No. 336.
Mr. Bassett to Mr. Fish.
Port au Prince, October 12, 1875. (Received October 29.)
Sir: I have read with especial interest and attention the Department’s dispatch numbered 236, of the 26th of August last, together with its four inclosures covering correspondence between the Department and Mr. Preston, the Haytian minister at Washington, and I have to thank you very sincerely for the virtual acceptance which that dispatch gives of the views advanced in my Nos. 383 and 389.
There are, however, one or two points in the said dispatch and inclosures which may, with your permission, befit a word of observation from me. And first of all, it may be due to myself to say that I really had no partiality for Boisrond Canal, and that no motive of personal [Page 732] preference or friendship for him in any way whatever, as far as I can judge, influenced my action in his case. This fact is in substance stated in that portion of my No. 364, of the 8th of May last, in which is detailed the entrance of Boisrond Canal and two of his followers into my house on the morning of the 3d of that month. It is due to General Canal to remark, however, that I now feel justified in all that is said of him in my Nos. 364 and 365, of the 8th and 19th of May, 1875. And in the next place, I may remark, what I suppose is now not unknown to you, that that person was not tried or sentenced previously to his seeking asylum under our flag.
I must not fail to express my grateful appreciation of the strong and efficient views conveyed to Mr. Preston in Mr. Cadwalader’s note of August 6, 1875, to that gentleman. The annoyances and dangers to which I and my family were subjected by the soldiers stationed under government orders all around my premises here were most outrageous, nay, almost inconceivable. (See my No. 384, of July 22, 1875, and its inclosure H.) But it is a source of very great satisfaction to us, and, if it be not unbecoming in me to say so, highly creditable to our Government that, as early as the 6th of August last, the Department squarely informed the Haytian minister at Washington that it was then expected that those annoyances should at once be discontinued; that if this “expectation should be disappointed, it will (would) be regarded as an unfriendly proceeding on the part of the Haytian government,” and that in consequence of the demonstrations adverted to (the surrounding of my premises by soldiers) the Secretary of the Navy would be requested to order a United States man-of-war to Port au Prince. Indeed I hardly know how adequately to express my gratification at this strong but, under the circumstances, exceedingly befitting position. This is, in my opinion, full of justice and full of credit to our flag. I do not wish to be understood as alluding to any other course that might or might not have been adopted, when I say that I think this ground taken in Mr. Cadwalader’s note will do much to uphold and maintain the prestige and dignity of our flag on these seas and before the world.
I shall avail myself of an early opportunity to revert to statements advanced in the correspondence covered by Department’s No. 236* relative to the right of asylum.
I am, &c.,
- Ante.↩