These Presidential pretensions, in all their variety, personal and
military, with reckless indifference to law, naturally ripened in the
contrivance, nursed in hot-house secrecy, against the peace of the
island of San Domingo: I say deliberately, against the peace of that
island, for under the guise of annexing a portion there was menace
to the Black Republic of Hayti. This whole business, absolutely
indefensible from beginning to end, being wrong at every point, is the
special and most characteristic product of the Administration, into
which it infused and projected itself more than into anything else.
In this multiform disobedience we behold our President. Already I
have referred to this contrivance as marking an epoch in Presidential
pretensions. It is my duty now to show its true character as a warning
against its author.
A few weeks only after beginning his career as a civilian, and while
occupied with military usurpations and the perquisites of office, he
was tempted by overtures of Dominican plotters, headed by the usurper
Baez and the speculator Cazneau: the first an adventurer, conspirator,
and trickster, described by one who knows him well as “the worst man
living of whom he has any personal knowledge”;[148] and the second,
one of our own countrymen, long resident on the island, known as
disloyal throughout the war, and entirely kindred in character to Baez.
Listening to these prompters, and without one word in Congress or in
the press suggesting annexion of the island or any part of it, the
President began his contrivance; and here we see abuse in every form
and at every step, absolutely without precedent in our history.
The agent in this transaction was Orville E. Babcock, a young officer
figuring in the Blue Book of the time as one of the unauthorized
“secretaries” at the Executive Mansion, and also as a major of
engineers. His published instructions, under date of July 13, 1869,
were simply to make inquiries; but the plot appears in a communication
of the same date from the Secretary of the Navy, directed to the
Seminole, a war-ship, with an armament of one eleven-inch gun and four
thirty-two pounders, “to give him the _moral support_ of its guns”; and
this was followed by a telegraphic instruction to Key West for another
war-ship “to proceed without a moment’s delay to San Domingo City, to
be placed at the disposal of General Babcock while on that coast.”[149]
With such “moral support” the emissary of the President obtained from
the usurper Baez that famous Protocol stipulating the annexion of
Dominica to the United States in consideration of $1,500,000, which the
young officer, fresh from the Executive Mansion, professed to execute
as “Aide-de-Camp to his Excellency General Ulysses S. Grant, President
of the United States,”--as if, instead of Chief Magistrate of a
Republic, the President were a military chieftain with his foot in the
stirrup, surrounded by a military staff. The same instrument contained
the unblushing stipulation, 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”:[150]
which is simply that the President shall become a lobbyist to bring
about the annexion by Congress. Such was the strange beginning,
illegal, unconstitutional, and offensive in every particular, but
showing the Presidential character.
On his return to Washington, the young officer, who had assumed to be
“Aide-de-Camp to his Excellency General Ulysses S. Grant,” and had
bound the President to become a lobbyist for a wretched scheme, instead
of being disowned and reprimanded, was sent back to the usurper with
instructions to negotiate two treaties,--one for the annexion of the
half-island of Dominica, and the other for the lease of the Bay of
Samana.[151] By the Constitution of the United States “ambassadors and
other public ministers” are appointed by the President by and with the
advice and consent of the Senate; but our Aide-de-Camp had no such
commission. Presidential prerogative empowered him. Nor was naval
force wanting. With three war-ships at his disposal,[152] he concluded
negotiations with Baez and obtained the two treaties. Naturally force
was needed to keep the usurper in power while he sold his country,
and naturally such a transaction required a Presidential Aide-de-Camp
unknown to Constitution or Law, rather than a civilian duly appointed
according to both.