A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 5, part 3: Franklin Pierce
History
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 5, part 3: Franklin Pierce
Pierce, Franklin, 1804-1869; Presidents -- United States; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government
While the present incumbent of the executive office has been in
discharge of its duties he has never failed to exert all the authority
in him vested to repress such enterprises, because they are in violation
of the law of the land, which the Constitution requires him to execute
faithfully; because they are contrary to the policy of the Government,
and because to permit them would be a departure from good faith toward
those American Republics in amity with us, which are entitled to, and
will never cease to enjoy, in their calamities the cordial sympathy, and
in their prosperity the efficient good will, of the Government and of
the people of the United States.
To say that our laws in this respect are sometimes violated or
successfully evaded is only to say what is true of all laws in all
countries, but not more so in the United States than in any one whatever
of the countries of Europe. Suffice it to repeat that the laws of
the United States prohibiting all foreign military enlistments or
expeditions within our territory have been executed with impartial
good faith, and, so far as the nature of things permits, as well in
repression of private persons as of the official agents of other
Governments, both of Europe and America.
Among the Central American Republics to which modern events have
imparted most prominence is that of Nicaragua, by reason of its
particular position on the Isthmus. Citizens of the United States have
established in its territory a regular interoceanic transit route,
second only in utility and value to the one previously established in
the territory of New Granada. The condition of Nicaragua would, it is
believed, have been much more prosperous than it has been but for the
occupation of its only Atlantic port by a foreign power, and of the
disturbing authority set up and sustained by the same power in a portion
of its territory, by means of which its domestic sovereignty was
impaired, its public lands were withheld from settlement, and it was
deprived of all the maritime revenue which it would otherwise collect
on imported merchandise at San Juan del Norte.
In these circumstances of the political debility of the Republic of
Nicaragua, and when its inhabitants were exhausted by long-continued
civil war between parties neither of them strong enough to overcome
the other or permanently maintain internal tranquillity, one of
the contending factions of the Republic invited the assistance and
cooperation of a small body of citizens of the United States from the
State of California, whose presence, as it appears, put an end at once
to civil war and restored apparent order throughout the territory of
Nicaragua, with a new administration, having at its head a distinguished
individual, by birth a citizen of the Republic, D. Patricio Rivas,
as its provisional President.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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