Bassett to Hamilton Fish, July 27, 1872

No. 221. Mr. Bassett to Mr. Fish.

Sir: I have the honor to invite your attention to the accompanying Inclosure, from which you will see that Mr. Charles F. Teel, an American citizen, and consular agent of the United States at Miragoâne, has suffered indignity and imprisonment at the hands of the military authorities at that place, under the charge of knowingly having in his possession and circulating false money, a charge which I cannot, from all the evidence which has come to my knowledge in the case, for one moment entertain. This Inclosure, which is my dispatch to the Haytian minister, will perhaps sufficiently explain the circumstances connected with the affair up to this date. In this dispatch I express to the minister my conviction that the proceedings in regard to Mr. Teel were illegal and unjustifiable, and that perhaps they were prompted by malicious motives. Under this conviction, and with the knowledge also that some consideration is, according to the customs of this country and according to public law, due to a consular officer of the United States here, I ask of the minister Mr. Teel’s immediate release from prison.

Immediately after receiving information of Mr. Teel’s arrest, and before writing to the minister, I called on him and explained the facts as they had come to me, and told him that I should, under the circumstances, be obliged to demand that Mr. Teel be at once set at liberty. The minister received my statements with his accustomed courtesy, and said he would give them prompt attention. But I have not yet received his answer to my dispatch, which was handed to him on the evening of the 25th instant.

I regret that I am not within sufficiently easy reach of the Department to avail myself of its early instructions in this case. But in the absence of those special instructions, I shall feel it my duty to anticipate them so far as to follow up the position taken in my dispatch to the minister, and I hope to be able at an early date to communicate to the Department a favorable result of these efforts.

I have, &c.