me? You will add to the many obligations under which I am to you.
FROM THOMAS F. BAYARD
| Department of State, | |
| Washington, Feb. 28, 1889. |
Personal.
It gratified me to receive your valued criticism of the part
I bore in the attempt to arrange in 1887 a fit government for
the Samoan Islands, with the British and German agents. I
cannot help asking you to read a despatch of mine in January,
1888—which goes by this mail—for Prince Bismarck's eye.
I think it states the Samoan case and the Polynesian question
generally, truly and succinctly.
To your inquiry, whether the German Government has asked for Klein s prosecution and that [whether] I had sent the correspondence to the Senate, I reply that nothing of the kind has taken place. Now that I have succeeded in attracting Prince Bismarck's attention to the real condition of Samoa, I find his views and disposition very much as I expected them to be—moderate and conciliatory. As I wrote you, the shopkeepers at Samoa got hold of official power and abused it, and the scene is so distant that mischief was done before the facts were known.
Entre nous, I have been crippled a good deal by poor Pendleton's[1] invalid condition, and but for that, I believe the Berlin
- ↑ George H. Pendleton, U. S. Minister to Germany.
attract the Irish-American voters. A correspondent in California, pretending to be a British-American, asked Lord Sackville's advice as to which party he should vote for. The unsuspecting Minister wrote him a letter marked “private” in which he said that the Democratic party was more friendly to Great Britain, etc. This was the desired answer. The Republican party managers kept it secret until a short time before the election and then used it, with all possible stress, to excite the Irish against the Democratic party. In order to lessen the damaging effect of the plot, President Cleveland, a candidate for reëlection, sent Lord Sackville his passports, with haste that was most abrupt and undiplomatic. For details and comment, see 47 The Nation, 345, 348, 369, 387.
