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.