Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/747

CHAPTER XIII.

CONTINUED NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE MÔLE ST. NICOLAS.

Unfortunate delay—Renewed authority from the United States—Haïti's refusal—Reasons for the refusal—The Clyde contract—A dishonest proposition—A strange demand—Haïti's mistake—Bad effect of the Clyde proposition—Final words.

"AT a meeting subsequent to the one already described, application for a United States naval station at the Môle St. Nicolas was made in due form to Mr. Firmin, the Haïtian Minister of Foreign Affairs. At his request, as already stated, this application was presented to him in writing. It was prepared on board the Philadelphia, the flagship of Rear-Admiral Bancroft Gherardi, and bore his signature alone. I neither signed it nor was asked to sign it, although it met my entire approval. I make this statement not in the way of complaint or grievance, but simply to show what, at the time, was my part, and what was not my part, in this important negotiation, the failure of which has unjustly been laid to my charge. Had the Môle been acquired, in response to this paper, the credit of success, according to the record, would have properly belonged to the gallant admiral in whose name it was demanded; for in it I had neither part nor lot.

"At this point, curiously enough, and unfortunately for the negotiations, the Haïtian Minister, who is an able man and well skilled in the technicalities of diplomacy, asked to see the commission of Admiral Gherardi