WASHINGTON, _May 15, 1856_.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:
I transmit herewith reports of the Secretary of State, the Secretary
of the Navy, and the Attorney-General, in reply to a resolution of the
Senate of the 24th of March last, and also to a resolution of the House
of Representatives of the 8th of May instant, both having reference to
the routes of transit between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through
the Republics of New Granada and Nicaragua and to the condition of
affairs in Central America.
These documents relate to questions of the highest importance and
interest to the people of the United States.
The narrow isthmus which connects the continents of North and South
America, by the facilities it affords for easy transit between the
Atlantic and Pacific oceans, rendered the countries of Central America
an object of special consideration to all maritime nations, which has
been greatly augmented in modern times by the operation of changes in
commercial relations, especially those produced by the general use of
steam as a motive power by land and sea. To us, on account of its
geographical position and of our political interest as an American State
of primary magnitude, that isthmus is of peculiar importance, just as
the Isthmus of Suez is, for corresponding reasons, to the maritime
powers of Europe. But above all, the importance to the United States of
securing free transit across the American isthmus has rendered it of
paramount interest to us since the settlement of the Territories of
Oregon and Washington and the accession of California to the Union.
Impelled by these considerations, the United States took steps at an
early day to assure suitable means of commercial transit by canal
railway, or otherwise across this isthmus.
We concluded, in the first place, a treaty of peace, amity, navigation,
and commerce with the Republic of New Granada, among the conditions of
which was a stipulation on the part of New Granada guaranteeing to the
United States the right of way or transit across that part of the
Isthmus which lies in the territory of New Granada, in consideration of
which the United States guaranteed in respect of the same territory the
rights of sovereignty and property of New Granada.
The effect of this treaty was to afford to the people of the United
States facilities for at once opening a common road from Chagres to
Panama and for at length constructing a railway in the same direction,
to connect regularly with steamships, for the transportation of mails,
specie, and passengers to and fro between the Atlantic and Pacific
States and Territories of the United States.
The United States also endeavored, but unsuccessfully, to obtain from
the Mexican Republic the cession of the right of way at the northern
extremity of the Isthmus by Tehuantepec, and that line of communication
continues to be an object of solicitude to the people of this Republic.
In the meantime, intervening between the Republic of New Granada and
the Mexican Republic lie the States of Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras,
Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, the several members of the former Republic of
Central America. Here, in the territory of the Central American States,
is the narrowest part of the Isthmus, and hither, of course, public
attention has been directed as the most inviting field for enterprises
of interoceanic communication between the opposite shores of America,
and more especially to the territory of the States of Nicaragua and
Honduras.
Paramount to that of any European State, as was the interest of
the United States in the security and freedom of projected lines of
travel across the Isthmus by the way of Nicaragua and Honduras, still
we did not yield in this respect to any suggestions of territorial
aggrandizement, or even of exclusive advantage, either of communication
or of commerce. Opportunities had not been wanting to the United States
to procure such advantage by peaceful means and with full and free
assent of those who alone had any legitimate authority in the matter.
We disregarded those opportunities from considerations alike of domestic
and foreign policy, just as, even to the present day, we have persevered
in a system of justice and respect for the rights and interests of
others as well as our own in regard to each and all of the States of
Central America.
It was with surprise and regret, therefore, that the United States
learned a few days after the conclusion of the treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, by which the United States became, with the consent of the
Mexican Republic, the rightful owners of California, and thus invested
with augmented special interest in the political condition of Central
America, that a military expedition, under the authority of the British
Government, had landed at San Juan del Norte, in the State of Nicaragua,
and taken forcible possession of that port, the necessary terminus of
any canal or railway across the Isthmus within the territories of
Nicaragua.
It did not diminish the unwelcomeness to us of this act on the part of
Great Britain to find that she assumed to justify it on the ground of
an alleged protectorship of a small and obscure band of uncivilized
Indians, whose proper name had even become lost to history, who did not
constitute a state capable of territorial sovereignty either in fact or
of right, and all political interest in whom and in the territory they
occupied Great Britain had previously renounced by successive treaties
with Spain when Spain was sovereign to the country and subsequently with
independent Spanish America.
Nevertheless, and injuriously affected as the United States conceived
themselves to have been by this act of the British Government and by its
occupation about the same time of insular and of continental portions
of the territory of the State of Honduras, we remembered the many and
powerful ties and mutual interests by which Great Britain and the United
States are associated, and we proceeded in earnest good faith and with
a sincere desire to do whatever might strengthen the bonds of peace
between us to negotiate with Great Britain a convention to assure the
perfect neutrality of all interoceanic communications across the Isthmus
and, as the indispensable condition of such neutrality, the absolute
independence of the States of Central America and their complete
sovereignty within the limits of their own territory as well against
Great Britain as against the United States. We supposed we had
accomplished that object by the convention of April 19, 1850, which
would never have been signed nor ratified on the part of the United
States but for the conviction that in virtue of its provisions neither
Great Britain nor the United States was thereafter to exercise any
territorial sovereignty in fact or in name in any part of Central
America, however or whensoever acquired, either before or afterwards.
The essential object of the convention--the neutralization of the
Isthmus--would, of course, become a nullity if either Great Britain
or the United States were to continue to hold exclusively islands or
mainland of the Isthmus, and more especially if, under any claim of
protectorship of Indians, either Government were to remain forever
sovereign in fact of the Atlantic shores of the three States of Costa
Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras.
I have already communicated to the two Houses of Congress full
information of the protracted and hitherto fruitless efforts which the
United States have made to arrange this international question with
Great Britain. It is referred to on the present occasion only because of
its intimate connection with the special object now to be brought to the
attention of Congress.
The unsettled political condition of some of the Spanish American
Republics has never ceased to be regarded by this Government with
solicitude and regret on their own account, while it has been the source
of continual embarrassment in our public and private relations with
them. In the midst of the violent revolutions and the wars by which they
are continually agitated, their public authorities are unable to afford
due protection to foreigners and to foreign interests within their
territory, or even to defend their own soil against individual
aggressors, foreign or domestic, the burden of the inconveniences and
losses of which therefore devolves in no inconsiderable degree upon the
foreign states associated with them in close relations of geographical
vicinity or of commercial intercourse.
Such is more emphatically the situation of the United States
with respect to the Republics of Mexico and of Central America.
Notwithstanding, however, the relative remoteness of the European
States from America, facts of the same order have not failed to appear
conspicuously in their intercourse with Spanish American Republics.
Great Britain has repeatedly been constrained to recur to measures of
force for the protection of British interests in those countries. France
found it necessary to attack the castle of San Juan de Uloa and even to
debark troops at Vera Cruz in order to obtain redress of wrongs done to
Frenchmen in Mexico.
What is memorable in this respect in the conduct and policy of the
United States is that while it would be as easy for us to annex and
absorb new territories in America as it is for European States to do
this in Asia or Africa, and while if done by us it might be justified as
well on the alleged ground of the advantage which would accrue therefrom
to the territories annexed and absorbed, yet we have abstained from
doing it, in obedience to considerations of right not less than of
policy; and that while the courageous and self-reliant spirit of our
people prompts them to hardy enterprises, and they occasionally yield to
the temptation of taking part in the troubles of countries near at hand,
where they know how potential their influence, moral and material, must
be, the American Government has uniformly and steadily resisted all
attempts of individuals in the United States to undertake armed
aggression against friendly Spanish American Republics.
While the present incumbent of the executive office has been in
discharge of its duties he has never failed to exert all the authority
in him vested to repress such enterprises, because they are in violation
of the law of the land, which the Constitution requires him to execute
faithfully; because they are contrary to the policy of the Government,
and because to permit them would be a departure from good faith toward
those American Republics in amity with us, which are entitled to, and
will never cease to enjoy, in their calamities the cordial sympathy, and
in their prosperity the efficient good will, of the Government and of
the people of the United States.
To say that our laws in this respect are sometimes violated or
successfully evaded is only to say what is true of all laws in all
countries, but not more so in the United States than in any one whatever
of the countries of Europe. Suffice it to repeat that the laws of
the United States prohibiting all foreign military enlistments or
expeditions within our territory have been executed with impartial
good faith, and, so far as the nature of things permits, as well in
repression of private persons as of the official agents of other
Governments, both of Europe and America.
Among the Central American Republics to which modern events have
imparted most prominence is that of Nicaragua, by reason of its
particular position on the Isthmus. Citizens of the United States have
established in its territory a regular interoceanic transit route,
second only in utility and value to the one previously established in
the territory of New Granada. The condition of Nicaragua would, it is
believed, have been much more prosperous than it has been but for the
occupation of its only Atlantic port by a foreign power, and of the
disturbing authority set up and sustained by the same power in a portion
of its territory, by means of which its domestic sovereignty was
impaired, its public lands were withheld from settlement, and it was
deprived of all the maritime revenue which it would otherwise collect
on imported merchandise at San Juan del Norte.
In these circumstances of the political debility of the Republic of
Nicaragua, and when its inhabitants were exhausted by long-continued
civil war between parties neither of them strong enough to overcome
the other or permanently maintain internal tranquillity, one of
the contending factions of the Republic invited the assistance and
cooperation of a small body of citizens of the United States from the
State of California, whose presence, as it appears, put an end at once
to civil war and restored apparent order throughout the territory of
Nicaragua, with a new administration, having at its head a distinguished
individual, by birth a citizen of the Republic, D. Patricio Rivas,
as its provisional President.
It is the established policy of the United States to recognize all
governments without question of their source or their organization, or
of the means by which the governing persons attain their power, provided
there be a government _de facto_ accepted by the people of the country,
and with reserve only of the time as to the recognition of revolutionary
governments arising out of the subdivision of parent states with which
we are in relations of amity. We do not go behind the fact of a foreign
government exercising actual power to investigate questions of
legitimacy; we do not inquire into the causes which may have led to
a change of government. To us it is indifferent whether a successful
revolution has been aided by foreign intervention or not; whether
insurrection has overthrown existing government, and another has been
established in its place according to preexisting forms or in a manner
adopted for the occasion by those whom we may find in the actual
possession of power. All these matters we leave to the people and
public authorities of the particular country to determine; and their
determination, whether it be by positive action or by ascertained
acquiescence, is to us a sufficient warranty of the legitimacy of
the new government.
During the sixty-seven years which have elapsed since the establishment
of the existing Government of the United States, in all which time this
Union has maintained undisturbed domestic tranquillity, we have had
occasion to recognize governments _de facto_, founded either by domestic
revolution or by military invasion from abroad, in many of the
Governments of Europe.
It is the more imperatively necessary to apply this rule to the
Spanish American Republics, in consideration of the frequent and not
seldom anomalous changes of organization or administration which they
undergo and the revolutionary nature of most of these changes, of
which the recent series of revolutions in the Mexican Republic is an
example, where five successive revolutionary governments have made
their appearance in the course of a few months and been recognized
successively, each as the political power of that country, by the
United States.
When, therefore, some time since, a new minister from the Republic of
Nicaragua presented himself, bearing the commission of President Rivas,
he must and would have been received as such, unless he was found
on inquiry subject to personal exception, but for the absence of
satisfactory information upon the question whether President Rivas was
_in fact_ the head of an established Government of the Republic of
Nicaragua, doubt as to which arose not only from the circumstances of
his avowed association with armed emigrants recently from the United
States, but that the proposed minister himself was of that class of
persons, and not otherwise or previously a citizen of Nicaragua.
Another minister from the Republic of Nicaragua has now presented
himself, and has been received as such, satisfactory evidence appearing
that he represents the Government _de facto_ and, so far as such exists,
the Government _de jure_ of that Republic.
That reception, while in accordance with the established policy of the
United States, was likewise called for by the most imperative special
exigencies, which require that this Government shall enter at once into
diplomatic relations with that of Nicaragua. In the first place, a
difference has occurred between the Government of President Rivas and
the Nicaragua Transit Company, which involves the necessity of inquiry
into rights of citizens of the United States, who allege that they
have been aggrieved by the acts of the former and claim protection
and redress at the hands of their Government. In the second place,
the interoceanic communication by the way of Nicaragua is effectually
interrupted, and the persons and property of unoffending private
citizens of the United States in that country require the attention of
their Government. Neither of these objects can receive due consideration
without resumption of diplomatic intercourse with the Government of
Nicaragua.
Further than this, the documents communicated show that while the
interoceanic transit by the way of Nicaragua is cut off, disturbances
at Panama have occurred to obstruct, temporarily at least, that by the
way of New Granada, involving the sacrifice of the lives and property
of citizens of the United States. A special commissioner has been
dispatched to Panama to investigate the facts of this occurrence with a
view particularly to the redress of parties aggrieved. But measures of
another class will be demanded for the future security of interoceanic
communication by this as by the other routes of the Isthmus.
It would be difficult to suggest a single object of interest, external
or internal, more important to the United States than the maintenance
of the communication, by land and sea, between the Atlantic and Pacific
States and Territories of the Union It is a material element of the
national integrity and sovereignty.
I have adopted such precautionary measures and have taken such action
for the purpose of affording security to the several transit routes
of Central America and to the persons and property of citizens of
the United States connected with or using the same as are within my
constitutional power and as existing circumstances have seemed to
demand. Should these measures prove inadequate to the object, that
fact will be communicated to Congress with such recommendations as
the exigency of the case may indicate.