No. 36.
Mr. Gresham
to Mr. Baker.
Washington, April 26, 1894.
Sir: In yours of March 20, you report the complaint made to you by the Government of Nicaragua that Mr. Braida, the United States consul at San Juan del Norte, has been in active sympathy with the British armed occupancy of Bluefields.
The Department approves your letter to Mr. Braida of March 19, calling for a statement of his action and especially commends the following passage of that letter.
I deem it my duty to caution you against doing anything by word or deed which could properly be construed into unfriendliness to the Government of Nicaragua, or to its claim of sovereign rights over that territory [the Mosquito Reservation].
Your later telegram of April 1 reported that the Nicaraguan Government had withdrawn Mr. Braida’s exequatur.
In a dispatch dated March 26, reporting his correspondence with you, on the subject, Mr. Braida says:
Furthermore, I beg to state that, having been without instructions, I have not “acted” at all, and have most conscientiously restricted myself to maintain order and peace and to quiet the prevailing excitement during day and night. I was in duty bound not to make ourselves a party in the arrangement between Great Britain and Nicaragua, knowing that [the] arrangements they were about to enter into would be detrimental to the best interests of the United States and also against the most vital interests of our citizens residing and doing business in the Mosquito Reservation.
In his letter to you of March 26, Mr. Braida disclaims any action nimical to Nicaragua.
It is proper that you should, upon receipt of this instruction, if you have not already done so, invite from the Government of Nicaragua a full statement of the grounds upon which it has withdrawn the exequatur [Page 51] of Mr. Braida It is desirable that this Department’s appreciation of Nicaraguan action in this regard should not rest upon mere inference.
I am, etc.,