Part 4

Referring to the correspondence of Raymond H. Perry, our Commercial Agent at San Domingo, who signed the treaties, the Secretary presents a summary, which, though obnoxious to just criticism, is a confession. According to him, the correspondence “tends to show that the presence of a United States man-of-war in the port was supposed to have _a peaceful influence_.”[25] The term “peaceful influence” is the pleonasm of the Secretary, confessing the maintenance of Baez in his usurpation. There is no such thing as stealing; “_convey_ the wise it call”; and so with the Secretary the maintenance of a usurper by our war-ships is only “a peaceful influence.” A discovery of the Secretary. But in the levity of his statement the Secretary forgets that a United States man-of-war has nothing to do within a foreign jurisdiction, and cannot exert influence there without unlawful intervention.

The Secretary alludes also to the probability of “another revolution,” of course against Baez, in the event of the failure of the annexion plot; and here is another confession of the dependence of the usurper upon our Navy.

But the correspondence of Mr. Perry, as communicated to the Senate, shows more plainly than the confession of the Secretary how completely the usurper was maintained in power by the strong arm of the United States.

The anxiety of the usurper was betrayed at an early day, even while vaunting the popular enthusiasm for annexion. In a dispatch dated at San Domingo, January 20, 1870, Mr. Perry thus reports:--

“The Nantasket left this port January 1, 1870, and we have not heard from her since. She was to go to Puerto Plata [a port of Dominica] and return _viâ_ Samana Bay [also in Dominica]. _We need the protection of a man-of-war very much_, but anticipate her return very soon.”[26]

Why the man-of-war was needed is easily inferred from what is said in the same dispatch:--

“The President tells me that it is almost impossible to prevent the people pronouncing for annexation before the proper time. _He prefers to await the arrival of a United States man-of-war before their opinion is publicly expressed._”[27]

If the truth were told, the usurper felt that it was almost impossible to prevent the people from pronouncing for his overthrow, and therefore he wanted war-ships.

Then under date of February 8, 1870, Mr. Perry reports again:--

“President Baez daily remarks that the United States Government has not kept its promises to send men-of-war to the coast. He seems very timid and lacks energy.”[28]

The truth becomes still more apparent in the dispatch of February 20, 1870,--nearly three months after the signature of the treaties, and while they were still pending before the Senate,--where it is openly reported:--

_“If the United States ships were withdrawn, he [Baez] could not hold the reins of this Government._ I have told him this.”[29]

Nothing can be plainer. In other words, the usurper was maintained in power by our guns. Such was the official communication of the very agent who had signed the treaties, and who was himself an ardent annexionist. Desiring annexion, he confesses the means employed to accomplish it. How the President did not at once abandon, unfinished, treaties maintained by violence, how the Secretary of State did not at once resign rather than be a party to this transaction, is beyond comprehension.

Nor was the State Department left uninformed with regard to the distribution of this naval force. Here is the report, under date of San Domingo, March 12, 1870, while the vote was proceeding:--

“The Severn lies at this port; the Swatara left for Samana the 9th; the Nantasket goes to Puerto Plata to-morrow, the 13th; the Yantic lies in the river in this city. Admiral Poor, on board the Severn, is expected to remain at this port for some time. Everything is very quiet at present throughout the country.”[30]

Thus under the guns of our Navy was quiet maintained, while Baez, like another usurper, exclaimed, “Now, by St. Paul, the work goes bravely on!”

What this same official reported to the State Department he afterward reaffirmed under oath, in his testimony before the committee of the Senate on the case of Mr. Hatch. The words were few, but decisive, touching the acts of our Navy,--“committed since we had been there, _protecting Baez from the citizens of San Domingo_.”[31]

Then, again, in a private letter to myself, under date of Bristol, Rhode Island, February 10, 1871, after stating that he had reported what the record shows to be true, “that Baez was sustained and held in power by the United States Navy,” he adds, “This fact Baez acknowledged to me.”

So that we have the confession of the Secretary of State, also the confession of his agent at San Domingo, and the confession of Baez himself, that the usurper depended for support on our Navy.

AN AMERICAN CITIZEN SACRIFICED TO HELP THE TREATY.

This drama of a usurper sustained by foreign power is illustrated by an episode, where the liberty of an American citizen was sacrificed to the consummation of the plot. It appears that Davis Hatch, of Norwalk, Connecticut, intimately known to one of the Senators of that State [Mr. FERRY] and respected by the other [Mr. BUCKINGHAM], lived in Dominica, engaged in business there, while Cabral was the legitimate President. During this time he wrote letters to a New York paper, in which he exposed the character of the conspirator Baez, then an exile. When the latter succeeded by violence in overthrowing the regular Government, one of his first acts was to arrest Mr. Hatch, on the ground that he had coöperated with Cabral. How utterly groundless was this charge appears by a letter to Baez from his own brother, governor of the province where the former resided,[32] and also by the testimony of Mr. Somers Smith, our Commercial Agent in San Domingo, who spoke and acted as became a representative of our country.[33] Read the correspondence and testimony candidly, and you will confess that the whole charge was trumped up to serve the purpose of the usurper.

Sparing all details of trial and pardon, where everything testifies against Baez, I come to the single decisive point, on which there can be no question, that, even after his formal pardon, Mr. Hatch was detained in prison by the authority of the usurper, at the special instance of Cazneau and with the connivance of Babcock, in order to prevent his influence against the treaty of annexion. The evidence is explicit and unanswerable. Gautier, the Minister of Baez, who had signed the treaty, in an official note to our representative, Mr. Raymond H. Perry, dated at San Domingo, February 19, 1870, and communicated to the State Department, says: “I desire that you will be good enough to assure his Excellency, the Secretary of State in Washington, that _the prolonged sojourn of Mr. Hatch here_ has been only to prevent his hostile action in New York.”[34] Nor is this all. Under the same date, Cazneau had the equal hardihood to write to Babcock, then at Washington, a similar version of the conspiracy, where, after denunciation of Perry as “embarrassing affairs here,” in San Domingo, by his persistency in urging the release of Mr. Hatch, he relates, that, on occasion of a recent peremptory demand of this sort in his presence, Baez replied, that Hatch “would certainly make use of his liberty to join the enemies of annexation,” and “that _a few weeks’ restraint_ would not be so inconvenient to him as his slanderous statements might become to _the success of General Grant’s policy in the Antilles_,”--and he adds, that he himself, in response to the simultaneous charge of “opposing the liberation of an innocent man,” declared, that, in his opinion, “President Baez had the right, _and ought_, to do everything in his power _to serve and protect negotiations_ in which our President was so deeply interested.”[35] All this is clear, plain, and documentary. Nor is there any drawback or deduction on account of the character of Mr. Hatch, who, according to the best testimony, is an excellent citizen, enjoying the good-will and esteem of his neighbors at home, being respected there “as much as Governor Buckingham is in Norwich,”[36]--and we all know that no higher standard can be reached.

In other days it was said that the best government is where an injury to a single citizen is resented as an injury to the whole State. Here was an American citizen, declared by our representative to be “an innocent man,” and already pardoned for the crimes falsely alleged against him, incarcerated, or, according to the polite term of the Minister of Baez, compelled to a “prolonged sojourn,” in order to assure the consummation of the plot for the acceptance of the treaty, or, in the words of Cazneau, “to serve and protect negotiations in which our President [Grant] was so deeply interested.” The cry, “I am an American citizen,” was nothing to Baez, nothing to Cazneau, nothing to Babcock. The young missionary heard the cry and answered not. Annexion was in peril. Annexion could not stand the testimony of Mr. Hatch, who would write in New York papers. Therefore was he doomed to a prison. Here again I forbear details, though at each point they testify. And yet the Great Republic, instead of spurning at once the heartless usurper who trampled on the liberty of an American citizen, and spurning the ill-omened treaty which required this sacrifice, continued to lend its strong arm in the maintenance of the trampler, while with unexampled assiduity it pressed the treaty upon a reluctant Senate.

CONFESSION OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT WITH REGARD TO HAYTI.

But intervention in Dominica is only one part of the story, even according to the confession of the State Department. Side by side with Dominica on the same tempting island is the Black Republic of Hayti, with a numerous population, which more than two generations ago achieved national independence, and at a later day, by the recognition of our Government, took its place under the Law of Nations as equal and peer of the Great Republic. To all its paramount titles of Independence and Equality, sacred and unimpeachable, must be added its special character as an example of self-government, being the first in the history of the African race, and a promise of the future. Who can doubt that as such this Black Republic has a value beyond all the products of its teeming tropical soil? Like other Governments, not excepting our own, it has complications, domestic and foreign. Among the latter is chronic hostility with Dominica, arising from claims territorial and pecuniary. To these claims I refer without undertaking to consider their justice. It is enough that they exist. And here comes the wrong perpetuated by the Great Republic. In the effort to secure the much-coveted territory, our Government, not content with maintaining the usurper Baez in power, occupying the harbors of Dominica with the war-ships of the United States, sent other war-ships, being none other than our most powerful monitor, the Dictator, with the frigate Severn as consort, and with yet other monitors in their train, to menace the Black Republic by an act of war. An American admiral was found to do this thing, and an American minister, himself of African blood, was found to aid the admiral.

The dispatch of the Secretary of State instituting this act of war does not appear in his Report; but we are sufficiently enlightened by that of Mr. Bassett, our Minister Resident at Port-au-Prince, who, under date of February 17, 1870, informs the State Department in Washington that he had “transmitted to the Haytian Government notification that the United States asked and expected it to observe a strict neutrality in reference to the internal affairs of San Domingo”; and then, with superserviceable alacrity, he lets the Department know that he communicated to Commander Owen, of the Seminole, reports that “persons in authority under the Haytian Government were planning clandestinely schemes for interference in San Domingo affairs.”[37] But a moment of contrition seems to have overtaken the Minister; for he adds, that he did not regard these reports “as sufficiently reliable to make them the basis for a recommendation of _severe or extreme measures_.”[38] Pray, by what title, Mr. Minister, could you recommend any such measures, being nothing less than war against the Black Republic? By what title could you launch these great thunders? The menacing note of the Minister was acknowledged by the Black Republic without one word of submission,--as also without one word of proper resentment.[39]

The officious Minister of the Great Republic reports to the State Department that he had addressed a diplomatic note to the Black Republic, under date of February 9, 1870, where, referring to the answer of the latter, he says, “It would nevertheless have been more satisfactory and agreeable to my Government _and myself_, if you, in speaking for your Government, had felt authorized to give assurance of the neutrality asked and expected by the United States.”[40] This letter was written with the guns of the Dictator and Severn behind. It appears from the Minister’s report, that these two war-ships arrived at the capital of the Black Republic on the morning of February 9th, when the Minister, as he says, “arranged for a formal call on the Haytian Government the same day.” The Minister then records, and no blush appears on his paper, that “the Admiral availed himself of this visit to communicate, _quite pointedly_, to the President and his advisers the tenor of his instructions.”[41] This assault upon the Independence and Equality of the Black Republic will appear more fully in the Report transmitted to the Senate by the Navy Department. For the present I present the case on the confession of the State Department.

RECORD OF THE NAVY DEPARTMENT.

If the Report of the State Department is a confession, that of the Navy Department is an authentic record of acts flagrant and indefensible,--unless we are ready to set aside the Law of Nations and the Constitution of the United States, two paramount safeguards. Both of these are degraded in order to advance the scheme. If I called it plot, I should not err; for this term is suggested by the machination. The record is complete.

The scheme first shows itself in a letter from the Secretary of State to the Secretary of the Navy, under date of May 17, 1869, informing the latter that the President deems it “desirable that _a man-of-war_, commanded by a discreet and intelligent officer, should be ordered _to visit the several ports of the Dominican Republic_, and to report upon the condition of affairs in that quarter.” The Secretary adds:--

“It is also important that we should have full and accurate information in regard to the views of the Dominican people of all parties in regard to annexation to the United States, or the sale or lease of the Bay of Samana, or of territory adjacent thereto.”[42]

No invitation from the island appears,--not a word even from any of its people. The beginning is in the letter of the Secretary; and here we see how “a man-of-war” formed part of the first stage. A mere inquiry is inaugurated by “a man-of-war.” Nor was it to stop at a single place; it was to visit the several ports of the Dominican Republic.

The Secretary of the Navy obeyed. Orders were given, and under date of June 29, 1869, Rear-Admiral Hoff reports that the Nipsic, with an armament of one 11-inch and two 9-inch guns, “is to visit all the ports of the Dominican Republic.”[43] Here again is a revelation, foreshadowing the future; all the ports are to be visited by this powerful war-ship. Why? To what just end? If for negotiation, then was force, _force_, FORCE our earliest, as it has been since our constant plenipotentiary. Already we discern the contrast with Old Spain.

The loss of a screw occurred to prevent this war-breathing perambulation. The Nipsic did not go beyond Port-au-Prince; but Lieutenant-Commander Selfridge, in his report, under date of July 14, 1869, lets drop an honest judgment, which causes regret that he did not visit the whole island. Thus he wrote:--

“While my short stay in the island will not permit me to speak with authority, it is my individual opinion, that, if the United States should annex Hayti _on the representation of a party_, it would be found an elephant both costly in money and lives.”[44]

The whole case is opened when we are warned against annexion “on the representation of a party.”

Still the scheme proceeded. On the 17th July, 1869, General Babcock sailed from New York for San Domingo, as special agent of the State Department. The records of the Department, so far as communicated to the Senate, show no authority to open negotiations of any kind, much less to treat for the acquisition of this half-island. His instructions, which are dated July 13, 1869, are simply to make certain inquiries;[45] but, under the same date, the Secretary of the Navy addresses a letter to Commander Owen, of the Seminole, with an armament of one 11-inch gun and four 32-pounders, of 4,200 pounds, in which he says:--

“You will remain at Samana, or on the coast of San Domingo, while General Babcock is there, _and give him the moral support of your guns_.”[46]

The phrase of the Secretary is at least curious. And who is General Babcock, that on his visit the Navy is to be at his back? Nothing on this head is said. All that we know from the record is that he was to make certain inquiries, and in this business “guns” play a part. To be sure, it was their “_moral_ support” he was to have; but they were nevertheless “guns.” Thus in all times has lawless force sought to disguise itself. Before any negotiation was begun, while only a few interrogatories were ordered by the State Department, under which this missionary acted, “the moral support of guns” was ordered by the Navy Department. Here, Sir, permit me to say, is the first sign of war, being an undoubted usurpation, whether by President or Secretary. War is hostile force, and here it is ordered. But this is only a squint, compared with the open declaration which ensued. And here again we witness the contrast with Old Spain.

But the “guns” of the Seminole were not enough to support the missionary in his inquiries. The Navy Department, under date of August 23, 1869, telegraphed to the commandant at Key West:--

“Direct a vessel to proceed without a moment’s delay to San Domingo City, _to be placed at the disposal of General Babcock while on that coast_. If not at San Domingo City, to find him.”[47]

Here is nothing less than the terrible earnestness of war itself. Accordingly, the Tuscarora was dispatched; and the missionary finds himself changed to a commodore. Again the contrast with Old Spain!

How many days the Tuscarora took to reach the coast does not appear; but on the 4th September the famous protocol was executed by Orville E. Babcock, entitling himself “Aide-de-Camp to his Excellency, General Ulysses S. Grant, President of the United States of America,” where, besides stipulating the annexion of Dominica to the United States in consideration of $1,500,000, it is further provided that “his Excellency, General Grant, President of the United States, promises, privately, to use all his influence in order that the idea of annexing the Dominican Republic to the United States may acquire such a degree of popularity among members of Congress as will be necessary for its accomplishment.”[48] Such was the work which needed so suddenly--“without a moment’s delay”--a second war-ship besides the Seminole, which was already ordered to lend “the _moral_ support of its guns.” How unlike that boast of Old Spain, that there was not a Spanish bottom in those waters!

Returning to Washington with his protocol, the missionary was now sent back with instructions to negotiate two treaties,--one for the annexion of the half-island, and the other for the lease of the Bay of Samana. By the Constitution ambassadors and other public ministers are appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate; but our missionary held no such commission. How the business sped appears from the State Department. The Report of the Navy Department shows how it was sustained by force. By a letter under date of December 3, 1869, on board the ship Albany, off San Domingo, addressed to Lieutenant-Commander Bunce on board the Nantasket, the missionary, after announcing the conclusion of a treaty for the lease of Samana and other purposes, imparts this important information:--

“In this negotiation the President has guarantied to the Dominican Republic protection from all foreign interposition during the time specified in the treaties for submitting the same to the people of the Dominican Republic.”

Of the absolute futility and nullity of this Presidential guaranty until after the ratification of the treaties I shall speak hereafter. Meanwhile we behold the missionary changed to plenipotentiary:--

“For this purpose the honorable Secretary of the Navy was directed to place _three armed vessels in this harbor, subject to my instruction_.”

Why three armed vessels? For what purpose? How unlike the boast of Old Spain! What follows reveals the menace of war:--

“I shall raise the United States flag on shore, and shall leave a small guard with it.”

Here is nothing less than military occupation. Besides war-ships in the waters, the flag is to be raised on shore, and soldiers of the United States are to be left with it. Again the contrast with Old Spain, boasting not only that there was not a single Spanish “bottom” on the coast, but not a single Spanish soldier on the land. Then follows an order to make war:--

“Should you find any foreign intervention intended, _you will use all your force_ to carry out to the letter the guaranties given in the treaties.”

Nothing could be stronger. Here is war. Then comes a direct menace by the young plenipotentiary, launched at the neighboring Black Republic:--

“The Dominican Republic fears trouble from the Haytian border, about Jacmel. You will please inform the people, in case you are satisfied there is an intended intervention, that such intervention, direct or indirect, will be regarded as an unfriendly act toward the United States, _and take such steps as you think necessary_.”[49]

The Dominican Republic fears trouble, or in other words the usurper Baez trembles for his power, and therefore the guns of our Navy are to be pointed at Hayti. Again, how little like Old Spain! And this was the way in which our negotiation began. We have heard of an “_armed_ neutrality,” and of an “_armed_ peace”; but here is an _armed_ negotiation.

The force employed in the negotiation naturally fructified in other force. Violence follows violence in new forms. Armed negotiation was changed to armed intervention, being an act of war,--all of which is placed beyond question. There is repetition and reduplication of testimony.

The swiftness of war appears in the telegram dated at the Navy Department January 29, 1870, addressed to Rear-Admiral Poor, at Key West. Here is this painful dispatch:--