Mr. Blaine to Mr. Coleman.
Washington, February 17, 1892.
Sir: Your No. 384, of the 26th ultimo, in relation to the application for a passport made to your legation by Mr. Julius C. Eversmann, has been received.
Born at Hickman, Ky., in 1842, of a German father, who resided in the United States from 1839 to 1846, and who is said to have been naturalized, although no evidence thereof is presented. Mr. Eversmann was taken [Page 180] in 1846, at the age of 4 years, to Germany, where he resided for eighteen years or until he was 22 years old. In 1864 he went to Mexico, where he remained for fifteen years, residing much of the time at Matamoras. In 1879 he returned to Germany, where he has since resided. He appears at sometime prior to May 17, 1886, to have received a United States passport, but the time and place of its issuance can not now be ascertained. No record can be found of its having been issued by the Department, as stated in your dispatch.
Mr. Eversmann held the office of vice-consul at Düsseldorf (not Barmen) from 1886 to 1889. In his dispatch nominating him for appointment the consul, Mr. D. J. Partello, stated that Mr. Eversinann had “resided nearly all his life in America and is an American citizen.” This somewhat loose statement conveys an impression inconsistent with the facts as now set forth; for since his birth, in 1842, Mr. Eversmann appears to have resided in the United States only during the first four years of infancy, and in Mexico for fifteen years after he became of age, leaving some thirty years as the total term of his residence in Germany. He attained his majority in Germany and since then appears not to have resided at any time in the United States. It is to be noticed that when he first quitted Germany, in 1864, at the age of 22, and while the war of secession was in progress, he took up his residence in Mexico, across the border from a State not occupied by the forces of the United States, and the inference is strong that in so doing he had no purpose of fulfilling the duties of citizenship to the country of which he now claims protection as a citizen.
You say that “while willing to take the oath of allegiance, Mr. Eversmann frankly declares that he can not comply with the requirement that the applicant shall swear that he intends to return to the United States, as he has no purpose whatever of doing so.”
Under the uniform ruling of this Department this latter declaration sufficiently excludes the issuance of a passport to Mr. Eversmann. All other facts in his case, so far as known, tend to confirm the belief that at no time since his coming of age has Mr. Eversmann performed the duties of citizenship, and he should be held as having abandoned his right to the protection of the United States.
Your action in declining to issue a passport to Mr. Eversmann is approved.
I am, etc,