History
Article II, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution authorized the President to appoint, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, "Ambassadors, other public Ministers, and Consuls." From 1789 until 1924, the Diplomatic Service, which staffed U.S. Legations and Embassies, and the Consular Service, which was primarily responsible for promoting American commerce and assisting distressed American sailors, developed separately.
With small appropriations from congress, overseas service could not be sustained based on salary alone. Diplomatic and consular service appointments fell on those with the financial means to sustain their work abroad. This, coupled with a government-wide practice of political appointments based on nomination rather than merit, led to careers for those with relations and wealth, rather than skill and knowledge.
Read more about this topic: Rogers Act
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)