Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

[(2) The full text of the Amendment to the Tenure-of-office Act will be found in Appendix B.]

CHAPTER XIX.

The chief interest in the events of General Grant's first term was divided between questions of a diplomatic character and those arising from the condition of the South after Reconstruction had been completed. The first issue that enlisted popular attention was in regard to the annexation of the Dominican Republic. It was the earliest decisive step of General Grant's policy that attracted the observation of the people. The negotiation was opened on the request of the authorities of San Domingo, and it began about three months after the President's inauguration. In July General O. E. Babcock, one of the President's private secretaries, was dispatched to San Domingo upon an errand of which the public knew nothing. He bore a letter of introduction from Secretary Fish, apparently limiting the mission to an inquiry into the conditions, prospects, and resources of the Island. From its tenor the negotiation of a treaty was not at that time anticipated by the State Department. General Babcock's mission finally resulted however in a treaty for the annexation of the Republic of Dominica, and a convention for the lease of the bay and peninsula of Samana,—separately negotiated and both concluded on the 29th of November, 1869. The territory included in the Dominican Republic is the eastern portion of the Island of San Domingo, originally known as Hispaniola. It embraces perhaps two-thirds of the whole. The western part forms the Republic of Haiti. With the exception of Cuba, the island is the largest of the West India group. The total area is about 28,000 square miles,—equivalent to Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island combined.

President Grant placed extravagant estimates upon the value of the Territory which he supposed was now acquired under the Babcock treaties. In his message to Congress he expressed the belief that the island would yield to the United States all the sugar, coffee, tobacco, and other tropical products which the country would consume. "The production of our supply of these articles," said the President, "will cut off more than $100,000,000 of our annual imports, besides largely increasing our exports." "With such a picture," he added, "it is easy to see how our large debt abroad is ultimately to be extinguished. With a balance of trade against us (including interest on bonds held by foreigners and money spent by our citizen traveling in foreign lands) equal to the entire yield of precious metals in this country, it is not easy to see how this result is to be otherwise accomplished." He maintained that "the acquisition of San Domingo will furnish our citizens with the necessities of every-day life at cheaper rates than ever before; and it is in fine a rapid stride towards that greatness which the intelligence, industry, and enterprise of our citizens entitle this country to assume among nations."

Earnest as General Grant was in his argument, deeply as his personal feelings were enlisted in the issue, thoroughly as his Administration was committed to the treaty, the Senate on the 30th of June (1870), to his utter surprise, rejected it. The vote was a tie, 28 to 28, as was afterwards disclosed in debate in open Senate. Though the votes of two-thirds of the senators were required to confirm the treaty President Grant was not discouraged. He returned to the subject six months later, in his annual message of December, and discussed the question afresh with apparently renewed confidence in the expediency of the acquisition. "I now firmly believe," he said, "that the moment it is known that the United States have entirely abandoned the project of accepting as part of its own territory the Island of San Domingo, a free port will be negotiated for by European nations in the Bay of Samana, and a large commercial city will spring up, to which we will be tributary without receiving responding benefits. Then will be seen the folly of our rejecting so great a prize. . . . So convinced am I of the advantages to flow from the acquisition of San Domingo, and of the great disadvantages, I might also say calamities, to flow from its non-acquisition, that I believe the subject has only to be investigated to be approved." He recommended that "by joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress, the Executive be authorized to appoint a commission to negotiate a treaty with the authorities of San Domingo for the acquisition of that island, and that an appropriation be made to defray the expenses of such commission."

The subject at once led to discussion in both branches of Congress, in which the hostility to the scheme on the part of some leading men assumed the tone of personal exasperation towards General Grant. So intense was the opposition that the President's friends in the Senate did not deem it prudent even to discuss the measure which he recommended. As the best that could be done, Mr. Morton of Indiana introduced a resolution empowering the President to appoint three Commissioners to proceed to San Domingo and make certain inquiries into the political condition of the island, and also into its agricultural and commercial value. The Commissioners were to have no compensation. Their expenses were to be paid, and a secretary was to be provided. Even in this mild shape the resolution was hotly opposed. It was finally adopted by the Senate, but when it reached the House that body refused to concur except with a proviso that "nothing in this resolution shall be held, understood, or construed as committing Congress to the policy of annexing San Domingo." The Senate concurred in the condition thus attached and the President approved it. It was plain that the President could not carry the annexation scheme; but he courted a searching investigation in order that the course he had pursued might be vindicated by the well-considered judgment of impartial men.

The President's selections for the Commission were wisely made. Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, Andrew D. White of New York, and Samuel G. Howe of Massachusetts, were men entitled to the highest respect, and their conclusions, based upon intelligent investigation, would exert large influence upon public opinion. The Commission at once visited the island (carried thither on a United-States vessel of war), made a thorough examination of all its resources, held conferences with its leading citizens, and concluded that the policy recommended by General Grant should be sustained. The Commissioners corroborated General Grant's assertion that the island could supply the United States with the sugar, coffee, and other tropical products needed for our consumption; and they upheld the President in his belief that the possession of the island by the United States would by the laws of trade make slave labor in the neighboring islands unprofitable, and render the whole slave and caste systems odious.

In communicating the report, the President made some remarks which had a personal bearing. "The mere rejection by the Senate of a treaty negotiated by the President," said he, "only indicates a difference of opinion among different departments of the Government, without touching the character or wounding the pride of either. But when such rejection takes place simultaneously with charges, openly made, of corruption on the part of the President, or of those employed by him, the case is different. Indeed, in such case the honor of the nation demands investigation. This has been accomplished by the report of the Commissioners, herewith transmitted, and which fully vindicates the purity of motive and action of those who represented the United States in the negotiation. And now my task is finished, and with it ends all personal solicitude upon the subject. My duty being done, yours begins, and I gladly hand over the whole matter to the judgment of the American people and of their representatives in Congress assembled."

The pointed remarks of the President were understood as referring to the speech made by Mr. Sumner when the resolution for the appointment of the Commission was pending before the Senate. Mr. Sumner had previously conceived a strong dislike to General Grant on account of some personal grievance, either fancied or real; and he debated the resolution in a spirit not at all justified by the subject itself. He spoke of it as "a measure of violence" and a "dance of blood." "In other days," said he, "to carry a project, a President has tried to change a committee: it was James Buchanan. Now we have been called this session to witness a similar endeavor by our President. He was not satisfied with the Committee on Foreign Relations, and wished it changed. He asked first for the removal of the chairman [Mr. Sumner himself]. Somebody told him that this would not be convenient. He then asked for the removal of the senator from Missouri [Mr. Schurz], and he was told that this could not be done without affecting the German vote."

Mr. Sumner continued: "The negotiation for annexation began with a political jockey named Buenaventura Baez; and he had about his two other political jockeys, Casneau and Fabens. These three together, a precious copartnership, seduced into their firm a young officer of ours, who entitles himself aide-de-camp to the President of the United States. Together they got up what was entitled a protocol, in which the young officer, entitling himself aide-de-camp to the President, proceeded to make certain promises for the President. I desire to say that there is not one word showing that at the time this aide-de-camp, as he called himself, had any title of instructions to take this step. If he had, that title and that instruction have been withheld. No inquiry has been able to penetrate it. . . . I ask you," said he, addressing the Vice-President, "do you know any such officer in our government as 'aide-de-camp to his Excellency the President of the United States'? Does his name appear in the Constitution, in any statute, in the history of this country anywhere? If it does, then your information is much beyond mine. . . . However, he assumed a title; and it doubtless produced a great effect with Baez, Casneau, and Fabens, the three confederates. They were doubtless pleased with the distinction. It helped on the plan they were engineering. The young aide-de-camp pledged the President as follows: '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.' Shall I read the rest of the document? It is somewhat of the same tenor. There are questions of money in it, cash down, all of which must have been particularly agreeable to the three confederates." At one stage of his bitter arraignment of the Administration Mr. Sumner besought the Vice-President (Mr. Colfax) "as a friend of General Grant to counsel him not to follow the examples of Franklin Pierce, of James Buchanan, and of Andrew Johnson."