House of Representatives. These terms are only relevant to the time in which he was living, but had to do with the divisions between the Democrats and the other parties that led to the Civil War. Basically the Democrats were the party of Slave owning Southern Aristocrats, and they were quite intent on extending slavery to the new territories to the West, -- though this would have meant expanding their influence and power in Washington as well and giving them control over the Senate and possibly the House as well. Different political forces were coalescing to oppose the Democrats influence, which had been felt since Andrew Jackson's polarizing Presidential terms 1829-37. The Fee Soilers had a platform of wanting to open up the West to settlement through incentives, while forbidding the expansion of Slavery. Not because they wanted Slavery to be abolished necessarily, and not all of them were abolitionists, nor were all abolitionists not racists necessarily either. Eventually these forces, the Free Soilers, Know Nothings and others came together to form the new Republican party, and when they managed to get a president elected -- Lincoln -- the result was Southern succession and the Civil War.

Charles Burlingame was the Pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was flown into the Pentagon on Septeber 11, 2001. His Sister Debra is a reactionary attorney who has written columns for the Wall Street Journal and who was instrumental in sinking the proposed International Freedom Center at the World Trade Center site. The Center was supposed to be a museum about various genocides and crimes against humanity through history; she used her influence along with other ignorant fire breathers to stop the center being built because she said the center had nothing to do with crimes against humanity in general; this was unique and somehow the center was seen as celebrating the terrorists.

Jeff Burlingame is a music PR guy and writer, he wrote a well regarded biography of Kurt Cobain.

Burlingame High School is in Burlingame, California, a very wealthy town near San Francisco. The three children of Kathryn Crosby Grant (blogged about by myself a couple of months ago) went there.