a position, in
view of the precedents with which it has been connected, to broadly deny
the right of asylum, and the correspondence has not thus far presented
any such denial. The treatment of our minister for a time was such as to
call for a decided protest, and it was very gratifying to observe that
unfriendly measures, which were undoubtedly the result of the prevailing
excitement, were at once rescinded or suitably relaxed.

On the 16th of October an event occurred in Valparaiso so serious and
tragic in its circumstances and results as to very justly excite the
indignation of our people and to call for prompt and decided action on
the part of this Government. A considerable number of the sailors of the
United States steamship _Baltimore_, then in the harbor at Valparaiso,
being upon shore leave and unarmed, were assaulted by armed men nearly
simultaneously in different localities in the city. One petty officer
was killed outright and seven or eight seamen were seriously wounded,
one of whom has since died. So savage and brutal was the assault that
several of our sailors received more than two and one as many as
eighteen stab wounds. An investigation of the affair was promptly made
by a board of officers of the _Baltimore_, and their report shows that
these assaults were unprovoked, that our men were conducting themselves
in a peaceable and orderly manner, and that some of the police of the
city took part in the assault and used their weapons with fatal effect,
while a few others, with some well-disposed citizens, endeavored to
protect our men. Thirty-six of our sailors were arrested, and some of
them while being taken to prison were cruelly beaten and maltreated.
The fact that they were all discharged, no criminal charge being lodged
against any one of them, shows very clearly that they were innocent of
any breach of the peace.

So far as I have yet been able to learn no other explanation of this
bloody work has been suggested than that it had its origin in hostility
to those men as sailors of the United States, wearing the uniform of
their Government, and not in any individual act or personal animosity.
The attention of the Chilean Government was at once called to this
affair, and a statement of the facts obtained by the investigation we
had conducted was submitted, accompanied by a request to be advised of
any other or qualifying facts in the possession of the Chilean
Government that might tend to relieve this a