Report of the Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo

Wade, Benjamin Franklin; White, Andrew Dickson; Howe, Samuel Gridley, (Commissioners), Dominican Republic. Report of the Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo, with the introductory message of the President, special reports ... state papers furnished by the Dominican government, and the statements of over seventy witnesses, Washington: GPO, 1871.

Available online.

Note by Dale:

The book lacks the front cover and is stamped as “Property of the The Supreme Council, 33°, Southern Jurisdiction”, the first Supreme Council of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. The book also has a hand written gift dedication in Spanish to who appears as a “Calesby Jones”, from who appears as a A. or H. “Faubuión” and dated December 15, 1966.

The Annexation of Santo Domingo was an attempted treaty during later Reconstruction, initiated by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1869, to annex “Santo Domingo” (as the Dominican Republic was then commonly known) as a U.S. territory, with the promise of eventual statehood. President Grant believed that that the annexed territory (on the island of Hispaniola) would serve as a safe haven for African Americans from the Southern United States, who were suffering violent persecution by the Ku Klux Klan. Grant also believed that the acquisition of Santo Domingo would help bring about the end of slavery in those parts of the Americas that still practised it, such as Brazil. A further motive was Dominican agricultural and mineral resources would benefit the U.S. economy. A U.S. naval port in the Dominican Republic would also serve as protection for a projected canal across the Isthmus of Darien.