[140] *Mr. Adams, Secretary of State, to Mr. Parker, district attorney.
July 29, 1820.
Sir: I have had the honor of receiving you letters of the 1st, 2d, and 21st instant, and shall pay every attention in my power to their contents.
The frigate Constellation has sailed, or is about to sail, from New York for Buenos Ayers. Mr. Forbes goes out in her, and has been instructed to remonstrate in the strongest terms against the articles of their privateering ordinance, which open the door to all the piracies committed under their flag. These articles are the third and the eighth, as you will immediately perceive on reference to them. (See appendix to 1 Wheaton’s Reports, p. 30, 31.) Commodore Perry, and afterward Commodore Morris, were instructed to remonstrate against them;-but the lamentable death of the former prevented his ever reaching Buenos Ayres; and the state of anarchy and revolution in which the latter found that country made his remonstrances ineffectual.
Mr. Forbes is charged to state the cases both of the General Rondeau and the Wilson; but by the manifesto of Mr. Surgeon *Wheedon, published in our papers, Captain Almeida no longer hails from Buenos Ayres, nor calls his brig the Wilson. He has become a denizen of the new republic of Colombia, and calls his privateer the Bolivar. This same Almeida was the captain of the Louisa, from which I think Clark and Wolf were hung; but he was then a Buenos Ayrean.
Wr. Wheedon insists that the only proper court to try the merits of his cause is the court at the island of Margaritta. It is precisely that court, combining with the third and eighth articles of the Buenos Ayres privateering ordinance, which sanctions all the piracies. We have remonstrated, and shall continue to remonstrate against its proceedings. [Page 504] But I believe our ultimate reliance for the suppression of piracy must be upon the tribunals of our own country. [141]
You will have seen by the newspapers that the mutineers of the General Rondeau killed only one of their officers, and that Captain David B. Miles has safely arrived at Margaritta, and there proclaimed them pirates. We have evidence at this Department that this Captain Miles, in May, 1819, went from Buenos Ayres to Valparaiso with one of his prizes, and there entered her as a *vessel of the United States, with forged papers, bought at Buenos Ayres for five hundred dollars, by Mr. Juan Higginbotham, mentioned in your letter of the 2d instant as part owner of the General Rondeau. [142]
If Miles should make his appearance in this country to bear testimony against his mutineers, it will serve infinitely more the cause of justice if testimony can be obtained to reward him according to his own deserts. I beg leave to recommend this to your particular attention. This fact of his going with forged United States papers to Valparaiso, in a pretended ship Mercury, you will please to keep secret for the present, but if he shows his face in the prosecution of his mutineers, you will make such use of it as you may think advisable. The forged papers are here, and an insolent letter from Higginbotham to Mr. Hill, the vice-consul at Valparaiso, who, as his duty required, obtained possession of the papers and sent them to this Department. Should copies of them or the originals themselves be necessary upon any of the trials, they shall be furnished upon your application for them.
I am, &c.,
Thomas Parker, Esq.,
United States District
Attorney,
Charleston, South Carolina.