Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 1

by Andrew Dickson White

I thought no more of this until I arrived at Port-au- Prince, where I found that this gentleman had suddenly taken the mail-steamer for New York on the plea of urgent business. The real cause of his departure was soon apparent. His letters to the paper he served now began to come back to us, and it was found that he had exercised his imagination vigorously. He had presented a mass of sensational inventions, but his genius had been especially exercised in trumping up quarrels which had never taken place; his masterpiece being an account of a bitter struggle between Senator Wade and myself. As a matter of fact, there had never been between us the slightest ill-feeling; the old senator had been like a father to me from first to last.

The same sort of thing was done by sundry other press prostitutes, both during our stay in the West Indies and at Washington; but I am happy to say that several of the correspondents were men who took their duties seriously, and really rendered a service to the American public by giving information worth having.

Our journey from Charleston to Washington had one episode perhaps worthy of recording, as showing a peculiarity of local feeling at that time. Through all the long day we had little or nothing to eat, and looked forward ravenously to the dinner on board the Potomac steamer. But on reaching it and entering the dining-room, we found that our secretary, Mr. Frederick Douglass, was absolutely refused admittance. He, a man who had dined with the foremost statesmen and scholars of our Northern States and of Europe,—a man who by his dignity, ability, and elegant manners was fit to honor any company,—was, on account of his light tinge of African blood, not thought fit to sit at meat with the motley crowd on a Potomac steamer. This being the case, Dr. Howe and myself declined to dine, and so reached Washington, about midnight, almost starving, thus experiencing, at a low price, the pangs and glories of martyrdom.

One discovery made by the commission on its return ought to be mentioned here, for the truth of history. Mr. Sumner, in his speeches before the Senate, had made a strong point by contrasting the conduct of the United States with that of Spain toward Santo Domingo. He had insisted that the conduct of Spain had been far more honorable than that of the United States; that Spain had brought no pressure to bear upon the Dominican republic; that when Santo Domingo had accepted Spanish rule, some years before, it had done so of its own free will; and that ``not a single Spanish vessel was then in its waters, nor a single Spanish sailor upon its soil.'' On the other hand, he insisted that the conduct of the United States had been the very opposite of this; that it had brought pressure to bear upon the little island republic; and that when the decision was made in favor of our country, there were American ships off the coast and American soldiers upon the island. To prove this statement, he read from a speech of the Spanish prime minister published in the official paper of the Spanish government at Madrid. To our great surprise, we found, on arriving at the island, that this statement was not correct; that when the action in favor of annexation to Spain took place, Spanish ships were upon the coast and Spanish soldiers upon the island; and that there had been far more appearance of pressure at that time than afterward, when the little republic sought admission to the American Union. One of our first efforts, therefore, on returning, was to find a copy of this official paper, for the purpose of discovering how it was that the leader of the Spanish ministry had uttered so grave an untruth. The Spanish newspaper was missing from the library of Congress; but at last Dr. Howe, the third commissioner, a life- long and deeply attached friend of Mr. Sumner, found it in the library of the senator. The passage which Mr. Sumner had quoted was carefully marked; it was simply to the effect that when the FIRST proceedings looking toward annexation to Spain were initiated, there were no Spanish ships in those waters, nor Spanish soldiers on shore. This was, however, equally true of the United States; for when proceedings were begun in Santo Domingo looking to annexation, there was not an American ship off the coast, nor an American soldier on the island.

But the painful thing in the matter was that, had Mr Sumner read the sentence immediately following that which he quoted, it would have shown simply and distinctly that his contention was unfounded; that, at the time when the annexation proceedings WERE formally initiated and accomplished, there were Spanish ships off those shores and Spanish soldiers on the island.

I recall vividly the deep regret expressed at the time by Dr. Howe that his friend Senator Sumner had been so bitter in his opposition to the administration that he had quoted the first part of the Spanish minister's speech and suppressed the second part. It was clear that if Mr. Sumner had read the whole passage to the Senate it would have shown that the conduct of the United States had not been less magnanimous than that of Spain in the matter, and that no argument whatever against the administration could be founded upon its action in sending ships and troops to the island.

In drawing up our report after our arrival, an amicable difference of opinion showed itself. Senator Wade, being a ``manifest-destiny'' man, wished it expressly to recommend annexation; Dr. Howe, in his anxiety to raise the status of the colored race, took a similar view; but I pointed out to them the fact that Congress had asked, not for a recommendation, but for facts; that to give them advice under such circumstances was to expose ourselves to a snub, and could bring no good to any cause which any of us might wish to serve; and I stated that if the general report contained recommendations, I must be allowed to present one simply containing facts.

The result was that we united in the document presented, which is a simple statement of facts, and which, as I believe, remains to this day the best general account of the resources of Santo Domingo.

The result of our report was what I had expected. The Spanish part of that island is of great value from an agricultural and probably from a mining point of view. Its valleys being swept by the trade-winds, its mountain slopes offer to a white population summer retreats like those afforded by similar situations to the British occupants of India. In winter it might also serve as a valuable sanatorium. I remember well the answer made to me by a man from Maine, who had brought his family to the neighborhood of Samana Bay in order to escape the rigors of the New England winter. On my asking him about the diseases prevalent in his neighborhood, he said that his entire household had gone through a light acclimating fever, but he added: ``We have all got through it without harm; and on looking the whole matter over, I am persuaded that, if you were to divide the people of any New England State into two halves, leaving one half at home and sending the other half here, there would in ten years be fewer deaths in the half sent here, from all the diseases of this country, than in the half left in New England, from consumption alone.''

A special element in the question of annexation was the value of the harbor of Samana in controlling one of the great passages from Europe to the Isthmus. It is large enough to hold any fleet, is protected by a mountain-range from the northern winds, is easily fortified, and is the natural outlet of the largest and most fertile valley in the islands. More than this, if the experiment of annexing an outlying possession was to be tried, that was, perhaps, the best of opportunities, since the resident population to be assimilated was exceedingly small.