An American Diplomat Writes About Latin America in 1832

Extract

The two letters included in this note date from 1832. Their interest and importance derive from a number of circumstances. In the first place, they were written by one Francis Baylies while on a special mission for the United States Government in Argentina to negotiate the settlement of a fisheries controversy growing out of the seizure of an American vessel in the Falkland Islands, to which Argentina laid claim. Baylies had no particular qualification or fitness for such a diplomatic mission, except insofar as he came from Massachusetts, and thus had an interest in shipping. He was a Federalist politician and former congressman from southern Massachusetts between 1821-1827. In the disintegration of Federalism which then occurred, Baylies found temporary and strange refuge in the camp of Andrew Jackson, whom he helped to win the Presidency in 1828. The appointment to this mission was Jackson’s somewhat anomalous reward for Baylies’ political services, in the fashion of the time. On March 8, 1832, Baylies, with his wife and young daughter, left Boston on the United States sloop-of-war, the Peacock, for South America. In less than a year, by February 12, 1833, he was back in Taunton, Massachusetts, his home town, his mission incomplete and unsuccessful. Britain’s occupation of the Falkland Islands in 1833 may, however, have disposed of the issue.