Sold – Ambassador James Buchanan Thinks of Home and Friends While in Russia – “This distant land.”

Buchanan's early years in politics coincided with the demise of the Federalist party after the War of 1812. Initially a Federalist, he sought a new political home, and in the election of 1824 supported Henry Clay for president. After that Buchanan moved into Andrew Jackson's camp, and in the 1828 election he helped Jackson carry Pennsylvania. The victorious Jackson rewarded him with the appointment as minister to Russia in 1831. On his mission abroad, Buchanan showed considerable diplomatic skill in negotiating a commercial treaty with Russia, and this in time led to his appointment by President Polk as Secretary of State.
 
Diplomat John Randolph Clay became Secretary to the U.S. Ambassador to Russia in 1830, and remained in that post under Buchanan. He later served in Austria as Henry A. P. Muhlenberg's chargé d'affaires, and then in Lima, Peru as American Chargé d'Affaires and Minister Plenipotentiary. There he negotiated a special treaty with Peru which entitled the U.S.  to the navigation of the Peruvian Amazon.

Autograph Letter Signed, as U.S. Ambassador to Russia, St. Petersburg, December 20, 1832, to George Louis Mayer, a friend from Buchanan’s native Lancaster who served in the Pennsylvania Legislature and was also a merchant and banker. "Mr. Clay the Secretary of Legation leaves here today with dispatches for Washington. He has promised to spend a few days in Lancaster for the purpose of informing my friends there how I am situated in this distant land. Knowing both your hospitality & your friendship for myself, I have thought I could not do better for Mr. Clay than to recommend him to your kindness. You will find him both amiable & agreeable, & I shall venture to predict he will please my friends in Lancaster. Any attentions which you may bestow upon him will be an addition to the many acts of kindness which you have conferred upon me."