Persuaded, Rockhill got Hay’s permission to draw up some notes on the relationship with China. Working out of the swank confines of the recently opened Holland House Hotel on Fifth Avenue at Thirtieth Street in New York, he reiterated what had been a consistent American stance since the Treaty of Wangxia of 1842 and Humphrey Marshall’s addendum a decade later: that trade should be open to all and that China’s stability was in the interests of the United States.
