Today in History:

1092 Series I Volume L-II Serial 106 - Pacific Part II

Page 1092 OPERATIONS ON THE PACIFIC COAST. Chapter LXII.

formed the magnificent dream of the giants in American statesmanship who have lately passed away and whose ghosts will upbrad you with your recreancy. Have you the nerve to dare and defy such consequences? The very situation of Mexico commends her to our sympathies. She is the 'sick man" of our continent, and instead of the good Samaritan, you purpose to collude with the thieves and robbers who have wounded and beset her.

My dear sir, I tell you and forewarn you, if you have a political hope or aspiration in the near or distant future and you do this act, go and bury your dead infant in the same grave in which you will have buried Mexican independence. For if there be a just God, a stump speaker, or a newspaper, there shall not be a man, woman not know that it is to you we owe all the inexpressible woe, suffering, mortification, and sin which will follow such treachery to a naturally and distressed republican neighbor. But God forbid I should use to you the language of menace, for you are, like myself, an American citizen, and cannot but feel your blood boil at the wrongs which another Republic has suffered and the insult to your own country, which has been inflicted in the contemptuous disregard by France of one of the cardinal articles of American faith-the Monroe doctrine. On the continent of America and in the nineteenth century are you willing to checkmate the advance of liberty with a king? If you are not, I implore you in the name of your party, of your own hopes and your country, in the name of republican institutions in the name of the great commons of America, who will assuredly impeach you to all posterity if you betray freedom in their name, and finally in the sacred catholic name of liberty itself to give these arms to Mexico. Your own conscience must approve this act, and your countrymen are waiting to applaud it.

Very respectfully, yours, &c.

E. F. BEALE.

CUSTOM-HOUSE, SAN FRANCISCO,

Collector's Office, July 20, 1864

General E. F. BEALE:

SIR: I have read the communication you handed me last evening relative to the export of arms. It was a mistake to suppose that the language of menace, contumely, and insult would induce me to disregard the express order of the President of the United States. Intimidation, not usually a powerful argument, will be found impotent in this case. Mr. Brown writes me that the proposed export is for Hamburg; the entry was presented for Liverpool. You both tell me the arms are intended for Mexico. If the last statement be true, who is to commit perjury by swearing to the entry? Is he to be a devotee of freedom and intrusted with these arms, which you speak of as the last hope of Mexico? At the very threshold of the plot stands his crime. It must be committed by some one, if the design is carried out. I will netiher connive at, promote, nor cloak it. My duty in the matter is plain, and I can neither be bullied, wheedled, coaxed nor cajoled from performing it. The President has ordered that no arms be cleared or exported except such as come within a rule which he has designated. These arms do not come within that rule, and are therefore subject to the prohibition. I shall enforce the order. I did so against our best citizens owning mines and representing immense interests in Mexico when I stopped the exportation of blasting powder to that country, to which export the French consul was ready to consent. In this action the Government sustained me, and refused to allow the export even on special application of known


Page 1092 OPERATIONS ON THE PACIFIC COAST. Chapter LXII.