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head of a nation, but as a constable, a catchpole—a character that it is not possible to express in gentlemanly language.  That is what this demand makes of the President of the United States.

The Secretary should also have set the Spanish Minister right with regard to the authorities before whom the question was pending. He should have told him that they were not the authorities of the state of Connecticut but of the United States, the courts of the Union in the state of Connecticut. He should have corrected this mistake of the minister at the beginning. It was a real misapprehension, which has continued through the whole proceeding to the present time, and it ought to have been corrected at first. And what is still more remarkable, the same mistake of calling it the court of Connecticut made by Mr. Forsyth himself long after.

But what did the Secretary do in fact? He barely replies to Mr. Calderon, that he had sent his letter to the President for his consideration, and that "no time will be needlessly lost, after his decision upon the demand it prefers shall have reached me, in communicating to you his views upon the subject."

And now, from that day to this, the Secretary of State has never answered one of these demands, nor arrested one of these misapprehensions, nor asserted the rights and the honor of the nation against one of these most extraordinary, inadmissible, and insolent demands. He has degraded the country, in the face of the whole civilized world, not only by allowing these demands to remain unanswered, but by proceeding, I am obliged to say, throughout the whole transaction, as if the Executive were earnestly desirous to comply with every one of the demands. In the very misrepresentations of those demands, in his instructions to the District Attorney, under which this case is brought here, why does he take such a course? The Spanish Minister pronounced the Court before which the Secretary brought the question, an incompetent tribunal-- and this position has been maintained by the Legation of Spain down to this very month, that a letter of Chevalier d'Argaiz officially protests against the jurisdiction of the courts before which the Secretary professes to be prosecuting the claim of this very minister!

Why does the Spanish Minister persist in such inadmissible pretensions? It is because they were not met in limine in a proper manner -- because he was not told instantly, without the 



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delay of an hour, that this Government could never admit such claims, and would be offended if they were repeated, or any portion of them. Yet all these claims, monstrous, absurd and inadmissible as they are, have been urged and repeated for eighteen months, upon our Government, and an American Secretary of State evades answering any of them -- evades it to such an extent that the Spanish Minister reproaches him for not meeting his arguments.

The demand of Mr. Calderon was dated September 6. The order of the Secretary to the District Attorney, in regard to the suit, was dated September 11, in which he says that "a communication has been addressed to this department by the Minister of Her Catholic Majesty, CLAIMING THE VESSEL, CARGO, AND BLACKS ON BOARD, AS SPANISH PROPERTY, and demanding its immediate release." On the 23d of September, the Secretary writes to the Spanish Minister as follows:

Sir: In the examination of the case of the Spanish schooner "Amistad," the only evidence at present within reach of this department is that presented by the ship's paper; and the proceedings of the court of inquiry held by a district judge of Connecticut, on board the schooner, at the time the negroes in whose possession she was found, were imprisoned for the alleged murder of the captain and mate of the vessel. If you have any other authentic documents relating to the question or evidence of facts which can be useful to a proper understanding of it, I have the honor to request by the direction of the President, that you will communicate them to me with as little delay as practicable.

Here the Secretary reiterates the error of the Spanish minster, instead of correcting it, with regard to the character of the Court before which the case was pending. The Secretary of State calls the United States District for Connecticut "a District Court of Connecticut." The Spanish Minister could not be expected to acquire a correct understanding of the case, unless he was informed, but here he has his error confirmed.

The Secretary further requests the ambassador, if he has any farther documents, "that you will communicate them to me." What had he to do with this evidence? The Spanish minister had made a certain demand upon the government of the United States. Whether it was what it appears to be, or whether it was what the Secretary represented it to be in his orders to the Dis-