The agent in this transaction was Orville E. Babcock, a young officer figuring in the Blue Book of the time as one of the unauthorized “secretaries” at the Executive Mansion, and also as a major of engineers. His published instructions, under date of July 13, 1869, were simply to make inquiries; but the plot appears in a communication of the same date from the Secretary of the Navy, directed to the Seminole, a war-ship, with an armament of one eleven-inch gun and four thirty-two pounders, “to give him the moral support of its guns”; and this was followed by a telegraphic instruction to Key West for another war-ship “to proceed without a moment’s delay to San Domingo City, to be placed at the disposal of General Babcock while on that coast.”[149] With such “moral support” the emissary of the President obtained from the usurper Baez that famous Protocol stipulating the annexion of Dominica to the United States in consideration of $1,500,000, which the young officer, fresh from the Executive Mansion, professed to execute as “Aide-de-Camp to his Excellency General Ulysses S. Grant, President of the United States,”—as if, instead of Chief Magistrate of a Republic, the President were a military chieftain with his foot in the stirrup, surrounded by a military staff. The same instrument contained the unblushing stipulation, that “his Excellency General Grant, President of the United States, promises, privately, to use all his influence, in order that the idea of annexing the Dominican Republic to the United States may acquire such a degree of popularity among members of Congress as will be necessary for its accomplishment”:[150] which is simply that the President shall become a lobbyist to bring about the annexion by Congress. Such was the strange beginning, illegal, unconstitutional, and offensive in every particular, but showing the Presidential character.
On his return to Washington, the young officer, who had assumed to be “Aide-de-Camp to his Excellency General Ulysses S. Grant,” and had bound the President to become a lobbyist for a wretched scheme, instead of being disowned and reprimanded, was sent back to the usurper with instructions to negotiate two treaties,—one for the annexion of the half-island of Dominica, and the other for the lease of the Bay of Samana.[151] By the Constitution of the United States “ambassadors and other public ministers” are appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate; but our Aide-de-Camp had no such commission. Presidential prerogative empowered him. Nor was naval force wanting. With three war-ships at his disposal,[152] he concluded negotiations with Baez and obtained the two treaties. Naturally force was needed to keep the usurper in power while he sold his country, and naturally such a transaction required a Presidential Aide-de-Camp unknown to Constitution or Law, rather than a civilian duly appointed according to both.
PRESIDENTIAL VIOLATIONS OF CONSTITUTIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LAW.
On other occasions it has been my solemn duty to expose the outrages which attended this hateful business, where at each step we are brought face to face with Presidential pretension: first, in the open seizure of the war powers of the Government, as if he were already Cæsar, forcibly intervening in Dominica and menacing war to Hayti, all of which is proved by the official reports of the State Department and Navy Department, being nothing less than war by kingly prerogative, in defiance of that distinctive principle of Republican Government, first embodied in our Constitution, which places the war powers under the safeguard of the legislative branch, making any attempt by the President “to declare war” an undoubted usurpation. But our President, like Gallio, cares for none of these things. The open violation of the Constitution was naturally followed by a barefaced disregard of that equality of nations which is the first principle of International Law, as the equality of men is the first principle of the Declaration of Independence; and this sacred rule was set aside in order to insult and menace Hayti, doing unto the Black Republic what we would not have that Republic do unto us, nor what we would have done to any white power. To these eminent and most painful Presidential pretensions, the first adverse to the Constitution and the second adverse to International Law, add the imprisonment of an American citizen in Dominica by the Presidential confederate, Baez, for fear of his hostility to the treaty, if he were allowed to reach New York,—all of which was known to his subordinates, Babcock and Cazneau, and doubtless to himself. What was the liberty of an American citizen compared with the Presidential prerogative? To one who had defied the Constitution, on which depends the liberty of all, and then defied International Law, on which depends the peace of the world, a single citizen immured in a distant dungeon was of small moment. But this is only an illustration. Add now the lawless occupation of the Bay of Samana for many months after the lapse of the treaty, keeping the national flag flying there, and assuming a territorial sovereignty which did not exist. Then add the protracted support of Baez in his usurped power, to the extent of placing the national flag at his disposal, and girdling the island with our ships of war, all at immense cost, and to the neglect of other service where the Navy was needed.
This strange succession of acts, which, if established for a precedent, would overturn Constitution and Law, was followed by another class of Presidential manifestations: first, an unseemly importunity of Senators during the pendency of the treaty, visiting the Capitol as a lobbyist, and summoning them to his presence in squads, in obvious pursuance of the stipulation made by his Aide-de-Camp and never disowned by him,—being intervention in the Senate, reinforced by all the influence of the appointing power, whether by reward or menace, all of which was as unconstitutional in character as that warlike intervention on the island; and then, after debate in the Senate, when the treaty was lost on solemn vote, we were called to witness his self-willed effrontery in prosecuting the fatal error, returning to the charge in his Annual Message at the ensuing session, insisting upon his contrivance as nothing less than the means by which “our large debt abroad is ultimately to be extinguished,” and gravely charging the Senate with “folly” in rejecting the treaty,—and yet, while making this astounding charge against a coördinate branch of Government, and claiming such astounding profits, he blundered geographically in describing the prize.[153]
All this diversified performance, with its various eccentricity of effort, failed. The report of able commissioners transported to the island in an expensive war-ship ended in nothing. The American people rose against the undertaking and insisted upon its abandonment. By a message charged with Parthian shafts the President at length announced that he would proceed no further in this business.[154] His senatorial partisans, being a majority of the Chamber, after denouncing those who had exposed the business, arrested the discussion. In obedience to irrepressible sentiments, and according to the logic of my life, I felt it my duty to speak; but the President would not forgive me, and his peculiar representatives found me disloyal to the party which I had served so long and helped to found. Then was devotion to the President made the shibboleth of party.
WHERE WAS THE GRAND INQUEST OF THE NATION?
Such is a summary of the San Domingo business in its characteristic features. But here are transgressions in every form,—open violation of the Constitution in more than one essential requirement; open violation of International Law in more than one of its most beautiful principles; flagrant insult to the Black Republic, with menace of war; complicity with the wrongful imprisonment of an American citizen; lawless assumption of territorial sovereignty in a foreign jurisdiction; employment of the national navy to sustain a usurper,—being all acts of substance, maintained by an agent calling himself “Aide-de-Camp to Ulysses S. Grant, President of the United States,” and stipulating that his chief should play the lobbyist to help the contrivance through Congress, then urged by private appeals to Senators, and the influence of the appointing power tyrannically employed by the Presidential lobbyist, and finally urged anew in an Annual Message, where undisguised insult to the Senate vies with absurdity in declaring prospective profits and with geographical ignorance. Such, in brief, is this multiform disobedience, where every particular is of such aggravation as to merit the most solemn judgment. Why the grand inquest of the nation, which brought Andrew Johnson to the bar of the Senate, should have slept on this conglomerate misdemeanor, every part of which was offensive beyond any technical offence charged against his predecessor, while it had a background of nepotism, gift-taking with official compensation, and various Presidential pretensions beyond all precedent,—all this will be one of the riddles of American history, to be explained only by the extent to which the One-Man Power had succeeded in subjugating the Government.