Grover Cleveland

Partly-printed DS as president, one page, 8 x 10, March 9, 1885. President Cleveland authorizes and directs the Secretary of State to cause the Seal of the United States to be affixed to an "envelope containing my letter to His Majesty the King of Corea." Crisply signed at the conclusion in ink by President Grover Cleveland. In fine condition, with light creasing in the top blank area.

This document dates to the opening days of Grover Cleveland’s first presidential term and reflects a formative period in United States–Korea relations, at a time when the United States was expanding its diplomatic presence in East Asia. Formal relations between the United States and the Kingdom of Korea (then commonly spelled “Corea”) had been established only a few years earlier with the Joseon–United States Treaty of 1882—the first treaty between Korea and a Western nation.