We are content to let the matter rest, although we cannot acquiesce in
the decision which her Majesty’s government has made upon the
subject.
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.
Acting Rear-Admiral Bailey to Mr.
Welles..
Oyster Bay, Long Island, New
York,
September 21, 1864.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the
receipt of your commxxnication dated August 6, which has just been
forwarded to me from Key West, at which station it arrived after my
departure.
You enclosed me a copy of a reply made by Mr. Butterfield, British
vice-consul at Key West, and addressed to Mr. Archibald, her
Britannic Majesty’s consul at New York, to certain statements that I
made to the department in the case of one Edward F. Rich, an
American citizen, and you request from me a reply thereto.
The points of agreement between my statement and the counter
statement of Mr. Butterfield are so marked, and the discrepancies
are so immaterial, that any lengthy explanation is rendered
unnecessary. I complained to the department that Mr. Butterfield had
then, in the case of Rich, as previously in the case of John Ring,
intervened between myself and an American citizen, whom I held a
prisoner, for the purpose of rendering him such aid as lay in his
power, by furnishing him with a British certificate—in other words,
granting him British protection. I do not find that Mr. Butterfield
denies in any way this statement; on the contrary, I gather from his
reply the frank admission that he did grant
the certificate; that it was to an American citizen, in no wise
entitled thereto, and that he was in error in doing so. Mr.
butterfield then proceeds to argue that this act on his part could
not lead to the consequences I attributed to it, because a British
passport was not in itself sufficient to enable a person to pass out
of the harbor of Key West. I cannot consider this an ingenuous plea.
Mr. Butterfield did all that it lay in his power to do. He armed
Rich with the first requisite and element of escape, a British
certificate. I cannot see that any less responsibility rests upon
Mr. Butterfield, because this act alone was
not sufficient to enable Rich to make his escape.
The only other issues raised by Mr. Butterfield are, as to the
precise date on which Rich made his escape, and whether or no the
vessel on which he went was owned by a Spaniard; whether the
certificate was addressed to the Spanish consul. All these matters
seem to me to have but little bearing upon the real points in the
case.
Mr. Butterfield, perhaps, is right in saying that the quartermaster
steamer Perry was the only one that left on the 27th of January, and
that no vessel in Key West is owned by a Spaniard. He speaks of a
vessel called the Aristides that left on the 26th of January for
Havana, with twenty-eight passengers. Some eight months have
elapsed, and I am now distant from any sources of information, but I
believe this to have been precisely the name of the vessel to which
I intended to refer. She may have left on the 26th of January, and
not the 27th, and her owner may not be a Spaniard.
I remember that when I discovered that Rich had escaped, I sent for
the captain of this schooner, the Aristides, (if that be her name, )
and examined him; he spoke broken English, and like a Spaniard.
Among all the passengers that he carried over on the short trip to
Havana, he was not able to give any names, or to individualize Rich,
but he assured me that all his passengers produced to him passports
before he would receive them on board. I had no doubt, from what I
then gathered from the master of the vessel, that Rich had passed
himself on board by means of his British protection. How he managed
to elude the boarding officers from the guard schooner, I do not
know, since, as Mr. Butterfield correctly states, I made it a
requisite that blockade runners should have their passes to leave
the island, countersigned by me before they were permitted to pass
the guard vessel. Finally, whether the certificate was addressed
[Page 326]
to the Spanish consul,
&c., Mr. Butterfield says not. I remember distinctly that Rich
handed me some sort of memorandum or note, which I supposed to be
for me; on reading it, I found that it was a request to the Spanish
consul to furnish the bearer with a passage to Havana, as he was a
British subject. I cannot be mistaken in this matter, for I remember
handing it back to Rich, and saying to him that it was not intended
for me; that it was addressed to the Spanish consul. Rich brought it
in the hope that I would be influenced to grant him also my permit
to leave the island, and I distinctly stated to him then that
whatever consular paper he might obtain, I should not grant him my permission to leave.
With this explanation, I submit the matter to the department. so far
as Mr. Butterfield is concerned, I believe him to have been deceived
in regard to the nationality of Rich, though I do not think that he took the proper precaution to guard
against such deception, since the proofs of the man’s nationality
were lying patent before him, on the files of the court, and in the
very register of the vessel in which he was captured, where it would
be supposed that any consul would, in the exercise of ordinary
caution, have at once looked. That Mr. Butterfield should have so
readily granted a British certificate to a master of an American
vessel, who was prima facie from that very
fact an American, was, I confess, a matter of considerable surprise
to me, and 1 was apprehensive that such incautiousness, if persisted
in, might lead to trouble in the future. It was in this view that I
called the case to the attention of the department.
So far as I am personally concerned, I am quite content that the
matter should rest where it is. I do not believe Mr. Butterfield to
have been animated by any feeling of hostility to the government of
the United States; and it is proper to state that since this matter
has been brought to his attention, he has consulted with me as to
the grounds I had for believing prisoners taken by me, to whom I had
refused passes, to be Americans, before granting to them his
protection and certificate. Should this course be continued there is
no reason to apprehend any future difficulty from like errors.
I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
THEODORUS BAILEY, Acting Rear-Admiral,
Com’g E. G. B. Squadron.
Hon. Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy.
