FDR's Maternal Grandfather an Opium Trader (#139; Topic H)

My brother-in-law, Charles, sent me an album, received just today, labeled Lin Zexu and the Opium War. From reading one of the clippings (by Ester Wu, an editor of the Dallas Morning News, datelined Shekow, China), I learned that Charles is Lin's great-great-grandson. No wonder Charles's residence in Highland Park TX is full of artifacts related to opium-smoking, which he collected during his many trips to China as a Halliburton consultant after retirement from Texas Instruments. Another clipping in the album is even more interesting. Written on 6/28/1997, just three days before Hong Kong was returned to China after 156 years in British opium warlords' hands, Karl Meyer wrote in New York Times, as follows: "In 1823, a 24-year-old Yankee, Warren Delano, sailed to Canton, where he did so well that within seven years he was a senior partner in Russell & Company." Russell & Company was a Boston company whose clipper ships were ostensibly trading in Chinese tea and silk. However, in his letters home, "Delano said he could not pretend to justify the opium trade on moral grounds, but 'as a merchant I insist it has been ... fair, honorable and legitimate.'" (In 1839, Lin was named the Imperial Commissioner by the Emperor to end the trade, thereby putting the Britain's lucrative scheme at risk, igniting the Opium War.) Delano came back to USA a rich man in 1846, settling in New York state in 1851; he returned to Hong Kong in 1860 to resume his opium trade after financial reverses during the Panic of 1857. In 1880, his daughter Sara was married to James Roosevelt, Franklin's father. When doing The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, biographer Geoffrey Ward was asked by the Delano family to minimize Delano's involvement in the opium trade (which Ward did not oblige). Why keep mum a great success story that is "honorable and legitimate"?