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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/9/2015, SPi

PHYSICS: A SHORT HISTOR Y F ROM

Q UI N T E S S E N C E T O QU A R K S
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3
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© J. L. Heilbron 
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
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contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/9/2015, SPi

C ON T E N T S

List of Figures vii

Introduction: The Greek Way 

. Invention in Antiquity 
Physica 
Applications 
Dumbing down 

. Selection in Islam 
Falsafa 
Mixed mathematics 
Departures 

. Domestication in Europe 
At the interface 
Alma mater 
Fresh imports 

. A Second Creation 
Revolution or integration? 
The invention of physics 
Institutional frameworks 
Physics and enlightenment 

. Classical Physics and its Cure 

Standard models 
Physicists as librarians 
Woes and wonders in  
The profession 

v
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CONTENTS

. From Old World to New 

Legacies of World War I 
The legacy enriched 
Other interwar business 
Americanization 

. The Quintessential 

References 
Further Reading 
Index 

vi
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LIST OF FIGURES

. Schools of Athens. 
Public Domain.
. Geometrical foundations of the world. 
Adapted from Cornford, Plato’s cosmology
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, n.d.), pp. –.
. Ptolemaic bric-a-brac. 
. Sabbath machinery. 
Photo Researchers/Mary Evans Picture Library.
. Lecture in a House of Wisdom. 
White Images/Scala, Florence.
. Astral history. 
. Computer in brass. 
Public Domain.
. Size of the Earth. 
. The magnificent elephant clock. 
Public Domain.
. Stoned students. 
The Art Archive/Pinacoteca Nazionale Bologna/
Gianni Dagli Orti.
. Motion pictured. 
. Heliocentric advantages. 
. Applied physics around . 
Bodleian Library.

vii
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LIST OF FIGURES

. Royal Academicians. 

Photo Scala, Florence.
. The Earth–Moon eddy in the solar vortex. 
© Digitaal Labo KU Leuven (Central Library, ms. , f. r).
. Diversion from politics. 
Bodleian Library.
. Planetary motion geometrized. 
. Newtonian tides. 
. Fashionable lecturing around . 
Bodleian Library.
. A physics institute around . 
AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives, Brittle Books Collection.
. Desktop physics. 
Mary Evans Picture Library.
. The palace of electricity. 
Mary Evans Picture Library.
. A small piece of big physics. 
U.S. Department of Energy, Fermilab Research Alliance LLC.
. Patent on the cyclotron. 
Public Domain.
. Birth and death in the microworld. 
Plate ., “Successive decay of the ð-meson, ð –> µ –> â.”
C.F. Powell, P.H. Fowler, and D.H. Perkins, The study of
elementary particles by the photographic method. Oxford:
Pergamon Press, .
. Very big science. 
CERN.

viii
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The Scale’s but small, Expect not truth in all.

Wenceslaus Hollar, A new map of the Cittiess
of London and Westminster, 
Precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions.
Aristotle, Nichomachean ethics, b

ix
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INTRODUCTION:
THE GREEK WAY


T he Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), the dream of
American high-energy physicists, would have had a circum-
ference of  kilometers and a price tag of billions of dollars. Its
proponents justified the expenditure on several grounds. On
the high ground, it would probe the universe to philosophical
depths and thus “keep faith with the Greeks.” Below ground, it
would advance tunneling technique and give society perfect
sewers. Congress cancelled it in .
The undertaking represented by the SSC might be the way to
an ultimate physics. But it is not the Greek way. In antiquity,
physics was philosophy, a liberal art, the pursuit of a free man
wealthy enough to do what he wished. He did not aim to
improve sewers and, since he had no need of public money,
did not have to claim that he would. Nor did he want apparatus,
since he seldom experimented, or mathematics, since he seldom
calculated. The few ancient applications of mathematics to


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PHYSICS: A SHORT HISTORY

physics constituted a mixed science devoted to the description

of phenomena rather than to the search for principles.
In the tripartite division of Greek philosophy, physics stood
between logic and ethics. It inquired into the principles regulat-
ing the physical world from the high heavens to the Earth’s
center, and from the human soul to the life of the least of living
creatures. It thus functioned as a natural theology—defining
man’s place in nature—and as a necessary approach to ethics,
or the principles of a good life. For two millennia the main
practical value of physics lay in the ethical consequences of its
versions of the way the world began and persists.
Greek physics, with its eye to ethics, its indifference to math-
ematics and experiment, and its independence of states and
courts, is sufficiently distinct from an enterprise conducted by
salaried teams requiring elaborate technologies and mathemat-
ical analyses to deserve a different name. Let it be physica and
those who cultivated it physici. This short book describes some of
the ways by which ancient physica became modern physics. It
does not ransack history to find items in ancient and medieval
science that look like physics, but sketches the place and purpose
of physica in the societies that supported it. Hence the primary
site(s) of cultivation receive special emphasis: the independent
private school (antiquity), court and library (Islam), university
(later Middle Ages), court again (Renaissance), academy (late
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), university again (modern-
ity), and university-government-industry (postmodernity). Of
course, successive forms did not annihilate their predecessors.
Academies of science survive, primarily as honorific societies
and depositories of history, although a few flourish as national


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INTRODUCTION: THE GREEK WAY

channels for funding, consultation, and outreach. The scientific

advisory apparatus of government may be considered the des-
cendant of courtly science; and the Greek schools, with their
characteristic discursive style, continue in the myriad seminars
in which the world’s nascent science is presented and anatomized.
The story of the SSC may do service as a double symbol:
through its cost, size, and design, of the transformation of physica
into physics; through its cancellation, of the ongoing dilution of
the dominance of the United States within an increasingly com-
petitive international system.


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Fig. . Schools of Athens. Raphael’s evocation of the intellectual vigor, diversity, and discursiveness of Greek
science.
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INVENTION IN
ANTIQUITY


T radition follows Aristotle in identifying the earliest physici
as some gentlemen of Miletus, a flourishing Greek city on
the coast of Anatolia, and in specifying half a dozen other Greek
speakers as their successors. In this philo-Hellenic creation
myth, no Greek physicus learned anything of any importance
from a barbarian during the  years between the times of
the eldest Milesian, Thales, and Aristotle. The story that Pythag-
oras, if he existed, did so partly in Egypt, suggests outside input;
and studies of cuneiform texts reveal a natural knowledge
among the Babylonians in some ways more advanced than
that of the ancient Greeks. Still, the essential criterion that
Aristotle used to identify his predecessors was not that they
were Greek, but that they had conquered a paralyzing prejudice.
Despite robust contrary evidence, they believed that the natural
world runs on law-like principles discoverable by the human


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PHYSICS: A SHORT HISTORY

mind and immune from interruption or cancellation by med-

dling gods and demons.
Whether or not the Milesians deserve the blame or credit for
this bold departure, it underlies and circumscribes all forms of
physica, natural philosophy, and physics. Its implications go
farther even than replacing caprice by law-like behavior. Since
the gods displayed all too faithfully the traits and behavior of
human beings, de-deifying implied (to speak Greek) deanthro-
pomorphizing. The progress of physics has continued to
remove human quirks and qualities projected on to nature.
Thus nature, or the objective world, came to lose not only
benevolence, malevolence, and color, but also such apparently
indispensable attributes as space, time, and causality.
Of the four main schools of ancient philosophy, Aristotle’s
paid greatest attention to physica (see Figure ). Having a particu-
lar interest in zoology, he derived his fundamental principles
with an eye to the classification of animals. Because of his
emphasis on physica and because his philosophy dominated
during the Middle Ages and beyond, convenience advises taking
it as normative. In antiquity, however, it had to compete with
Platonic, Epicurean, and Stoic philosophies. The fluctuating
market share of a school reflected the reputation of its leader
as well as fad and fortune. Typically, its premises, library, and
other assets passed from the founder to his senior disciples, and,
perhaps consequently, the schools bore names suggestive more
of real estate than of scholarship: the Academy (Grove) for the
Platonists, Lyceum (a shrine) and Parapatos (a place for walking)
for the Aristotelians, the Stoa (Porch) for the Stoics, and the
Garden of Epicurus.


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INVENTION IN ANTIQUITY

During the  years from the founding of the Academy in

Athens and its refounding in Alexandria, the four schools
underwent many reversals of fortune, including dissolutions
and amalgamations. When operating, they were forums for
free discussion of the sort practiced in political circles, but
centered on studies pursued for personal improvement rather
than for civic or financial advancement. Although they had
members who studied with them for decades, they also admit-
ted students who sampled each in turn. When Romans like
Cicero frequented the schools of Athens they took advantage
of this Lernfreiheit. The Pythagoreans did not form such a
school, as they did not tolerate deviations from their doctrines
and way of life, and acted ruthlessly against members who
revealed their secrets.

Physica

Although physica ran from astronomy through zoology to

psychology, limitation of coverage to cosmology and cosmog-
ony, as in this book, is not unacceptably anachronistic provided
we recognize that the same principles of structure and change
applied to all natural processes. This truncated physica corres-
ponds to the books of Aristotle dealing with general principles
(Physica), the heavens (De caelo), the region between the Moon
and the Earth (Meteorologica), and the creation and destruction of
things on or in the Earth (De generatione et corruptione). These
books (and the rest of the corpus from logic to ethics) became
available in a standard format edited around  BCE from the
lecture notes Aristotle bequeathed to his successors. They


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PHYSICS: A SHORT HISTORY

constitute the main parts of a theory of everything, or, as the

moderns say, a TOE.

Cosmologies
The first TOEs Aristotle stepped on belonged to the Milesian
monists. He then took on more generous materialists: Leucippus
and Democritus, who allowed two principles, atoms and the
void; Empedocles, who accepted the three Milesian elements
(water, air, fire) and added earth to complete the tetrad; and
Anaxagoras, who admitted an infinite number of different sorts
of stuff. There were also those whose matter had no stuff at all,
Pythagoras notably, for whom number had an independent
existence—a concept that made no sense to Aristotle. The
Pythagoreans’ deduction that there must be a counter earth
circulating opposite ours around a central fire (to raise the
number of heavenly bodies to the holy tetractys) proved to
Aristotle both the falsity of their physica and the nonsense to
which numbers can lead.
Aristotle’s teacher, Plato, had some sympathy for Pythagorean
numerology and a belief in the importance of mathematical
patterns for cosmological architecture. He took as his material
not only mathematical abstractions but also supersensible ideal-
izations of classes of objects: for example, the Idea “Horse,” in
which individual horses “participate” more or less, but always
imperfectly. Consequently, although Plato was optimistic about
the possibility of knowing the ideal world and even the supreme
Good that made the Ideas and their relations intelligible, he did
not allow the possibility of true knowledge of the things of this


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INVENTION IN ANTIQUITY

world. Since no material individual could express an Idea per-

fectly, our physica can never be other than fuzzy.
Physica comes from “physis” meaning “nature,” which, accord-
ing to Aristotle, “is the source or cause of being moved or being
at rest.” What makes things move? The early physici adumbrated
four causes of change that Aristotle later codified. The monists
and the atomists considered only the material cause. Empedo-
cles and Anaxagoras provided action by taking some principles
to be active and others passive—vague glimpses of efficient
causes. Others saw the need to explain order in a universe of
change and hinted at a teleological or final cause, such as set by a
cosmic Mind. And Plato supplied a fourth cause, the formal, the
Idea in which a thing participates.
Aristotle’s inventory of the cosmological ideas of his predeces-
sors, including anticipations of the four causes of change, was
not an idle retrospective. It confirmed, and even proved, that he
had not overlooked anything fundamental. “Of all who have
discussed principles and causes none has spoken of any kind
except those which have been distinguished in [my] discourses
on Physics. They are all unmistakably, though obscurely, trying to
formulate these.” Aristotle’s TOE, thus established as complete,
makes use of some special concepts. A substance is any individual
thing. The collection of its properties constitutes its form, which,
contrary to a Platonic Idea, occurs only in union with matter. Form
can be divided, although only mentally, into essence, which makes
a substance the sort of thing it is, and accidents, which can change
without causing the substance to alter its essence or kind. The
essences of the four elements are easily stated: fire is dry, hot, and
absolutely light; air is hot, moist, and relatively light; water is cold,


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PHYSICS: A SHORT HISTORY

moist, and relatively heavy; earth is cold, dry, and absolutely

heavy. The elements can transform into one another, as fire
evaporates water into air. An essence is usually compatible with
a wide range of accidents: Socrates may be warm or cold, but
heated or cooled too much he will cease to be Socrates.
It may now be intelligible to state that a substance’s matter and
essence are its material and formal causes, and that the active
qualities hotness and moistness are the principal efficient causes
of change. The final cause is the purpose for the existence of a
form. Heavy bodies have gravity so as to fall toward the center of
the world, and light bodies have levity so as to be able to rise
toward the heavens, to restore order disrupted by the activity of
animate creatures or the revolutions of the celestial spheres. These
spheres and the stars and planets they carry cannot be made of the
four elements, whose forms require that they move when unim-
peded in a straight line toward or away from the world’s center.
There must therefore be a fifth element, a quintessence, which,
obeying its formal and final causes, circulates around the uni-
versal center. With these few principles and some ad hoc adjust-
ments, Aristotle worked his way from the Mind of the Unmoved
Mover, which, as it can think only of the most sublime thing, can
think only of itself, down to the mind of man, which, though no
less selfish than the Mind of the Universe, is subject to frequent
change like everything else below the quintessential heavens.
And where there is change, there cannot be certainty; the best
a physicus can do is to find a “rule [that] applies to what is always
true or true for the most part.”
A few deductions from Aristotle’s approximate physica that
came under sustained scrutiny will give some impression of its


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INVENTION IN ANTIQUITY

general character. Every motion, whether change of place or

color or species, requires an external mover. Since none is
available in a vacuum, where there literally is no place (no
reference material) by which a body could orient itself, there
can be no vacuum. Hence the flight of an arrow implies a vortex
in the air, which cedes a place to the tip while slipping in behind
to provide a push at the tail. The ambiguous role of the air,
offering both resistance and propulsion, made an obvious diffi-
culty. Another awkwardness arose from the absolute dichotomy
between terrestrial and celestial physics. Because the heavens
cannot change, transient phenomena that appear to take place
there, like comets and meteors, must have their seat with light-
ning and the weather in sublunar regions.
Nothing, however, is more obvious than that the Sun influ-
ences the weather. How? Sometimes Aristotle wrote as if he
thought that the Sun was hot, which would violate his pro-
scription against terrestrial qualities in heaven. More often, he
ascribed the seasonal powers of the Sun to its annual revolu-
tion, which, together with the rolling of the quintessential
spheres, continually stirs up the sublunary regions. These dis-
turbances cause moist and dry vapors to rise from the earth.
Precipitation results from the moist exhalation, winds from the
dry. “The same stuff is wind on the earth, and earthquakes
under it, and in the clouds thunder.” Lightning and thunder are
dry exhalations breaking free from the clouds like pips
squeezed from a fruit. The rainbow is a reflection from the
clouds. Aristotle described it, in a manner unusual for him,
geometrically: the Sun, the eye of the observer, and the center
of the bow lie on a straight line that cannot exceed a certain


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PHYSICS: A SHORT HISTORY

angle with the horizon. This factoid would have a long and
influential history.
Despite the continuing operation of final causes, the world is
not in perfect order. The frictional drag of the turning lunar
sphere on the stationary region of fire below it produces such
anomalies as fiery meteors in the air, mountains above sea level,
and water below earth. In the big picture, however, the universe
resembles an onion. Peeled from the outside in, it discloses the
fixed stars, the planets and luminaries in the conventional order
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, and Moon, and, in slight disorder, the
elements Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. What is outside the skin?
Here the onion analogy fails. There is literally nothing there. And
just as there is no space not included in the visible universe, there
was no time at which it did not exist.

Cosmogonies
Aristotle’s world picture thus lacked a creator. So did the atomic
theory of Democritus, who, nevertheless, offered a creation story
for the visible universe. It began to be when a clutch of the infinity
of atoms bouncing about in the infinite void happened to come
together in a great vortex from which the largest fell to the center,
forming the Earth. From what remained, centrifugation produced
the air, the luminaries, the planets, and the stars. Although all
things are made of the same dull stuff, they appear different to us
because our sensory systems can build rich images from the few
properties (size, shape, motion) of their constituent atoms. Epi-
curus added a spontaneous “swerve” to explain how atoms, falling
in parallel through the void, occasionally collide and concatenate
a world. According to him, the soul can exploit the swerve to


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INVENTION IN ANTIQUITY

choose to live the good life in an otherwise pointless universe.

Since the Epicurean did not have to fear gods in this life or
anything in the next, he could take moderate enjoyment of the
flesh and free employment of the mind as the greatest goods. The
inevitable erosion of all sound doctrine has transformed Epicurus’
sober happiness into selfish hedonism, and his name into an
eponym for refined pleasure.
Whereas the atomists allowed for the creation of many
worlds in space and time by random accretion of their parts,
the Stoics supposed that the single cosmos they admitted, geo-
centric like Aristotle’s, is alternately destroyed and recreated. In
place of disparate atoms, the Stoics put a continuous prime
matter; and in place of bumps and grinds, “pneuma,” a self-
moving elastic compound of fire and air that gives matter its
cohesive and other properties. Strict causality applies every-
where, guaranteed and effected by the spatial continuity of the
pneuma, whose changing tension drives the world through
repeated identical thermodynamic cycles. The system would
seem to rule out free will decisively. But since ethics required a
free acceptance of fate and the mental preparation necessary to
meet it, Stoics had to find a way around the strict causality of their
physics. Their solution was no more plausible than the Epicurean
swerve. As an alterative to strict atomism, however, the Stoic
concept of a space-filling active elastic spirit had a future.
In contrast to the Peripatetics with their unchanging uncre-
ated cosmos, and the atomists and Stoics with their random and
cyclical worlds, the Academics had a full cosmogony, with a
creator as well as a creation story. As told by Plato’s mouthpiece,
the mathematician Timaeus of Locris, the Demiurge who made

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PHYSICS: A SHORT HISTORY

the realm of Ideas and the World Soul used what he had left after
rolling out the celestial equator and the paths of the planets to
manufacture a swarm of human souls. These he sent to stars in
the realm of Ideas to await planting in bodies created by the
lesser gods to whom he assigned the task of making the sensible
world. At the end of life, the rational soul returns to its domicile
star if its human possessor had lived a good life; if not, the soul
reincarnates in a lesser being. Our animal parts, the gift of the
gods, serve merely to keep our head, the seat of our reason, from
rolling around on the ground.
Used properly, our rational soul can bring us through obser-
vation of the motions of the heavenly bodies to the discovery
of number, time, and harmony, and to the contemplation of
the Ideas. We might then perceive that the Ideas of the four
elements and the quintessence are linked to the mathematics of
the five regular solids. The plane faces of three of them (the
tetra, octa, and icosahedron) are equilateral triangles, and con-
sequently the elements corresponding to them (fire, air, and
water) are interconvertible (see Figure ). The remaining two,
the cube and the dodecahedron, are the “Ideas” of the earth and
the universe as a whole. We should not press the obvious
difficulties. The lesser gods who created the material world
were not entirely competent. “[I]t is fitting that we should, in
these matters, accept the likely story and look for nothing
further.”

Roman worlds
Although foreign students from Rome added little of note to
Greek physica, they turned much of it into useful summaries and


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INVENTION IN ANTIQUITY

Second Level First Level

B B H
I G

A C D E F A C I G

In the case of equiangular triangular faces:

Second level First level

Solid Equilateral faces Elements Equilateral faces Solid
composed of composed of
6 elements 2 elements
3 pyramids or
1 pyramid = 4 = 24 = 12 = 1 octahedron (fire)
+ 1 pyramid.

6 pyramids, or
1 octahedron = 8 = 48 = 24 = 3 octahedra, or
1 Icosahedron (air)
+ 1 pyramid. Octahedron

15 pyramids, or
6 octahedra +
1 icosahedron = 20 = 120 = 60 = 3 pyramids, or (water)
3 icosahedra.
Icosahedron

Fig. . Geometrical foundations of the world. The faces of the cube come in
aggregates of elementary isosceles right triangles ACB; those of the pyramid,
octahedron, and icosahedron come in aggregates of various sizes of elemen-
tary -- degree triangles IGH. The diagram shows how the second level
aggregates from the first and, in the case of the three solids with equilateral
triangles as faces, how the solids can transform into one another. Adapted
from Cornford, Plato’s cosmology (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, nd), pp.–.

compendia. During the last years of the Republic, Lucretius

versified Epicurus’ atomism. During the reign of Caesar Augustus,
the poet Ovid made a conspicuous place for Pythagoreanism in
his Metamorphoses. Under the Emperor Nero, Seneca composed a
meteorology on Stoic principles—cut short, unfortunately, by
Nero’s invitation (which Seneca could scarcely refuse) to commit
suicide. And in the years before his fatal inspection of Vesuvius


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PHYSICS: A SHORT HISTORY

during its eruption of  CE, Pliny the Elder crammed into one of
the  books of his Natural history a qualitative survey of the world
featuring a God unpolluted by commerce with human beings, a
naturalistic account of meteors, comets, and eclipses calculated to
free humankind from fear of lesser gods, some hints at atomism
and stoicism (physica of chance and necessity), and a few bars from
Pythagorean music of the spheres.
Lucretius begins his poem with the customary invocation of a
muse, in this case Venus, after which he disobligingly announces
that his great purpose is to remove her and all the other gods from
human concerns. The atoms cavorting in the infinite void follow
the laws of necessity apart from the occasional unintelligible
swerve that gives spontaneity to the world and freedom to the
will. No external agency can interfere with this process. Therefore,
although you are nothing but chance congeries of buzzing par-
ticles, be joyful, submit to fate, and fear not the impotent gods.
The lengthy exposition of Pythagorean doctrine that Ovid
jams into the last book of his catalogue of beings that transform
into beasts treats only briefly the founder’s physica, his teachings
about “The great world’s origin, the cause of things | what nature
is, what god, and whence the snow | what makes the lightning,
whether thunder comes | from Jove or from the winds when
clouds burst wide | why the earth quakes, what ordnance con-
trols | the courses of the stars | and the whole sum | of nature’s
secrets.” Most of Ovid’s account of Pythagorean thought con-
cerns metempsychosis and vegetarianism, a belief and a practice
indissolubly connected. If souls transmigrate, how can you tell
whether your ox, your faithful brother at the plow, was not in
fact your late brother?

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INVENTION IN ANTIQUITY

This sound teaching fell on deaf ears. Ovid admitted as much;

Seneca, writing half a century later, reported that in his time
would-be Pythagoreans could not even find a teacher. But that,
according to Seneca, merely mirrored the sad state to which
philosophy in general had fallen in his time: “Many philosoph-
ical lineages are dying out without a successor.” His Natural
questions, an attempt to reinvigorate Stoic physica, reconstructed
the meteorology of the Stoa and the Lyceum to answer the
questions whose solution Ovid credited to Pythagoras—the
causes of the wind and weather, thunder and lightning, and
earthquakes. All of these problems had been standard in physica
since the time of Thales. They were, as they still are, of greater
importance to humankind than the doings of Demiurges. In
Seneca’s meteorology, high winds, thunder, and earthquakes
accompany the expansion of previously constrained pneuma.
Breaking from Stoic authority, he enrolled comets, famous for
bad reputations, among the planets and toyed with the possibil-
ity that their daily motions, and those of the stars in general,
arise from a revolution of the Earth rather than from the turning
of the great celestial vault. As his placement of comets suggests,
the interconnectedness of the Stoics’ space-filling active pneuma
destroyed the barrier between the heavens and the Earth char-
acteristic of Aristotelian cosmology.
Seneca puffed up his meteorology with moral reflections that
appear to be its reason and result. If you do not inquire into the
material foundation of the world and the nature of its creator or
guardian, or speculate whether he still creates (if he ever did) or
has retired, whether he thinks only of himself and whether he
can amend fate, you enslave yourself to merely human affairs.

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PHYSICS: A SHORT HISTORY

Life would not be worth its pain and suffering were it not for the
opportunity to learn that nature, fate, the world, providence, and
God are different names for the same thing; that God did not
make the world exclusively for human beings; that life is a
sentence of death; and that philosophy, by dispelling fear of
death, is the only healthy way to resign oneself to fate. Seneca’s
eloquent combination of moralizing and meteorology made the
Natural questions the authority on the physical problems it treated
for most of the Latin Middle Ages.
Had Plutarch’s dialogue on the markings on the Moon not
suffered an eclipse of  centuries, Seneca’s stoicism would have
faced a sprightly challenge in medieval times. Plutarch freely
criticized most ancient systems. As a probe and goad he asked
the obvious question: why do we not see the Sun’s image on the
Moon as we see it on the sea? Since the answer depends on
knowledge of the Moon’s makeup, it was beyond the compe-
tence of mathematicians. What then did the physici have to say?
Plutarch’s spokesman replied that the Peripatetic model of the
Moon as pure quintessence is nonsense; the mottled, imperfect
lunar surface betrays some admixture in its makeup. The Stoic
view—that it is made of a sort of pneuma—is worse, since air and
fire cannot reflect visual rays. We are left with the Platonic
account that the Moon is more “earthy” than heavenly. Its
rugged surface acts as if composed of a great many randomly
oriented mirrors, which can unite visual and solar rays without
producing an image.
What keeps the rocky Moon from falling on the Earth? “[T]he
rapidity of its revolution, just as missiles placed in slings are kept
from falling by being whirled around in a circle.” What keeps it


Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
together with all other facts in the possession of the Executive Department relating
to this matter.
The diplomatic correspondence is herewith transmitted, together with some
correspondence between the naval officers for the time in command in Chilean
waters and the Secretary of the Navy, and also the evidence taken at the Mare
Island navy yard since the arrival of the Baltimore at San Francisco. I do not deem
it necessary in this communication to attempt any full analysis of the
correspondence or of the evidence. A brief restatement of the international
questions involved, and of the reasons why the responses of the Chilean
government are unsatisfactory is all that I deem necessary.
It may be well, at the outset, to say that whatever may have been said in this
country or in Chile in criticism of Mr. Egan, our minister at Santiago, the true
history of the exciting period in Chilean affairs, from the outbreak of the revolution
until this time, discloses no act upon the part of Mr. Egan unworthy of his position,
or that could justly be the occasion of serious animadversion or criticism. He has, I
think, on the whole borne himself in very trying circumstances with dignity,
discretion and courage, and conducted the correspondence with ability, courtesy
and fairness.
It is worth while, also, at the beginning to say that the right of Mr. Egan to give
shelter in the legation to certain adherents of the Balmaceda government who
applied to him for asylum has not been denied by the Chilean authorities, nor has
any demand been made for the surrender of these refugees.
That there was urgent need of asylum is shown by Mr. Egan’s note of August 24,
1891, describing the disorders that prevailed in Santiago, and by the evidence of
Captain Schley as to the pillage and violence that prevailed at Valparaiso. The
correspondence discloses, however, that the request of Mr. Egan for a safe conduct
from the country, in behalf of these refugees, was denied.
The precedents cited by him in the correspondence, particularly the case of the
revolution in Peru in 1865, did not leave the Chilean government in a position to
deny the right of asylum to political refugees, and seemed very clearly to support
Mr. Egan’s contention that a safe conduct to neutral territory was a necessary and
acknowledged incident of the asylum. These refugees have very recently, without
formal safe conduct, but by the acquiescence of the Chilean authorities, been
placed on board the Yorktown, and are now being conveyed to Callao, Peru.
This incident might be considered wholly closed but for the disrespect
manifested towards this government by the close and offensive police surveillance
of the legation premises which was maintained during most of the period of the
stay of the refugees therein.
After the date of my annual message and up to the time of the transfer of the
refugees to the Yorktown, the legation premises seem to have been surrounded by
police, in uniform, and police agents or detectives, in citizens’ dress, who
offensively scrutinized persons entering or leaving the legation, and, on one or
more occasions, arrested members of the minister’s family.
 Commander Evans, who, by my direction, recently visited Mr. Egan at Santiago,
in his telegram to the Navy Department described the legation as “a veritable
prison,” and states that the police agents or detectives were, after his arrival,
withdrawn during his stay. It appears further, from the note of Mr. Egan, of
November 20, 1891, that, on one occasion at least, these police agents, whom he
declares to be known to him, invaded the legation premises, pounding upon its
windows and using insulting and threatening language towards persons therein.
This breach of the right of a minister to freedom from police espionage and
restraint seems to have been so flagrant that the Argentine minister, who was dean
of the diplomatic corps, having observed it, felt called upon to protest against it to
the Chilean Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Chilean authorities have, as will be
observed from the correspondence, charged the refugees and the inmates of the
legation with insulting the police; but it seems to me incredible that men whose
lives were in jeopardy and whose safety could only be secured by retirement and
quietness, should have sought to provoke a collision which could only end in their
destruction, or to aggravate their condition by intensifying a popular feeling that at
one time so threatened the legation as to require Minister Egan to appeal to the
Minister of Foreign Affairs.
But the most serious incident disclosed by the correspondence is that of the
attack upon the sailors of the Baltimore in the streets of Valparaiso on the 16th of
October last. In my annual message, speaking upon the information then in my
possession, I said: “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.”
We have now received from the Chilean government an abstract of the
conclusions of the Fiscal General upon the testimony taken by the Judge of Crimes
in an investigation which was made to extend over three months. I very much
regret to be compelled to say that this report does not enable me to modify the
conclusion announced in my annual message. I am still of the opinion that our
sailors were assaulted, beaten, stabbed and killed, not for anything they or any of
them had done, but for what the government of the United States had done, or was
charged with having done by its civil officer and naval commanders. If that be the
true aspect of the case, the injury was to the government of the United States, not
to these poor sailors who were assaulted in the manner so brutal and so cowardly.
Before attempting to give an outline of the facts upon which this conclusion
rests, I think it right to say a word or two upon the legal aspect of the case. The
Baltimore was in the harbor of Valparaiso by virtue of that general invitation which
nations are held to extend to the war vessels of other powers with which they have
friendly relations. This invitation I think must be held ordinarily to embrace the
privilege of such communication with the shore as is reasonable, necessary and
proper for the comfort and convenience of the officers and men of such vessels.
Captain Schley testifies that when his vessel returned to Valparaiso, on September
14th, the city officers, as is customary, extended the hospitalities of the city to his
officers and crew.
It is not claimed that every personal collision or injury in which a sailor or officer
of such naval vessel visiting the shore may be involved raises an international
question; but I am clearly of the opinion that where such sailors or officers are
assaulted by a resident population, animated by hostility to the government whose
uniform these sailors and officers wear, and in resentment of acts done by their
government, not by them, their nation must take notice of the event as one
involving an infraction of its rights and dignity, not in a secondary way as where a
citizen is injured and presents his claim through his own government, but in a
primary way, precisely as if its minister or consul of the flag itself had been the
object of the same character of assault.
The officers and sailors of the Baltimore were in the harbor of Valparaiso under
the orders of their government, not by their own choice. They were upon the shore
by the implied invitation of the government of Chile and with the approval of their
commanding officer, and it does not distinguish their case from that of a consul
that his stay is more permanent or that he holds the express invitation of the local
government to justify his longer residence. Nor does it affect the question that the
injury was the act of a mob. If there had been no participation by the police or
military in this cruel work, and no neglect on their part to extend protection, the
case would still be one, in my opinion, when its extent and character are
considered, involving international rights.
The incidents of the affair are, briefly, as follows: On the 16th of October last,
Captain Schley, commanding the United States steamer Baltimore, gave shore
leave to 117 petty officers and sailors of his ship. These men left the ship about 1.30
P.M. No incident of violence occurred; none of our men were arrested; no complaint
was lodged against them; nor did any collision or outbreak occur until about 6
o’clock P.M. Captain Schley says that he was himself on shore and about the streets
until 5.40 P.M.; that he met very many of his men who were upon leave; that they
were sober and were conducting themselves with propriety, saluting Chilean and
other officers as they met them. Other officers of the ship, and Captain Jenkins, of
the merchant ship Keweenaw, corroborate Captain Schley as to the general
sobriety and good behavior of our men.
The Sisters of Charity at the hospital to which our wounded men were taken,
when inquired of, stated that they were sober when received. If the situation had
been otherwise, we must believe that the Chilean police authorities would have
made arrests. About 6 P.M. the assault began, and it is remarkable that the
investigation by the Judge of Crimes, though so protracted, does not enable him to
give any more satisfactory account of its origin than is found in the statement that
it began between drunken sailors. Repeatedly in the correspondence it is asserted
that it was impossible to learn the precise cause of the riot. The Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Matta, in his telegram to Mr. Montt under date of December 31st, states
that the quarrel began between two sailors in a tavern, and was continued in the
street, persons who were passing joining in it.
 The testimony of Talbot, an apprentice, who was with Riggin, is that the
outbreak in which they were involved began by Chilean sailor spitting in the face of
Talbot, which was resented by a knock-down. It appears that Riggin and Talbot
were at that time unaccompanied by any others of their shipmates.
These two men were immediately beset by a crowd of Chilean citizens and
sailors, through which they broke their way to a street car and entered it for safety.
They were pursued, driven from the car, and Riggin was so seriously beaten that he
fell in the street apparently dead. There is nothing in the report of the Chilean
investigation made to us that seriously impeaches this testimony. It appears from
Chilean sources that almost instantly, with a suddenness that strongly implies
premeditation and preparation; a mob, stated by the police authorities at one time
to number 2000, and at another 1000, was engaged in the assault upon our sailors,
who are represented as resisting “with stones, clubs and bright arms.” The report
of the Intendente of October 30th states that the fight began at 6 P.M. in three
streets, which are named, that information was received at the intendencia at 6.15,
and that the police arrived on the scene at 6.30, a full half hour after the assault
began. At that time he says that a mob of 2000 men had collected, and that for
several squares there was the appearance of a “real battle-field.”
The scene at this point is very graphically set before us by the Chilean testimony.
The American sailors, who, after so long an examination, have not been found
guilty of any breach of the peace, so far as the Chilean authorities are able to
discover, unarmed and defenceless, are fleeing for their lives, pursued by
overwhelming numbers, and fighting only to aid their own escape from death or to
succor some mate whose life is in greater peril. Eighteen of them are brutally
stabbed and beaten, while one Chilean seems, from the report, to have suffered
some injury; but how serious or with what character of weapon, or whether by a
missile thrown by our men or by some of his fellow-rioters is unascertained.
The pretense that our men were fighting “with stones, clubs, and bright arms,”
is, in view of these facts, incredible. It is further refuted by the fact that our
prisoners, when searched, were absolutely without arms, only seven penknives
being found in the possession of the men arrested, while there were received by our
men more than thirty stab wounds, every one of which was inflicted in the back,
and almost every contused wound was in the back or back of the head. The
evidence of the ship’s officer of the day is that even the jack-knives of the men were
taken from them before leaving the ship.
As to the brutal nature of the treatment received by our men, the following
extract from the account given of the affair by the La Patria newspaper, of
Valparaiso, of October 17th, cannot be regarded as too friendly: “The Yankees, as
soon as their pursuers gave chase, went by way of the Calle del Arsenal towards the
city car station. In the presence of an ordinary number of citizens, among whom
were some sailors, the North Americans took seats in the street car to escape from
the stones which the Chileans threw at them. It was believed for an instant that the
North Americans had saved themselves from popular fury, but such was not the
case. Scarcely had the car begun to move, when a crowd gathered around and
stopped its progress.
“Under these circumstances, and without any cessation of the howling and
throwing of stones at the North Americans, the conductor entered the car, and
seeing the risk of the situation to the vehicle, ordered them to get out. At the
instant the sailors left the car, in the midst of a hail of stones, the said conductor
received a stone blow on the head. One of the Yankee sailors managed to escape in
the direction of the plaza Wheelright, but the other was felled to the ground by a
stone. Managing to raise himself from the ground where he lay he staggered in an
opposite direction from the station. In front of the house of Señor Mazzini he was
again wounded, falling then senseless and breathless.”
No amount of evasion or subterfuge is able to cloud our clear vision of this brutal
work. It should be noticed, in this connection that the American sailors arrested,
after an examination, were, during the four days following the arrest, every one
discharged, no charge of any breach of the peace or other criminal conduct having
been sustained against a single one of them.
The Judge of Crimes, Foster, in a note to the Intendente, under date of October
22d, before the dispatch from the government, of the following day, which aroused
the authorities of Chile to a better sense of the gravity of the affair, says: “Having
presided temporarily over this court in regard to the seamen of the United States
cruiser Baltimore, who have been tried on account of the deplorable conduct which
took place.” The noticeable point here is that our sailors had been tried before the
22d of October, and that the trial resulted in their acquittal and return to their
vessel.
It is quite remarkable and quite characteristic of the management of this affair
by the Chilean police authorities that we should now be advised that seaman
Davidson, of the Baltimore, has been included in the indictment, his offence being
so far as I have been able to ascertain, that he attempted to defend a shipmate
against an assailant who was striking at him with a knife. The perfect vindication of
our men is furnished by this report; one only is found to have been guilty of
criminal fault, and that for an act clearly justifiable.
As to the part taken by the police in the affair, the case made by Chile is also far
from satisfactory. The point where Riggin was killed is only three minutes walk
from the police station and not more than twice that distance from the
Intendencia; and yet, according to their official report, a full half hour elapsed after
the assault began before the police were upon the ground. It has been stated that
all but two of our men have said that the police did their duty. The evidence taken
at Mare Island shows that if such a statement was procured from our men it was
accomplished by requiring them to sign a writing in a language they did not
understand and by the representation that it was a mere declaration that they had
taken no part in the disturbance. Lieutenant McCrea, who acted as interpreter,
says in his evidence that when our sailors were examined before the Court the
subject of the conduct of the police was so carefully avoided that he reported the
fact to Captain Schley on his return to the vessel.
 The evidences of the existence of animosity toward our sailors in the minds of
the Chilean navy and of the populace of Valparaiso are so abundant and various as
to leave no doubt in the mind of any one who will examine the papers submitted. It
manifested itself in threatening and insulting gestures toward our men as they
passed the Chilean men-of-war in their boats, and in the derisive and abusive
epithets with which they greeted every appearance of an American sailor on the
evening of the riot.
Captain Schley reports that boats from the Chilean warships several times went
out of their course to cross the bows of his boats, compelling them to back water.
He complained of the discourtesy, and it was corrected. That this feeling was
shared by men of higher rank is shown by an incident related by Surgeon Stitt, of
the Baltimore. After the battle of Placilla he, with other medical officers of the war
vessels in the harbor, was giving voluntary assistance to the wounded in the
hospitals. The son of a Chilean army officer of high rank was under his care, and
when the father discovered it he flew into a passion and said he would rather have
his son die than have Americans touch him, and at once had him removed from the
ward.
This feeling is not well concealed in the dispatches of the Foreign Office, and had
quite open expression in the disrespectful treatment of the American Legation. The
Chilean boatmen in the bay refused, even for large offers of money, to return our
sailors who crowded the Mole, to their ship when they were endeavoring to escape
from the city on the night of the assault. The market boats of the Baltimore were
threatened, and even quite recently the gig of Commander Evans, of the Yorktown,
was stoned while waiting for him at the Mole.
The evidence of our sailors clearly shows that the attack was expected by the
Chilean people; that threats have been made against our men, and that in one case,
somewhat early in the afternoon, the keeper of one house into which some of our
men had gone, closed his establishment in anticipation of the attack, which he
advised them would be made upon them as darkness came on.
In a report of Captain Schley to the Navy Department he says: “In the only
interview that I had with Judge Foster, who is investigating the case relative to the
disturbance before he was aware of the entire gravity of the matter, he informed
me that the entire assault upon my men was the outcome of hatred for our people
among the lower classes because they thought we had sympathized with the
Balmaceda Government on account of the Itata matter, whether with reason or
without he could, of course, not admit; but such he thought was the explanation of
the assault at that time.”
Several of our men sought security from the mob by such complete or partial
changes in their dress as would conceal the fact of their being seamen of the
Baltimore, and found it then possible to walk the streets without molestation.
These incidents conclusively establish that the attack was upon the uniform—the
nationality—and not upon the men.
The origin of this feeling is probably found in the refusal of this government to
give recognition to the Congressional party before it had established itself, in the
seizure of the Itata for an alleged violation of the Neutrality law in the cable
incident, and in the charge that Admiral Brown conveyed information to
Valparaiso of the landing at Quinteros. It is not my purpose to enter here any
defense of the action of this government in these matters. It is enough for the
present purpose to say that if there was any breach of international comity or duty
on our part it should have been made the subject of official complaint through
diplomatic channels, or of reprisals for which a full responsibility was assumed.
We cannot consent that these incidents and these perversions of the truth shall
be used to excite a murderous attack upon our unoffending sailors and the
Government of Chile go acquit of responsibility. In fact the conduct of this
government during the war in Chile pursued those lines of international duty
which we had so strongly insisted upon on the part of other nations when this
country was in the throes of civil conflict. We continued the established diplomatic
relations with the government in power until it was overthrown, and promptly and
cordially recognized the new government when it was established.
The good offices of this government were offered to bring about a peaceful
adjustment, and the interposition of Mr. Egan to mitigate severities and to shelter
adherents of the Congressional party were effective and frequent. The charge
against Admiral Brown is too base to gain credence with any one who knows his
high personal and professional character.
Recurring to the evidence of our sailors, I think it is shown that there were
several distinct assaults, and so nearly simultaneous as to show that they did not
spread from one point. A press summary of the report of the Fiscal shows that the
evidence of the Chilean officials and others was in conflict as to the place of origin,
several places being named by different witnesses as to the locality where the first
outbreak occurred. This, if correctly reported, shows that there were several
distinct outbreaks, and so nearly at the same time as to cause this confusion.
La Patria, in the same issue from which I have already quoted, after describing
the killing of Riggin and the flight which from that point extended to the Mole,
says: “At the same time in other streets of the port the Yankee sailors fought
fiercely with the people of the town, who believed to see in them incarnate enemies
of the Chilean navy.”
The testimony of Captain Jenkins, of the American merchant ship Keweenaw,
which had gone to Valparaiso for repairs, and who was a witness of some part of
the assault upon the crew of the Baltimore, is strongly corroborative of the
testimony of our own sailors when he says that he saw Chilean sentries drive back
a seaman, seeking shelter, upon a mob that was pursuing him. The officers and
men of Captain Jenkins’ ship furnish the most conclusive testimony as to the
indignities which were practiced toward Americans in Valparaiso. When American
sailors even of merchant ships, can only secure their safety by denying their
nationality, it must be time to readjust our relations with a government that
permits such demonstrations.
As to the participation of the police, the evidence of our sailors shows that our
men were struck and beaten by police officers before and after arrest, and that one,
at least, was dragged with a lasso about his neck by a mounted policeman. That the
death of Riggin was the result of a rifle shot fired by a policeman or soldier on duty
is shown directly by the testimony of Johnson, in whose arms he was at the time,
and by the evidence of Charles Langen, an American sailor, not then a member of
the Baltimore’s crew, who stood close and saw the transaction. The Chilean
authorities do not pretend to fix the responsibility of this shot upon any particular
person, but avow their inability to ascertain who fired it, further than that it was
fired from a crowd.
The character of the wound, as described by one of the surgeons of the
Baltimore, clearly supports his opinion that it was made by a rifle ball, the orifice
of exit being as much as an inch or an inch and a quarter in width. When shot, the
poor fellow was unconscious, and in the arms of a comrade, who was endeavoring
to carry him to a neighboring drug store for treatment. The story of the police, that
in coming up the street they passed these men and left them behind them is
inconsistent with their own statement as to the direction of their approach and
with their duty to protect them, and is clearly disproved. In fact, Riggin was not
behind, but in front of the advancing force, and was not standing in the crowd, but
was unconscious and supported in the arms of Johnson when he was shot.
The communications of the Chilean government in relation to this cruel and
disastrous attack upon our men, as will appear from the correspondence, have not
in any degree taken the form of a manly and satisfactory expression of regret,
much less of apology. The event was of so serious a character that if the injuries
suffered by our men had been wholly the result of an accident in a Chilean port, the
incident was grave enough to have called for some public expression of sympathy
and regret from the local authorities. It is not enough to say that the affair was
lamentable, for humanity would require that expression even if the beating and
killing of our men had been justifiable.
It is not enough to say that the incident is regretted, coupled with the statement
that the affair was not of an unusual character in ports where foreign sailors are
accustomed to meet. It is not for a generous and sincere government to seek for
words of small or equivocal meaning in which to convey to a friendly power an
apology for an offence so atrocious as this. In the case of the assault by a mob in
New Orleans upon the Spanish consulate in 1851, Mr. Webster wrote to the
Spanish minister, Mr. Calderon, that the acts complained of were a “disgraceful
and flagrant breach of duty and propriety,” and that his government “regrets them
as deeply as Minister Calderon or his government could possibly do;” that “these
acts have caused the President great pain, and he thinks a proper acknowledgment
is due to her Majesty’s government.” He invited the Spanish consul to return to his
post, guaranteeing protection, and offering to salute the Spanish flag if the consul
should come in a Spanish vessel. Such a treatment by the government of Chile of
this assault would have been more creditable to the Chilean authorities; and much
less can hardly be satisfactory to a government that values its dignity and honor.
In our note of October 23d last, which appears in the correspondence, after
receiving the report of the board of officers appointed by Captain Schley to
investigate the affair, the Chilean government was advised of the aspect which it
then assumed, and called upon for any facts in its possession that might tend to
modify the unfavorable impression which our report had created. It is very clear
from the correspondence that before the receipt of this note the examination was
regarded by the police authorities as practically closed. It was, however, reopened
and protracted through a period of nearly three months. We might justly have
complained of this unreasonable delay, but in view of the fact that the government
of Chile was still provisional, and with a disposition to be forbearing and hopeful of
a friendly termination, I have awaited the report which has but recently been
made.
On the 21st instant I caused to be communicated to the government of Chile, by
the American minister at Santiago, the conclusions of this government after a full
consideration of all the evidence and of every suggestion affecting this matter, and
to these conclusions I adhere. They were stated as follows:
“First—That the assault is not relieved of the aspect which the early information
of the event gave to it, viz: That an attack was made upon the uniform of the
United States Navy, having its origin and motive in a feeling of hostility to this
government, and not on any account of the sailors or any of them.
“Second—That the public authorities of Valparaiso flagrantly failed in their duty
to protect our men, and that some of the police and of the Chilean soldiers and
sailors were themselves guilty of unprovoked assaults upon our sailors before and
after arrest. He (the President) thinks the preponderance of the evidence and of
the inherent probabilities lead to the conclusion that Riggin was killed by the
police or soldiers.
“Third—That he (the President) is therefore compelled to bring the case back to
the position taken by this government in the note of Mr. Wharton on October 23d
last, *** and to ask for a suitable apology and for some adequate reparation for the
injury done to this country.”
In the same note the attention of the Chilean government was called to the
offensive character of a note addressed by Mr. Matta, its Minister of Foreign
Affairs, to Mr. Montt, its minister at this capital, on the 11th ult. This dispatch was
not officially communicated to this government, but as Mr. Montt was directed to
translate it, and to give it to the press of this country, it seemed to me that it could
not pass without official notice. It was not only undiplomatic, but grossly insulting
to our naval officers and to the Executive Department, as it directly imputed
untruth and insincerity to the reports of the naval officers and to the official
communications made by the Executive Department to Congress. It will be
observed that I have notified the Chilean government that unless this note is at
once withdrawn and an apology as public as the offence made, I will terminate
diplomatic relations.
The request for the recall of Mr. Egan upon the ground that he was not persona
grata, was unaccompanied by any suggestion that could properly be used in
support of it, and I infer that the request is based upon official acts of Mr. Egan,
which have received the approval of this government. But however that may be, I
could not consent to consider such a question until it had first been settled whether
our correspondence with Chile could be conducted upon a basis of mutual respect.
In submitting these papers to Congress for that grave and patriotic consideration
which the questions involved demand, I desire to say that I am of the opinion that
the demands made of Chile by this government should be adhered to and enforced.
If the dignity as well as the prestige and influence of the United States are not to be
wholly sacrificed we must protect those who, in foreign ports, display the flag or
wear the colors of this government against insult, brutality, and death, inflicted in
resentment of the acts of their government, and not for any faults of their own. It
has been my desire in every way to cultivate friendly and intimate relations with all
the governments of this hemisphere.
We do not covet their territory; we desire their peace and prosperity. We look for
no advantage in our relations with them except the increased exchanges of
commerce upon a basis of mutual benefit. We regret every civil contest that
disturbs their peace and paralyzes their development, and are always ready to give
our good offices for the restoration of peace. It must, however, be understood that
this government, while exercising the utmost forbearance towards weaker powers,
will extend its strong and adequate protection to its citizens, to its officers, and to
its humblest sailor, when made the victims of wantonness and cruelty in
resentment, not of their personal misconduct, but of the official acts of their
government.
Upon information received that Patrick Shields, an Irishman and probably a
British subject, but at the time a fireman of the American steamer Keweenaw, in
the harbor of Valparaiso for repairs, had been subjected to personal injuries in that
city—largely by the police—I directed the Attorney-General to cause the evidence of
the officers and crew of that vessel to be taken upon its arrival in San Francisco,
and that testimony is also herewith transmitted.
The brutality and even savagery of the treatment of this poor man by the Chilean
police would be incredible if the evidence of Shields was not supported by other
direct testimony, and by the distressing condition of the man himself when he was
finally able to reach his vessel. The captain of the vessel says:
“He came back a wreck: black from his neck to his hips, from beating; weak and
stupid, and is still in a kind of paralyzed condition, and has never been able to do
duty since.”
A claim for reparation has been made in behalf of this man, for, while he was not
a citizen of the United States, the doctrine long held by us, as expressed in the
Consular Regulations, is:
“The principles which are maintained by this government in regard to the
protection as distinguished from the relief of seamen are well settled. It is held that
the circumstance that the vessel is American is evidence that the seamen on board
are such; and in every regularly documented merchant vessel the crew will find
their protection in the flag that covers them.”
 I have as yet received no reply to our note of the 21st inst., but, in my opinion, I
ought not to delay longer to bring these matters to the attention of Congress for
such action as may be deemed appropriate.
Benjamin Harrison.

Executive Mansion, Jan. 25, 1892.

 The National Conventions of 1892.

REPUBLICAN.

The National Republican Convention for 1892 was called to meet

at Minneapolis June 7th. The Convention was close at hand before
any candidates were named, other than President Harrison. In
February Mr. Blaine had written to Mr. Clarkson, Chairman of the
National Convention, saying that his name would not be presented as
a candidate, and declining in such positive terms that it was accepted
as meaning what it said at the time. Later on the opposition to the
President’s nomination, led by a syndicate of very strong names—
Platt, of New York; Quay, of Pennsylvania; Clarkson, of Iowa;
Conger, of Ohio; Kellogg, of Louisiana; Wolcott, of Colorado; Bourne,
of Oregon; Filley, of Missouri—agreed to present Mr. Blaine, upon
the statement that he would accept if his nomination was plainly for
the good of the party. Three days preceding the Convention Mr.
Blaine suddenly resigned as Secretary of State, and thus created the
impression that he would accept and that he was a candidate. The
first effect of the resignation was to enthuse his friends, many of
them already assembled at Minneapolis, but when the
correspondence was published, and its terseness was traceable
entirely to Mr. Blaine’s haste, a great reaction followed in all parts of
the country, and groups of businessmen from all prominent towns
and cities wired their delegates of the change in sentiment, and as a
rule they were asked to re-nominate President Harrison. A feeling
affected the Blaine delegates, and many of the leaders began to look
for a third man, in the person of Major McKinley, the father of the
tariff bill of 1890, since chosen Governor of Ohio. Major McKinley
himself voted for Harrison and resisted a proposed stampede in his
own behalf, which had been planned to plump Ohio, Oregon and
Pennsylvania solidly for McKinley. The plan failed, partly because
Harrison had gained largely over estimates after New York had
voted, and Pennsylvania cast 19 votes for him at the only moment
which could have been at all critical.
The Convention organized at noon on the 7th, with Major
McKinley as its President. The first contest was upon the question of
the majority and minority reports of the Committee on Contests, the
majority being adopted and generally regarded as a victory for the
friends of Harrison. The contests were important only in the case of
Alabama, where two full sets of delegates disputed for the seats.
Senator Wolcott, of Colorado, presented the name of Mr. Blaine,
and it was seconded by ex-Senator Warner Miller, of New York.
Ex-Secretary of the Navy Richard T. Thompson, of Indiana (on
that day eighty-three years of age, and a delegate to every previous
Republican National Convention), presented the name of President
Harrison. It was seconded by Chauncey M. Depew, of New York, in a
speech remarkable for its force and eloquence.
The first and only ballot was taken on the morning of June 10th,
with the following result:
 THE BALLOT IN DETAIL.
States. Harrison. Blaine. McKinley.
Alabama 15 0 7
Arkansas 15 0 1
California 8 9 1
Colorado 0 8 0
Connecticut 4 0 8
Delaware 4 1 1
Florida 8 0 0
Georgia 26 0 0
Idaho 0 6 0
Illinois 34 14 0
Indiana 30 0 0
Iowa 20 5 1
Kansas 11 0 9
Kentucky 22 2 1
Louisiana 8 8 0
Maine 0 12 0
Maryland 14 0 2
Massachusetts 18 1 11
Michigan 7 2 19
Minnesota 8 9 1
Mississippi 13½ 4½ 0
Missouri 28 4 2
Montana 5 1 0
Nebraska 15 0 1
Nevada 0 6 0
New Hampshire 4 2 0
New Jersey 18 2 0
New York 27 35 10
North Carolina 17⅔ 2⅔ 1
North Dakota 2 4 0
Ohio 1 0 45
Oregon 1 0 7
Pennsylvania 19 3 42
Rhode Island 5 1 1
South Carolina 13 3 2
South Dakota 8 0 0
Tennessee 17 4 3
Texas 22 6 0
Vermont 8 0 0
 Virginia 9 13 2
Washington 1 6 1
West Virginia 12 0 0
Wisconsin 19 2 3
Wyoming 4 2 0

Territories.
Alaska 2 0 0
Arizona 1 1 0
Dist. of Columbia 0 2 0
Indian Territory 1 1 0
New Mexico 6 0 0
Oklahoma 2 0 0
Utah 2 0 0
Total 535⅙ 182⅙ 182
Absent and not voting, 1⅔.
Reed, of Maine, received 3 votes, and Lincoln, of Illinois, 1.
Major McKinley moved to make the nomination unanimous, and it
was adopted with great enthusiasm.
In response to the unanimous request of the New York delegation,
Hon. Whitelaw Reid was nominated for Vice-President by
acclamation.
[See Book II. for Platform and Comparison of Platforms; Book III.
for speech of Hon. Chauncey M. Depew.]

DEMOCRATIC.

The Democratic National Convention assembled at Chicago, June

21st, and its deliberations excited great interest because of the
opposition of the New York delegation to the nomination of
Cleveland. Under the leadership of Governor Hill, the New York
Democracy, in the canvass of 1891, carried the State, electing Flower
as Governor, and Hill as U. S. Senator, the latter only after a severe
contest and depriving three Republican State Senators of their seats
by contests settled before partisan courts. The New York opposition
to Cleveland, with the active aid of Tammany, united upon Hill as a
Presidential candidate. A “snap” or mid-winter State Convention was
called to elect delegates to the National Convention, and 72 Hill men
were chosen and instructed. This system of forestalling public
sentiment angered the Cleveland Democrats, who signed a protest to
the number of 200,000 and three months later elected a contesting
delegation, with instructions for Cleveland. Mr. Croker, Tammany’s
Chief, and State Chairman Murphy were the Hill leaders at Chicago,
and they gave early and public notice, in very bitter language, that if
nominated Cleveland could not carry New York. Ex-Secretary of the
Navy Whitney was the Cleveland leader, and he readily mustered
more than two-thirds of the Convention, and felt so assured of
victory that he advised the withdrawal of the contest against Hill’s
delegation. Singularly enough the minority desired the repeal of the
unit rule, for they had ascertained, after a careful canvass, that
Cleveland would lose enough votes to check and possibly prevent his
nomination if all of the delegates were permitted to vote separately.
The unit rule, however, was carefully re-enacted in the report of the
Committee on Rules.
Governor Wm. L. Wilson, of West Virginia, was elected President.
Governor Leon Abbett, of New Jersey, presented the name of Grover
Cleveland; William C. DeWitt, of New York, that of Senator David B.
Hill, and John M. Duncombe, of Iowa, that of Governor Boies. A
ballot was reached at 4 o’clock on the morning of the 23d, the
Cleveland leaders doing this to prevent combinations by the
opposition.
 THE BALLOT IN DETAIL.

States. Cleveland. Hill. Boies. Gorman. Scattering.

Alabama 14 2 1 1 4
Arkansas 16 0 0 0 0
California 18 0 0 0 0
Colorado 0 3 5 0 0
Connecticut 12 0 0 0 0
Delaware 6 0 0 0 0
Florida 5 0 0 0 3
Georgia 17 5 0 4 0
Idaho 0 0 6 0 0
Illinois 48 0 0 0 0
Indiana 30 0 0 0 0
Iowa 0 0 26 0 0
Kansas 20 0 0 0 0
Kentucky 18 0 2 0 6
Louisiana 3 1 11 1 0
Maine 9 1 0 1 1
Maryland 6 0 0 9½ 0
Massachusetts 24 4 1 0 1
Michigan 28 0 0 0 0
Minnesota 18 0 0 0 0
Mississippi 8 3 3 4 0
Missouri 34 0 0 0 0
Montana 0 0 6 0 0
Nebraska 15 0 0 1 0
Nevada 0 0 4 2 0
New Hampshire 8 0 0 0 0
New Jersey 20 0 0 0 0
New York 0 72 0 0 0
North Carolina 3⅓ 1 0 0 17⅔
North Dakota 6 0 0 0 0
Ohio 14 6 16 5 5
Oregon 8 0 0 0 0
Pennsylvania 64 0 0 0 0
Rhode Island 8 0 0 0 0
South Carolina 2 3 13 0 0
South Dakota 7 0 1 0 0
Tennessee 24 0 0 0 0
Texas 23 1 6 0 0
 Vermont 8 0 0 0 0
Virginia 12 11 0 1 0
Washington 8 0 0 0 0
West Virginia 7 1 0 3 1
Wisconsin 24 0 0 0 0
Wyoming 3 0 0 3 0

Territories
Alaska 2 0 0 0 0
Arizona 5 0 0 1 0
Dist. of Columbia 2 0 0 0 0
New Mexico 4 1 1 0 0
Oklahoma 2 0 0 0 0
Utah 2 0 0 0 0
Indian Territory 2 0 0 0 0
Total 617⅓ 115 103 36½ 38⅔
Number of votes cast, 909½. Necessary to a choice, 607.
Of the scattering votes Campbell got two from Alabama.
Carlisle got 3 from Florida, 6 from Kentucky, 5 from Ohio. Total
14.
Stephenson got 16⅔ from North Carolina.
Pattison got 1 from West Virginia.
Russell got 1 from Massachusetts.
Whitney got 1 from Maine.
Adlai E. Stevenson, of Illinois, former Assistant Postmaster-
General, was nominated Vice-President on the first ballot, his chief
competitor being Senator Gray, of Indiana.
[See Book II. for Democratic National Platform and Comparison;
Book III. for Governor Abbett’s speech nominating Cleveland.]
A notable scene in the Convention was created by Mr. Neal, of
Ohio, who moved to substitute a radical free trade plank as a
substitute for the somewhat moderate utterances reported by ex-
Secretary of the Interior Vilas, who read the report of the Committee
on Platform. The substitute denounced the protective tariff as a
fraud.
Mr. Neal made an earnest speech in support of his substitute and
was ably seconded by Mr. Watterson.
 Mr. Vilas replied defending the majority report in a vigorous
speech, which was as generously applauded as that which preceded.
The debate was animated and made specially interesting by the
suggestions and calls from the galleries. The substitute was finally
accepted by Chairman Jones on behalf of the committee, but this did
not satisfy the friends of the substitute, who persisted in having a roll
call upon its adoption.
A synopsis of the platform was submitted to and received the
approval of Mr. Cleveland, and it was reported that the Neal
substitute was prepared by the anti-Cleveland leaders, and the fact
that the roll call was persisted in by the anti-Cleveland men gave
color to this report.
There was a great deal of confusion and excitement preceding the
roll call, and its progress was watched with as much interest as
though its result was to decide the nomination. The States at the
head of the roll generally cast their votes according to what was
believed to be the feeling of their delegations on the Presidency, but
later on the order was more varied, States known to be for Cleveland
casting their solid vote for the substitute. New York was loudly
cheered when the 72 votes of the State were given for the substitute.
It was a most inconsistent vote, as Tammany is not regarded as a free
trade organization—rather as one favoring moderate tariffs. A ripple
of excitement was occasioned when Chairman Hensel cast the 64
votes of Pennsylvania against the substitute. Mr. Wallace protested
that 15 of the delegates favored the substitute, and he demanded that
the delegation be polled. A colloquy followed between Hensel and
Wallace on the rules of the Convention, and the point raised by the
former that Wallace’s motion was not in order under the unit rules
was sustained by the Chair.
The result of the vote was 564 for the substitute and 342 against it.