Mr. Dupuy de Lôme to Mr. Sherman.
Lenox, Mass., September 28, 1897.
Mr. Secretary: Since the close of the month of July, the legation of His Majesty has had the honor to inform the Department under your [Page 534] worthy charge of the preparation and sailing of a filibustering expedition.
Your excellency has acknowledged the receipt of the written and verbal communications from this legation in your notes Nos. 276, 278, 280, 281, 282, 283, 285, 286, 287, 289, 290, and 292, dated July 24, 26, and 30; August 3, 6, 6, 14, 17, 18, and 31; September 7 and 10; and the official letter from Mr. Adee of August 14. To-day I can complete for your excellency the history of said expedition, which set out from Cleveland, near Punta Gorda (Florida), and landed in Cuba.
The arms which were carried from Jacksonville to New York on the steamer Iroquois, and the munitions which supplied the persons arrested on board the schooner Blanche Morgan, were shipped at New York on board the schooner Donna T. Briggs.
The men who sailed from New York on the steamer Tallahassee the 16th of August, and who later joined others, left Tampa by special train on the 28th, were in that city publicly engaged in military drills, dressed in the uniform of Cuban insurgents. On the 28th they went to Cleveland, where they embarked on the tugs (“remolcadores”) Mary Blue and A. F. Deney, both of Punta Gorda, and from there were transported to the Mobile pilot boat Sommers N. Smith, Capt. Frank Dumm, which took the place of the Dauntless, the latter being detained by the authorities on the same day, the 28th. The so-called brigadier of the insurgents, Emilio Nunez, who in the United States devotes himself to directing expeditions, went at the head of this one.
The Sommers N. Smith rejoined the Donna T. Briggs, as proves—which I will show later on—the return in said steamer of Captain O’Brien, who had sailed in the schooner Donna T, Briggs and effected a landing in Cuba.
On Saturdary, September the 18th instant, the said Sommers N. Smith was seen lowering a boat containing a number of individuals at the upper point of Key West. It was attempted by the United States authorities to intercept and capture them, and a portion of the crew were captured, but the men were allowed to get off.
The latter, among whom were Emilio Nunez, from Cleveland; Capt. John O’Brien, who went on board the Donna T. Briggs; and the Cuban pilot, Silva, left that very night of the 18th instant for Tampa, in the steamer Mascatti, without any interference on the part of the local or Federal authorities.
Nunez came north and arrived at Philadelphia on the 21st, and went afterwards to New York to give an account of the accomplishment of his mission to the Junta, which from the United States directs and promotes the war in Cuba. O’Brien went to Jacksonville. In regard to the steamer Sommers N. Smith, it arrived at Pensacola the 19th of September and was quarantined. The Donna T. Briggs, so far as I yet know, has not entered any American port.
I need not attempt to impress upon your excellency the gravity of all this. Not only are the so-called neutrality laws a dead letter, since the men engaged in these expeditions have been encamped and drilled at Tampa without dissimulation, and have sailed to the knowedge of everyone how they were going and where they were going, but the sanitary laws so severely enforced elsewhere are suspended in order not to disturb the movements of such notorious transgressors of the law as Nunez, O’Brien, and Silva, without the authorities apparently having arrived at the knowledge of what is known to all.
As I am informed, in the baggage that was captured at Key West, there were letters which I hope may be preserved as evidence, to avoid [Page 535] the escape of the guilty from punishment and to prevent the crew of the Sommers N. Smith from falsification of the facts in the investigation which I do not doubt the Government of the United States will order.
I avail myself, etc.,