Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the First Session Thirty-ninth Congress

Mr. Perry to Mr. Seward

No. 196.]

Legation of The United States, Madrid, May 7, 1865.

Sir: I have the honor to enclose an official copy of the law for the abandonment of San Domingo, which, after passing both chambers of the legislature was signed by the Queen on the 30th ultimo, and published in the senate on the 3d instant.

I am informed that the necessary orders have been immediately sent out for the prompt evacuation of the island by the Spanish military and naval torces, and by the civil administration.

The more recent debates on this question in both houses have elicited nothing new, and, though I have considered it my duty to follow them pretty closely, there has been no particular occasion to report to you.

You are aware that I have seized every opportunity to undeceive the Spanish government as to the entravagant declamation of the orators opposed to this wise measure, tending to create the impression that the United States were constantly lying in wait to pounce upon the Spanish American colonies, and that the only way to keep Dominica out of our hands, and prevent its becoming an outpost of the United States, threatening Cuba on the one side and Porto Rico on the other, was to hold on to the coveted island, and fortify, garrison, and defend it to the last extremity as the keystone in the arch of Spanish colonial power in America.

Without in any way making myself conspicuous, I have not failed to embrace every occasion to converse with deputies and senators in such a way as to show them the wholly imaginary basis of these apprehensions. My well known antecedents in opposition to the Jeff. Davis or Pierre Soulé policy of war for Cuban annexation in 1855, have again stood me in stead to produce conviction now. I said, those projects which were attributable to our slaveholding faction, and undertaken for the sake of slavery by that party which has since gone into rebellion against the government of the republic for the same cause, cannot be attributed to the government which is fighting these very men and which maintains me as its humble representative here. Nor is it conceivable that I should now be in the service of an administration harboring such projects, when in 1855 I made war upon the traitors who did harbor them, though it involved my separation from the service. But I had since protested against the annexation of San Domingo. True—and this was in fact the only question on which it might be possible to breed serious difficulty between the United States and Spain—the former Spanish administration had made a great mistake in going into Dominica, and we had protested against it in such terms as we thought the case demanded. But if Spain would only keep within her own limits in America, she need have no apprehension at all that the United States would go out of theirs to trouble her power in her own islands. It must be tolerably evident that we could not be very ambitious to have upon our hands the question of any additional negro population now, whether slave or free.

As to Dominica, it was a source not of strength but of weakness and embarrassment to any power who should possess it. Spaniards had certainly found it so, and I did not understand why they should consider the place so desirable for us.

Probably, if we had had the misfortune to have an army stationed in Dominica, and our men were dying as fast as those of Spain, we should have withdrawn from that country long ago; and the point of honor whether those natives had beaten us or we had beaten those natives would not have troubled us greatly.

In my conferences with Mr. Benavides on this subject I was greatly aided by your clear and most opportune instructions. Towards the last of March I received your instruction No. 70, of February 27, and immediately made a Spanish translation and placed it in Mr. Benavides’s hands.

You will find enclosed the translation of a paragraph of his speech, pronounced soon after, on the 29th of March, which is evidently based upon the ideas set forth by you.

The vote for the bill was in the congress of deputies 157 for, to 68 against; and in the senate, on the 29th ultimo, 93 for, to 39 against the project of the government.

Thus I beg to congratulate you upon the final termination of this vexed question.

With sentiments of the highest respect, sir, your obedient servant,

HORATIO J. PERRY.

Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington.

[Translation.]

Extract from the speech of Mr. Benavides, Minister of State, in the congress of deputies March 29, 1865, on the hill for abandonment of San Domingo.

Much has been said here also about the United States. The United States are presented as a bugbear by certain classes of persons when they talk about the question of San Domingo and the question of the existence of our West Indies. Señor Ulloa has talked to us about a new Salamy. It is said here that the day approaches of great armed conflicts; it is said that in our days we shall witness a conflict between Europe and America; a conflict which will be colossal—of such proportions that it shall have no parallel in history; and all this is said with reference to the question of San Domingo, of its annexation and of the project of abandonment which now occupies us.

I, gentlemen, perhaps may be a false prophet; you will have a perfect right to say so, and I cannot answer you; but I believe that those who talk in that manner are greatly mistaken; that those great conflicts are not to be feared; that the new Salamy is not coming; that none of those conflicts is coming; none of those battles in which the two parts of the world, America and Europe, will come into collision.

I believe that nothing of that kind is about to happen; and it is clear. Deputies will ask me what data, what motives, have you to think in that agreeable way? for it is agreeable, undoubtedly, to think in this way.

I, gentlemen, on this occasion cannot say much, but I have reasons to believe, I am intimately convinced that the day the war ends between the States of the north and south of America, the day those great battles terminate—would to God it were to-morrow for the good of humanity—the United States are not going to make war on Europe. They are going to do something greater, something which great people love better to do. They have a need greater than that of fighting, and it is not certainly the need of more territory. Gentlemen, they are going to work to strengthen the union of the United States; that is their passion—that is and must always be their strength; that is always their idea, and that is always their necessity. That is what is going to happen. They will strengthen their union undoubtedly, and to that end they will dedicate all their political work, and I have a most intimate conviction of this.

This agreeable way of thinking, gentlemen deputies may credit it or not; to me it belongs to speak thus because I have data which warrants me. I cannot explain myself further upon this point.