(INCLOSURE)

ROYAL PROCLAMATION TO THE INHABITANTS OF THE ISLANDS OF ST. THOMAS AND ST. JOHN. OCTOBER 25, 1867

We, Christian the Ninth, by the grace of God King of Denmark, the Vandals, and the Goths, duke of Schleswig, Holstein, Stormarn, Ditmarsh, Laurenburg, and Oldenburg, send to our beloved and faithful subjects in the islands of St. Thomas and St. John our royal greeting:

We have resolved to cede our islands of St. Thomas and St. John to the United States of America, and we have to that end, with the reservation of the constitutional consent of our Reichstag, concluded a convention with the President of the United States. We have, by embodying in that convention explicit and precise provisions, done our utmost to secure you protection in your liberty, your religion, your property, and private rights, and you shall be free to remain where you now reside or to remove at any time, retaining the property which you possess in the said islands, or disposing thereof and removing the proceeds wherever you please, without you being subjected on this account to any contribution, tax, or charge whatever.

Those who shall prefer to remain in the said islands may either retain the title and the rights of their natural allegiance or acquire those of citizens of the United States, but they shall make their choice within two years from the date of the exchange of ratifications of the said convention, and those who shall remain in the islands after the expiration of that term without having declared their intention to retain their natural allegiance shall be considered to have chosen to become citizens of the United States.

As we, however, will not exercise any constraint over our faithful subjects, we will give you the opportunity of freely and extensively expressing your wishes in regard to this cession, and we have to that effect given the necessary instructions to our commissioner extraordinary.

With sincere sorrow do we look forward to the severment of those ties which for many years have united you to us and the mother country, and never forgetting those many demonstrations of loyalty and affection we have received from you, we trust that nothing has been neglected from our side to secure the future welfare of our beloved and faithful subjects, and that a mighty impulse, both moral and material, will be given to the happy development of the islands under the new sovereignty. Commending you to God. Given at our palace of Amalienborg, the 25th of October, 1867, under our royal hand and seal.

(L.S.)

CHRISTIAN, R.

Address of Merchants of St. Thomas to the Danish Commissioner

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To His Excellency Chamberlain Carstensen, Knight of Dannebrog and Dannebrogsman, royal commissioner extraordinary for preparing the cession of the islands of St. Thomas and St. John to the United States of America.

YOUR EXCELLENCY: It was with feelings of the most profound pain and sorrow, mingled with disquietude and disappointment, that the undersigned have read His Majesty's proclamation dated the 25th October, 1867, relating to his royal resolution to cede the islands of St. Thomas and St. John to the United States of America: with pain and sorrow because the severance of this island from the Danish nationality, and from those mild and benign laws under which the island has existed and prospered for so long a series of years, can not otherwise but be acutely felt; disquietude and disappointment because, although it has pleased His Majesty the King most graciously to proclaim to us that he, by distinct and definite stipulations, entered into the convention of the cession, has secured to us the free exercise of our liberty, religion, rights of property, and other private rights, still we do not find that any conditions have been made to secure to us that on which depend our existence and welfare as a community - nay, that without which those very rights which are secured to us, as aforesaid, will be lessened - namely, the unshackled freedom, as heretofore, of this port and of its commerce.

Your excellency will know that this island is devoid of all internal resources, having neither agriculture nor manufacture, nor is it by nature fitted to produce those things which contribute to human life and happiness. It has but its free commerce to depend upon. Deprive it of that freedom, and the whole scene, as it now exhibits itself, will be changed. Fortunes will fall, properties will be depreciated in their value, merchants will fail, and homesteads ruined, because all will find the usual employment suddenly arrested.

The question of the continuance of the freedom of this port and of its commerce under a change of government is therefore of paramount importance to us. It addresses itself to the two most powerful passions of the human heart, interest and fear. It applies itself to the strongest principles of human action, profit and loss. It is therefore of the greatest significance and moment for us that a concession in this respect be obtained from the United States Government.

Your excellency, it is said, is on the eve of departure for Washington, wherefore the undersigned now respectfully pray and solicit of your excellency there at the seat of the government of the United States of America to 1 U. S. Sen. Doc. No. 231, pt. 8, 56th Cong., 2d sess., p. 215.

espouse and advocate our cause, our existence, and welfare, and that your excellency will endeavor and strive to obtain for us, if not perpetually, yet for as many years as possible, those immunities and privileges of this port and its commerce which we have hitherto possessed and enjoyed under the Danish Government.

With sentiments of the highest esteem, the undersigned have the honor to be your excellency's most obedient and respectful servants.

(Here follow names of some one hundred and thirty merchants and proprietors.)

Proposed Additional Articles to the Convention between Denmark and the United States of America made at Copenhagen on October 4, 1867 1

ARTICLE I

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Considering that the island of St. Thomas has from olden times been a free port, and considering that the welfare of the merchants and of the inhabitants of the island depends upon the continuance thereof, so that no sudden changes in the present state of things be made, particularly as regards the low rates of custom and ship dues, and of port charges, it is agreed that the enactments contained in the law of 16th April, 1862, relating to trade and navigation in St. Thomas, now in force in the said island, shall continue to be in force, as hitherto, for the period of twenty years after the cession of the islands, unless it should be found necessary and requisite to make alterations in any of the minor clauses or enactments of the aforesaid law, in which case the contracting parties reserve the matter for further agreement.

It is, however, understood that the enactments in section 4, III 2, c and d, of the aforesaid law, may be abolished without such mutual agreement as aforesaid.

ARTICLE II

In the same manner as Article III of the convention has already secured to the inhabitants of the ceded islands protection in their liberty, their religion, their property and private rights, so also is it understood, as a matter of course, that the Danish common and statute law now in force in the islands, with the modifications hitherto enacted therein, shall remain in force in the islands until alterations be made by new legislative enactments after previous deliberation in the council existing at the time in the islands for the treatment of legislative and other like matters.

1 U. S. Sen. Doc. No. 231, pt. 8, 56th Cong., 2d sess., p. 215.

ARTICLE III

Concessions or grants given from time to time by the Danish Government for conducting or carrying on certain establishments or industrial occupations shall remain in force until they either expire or be withdrawn or recalled from the same circumstances that would have justified such withdrawal or recall had the islands continued to be subject to Denmark; and this shall also be the case with those rights or privileges which have been granted or bestowed by the Danish Government to certain communities or establishments in the islands.

Letter from Mr. Seward to Mr. Hawley 1

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Department of State, Washington, December 16, 1867.

SIR: I have carefully read the copy which you have placed in my hands of a communication which was made on the 4th of December instant, by his excellency W. Birch, governor-general of the Danish West India Islands, to Chamberlain E. J. A. Carstensen, Danish royal commissioner extraordinary to the islands of St. Thomas and St. John.

That communication consists of a draft of two additional articles proposed to be incorporated in the convention between Denmark and the United States of America, which was made at Copenhagen the 24th of October, 1867, and of an argument made by Governor Birch in support of the proposition, together with a memorial which has been addressed to the royal commissioners by citizens, merchants of St. Thomas and St. John.

The President has promptly given attention to the subject presented by these papers, and I am now to communicate to you the result.

You will inform the royal commissioner extraordinary that in so great a transaction as the cession of territory and dominion by one sovereign to another it is difficult, if not impossible, to adjust minute arrangements in detail concerning the future government of the ceded territory. All reservations and conditions made by the ceding sovereign necessarily impair the sovereignty of the receiving power, and equally tend to embarrass its legislation and to lay the foundation of ultimate difference and controversy between the contracting powers.

Second. The Constitution of the United States reserves to the Senate the power to ratify, and to refuse to ratify, the treaty made by the President, and the constitution of Denmark equally reserves to the legislature of Denmark the same absolute control over the subject. While the respective chief magistrates concluding the treaty might well suppose that they possess sufficient ability to adjust such details by contract, the assumption that they could so 1 U. S. Sen. Doc. No. 231, pt. 8, 56th Cong., 2d sess., p. 215.

adjust them as to obtain the consent of the two ratifying bodies, and foreclose future legislative action by the Congress of the United States indefinitely, or for a term of years, would be exceedingly presumptuous. The United States have proceeded upon broad considerations of political advantage to themselves in receiving the cession of St. Thomas and St. John from Denmark, but they have not overlooked the rights and interests of the inhabitants of the ceded islands.

Our constitutional system of government is established upon the principle that every people incorporated into the American Union by annexation, or even by conquest, acquire, in the act of annexation, their due and equal share in the protection of the United States and of the liberties and rights of American citizens. Another principle is found at the base of the American Constitution, which is that every community which is received into the national family secures rights and privileges of local self-government with due representation in the councils of the Federal Union.

It is believed by the United States that no portion of the American people can need or reasonably desire any higher or broader guaranties for the protection of life, liberty, and property than those which the Constitution of the United States affords equally and indiscriminately to all the States and the whole American people. The United States are an aggregation of fortyseven distinct political communities, thirty-seven of which are States and ten preparing to be States. They occupy a region which extends from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean, and which stretches from the Atlantic coast to the furthermost of the Aleutian islands in the Pacific Ocean.

All these political communities have at some time belonged to foreign states and empires.

Such has been the benignant operation of self-government in the United States that no one of these distinct communities could now be induced to assume independence, much less to return to its ancient allegiance, or to accept any other sovereign.

The questions which Governor Birch presents in his proposed amendments were long and elaborately discussed, and were finally overruled in the debates which preceded the treaty of Copenhagen.

The United States were unwilling to make the treaty conditional upon the consent of the people of the islands ceded, because, first, they suppose that the King and legislature of Denmark would not, in any case, make a treaty prejudicial to the rights and liberties of those inhabitants; and secondly, because they were satisfied that, through the constitutional guarantees I have alluded to, the inhabitants would secure rights superior even to those which they have so long enjoyed as a colony under the protection of Denmark. The popular vote which is to be taken in the islands is asked by the Danish