Mr. Olney to Mr. Dupuy de Lôme.

No. 38.]

Sir: Dispatches recently received from the United States consul-general at Havana and from the consul at Sagua la Grande present the circumstances attending the expulsion of certain American citizens from the province of Santa Clara and from the Island of Cuba in such a light as to constrain me to bring the matter to your attention.

The persons so deported are four in number, all being citizens of the United States, namely, Joseph A. Ansley, Aurelio Ansley, Maria Luis Ansley, and John A. Sowers. These persons were arrested by the military authorities on a charge the nature of which was not formally made known or even indicated until after they had been provisionally released from confinement. After such release they were cited to appear before the military commandant, who, it is reported, informed them that an order of the Captain-General of the island directed them to leave Sagua within twenty-four hours and report to the United States consul-general at Havana to be banished from the island and to be under prohibition of resorting to any other port of the Spanish dominions.

Upon representations of the hardships entailed by this proceeding and of the inability of the parties to provide their own passage to Havana, the military commandant modified his order so as to give them forty-two hours within which to take their departure, and agreed to furnish transportation from Sagua to Havana, warning them that if they were found in Sagua after the expiration of the time specified they would be manacled and escorted to Havana by a military guard.

The Department is unable to comprehend that part of the order of the Governor-General which appears to require these four citizens of the United States to report to the consul-general of the United States at Havana for deportation from the island. It is, of course, entirely outside of the functions of that officer to forcibly deport an American citizen upon the decree of the Spanish or Cuban authorities. It is not within his official competence to execute any decrees or laws of any other than his own Government, and certainly he could neither be expected nor requested to assume any share of the responsibility of removing an American citizen from Spanish jurisdiction against his will. Fortunately, however, it was not necessary for Mr. Williams to put this question to a practical test, inasmuch as the parties themselves on reaching Havana voluntarily elected to obey the Govern or-GeneraFs order and quit the island.

The proceeding is furthermore harsh in this regard, that two of the deported persons, Mr. Joseph A. Ansley and Mr. John A. Sowers, are said to have been men of family, and, being in impoverished circumstances, to have been compelled to leave their wives and children behind them without resources. The Governor-General’s order, as interpreted by the military commandant of Sagua, appears to have required these four individuals to remove from Sagua to Havana at their own expense, and thereafter to find for themselves the means of reaching the United States. It is true that upon representation of their destitute circumstances the military commandant of Sagua offered to furnish transportation to Havana. But it does not appear that the Government of the island threafter intervened in any way to enable these unfortunate men to obey the arbitrary mandate of expulsion.

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The right of Spain, as of every other sovereign state, to expel aliens need not be discussed. If the right be conceded to the fullest extent, the mode of its exercise may be so harsh, unreasonable, and oppressive as to give just ground of complaint, and was so beyond all doubt in the four cases now under consideration. Whether there be regard to the arbitrary character of the decree of deportation, to the successive steps by which it was apparently proposed to be enforced, to the separation of husbands and fathers from dependent families, or to the constrained abandonment of the latter in destitute circumstances to the tender mercies of strangers, the proceedings at every stage and in every particular seem to have been characterized by willful disregard not merely of the rights of American citizens, but of the dictates of common humanity. This Government can not be expected to look upon such proceedings except with indignation, nor to pass them over without remonstrance. It takes this occasion, therefore, to make known its sentiments in the matter, and to give notice both that it will demand adequate redress for the indignities and injuries inflicted upon Sowers and the Ansleys, and that it will expect such precautionary measures to be taken by the Spanish Government for the future as will prevent any like treatment of other American citizens.

Accept, etc.,

Richard Olney.