I inclose, for your information, a copy of a letter of the Secretary of
State to the Hon. Edwin Denby concerning conditions in the Kongo Free
State.
[Inclosure.]
The Secretary of
State to the Hon. Edwin
Denby.
Department of State,
Washington, February 20,
1906.
Dear Sir: I have your letter of the 15th
regarding the widespread feeling among your constituents that our
Government ought to do something to bring about an international
inquiry with a view to authoritative adjudication of the issues to
which the conditions supposed to exist in the Kongo Free State are
related.
Your inquiry expresses the difficulty in the way. It is not clear
that the United States is in a position to bring about such an
international inquiry and adjudication. We are parties to a general
act for the suppression of the slave trade and the regulation of the
firearms and liquor traffics in central Africa, but that act
relegates and confines all power and functions to those ends to the
several powers having possessions or spheres of influence in Africa.
The United States has neither, and its participation in the general
act was on the distinct understanding that we had no territorial or
administrative interest in that quarter. Our only potential function
is in relation to the search and capture of slave vessels within
certain waters of the African coast, and no occasion has arisen to
exercise that function.
We are not parties to the other more commonly cited general act of
the Kongo (signed at Berlin on February 26, 1885). Our treaty
relation to the Kongo State is that of one sovereign to another,
wholly independent of any relations created by or deducible from the
general act of Berlin, which applies only to its signatories. It is
questionable whether the treaty rights of the signatories extend to
intervention by any one or more of them in the internal affairs of
any of them. The Kongo State absolutely denies any right on their
part to intervene in its affairs, and none of the other signatory
powers appears to controvert that denial. However this may be, it is
certain that the United States has no treaty right of intervention.
We could not rightfully summon or participate in any international
conference looking to intervention, adjudication, [Page 89] or enforcement of a general accord
by other African powers against the Kongo State.
Moreover, we are without opportunity or power to investigate
conditions in the Kongo. We have no diplomatic or consular
representatives in that country. We could not send anyone there
except with the consent of the Government of the Kongo—to do
otherwise would be an invasion of its sovereignty. Other powers,
being parties to the general act of Berlin, have made investigation
through their authorized representatives, and the Kongo Government
also has sent investigating commissions. The information we have on
the subject of Kongo misrule comes at second hand through opposed
channels.
Whenever complaint has been made by American interests in the Kongo
that the administrative conditions there impair American rights or
endanger American establishments the matter has been brought
promptly and forcibly before the Kongo Government and has been met
with the assurance of investigation and, if substantiated, full
redress. In taking this course we act within our sovereign rights,
directly and without subordinating them to the judgment of any third
parties. So far as we have rights of our own in the Kongo, it would
be impossible to submit them to an international conference.
I most sincerely wish that some way could be found by which the whole
of central Africa could be rightly administered by the several
powers ruling or exercising a controlling influence therein, so as
to realize the intention of those powers when they framed the
general act of the Kongo. Much may be, and doubtless is, desirable
in the way of good government in that vast region elsewhere than in
the Kongo. If the United States had happened to possess in Darkest
Africa a territory seven times as large and four times as populous
as the Philippines, we, too, might find good government difficult
and come in for our share of just or unjust criticism. No such
responsibility falls upon us. That pertains to the powers who have
assumed control and undertaken, by mutual agreement, to regulate its
exercise.
Very truly, yours,
Hon. Edwin Denby, M. C.,
Washington, D. C.
