Baron Fava to Mr. Olney.
Washington, September 6, 1896.
Mr. Secretary of State: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your notes of the 28th and 29th ultimo, Nos. 148 and 150.
With the first note you inclosed the reports of the governor of Louisiana concerning the recent lynching of three Italian subjects at Hahnville, which reports had just reached you, and you called my attention to the purpose expressed by the competent judicial authorities to spare no efforts to detect the guilty parties. In the second note you inclosed a copy of a telegram whereby you called the aforesaid governor’s attention to those clauses of the existing treaty which guarantee personal safety to Italian subjects residing in the United States, and expressed to his excellency the President’s conviction that every means would be used to inflict the legal penalty upon the perpetrators of this abominable outrage upon subjects of a friendly power.
I hastened to bring the foregoing to the knowledge of the King’s Government, which feels quite confident, as I do, that, in accordance with the statements of the judicial authorities of the State of Louisiana and the urgent request addressed by the President to the governor, a vigorous effort will be made to detect the guilty parties and bring them to trial, and that the United States Government will promptly make suitable provision to indemnify the families of the victims. The members of these families are numerous and have been left wholly without means.
I need not insist upon these important points in addressing your excellency, who is actuated by the most upright sentiments of justice. I must, nevertheless, call your earnest attention to them, because, by the reports which have been received by you from New Orleans, the lamentable fact is established that the three Italian subjects, who were under the protection of the laws and the authorities, were barbarously put to death without the slightest effort being made by the latter to provide for their safety.
Accept, etc.,