No. 217.
Mr. Evarts to Señor Arosemena.
Washington, June 5, 1880.
Sir: I had the honor to receive your note of the 19th ultimo, wherein, while disclaiming desire on your part to interfere with any arrangements which may be made at Bogotá by the United States minister, Mr. Dichman, with regard to coaling stations on the Colombian Isthmus, as contemplated in my note to you of April 17, last, you intimate your trust that orders have been issued by the competent department for the withdrawal from Chiriqui Bay and Dulce Gulf of the United States war vessels lately engaged there in taking soundings and other operations preparatory to the establishment of such coaling stations. You are pleased to add that such a step on the part of this government would greatly facilitate any arrangement or agreement that may be entered into by the United States of Colombia in relation to the matter, inasmuch as it would quiet the agitation which has been caused in your country by the operations of the vessels in question, and, which you suggest, must inevitably find an echo in official circles.
[Page 340]I cannot but share the regret, which I doubt not you must feel, that the operations of the Adams in the Gulf of Dulce and of the Kearsarge in Chiriqui Bay should have given rise to the disquietude you mention. Our conferences hitherto, and the frank and full note I had the honor to address to you on the 17th of April last will, I doubt not, have removed from your own mind and from that of the Government of Colombia any impression that the movements of the Adams and Kearsarge were in violation of comity or in disparagement of the national independence and sovereignty of the United States of Colombia, or that they were, in short, otherwise than in the routine of amicable intercourse and in conformity to the usage and courtesy of friendly nations, whose ports and harbors, whether open to commerce or not, are at all times free to the national vessels of a power with which relations of peace and good will prevail.
I am in receipt of official advices to the effect that on the 12th of May, ultimo, the executive of the State of Panama, in compliance, as alleged, with the orders of the citizen President of the nation communicated to the consular officers of the United States at the ports of Panama and Aspinwall an intimation to the commanders of the vessels in question to not only cease the operations of taking soundings, which it was alleged they had been engaged in, but, furthermore, that the Adams should forthwith quit the port of Golfito on account of its not being open to commercial operations (puerto habilitado).
I need hardly advert to the aspect of unfriendliness which this proceeding assumes, and the spirit in which it might readily be received, were not this government confident that the whole proceeding on the part of the authorities of the State of Panama is based on an unhappy misconception, which, in the interest of good will, this government is desirous to see removed. For I am sure you will agree with me that the peremptory notification thus conveyed to the distant vessels and officers of the United States, although, perhaps, an echo in official regions of the baseless disquietude of the populace, is not consonant with the calm and amicable communication looking to the accomplishment of the same end in the withdrawal of the vessels, which you, a week later in point of time, make, officially, at the seat of this government in your note of the 19th ultimo, to which I now have the honor to reply.
Under these circumstances you will have no difficulty in understanding my readiness and desire to regard the act of the authorities of Panama as ill-judged and unsupported by the cool good sense of your federal government, whose considerate and amicable purposes I find reflected in your recent note.
The information I possess from the officers of the United States in Colombia and from the naval authorities of the United States in those regions, enables me to inform you with pleasure, that at the time of the action taken by the executive of the state of Panama, the United States steamer Adams was no longer in Colombian waters but lay at Punta Arenas, in the friendly neighboring Republic of Costa Rica, and that having accomplished the peaceable object of her voyage, she was then under orders of recall to a home port of the United States.
I may also add, with regard to the corresponding operations of the Kearsarge in the waters of Chiriqui Lagoon, that at the date of last advices and under the orders of the Navy Department, given some time previously, that vessel was about to quit Las Bocas del Toro, having completed her errand.
It is therefore, very probable that, at the time you addressed me, the Kearsarge, like the Adams, was already out of Colombian jurisdiction.
[Page 341]The present occasion seems a fitting one for me to again assure you, as I have done in my note of April 17th, that the errand upon which these national vessels of the United States visited the waters of a state to which we are allied by ties of friendship and treaty guarantees, neither in design nor in execution justified any feeling of alarm or irritation on the part either of the government of the state of Panama or of the population thereof. The repetition of this assurance is, I feel, all that it is now needful to add to the explanation of that note.
It is, therefore, confidently hoped by the President, that the actual course so inconsiderately adopted by the executive of Panama, notwith-withstanding the ample and frank explanations made to him by Mr. Dichman, on the occasion of the official visit of the latter to Panama on the 5th of May last, and notwithstanding, moreover, an explicit promise then made by President Cervera to Mr. Dichman, of which this government was duly advised, that he would hold in abeyance any step then contemplated toward the Adams and Kearsarge, until Mr. Dichman should have made to the federal authorities at Bogotá, the communication with which he was charged, will either be promptly disavowed or satisfactorily explained by the supreme government of the United States of Colombia. For in whatever way the act of President Cervera, as communicated to the consuls of the United States at Colon (Aspinwall) and Panama on the 12th ultimo may be regarded, it cannot be deemed as otherwise than unprecedented, and, if not unfriendly in its conception as at least partaking to an unfortunate extent of the appearance of unfriendliness.
It is the purpose of the Department to place before the government at Bogotá the just grievance of this government in the matter, not in a spirit of querulous indignation at the treatment offered to its vessels under an irresponsible impulse of uninstructed suspicion, but in confidence that the apparent offense of wishing to exclude the public vessels of the United States, in time of peace, from any of the ports and places of the Colombian Union may be speedily relieved of its unhappy features, and that your note to me, to which I now reply, will be found to truly represent, as I have assumed it to do, the spirit of sincere friendship and thoughtful consideration which I cannot but believe the Colombian Government feels toward that of the United States, and which, I am not slow to affirm, is felt in like eminent degree by the United States toward their sister republic.
I am confident, Mr. Minister, that your enlightened judgment and marked friendliness will lead you to concur with me in the need of a better understanding of this strange and precipitate action of the Executive of the State of Panama.
Accept, sir, &c.,