GREEN, DUFF (1791-1875), American journalist, poli tician, and private agent of President John Tyler (1841-45) and of the Department of State at various times in Great Britain, France, Texas, and Mexico, first gained national importance by editing The United States Telegraph (Washington, 1$25-35), the organ of Jacksonian democracy. In 183o-3 1 , however, he fol lowed John C. Calhoun (whose son Andrew Pickens had married his daughter Margaret) in the latter's break with President Jack son. From 1835 until the death of President Harrison and the succession of Tyler (whose nomination for vice-president Green is said to have suggested), he was in a very unsettled condition. For a time he edited with R. K. Cralle The Reformer, a radically partisan, free trade and states' rights weekly, and a daily; but he got into difficulties and withdrew; and the panic of 1837 and the subsequent depression appears to have crippled him financially. By 184o he was seeking Whig support for election as government printer. As early as 1839, Duff Green had planned a visit to Great Britain "to sell stock"; and in the fall of 1841 President Tyler sent him there as a private or personal agent, possibly without any definite object in view. Green immediately became excited over the power of the Bank of England in American business, over British anti-slavery interests in Texas, and over the activities of the Anti-Corn Law League. Later on in the same year he returned with a project for a commercial treaty which might undermine the American Whig Tariff of 1842, a protective meas ure which was just being enacted into law. When this appeared impracticable, he attempted, apparently, some form of co-opera tion with British free traders and established The Republic in New York to advocate free trade and the candidacy of Calhoun for president. But after Calhoun accepted appointment as sec retary of state under Tyler and refused to be a candidate for president, Green gave up The Republic and went to Galveston, Texas, as United States consul. His purpose was, of course, to facilitate the annexation of Texas; for while in London, in with Ashbel Smith, the Texan minister to Great Britain and France, he had reported the British anti-slavery interest in Texas in such a way as to precipitate the movement for annexation. Within a short time President Jones, of the Republic of Texas, resented Green's interference and revoked his exequator. In 1849, Green served the United States Government effectively in arrang ing the payment of money due to Mexico under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo by exchange instead of in specie.
There is no satisfactory biography of Duff Green. See his Facts and Suggestions (1866) ; and Southern Historical Association Publica tions, VII., 16o. (T. P. MA.)