Mr. MacVeagh to Mr. Fish.
Sir: Your dispatch No. 15, of the 5th of January, 1871, reached me some time ago, but I have delayed answering it until the result of the conference [Page 898] at London was clearly ascertained, and the important subject alluded to by you could thus be considered in its true light. My dispatches Nos. 23 and 24, on the same subject, had been forwarded to you some time before I was in receipt of yours, the dispatches having passed each other en route, and I beg you to regard what I now have the honor to submit to you as simply in continuation of those dispatches. In the former I endeavored to sketch for you the Ottoman history of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, and in the latter to suggest the probable action of the conference at London on the subject. That action, as announced by telegraph to us, is in exact accordance with the tenor of my dispatch of January 27, 1871. The ancient rule of the exclusion of ships of war is maintained except when the Porte deems it necessary to open them to allied and friendly fleets to secure the objects of the treaty of Paris of 1856; in other words, to resist the attack of an enemy. It may, therefore, become important at any moment for the Department to consider the question suggested in your dispatch of January 5, 1871, the denial of the passage of these straits to our ships of war; and, indeed, the dispatch itself suggests the necessity of its serious consideration at an early day. Under these circumstances I need offer no apology for calling your attention to the conduct of our Government in the matter upon previous occasions. In one of my former dispatches I fully explained the error of supposing that the closing of these straits to foreign ships of war depended upon, or was the result of, any treaty or agreement between the Porte and any other powers, great or small. It rests solely upon the immemorial usage of this empire; a usage explicitly recognized by the authoritative treatise of our own Wheaton, sanctioned by the recognition and respect of all nations at peace with the Porte since the possession of Constantinople by the Ottoman Sultans, and whose validity and prosperity are not known to have been ever seriously questioned. Like many other rights of sovereignty of many other nations, the manner of the exercise of this right of sovereignty of the Porte has, at different times, been the subject of treaty stipulations with other powers. As I stated at length in my former dispatch, at one time, by treaty with Russia, the Porte agreed to suspend the exercise of its right as to the vessels of Russia, but to exercise it as against the vessels of all other powers. At other times it agreed with the five great powers of Europe to exercise its right as against the vessels of all nations. By the recent treaty of London, it agrees to exercise its right at all times and against the vessels of all nations, except when it believes the opening of the straits is essential to its own defense. On all these occasions the Porte has received a most valuable equivalent for its agreement as to the mode of exercise of its sovereign rights over these straits, a solemn guarantee for the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and on all these occasions it has retained the exception, which is as immemorial as the usage, of permitting the passage of vessels of moderate size attached to the service of the foreign legations resident at Constantinople. If, therefore, the Porte has the right of closing these straits to vessels of war, the mode of the exercise of that right would seem to be wholly unobjectionable at the present time, for, unlike the Russian treaty of 1833, the present operates upon all nations with perfect equality. The recognition of this right of the Porte by the Government of the United States has been frequent and uniform.
During forty years of friendly intercourse hardly a year has elapsed without some application for a firman for the passage of a war-vessel in virtue of the exception to which I have alluded; and from the John Adams, which brought Commodore Porter here in 1831, to the Franklin, [Page 899] which carried Admiral Farragut away in 1868, there was no intimation of any kind on the part of our Government of any dissatisfaction with the rule of exclusion, or of the slightest doubt of its entire validity. In addition to these constant recognitions of the rule from year to year, this legation has on different occasions brought the matter to the knowledge of the Department of State, without ever evoking a suggestion as to the impropriety of the usage. Moreover, the Porte itself has on several occasions notified the legations resident here of its intentions with respect to the closing of the straits, and these intentions have been brought to the attention of our Government, and have been received with entire acquiescence. Following this unbroken series of precedents from the institution of the legation, my predecessor, Hon. E. Joy Morris, on the occasion of the permission accorded the Franklin to pass the Dardanelles, in 1868, she exceeding in size the class of vessels contemplated by the exception, recognized the rule of exclusion in the clearest terms, and acknowledged the exceptional character of the favor as well as its courtesy, and in the circular addressed by the Porte upon that occasion to the representatives of the signatary powers of the treaty of Paris of 1856, the ample recognition of the rule by Mr. Morris is set forth. Copies of the correspondence and of the circular were furnished by Mr. Morris to the Department in his dispatch No. 272, of 29th October, 1868. The Department of State, in a dispatch of September 15, 1868, had written to Mr. Morris: “The courtesy shown to the United States by the Sublime Porte in dispensing with the prohibition which would have prevented the Franklin from going up to Constantinople, is creditable to the Saltan’s government, and for many reasons it is pleasing to the Government of the United States.” Such has been the uniform tenor of the intercourse of the two governments upon the subject, as well before as after any treaty had been made by the Porte in the matter. The passage of our vessels of war has uniformly been requested in writing, and either as within the exception to the rule, or as an act of special courtesy in suspension of it. In the latter case it has uniformly been followed by the thanks of our Government for the favor. It does not seem proper to occupy your time with numerous extracts from the archives of the legation, but I have given you the results of a very careful and exhaustive study of them. We began our intercourse with Turkey by a treaty which secured for our vessels of commerce the right of passing these straits; and thus excluded the idea that we possessed the same right for our ships of war. In the long interval we have uniformly recognized, in all the modes known to diplomatic intercourse, the continued existence of the distinction.
In all this we have acted in company with every other civilized State. Any departure by us from a policy which we have so uniformly and so long pursued, and which all other nations continue to pursue, would certainly require very grave reasons for its justification. As I cannot conceive that upon careful consideration any such reasons will be found to exist, I fear I am troubling you unnecessarily with this dispatch, but it seemed to me to be proper to thus bring the whole subject to your notice. Of course I am not disturbed by the notions I found prevailing in this atmosphere upon the subject of our eastern policy, that we had no views or policy in these matters of our own, properly speaking; but that in the name of the removal of restrictions, or of the freedom of the seas, or of oppressed nationalities, or of the Hellenic idea, we were to espouse the policy of this or that European power, and to serve its purposes. These convictions do, however, quite generally prevail in this vicinity, as you will observe by some extracts I have heretofore sent [Page 900] you, and have, in the ignorance which prevails of our national character, done us some harm. I do not discover that these aspersions have made any impression upon this government, though there have been of recent years some unfortunate combinations of circumstances which might have given rise to suspicions in suspicious minds. Whenever a proper opportunity has offered I have uniformly protested that we were the partisans of no power, whether friendly or hostile to Turkey; that we were loyal and sincere in our professions of friendship and amity for this government; that we remembered with gratitude the unwavering fidelity of the Porte during our great struggle; and that it was a base libel upon our national character to insinuate that we were susceptible of undue control or capable of other than a manly, straightforward, and utterly independent line of conduct. At the same time I have frankly stated that in the interest of our general policy we would rejoice at the opening of these waters to the unrestricted navigation of the globe, and that we would continue to cherish the hope that it would before long appear to the government of the Sultan to be compatible in every way with its interest and its safety to abandon in this respect the ancient usages of the empire. In the mean time, however, I have added, it would be grossly unjust to the United States to imagine for a moment that it would suffer itself to be used as the agent or ally of any other power to cause undue embarrassment to the Porte upon this or any other subject.
Yours, &c.,