Baron Fava to Mr. Olney.
Washington, August 25, 1896.
Mr. Secretary of State: By my notes of the 11th, 13th, and 19th instant, I had the honor to beg your excellency to be pleased to let me know what measures had been taken for the arrest and arraignment before the competent courts of the instigators and the perpetrators of the brutal assassination committed on the 9th of this month at Hahnville, La., of three Italian subjects who were at the time in the jail of that town under the immediate custody of the American authorities, and to prevent the renewal of similar outrages upon the security of my countrymen, who, in virtue of the existing treaties, are entitled to the protection of the law and of those authorities.
As an inclosure to my note of the 19th, I transmitted to your excellency an authenticated copy of seven affidavits stating the names and attesting the Italian nationality of the three individuals above mentioned.
In reply your excellency was pleased to assure me that on the 11th instant, and subsequently on different occasions, you had requested the governor of Louisiana to communicate to you the result of the investigation promised by him on that subject; that your excellency had immediately telegraphed to the governor the information which I had received concerning the Italian nationalities of the three persons lynched; and finally, that the Federal Government would act in conformity with the facts as soon as they should have been ascertained by the competent governor.
By a subsequent note of August 21 your excellency informed me that the aforesaid governor, having found upon his return to his residence a report of the judge and one of the district attorney concerning the lynching in question, had promised to send the said reports to you the same evening by mail.
No communication having subsequently reached me touching the arrival at its destination of those reports, I hereby call your excellency’s kind attention to this delay, and I must express my regret at not yet having been enabled, probably because of the delay referred to, to transmit to the Government of the King, which is awaiting it, an explicit and formal assurance that all necessary measures have been taken by the authorities with a view to the detection of the guilty parties and their arraignment before the competent courts.
I feel confident that, thanks to the high and efficacious intervention of your excellency, whose sentiments of justice are so well known, all subsequent delay will be abridged, and I avail myself, etc.,