Baron von Osten-Sacken

Baron Karl Fedorovich von Osten-Sacken represented Russia in Washington during the early Jackson administration. He received instructions for his Washington duties in May 1830 and met Martin Van Buren and President Andrew Jackson later that year. ^{1, 2}

He closely followed American sympathy for the Polish uprising against Russian rule. In May 1831 he reported that newspapers and public opinion generally favored the insurgents. That September he described a New York meeting organized by tradesmen and lawyers to raise money for Poland through Lafayette. He worried that similar organizations would spread across the United States, making support for the uprising a continuing diplomatic problem. ²

The dispute carried into the negotiations for a Russian-American commercial treaty in 1832. Osten-Sacken protested the Washington Globe’s attacks on Russia’s treatment of Poland. In St. Petersburg, American minister James Buchanan suspected that these reports explained Foreign Minister Nesselrode’s temporary reluctance to meet him. The treaty nevertheless proceeded, and Nesselrode raised the newspaper question after its conclusion. Historian Derek Kane O’Leary argues that American concern for preserving the commercial relationship muted the administration’s response to the Polish cause. ³