On May 14, 1880, Democratic Senator William W. Eaton of Connecticut read a memorial from Davis Hatch, who had been arrested in Santo Domingo in 1868 and was requesting reimbursement for the financial losses he said resulted from his imprisonment. According to Hatch, he was jailed on false charges and was going to be released, but Babcock, who was on the island in 1869 during negotiations for the proposed annexation treaty, interfered with Hatch's release and was complicit in Hatch being sentenced to a five-month prison term. Republican Senator Roscoe Conkling defended Babcock, saying that the Senate investigating committee's 1870 majority report fully exonerated him and that Eaton raised the issue only to try giving Democrats an advantage in an election year.