Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume I Part 31

In one of the large interior towns there had been, indeed, one evidence of civilization to which the people of that region had pointed with pride--a steam-engine for sawing timber; but sometime before my arrival one of the innumerable petty revolutions had left it a mere ma.s.s of rusty sc.r.a.ps.

Under the natural law of increase the population of the republic should have been numbered in millions; but close examination, in all parts of its territory, showed us that there were not two hundred thousand inhabitants left, and that of these about one half were mulattos, the other half being about equally divided between blacks and whites.

Since my visit business men from the United States have developed the country to some extent; but revolutions have continued, each chieftain getting into place by orating loudly about liberty, and then holding power by murdering not only his enemies, but those whom he thought likely to become his enemies.

The late president, Heureaux, was one of the most mon- strous of these creatures who have found their breeding- bed in Central American politics. He seems to have murdered, as far as possible, not only all who opposed him, but all who, he thought, MIGHT oppose him, and even members of their families.

It was not at all surprising that Baez, clear-sighted and experienced as he was, saw an advantage to his country in annexation to the United States. He probably expected that it would be, at first, a Territory of which he, as the foremost man in the island, would become governor, and that later it would come into the Union as a State which he would be quite likely to represent in the United States Senate. At a later period, when I saw him in New York, on his way to visit the President at Washington, my favorable opinion of him was confirmed. He was quiet, dignified, manly, showing himself, in his conversation and conduct, a self-respecting man of the world, accustomed to manage large affairs and to deal with strong men.

The same desire to annex the island to the United States was evident among the clergy. This at first surprised me, for some of them were exceedingly fanatical, and one of them, who was especially civil to us, had endeavored, a few months before our arrival, to prevent the proper burial of a charming American lady, the wife of the American geologist of the government, under the old Spanish view that, not being a Catholic, she should be buried outside the cemetery upon the commons, like a dog.

But the desire for peace and for a reasonable development of the country, even under a government considered heretical, was everywhere evident.

It became my duty to discuss the question of church property with the papal nuncio and vicar apostolic. He was an archbishop who had been sent over to take temporary charge of ecclesiastical matters; of course a most earnest Roman Catholic, but thoroughly devoted to the annexation of the island to the United States, and the reason for his opinion was soon evident. Throughout the entire island one constantly sees great buildings and other church property which have been confiscated and sold for secular purposes. In the city itself the opera-house was a former church, which in its day had been very imposing, and everywhere one saw monastery estates in private hands. The authorities in Santo Domingo had simply pursued the policy so well known in various Latin countries, and especially in France, Italy, and Spain, of allowing the religious orders to absorb large ma.s.ses of property, and then squeezing it out of them into the coffers of the state.

In view of this, I said to the papal nuncio that it was very important for the United States, in considering the question of annexing the island, to know what the church claimed; that if the church demanded the restoration of all that had been taken from her, this would certainly greatly diminish the value of the island in the eyes of our public men. To this he answered that in case of annexation the church would claim nothing whatever beyond what it was absolutely and actually occupying and using for its own purposes, and he offered to give me guarantees to that effect which should be full and explicit.

It was perfectly clear that the church authorities preferred to be under a government which, even though they regarded it as Protestant, could secure them their property, rather than to be subject to a Roman Catholic republic in which they were liable to constantly recurring spoliation. This I found to be the spirit of the clergy of every grade in all parts of the island: they had discovered that under the Const.i.tution of the United States confiscation without compensation is impossible.

It also fell to my lot, as the youngest man in the commission, to conduct an expedition across the mountains from the city of Santo Domingo on the south coast to Puerto Plata on the north.

During this journey, on which I was about ten days in the saddle, it was my duty to confer with the princ.i.p.al functionaries, and this gave me novel experiences. When- ever our cavalcade approached a town, we halted, a messenger was sent forward, and soon the alcalde, the priests, and other men of light and leading, with a long train of functionaries, came dashing out on horseback to greet us; introductions then took place, and, finally, there was a wild gallop into the town to the house of the alcalde, where speeches were made and compliments exchanged in the high Spanish manner.

At the outset there was a mishap. As we were organizing our expedition, the gentlemen charged with purchasing supplies a.s.sured me that if we wished to secure proper consideration of the annexation question by the princ.i.p.al men of the various towns, we must exercise a large if simple hospitality, and that social gatherings without rum punch would be offensive rather than propitiatory. The order to lay in a sufficient spirituous supply was reluctantly given, and in due time we started, one of our train of pack-horses having on each side of the saddle large demijohns of the fluid which was to be so potent for diplomatic purposes. At the close of the first day's travel, just as our hammocks had been swung, I heard a scream and saw the people of our own and neighboring huts s.n.a.t.c.hing cups and gla.s.ses and running pell-mell toward the point where our animals were tethered. On examination I found that the horse intrusted with the precious burden, having been relieved of part of his load, had felt warranted in disporting himself, and had finally rolled over, crushing all the demijohns. It seemed a serious matter, but I cannot say that it afflicted me much; we propitiated the local functionaries by other forms of hospitality, and I never found that the absence of rum punch seriously injured our diplomacy.

Civil war had been recently raging throughout the republic, and in one of the interior towns I was one day notified that a well-known guerrilla general, who had shown great bravery in behalf of the Baez government, wished a public interview. The meeting took place in the large room of the house which had been a.s.signed me. The mountain chieftain entered, bearing a rifle, and, the first salutations having been exchanged, he struck an oratorical att.i.tude, and after expressing, in a loud harangue, his high consideration for the United States, for its representative, and for all present, he solemnly tendered the rifle to me, saying that he had taken it in battle from Luperon, the arch-enemy of his country, and could think of no other bestowal so worthy of it. This gift somewhat disconcerted me. In the bitterness of party feeling at home regarding the Santo Domingo question, how would it look for one of the commissioners to accept such a present?

President Grant had been held up to obloquy throughout the whole length and breadth of the land for accepting a dog; what, then, would happen to a diplomatic representative who should accept a rifle? Connected with the expedition were some twenty or thirty representatives of the press, and I could easily see how my acceptance of such a gift would alarm the sensitive consciences of many of them and be enlarged and embroidered until the United States would resound with indignant outcry against a commission which accepted presents and was probably won over by contracts for artillery. My first attempt was to evade the difficulty. Rifle in hand, I acknowledged my appreciation of the gift, but declared to the general that my keeping such a trophy would certainly be a wrong to his family; that I would therefore accept it and transmit it to his son, to be handed down from generation to generation of his descendants as an heirloom and a monument of bravery and patriotism. I was just congratulating myself on this bit of extemporized diplomacy, when a cloud began to gather on the general's face, and presently he broke forth, saying that he regretted to find his present not good enough to be accepted; that it was the best he had; that if he had possessed anything better he would have brought it. At this, two or three gentlemen in our party pressed around me, and, in undertones, advised me by all means to accept it. There was no alternative; I accepted the rifle in as sonorous words as I could muster --''IN BEHALF OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES''; had it placed immediately in a large box with the words ''War Department'' upon it, in very staring letters; and so the matter ended. Fortunately the commission, though attacked for a mult.i.tude of sins, escaped censure in this matter.

One part of our duty was somewhat peculiar. The United States, a few years before, had been on the point of concluding negotiations with Denmark for the purchase of St. Thomas, when a volcanic disturbance threw an American frigate in the harbor of that island upon the sh.o.r.e, utterly wrecking both the vessel and the treaty.

This experience it was which led to the insertion of a clause in the Congressional instructions to the commission requiring them to make examinations regarding the frequency and severity of earthquakes. This duty we discharged faithfully, and on one occasion with a result interesting both to students of history and of psychology.

Arriving at the old town of Cotuy, among the mountains, and returning the vicar's call, after my public reception, I asked him the stereotyped question regarding earthquakes, and was answered that about the year 1840 there had been one of a very terrible sort; that it had shaken and broken his great stone church very badly; that he had repaired the whole structure, except the gaping crevice above the front entrance; ''and,'' said the good old padre, ''THAT I left as a warning to my people, thinking that it might have a good influence upon them.'' On visiting the church, we found the crevice as the padre had described it; but his reasoning was especially interesting, because it corroborated the contention of Buckle, who, but a few years before, in his ''History of Civilization in England,''

had stated that earthquakes and volcanoes had aided the clergy of southern countries in maintaining superst.i.tion, and who had afterward defended this view with great wealth of learning when it was attacked by a writer in the ''Edinburgh Review.'' Certainly this Santo Domingo example was on the side of the historian.

Another day brought us to Vega, noted as the point where Columbus reared his standard above the wonderful interior valley of the island; and there we were welcomed, as usual, by the officials, and, among them, by a tall, ascetic- looking priest who spoke French. Returning his call next day, I was shown into his presence in a room utterly bare of all ornament save a large and beautiful photograph of the Cathedral of Tours. It had happened to me, just after my college days, to travel on foot through a large part of northern, western, and middle France, especially interesting myself in cathedral architecture; and as my eye caught this photograph I said, ''Father, what a beautiful picture you have of the Church of St. Gatien!'' The countenance of the priest, who had at first received me very ceremoniously and coldly, was instantly changed; he looked at me for a moment, and then threw his arms about me. It was pathetic: of all who had ever entered his door I was probably the only one who had recognized the picture of the cathedral where he had been ordained; and, above all, by a curious inspiration which I cannot to this hour account for, I had recognized it by the name of the saint to whom it is dedicated. Why I did not speak of it simply as the Cathedral of Tours I know not; how I came to remember that it was dedicated to St. Gatien I know not-- but this fact evidently loosened the cords of the father's heart, and during my stay at Vega he was devoted to me; giving me information of the greatest value regarding the people, their habits, their diseases, and the like, much of which, up to that moment, the commission and its subordinates had vainly endeavored to secure.

And here I recall one thing which struck me as significant. This ascetic French priest was very severe in condemnation of the old Spanish priesthood of the island.

When I asked him regarding the morals of the people he answered, ''How can you expect good morals in them when their pastors set such bad examples?'' It was evident that the church authorities at Rome were of his opinion; for in nearly every town I found not only a jolly, kindly, easy-going old Spanish padre, surrounded by ''nephews'' and ''nieces,'' but a more austere ecclesiastic recently arrived from France or Italy.

In the impressions made upon me by this long and tedious journey across the island, pleasure and pain were constantly mingled. On one hand was the wonderful beauty of the scenery, the luxuriance of the vegetation, and the bracing warmth of the climate, while the United States were going through a winter more than usually bitter.

But, on the other hand, the whole condition of the country seemed to indicate that the early Spanish rulers had left a curse upon it from which it had never recovered.

Its inhabitants, in revolution after revolution, had destroyed all industry and industrial appliances, and had virtually eaten up each other; generation after generation had thus been almost entirely destroyed.

Finally, after nearly a fortnight of clambering over mountains, pushing through tropical thickets, fording streams, and negotiating in palm huts, we approached the sea; and suddenly, on the north side of the island, at the top of the mountain back of Puerto Plata, we looked far down upon its beautiful harbor, in the midst of which, like a fly upon a mirror, lay our trim little frigate Nantasket.

The vice-president of the republic, surrounded by the representatives of the city, having welcomed us with the usual speeches, we pushed forward to the vice-presidential villa, where I was to be lodged.

Having no other dress with me than my traveler's outfit, of which the main features were a flaming red flannel shirt, a poncho, and a sombrero, and having been invited to dine that evening at the house of my host, with the various consuls and other leaders of the place, I ordered two of my men to hurry down the mountain, and out to the frigate, to bring in my leather trunk containing a costume more worthy of the expected ceremony; and hardly were we comfortably established under the roof of the vice-president, when two sailors came in, bringing the precious burden.

Now came a catastrophe. Turning the key, I noticed that the bra.s.s fittings of the lock were covered with verdigris, and, as the trunk opened, I shrank back in horror. It was filled, apparently, with a ma.s.s of mossy white-and- green mold from which c.o.c.kroaches of enormous size darted in all directions.

Hastily pulling down the cover, I called a council of war; the main personages in it being my private secretary, Professor Crane, since acting president of Cornell University, and sundry of the more important men in the expedition. To these I explained the situation. It seemed bad enough to lose all means of presenting a suitable appearance at the approaching festivity, but this was nothing compared with the idea that I had requited the hospitality of my host by spreading through his house this hideous entomological collection.

But as I exposed this latter feature of the situation, I noticed a smile coming over the faces of my Dominican attendants, and presently one of them remarked that the c.o.c.kroaches I had brought would find plenty of companions; that the house was doubtless already full of them.

This was a great relief to my conscience. The trunk was removed, and presently the clothing, in which I was to be arrayed for the evening, was brought in. It seemed in a fearful condition, but, curiously enough, while boots, shoes, and, above all, a package of white gloves carefully reserved for grand ceremonies, had been nearly devoured, the garments of various sorts had escaped fairly well.

The next thing in order being the preparation of my apparel for use, the men proceeded first to deluge it with carbolic acid; and then, after drying it on the balconies in front of the vice-president's house, to mitigate the invincible carbolic odor by copious drenchings of Florida water. All day long they were thus at work making ready for the evening ceremony. In due time it arrived; and, finally, after a sumptuous entertainment, I stood before the a.s.sembled consuls and other magnates.

Probably no one of them remembers a word of my discourse; but doubtless every survivor will agree that no speaker, before or since, ever made to him an appeal of such pungency. I pervaded the whole atmosphere of the place; indeed, the town itself seemed to me, as long as I remained in it, to reek of that strange mixture of carbolic acid and Florida water; and as soon as possible after reaching the ship, the contents of the trunk were thrown overboard, and life became less a burden.

Having been duly escorted to the Nantasket, and received heartily by Commander McCook, I was a.s.signed his own cabin, but soon thought it expedient to get out of it and sleep on deck. The fact was that the companions of my c.o.c.kroaches had possession of the ship, and, to all appearance, their headquarters were in the captain's room. I therefore ordered my bed on deck; and, though it was February, pa.s.sed two delightful nights in that balmy atmosphere of the tropical seas while we skirted the north side of the island until, at Port-au-Prince, I rejoined the other commissioners, who had come in the Tennessee along the southern coast.

At the Haitian capital our commission had interviews with the president, his cabinet, and others, and afterward we had time to look about us. Few things could be more dispiriting. The city had been burned again and again, and there had arisen a tangle of streets displaying every sort of cheap absurdity in architecture. The effects of the recent revolution--the latest in a long series of civic convulsions, cruel and sterile--were evident on all sides. On the slope above the city had stood the former residence of the French governor: it had been a beautiful palace, and, being so far from the sea, had, until the recent revolution, escaped unharmed; but during that last effort a squad of miscreants, howling the praises of liberty, having got possession of a small armed vessel in the harbor and found upon it a rifled cannon of long range, had exercised their monkeyish pa.s.sion for destruction by wantonly firing upon this beautiful structure. It now lay in ruins. In its main staircase an iron ring was pointed out to us, and we were given the following chronicle.

During the recent revolution the fugitive President Salnave had been captured, a leathern thong had been rudely drawn through a gash in his hand, and, attached by this to a cavalryman, he had been dragged up the hill to the palace, through the crowd which had but recently hurrahed for him, but which now jeered and pelted him.

Arriving upon the scene of his former glory, he was attached by the thong to this iron ring and shot.

Opposite the palace was the ruin of a mausoleum, and in the street were scattered fragments of marble sarcophagi beautifully sculptured: these had contained the bodies of former rulers, but the revolutionists of Haiti, imitating those of 1793 in France, as apes imitate men, had torn the corpses out of them and had then scattered these, with the fragments of their monuments, through the streets.

In the markets of the city we had ample experience of the advantage arising from unlimited paper money.

Successive governments had kept themselves afloat by new issues of currency, until its purchasing power was reduced almost to nothing. Preposterous sums were demanded for the simplest articles: hundreds of dollars for a basket of fruit, and thousands of dollars for a straw hat.

With us as one of our secretaries was Frederick Dougla.s.s, the gifted son of an eminent Virginian and a slave woman,--one of the two or three most talented men of color I have ever known. Up to this time he had cherished many hopes that his race, if set free, would improve; but it was evident that this experience in Santo Domingo discouraged and depressed him. He said to one of us, ''If this is the outcome of self-government by my race, Heaven help us!''

Another curious example bearing on the same subject was furnished us in Jamaica, whither we went after leav- ing Haiti. Our wish was to consult, on our way home, the former president of the Haitian republic, Geffrard,-- who was then living in exile near Kingston. We found him in a beautiful apartment, elegantly furnished; and in every way he seemed superior to the officials whom we had met at Port-au-Prince. He was a light mulatto, intelligent, quiet, dignified, and able to state his views without undue emphasis. His wife was very agreeable, and his daughter, though clearly of a melancholic temperament, one of the most beautiful young women I have ever seen. The reason for her melancholy was evident to any one who knew her father's history. He had gone through many political storms before he had fled from Haiti, and in one of these his enemies had fired through the windows of his house and killed his other daughter.

He calmly discussed with us the condition of the island, and evidently believed that the only way to save it from utter barbarism was to put it under the control of some civilized power.

Interesting as were his opinions, he and his family, as we saw them in their daily life, were still more so. It was a revelation to us all of what the colored race might become in a land where it is under no social ban. For generations he and his had been the equals of the best people they had met in France and in Haiti; they had been guests at the dinners of ministers and at the soires of savants in the French capital; there was nothing about them of that deprecatory sort which one sees so constantly in men and women with African blood in their veins in lands where their race has recently been held in servitude.

And here I may again cite the case of President Baez-- a man to whom it probably never occurred that he was not the equal socially of the best men he met, and who in any European country would be at once regarded as a man of mark, and welcomed at any gathering of notables.

Among our excursions, while in Jamaica, was one to Spanish Town, the residence of the British governor.

In the drawing-room of His Excellency's wife there was shown us one rather curious detail. Not long before our visit, the legislature had been abolished and the island had been made a crown colony ruled by a royal governor and council; therefore it was that, there being no further use for it, the gorgeous chair of ''Mr. Speaker,'' a huge construction apparently of carved oak, had been transferred to her ladyship's drawing-room, and we were informed that in this she received her guests.

From Kingston we came to Key West, and from that point to Charleston, where, as our frigate was too large to cross the bar, we were taken off, and thence reached Washington by rail.

One detail regarding those latter days of our commission is perhaps worthy of record as throwing light on a seamy side of American life. From first to last we had shown every possible civility to the representatives of the press who had accompanied us on the frigate, constantly taking them with us in Santo Domingo and elsewhere, and giving them every facility for collecting information.

But from time to time things occurred which threw a new and somewhat unpleasant light on the way misinformation is liberally purveyed to the American public. One day one of these gentlemen, the representative of a leading New York daily, talking with me of the sort of news his paper required, said, ''The managers of our paper don't care for serious information, such as particulars regarding the country we visit, its inhabitants, etc., etc.; what they want, above all, is something of a personal nature, such as a quarrel or squabble, and when one occurs they expect us to make the most of it.''

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 ma.s.s 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 prost.i.tutes, 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 Dougla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sage 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 sh.o.r.e. 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.