The Baltimore crisis, also known as the Baltimore affair or the Valparaíso incident, was a diplomatic crisis between Chile and the United States that arose after the Chilean Civil War of 1891, at a moment of growing American assertiveness in the Pacific coast region of Latin America. It was triggered when a mob attacked a group of sailors from the protected cruiser outside the True Blue Saloon in the port of Valparaíso on October 16, 1891, leaving two American sailors dead and roughly seventeen wounded. The incident, compounded by unrelated disputes over diplomatic asylum and the seizure of the rebel arms ship Itata, pushed the two countries to the brink of war before Chile apologized and paid a $75,000 indemnity in early 1892.
The crisis marked a turning point in Chile–United States relations. Chile, fresh from its victory in the War of the Pacific and possessing the strongest navy on the Pacific coast of the Americas, had for a decade been able to defy Washington's wishes; the Baltimore affair instead demonstrated the willingness of President Benjamin Harrison's administration, informed by the naval theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan, to threaten force to defend American prestige in the hemisphere. Argentina's foreign minister, Estanislao Zeballos, reportedly offered Buenos Aires's support to a prospective American invasion of northern Chile, an episode that has since been debated by historians in both countries. Many historians view the crisis as an early demonstration of the United States' emergence as a hemispheric and eventually a world power.
Background
In 1884, Chile emerged from the War of the Pacific as a potential threat to the hegemony of the United States in the Western Hemisphere.William Sater, Chile and the United States: Empires in Conflict, Athens, GA; University of Georgia Press, p.51 The Chilean Navy, then the strongest fleet in the Pacific, was able to confront American policy: in 1882 Chile had refused United States mediation in the war with Peru and Bolivia, and during the Panama crisis of 1885, when the U.S. Navy occupied Colón, the Chilean government sent its most powerful cruiser to Panama City with orders not to withdraw until American forces had evacuated. In 1888 Chile annexed Easter Island, roughly west of Valparaíso, joining the ranks of imperial powers. Resentment toward the United States also dated from the early 1880s, when Secretary of State James G. Blaine had openly backed Peru against Chile during the War of the Pacific and later tried, unsuccessfully, to mediate a settlement.
By 1891, however, the balance of power in the Pacific had begun to shift. The United States possessed growing naval power and, more significantly,William Sater, Chile and the United States: Empires in Conflict, 1990 by the University of Georgia Press, , page 66: 'particularly Alfred Thayer Mahan's blue water boys- bristled with joy at the prospect of unleashing their recently acquired naval weapons against Santiago applied the theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan to secure its growing influence in Latin America through shows of naval force.William Sater, Chile and the United States: Empires in Conflict, 1990 by the University of Georgia Press, , page 64: It became clear that Harrison saw the issue as a matter of American prestige:"We must protect those who, in foreign ports, display the flag or wear the colors of this government against insult, brutality, and death, inflicted in resentement of the acts of their government ..."
Chilean Civil War and the Itata incident During the Chilean Civil War, a conflict between President José Manuel Balmaceda and the Chilean Congress, the Balmaceda government retained the loyalty of the army while the Congress won over the navy. The American government openly favored Balmaceda and enforced a ban on arms exports to the congressional forces, a policy partly supported by the United Kingdom. Facing a shortage of weapons, the congressional rebels purchased arms in San Diego, California, and loaded them aboard the Chilean steamer Itata. When the ship evaded U.S. customs and sailed for Chile, Washington dispatched a squadron, including , to intercept it; the American ships reached Iquique ahead of Itata, and after the congressional victory the new Chilean government itself ordered the vessel back to San Diego to face the outstanding charges. These events, and the tension they created, badly damaged relations between Washington and the congressional faction that took power in Chile in 1891.
During the war, the American-owned Central and South American Cable Company, acting on Balmaceda's orders, restored submarine telegraph service between Santiago and Lima while severing the cable connection to congressional headquarters, further souring relations with the eventual victors.
In addition, the U.S. minister in Santiago, Patrick Egan, granted diplomatic asylum to congressional leaders during the fighting and, after Balmaceda's defeat in August 1891, to defeated Balmacedist officials and supporters who took refuge in the U.S. legation. The victorious congressional government demanded that Egan surrender these refugees; he refused, and through early October 1891 pressed instead for safe conducts allowing them to leave the country, a dispute that kept relations between Egan and the new government at a boil in the days before the Baltimore incident. From the point of view of the victorious congressionalists, the United States had tried to stop them from purchasing weapons, denied them access to international telegraph traffic, and refused to surrender men they regarded as war criminals.
The Valparaíso incident
On October 16, 1891, Captain Winfield Scott Schley of USS Baltimore, anchored in Valparaíso after months at sea, granted shore leave to some 117 of his sailors. The decision was risky: relations between Chile and the United States were already strained, and Baltimore itself was viewed with suspicion by many Chileans because it had earlier helped evacuate defeated Balmacedist officials to Peru.
That evening, groups of sailors visited several bars along Valparaíso's waterfront. At the "True Blue" saloon, a brawl broke out between American sailors and a group of Chilean dockworkers and sailors; according to Chilean police reports, the fight began after an American sailor spat on a portrait of Arturo Prat, a Chilean naval hero of the War of the Pacific, that hung on the wall. The disturbance quickly spread through the streets of the port and lasted more than an hour, with sailors, boatmen, and townspeople joining in and objects including stones and clubs used as weapons.
Boatswain's Mate Charles W. Riggin was killed outright—American witnesses maintained he was shot by a Chilean policeman or soldier rather than stabbed—and coal-heaver William Turnbull was gravely wounded; Turnbull died several weeks later, apparently of blood poisoning that developed from inadequate antiseptic treatment of his wounds in a Valparaíso hospital rather than directly from the injuries themselves. Several other sailors, including Carpenter's Mate John Hamilton, Landsman John H. Davidson, Seaman Apprentice John W. Talbot, and coal-heavers Jerry Anderson and George Panter, were seriously stabbed. In all, two sailors were killed and seventeen or eighteen were wounded. Chilean police arrested dozens of participants from both sides, including about forty American sailors, most of whom were later released.
Schley convened a board of inquiry aboard Baltimore within days, which concluded that the attack had been unprovoked and possibly coordinated. Chilean investigators, by contrast, treated the episode chiefly as a drunken brawl and initially rejected American protests; Chile's foreign minister publicly criticized the United States for what he considered excessive interference in what Chilean officials saw as an ordinary criminal matter for the Chilean courts to resolve.
Diplomatic escalation
The new Chilean government, led by President Jorge Montt and Foreign Minister Manuel Antonio Matta, insisted that the matter first had to run its course through Chile's independent judiciary, then investigating the riot under judge E. Foster Recabarren in Valparaíso, and that the executive branch could not intervene in that process. Acting U.S. Secretary of State William F. Wharton instructed Egan to tell the Chilean government that the American sailors had been unarmed, had not provoked the attack, and had been arrested by police instead of protected by them, and that Washington considered the episode an act of hostility toward the United States. A separate dispute arose in November 1891 over Patrick Shields, an Irish-born sailor from a U.S. merchant ship whom Egan claimed had been beaten without provocation by Chilean police; Matta responded that Shields, found in poor condition, had in fact been treated with compassion, and that in any case he was a British subject and not an American citizen.
Tensions deepened through December. President Harrison, in his December 9, 1891, annual message to Congress, drew heavily on Schley's and Egan's accounts of the riot and criticized Chile for its handling of the affair. Matta drafted a sharp rebuttal for transmission through Chile's representative in Washington, Pedro Montt, accusing Harrison of factual errors and unwarranted provocations; Pedro Montt, wary of a diplomatic rupture, withheld the message, but its contents were leaked to and published in full by the Santiago newspaper El Ferrocarril, embarrassing both governments. On December 10, Baltimore was ordered to leave Valparaíso; it was ultimately replaced on station by USS Yorktown, under Commander Robley D. Evans, who awaited word on whether the crisis would end in settlement or war.
A conciliatory turn followed on January 1, 1892, when the Chilean government replaced Matta as foreign minister with the more moderate Luis Pereira Cotapos, who met cordially with Egan and eased restrictions on the Balmacedist refugees still sheltering in the U.S. legation. On January 8, a Chilean court indicted three Chileans and one American sailor for their roles in the riot, effectively finding the American sailors largely blameless. That apparent progress was undercut on January 20, when the Chilean government—still smarting over Egan's earlier conduct—called for his removal as U.S. minister, a demand Washington flatly rejected.
Argentine involvement
At the height of the crisis, Argentina's foreign minister, Estanislao Zeballos, is reported to have offered material and diplomatic support to the United States for a possible invasion of northern Chile, including the use of Argentine territory in Salta and Tucumán for provisioning American forces, coal for U.S. warships, and intelligence on Chilean naval and military strength. According to the U.S. minister in Buenos Aires, Zeballos suggested that a U.S. squadron seizing the northern Chilean port of Antofagasta could draw agricultural supplies from Salta and use the Río de la Plata estuary as a staging base, with American troops crossing Argentine territory en route to Chile. The overture came only after Blaine believed the crisis was nearly resolved, and the State Department did not pursue it.
Zeballos later denied that he had proposed a military alliance, insisting his approach to Washington had been strictly informal and that he had in fact warned American officials that an attack on Chile would be viewed unfavorably across South America. Chilean and Argentine historians have debated the episode ever since, with Argentine scholars generally seeking to minimize Zeballos's role and Chilean historians treating the archival record of his contacts with Washington as substantially reliable. Whatever their extent, Zeballos's overtures left Argentina's own relations with Chile strained for years afterward.
Ultimatum