Existing comment:
Sword Adornment:
This small gold ornament was likely decoration for a Japanese sword scabbard. Family tradition states that it was presented to Commodore Perry during his 1850s expedition to Japan, and that it had once belonged to the Mikado of Japan.
The Consulate at Kanagawa, Japan, burned during Johnson's presidency, on November 26, 1866. In Johnson's 1868 address to Congress, he affirmed that the US had maintained neutrality in the face of Japan's "theater of Civil War." |