Hudson to Edwin Corbett, May 18, 1870

Mr. Silas A. Hudson to Mr. Fish.

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your dispatch, dated April 19, in reply to my No. 15, and in which you are pleased to say that “In the absence of the correspondence with the British minister, to which you (I) refer, the Department withholds an expression of opinion.”

Perhaps in my brief dispatch I failed to convey a correct understanding of my intended meaning. I was not a party to that correspondence and had I been, I should have promptly transmitted the correspondence to you. The changed feeling ascribed to the government in my dispatch was produced by the general unfriendly conduct of the British minister, and that correspondence convinced the government the minister was playing a studied part. It was known to the government that the British minister had called at this legation on behalf of Señor Granados, and that I had refused his request to grant that rebel asylum. It was known too that Mr. Corbett approved my reasons for that refusal, and had agreed with me upon a common line of action, that was to govern the conduct of each toward the insurgents against whom the government had issued orders for their arrest, should they apply for asylum, and that I had held to the understanding, and that he had not.

It was known that after the British minister had failed to secure asylum for Granados at this legation, he secreted him in his own house. * * * * It was also known to the government that the French and Italian ministers had absented themselves from this city at this particular time. * * * * These and many similars acts were made known to the President and ministry through their secret agents, and convinced them that Mr. Corbett was false to his professions of friendship for them, and that he was seeking to compromise me with the government from selfish motives.

That Mr. Corbett has reaped the severest displeasure of this government by his conduct toward it is well known here, and that by bringing my conduct to the knowledge of the President and ministry, he has caused them to make known in the most public and marked manner their approval of it, is also true. Mr. Corbett desired and believed that the insurgents would, under the lead of Mandez Cruz, the successor of Serapio, succeed in displacing the present state officials, and his conduct was shaped to secure favor in the event of such success.

I believed it to be my duty to sustain the constitutional government in all its just efforts to preserve its authority, and have done so. But I advised firmly against harsh and extreme treatment of these political offenders, and for the mild punishment meted out to them much is due to my advisement and the favorable opinion the government entertained of my conduct during the struggle for supremacy.

I have made a careful translation of the correspondence exchanged between the parties, and herewith transmit you copies thereof and copies of the official paper in which it was published.

I have the honor to be, with great respect, your obedient servant,

ministry of foreign relations.

[Editorial.]

As there has been circulating in public different versions of what occurred between this government and the British legation, provoked by the conduct of that legation in granting asylum to Don Miguel Garcia Granados, the President has ordered the publication of that correspondence. We also publish the communication of the British chargé d’affaires, in which he informs ns he has obtained permission from his government to return to England, and with it the reply of our minister of foreign relations.