“Sam Ward’s Bargain”: A Tentative Reconsideration

Abstract

IN 1860 A DECISION of the United States and Paraguayan Arbitration Commission settled the last in a series of disputes that had brought the two countries perilously close to an armed confrontation.' The commissioners ruled that the Paraguayan government had not acted unjustly in expelling from its soil the American-owned United States and Paraguay Navigation Company, and they dismissed the company's claim for one million dollars in compensation.2 A fascinating aspect of the maneuvers that led to the decision was the role played by Sam Ward, one of the most skilled American lobbyists in the nineteenth century. Historians have recounted many other chapters in his intriguing career,3 but this one was overlooked until 1954, when Pablo Max Ynsfran revealed in the pages of this journal that Carlos Antonio Lopez, the Paraguayan dictator, secretly hired Ward to work against the claim of the navigation company.4 A perusal of the evidence, however, suggests that the company officials were indeed aware of the Ward-Lo'pez connection and that Ward was later appointed to the arbitration commission for just this reason. What proof is there to support such a contention? It seems most unlikely that Ward could have kept all his activities on behalf of