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.