In these circumstances of the political debility of the Republic of Nicaragua, and when its inhabitants were exhausted by long-continued civil war between parties neither of them strong enough to overcome the other or permanently maintain internal tranquillity, one of the contending factions of the Republic invited the assistance and cooperation of a small body of citizens of the United States from the State of California, whose presence, as it appears, put an end at once to civil war and restored apparent order throughout the territory of Nicaragua, with a new administration, having at its head a distinguished individual, by birth a citizen of the Republic, D. Patricio Rivas, as its provisional President.

It is the established policy of the United States to recognize all governments without question of their source or their organization, or of the means by which the governing persons attain their power, provided there be a government de facto accepted by the people of the country, and with reserve only of the time as to the recognition of revolutionary governments arising out of the subdivision of parent states with which we are in relations of amity.  We do not go behind the fact of a foreign government exercising actual power to investigate questions of legitimacy; we do not inquire into the causes which may have led to a change of government.  To us it is indifferent whether a successful revolution has been aided by foreign intervention or not; whether insurrection has overthrown existing government, and another has been established in its place according to preexisting forms or in a manner adopted for the occasion by those whom we may find in the actual possession of power.  All these matters we leave to the people and public authorities of the particular country to determine; and their determination, whether it be by positive action or by ascertained acquiescence, is to us a sufficient warranty of the legitimacy of the new government.

During the sixty-seven years which have elapsed since the establishment of the existing Government of the United States, in all which time this Union has maintained undisturbed domestic tranquillity, we have had occasion to recognize governments de facto, founded either by domestic revolution or by military invasion from abroad, in many of the Governments of Europe.

It is the more imperatively necessary to apply this rule to the Spanish American Republics, in consideration of the frequent and not seldom anomalous changes of organization or administration which they undergo and the revolutionary nature of most of these changes, of which the recent series of revolutions in the Mexican Republic is an example, where five successive revolutionary governments have made their appearance in the course of a few months and been recognized successively, each as the political power of that country, by the United States.