The Lexington Incident Part 4

Intro.....Part 1.....Part 2.....Part 3.....Part 4

George Washington Slacum apparently was a real ass.

By virtually every account, the man was overly ambitious, insubordinate, spiteful and self-aggrandizing. Not that all that much is known about him. He was the son of the mayor of Alexandria, DC (now Virginia) and had an ambitious brother who made his way from being a ship's purser to US Special Diplomatic Agent to Mexico.

G.W. Slacum was appointed US Consul to Buenos Aires in 1824 and this is the best description on the web of his personality:

The events of the controversy were handled by George W. Slacum, the American Consul. Slacum was a man of enormous ambitions and slight discretion whose character is revealed in his relationships with his fellow citizens.


Political liaison was Mr. Forbes's job.


Commercial enterprises, the welfare of American merchant seamen, and the state of trade in general were Mr. Slacum's normal and proper area of responsibility.


In 1825, the American merchant schooner La Meroupe was stranded on the coast of Patagonia, and it was discovered that a part of its valuable cargo of wax was salvable. Slacum sent his trusted clerk and confidant, John Duffy, to take charge of the salvage and protect the owners' rights.

Apparently, Slacum's clerk may have cut himself in on a piece of the deal while salvaging the stranded cargo in Patagonia (or MAYBE... cut Slacum OUT of the deal!)

Rather than handle the matter "diplomatically", Slacum threw the guy into the street and called the local Buenos Aires police on him; a strange and extreme action between two members of the diplomatic corps and one that caused Slacum's boss, John Murray Forbes, to write to him expressing concern... and maybe suspicion... at Slacum's treatment of a man that appeared to be a friend as well as a co-worker:

"...it make on part of my present purpose to consider...whether its recovery...was or was not the most probable result of the steps you took...the placing of Mr. Duffy's person at the disposition of the Police...was a precipitate assumption of authority not warranted by the nature and functions of your consular office..."


"Duffy was the companion of your labors and your leisures...In a moment of doubt, you break to the bitterest enmity, and Mr. Duffy is cast to the fangs of the Police as a criminal. I thank God Sir, that my heart is not a moral kaleidoscope where the feelings...can be changed with that quickness of lightning...(3)"

Slacum got defensive, as anybody would.

However, he then upped the ante considerably.

He seemed to take a page right out of today's neo-con/fox-news playbook and changed the subject to possible corruption by his boss and accused Forbes of orchestrating the whole salvage shakedown with Forbes' buddy, the German consul to Buenos Aires.

This was the final insult for the chargé, who refused to accept any but official communications from the consul and urged that Slacum "...state your greifs (sic) and even to present yourself a reasonable latitude of personality that your rancour...may be presented to the judgement of our masters, the President and Secretary of State...(4)"

Here the unhappy affair stood. In January, 1827, writing to Secretary of State Henry Clay from Annapolis, Slacum denounced the "continued oppression" of his superior, lamenting that he had been "...the object of personal jealousy of Mr. Forbes and the victim of official and private slander...(5)"

To be fair, Forbes himself was provoked to making some undiplomatic statements. But by then old Forbes was sick, close to death, and undoubtedly maddened by the accusations of his subordinate.

Slacum's own personal physician wrote the US Secretary of State:

"...Slacum...is capable of making use of dishonorable means against an opponent and considers every man his enemy who does not think it proper to hold opinions similar to his own...you must know that he is an exceedingly vain person, loves his own person exceedingly well...(6)

That was the situation Forbes faced when he died... just months before the US destruction of the Argentine settlement in the Malvinas.

Forbes' death left Buenos Aires without a chargé d'affaires and left Consul Slacum, at least temporarily, the highest ranking US diplomat in Argentina.

Although Slacum's status hadn't really changed at all, he considered himself automatically promoted to Forbes' old job.

His letter to Secretary of State Van Buren is a curious mixture of bold self-assurance and humility: "...from the good understanding subsisting between the governments of the United States and Buenos Ayres, as well as from my intimate...personal acquaintance, I shall find no difficulty in proctecting the honor and interests of my country...until the Government shall be pleased to send some other representative more competent than myself...(7)

Washington DC probably considered him harmless. But with the seizure of a US merchant ship only a few months later, Slacum would show his ass to the world... and the US would be forced to cover it.

"Commander Silas Duncan and
the Falkland Islands Affair"
by Lt. Comm. Alexander G. Monroe, USN Reserve

The Lexington Incident Part 3

Intro.....Part 1.....Part 2.....Part 3.....Part 4

The Argentina into which the seized US ship Harriet sailed in July of 1831 was still in disarray from its revolution 15 years earlier.

An attempt at a constitutional government with a President had failed and the former Provinicias Unidas del la Plata was now known as the Argentine Confederation with the Governor of Buenos Aires appointed to conduct foreign affairs.

The US had recognized its independence in 1820 and had gotten off to a terrific start with the diplomatic personnel sent here. Caesar Augustus Rodney, former US Congressman, US Senator, US Attorney General, US Army Capitan during the "War of 1812" and possibly the foremost US expert on South America was appointed his country's first Minister Plenipotentiary to the fledgling Argentina.

He presented himself to the Argentine government in 1823, endeared himself to Argentines everywhere, and promptly died, June 10, 1824, and was buried in Barrio Retiro on calle Juncal between Esmeralda and Suipacha.

Leading Rodney's funeral cortege was the man who would soon replace him: the US chargé d'affaires, John Murray Forbes.

The scion of one of the great "yankee trader" families and former Harvard classmate of John Quincy Adams, Forbes practiced law for a short time in Boston and moved to Europe in the late 1790s. From 1801 to 1819, he served as consul for the US, first in Copenhagen and then in Hamburg, paying particular attention to commercial issues. When he returned to the US, he was asked by Adams, then Secretary of State, to represent the U.S. in Argentina in regards to shipping and other business matters.

Forbes career was marked by both a great admiration for Argentina and a great concern over the United Kingdom's efforts to turn it into a de facto colony. He spent years constantly communicating his alarm to his own government and to the officials in Buenos Aires but to no avail.

While the US was the only competition for the UK during Forbes' years in Buenos Aires, it was very small competition. The US was either unwilling or unable to take the necessary steps to compete with Britain's bigger ships, bigger banks, and bigger business connections, and bigger diplomatic corps in Argentina.

In the end, the yanqui shipments of Chinese silk and affordable cotton goods were looked upon by Great Britain as an annoyance easily crushed. Increased trade with Argentina could also have annoyed Spain, a major US trading partner at the time.

While Forbes howled in the wilderness, political instability in the young US led his old pal Adams to be defeated after one term. With the presidency of Andrew Jackson came a new US consul to Buenos Aires, George Washington Slacum.

Slacum, by all accounts was a most disagreeable man who was a thorn in the old man's side until Forbes too was buried in Retiro near his predecessor, June 14, 1831.

Slacum then seized Forbes' old post and, with the help of a one-armed war-hero US sea capitan, changed the course of Islas Malvinas / Falklands Islands history.

The Lexington Incident Part 2

Intro.....Part 1.....Part 2.....Part 3.....Part 4

Yanqui involvement in the Malvinas, curiously, began way back in 1820 with its first Argentine governor, Daniel Jewett. The 48 year old Jewett; born in New London, Connecticut; had acted as a privateer for the US during its "War of 1812" against the British.

Jewett later offered his services to the newly-independent United Provinces of the River Plate (later Argentina), which accepted his proposal and authorized his corsair activities against the Spanish; he was appointed Colonel in the Argentine Navy.

He was given command of the frigate Heroina in 1820 and set out on a voyage marked by misfortune, a mutiny, and scurvy. Some 80 of his crew of 200 were either sick or dead by the time he arrived in October at Puerto Soledad (formerly Port Louis), the one-time Spanish capital of the Malvinas/Falkland Islands. There he found some fifty British and U.S. sealing ships, whose presence had not been authorized by either the Spanish or the authorities at Buenos Aires.

On 6 November 1820 he raised the blue-and-white flag of what would become Argentina.

Seals and sealing ships were important everywhere in the Atlantic at that time along with whaling and other fishing.

Jewett soon left the islands but seal hunting remained an important source of revenue for the Malvinas. So much so that 9 years later, the new Argentine governor, Luis Vernet, was granted a monopoly on seal hunting in the Malvinas as part of his salary.

Vernet was a successful Buenos Aires businessman with extensive dealings in and around the islands. The new government in Argentina hoped that his appointment could keep poaching under control in Argentine waters.

Luis Vernet was apparently a good choice for the job. He immediately found at least one ship, the yanqui merchant Harriet, poaching seals. He seized her, and sent her to Buenos Aires along with her captain to stand trial.

That might have seemed like standard operating procedure to the new governor but it started a chain of events with another fledgling nation north of the equator that reverberates to this day.

The Lexington Incident Part 1

Intro.....Part 1.....Part 2.....Part 3.....Part 4

Of all the periods in American history, the years 1825 to 1840 are least studied by diplomatic historians. The reason for this lack of attention is usually ascribed to an absence of important diplomatic events. As Thomas A. Bailey wrote, "The chronicle of American foreign affairs from 1825 to 1840 is not thickly studded with striking developments. During no other period of similar length prior to 1872 does the student of diplomacy find so little significance to record." This position, however, is in need of revision. There was, in fact, at least one significant development during this period which merits the attention of diplomatic historians.

Between 1831 and 1833, the United States became involved with Argentina in a dispute over events which occured at the Falkland Islands. The ensuing crisis was considered so important at the time that it was the subject of two state of the union addresses by President Andrew Jackson. Moreover, the incident brought the United States to the brink of war with Argentina and resulted in a prolonged cessation of diplomatic relations between the two nations

And so begins our little tale of how the whole Malvinas imbroglio comes to today, 176 years later... and 25 years after the war between the last Argentine dictatorship and Margaret Thatcher's 1980's Britain.

In the interest of full-disclosure, I firmly believe that the Malvinas belong to Argentina and before them Spain. Not only that, this writer can point to more than 3 treaties signed by the United Kingdom acknowleging that the islands belong to Argentina.

What fascinates me, however, is the relatively untold involvement of the United States in this fiasco; something that is not taught to school children in the US, Argentina, nor the UK.

It was not a small matter.

In fact, had it not been for the actions of a one-armed, war-hero, US Navy Captain; an incompetent US Consul in Buenos Aires; and a meddling UK, still smarting from the loss of its New World holdings...the tiny, desolate, wind-swept, gloomy islands might still be under the Argentine flag and there would be no commemorations of an undeclared war described by Jorge Luis Borges "as two bald men fighting over a comb."

The Lexington Incident in the Falklands

Intro.....Part 1.....Part 2.....Part 3.....Part 4

The Malvinas war and the UK's dispute over its sovereignty bores me.

As I tried to show in my little post last month, the United Kingdom signed at least 3 treaties recognizing that the islands belong to Spain then Argentina before taking them by force in 1833, deporting all the Argentines, and transplanting Brits there to replace them. End of Story.

In my fact checking, however, I ran across the bizarre story of the USS Lexington and the United States destruction of the Argentine colony. I had never heard a word of this before.

Not only is the story absolutely fascinating but the illegal yanqui smashing of the Malvinas appears to be the cause of the whole sad chain of events leading to the British theft and West-Bank style repopulation, to the 1982 war, to the events of today.

It's got a cast of characters that could be pulled right out of the current West Wing, international terrorists (um...pirates!) and is filled with last-gasp colonial meddling by a dying empire. A tale of our times, if you'll only suspend a little disbelief.

It's all been written before (like I said, I only learned about it while wiki/googling only 3 weeks ago) but I gotta write it again.

I hope you enjoy it... 'cause it's gonna take up a lot of this blog's time.

Las Malvinas son Argentinas

...read the Lexington Incident

Over the next 3 months or so we're liable to hear quite a bit about the Malvinas. Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of the chain of events that came to be known as La Guerra de las Malvinas or the Falkland Islands War...even though no declaration of war was ever made.

The desolate little place (so desolate that it never even had any indigenous peoples) has an interesting history that involves the Dutch, French and even Yanquis in addition to Spain, Argentina and the UK.

It was discovered by the Dutch and the French built the first settlement, naming them Îles Malouines after St. Malo. Hence, the Spanish name Malvinas. A couple of years later the British built a fort on the islands without even knowing the French were there.

Spain eventually signed a treaty with France and Britain limiting its holdings in the New World... that included the Malvinas. Spain took over the French colony (they later reimbursed them) then they simply kicked the British out.

The Brits came back for while but ended up abandoning their colony. The British later signed another treaty renouncing all colonial ambitions in South America "and the islands adjacent" in exchange for an agreement on who was the boss of the west coast of North America.

Then the Spanish abandoned the islands, too. Like I said, the place is desolate.

About 15 years later the British invaded Buenos Aires twice in two years and were defeated both times. That made Argentines so cocky they declared independence from the mother country that never lifted a hand to help them with the invasions.

With independence, they got the Malvinas from Spain as a package deal.

The UK then signed a treaty recognizing Argentina's independence.

The newly minted Argentina sent a governor, built a prison, and started to farm and trade. A few years later, the settlers gave birth to some babies...the first people ever born on the islands.

Now come the yanquis. The Argentine governor of the islands had placed some pretty strict rules on the hunting of seals. Not long after, he caught a US merchant ship illegally hunting seals and seized it.

The US consul in Buenos Aires protested that his government didn't even recognize Argentina's ownership of the Malvinas.

The US sent a warship to get the ship back but the yanqui captain overstepped his orders and destroyed the entire Argentine settlement.

The UK then took advantage of the confusion and seized what was left of the islands without firing a shot. They later deported all the Argentines. That was 1833.

Argentina has never relinquished its claim to islands.