THE PROTECTION OF
AMIERICAN LIVES
AND PROPERTY
THE SONORA CRISIS
OF 1915
Warrick Ridge
Edwards
Tallahassee
Community College
Woodrow Wilson entered office suspicious of material interests and opposed to economic exploitation both at home and abroad. Those sentiments would be reflected, in turn, in his highly personal response to the massive and ongoing Mexican Revolution. Foreign concessionaires, he would charge, some of them American, had monopolized the most productive lands in the Mexican Republic, ruthlessly exploited its resources, and reduced its population to a mean and hopeless peonage. The Mexican people, he asserted, were "entitled to attempt their liberty from such influences." And while there had in fact been many "serious wrongs" against the persons and property of Americans and other foreigners in Mexico since the onset of revolution, the government of the United States should in no way attempt to suppress that struggle. Indeed, he declared that he would do "everything in [his] power" to prevent it. "I am," he concluded, "more interested in the fortunes of oppressed men and pitiful women than in any property rights whatsoever. Mistakes I have no doubt made in this perplexing business, but not in purpose or object."(1)
There were, of course, many who differed with that assertion. Both within and without the administration, there was great consternation over the president's indiscriminate indictment of American and other foreign investors in Mexico. As it became evident that he himself had no intention of providing truly effective protection for their properties or for the lives of those many foreigners still resident in the republic, that concern would turn to dismay and indignation. Within the administration itself there was strong, even bitter disagreement with the president's position. To be sure, both Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan and Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels shared their chief's suspicion of, and antipathy toward, the foreign investor in Mexico and would vigorously support his policy.(2) But few of their colleagues, at any level of government, could reconcile themselves to the president's position. Indeed, the principal opposition to that policy would come from within Bryan's own department and to a somewhat lesser degree from high-ranking naval officers stationed in Mexican waters.
Robert Lansing, department counselor and subsequently secretary of state in his own right, was much distressed at the president's disregard for American property tights in Mexico and even more so at the apparent abandonment of his countrymen resident therein. In fact, he was inclined to intervene forcefully on their behalf.(3) Lansing, Josephus Daniels would observe, "held to the old diplomacy that encouraged exploitation of small countries by American industrial captains. . . ." He was a disciple of [Elihu] Root, "a Big Stick-Dollar Diplomacy" advocate who "just naturally believed that the strong ought to rule."(4) And so too, in varying degree, were assistant secretaries William Phillips and Frank Lyon Polk, counselor Chandler P. Anderson, and Boaz Long and Leon J. Canova, the chief and assistant chief respectively of the department's Division of Latin American Affairs.(5) Together, then, those officials would do all in their power to protect American lives and property below the border. And they would go to great lengths indeed.
From early 1915 on, they would deliberately subvert presidential Mexican policy, collude with Mexican reactionaries and the representatives of large American interests in Mexico, and, in conjunction with those elements, seek to substitute and implement an aggressive policy of their own making aimed at frustrating the revolution and imposing a sort of Platt Amendment protectorate over the whole of the Mexican Republic.(6) Rapidly deteriorating conditions in that country in the spring of 1915 would provide them with the first of several opportunities to realize those objectives.
By late May of that year, the government in Washington was under intense and mounting pressure both to relieve the foreign community in Mexico and to stop the confiscation and destruction of foreign property there. Appalled at the seemingly endless slaughter and devastation in the neighboring republic and encouraged by interventionist elements within the administration itself, the president on June 2 addressed a stern and ominous warning to the contending factional leaders. They must halt the fighting in their country "within a very short time," he insisted, or the government of the United States would itself be "constrained" to do it for them .(7) Failure to comply, it was clear, would be to invite massive armed intervention.
Suddenly relations between the United States and Mexico had entered a new and highly sensitive phase. And until it passed, almost any serious confrontation between the government in Washington and either of the warring factions in Mexico would likely culminate in a general Mexican-American conflict.
Although there existed at the time a number of points of contention between the government of the United States and one or the other of the several factional leaders, none was more apt to lead to an explosive confrontation than was the failure of Mexican authorities to provide effective protection to the large foreign colony in the Yaqui Valley of southern Sonora. In imminent danger of annihilation either by the rebellious Yaqui tribesmen or by xenophobic Mexican soldiers, the several hundred American and other foreign settlers in that district would remain highly vulnerable throughout that critical period in Mexican-American relations.
Despite his threat of June 2, for Woodrow Wilson, anxious to avoid further armed intervention below the border, the situation in Lower Sonora constituted a most serious and vexatious dilemma. Should Mexican authorities continue to deny effective protection to the colony, a massacre of major proportions was all but certain to occur. And that, in turn, was bound to provoke at least regional American armed intervention and very likely war as well. Should, however, the government in Washington seek to employ American troops in defense of the settlements, a clash with local Mexican forces was virtually a foregone conclusion. And, again, war would most likely follow. Either way, it seemed, the continuing crisis in Lower Sonora threatened to precipitate precisely the sort of sanguinary confrontation that the president so desperately hoped to avert. And interventionist elements, both within and without the administration, would seek to turn it to their advantage.
The largest of the American concerns located in the troubled district and the focal point of Washington's interest there was the Los Angeles-based Richardson Construction Company. That firm, in turn, was the operating subsidiary of the Yaqui Delta Land and Water Company, a holding company capitalized at twelve million dollars and tightly controlled by the New York financiers John Hays Hammond and Harry Payne Whitney. By 1910, the Richardson interests had purchased from the Mexican government some 1,200,000 acres in and around the fertile Yaqui Valley and had been awarded virtually unlimited use of the waters of the Yaqui River. In return for those rights the company was committed to construct and operate extensive irrigation works in the valley and to foster regional development through the sale of reclaimed land and water to Mexican and foreign colonists. Until Yaqui raids and revolutionary disorder baited all construction in the valley, the company had enjoyed considerable success in fulfilling its contractual obligations.(8)
The underlying cause of unrest in that district was the expulsion of the Yaqui Nation from its traditional homeland in the valley and the disposal of its lands to other parties. Constituting approximately a sixth of the state's population, the Yaquis of Sonora were too numerous to subjugate.(9) When, in 1910, revolution swept the republic, they would seek to avail themselves of the turmoil to throw off Mexican rule forever. Determined to recover their ancestral lands and to establish an independent Yaqui republic, the tribesmen allied themselves with first one faction and then another in resolute pursuit of those objectives. In a relatively short time, they had amassed a sizeable arsenal of modern weapons, earned a reputation as the finest fighting men in Mexico, and acquired a position of considerable power and influence in the Mexican northwest. Yet, despite repeated praises to the contrary, their lands, including the coveted Yaqui Valley, remained in other hands.(10) Out of patience and distrustful of all Mexican factions, a large portion of the Yaqui Nation, the so-called wild or broncho Yaquis, rose in open revolt against all Mexican authority. Well-armed, clandestinely supported by their ostensibly pacified or manso kinsmen, and most capably led by the chieftains Luis Espinosa and Juan Jose Sibalaume, they sought to drive Mexicans and foreigners alike from the Yaqui Valley and from all other tribal lands.(11) They would very nearly succeed in that endeavor.
By the beginning of 1915, the Yaqui rebellion in Sonora had assumed crisis proportions. Villista governor Jose Maria Maytorena, dependent upon a local garrison composed in large part of manso mercenaries, was unable to quell the uprising. Yaqui soldiers in Mexican employ could not be counted upon to serve against their rebellious kinsmen. Indeed, some smuggled arms and ammunition to the insurgents, and not a few of them covertly joined the bronchos in operations against their common oppressor. Thus by the spring of 1915, when the raiding spread southward into the Yaqui Valley, state authorities were all but powerless to stop it.(12) Ile colonists were on their own.
Early in May, an estimated 500 raiders struck hard at the foreign settlements in Lower Sonora. Emerging from their stronghold in the nearby Sierra de Bacatete, they forded the Yaqui River, rode across the valley, and suddenly fell upon the colonists in the southern tier of farms and ranches. Several Americans and a large number of Mexicans were killed, and for some days thereafter those who escaped were engaged in a fierce struggle for survival.(13) Eventually the Yaquis themselves broke off the attack. But they would return, they warned, and soon; and when they did, they would kill every Mexican and American who remained.(14) Terrified, the colonists turned in desperation to Washington. The governor, they declared, could not or would not protect them. Their only hope lay in United States marines.(15)
Alarmed at the prospect of a general massacre of Americans in Sonora and appalled at the probable effect of such an outrage on subsequent Mexican-American relations, Secretary Bryan reluctantly requested the dispatch of United States warships to the Yaqui delta.(16) Accordingly, Admiral Thomas B. Howard was instructed to proceed at once to the Gulf of California to investigate the disturbance ashore. In the meantime, the cruiser Raleigh dropped anchor off Tobari Bay. And there it would remain, its crew at the ready to take off the settlers, until the crisis in the valley had passed.(17)
The settlers, however, were by no means prepared to withdraw. Heavily invested in the colonization venture, they would fight if necessary to protect their holdings. And they both expected and demanded that the government in Washington assist them. Established around the station of Esperanza, some 30 miles inland from the sea, they derived no comfort whatsoever from the warship at Tobari Bay. It was marines they wanted, and they wanted them stationed permanently in the valley.(18)
Accordingly, early in June, H. A. Sibbett, vice-president and general manager of the Richardson Construction Company, traveled to Washington to appeal in person to officials of the Department of State. In Leon J. Canova, the department's acknowledged authority on Mexican affairs, be found an interested and enthusiastic supporter.(19)
Canova, of course, sympathized strongly with American investors in Mexico, but he was moved by other considerations as well. Closely associated with leaders of the Mexican exile community and at the moment deeply involved in counterrevolutionary intrigue, Canova was the most aggressively interventionist of all administration officials. A persistent advocate of American domination of Mexico, he welcomed any development which might bring about an imposed settlement of the civil war and the establishment of an American protectorate over the republic.(20) Indeed, it was Canova who was in large part responsible for the recent hardening of the president's policy toward that Country.(21) He would do what he could, then, for the Richardson interests and for the other American investors in Sonora, and should his efforts ultimately precipitate a major regional intervention and a new Mexican-American confrontation, then so much the better. Admiral Howard would show him the way.
On June 3, Admiral Howard reported that the Indians had recrossed the river in force and were at the moment laying waste to the last vestiges of settlement in the southern portion of the valley. The colonists, supported by some fifty of Maytorena's soldiers, had refused to withdraw. Instead, they had ignored the governor's advice to depart the valley and had rejected his every offer of an escort to the sea. Their stubbornness had rendered the matter of their protection a most difficult and vexatious problem, the admiral complained, and under his present orders there was little he could do to assist them.(22)
It had been suggested by the colonists, he continued, as well as by a number of his subordinate commanders, that the only effective solution to the problem at hand was the establishment of a permanent American garrison in the Yaqui Valley. He could not, however, in good conscience endorse that proposal. lie was willing enough to risk his men to save American lives, Howard declared, but he objected strongly to sacrificing them "for the purpose of protecting property." And there would be losses, he assured his superiors. A campaign against the broncho Yaquis would be similar to the earlier Apache campaigns but considerably more difficult. Not only would the marines be operating in unfamiliar territory, but in an area in which the Mexican population too was strongly antagonistic to Americans. Unquestionably, a clash with the broncho Yaquis would be a costly and ugly affair.(23)
Howard was also much concerned over possible Mexican reaction to so blatant a violation of national sovereignty. In view of the president's recent warning to the several factional leaders, occupation of the Yaqui Valley might well be misconstrued as the first phase of massive American intervention. That, in turn, could well mean war. All things considered, the admiral opposed occupation of the valley. Should, however, the administration still choose to adopt such a course, considerably more than the 500 troops requested by the colonists would be required. It would take "at least a regiment," he believed, "with field and machine guns" to secure the settlements from attack.(24) Unlike his fellow officers, Howard had the highest regard for the prowess of the Yaqui soldier. He had no illusions of a quick and easy victory over so formidable a foe.
Personally, the admiral preferred to respond to the Indian menace by strengthening the naval patrol off the Yaqui delta and by extending to subordinate commanders there discretionary authority to employ their forces ashore.(25) Yet even that limited response would in the event of new raids on the settlements most assuredly end in armed intervention. Sooner or later, through their own intransigence, the colonists would find themselves faced with imminent annihilation. When that critical moment arrived, it would be difficult indeed for Howard or any other American commander to turn a deaf ear to their pleas. Almost certainly, if the admiral had his way, the colonists would have their marines anyway. And Canova and his colleagues, theretofore frustrated for want of an immediate rationale for intervention, would at last have the crisis they sought.
Canova, of course, grasped the situation at once, and in advising his superiors on Mexican matters, he appears to have given the strongest possible endorsement to Howard's recommendations. Certainly Sibbett was much impressed with Canova's performance and came away from the Department of State convinced that he was doing all that was possible to protect American lives and property in Sonora.(26)
While the agent for the Richardson interests continued to work through the Division of Latin American Affairs, his associates elsewhere sought the assistance of still other influential officials. From his offices in New York, Frederic N. Watriss, president of the Yaqui Delta Land and Water Company and spokesman for the Hammond-Whitney group, addressed a fraternal appeal to fellow Harvard alumnus, Assistant Secretary of State William Phillips. Moving quickly to the point, Watriss revealed to "Brother Phillips" that the principal investor in the Yaqui Valley enterprise was none other than Harry Payne Whitney. It had occurred to him, Watriss explained, that "in view of the services, material and otherwise, which Whitney and his Father before him [had] always rendered to the Democratic Party," that knowledge in turn "might stimulate the Department to some further effort" on behalf of the Whitney interests in Mexico.(27)
Duly impressed, Phillips immediately consulted Canova. Forwarding Watriss's letter to the Latin American Division, he inquired of his subordinate whether the department was indeed doing all that it might on behalf of the party in question. It most certainly was, Canova replied.(28) In fact, he had just discussed the matter with the secretary of state, who, in turn, was even then preparing to bring it to the attention of the president himself. Satisfied, Phillips took no further action. Having conveyed his information to those persons best able to use it to advantage, he would await the results of Lansing's report to the president before advising his correspondent in New York.
The following day, June 12, while Yaqui raiders again swept through the valley, Lansing did advise the president on the situation in Lower Sonora. The Indians there, he related, had stated their intent to "wipe out" the entire American, colony. Local Mexican authorities could not, or would not, afford the settlements adequate protection, and the colonists themselves could not be induced to leave. It was a most serious and perplexing dilemma, he implied, and unless some precautionary measures were taken by the administration itself, "the loss of many American lives [might] be expected." Admiral Howard, he continued, had recommended maintaining an expeditionary force in the Gulf of California. Once in place, such a force could be used to great advantage to protect the lives of American and other foreign colonists in the area. In the event of a "positive emergency," several hundred marines might be rushed inland to relieve the settlements and, if necessary, to escort the colonists to the sea. Meanwhile, he suggested, the admiral might send a wireless team, disguised as civilians, into the American colony. It was imperative, he explained, that the naval patrol offshore be advised instantly should the Yaquis again descend upon the settlements. Under the circumstances, the secretary concluded, Howard's plan seemed "the only safe action," and it was evident that he himself strongly endorsed it.(29) Canova, it would appear, had done his work well.
So, too, had Lansing. Clearly impressed with the urgency of the situation, the president replied within hours. It was obvious, he tersely informed the secretary, that the course recommended by Howard was "necessary." Accordingly, Lansing was to meet with the secretary of the navy and to coordinate with him both the 'disposition of forces' and the issue of the equipment proposed.(30) On the following day, accompanied by an undoubtedly jubilant Canova, the secretary complied."(31)
The outgrowth of the conference of June 15 was the adoption by the Department of State of a self-proclaimed "vigorous policy' for the protection of American lives and property in the Yaqui Valley." Accordingly, in a strongly worded communiqué to the governor of Sonora, Lansing insisted that he dispatch additional troops to the valley and take whatever measures were necessary to secure the settlements there from attack. Failure to do so, Lansing warned, would leave the United States no choice but to land an expeditionary force in the Yaqui delta.(33)
Nor was the secretary bluffing. On June 16, Admiral Howard was ordered to proceed at once to the port of Guaymas. Accompanying him aboard the cruiser Colorado was an expeditionary force composed of 600 marines and bluejackets. The flagship was to be joined at Guaymas by the cruisers Raleigh, Chattanooga, and New Orleans, with a combined complement of 1100 men. The decision to go ashore and to advance to the relief of the settlements was left solely to Howard's discretion. It was understood, however, that the admiral was not to disembark his forces unless conditions around Esperanza rendered such action "absolutely necessary."(34)
While Admiral Howard prepared to sail for Guaymas, William Phillips drafted a belated reply to his classmate in New York. In a surprisingly candid discussion of a highly sensitive matter, the assistant secretary disclosed in detail administration plans for coping with the anticipated Yaqui strikes in the valley. Both he and his colleagues, he explained to Watriss, were convinced that a naval demonstration off Guaymas would in itself be sufficient to "spur" state authorities to defend the American colony. Should, however, the governor still refuse to cooperate and a genuine emergency arise, United States naval forces would most certainly intervene. Under no circumstances, he implied, were officials in Washington prepared to permit the massacre of their countrymen in Sonora. Yet intervention would undoubtedly engender the most bitter animosity toward the Americans in the valley. Consequently, Phillips explained, should Howard be forced to land his marines, officials in Washington would expect the colonists to withdraw voluntarily from the country and to remain away for whatever length of time it took to restore order in that portion of the republic. And they would expect Watriss and his associates to encourage tills action.(35)
"Brother Watriss," however, would do nothing of the sort. With some half-million dollars worth of rice, wheat, and other crops approaching maturity on company lands alone, he and other investors in the Richardson project had an immense stake in the forthcoming harvest. And all would be lost should the settlers withdraw from the valley. Even brief neglect of the project's irrigation works would likely result in extensive crop failure. Yaqui raiders would do the rest: what they failed to carry off for their own use, they would most assuredly put to the torch. Watriss, then, had no intention of encouraging evacuation of the valley. On the contrary, he would do all in his power to prevent it. Secretary Phillips, inadvertently it would seem, had considerably strengthened his hand.
For weeks the colonists had been on the verge of abandoning the settlements. Shaken by the deaths of their comrades, appalled at the prospect of still greater raids to come, and despairing of effective protection from either Maytorena or the government in Washington, more than a few of them had already quit the country. Those who remained behind experienced the most acute anxiety. The sure knowledge that sooner or later they must face a major Yaqui offensive--isolated, poorly armed, and, upon the resumption of hostilities, cut off from escape by sea--was profoundly demoralizing.(36) Indeed, a visitor to the valley reported the settlers there were all but paralyzed by fear, 'afraid to do anything, even to protect themselves."(37) Unquestionably, then, many among them were contemplating withdrawal. There is, in fact, every indication that had administration officials firmly resisted external pressures to act on behalf of the colony, most if not all of the Americans there would soon have departed the valley. As a consequence, the recurring crises in that district, at the moment the most serious threat to peace between the neighboring republics, would have ceased. Phillips' correspondence with Watriss had drastically altered that situation.
In seeking to reassure the Hammond-Whitney group, the assistant secretary dispelled whatever doubts existed in the minds of investors and settlers alike regarding the administration's commitment to protect American interests in Sonora. The government, he implied, not only acknowledged the legitimacy of the American presence in the valley but was prepared to uphold it as well.(38) It had no intention of abandoning the colony to its fate. Whether the settlers agreed to leave the valley or not, in the event of a genuine emergency, they could count on the fleet marines.(39) And in disclosing that bit of privileged information, Phillips irreparably subverted presidential policy in the matter.
Heartened immeasurably by what they assumed to be an official pledge of emergency relief, a determined majority of the colonists resolved to stay on in the valley.(40) From what point on, even temporary evacuation was all but out of the question. While the colonists themselves began preparations for the anticipated Yaqui offensive, their associates in the United States moved at once to exploit what they perceived as a new and more receptive mood in Washington. Not content with assurances of protection for their people in the valley, they sought guarantees for their property as well. For months thereafter they would petition vigorously for the establishment of a permanent American garrison at Esperanza.
Maytorena, meanwhile, had finally responded to Lansing's ultimatum. With some 5000 armed Yaquis raiding at will over the greater part of the state, he could ill afford to spare a large body of troops to garrison Esperanza. Nonetheless, doubtless because of the forcefulness of the American demand, the governor grudgingly agreed to send token reinforcements to the valley.(41)
On June 18, General Sosa and 150 men entrained at Guaymas for Esperanza. They never reached their destination. Yaquis attacked the train within sight of the settlement, killing and wounding most of its occupants and forcing the survivors to retreat in panic up the line. Under the circumstances, the New York Times solemnly concluded, the 'only hope' for the Americans in Lower Sonora was intervention by Howard's marines.'(42)
Officials in Washington concurred. At Lansing's behest the commander of the Raleigh, whose vessel again stood off Tobari Bay, was instructed to rush a heliograph team inland to Esperanza. Ile moment the colonists were threatened, word was to be flashed to the cruiser. With or without Maytorena's approval, American forces would move at once to the rescue.(43)
Similar instructions were conveyed to Howard at Guaymas. The admiral was to proceed immediately to Tobari Bay. In the event of an attack on the settlements, he was to relieve the colonists there and escort them safely to the coast. Under no circumstances, however, was he to linger in the Yaqui Valley. A prolonged occupation of Mexican territory, it was feared, could have the most serious consequences.(44)
And, indeed, they had cause for concern. On June 19, Maytorena announced that 1000 men would be sent to the Yaqui Valley to defend the foreign settlements. Those same men, however, had been ordered to resist with every means at their command any attempt to land American troops on Mexican soil.(45) Then, on June 21, Admiral Howard met at Guaymas with General Leyva, commander-in-chief of Mexican forces in southern Sonora. State authorities, the general conceded, sympathized with the American dilemma and could understand the necessity of dispatching a relief expedition to the valley. The Mexican people, however, would unquestionably 'misunderstand' such a move and deeply resent it. Moreover, Leyva warned, even minimal American intervention in that district would provoke still more of the Yaqui Nation to take up arms against the foreign community in Lower Sonora. And there would be "trouble" for Americans "all along the coast."(46)
The following day, a worried Howard conferred once again with the general. Communications with the colonists had been restored, he learned, and General Sosa with a large body of troops was even then moving into the valley. For the moment, it seemed, the colony was secure.
But Leyva's mood had turned decidedly hostile. The colonists, he asserted, should leave the state at once, and he expressed impatience and indignation at their persistent refusal to do so. Their very presence on Mexican soil, he suggested, had become a serious provocation; indeed, it was the principal cause of unrest in his district. Ultimately, he feared, it would lead to a most serious Mexican-American confrontation.
General Sosa's command, composed in large part of manso Yaquis, was undisciplined and antagonistic toward Americans and could not be depended upon to defend the settlements. Sooner or later, then, Leyva believed, Howard would be forced to intervene. When he did, the general warned, Sosa's troops and, by implication, those of his own command would vigorously resist.(47) It would, of course, be most difficult to contain such a conflict once hostilities had begun. Under the circumstances, it could go badly indeed for the hundreds of American citizens scattered throughout the State of Sonora and especially so for the colonists at Esperanza. There was little, however, that Howard could do to placate the general or to otherwise reduce tension. He had his orders, and on June 23 he proceeded to Tobari Bay. There he waited, poised to intervene.
The colonists, meanwhile, continued to spurn their own government's advice to withdraw from the valley. Instead, they reiterated their demand that American troops be sent out to protect them.(48) On June 24, George C. Singletary, president of the Sonora Land and Investment Company, wired Lansing directly to complain bitterly of the lack of support from Washington and to warn of still another grave threat to the lives and property of his countrymen in Yaqui territory. General Sosa's troops, he had learned, were themselves preying upon American and other foreign inhabitants of the valley. Far from affording protection, the soldiers constituted a most serious menace to every foreigner there. Immediately upon entering the valley, they had descended upon outlying settlements, looting private homes, abusing their residents, and drawing their weapons on those persons bold enough to protest. His employees there, Singletary feared, "were in as great danger for their lives" from the Mexicans as they were from the broncho Yaquis. The administration, he angrily asserted, was obligated to protect the Americans in the valley, and he insisted that it do so at once. Failure to provide that protection, he feared, would result in death for the lot of them.(49)
In the meantime, the Americans in the valley would look to their own defense. By the time that Howard arrived off Tobari Bay, the colonists had sent all but a few of their dependents out of the country, barricaded their homes, and begun preparations for a lengthy siege. Of the original 300 or more American settlers in the valley, only some l00 remained. But those who stayed on were by then adequately armed, situated in strong defensive positions, and supported by a sizeable number of German and Mexican colonists. Moreover, they were all aware of the Raleigh 's continued presence offshore and, since Phillips' indiscretion, of the true nature of her mission as well. They chose, then, to gamble, and the Raleigh was their trump card. They would stay on in the valley regardless of the odds against them.(50)
Clearly, by late spring of 1915, the foreign settlements in Lower Sonora had become more than a mere embarrassment to Mexican and American officials; indeed, they constituted a most serious liability to Washington and to the two Mexican factions as well. So long as they remained, intervention and a major Mexican-American conflict might occur at any time. That fact, in turn, was a matter of acute concern to the president of the United States. Despite his recent threat to impose order throughout the neighboring republic, Woodrow Wilson entertained the most serious misgivings over again intervening below the border. Too, by late June, administration officials had learned of an as yet, ill-defined German scheme to provoke a general war between the United States and Mexico. Already, then, the president had begun to reassess his position with regard to a dictated settlement of the Mexican civil war and to restrain his more aggressive subordinates from any act that might provoke an armed confrontation with Mexico.
Thus when Admiral Howard, dismayed at the recent turn of events in the Yaqui Valley, suddenly reversed his position and called for American occupation of the settlements, Wilson himself acted at once to veto the plan.(51) He thought such a move "unwise," he advised the secretary of the navy, and so too, in retrospect, Lansing's proposal to send a wireless team to the colony. Indeed, he concluded, upon reviewing the overall situation in Mexico, he believed it best to revert to the "original plan of merely offering to bring [the] settlers out."(52) Mexico," he would remark some months later, "believes that we want to possess her. . . . " And she was justified in that belief by the attempts of certain American investors "to exploit her privileges and possessions." For his part, he declared, he would not "serve the ambitions" of those gentlemen.(53) Under no circumstances, it is clear, was the president prepared to employ American troops to secure the property of the likes of Hammond, Watriss, and Whitney, archetypes, in his mind, of the avaricious and exploitative concessionaires that he had denounced from the earliest days of his administration.
Josephus Daniels, of course, wholeheartedly concurred. Adamantly opposed to further intervention in Mexico on any grounds, the secretary had been appalled at the extension of discretionary authority to Admiral Howard.(54) Unquestionably, then, he was delighted with the president's decision and lost no time in transmitting it to the admiral at Tobari Bay.(55) For the moment, at least, the drift toward United States intervention in Sonora had been arrested.
***
Dr. Warrick R. Edwards received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in United States History with a concentration in foreign relations and economic history. His dissertation was "United States-Mexican Relations, 1913-1916: Revolution, Oil, and Intervention." He has taught at Louisiana State University, Newberry College, the University of Southern Mississippi, and Central Florida Community College; he has been affiliated with Tallahassee Community College since 1991. Dr. Edwards is a co-author of the forthcoming Politics and the Penitentiary, a study on the political economy of the Mississippi penal system.
ENDNOTES
1. Ray Stannard Baker and William E. Dodd, eds., The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 6 vols. (New York, 1925-27), 2: 284-86, 340 [hereafter cited as PPWW].
2. Richard Challener, Admirals, Generals, and American Foreign Policy, 1898-1914 (Princeton, NJ, 1973), 382-83; David Cronon, Josephus Daniels in Mexico (Madison, WI, 1960), 10-12.
3. Clifford Trow, "Woodrow Wilson and the Mexican Interventionist Movement of 1919," Journal of American History 58 (June 1971), 57, 66; Richard M. Abrams, "United States Intervention Abroad: The First Quarter Century," American Historical Review 79 (Feb. 1974), 93; Josephus Daniels, The Wilson Era: Years of Peace, 1910-1917 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1944), 439.
4. Ibid.
5. Warrick R. Edwards, "United States-Mexican Relations, 1913-1916: Revolution, Oil, and Intervention," (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Louisiana State University, 1971), 258-70, 277-81, 500-03; P. Edward Holey, Revolution and Intervention. The Diplomacy of Taft and Wilson with Mexico, 1910-1917 (Cambridge, MA, 1970), 245-46.
6. Trow, "Woodrow Wilson and the Mexican Interventionist Movement of 1919," 46-72; Emily Rosenberg, "Economic Pressures in Anglo-American Diplomacy in Mexico," Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 17 (May 1975): 125, 133-34. For specific examples, see Long to Lansing, July 8, 1916, National Archives, Record Group 59, General Records of the Department of State, File number 812.00120688 (hereafter cited as DS followed by file number); and Canova to Lansing, Feb. 14, 1916, Papers of Frank Lyon Polk, Yale University Library.
7. New York Times, June 3, 1915.
8. John Hays Hammond, The Autobiography of John Hays Hammond, 2 vols. (New York, 1935), 2: 741-46; Herbert A. Sibbett, "Facts and Documents Relative to the Development of the Yaqui Valley and Particularly to Davis Richardson," n.d., Compania Constructors Richardson, S. A. Papers, University of Arizona Library; Testimony of Frederic N, Watriss, United States Senate, "Investigation of Mexican Affairs," Preliminary Report and Hearings of the Committee an Foreign Relations, Senate Document No. 285. 2 vols., 66th Cong., 2nd Sess. (Washington, 1920), 1: 426-35.
9. Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960 (Tucson, AZ, 1962), 68-81; Evelyn Hu-Dehart, "Development and Rural Rebellion: Pacification of the Yaquis in the Late Porfiriato," Hispanic-American Historical Review 54 (Feb. 1974), 76-93.
10. Susan M. Deeds, "Jose Maria Maytorena and the Mexican Revolution in Sonora," (Part 1), Arizona and the West 18 (Spr. 1976): 34-36; General Frederick Funston to the Adjutant General, May 19, 1915, DS 812.00/15074.
11. Ibid.; Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, 82-83.
12. Frederick Simpich (consul at Nogales) to Bryan, May 14, 1915, DS 312.11/6008.
13. Charles F. O'Brien to Bryan, May 12, 1915, DS 312.11/5950; Harry Grigsby to George C. Singletary, May 26, 1915, DS 312.11/6208; Herbert A. Sibbett to Bryan, June 10, 1915, DS 312.11/6152; Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1915.
14. Sibbett to Lansing, June 10, 1915, DS 312.11/6152; Commander T. P. Magruder (U.S.S. RALEIGH) to Josephus Daniels, May 26, 1915, DS 812.00/15204.
15. O'Brien to Bryan, May 12, 1915, DS 312.11/5950; W. E. Richardson to Bryan, May 14, 1915, DS 312.11/5963.
16. Bryan to Daniels, May 13, 1915, DS 312.11/5950; Los Angeles Times, May 15, 16, 1915.
17 Ibid.
18. O'Brien to Bryan, May 12, 1915, DS 312.11/5950; Richardson to Bryan, May 14, 1915, DS 312.11/5963.
19. Frederic N. Watriss to William Phillips, June 10, 1915, DS 312.11/6189; Sibbett to Lansing, June 16, 1915, DS 312.11/6312½.
20. "Haley, Revolution and Intervention, 182; Rosenberg, "Economic Pressures in Anglo-American Diplomacy In Mexico," 125, 133-34; Canova to Lansing, Feb. 14, 1916, Polk Papers.
21. Edwards, "United States-Mexican Relations, 1913-1916," 235-56.
22. Howard to Daniels, June 3, 1915, DS 312.11/5804½A; Howard to Daniels, Papers of Josephus Daniels, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Container 109, File: "Special Correspondence, Woodrow Wilson Correspondence with JD."
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.; Lansing to Wilson, June 12, 1915v DS 312.11/5804½A.
26. Watriss to Phillips, June 10, 1915, DS 312.11/6189; Sibbett to Lansing, June 16, 1915, DS 312.11/6312½.
27. Watriss to Phillips, June 10, 1915, DS 312.11/6189.
28. Phillips, to Canova, June 11, 1915, Ibid,; Canova to Phillips, June 11, 1915, Ibid.
29. Lansing to Wilson, June 12, 1915. DS 312.11/5804½A.
30. Wilson to Lansing, June 14, 1915, DS 312.11/5805½.
31. Memorandum, June 15, 1915, Ibid.
32. New York Times, June 17, 1915.
33. Ibid.; Tucson Citizen, June 16, 17, 1915.
34. Ibid.; Daniels to Howard, June 18, 1915, Daniels Papers, Container 537, File: "Mexico, 1915-1917."
35. Phillips to Watriss, June 16, 1915, DS 312.11/6189.
36. Simpich to Bryan , May 21, 1915, DS 312.11/6051.
37. B. F. Brunk to Lansing, June 21, 1915, DS 312.11/6202; Tucson Citizen, June 22, 1915.
38. Phillips to Watriss, June 16, 1915, DS 312.11/6189.
39. Ibid.
40. Sibbett to Lansing, June 16, 1915, DS 312.11/6312½; Tucson Citizen, June 22, 28, 1915.
41. New York Times, June 19, 22, 1915.
42. Simpich to Lansing, June 20, 1915, DS 312.11/6200; Tucson Citizen, June 20, 1915; New York Times, June 22, 1915.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid., Tucson Citizen, June 22, 1915; Daniels to Howard, June 18, 1915, Daniels Papers, Container 537, File: "Mexico, 1915-1917."
45. Tucson Citizen, June 19, 191 5; New York Times, June 20, 1915.
46. Ibid., June 23, 1915; Howard to Daniels, June 21, 1915, Daniels Papers, Container 537, File: "Mexico, 1915-1917."
47. New York Times, June 23, 1915.
48. Ibid.
49. Singletary to Lansing, June 24, 1915, DS 312.11/6224.
50. Tucson Citizen, June 22, 1915; New York Times, June 23, 1915.
51. Wilson to Daniels, June 28, 1915, Daniels Papers, Box 109, File: "Special Correspondence, Woodrow Wilson Correspondence with JD."
52. Ibid.
53. PPWW, 2: 231.
54. Cronon, Josephus Daniels in Mexico, 10_ 1 2.
55. Daniels to Wilson, June 28, 1915, Daniels Papers, Box 109, File: "Special Correspondence, Woodrow Wilson Correspondence with JD."