John Bigelow to Monsieur Drouyn de Lhuys, April 24, 1866

Mr. Bigelow to Mr. Drouyn de Lhuys

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your excellency’s communication of the 16th instant in reference to the arrest and imprisonment of François Pierre at Sarreguemines in March last.

Your excellency expresses the opinion that Pierre probably exaggerated the rigors which inevitably attend the transfer of a prisoner from one place to another. I trust your excellency’s opinion is well founded, though I regret to say that I am in possession of no evidence tending to invalidate the statements of Pierre and another eye-witness of the treatment of which he complains.

Your excellency is pleased to add that the first use that Pierre made of his liberty was “to withdraw himself from the jurisdiction of the French tribunals, before which it was his duty to establish the loss of his quality as a Frenchman by the acquisition of a new nationality.” I do not know that I entirely comprehend the implication intended to be conveyed by these words of your excellency; but if they were designed to reproach Pierre with a violation of good faith in withdrawing from France when he did, I do not hesitate to express my conviction that they do him injustice.

Pierre came to England as the agent of a New England manufacturing company. He thought fit to profit by the opportunity to visit the place of his birth and the friends of his early youth. He arrived there on the night of the 15th of March. On the following day he was arrested and kept a prisoner until the 28th of March, when he was liberated, and his passport and naturalization papers returned to him. Then, instead of avalling himself of his liberty, as your excellency intimates, to withdraw from France, he came to Paris, where I first saw him. After a sojourn here of two days he left for London to join his wife, whose anxieties he was naturally anxious to relieve, and to attend to the business for which he had been sent to Europe. He assures me that when his papers were returned to him he had no suspicion that there was any further question of his right to his freedom, nor did he receive any intimation from any quarter that he was expected to abide the result of any further investigation. If the fact be otherwise, and if Pierre entered into any engagement, formal or implied, to remain in France after his liberation, I should esteem it a favor if your excellency would inform me of the nature and terms of such engagement. I am at a loss to comprehend upon what principle such terms could have been imposed, or if imposed, that Pierre, with his presumed tendency to exaggerate his grievances, should not have added this to the list.

But whether the rigors of Pierre’s confinement were exaggerated or not, and whether he took refuge from his persecutors in England or not, are, I suppose, in this case, secondary questions. It is not disputed that he was arrested with ample evidence of his American citizenship upon his person, and detained a prisoner for nearly a fortnight without any charge or pretence of crime. With all the presumptive evidence of his nationality in his favor, he was treated like a felon. This is so inconsistent with the privileges which, by the comity of nations, are usually accorded to strangers fortified with the ordinary evidences of their nationality, that I venture to believe your excellency will agree with me in thinking that a more precise definition of the authority and value of an American passport in France would have a most desirable tendency to prevent misunderstandings.

I avail myself of this occasion, &c., &c.