Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 7, 1874

No. 103.
Mr. Williamson to Mr. Fish.

United States Legation in Central America,
Guatemala, April 11, 1874. (Received May 18.)

No. 136.]

Sir: I have the honor to inclose you, for your information, the original and translated copy of an extract, from the report of the secretary of foreign affairs of Salvador to the Constituent Assembly.

The extract is taken from the “Boletin Oficial,” March 31.

You will observe the government of Salvador seems to attach importance to the exercise of my good offices, in December last, in behalf of peace in Central America.

I have, &c.,

GEO. WILLIAMSON.

[Inclosure.]

San Salvador, January 31, 1874.

(Extract from the report of the minister of foreign affairs of Salvador.)

[Translated from the “Boletin Oficial” of March 31.]

The President of Costa Rica, no doubt wrongly informed, was manifesting somewhat, in the various acts of his policy, overt hostility toward Salvador as well as toward the other Central American states. For this reason the treaty of triple alliance between Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua was negotiated, at Managua, about the close of last August.

Afterward, the condemnation by the cabinet of Costa Rica of this alliance, that the constitutional assembly of the preceding year had examined and approved, increased to the greatest excess, but Salvador, on her part, did not wish them to memorialize her arguments or official remonstrances, for she considered that once this having been commenced she could not remain in statu quo without injury to her national dignity, and would very probably arrive at the brink of a disastrous war, which ought always, as a terrible calamity, to be reserved for the last resort, from which there is positively no escape.

The President of Salvador believed that, with the lapse of a little time, the progress of events would show the folly of a fratricidal war, and of discord, between provinces that ought continually to become more closely united and identified. So it proved in the end. The President of Costa Rica abandoned that hostile policy, and has turned his thoughts to the consideration of the ideas of peace and concord that have been proposed to the Presidents of Central America through the honorable mediation of the American minister.

This honorable diplomat, without compromising his official character, has prepared, in connection with the President of Costa Rica and the British chargé d’affairés, a memorandum in which was embraced and adopted a meeting of the live Central American Presidents, in a place to be selected, to treat of a general peace. This plan has been unanimously approved, and has only been delayed to select the time and place for accomplishing it. It is probable that from this meeting will fallow not only the establishment of a lasting peace, but a basis for Central American organization.