was poor. In Latin America the U.S. was represented in some countries, not in others. Until consul Hopkins arrived the United States did not have any kind of representation in Asunción. When it had needed to, it sent a diplomat from Buenos Aires. The quality of this part-time representation could be poor. The mistakes that got into the U.S.-Paraguay treaty of friendship did so because of the carelessness of one of those visitors, who cannot have proof-read the document. Hopkins, the first U.S. consul, got the post because nobody else applied. After he left the job of representing America was given to Lieutenant Page, effectively a persona non grata in Paraguay, who was anyway a junior naval officer with no diplomatic aptitude. In one assessment, "The dispatch of a strong American task force to bring Paraguay to book was the culmination of fifteen years of diplomatic futility". President Buchanan's motives There was no public pressure for action against Paraguay; newspaper coverage was sparse and, if anything, adverse to Hopkins and Page. The Water Witch incident was almost forgotten in public consciousness when, three years later, it was suddenly revived by President Buchanan in his first annual message to Congress. It is not certain that Buchanan himself believed his complaints were valid. He personally knew something about Hopkins' track record; he presumably knew that Secretary of State Marcy had thought Lieutenant Jeffers was probably to blame for the Fort Itapirú incident; and it could be guessed why President López might be unwilling to ratify a treaty of friendship. Yet the Paraguay expedition was despatched "without bothering about a real investigation of the rather complicated antecedents of the trouble". Several authors have thought Buchanan had an ulterior motive. "The reason for the sending of the expedition plainly lies outside the scope of American-Paraguayan relations". One theory is that Buchanan sent the Paraguay expedition to distract American public opinion from the domestic problems that plagued his presidency. "Stymied on the domestic front, Buchanan looked to the foreign policy area... President Buchanan hoped to restore national unity by sending a large fleet to Paraguay to gain redress for alleged wrongs done to American honor. That did not occur and the nation ultimately descended into a brutal civil war. Another interpretation is that Buchanan wanted to demonstrate that "the United States had the will and the power to enforce the Monroe Doctrine". Still another is