pecuniary compensation whatever, in all the premises. In his detailed reasons Cave Johnson alluded to the "enormous, if not criminal exaggeration of the demands of this company". Hence the company, which could have got $250,000 if Bowlin had had a free hand, received nothing. Cost of the expedition The Paraguay expedition cost perhaps $3 million. The cost of chartering and refitting the steamers and supplying them with coal and stores alone amounted to $486,256.57. Disinformation In his memoirs President Buchanan said his administration's foreign policy met with "great and uncommon success", instancing the Paraguay expedition. Exaggerating the extent to which U.S. ships approached Asunción, he claimed Paraguay issued "ample apologies", even though Paraguay had not apologized at all. He mentioned that Paraguay paid $10,000 for the deceased helmsman, but not that his administration had demanded $500,000 minimum for the Rhode Island company, which got nothing. As for the costs of the expedition, It is a remarkable fact in our history, that its entire expenses were defrayed out of the ordinary appropriations for the naval service. Not a dollar was appropriated by Congress for this purpose, unless we may except the sum of $289,000 for the purchase of seven small steamers of light draft, worth more than their cost, and which were afterwards usefully employed in the ordinary naval service.The Republican Congressional Committee riposted that "The expense of the naval service of Mr. Buchanan's past two years is almost twenty-seven millions, doubling that of Mr. Madison's naval expenses during the war with Great Britain, when the glory of our flag of stars illuminated the ocean". Some elements of the disinformation of the time innocently got into mainstream works, even surviving to the present day. The fate of José Berges The ultimate fate of José Berges, Paraguay's arbitrator and briber of Sam Ward, was not a happy one. In the War of Paraguay against the Triple Alliance (1865-70) the country was governed by López's son, Francisco Solano. When the war was going badly for Paraguay, José Berges, like many other prominent Paraguayans, was accused of treason. They were arrested, brought to the town of San Fernando, severely tortured (Berges was "reduced to groveling idiocy"), forced to confess to a conspiracy that probably never existed, and shot. Persistence Buchanan refused to accept the arbitrators' award, arguing that they had no power to award no damages at all. In 1861 President Lincoln sent Charles