A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - James D. Richardson
Seeing that Mr. Hise had been positively instructed to make no treaty,
not even a treaty of commerce, with Nicaragua, Costa Rica, or Honduras,
I had no suspicion that he would attempt to act in opposition to his
instructions, and in September last I was for the first time informed
that he had actually negotiated two treaties with the State of
Nicaragua, the one a treaty of commerce, the other a treaty for the
construction of the proposed ship canal, which treaties he brought with
him on his return home. He also negotiated a treaty of commerce with
Honduras; and in each of these treaties it is recited that he had full
powers for the purpose. He had no such powers, and the whole proceeding
on his part with reference to those States was not only unauthorized by
instructions, but in opposition to those he had received from my
predecessor and after the date of his letter of recall and the
appointment of his successor. But I have no evidence that Mr. Hise,
whose letter of recall (a copy of which is herewith submitted) bears
date the 2d day of May, 1849, had received that letter on the 21st day
of June, when he negotiated the treaty with Nicaragua. The difficulty of
communicating with him was so great that I have reason to believe he had
not received it. He did not acknowledge it.
The twelfth article of the treaty negotiated by Mr. Hise in effect
guarantees the perfect independence of the State of Nicaragua and her
sovereignty over her alleged limits from the Caribbean Sea to the
Pacific Ocean, pledging the naval and military power of the United
States to support it. This treaty authorizes the chartering of a
corporation by this Government to cut a canal outside of the limits of
the United States, and gives to us the exclusive right to fortify and
command it. I have not approved it, nor have I now submitted it for
ratification; not merely because of the facts already mentioned, but
because on the 31st day of December last Senor Edwardo Carcache, on
being accredited to this Government as charge d'affaires from the State
of Nicaragua, in a note to the Secretary of State, a translation of
which is herewith sent, declared that he was "only empowered to exchange
ratifications of the treaty concluded with Mr. Squier, and that the
special convention concluded at Guatemala by Mr. Hise, the charge
d'affaires of the United States, and Senor Selva, the commissioner of
Nicaragua, had been, as was publicly and universally known, disapproved
by his Government."
We have no precedent in our history to justify such a treaty as that
negotiated by Mr. Hise since the guaranties we gave to France of her
American possessions. The treaty negotiated with New Granada on the 12th
day of December, 1846, did not guarantee the sovereignty of New Granada
on the whole of her territory, but only over "the single Province of the
Isthmus of Panama," immediately adjoining the line of the railroad, the
neutrality of which was deemed necessary by the President and Senate to
the construction and security of the work.
The thirty-fifth article of the treaty with Nicaragua, negotiated by Mr.
Squier, which is submitted for your advice in regard to its
ratification, distinctly recognizes the rights of sovereignty and
property which the State of Nicaragua possesses in and over the line of
the canal therein provided for. If the Senate doubt on that subject, it
will be clearly wrong to involve us in a controversy with England by
adopting the treaty; but after the best consideration which I have been
able to give to the subject my own judgment is convinced that the claims
of Nicaragua are just, and that as our commerce and intercourse with the
Pacific require the opening of this communication from ocean to ocean it
is our duty to ourselves to assert their justice.
This treaty is not intended to secure to the United States any monopoly
or exclusive advantage in the use of the canal. Its object is to
guarantee protection to American citizens and others who shall construct
the canal, and to defend it when completed against unjust confiscations
or obstructions, and to deny the advantages of navigation through it to
those nations only which shall refuse to enter into the same guaranties.
A copy of the contract of the canal company is herewith transmitted,
from which, as well as from the treaty, it will be perceived that the
same benefits are offered to all nations in the same terms.
The message of my predecessor to the Senate of the 10th February, 1847,
transmitting for ratification the treaty with New Granada, contains in
general the principles by which I have been actuated in directing the
negotiation with Nicaragua. The only difference between the two cases
consists in this: In that of Nicaragua the British Government has seized
upon part of her territory and was in possession of it when we
negotiated the treaty with her. But that possession was taken after our
occupation of California, when the effect of it was to obstruct or
control the most eligible route for a ship communication to the
territories acquired by us on the Pacific. In the case of New Granada,
her possession was undisturbed at the time of the treaty, though the
British possession in the right of the Mosquito King was then extended
into the territories claimed by New Granada as far as Boca del Toro. The
professed objects of both the treaties are to open communications across
the Isthmus to all nations and to invite their guaranties on the same
terms. Neither of them proposes to guarantee territory to a foreign
nation in which the United States will not have a common interest with
that nation. Neither of them constitutes an alliance for any political
object, but for a purely commercial purpose, in which all the navigating
nations of the world have a common interest. Nicaragua, like New
Granada, is a power which will not excite the jealousy of any nation.
As there is nothing narrow, selfish, illiberal, or exclusive in the
views of the United States as set forth in this treaty, as it is
indispensable to the successful completion of the contemplated canal to
secure protection to it from the local authorities and this Government,
and as I have no doubt that the British pretension to the port of San
Juan in right of the Mosquito King is without just foundation in any
public law ever before recognized in any other instance by Americans or
Englishmen as applicable to Indian titles on this continent, I shall
ratify this treaty in case the Senate shall advise that course. Its
principal defect is taken from the treaty with New Granada, the
negotiator having made it liable to be abrogated on notice after twenty
years. Both treaties should have been perpetual or limited only by the
duration of the improvements they were intended to protect. The
instructions to our charge d'affaires, it will be seen, prescribe no
limitation for the continuance of the treaty with Nicaragua. Should the
Senate approve of principle of the treaty, an amendment in this respect
is deemed advisable; and it will be well to invite by another amendment
the protection of other nations, by expressly offering them in the
treaty what is now offered by implication only--the same advantages
which we propose for ourselves on the same conditions upon which we
shall have acquired them. The policy of this treaty is not novel, nor
does it originate from any suggestion either of my immediate predecessor
or myself. On the 3d day of March, 1835, the following resolution,
referred to by the late President in his message to the Senate relative
to the treaty with New Granada, was adopted in executive session by the
Senate without division:
_Resolved_, That the President of the United States be respectfully
requested to consider the expediency of opening negotiations with the
Governments of Central America and New Granada for the purpose of
effectually protecting, by suitable treaty stipulations with them,
such individuals or companies as may undertake to open a communication
between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by the construction of a ship
canal across the isthmus which connects North and South America, and
of securing forever by such stipulations the free and equal rights
of navigating such a canal to all such nations on the payment of such
reasonable tolls as may be established to compensate the capitalists
who may engage in such undertaking and complete the work.
President Jackson accorded with the policy suggested in this resolution,
and in pursuance of it sent Charles Biddle as agent to negotiate with
the Governments of Central America and New Granada. The result is fully
set forth in the report of a select committee of the House of
Representatives of the 20th of February, 1849, upon a joint resolution
of Congress to authorize the survey of certain routes for a canal or
railroad between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The policy indicated
in the resolution of the 3d March, 1835, then adopted by the President
and Senate, is that now proposed for the consideration and sanction of
the Senate. So far as my knowledge extends, such has ever been the
liberal policy of the leading statesmen of this country, and by no one
has it been more earnestly recommended than by my lamented predecessor.
Z. TAYLOR.
WASHINGTON, _March 26, 1850_.
_To the House of Representatives of the United States:_
I herewith transmit, for the information of Congress, a copy of the
report[4a] of Thomas Butler King, esq., appointed bearer of dispatches
and special agent to California, made in pursuance of instructions
issued from the Department of State on the 3d day of April last.
[Footnote 4a: On California affairs.]
Z. TAYLOR.
WASHINGTON, _March 28, 1850_.
_To the Senate of the United States:_
In compliance with a resolution of the Senate of the 22d instant,
requesting the President of the United States to communicate to that
body a copy of the instructions given to the agent of the United States
who was employed to visit Hungary during the recent war between that
country and Austria, and of the correspondence by and with such agent,
so far as the publication of the same may be consistent with the public
interest, I herewith transmit to the Senate a copy of the instructions
to A. Dudley Mann, esq., relating to Hungary, he having been appointed
by me special agent to that country on the 18th day of June last,
together with a copy of the correspondence with our late charge
d'affaires to Austria referred to in those instructions and of other
papers disclosing the policy of this Government in reference to Hungary
and her people. I also transmit, in compliance with the resolution of
the Senate, but in a separate packet, a copy of the correspondence of
Mr. Mann with the Department of State. The latter I have caused to be
marked "_executive_"--the information contained in it being such as will
be found on examination most appropriately to belong to the Senate in
the exercise of its executive functions. The publication of this
correspondence of the agent sent by me to Hungary is a matter referred
entirely to the judgment and discretion of the Senate.
It will be seen by the documents now transmitted that no minister or
agent was accredited by the Government of Hungary to this Government at
any period since I came into office, nor was any communication ever
received by this Government from the minister of foreign affairs of
Hungary or any other executive officer authorized to act in her behalf.
My purpose, as freely avowed in this correspondence, was to have
acknowledged the independence of Hungary had she succeeded in
establishing a government _de facto_ on a basis sufficiently permanent
in its character to have justified me in doing so according to the
usages and settled principles of this Government; and although she is
now fallen and many of her gallant patriots are in exile or in chains, I
am free still to declare that had she been successful in the
maintenance of such a government as we could have recognized we should
have been the first to welcome her into the family of nations.
Z. TAYLOR.
WASHINGTON, _April 3, 1850_.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:_
I transmit a translation of a note, under date the 20th of last month,
addressed to the Secretary of State by the minister of the Mexican
Republic accredited to this Government, expressing the views of that
Government with reference to the control of the wild Indians of the
United States on the frontier of Mexico, as stipulated for in the
eleventh article of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Z. TAYLOR.
WASHINGTON, _April 22, 1850_.
_To the Senate of the United States:_
I herewith transmit to the Senate, for their advice with regard to its
ratification, a convention between the United States and Great Britain,
concluded at Washington on the 19th instant by John M. Clayton,
Secretary of State, on the part of the United States, and by the Right
Hon. Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, on the part of Great Britain.
This treaty has been negotiated in accordance with the general views
expressed in my message to Congress in December last. Its object is to
establish a commercial alliance with all great maritime states for the
protection of a contemplated ship canal through the territory of
Nicaragua to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and at the same
time to insure the same protection to the contemplated railways or
canals by the Tehuantepec and Panama routes, as well as to every other
interoceanic communication which may be adopted to shorten the transit
to or from our territories on the Pacific.
It will be seen that this treaty does not propose to take money from the
public Treasury to effect any object contemplated by it. It yields
protection to the capitalists who may undertake to construct any canal
or railway across the Isthmus, commencing in the southern part of Mexico
and terminating in the territory of New Granada. It gives no preference
to any one route over another, but proposes the same measure of
protection for all which ingenuity and enterprise can construct. Should
this treaty be ratified, it will secure in future the liberation of all
Central America from any kind of foreign aggression.
At the time negotiations were opened with Nicaragua for the construction
of a canal through her territory I found Great Britain in possession of
nearly half of Central America, as the ally and protector of the
Mosquito King. It has been my object in negotiating this treaty not only
to secure the passage across the Isthmus to the Government and citizens
of the United States by the construction of a great highway dedicated to
the use of all nations on equal terms, but to maintain the independence
and sovereignty of all the Central American Republics. The Senate will
judge how far these objects have been effected.
If there be any who would desire to seize and annex any portion of the
territories of these weak sister republics to the American Union, or to
extend our dominion over them, I do not concur in their policy; and I
wish it to be understood in reference to that subject that I adopt the
views entertained, so far as I know, by all my predecessors.
The principles by which I have been regulated in the negotiation of this
treaty are in accordance with the sentiments well expressed by my
immediate predecessor on the 10th of February, 1847, when he
communicated to the Senate the treaty with New Granada for the
protection of the railroad at Panama. It is in accordance with the whole
spirit of the resolution of the Senate of the 3d of March, 1835,
referred to by President Polk, and with the policy adopted by President
Jackson immediately after the passage of that resolution, who dispatched
an agent to Central America and New Granada "to open negotiations with
those Governments for the purpose of effectually protecting, by suitable
treaty stipulations with them, such individuals or companies as might
undertake to open a communication between the Atlantic and Pacific
oceans by the construction of a ship canal across the isthmus which
connects North and South America, and of securing forever by such
stipulations the free and equal right of navigating such canal to all
such nations on the payment of such reasonable tolls as might be
established to compensate the capitalists who should engage in such
undertaking and complete the work."
I also communicate herewith a copy of the correspondence between the
American Secretary of State and the British plenipotentiary at the time
of concluding the treaty. Whatever honor may be due to the party first
proposing such a treaty justly belongs to the United States. My
predecessor, in his message of the 10th of February, 1847, referring to
the treaty with New Granada for the protection of the Panama Railroad,
observes that--
Should the proposition thus tendered be rejected we may deprive the
United States of the just influence which its acceptance might secure to
them, and confer the glory and benefits of being the first among the
nations in concluding such an arrangement upon the Government either of
Great Britain or France. That either of these Governments would embrace
the offer can not be doubted, because there does not appear to be any
other effectual means of securing to all nations the advantages of this
important passage but the guaranty of great commercial powers that the
Isthmus shall be neutral territory. The interests of the world at stake
are so important that the security of this passage between the two
oceans can not be suffered to depend upon the wars and revolutions which
may arise among different nations.
Should the Senate in its wisdom see fit to confirm this treaty, and the
treaty heretofore submitted by me for their advice in regard to its
ratification, negotiated with the State of Nicaragua on the 3d day of
September last, it will be necessary to amend one or both of them, so
that both treaties may stand in conformity with each other in their
spirit and intention. The Senate will discover by examining them both
that this is a task of no great difficulty.
I have good reason to believe that France and Russia stand ready to
accede to this treaty, and that no other great maritime state will
refuse its accession to an arrangement so well calculated to diffuse the
blessings of peace, commerce, and civilization, and so honorable to all
nations which may enter into the engagement.
Z. TAYLOR.
WASHINGTON, _May 6, 1850_.
_To the Senate of the United States:_
I transmit to the Senate, for its consideration with a view to
ratification, a consular convention between the United States and the
Republic of New Granada, signed in this city on the 4th of this month by
the Secretary of State on the part of the United States, and by Senor
Don Rafael Rivas, charge d'affaires of New Granada, on the part of that
Republic.
Z. TAYLOR.
WASHINGTON, _May 7, 1850_.
_To the House of Representatives of the United States:_
I herewith transmit to the House of Representatives copies of a
correspondence between the Department of State and the British legation
in this city, relative to the reciprocal admission of the natural
products of the United States and Canada free of duty into the
territories of both countries. It will be seen by the accompanying
documents that the late Secretary of the Treasury recommended, in his
correspondence with the Committee on Commerce in the House of
Representatives, reciprocal free trade in the natural products of the
United States and Canada; that in March and June, 1849, a correspondence
was opened between the British charge d'affaires then residing in
Washington and the Secretary of State upon the subject of a commercial
convention or treaty to carry out the views of Her Majesty's Government
in relation thereto, and that the proposition for such a convention or
treaty was declined on the part of the American Government for reasons
which are fully set forth in the note of the Secretary of State to Mr.
Crampton of the 26th of June last. During the negotiations connected
with this correspondence, not considering the markets of Canada as an
equivalent for those of the United States, I directed the Secretary of
State to inquire what other benefits of trade and commerce would be
yielded by the British authorities in connection with such a measure,
and particularly whether the free navigation of the St. Lawrence would
be conceded to us. That subject has accordingly been presented to the
British Government, and the result was communicated by Her Majesty's
minister in Washington on the 27th of March last in reply to a note from
the Secretary of State of the 26th of that month. From these papers it
will be perceived that the navigation of the St. Lawrence and of the
canals connecting it with the Western lakes will be opened to the
citizens of the United States in the event that the bill referred to in
the correspondence, providing for the admission of their natural
products, should become a law. The whole subject is now submitted to the
consideration of Congress, and especially whether the concession
proposed by Great Britain is an equivalent for the reciprocity desired
by her.
Z. TAYLOR.
WASHINGTON, _May 8, 1850_.
_To the Senate of the United States:_
With reference to the convention between the United States and Her
Britannic Majesty relative to interoceanic communication by the way of
Nicaragua, recently submitted to the Senate, I transmit a copy of a
note, under date the 29th ultimo, addressed to the Secretary of State by
Sir Henry L. Bulwer, Her Britannic Majesty's minister here, and of Mr.
Clayton's reply, under date the 30th ultimo. Intelligence received from
the charge d'affaires of the United States in Central America and from
other quarters having led to an apprehension that Mr. Chatfield, Her
Britannic Majesty's minister in that country, had concluded a treaty
with the Government of Costa Rica placing that State under the
protection of the British Government, I deemed it my duty to cause
inquiries upon the subject to be addressed to Her Majesty's Government
through Sir Henry L. Bulwer. The note of that functionary communicates
the answer to those inquiries, and may be deemed satisfactory, both from
the denial of the fact that any such treaty has been concluded and from
its positive disavowal on behalf of the British Government of the policy
intended to be subserved by such treaties.
Z. TAYLOR.
WASHINGTON, _May 18, 1850_.
_To the House of Representatives of the United States:_
I herewith transmit to the House of Representatives a report of the
Secretary of State, with accompanying papers,[5a] in answer to its
resolution of the 28th of March last.
Z. TAYLOR.
[Footnote 5a: Communications from the United States consul at Vienna.]
WASHINGTON, _May 20, 1850_.
_To the Senate of the United States:_
I transmit herewith reports from the Secretary of the Interior and
Secretary of War, in reply to the resolution of the Senate of the 30th
ultimo, calling for information in relation to the hostilities and
outrages committed during the past year by the Seminole Indians in
Florida, the steps taken for their removal west of the Mississippi, the
area now occupied by them, etc.
Z. TAYLOR.
WASHINGTON, _May 22, 1850_.
_To the Senate of the United States:_
I herewith transmit to the Senate reports of the several heads of
Departments, to whom were referred the resolutions of the Senate of the
9th instant, "requesting the President of the United States to furnish
to the Senate copies of all correspondence between any of the Executive
Departments and General Persifor F. Smith and Brigadier-General B.
Riley, or either of them, relative to affairs in California, which had
not been communicated to the Senate; and also all information existing
in any of the Executive Departments respecting the transactions of the
convention in California by which the project of a State government was
prepared, and particularly a copy of the journals of said convention and
of such of the ordinances adopted by it as may in any way have been
communicated to any of the said Departments; and likewise to inform the
Senate if the surrender of General Riley to the jurisdiction and civil
authority of the government made by the aforesaid convention was by
order of the Executive of the United States, and, if not, whether the
proclamation of General Riley recognizing the said State government and
submitting to its jurisdiction has received the sanction of the
Executive; and also that he furnish to the Senate whatever intelligence
may have been received in the executive department respecting the
condition of civil affairs in the Oregon Territory."
The reports, with the official correspondence accompanying them, it is
believed, embrace all the information in the Departments called for by
the resolutions.
Z. TAYLOR.
WASHINGTON, _May 24, 1850_.
_To the Senate of the United States:_
In the month of January last I nominated Thomas Sewall to be consul of
the United States for the port of Santiago de Cuba, to which office he
had been appointed by me during the recess of the Senate. The Spanish
Government having refused to recognize Mr. Sewall as consul for that
port, I now withdraw that nomination and nominate William N. Adams to
fill the vacancy thus occasioned.