No. 687.
Mr. Fish to Mr. Adee.
Washington, December 31, 1873.
Sir: On the 26th ultimo General Sickles’s No. 893 arrived at this Department during my absence for the holidays. In it he states that it was informally agreed, on the night of the 27th of November last, that on a declaration made by him of the American nationality of the Virginius, the vessel and surviving passengers and crew would be delivered up, the flag saluted, and the other measures of reparation accorded in conformity with our demands of the 15th instant. It is greatly to be regretted that General Sickles did not state with whom this informal agreement was made.
The note of Mr. Carvajal, minister of foreign affairs, which accompanies General Sickles’s dispatch, does not convey the idea that he had been a party to that agreement, but does intimate that he would have discussed some of the points raised in General Sickles’s note but for the arrangement which was made here.
General Sickles further says, that at noon on the 28th of November Mr. Carvajal sent him a copy of a telegram from Admiral Polo, containing what purported to be a fresh proposal from me respecting the Virginius, which General Sickles appears to have supposed was in conflict with the informal arrangement of the previous evening.
Without more accurate information concerning the person with whom the informal arrangement was made I cannot, permit myself to think that the Spanish government receded from any undertaking which it had once assumed.
So far, however, as General Sickles’s statement may be supposed to affect this Government, it is proper to say that the changes from the original demands of the United States which were agreed to in the protocol of the 29th of November were adopted on the suggestion of the Spanish government, under the belief that they did not affect the principles upon which our demands were founded, and were calculated to promote a peaceful settlement of the unfortunate differences which had arisen between the two powers.
Spain having admitted (as could not be seriously questioned) that a regularly-documented vessel of the United States is subject on the high seas in time of peace only to the police jurisdiction of the power from which it receives its papers, it seemed to the President that the United States should not refuse to concede to her the right to adduce proof to show that the Virginius was not rightfully carrying our flag. When the question of national honor was adjusted, it also seemed that there was a peculiar propriety in our consenting to an arbitration on a question of pecuniary damages.
This happy adjustment of the differences between two sister republics, on a basis honorable to both, fortunately makes the matters referred to by General Sickles of little importance. I have thought it right, however, to correct the misapprehensions under which his dispatch seems to have been written.
I am, sir, &c,