Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
It is believed that the Government of Chile is not in a position, in view
of the precedents with which it has been connected, to broadly deny the
right of asylum, and the correspondence has not thus far presented any such
denial. The treatment of our minister for a time was such as to call for a
decided protest, and it was very gratifying to observe that unfriendly
measures, which were undoubtedly the result of the prevailing excitement,
were at once rescinded or suitably relaxed.
On the 16th of October an event occurred in Valparaiso so serious and
tragic in its circumstances and results as to very justly excite the
indignation of our people and to call for prompt and decided action on the
part of this Government. A considerable number of the sailors of the United
States steamship Baltimore, then in the harbor at Valparaiso, being upon
shore leave and unarmed, were assaulted by armed men nearly simultaneously
in different localities in the city. One petty officer was killed outright
and seven or eight seamen were seriously wounded, one of whom has since
died. So savage and brutal was the assault that several of our sailors
received more than two and one as many as eighteen stab wounds. An
investigation of the affair was promptly made by a board of officers of the
Baltimore, and their report shows that these assaults were unprovoked, that
our men were conducting themselves in a peaceable and orderly manner, and
that some of the police of the city took part in the assault and used their
weapons with fatal effect, while a few others, with some well-disposed
citizens, endeavored to protect our men. Thirty-six of our sailors were
arrested, and some of them while being taken to prison were cruelly beaten
and maltreated. The fact that they were all discharged, no criminal charge
being lodged against any one of them, shows very clearly that they were
innocent of any breach of the peace.
So far as I have yet been able to learn no other explanation of this bloody
work has been suggested than that it had its origin in hostility to those
men as sailors of the United States, wearing the uniform of their
Government, and not in any individual act or personal animosity. The
attention of the Chilean Government was at once called to this affair, and
a statement of the facts obtained by the investigation we had conducted was
submitted, accompanied by a request to be advised of any other or
qualifying facts in the possession of the Chilean Government that might
tend to relieve this affair of the appearance of an insult to this
Government. The Chilean Government was also advised that if such qualifying
facts did not exist this Government would confidently expect full and
prompt reparation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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