Cabral withdrew to the interior, keeping up a menace of war, while
the country was indignant with the unscrupulous usurper, who for
the second time obtained power by violence. Power thus obtained was
naturally uncertain, and Baez soon found himself obliged to invoke
foreign assistance. “Help me, Cassius, or I sink!” cried the Grand
Citizen. European powers would not listen. None of them wanted his
half-island,--not Spain, not France, not England. None would take it.
But still the Grand Citizen cried, when at last he was relieved by an
answering voice from our Republic. A young officer, inexperienced in
life, ignorant of the world, untaught in the Spanish language, unversed
in International Law, knowing absolutely nothing of the intercourse
between nations, and unconscious of the Constitution of his country,
was selected by the President to answer the cry of the Grand Citizen.
I wish that I could say something better of General Babcock; but
if I spoke according to the evidence, much from his own lips, the
portraiture would be more painful, and his unfitness more manifest. In
closest association with Baez, and with profitable concessions not easy
to measure, was the American Cazneau, known as disloyal to our country,
and so thoroughly suspected that the military missionary, before
leaving Washington, was expressly warned against him; but like seeks
like, and he at once rushed into the embrace of the selfish speculator,
who boasted that “no one American had been more intimately connected
with the Samana and annexation negotiations, from their inception to
their close, than himself,”--and who did not hesitate to instruct Baez
that it was not only his right, but duty, to keep an American citizen
in prison “to serve and protect negotiations in which our President
was so deeply interested,” which he denominates “the great business in
hand.”[20]
By the side of Cazneau was Fabens, also a speculator and life-long
intriguer, afterwards Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary
of Baez in “the great business.” Sparing details, which would make the
picture more sombre, I come at once to the conclusion. A treaty was
signed by which the usurper pretended to sell his country to the United
States in consideration of $1,500,000; also another treaty leasing the
Bay of Samana for an annual rent of $150,000. The latter sum was paid
down by the young plenipotentiary, or $100,000 in cash and $50,000 in
muskets and a battery. No longer able to pocket the doubloons of Spain,
the usurper sought to pocket our eagles, and not content with muskets
and a battery to be used against his indignant fellow-countrymen,
obtained the Navy of the United States to maintain him in his treason.
It was a plot worthy of the hardened conspirator and his well-tried
confederates.