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 MEXICO. 
 
 ITS REVOLUTIONS: 
 
 ARE THEY EVIDENCES OF RETROGRESSION 
 OR OF PROGRESS? 
 
 HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL REVIEW, 
 
 GEORGE E. CHURCH. 
 
 REVISED ERflll THE NEW YORK HERALD OE MAY '25TH, 1 8(5(5 
 
 NEW YOTCK : 
 
 15 A K K U A- ( i O I ) \\ IN, P R I X T V. K S 
 
 IMllNTINfMlorSK SljT U!K, 
 
 1 S(H').
 
 ME T ICO. 
 
 ITS REVOLUTIONS; 
 
 ARE THEY EVIDENCES OF RETROGRESSION 
 OR OF PROGRESS? 
 
 HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL REVIEW, 
 
 GEORGE E. CHURCH. 
 
 REVISED FROM THE NEW YORK HERALD OF MAY 25TH, 1866. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 BAKER <fc GODWIN, PRINTERS, 
 
 PRINTING-HOUSE SQUAEE. 
 
 1866.
 
 * # * NUMEROUS applications for a pamphlet edition of my 
 " Historical Review of Mexico" have induced me to revise that 
 which appeared in the NEW YORK HERALD of May 
 25th, 1866. 
 
 For a clearer understanding of the subject, many details 
 have been introduced, appertaining to the period from the 
 " Revolution of Ayutla " to the French invasion; for it was 
 during that time that the great principles for which .the coun- 
 try had been battling were raising their heads above the 
 revolutionary surges which had so long deluged the land. A 
 supplement has also been added, containing some of the later 
 political developments relative to Mexico. 
 
 GEORGE E. CHURCH. 
 PROVIDENCE, R. I., 
 July 4th, 1866.
 
 MEXICO : 
 
 Jfis lUtoltiifotts : &n %g (^bifrentes oi ^iwQnt&wn xrr 
 
 A HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL REVIEW. 
 
 PAKT I. 
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF MEXICO HER COMMERCIAL ADVAN- 
 TAGES THE TRADE CURRENTS OF THE WORLD CLIMATE, 
 SOIL, ETC. HER KEVOLUTIONS ELEMENTS OF PROGRESS 
 ERA OF THE SPANISH CONQUEST OCCUPATION OF THE NEW 
 WORLD GOVERNMENT OF THE VICEROYS LAWS OF THE 
 INDIES EDUCATION. 
 
 From the peculiar and commanding geographical position 
 of Mexico, there is, perhaps, no country in the world destined 
 to play a more important role in the history of mankind. Sit- 
 uated midway between supply and demand, she stands like a 
 barrier, interrupting and claiming tribute from modern Euro- 
 pean civilization on the east and ancient Asiatic civilization on 
 the west. At her western doors she may bathe her commercial 
 enterprise in the products of Japan, China, India, Australia, 
 and all the islands of the Pacific. To the eastward, the vast 
 wave of progressive civilization is fast rolling onward towards 
 her shore, bearing with it the demands for ceaseless activity, 
 and the germs of national development. It is upon her terri- 
 tory that the wave of empire, which has for so many centuries 
 been sweeping westward, reaches the confines of that great sea 
 
 304822
 
 r 
 
 from whose westeri. o^ure it parted. Northward she enjoys the 
 immediate contact of the wonderful national progress of the 
 great republic, while to the southward, within easy reach, lie 
 the trade and wealth of South America. There is not a com- 
 mercial country in the world which she cannot reach by easy 
 water communication and in almost a straight line. 
 
 With such a magnificent geographical position, there should 
 spring up great cities and commercial centers upon her terri- 
 tory ; for, as commerce advances, it will place her, with reference 
 to the modern trade of the world, in nearly the same position 
 that Syria, Mesopotamia, and the whole of Western Persia 
 occupied to its ancient trade. It was the East Indian and 
 European trade currents, flowing over these countries, which 
 gave birth to the cities of Selucia, Palmyra, Sidon, and her 
 colony, Tyre. The same causes, later, forced into notice Byzan- 
 tium and Alexandria, made Home and Carthage centres of dis- 
 tribution for East Indian products, and gave Venice wealth and 
 power to turn back the Ottoman sword from Europe. 
 
 No better illustration of the importance of occupying a 
 central position, with reference to the great trade currents, can 
 be selected than by the comparison of Europe in the latter part 
 of the fifteenth with the beginning of the sixteenth century. 
 In 1498 her whole Indian commerce flowed westward from its 
 Asiatic sources through the old laborious channels to the eastern 
 shore of the Mediterranean, where the merchants of Genoa and 
 Venice became its principal European distributors. Every 
 Mediterranean port resounded to the hum of commercial life. 
 Suddenly the tide was turned ; Vasco de Gama, retracing the 
 track made by Pharaoh Necho's Phoenician ships twenty 
 centuries before, rolled away the barriers to great com- 
 mercial development, and ordered Europe henceforth to look to 
 the Atlantic coast for centers of East Indian supply. The whole 
 Atlantic seaboard immediately sprang to meet the 'demands 
 made upon it, and to reap the civilizing influences caused by an 
 intense forcing of mental activity to supply the wants of rival 
 commercial interests, and gather the new harvest laid at the 
 feet of Western Europe. It was like a desert simoon to the 
 Mediterranean ports ; the great Nile of Asiatic commerce, 
 which had annually borne in its tide the segregated wealth of 
 the Indies, had changed its course, and now poured its wealth 
 around the Cape of Good Hope and through the dreaded portals 
 of Hercules. The Mediterranean ports which had throve upon 
 its bounty suddenly sunk into mere local importance ; or, no 
 longer imbibing its fructifying power, became, like Venice, a 
 mournful wreck of their former splendor. The world now 
 breathed westward. Wafted in its breath, the great trade cur-
 
 rents are now fast settling their foci upon the northern half of 
 the New World, and point unerringly to a culmination in Mex- 
 ico ; for, as they have advanced westward, constantly nearing 
 the great source of supply, and constantly having more demand 
 to the east of them, the cities with which they have been preg- 
 nant have risen to opulence and grandeur in proportion to their 
 ability to intercept and distribute the waves of wealth flowing 
 past them. 
 
 Mexico, so favorably situated, must then have at her com-\ 
 mand more elements than any other country ever before pos- ' 
 sessed for the building up of a mighty people. Under the 
 colonial rule of Spain, the advantages which she possessed for a 
 direct trade with the Indies were not overlooked, and her splen- 
 did harbor of Acapulco, upon the western coast, became the 
 great center of East India commerce, not only for all the Span- 
 ish-American possessions, but even for the mother country, who 
 found it to her advantage to ship direct to the Indies, from the 
 Mexican mines,that silver which the Asiatics so largely demand 
 in exchange for their products ; while, from Acapulco, many of 
 the East India goods, crossing the country by the great national 
 road to Yera Cruz, were reshipped to supply the demand in old 
 Spain. 
 
 Added to the blessings of geographical position, there is, 
 internally, no country in the world which surpasses Mexico in 
 the natural blessings of climate, fertile soil, and opportunities 
 for the development of agricultural, pastoral, and mineral 
 wealth. While under a united people her military position 
 would be almost invulnerable. Thus preeminent among the 
 countries of the world, she occupies a superior position for 
 great national development, homogeneousness, and intense con- 
 centration of the elements of stability. 
 
 In making this statement we are not unmindful of the refined 
 horrors entailed upon her by Spanish misrule, nor its zealous 
 cultivation into still more bitter fruit by the Mexican clergy : it 
 is this which has prevented her from making use of those mag- 
 nificent advantages which Heaven has conferred upon her. 
 Mexico has been too much derided by the world for her misfor- 
 tunes. Our countrymen are too fond of having her painted 
 writhing under the miseries from which for a half century she 
 has been trying to shake herself free. We have been too willing 
 to compare her woes with the happiness of our own country, 
 which was born under different circumstances ; for, while every- 
 thing aided us in our national advancement, she drank the 
 bitterest dregs that were ever poured out for the mental crush- 
 ing of a people. 
 
 But, in speaking of her chances in the great march of nations,
 
 we are looking into the future, when this Mexican chaos shall 
 have cooled down, and the volcanic elements so rudely stirred 
 to action by her priesthood shall find outlet in more peaceful 
 pursuits ; when that great cloud of fifteenth century darkness 
 which found its Spanish-American focus in Mexico shall be 
 swept away by the advancing sun of modern civilization, and 
 her people," freed from the incubus of a long night of bigoted 
 religious misrule, may really develop their unexampled oppor- 
 tunities for national prosperity. 
 
 The insurrectionary outbreaks which have so long desolated 
 the Spanish- American countries are necessary to their progress 
 in the direction of civilization ; at each new revolt, some griev- 
 ance, some curse which the rule of old Spain inflicted upon 
 them, is thrown into its grave, and the next uprising buries it 
 completely. 'No one who has not lived in Spanish- American 
 countries and studied their colonial history, can judge of the 
 depth of the flood of entailed woes in which they have had to 
 float their republican arks for a half century, until the subsid- 
 ing revolutionary surges might give them some hope of rest. 
 Nor does history present instances in European progress where 
 so much misrule has been shaken off so quickly. 
 
 In all the Spanish- American republics, it will be found as a 
 rule that, in proportion to their distance from Mexico, the great 
 center of Spanish- American Catholic power, so has been their 
 progress in civilization since their war of independence ; for the 
 great prime causes, especially in Mexico, of the numerous revo- 
 lutions, have been the attempts of the progressive portio"n of 
 her people to shake themselves free from the crushing rule of 
 the clergy. But circumstances far back in the history of Spain, 
 and having more direct and powerfully drawn lines of cause and 
 effect than most historical events, conspired to turn Spanish 
 character into a tide that spent its full and culminating force 
 upon the American colonies. 
 
 !3j)ain, at the very date of the discovery of America, was 
 taking breath after the most terrible religious war on record. 
 It had taken nearly eight hundred years for the flow and ebb 
 of the Moslem tide, and in that time the whole nation had 
 received an intensely concentrated religious education in a 
 single given direction. Spain was the great battle-ground, the 
 bulwark of Catholicism against the more tolerant Moslem faith, 
 whose cimeters, having carved their way across her territory, 
 were threatening to rest on the plains of Italy, under the 
 shadows of the Moslem standards which were advancing west- 
 ward. Spurred on by all the fiery fanaticism which the Catho-
 
 lie faith could inspire, the whole nation lost itself in a single 
 idea, and became the mighty exponent of Catholic militant 
 power in western Europe. As war rolled on, and shock after 
 shock baptized the Cross in Moslem blood, the mind of Spain 
 lost its balance ; every element of the intellect was forced into 
 the channel of religious fervor, until Spain became educated to 
 engraft upon jier moral code the most revolting crimes.* Relig- 
 ious fanaticism, true to its instincts to enslave, not to cultivate, 
 the intellect, step by step crushed out every ennobling influence, 
 until the former generosity of Spanish character lost itself in 
 the darkness which advanced southward with their armies. 
 The wild tide, while it hurled back the Moors and drowned 
 human progress in its waves, at length reached the Spanish 
 Jews, who, with all their advancement in civilization, refine- 
 ment, and wealth, bent to the blast which seemed to drive civ- 
 ilization to the shelter of the Crescent. At length came the 
 Inquisition, to enthrone itself upon the ruin, fit sovereign to 
 crush out the last spark of intellectual opposition to religious 
 fanaticism, and in the wild wreck to sway the destinies of a 
 people. 
 
 The rulers of Spain were at that time the monks and inquisitors. 
 Their sovereign, the exponent of a religious idea, turned the 
 thunderbolts m his power to- the task of the upholding of the 
 Cross and the overthrow of the heretic. The whole country 
 became a vast monastery, in which the stormy elements of the 
 times swayed natures as potent for religion, ambition and ava- 
 rice as ever figured in history ; and all these elments swayed by 
 the Roman pontiff became in his hands the lash with which he 
 scourged Europe. The brain of Spain, at all times powerful 
 in the direction of its education, proved what mighty efforts man 
 can make when his forces are led in a given direction. The 
 period produced some of the most extraordinary men of history, 
 and though we lament the talent which, perverted, flooded all 
 opposition to its inclinations, we can but admire the genius 
 which could spring from such elements and wield such power 
 with so much success. 
 
 Suddenly the barriers which had for so many centuries held 
 in check the flood of religious fervor were no more. Swept 
 southward by the fanatical torrent, the Moors had disappeared 
 across the Mediterranean, and Spain was at length free from 
 
 * " Any one, it was said, might conscientiously kill an apostate whenever he 
 could meet him. There was some doubt whether a man might slay his own 
 father, if a heretic or infidel, but none whatever as to his right, in that event, 
 to take away the life of his son or his brother." Prescott's Ferdinand and Isa- 
 bella, vol. 2, p. 451.
 
 8 
 
 civilization and the Crescent the spiritual fervor was at a 
 loss where to vent its fury ; the national mind, missing its ac- 
 customed recreation, turned its forces wherever the sanctity of 
 the Cross was to be upheld, and found employment under Car- 
 dinal Ximenes, in a campaign against the Moors of Northern 
 Africa, or, later still, against Splyman the Magnificent, in 
 Hungary, and the crushing of Protestantism in Germany. But 
 this was not enough for the occupation of all Ihe turbulent 
 spirits to which eight centuries of warfare had given birth. 
 They sighed for a wider field, and as if destiny had fixed the 
 proper moment, the ships of Columbus brought back the tidings 
 of the wonderful New v^orld which was to become a curse to 
 Spain, of the vast fields which were open for the planting of the 
 Cross and the propagation of the faith. The stories of untold 
 treasures to be gained there expanded like wave ripples, and 
 pandering to the cupidity of the mind linked its two most pow- 
 erful forces, religion ana avarice. The brain of Spain became 
 a vast crucible in which the fiery Spanish imagination melted 
 down the wealth of the New World and threw its power into 
 the religious idea that still swayed the nation. The conquest 
 of Mexico by Cortez, the boldest Jilibustero of his time, and the 
 overthrow of the Empire of the Incas by his cousin, Pizarro, 
 with the tide of treasure which immediately poured into Spain, 
 inflamed to a still higher degree the imagination which had been 
 tame in its estimates of results. To the Spaniard the new sun 
 which shimmered in the west was full of opulent empires only 
 awaiting the Cross and sword of some bold adventurer to build 
 a mighty family upon their ruins. 
 
 Expeditions launched out in quick succession and headed 
 toward the New World. They were composed of hardy sol- 
 diers who had bronzed their faces in the wars of Italy under 
 the great captain, or.in the wars of Spain against the Moors ; 
 of Hidalgos of all classes ; from the noble with royal blood 
 to the " Hidalgo de Bragueta ; " and while they drew into their 
 wild excitement much of the best blood of the Peninsula, they 
 also furnished an outlet for much of the most turbulent and un- 
 principled element of the Spanish population. The first expe- 
 ditions were generally of a better class than the emigration 
 which followed. The countries being all occupied or appor- 
 tioned to Adalantados there was left no inducement to men to 
 organize such knightly expeditions as Pedro de Mendoza fitted 
 at nis own cost and led to the conquest of the La Plata region 
 in ISS^/Mendoza in this expedition agreed to take with nim 
 ofie thousand men, well armed and equipped, with physicians 
 for the sick, and a number of missionaries for the conversion of 
 the Indians. The latter point was particularly insisted upon by
 
 the Emperor. Not even the salary of an Adalantado two 
 thousand ducats per year was to be claimed by Mendoza. It 
 was, moreover, especially stipulated in his contract that if any 
 sovereign prince should fall into his hands his ransom, although 
 belonging by law to the Emperor, should be divided among the 
 congmstadores, deducting only the royal fifth. It was by such 
 contracts as this that the New World was apportioned to the 
 adventurous spirits of the times. To indicate the intense ac- 
 tivity of the Spanish mind in the direction of America, it may 
 be stated that, so soon as the terms of the contract were promul- 
 gated, crowds of all classes presented themselves. No less than 
 fifty grandees and gentlemen of distinction took part in this ex- 
 pedition. Among them was Don Juan de Osorio, who had 
 gained great renown in the wars of Italy ; Don Diego de Men- 
 doza, a brother of the Adalantado, and who was named Admiral 
 of the fleet ; Juan de Ayolas, Don Domingo Martinez, after- 
 wards a famous poet ; Francisco de Mendoza, major domo of 
 the King of the Romans, and Don Carlos Dubin, foster brother 
 of the Emperor ; all volunteers led bv the spirit of adventure 
 and the desire of riches. The multitude desirous to embark 
 became so great that it was necessary to sail before the ap- 
 pointed day ; and when the account was taken of the number 
 on board the fourteen vessels which composed the fleet, it was 
 found that instead of the one thousand men for which Mendoza 
 had stipulated, there were twenty-five hundred Spaniards and 
 one hundred and fifty Germans, besides the crews of the ves- 
 sels.* 
 
 % It did not appear to be the policy of Spain to found agricul- 
 tural dependencies. The New World, in its earlier develop- 
 ments, was considered a vast treasure-house of the precious 
 metals. The expeditions of Hernando Cortez and Francisco 
 Pizarro had demonstrated the truth of the theory, and Spain 
 acted upon this principle, expecting in return for her expeditions 
 not agricultural but mineral products. Wherever agricultural 
 settlements were formed, as on the banks of the La Plata, they 
 were the results of the disappointed hopes of the conquistadores, 
 who, failing in their attemps to realize their golden dreams, had 
 been forced to cultivate the lands around them to sustain life. 
 
 The conquest of the country, whether to glut their avarice 
 or- religious bigotry, was the prime object ; and they carried it 
 onward with a courage and perseverance which the sole exer- 
 cise of the two most powerful elements of the mind could bring 
 to bear for the object in view. The tide of conquest, after des- 
 olating Mexico, swept across the Isthmus of Panama and over- 
 
 * See Sir W. Parish's Rio de la Plata.
 
 10 
 
 threw the Empire of the Incas. Southward it flowed, bearing all 
 before it, until at Valdivia they found something of the courage 
 in the Araucanian tribes wmch animated their own swords ; 
 and from that day to this the Araucanians, Huelches, Puelches, 
 Pehuenches, and "Pampas have held their territory.* 
 
 The country in great part conquered, there became no longer 
 any new kingdoms awaiting the adventurous sword ; and the 
 problem then was to make the most of the silver harvest which 
 had fallen into their hands:, and to see how much precious metal 
 might be produced in the shortest possible time. The wars of 
 Charles Y. and Phillip II. demanded that the colonies should 
 produce largely ; and between the exactions of the clergy and 
 the demands of the Crown, the colonies were ground into silver, 
 grained through Indian blood. The sway of the earlier con- 
 querers overthrew a civilization in Mexico and Peru which they 
 scarcely replaced during their occupation of the country. 
 Spanish America was wrecked, and like a huge hulk thrown 
 among savages, she was torn in pieces to obtain the metal that held 
 her together. .It is mournful to contemplate what a garden she 
 might have been to the mother country had a liberal policy 
 ruled the councils of the nation in its government. What could 
 have been the government of the colonies during that long night of 
 Spanish misrule that it could so brand itselt upon them, that 
 after fifty years of revolutionary throes, they have been unable 
 to shake themselves entirely free from the curses which still 
 linger in their valleys and hold the cup of misery to the lips of 
 their people. Humanity might well draw a veil over these 
 woes. It is a sickening tale of horror to run through the three 
 hundred years of sword, bullet, fagot, torture, and famine ; but 
 a glance at it is necessary to our views of the leniency with 
 which we should judge the Spanish-American people in their 
 struggles for stable government. In Mexico, especially, every- 
 thing appeared to conspire to hold her in the depth of physical 
 and mental degradation. Under the Viceroys she suffered all 
 the miseries which bad government at home, administered by 
 unprincipled colonial officials, could deal out to her. 
 
 Although the " Laws of the Indies " gave the right to Creoles 
 to hold even the highest offices, the law of Charles Y. stating 
 " that the discoverers, the settlers and their posterity and those 
 born in the country were to be preferred before all others in the 
 offices of the Church, State, and jurisprudence," yet of the one 
 
 * The author has had the pleasure of participating in two battles against the 
 banded tribes above mentioned, and can attest to their courage, which has lost 
 nothing of its former energy. We have seen them charge a regiment of modern 
 infantry with rude lances made of reeds, having sharpened pieces of hoop-iron 
 bound to the ends of them with hide thongs.
 
 11 
 
 hundred and sixty Viceroys who ruled during the time that 
 Spain held her colonies only four were Creoles or natives of the 
 colonies by Spanish parents ; and these four owed their position 
 to an education received in the mother country, to which they 
 had added a powerful home influence. Every situation, even 
 the lowest Custom-House clerkship, was held by an European. 
 Of six hundred and two Captain Generals all but fourteen were 
 Spaniards. 
 
 The laws were very rigid in reference to the conferring oi 
 ecclesiastical benefices upon the descendants of the conquista- 
 dores and " pacificators " of the country ; but they were so 
 evaded that, notwithstanding the law stipulated that no Spaniard 
 could hold such a benefice, even if appointed by the King him- 
 self, yet of five hundred and fiftv ecclesiastics who had reached 
 the episcopal dignity in the N ew World, only fifty-five were 
 natives. The Viceroys,* with rare exceptions, were men whose 
 ruined fortunes and profligate life at home had left them no 
 hope, unless an appointment in the New World might enable 
 them in a few years of its occupancy to return loaded with 
 plundered wealth. Generally, men of the vilest antecedents, 
 court parasites, uneducated and bigoted, they appeared to be 
 selected as crushing machines for colonial silver mines. They 
 were the first to violate the law which allowed the Creoles to 
 hold office. The distance to the mother country and the fact 
 that all complaints had to pass through the hands of those who 
 held office were effectual preventives to all redress of this great 
 grievance. At one time, under Godoy's rule of the Indies, every 
 office in the Mexican viceroyalty was publicly sold at auction. 
 
 The power of the Viceroy was more than regal. The troops 
 were entirely under his command. Every civil and military 
 appointment was dependent upon him as President of the " Real 
 Audiencia," which controlled all appointments by virtue of the 
 "Laws of the Indies." His salary was $60,000 per year: yet 
 off of this he lived like an eastern monarch and returned home 
 in a few years with a princely fortune. " He reaped profits on 
 the illegal sales of titles and distinctions, granting licenses and 
 the introduction of foreign goods," while " at one time even 
 government situations were in great demand without a salary,"f 
 the opportunities for plunder were so numerous. Special priv- 
 ileges or " Fueros " were granted to Spaniards which enabled 
 them to make vast sums of money. Spanish-America appeared 
 
 * There were originally but two Viceroyalties, Mexico and Pern. The Vice- 
 royalty of New Grenada was established in 1718, that of Venezuela in 1731, that 
 of Chile in 1734, and that of Buenos Ayres in 1778.) 
 
 t See Ward's Mexico,
 
 12 
 
 to be an immense field over which avarice rim riot in acts of 
 oppression and misrule. 
 
 The repartimentos and the mita were other evils forced upon, 
 the country. The mita, as if to grind out every physical effort 
 of the Indian, imposed the most abject slavery. It was a year's 
 personal toil exacted from him ; and the owner of every mine 
 had a right to a certain number of Indian workmen, to whom 
 he paid four reals (fifty cents) per day. This was insufficient 
 to keep the Indian and his family from starvation. A system of 
 ^credit was however established, whereby the Indian could re- 
 itain life while his physical energies endured, the owner of the 
 mine crediting him with absolute necessities ; but if at the end 
 jof his term of service he was in debt, the law forced him to re- 
 main until it was paid. As it was impossible for him to pay it r 
 the poor Indian found no relief from his misery except in death, 
 which from scanty food, hard labor, and exposure, seldom gave 
 him more than two or three years' lease of existence. The de- 
 struction of Indian life was immense ; to be detailed to work 
 in the mines was considered by the Indian as a sentence of 
 death. Out of his scanty earnings he was obliged to pay a 
 capitation tax of eight dollars per head, not to speak of the ex- 
 actions of the clergy, which will be hereafter mentioned. The 
 result upon the Indian element in Mexico was not so crushing 
 as in the other colonies farther removed from the mother coun- 
 try, consequently more liable to misrule ; but even in Mexico 
 the philanthropic Las Casas has depicted cruelties which freeze 
 the blood. In the 1,400 mines of Peru, it is stated* that no 
 less than 8,285,000 Indians perished under colonial rule ; but 
 this must be an exaggeration. The Indian could not hold prop- 
 erty to exceed the value of $50 without permission of the " Pro- 
 tector de los naturales," appointed by the King. 
 
 Education, at all times necessary to the intellectual expan- 
 sion of a people, was confined in the colonies to the narrowest 
 limits. W hile the rest of the world was basking in the sunshine 
 of a mighty intellectual advancement, while Protestantism was 
 confirming the right to think which God gave to man, the 
 whole of Spanish- America was overspread with the dark veil of 
 bigotry. The curse which had rested on Europe for so many 
 centuries, and from which, after long and tremendous efforts, 
 she had shaken herself free, fled to the New World, where, 
 nursed by ambition, avarice, and all the most fearful elements 
 of perverted human nature, it found a soil where its seeds, 
 planted by the Viceroys and their parasites, and nurtured by 
 
 See General Miller's Memoirs.
 
 13 
 
 the clergy, weighed heavily upon the oppressed Creole and Indian 
 races. 
 
 The only studies permitted in the schools were Latin gram- 
 mar, ancient philosophy, theology, and civil and canonical 
 jurisprudence, while the only history taught was that of Spain. 
 "Public schools were forbidden under plea that " it was not ex- 
 pedient for learning to become general in America." Complete 
 ignorance was the policy imposed. The Board of Trade at 
 Buenos Ayres was not allowed to establish a school of mathe- 
 matics, it being suppressed by the Yiceroy Joaquin del Pino. 
 Juan Francisco, an Opata chief, journeyed on foot to Mexico, a 
 distance of five hundred miles, and crossed the Ocean to Mad- 
 rid, to solicit the privilege of teaching to his tribe the mere 
 rudiments of education. This petition to the " Council of the 
 Indies " was rejected in 1T98._ Cirilo de Castella, a cacique, 
 failed in a similar cause, which, after a twenty years' effort at 
 Madrid, resulted in his death. Merida, in Venezuela, was, by 
 Charles IV., refused permission to found a university. In 
 Mexico every effort in a similar direction proved entirely fruit- 
 less. With the exception of Peru, Buenos Ayres, and Mexico, 
 printing presses were denied to the colonies. In the latter vice- 
 royalty, so late as 1806, there was but one printing press, and 
 that was under the control of the government, to promulgate 
 laws for the crushing of the people and the exaction of 
 revenue. 
 
 It is unnecessary to detail the acts committed during this 
 long night of saturnalian horrors which held high carnival 
 from San Francisco to Valdivia. "We shall find in the war of 
 the Revolution sufficient human suffering to pander to the 
 naturally morbid condition of the mind which delights in pic- 
 tures of concentrated misery. 
 
 During the long colonial dependence of the Americas, the 
 exclusive policy of the mother country had shut them out from 
 the progress of the Old World ; they gained nothing by abra- 
 sion with other nationalities ; they were free from the heretical 
 doctrines which were rocking Europe like a cradle, and which 
 were giving birth to a new era in the history of religion and 
 civilization. The jealous exclusion of all historical information, 
 except that portion of the history of Spain, which, having passed 
 the censorship of the clergy, was deemed fitted for the colonial 
 mind, had narrowed their 'ideas of humanity, and entirely un- 
 prepared them for the flood of light which was to pour in upon 
 them when the Bourbon dynasty was overthrown in the mother 
 country.
 
 PART II. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF CATHOLICISM. THE CLERGY THE GREAT REVOLU- 
 TIONARY ELEMENT. THEIR IMMORALITY AND EXACTIONS. 
 - THE EFFECT ON THE CREOLES AND MIXED RACES. BUCCA- 
 NEERING THE EFFECT OF THE INVASION OF SPAIN BY BONA- 
 PARTE OPPOSITION OF THE SPANISH- AMERICAN CLERGY TO 
 
 THE FRENCH OCCUPATION OF AMERICA. ESTABLISHMENT OF 
 COLONIAL JUNTAS. SEVERE MEASURES OF THE CADIZ REGEN- 
 CY. RESTORATION OF FERDINAND VII. SAVAGE MEASURES 
 
 AGAINST THE COLONIES. APPEAL OF THE COLONIES TO 
 
 Catholicism had found a virgin field in America, where it 
 had luxuriated and spread its dogmas, free from all contact 
 with heresies which might contaminate it. The land was free 
 from the seeds of the Eleatie philosophy which the school of 
 Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno had drawn from physical 
 speculations. It was free from the scientific deductions which 
 Aristotle and Zeno had planted in the Old World. The Church 
 of Rome did not have to step into the New-AVorld and dash 
 aside such theories as the opening of the Egyptian ports had 
 spread over Europe. There was no contact with extraneous 
 elements ; no Pantheism to the east of them ; no Greek philos- 
 ophy ; no Mahommedism to overrun some of the fairest territory 
 of the church ; no sects to distract the faithful ; no Trinitarian 
 controversy to set the mind in action. The religious force which 
 had concentrated itself in the Old World burst over the virgin 
 wilds of the New like a pestilence. The fanatical monk pene- 
 trated with the crucifix into the midst of the most savage tribes ; 
 while sword, fire, and massacre were the true instruments used 
 in the propagation of the faith, and made more converts than 
 the Bible, whose blessed teachings the Indians received at the 
 point of the sabre. Truly, the sword holds mighty arguments, 
 and, as Mahommedan and Christian have proven, makes more 
 converts than tongue or pen. 
 
 In touching the results of the establishment of Catholic 
 power in the New World, we are not attacking the high moral 
 teachings of the Church of Rome, but the perversion of its 
 religion when in the hands of bad men, and its wonderful 
 capacity for such perversion. We know that the Catholic 
 religion was born of the moral wants of the Mediterranean 
 nations, who, completely sunk in immorality, were ready to 
 seize upon any faith which could lift them from the degradation
 
 15 
 
 into which the crimes and lust of the Eoman empire had sunk 
 them ; but, like any other great monopoly of the human mind 
 in a single direction, it soon became perverted, and deemed no 
 measure too atrocious to obtain proselytes. We may not, as 
 Protestants, arrogate too much virtue in our own minds, or 
 proclaim ourselves free from the same religious madness which 
 wrecks what it would beautify. We have only to look at our 
 early history to find acts which are kindred to those of the In- 
 quisition, and that opportunity was alone lacking to make 
 proselytes with quite as much fanatical spirit as was ever used 
 by the clergy of Rome in the New World. 
 
 In tracing the causes of the numberless revolutions of the 
 Spanish- American States, we shall find that at every phase of 
 their history, and especially in Mexico, the clergy have been 
 the great vital principle which has occasioned the chronic revo- 
 lutionary condition of the country. To form an idea of their 
 power, it is necessary to glance at the immense influence which 
 they exercised in colonial affairs, and the vast accumulations of 
 wealth which, by every art avarice could suggest, they wrung 
 from Spaniard and native. There were in Mexico, in 1827, one 
 hundred and fifty convents, besides innumerable parochial 
 churches. The clergy collected, by the exaction of tithes, one- 
 tenth of the whole products of the country. Notwithstanding 
 the tithe system was abolished in 1833 by the government, many 
 of the devoted adherents of the church still submit to it. It cost 
 Mexico yearly to sustain her clergy $8,000,000 ; while the esti- 
 mated value of church property was, in 1860, from $250,000,000 
 to $300,000,000 about one-third the valuation of the whole 
 country. In the city of Mexico there are five thousand houses, 
 valued at $80,000,000, of which the clergy then owned one-half at 
 least. The income of the Mexican Church, in 1860, was about 
 $20,000,000. In 1805, they held $44,000,000 cash. In 1826 
 it had been reduced to $20,000,000, part of it having been seized 
 by the Spanish government. $40,000,000 of mortgages on the 
 agricultural districts around Puebla supported the religious in- 
 stitutions of that city, which is still known as the most intensely 
 Catholic in the country. 
 
 The clergy had, side by side with Cortez, entered Mexico; 
 and, having the light of the sainted religion constantly before 
 his eyes, the bold conqueror never refused to exchange the con- 
 solation of the holy faith for the riches of the Indian. Whether 
 by persuasion or the sword, they were baptized by thousands. 
 The clergy never forgot the injunction of the Pope to require 
 them to embrace the Catholic religion ; and, if they were un- 
 willing, " to attack them with fire and sword, and exterminate 
 or reduce them to slavery."
 
 16 
 
 So scandalous was the- action of the secular clergy in their 
 intercourse with the Indians, that Cortez wrote to Charles V. to 
 send him regulars instead of seculars. Said he : " The latter 
 display extravagant luxury, leave great wealth to their natural 
 children, and give great scandal to the newly converted 
 Indians." 
 
 The time which had elapsed from the conquest of Mexico to 
 the date of the revolution of Hidalgo, in 1810, had only enabled 
 the clergy to expand their luxurious habits, in the ratio of their 
 constantly increasing wealth, which, as we have seen, has 
 amounted to almost one-half of the entire valuation of the 
 country. Unchecked by any supreme power, they had rioted 
 in the most unbridled excesses, heedless of the example which 
 they set to their proselytes, who, in their ignorance, naturally 
 followed their teachings. They contrived to lay excessive 
 exactions upon everything which' might contribute to the moral 
 elevation of the people ; and, after the civil authorities had 
 wrung the last drop of treasure out of the physical nature of 
 the Creole and Indian, the clergy took them, and in their 
 hydraulic religious press squeezed out the treasure from their 
 spiritual development. There are, however, a few shining ex- 
 amples of probity floating in this sea of moral debasement. 
 Don Antonio Raya, Bishop of Cuzco, gave in charities three 
 hundred and seventy thousand dollars in eight years. The Arch- 
 bishop of Charcas was held in high repute for his honesty and 
 virtue, while several of the bishops of Peru atoned in part for 
 the misrule of others. 
 
 The Viceroy and his satellites exerted every effort to lay the 
 most exhaustive taxes upon every article that might possibly 
 yield a revenue. The whole country was given up to the most 
 wholesale system of robbery that the world ever saw. The 
 exactions laid upon the people naturally begot a carelessness 
 with regard to the future, wherein they could only accumulate 
 treasure to pour into the coffers of their masters, who wielded 
 it both for their physical and mental oppression. In Mexico 
 many a wealthy Creole, to prevent the loss of his property by 
 the Inquisition, gave immense sums to the holy orders. *The 
 one hundred and seventy-five feast days of the year did not 
 leave the poor Indian time enough to earn the enormous mar- 
 riage fee, of from fourteen to sixteen dollars, which was exacted 
 from him for the performance of such a service by the clergy. 
 The result was that marriage was the exception, not the rule. 
 It very naturally inaugurated a wholesale system of concubin- 
 age, in which the clergy were the principal actors. Every social 
 or family tie appeared to be broken, or, at the date of the revo- 
 lution, had disappeared in the mad vortex of political and re-
 
 17 
 
 ligious immorality, which, like a deluge, had swept over the 
 land. The most brutal passions were uppermost in the Mexican 
 mind. Three great castes Spaniards, Creoles, and Indians 
 had been established at the occupation of the country, and these 
 had, year after year, taken more marked features, until the woes 
 of the two latter were finally forced to coalesce and form a com- 
 panionship in misery. The Creoles had, at the date of the 
 revolution, been ground down in proportion to the jealousy 
 which their constantly increasing numbers had excited in the 
 breasts of the old Spaniards, who saw, from the groans which 
 their intolerable exactions and cruelties had forced from them, 
 that they could not be kept much longer from sharing in the 
 government. The Europeans had heaped woe upon misery, 
 until Spanish-America could no longer endure it. Petition 
 after petition was laid at the foot of the throne ; but, spurned 
 in the most outrageous language, they were returned unconsid- 
 ered to the colonists. A few of the very lowest offices in the 
 Americas had been ddled out to the Creoles. So late as 1785 
 the Minister Galvez referred to the fact that a few Mexicans 
 held office in their country as an abuse. Thus was a wide 
 breach opened between the old Spaniard and his progeny. So 
 late as 1817 it was asserted, in a Spanish legislative assembly, 
 that " so long as a man lived in Spain, every American owed 
 him allegiance." And the Oidor Bataller had a favorite 
 maxim, " that while a Manchego mule or a Castilian cobbler 
 remained in the Peninsula, he had a right to govern the 
 Americas." 
 
 The effect of this policy upon the Creoles, who, at the date 
 of the revolution were very numerous, was most disastrous. 
 Ignorant, though possessing great natural talent, their whole 
 mind had been so warped by the enslaving rule to which it had 
 been subjected, that thought flowed in its channels more by 
 instinct than by reason, with minds corrupted by their mas- 
 ters ; with the most disgusting vices engrafted upon their polit- 
 ical upas tree ; with the clergy pandering to every known vice 
 of a corrupt education ; in the culmination of three centuries 
 of the vilest excesses ; with honor a myth, virtue a mockery, 
 and honesty buried deep in the foul pool of crime and horror, 
 which seemed to have poured down upon them in a ceaseless 
 torrent, they drank from this sea of misery, until nature, over- 
 loaded, shook itself free by revolution. 
 
 Following the ideas which were traced out in the action of 
 the Europeans, the Creoles imbibed the spirit of their oppressors, 
 and deemed that the only honorable employments were to be 
 found in the army or in the church. In the latter, it had been 
 the policy of the royal government to cherish its temporalities ; 
 2
 
 18 
 
 and thus the " mayorazgos," or rights of primogeniture, fre- 
 quently forced the younger sons into the religious orders ; but 
 after the right of primogeniture was abolished, during the 
 revolution, the church became unpopular as a profession, except 
 for the lowest classes. We shall see, in the course of the Mexi- 
 can revolutions, the results of this . action, both in the military 
 and in the church. 
 
 The only ports from which the Spanish Americans could 
 have communication with the mother country were Porto Bello 
 and Yera Cruz. It was as late as 1774: before the colonies were 
 allowed to communicate with each other, and not until about 
 fifty years before the revolution that commerce from any other 
 port than Seville, in Spain, could be carried on with the col- 
 onies. It was not until 1713 that the ships of any other nation 
 were allowed to touch at any Spanish colonial port. Great 
 Britain, at this date, in her contract to supply slaves, had a 
 very slight trading interest granted to her, but confined to the 
 ships in which the slaves were transported. Not until 1764 did 
 monthly packets, which were Spanish, commence running to 
 Havana, Porto Bello, and Buenos Ayres ; and it was not until 
 1810 that the ports of Mexico were fully opened to foreign 
 trade. Spain not only claimed the exclusive jurisdiction of all 
 the Spanish Americas, but even the surrounding oceans, and it 
 was these claims which gave rise to the disputes between the 
 Spanish Crown and Queen Elizabeth, who held that Spain had 
 no right to the possession of territory which she did not actually 
 occupy. This controversy, in connection with the attempts of 
 the Dutch and English to trade in New Spain, gave rise to the 
 buccaneering expeditions which made the Gulf of Mexico ring 
 with the romantic deeds of the freebooters, the capture of richly 
 freighted Spanish galleons, the plundering of Spanish American 
 towns, the sacking of the richly ornamented cathedrals, and 
 other riotous deeds, which gradually caused the buccaneers to 
 sink into pirates, who then seized upon some of the fairest West 
 Indian ports, and, perching their lookout towers upon the com- 
 manding points, were ready at any moment to dart out upon 
 the rich treasure ships of Spain. 
 
 On the 29th July, 1808, in the midst of the circling influences 
 which the despotic policy of Spain had produced in the colonies, 
 the news arrived of the invasion of the mother country by the 
 troops of Bonaparte, the deposing of Ferdinand VII. on the 5th 
 ef May, 1808, and the resigning to Joseph Bonaparte of all the 
 rights of the Bourbon family to the crown of Spain. It is ne- 
 cessary to trace this phase of Spanish history for a moment. 
 Revolutionary measures opposing the French invasion were 
 immediately inaugurated, and several juntas were established in
 
 19 
 
 different parts of the country ; these juntas, separately claiming 
 jurisdiction in the colonies, occasioned the greatest uncertainty 
 as to which they owed allegiance : this naturally assisted in 
 shaping the events which now followed. Finally these juntas 
 resolved themselves into the " Supreme Junta of Seville,'" con- 
 sisting of twenty-three members, mostly of the nobility. It met 
 June 6, 1808, and proclaimed allegiance to Ferdinand VII., 
 whom they attested had been deposed by the French army, and 
 had been forced to surrender the royal rights of a family which 
 were not in his power to surrender. Meanwhile Joseph Bona- 
 parte had summoned one hundred and fifty deputies, ninety-two 
 of whom assembled and accepted the constitution which Napo- 
 leon had prepared for them. This constitution provided that 
 the colonies were to be represented in the general Cortes at 
 Madrid, and enjoy all the rights and privileges of the mother 
 country. 
 
 From Ferdinand VII. and the Council of the Indies orders 
 were immediately forwarded to the colonies to transfer to 
 France their allegiance. The emissaries of King Joseph were 
 immediately scattered throughout America to make the transfer 
 more certain, and to receive the submission of the country. 
 The old Spaniards vacillated. Some were at first for accepting 
 the new order of things, fearful of losing their fat offices, but 
 an element had crept into the problem which, though quiet in 
 its action, was nevertheless more powerful than all the others 
 combined. It was for the interest of the Catholic clergy in the 
 New "World to oppose the French occupation of the Americas, 
 for the government of King Joseph had threatened drastic re- 
 forms in the Church, which would militate powerfully against 
 the monopoly which the clergy of the New World held over 
 the tollgates to heaven. The consequence was that everywhere 
 the clergy opposed the French occupation. M. de Sastenay, 
 who was sent to receive the submission of the inhabitants of the 
 Rio de la Plata, was imprisoned, and the proclamation of King 
 Joseph was thrown into the flames. 
 
 At Caraccas the government officials made every effort to 
 turn the government over to the French, who had heavily 
 bribed them ; but the people assembled on the 15th of July, 
 1808, and took an oath of allegiance to Ferdinand VII. 
 Throughout the colonies the clergy used their influence to in- 
 struct the lower classes of people to support the cause of Fer- 
 dinand ; and these raised immense sums and forwarded them to 
 Spain to aid the dethroned King in regaining his crown. Ninety 
 millions dollars were raised for this purpose, and the religious 
 enthusiasm became so great that many colonists crossed the 
 ocean to fight in the ranks of the revolutionists. Bat the mo-
 
 20 
 
 ment had arrived for which the Americans had long hoped, and 
 though loyal still, they seized upon it to advance their social 
 position. Efforts were made bv the Creoles to disseminate 
 through the masses the idea of their importance and the value 
 of independence. The moving force was the desire to shake 
 themselves free from the dominating hand of. the Europeans, 
 but not to separate from the mother country, providing they 
 could have equal rights with the old Spaniards. The interests 
 of the clergy coinciding for the time, the moment appeared 
 most propitious. Loyalty was, however, a strong element in 
 the Creole character, and it will be noticed that they made every 
 effort in favor of their Sovereign before the action of the 
 " Supreme Junta " and Cadiz Regency forced them to declare 
 their independence of the mother country. 
 
 The period which had elapsed from the first news of the 
 French invasion of the Peninsula until 1810, was all quivering 
 with the agitation of the elements which, in the colonies, had 
 been so long subject to the control of the few. They main- 
 tained themselves in complete uncertainty as to their future, 
 and the whole political forces of the country being unsettled, 
 left the people to imagine the wildest theories with respect to 
 their future government. It was in this condition that they re- 
 ceived news of the dissolution of the Supreme Junta of Seville, 
 and that some of its members had been accused as traitors ; 
 that the French had conquered the whole of Spain, excepting 
 Cadiz, where a Regency had been illegally established by the 
 President of the defunct Junta, who published a decree, with- 
 out date, naming the five members who composed it. 
 
 During this uncertain condition of colonial affairs, the Vice- 
 roy of Mexico, Jose Iturrigaray, more liberal than many of his 
 predecessors, had espoused the popular side and assisted in the 
 formation of a Colonial Junta, which placed him at its head to 
 represent the interests of King Ferdinand during his captivity. 
 But the power of the old Spaniards, who still held the principal 
 offices, both civil and military, was more than a match for the 
 unorganized Creole faction, and they, therefore, immediately 
 seized Iturrigaray and forwarded him a prisoner to Seville, 
 where the Junta approved the action, rewarded those who had 
 deposed him, and appointed another Viceroy, Vanegas, who 
 was sent to assume control of affairs in Mexico. It appears 
 that the Supreme Junta of Seville not only claimed full control 
 of all Spanish affairs during its existence, but endeavored to 
 assume control of all the affairs of the New "World, that they 
 might obtain sufficient funds to wage war against the French 
 and drive them out of the Peninsula. They were, therefore, 
 bitterly opposed to the establishment of provisional govern-
 
 21 
 
 ments by the different viceroyalties, and took measures by every 
 method in their power to prevent such proceedings, proclaiming 
 as rebels all who engaged in their organization. 
 
 The Eegency which had been organized on the 29th of Oc- 
 tober, 1810, decreed a very democratic constitution, infringed 
 seriously upon the religious influences of the Church, and abol- 
 ished the Holy Tribunal. The effect of this upon the New 
 World was to bind the clergy more firmly in their opposition to 
 the Regency, and the support of the colonial juntas, which gave 
 more hopes of a continuance of religious monopoly. 
 
 The old Spaniards, who had so monopolized colonial offices, 
 were generally excluded in the formation of the colonial juntas. 
 In Buenos Ayres they were wholly so ; but in Chile Spaniards 
 and Creoles joined in the general movement until the former, 
 attempting to restore the old order of things, were entirely ex- 
 cluded from the Junta there established. The Spaniards, at 
 first inclined to espouse the French cause, found that in opposi- 
 tion to the Creole and church interests, it was impracticable ; 
 they, therefore, with the hope of continuing their monopolies, 
 espoused the cause of the Cadiz Regency wnich threatened to 
 overthrow all the colonial juntas, and restore America to its 
 former dependent position. The native element had, however, 
 grown too powerful to be treated with impunity ; the avalanche 
 of free thought and action had received its impetus, and was 
 destined to roll through the land crushing out all attempted 
 opposition. The people had tasted the waters at the spring 
 of power, for which they had so long sighed, and though the 
 fountain has often, from that day to this, flowed blood instead 
 of water in its attempts to free itself from the poison of colonial 
 rule, liberty and progress are still the moving forces of the 
 Spanish- American mind. 
 
 The first impulse of the Cadiz Regency was to deal liberally 
 with the colonies. On May 17, 1810, they declared them open 
 to free trade in all articles of their own production which Spain 
 could not consume. The merchants of Cadiz, all-powerful' in 
 their monopoly of the colonial trade, found means to have this 
 decree revoked one month after its issue ; and the Regency 
 went back to the old system of trade throughout America. It 
 w r as too late to exercise such a vacillating policy ; the colonists 
 had discovered their rights and were now determined to assert 
 them, while, from reasons already mentioned, the clergy sided 
 with them. 
 
 It is a notable fact that the revolution in Spain against 
 French power was incited principally by the parish priests, 
 while the nobility and higher orders were the principal adher- 
 ents of King Joseph. There was a similar power existing in
 
 22 
 
 
 
 America ; the " Curas," who were in immediate contact with 
 the lower classes, swayed their minds in any desired direction, 
 and the lower orders of the clergy, being^ composed entirely of 
 Creoles and mixed races, naturally exercised their influence in 
 the direction of the provisional juntas from which they liad so 
 much to hope. 
 
 Strong in the belief that by provisional governments they 
 -might be enabled to hold the country for Ferdinand YIL, they 
 established juntas almost simultaneously in all parts of the 
 country : At Caraccas, 19th April ; Buenos Ayres, 25th May ; 
 New Grenada, 3d July ; Bogota, 20th July ; Carthagena, 18th 
 August ; Chile, 18th September, and Mexico, 16th September, 
 1810. 
 
 No people in history were ever blest with a more favorable 
 opportunity to free themselves from the crushing despotism that 
 weighed upon them than were the Spanish- Americans. Their 
 whole country contained but very few Spanish troops. In fact 
 so convinced was the mother country of the loyalty of the col- 
 onies that immense districts had been guarded with but the 
 shadow of an army. . 
 
 When the Regency received news of the formation of colo- 
 nial juntas, they were animated with the utmost fury against 
 the colonists. They immediately dispatched a royal commis- 
 sioner to Venezuela', who was " to assume the regal power to its 
 fullest extent ; to remove, suspend, or dismiss the authorities of 
 every rank and class ; to pardon or punish the guilty at plea- 
 sure ; to use the moneys belonging to the royal treasury," &c. 
 The Junta of Caraccas refused to receive him. Venezuela was 
 then declared in a state of blockade, although there was not a 
 ship to enforce the decree. 
 
 With money which the colonists had furnished the Regency 
 to uphold the cause of Ferdinand VII., an expedition was im- 
 mediately organized and sent to Venezuela. The whole pro- 
 ceedings of the colonies were declared revolutionary, and in- 
 structions were given to the Spanish forces to devastate the 
 country with fire and sword. So thoroughly were the orders 
 carried out that they often murdered their own brothers and 
 relatives whom they ibuiid among the insurgents. General 
 Calleja in a dispatch informs the Viceroy that, after losing one 
 man killed and two wounded, he put nve thousand betrayed 
 Indians to the sword, and that the total Indian loss was double 
 that number. Most of them were killed while on their knees 
 begging for mercy. 
 
 Caraccas capitulated to the Spaniards under General Monte- 
 verde, July 25th, 1812. It had been conceded that life and 
 property should be held sacred. An English naval commander
 
 on that station thus describes how that treaty was kept: 
 " Monte verde caused to be arrested nearly every Creole of ranlf 
 throughout the country, chained them in pairs, and had thenj 
 conducted to the prisons of Laguayra and Porto Cabello, wherd 
 many perished from suffocation and disease." The same officer- 
 states that Boves and Rosette, royalist officers, in traversing the 
 route from the river Orinoco to the valley of Caraccas, more 
 than four hundred miles, left no human being alive of any age 
 or sex, except auch as joined their standard. 
 
 Upon the restoration of Ferdinand to the throne, through 
 the efforts of the English and the defeat of the plans of Bona- 
 parte throughout Europe, he threw himself into the hands of 
 the most bigoted and fanatical of the reactionary party, and 
 refused to uphold the liberal constitution to which the Cortes 
 had taken oath in March, 1812, and in which the colonies were 
 placed upon a footing with the mother country, being entitled 
 to one representative for every seventy thousand inhabitants. 
 He immediately declared the colonies to be in a state of mutiny, 
 refused to listen to any representations from them, but offered 
 to them unconditional pardon. The Viceroys and all their 
 acts were confirmed ; the colonists were censured for presuming 
 to frame a government for themselves, and active measures 
 were taken to return to the old system under which they had 
 so long groaned. Large reinforcements were dispatched to 
 America, and in the name of Ferdinand de Bourbon the whole 
 land was made desolate. Morillo, in 1816, entered Bogota, and 
 wrote to Spain that " by cutting off all who could read and 
 write he hoped effectually to arrest the spirit of revolution." 
 Six hundred of the first people of the city were hanged or shot 
 in cold blood. A liberal policy in the royal council would have 
 immediately restored the colonies to Spain, but this course was 
 only widening the breach. 
 
 Great Britain interposed her good offices to mediate between 
 the colonists and the mother country, but fruitlessly. Scaffolds 
 were erected on all sides ; the sword found wild work ; x the 
 sanguinary tide of Spanish vengeance had been loosed, and 
 threatened to inundate the whole country. It was in the midst 
 of these wild throes that Spanish-American independence was 
 to be born, and it was from ttyese horrors they were to consoli- 
 date their nationalities by fifty years of subsequent revolutions, 
 which were the results of the curses thus entailed upon them. 
 The colonists had poured out their blood and treasure to restore 
 Ferdinand to his throne, and he now rewarded them with chains 
 and massacre. But the revolution in the Creole mind had pro- 
 gressed too far, and Spain had no power to again enchain com- 
 pletely the mind which had caught sight of freedom.
 
 24 
 
 To relate the condition of one section is to recount the 
 horrors of all. The Congress of the La Plata, in their address to 
 the nations of the earth, which was more like the "Groans of 
 the .Britons " for protection from the savages, said : " The 
 Spanish Ministers issued vigorous orders to all their generals to 
 push the war and to inflict neavier punishments.' * * * 
 " From that moment they endeavored to divide us by all the 
 means in their power, in order that we might exterminate each 
 other. They propagated against us atrocious calumnies, attrib- 
 uting to us the design of destroying our sacred religion, of set- 
 ting aside all morality and establishing licentiousness of man- 
 ners. They carried on a war of religion against us, devising 
 many and various plots to agitate and alarm the consciences of 
 the people by causing the Spanish bishops to issue edicts of 
 ecclesiastical censure and interdiction among the faithful ; to 
 publish excommunications, and, by means of some ignorant 
 confessors, to sow fanatical doctrines in the tribunal of penance. 
 T3y the aid of such religious discords they have sown dissensions 
 in families, produced quarrels between parents and their child- 
 ren, torn asunder the bonds which united man and wife, scat- 
 tered implacable enmity and rancor among brothers formerly 
 the most affectionate, and even placed nature herself in a state 
 of hostility and variance." * * * " They have shot the 
 bearers of our flags of truce." * * * "They have shot 
 many in cold blood after they have surrendered." * * * 
 " In the town of Yalle-Grande they enjoyed the brutal pleasure 
 of cutting off the ears of the inhabitants, and sent off a basket 
 filled with these presents to their headquarters. They after- 
 ward burned the town, set fire to thirty other populous ones in 
 Peru, and took delight in shutting up persons in their own 
 houses, before the flames were applied to them, in order that 
 they might there be burned to death." * * * " They have 
 divested themselves of all morality and public decency by 
 whipping old religious persons in the open squares, and also 
 women bound to a cannon, causing them previously to be 
 stripped and exposed to shame and derision." "They have 
 plundered our coasts, butchered their defenceless inhabitants, 
 even without sparing superannuated priests ; and, by orders of 
 General Pezuela, they burned the church of the town of Puna, 
 and put to the sword old men, women and children, the only 
 inhabitants therein found. They have in a most shameful 
 manner failed to fulfill every capitulation we have, on repeated 
 occasions, concluded with them. 
 
 The Cortes of Spain decreed, April 10, 1813, " That it was 
 derogatory to the majesty and dignity of the national Congress 
 to confirm a capitulation made with malignant insurgents."
 
 25 
 
 This was to annul the capitulation of Miranda, in Venezuela, 
 in 1812. 
 
 Such was the rule of Ferdinand from Northern Mexico to 
 the La Plata. The result was that Spanish-America found no 
 opening for herself except to press onward and resist the power 
 that would again enslave her, and they therefore made mighty 
 efforts in the cause of liberty. Our efforts in the United States 
 during the War of Independence pale before those of the Span- 
 ish-American States to shake off the curse which weighed so 
 heavily on every hope. Linked in a common cause and ani- 
 mated by a common misfortune, their efforts were not confined 
 to their own States ; they marched their armies from Buenos 
 Ayres, under the heroic San Martin, to Chile ; from Chile to 
 Peru, over the deserts of Atacama; through the mountain 
 paths of the Andes, trailing their worn forces through the 
 mountain torrents, or lying down to sleep upon the frozen snows 
 of the Cordilleras. Their armies fought and bled as heroically 
 as ever patriot could dream until the battle of Ayacucho vir- 
 tually closed the contest. 
 
 As before stated, the events that we have detailed had a 
 general bearing throughout Spanish America. The crushing 
 policy of Spain was applied to every foot 'of territory which she 
 held on the "Western Continent. In Mexico the problem of 
 liberty was, however, of more difficult solution even than in 
 South America, for reasons we shall now state.
 
 26 
 
 PAKT III. 
 
 REVOLUTION or HIDALGO CONVENING or A MEXICAN CON- 
 GRESS CHANGE IN THE POLICY or THE CLERGY THEY 
 ESPOUSE THE INSURGENT CAUSE "PLAN OF IGUALA" 
 CONFLICT OF PARTY INTERESTS ITURBIDE PROCLAIMED 
 EMPEROR MEXICO UNDER REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS A 
 REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD ONLY THREE SYSTEMS OF GOV- 
 ERNMENT REVIEW OF THE SITUATION OF SPANISH AMERICA 
 
 PRIOR TO THE FRENCH INVASION THE UPWARD STRUGGLE 
 
 OF THE COLONIES MEXICO DURING THIS PERIOD TO THE 
 REVOLUTION OF AYUTLA ALVAREZ AND COMONFORT'S AD- 
 MINISTRATIONS ATTEMPTS, UNDER SANTA ANNA, TO ESTAB- 
 LISH A MONARCHY ASSEMBLY OF A NATIONAL CONGRESS 
 SWEARING OF THE CONSTITUTION OF 1857 COMONFORT 
 DESERTS THE CAUSE SIEGE OF THE CAPITAL THE "LAW 
 
 On the 10th of September, 1810, an uprising of the Indians 
 and mixed races took place. It was called the revolution of 
 Jlidalgo.* It caused a variation in the Mexican revolution 
 against Spain, which'made an essential difference as to the time 
 required by Mexico to free herself from the miseries with which 
 Spanish rule environed her. The revolution of Hidalgo was 
 essentially an outbreak against the oppression which had borne 
 heavily upon the Indians and mixed races. ' The civil commo- 
 tions in Spain h,ad so disturbed the rule of the Viceroys that 
 the Indian element had easily observed its importance in solv- 
 ing the problem of future government. It was thus easy to 
 incite them to insurrection. Hidalgo, a "cura," moved by 
 public and private wrongs, headed the uprising, and organized 
 a force of 100,000 Indians and mixed races. The whole success 
 of the movement depended upon the Creoles, who then formed 
 a large part of all the regular forces of the royalists. Had 
 they sided with the Indians, the revolution would have been 
 successful and the country freed from Spanish tyranny. Unfor- 
 tunately for the Indian cause, the first body of insurgents fired 
 into the Creole troops, and commenced in the towns an indis- 
 criminate massacre of both Spaniards and Creoles. This united 
 the two latter for mutual defence, and for a time the most ruth- 
 
 * Hidalgo was a Creole of extraordinary natural and acquired talent. The 
 great uprising of the mixed races which he organized was to break forth Novem- 
 ber 1, 1810, but was, by the betrayal of the cause, precipitated, and commenced 
 prematurely on the date we have mentioned.
 
 27 
 
 less barbarities were committed. The Church opposed the 
 insurgents, and the Archbishop of Mexico excommunicated 
 their whole force in a body.* 
 
 At Guanaxuato, which Hidalgo stormed and sacked, the 
 most terrible retribution was taken upon their oppressors, and 
 for a time it appeared that the entire pure European blood 
 would be forced from the country. Had the insurgents been 
 properly commanded, there is no doubt but they might have 
 swept every European from Mexico ; this, with a lack of the 
 necessary material of war, rendered it comparatively easy for 
 the regular forces to overthrow them. 
 
 This terrible war of caste was waged with savage ferocity 
 on both sides. General Calleja met the insurgents and defeated 
 them at Guanaxuato, where he put fourteen thousand men, 
 women, and children to the sword ; for which he was created 
 "Mariscal de Campo " for distinguished services, decorated with 
 the Cross of the Order of Charles III., and appointed to the 
 vice-royalty. Hidalgo, through the treachery of Bustamente, 
 was captured and shot July 11, 1811. The insurgents, how- 
 ever, continued the revolution under General Morelos, formerly 
 the lieutenant of Hidalgo, who called a National Congress, 
 which met September 13, 1813, and on the following October 
 declared Mexico independent. This Congress promulgated the 
 " Constitution Apatzingan " October 22, 1814. 
 
 Gradually the Creoles began to take sides with the insur- 
 gents, and very many valuable officers were added to their 
 ranks by the desertions from the royalist forces ; but it was not 
 until 1820 that any considerable movement took place among 
 the Creole forces in aid of the revolutionists. Gen. Morelos 
 proclaimed that " despots and bad government, not Hidalgo, 
 were the real cause of the insurrection," and the Congress 
 appealed to the Creoles to join them in their struggle against 
 the oppression of the dominant class, to join hands with them 
 and overthrow their power. " Brethren," said they, " let us 
 embrace and be happy, instead of mutually bringing disgrace 
 upon our heads." If they could not have peace, they desired 
 to carry on the war in a civilized manner. In article five of 
 
 * This was a similar uprising to that of Don Jos6 Gabriel in Peru in 1780; 
 He was a descendant of the Inca, Tupac Amaru, who was beheaded in 1562 by 
 Francisco de Toledo. The Indians, having endured the most terrible oppression, 
 were roused to revenge themselves upon their tyrants. Undisciplined, without 
 munitions of war, but full of the courage of despair, they for a long time waged 
 a desperate war against both Spaniard and Creole. With desperate valor, both 
 men and women fought until Gabriel was made prisoner. As a punishment, "he 
 beheld the execution of his wife and children, and many of his faithful followers ; 
 his tongue was then cut out, and wild horses harnessed to his legs and arms tore 
 his limbs asunder."
 
 28 
 
 the conditions in 
 
 ditions upon which they would have peace or carry 011 
 the war, they said : " It is contrary to the rights of war, as well 
 / as those of nature, to enter with fire and sword into defenceless 
 / towns, or to assign by tenths and fifths persons to be shot, by 
 / which the innocent are confounded with the guilty ; let no one 
 | be allowed, under the severest penalties, to commit such enor- 
 mities as those which so greatly dishonor a Christian and civil- 
 ' ized people." They also urged the clergy to abstain from calling 
 it a war against the Catholic religion. 
 
 The war, after the reception of this message, was waged by 
 Calleja with relentless fury. Almost every insurgent who fell 
 into his hands was sacrificed. The insurgents were forced to 
 retaliate ; and, for a time, Mexico was a perfect pandemonium. 
 Circumstances were, however, fast inducing the Mexican 
 clergy to throw their influence into the scale with the insurgents. 
 The revolutionary troubles which immediately followed the res- 
 toration of Ferdinand VII. in Spain, had shown the Church 
 that it had little to hope from the mother country for a contin- 
 uance of its monopolies. The blind infatuation of Ferdinand, 
 in waging war upon the colonies immediately upon his restor- 
 ation to power, had prevented entirely any lull in the stormy 
 commotion wherein the colonies might explain more fully the 
 -causes which had impelled them to the course they had pursued 
 during the French occupation of the Peninsula. The clergy, 
 seeing in the liberal constitution of the Cortes nothing but the 
 downfall of the Mexican church system, aided in the estrange- 
 ment of the colonies, and urged onward the policy of complete 
 independence, unless the signs in Spain might become more 
 favorable to their interests. 
 
 The Cortes had, in the liberal constitution sworn to by them, 
 declared the Inquisition abolished, and effected numerous 
 church reforms, while all ecclesiastical positions were placed 
 under their control, and decrees promulgated against church 
 property. This was a direct and staggering blow to the Mex- 
 ican clergy, unless they could escape its effects by freeing the 
 colony from the mother country. The constitution to which 
 the Cortes had sworn was held in abeyance by the revolutionary 
 condition of the country, and the opposition of Ferdinand, 
 until March, 1820. At that time, the Cortes being reinstated, the 
 free constitution was proclaimed and sworn to by the king, who 
 was forced to follow a popular will which he could not control. 
 So long as Ferdinand had opposed the popular liberal party 
 in Spain, the Mexican clergy clung to his cause with the hope 
 of a reaction to the old system ; but when the news reached 
 them of his adoption of the Jiberal constitution, they immedi- 
 ately threw their whole influence into the cause of the insur-
 
 29 
 
 gents in an attempt to establish a separate government, with 
 the idea of inviting the bigoted Ferdinand to cross the Atlantic 
 and accept the crown. At this time Augustin Irturbide came 
 prominently into notice. Although a Creole he had entirely 
 adhered to the church, and had thus figured in various subordi- 
 nate positions. In command of a small detachment of the 
 rayalist forces he had carried on an unsparing warfare against 
 the insurgents. As an instance of his cruelty, he states in a 
 dispatch to the Viceroy, in 1814, that " in honor of the day," 
 Good Friday, " he had just ordered three hundred excommuni- 
 cated wretches to be shot." Upon the clergy changing sides, 
 Iturbide, under their direction, while in command of a small 
 force on the western coast, in 1820, espoused the insurgent 
 cause, headed the forces that flocked to his standard, and 
 marched on the Mexican capital. At the small town of Iguala, 
 he proclaimed the " Plan of Iguala," or the " Constitution of the 
 Three Guarantees." The movement was entirely successful, 
 as most all the movements for the overthrow of any established 
 government have been in Mexico when the clergy have directed 
 the revolutionists. The City of Mexico was occupied by Itur- 
 bide on the 27th of September, 1821. Nearly the whole coun- 
 try, under the influence of the clergy, sent in its allegiance. 
 The newly appointed constitutional Viceroy (O'Donoju) 'at that 
 moment arrived to assume the reins of government. He was 
 forced to acknowledge the independence of the country ; and, 
 in conformity with the plan of Iguala, endorse the right which 
 it gave to the house of JBourbon to the throne of Mexico. 
 
 The " plan of Iguala," declared on the 24th of February, 
 1821, breathed progress and liberal government, but contained 
 one element which was more potent than all the others com- 
 bined, and indicated, not only the secret control which the 
 church possessed in the revolutionary movement of the country, 
 but its determination to carry its power into every department 
 of state, and to virtually rule the country. The plan of Igu- 
 ala stated : 
 
 First. The Mexican nation is independent of the Spanish 
 nation and of every other, even on its own continent. 
 
 Second. Its religion shall be the Catholic, which all its in- 
 habitants profess. 
 
 Third. They shall be all united, without any distinction 
 between American and Europeans. 
 
 * ***** 
 
 "Eighth His Majesty Ferdinand VII. shall be invited to 
 the throne of the empire, and, in case of his refusal, the Infantes 
 Don Carlos and Don Francisco de Paula."
 
 30 
 
 Twelfth. An army shall be formed for the support of 
 religion, independence", and union, guaranteeing these three 
 principles, and therefore it shall be called the army of the 
 "Three Guarantees." 
 
 So soon as the army which bore these principles upon their 
 banners had entered the capital, a junta was established, of 
 V^which Irturbide was proclaimed President. 
 
 The country breathed a moment after its long struggle of 
 eleven years of internecine strife, which had finally culminated 
 in independence and the establishing of a junta free from 
 foreign control. 
 
 Thus the clergy, the Creoles, and the Indian and mixed 
 races, had banded their interests and reached the first point in 
 the problem of Mexican freedom. But the moment was preg- 
 nant with an intense and fresh mental activity ; one step reached, 
 another, perforce, must be taken, and they immediately divided 
 into three parties. 
 
 The republicans wanted a central or federal republic, and 
 they opposed the military power, whom they accused of a desire 
 to usurp all authority, which properly belonged to the whole 
 people. The Bourbonists adhered to the idea of inviting 
 Ferdinand to the throne ; and, being very strongly supported 
 by the clergy, were really the dominant party. The third party 
 which sprang up was the Iturbidists, who desired to place their 
 favorite upon the throne which the plan of Iguala had reserved 
 for Ferdinand de Bourbon. A larger part of the military, 
 having followed Irturbide in his successes, were in favor of the 
 latter movement. The adherents of Irturbide did not, however, 
 feel themselves sufficiently strong to attempt this movement 
 while the clergy favored the Bourbonists. Thus the growing 
 interests of the different parties daily made a wider gap between 
 them, and daily pointed to the necessity for some strong hand 
 to turn the powerful revolutionary elements into a peaceful 
 channel. In this condition of affairs, news arrived from Spain 
 that the Cortes had refused to ratify the treaty of Cordova, 
 which the Viceroy O'Donoju had signed with Irturbide. It 
 was thus rendered impossible for any Spanish Bourbon to ascend 
 the throne. 
 
 In the uncertain position in which the Bourbonists now 
 found themselve thev were unprepared to oppose the rapid 
 action of the Irturbidists, who now proclaimed Irturbide Empe- 
 ror, under title of Augustin I., and forced Congress to ratify 
 the usurpation. Immense sums were voted to maintain the
 
 31 
 
 royal dignity, a large army drained the resources of the people, 
 and the Emperor, waiving all constitutional considerations, 
 made himself virtually dictator. His reign was, however, a 
 very short one ; the federal party had grown formidable, and 
 pandering more essentially to the interests of the church, issued 
 a " pronunciamiento " which roused the country, won over a 
 large part of the army, and resulted, through Generals Victoria 
 and Santa Anna the latter of whom here first appears upon 
 the stormy waves of Mexican politics in the establishment of 
 a representative Congress, in August, 1823, the adoption of a 
 federal constitution in 1824, and the appointment of General 
 Victoria as first President of the republic. 
 
 This was the first thoroughly considered and well digested 
 constitution which Mexico had. It was, moreover, acknowl- 
 edged by the whole country, while that of October 14, 1814, 
 was only adopted by the section under control of the insurgent 
 forces commanded by Morelos. The more perfect and demo- 
 cratic republican constitution of 1857 was to grow from the 
 seeds here planted in 1824. 
 
 The Mexican Church was in trouble. The elements of 
 republicanism, following rapidly upon the heels of freedom 
 from Spanish oppression, had crept into the worn frame of co- 
 lonial misrule, and the intellect of the Creoles, expanding with 
 the new lights of education and advancement, forced the clergy 
 to direct the storm they could not .breast. 
 
 The new constitution, however, still clung closely to that 
 curse upon the body politic which has been so fruitful in revo- 
 lutionary throes. It provided, in Article 50, for a concordat 
 with the Holy See, which was to throw nearly the whole of the 
 Mexican Church management into the hands of the Roman 
 pontiff. The clergy figured to exempt themselves entirely from 
 any chance of government control over their property and 
 monopolies. The old shadow of caste crept into it ; the secular 
 and parochial clergy were confined to the lower offices, such as 
 parish priests. All the bishoprics, deaneries, and chapters could 
 only be filled by old Spaniards. It will be remembered that 
 the lower orders of church offices had been the only ones during 
 colonial rule to which the Creoles and mixed races were eligible. 
 Thus the old feeling of caste still shook its head above the soil 
 of Mexico, and, united with the clergy, cursed the land it had 
 already desolated. 
 
 It is unnecessary to run through the long list of revolutions 
 which have torn Mexico in her struggles to free herself from 
 her inherited miseries. The numbers of presidents and dictators 
 who have followed each other in rapid succession, shows what 
 a terrible struggle and fratricidal strife has been going on at
 
 32 
 
 our very doors for nearly a half century Irom the date of the 
 revolution of independence. 
 
 But in mentioning these numerous changes, it must not be 
 supposed that there were as many parties sustaining different 
 principles : there were never more than three ; and the whole 
 
 , country became at last swallowed up in the two great ones the 
 Church, with its reactionary system ; and the Liberals, who op- 
 
 , posed it with reforms and innovations. The latter, as we shall 
 
 1 see, finally triumphed, when, in 185Y, the constitution which 
 they promulgated became the organic law of the land. It was 
 the shock of the contending forces of these parties which threw 
 
 - the presidential power first into the hands of one, then of the 
 other; making the numerous changes in power, which have 
 heretofore been erroneously considered as the result of constantly 
 changing political principles. The three classes of government 
 which have in turn ruled Mexico since her Spanish war of in- 
 dependence, are the empire, the republican federal constitution 
 of 1824, the centralized military dictatorships, and the return 
 in 1857 to the reconstituted federal republican government, 
 under the Liberals who had so many years been advocating it 
 with sword and pen. Since that date there has been another 
 period of centralized militarv dictatorships, under Zuloa'ga and 
 Miramon ; a return again 01 constitutional government, under 
 Juarez ; and latterly, the attempted usurpation of the govern- 
 ment by the French, for the purpose of establishing the imperial 
 rule of Maximilian. 
 
 When the viceroyalties of America severed the ties which 
 had bound them to the iron embrace of Spain, they found them- 
 selves exposed to the wildest theories of government. It had 
 been less than a half century since they had been allowed inter- 
 nal communication with each other/ We have seen that the 
 only political education they had received was the history of 
 Spain, which had for centuries shaped its laws under the shadow 
 of the inquisition. The vast influence of the Jesuits and other 
 orders of the Romish clergy, all tended to the formation of 
 governments in the New World which might crush out every 
 spark of information which had not passed the censorship of 
 the church. The religious bigotry of Spain, which we have 
 seen educating itself in eight nundred years of Moorish war- 
 fare, had spread its full force over the colonies, and repelled 
 every ray of civilization which attempted to penetrate the 
 universal gloom. 
 
 When communication with the Spanish-Americans was 
 opened, during their war of independence, the people looked 
 across the Atlantic for instruction in government, and they 
 saw chaos ! " Should they be republics ? the French repub-
 
 33 
 
 lie of 1793 had fallen. Should they be monarchies ? one of 
 the kings of Spain was an imbecile, the other was a captive. 
 Should they be empires? the great emperor, as a warning, 
 was bound to the rock of St. Helena." 
 
 To the northward they saw the rising glory of the great 
 republic, its wonderful -advancement, its power, and peace. No 
 internecine strife resounded through its valleys and covered its 
 people with the symbols of mourning. They are happy ! why 
 may we not be "happy under a similar form of government? 
 Henceforth the United States became their solar centre ; they 
 drank in its brightest rays, and fashioned their constitutional 
 governments upon the model of their great luminary. The 
 material with which they had to deal was crude ; it had scarcely 
 reached the eocene period of political stability. The revolu- 
 tionary vista loomed up darkly before them ; but they bravely 
 grappled with the problem, and, with herculean efforts, hurled 
 the States into the planes of their orbits. They had baptized 
 their advent into new life with the blood of their bravest sons ; 
 they could have established different and temporarily stable 
 governments, which would have given them rest for the moment, 
 but their bold leaders resolved every malign element into the 
 one great crucible, and, unsheathing their swords, exclaimed, 
 " Here is the problem we will kindle the fires of revolution 
 over eighty degrees of latitude, but we will melt down these " 
 elements which curse us, and although we may not know the 
 exact date of our regeneration, we do know that the exponent 
 of that unknown quantity is liberty, and that we constantly 
 approach it." 
 
 The States thrown into the planes of their revolutionry 
 orbits were in their courses most erratic. The sunshine of free- 
 dom struck upon a race which had been illy prepared to receive 
 its rays. There were elements in their organization which had 
 driven Europe into the most exhaustive wars of the sixteenth 
 century ; battled out of Europe, these elements had taken refuge 
 and rooted deeply into the soil of the New World, and at their 
 first outbreak, showed how bitterly their " Dead Sea fruits " 
 were to act upon the people who fed upon them. Their race 
 had been taught that labor was degrading ; that honest toil was 
 a curse to manhood instead of a blessing ; that there were but 
 three avenues to honor first, the Church ; second, the State ; 
 third, the army. Naturally taking their ideas of action from 
 those who had ruled over and educated them in a single direc- 
 tion for three hundred years, even now, from the highest to the 
 lowest position, they evince but too often that most unrepub- 
 lican, haughty, and arrogant bearing which it must take long 
 to eradicate. ' Their best educated men see this, and, in proper-
 
 34 
 
 tion to their education and breadth of views, are free from this 
 defect of character. The old Spaniards had left upon them, too, 
 their habits of plunder and misrule ; the effects had to be 
 eradicated. Agricultural pursuits were degrading ; they were 
 to be made honorable. The gambling spirit was predominant ; 
 it had to be curbed. The laws were of ancient Spanish mould, 
 un suited to modern progress ; they were to be remodeled. 
 France had instilled into them, among the first books which 
 they received, the " red republicanism and Utopian theories 
 of the French revolution ; the effects had to be modified. In a 
 late address before the Rhode Island Historical Society, the 
 learned Minister from the Argentine Republic, Don Domingo 
 F. Sarmiento, said : " You have not been exposed to the dan- 
 gerous influence of France from 1810 to 18 , and I know not 
 what, disturbing you with pernicious writings and evil examples, 
 holding up alternately, as the maximum bonum of government, 
 first the republic, then the empire, next the restored monarchy, 
 again the popular monarchy, then throwing down the monarchy 
 and restoring the republic, crushing the republic and establish- 
 ing the empire. You have not had, as we have, a more fortunate 
 republic, such as the United States, as a neighbor, tantalizing 
 you by holding up, as examples, its liberties, its wonderful pro- 
 gress, and its federation." 
 
 In a fierce struggle of ten years, the colonies had leaped 
 from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, and suddenly, in . 
 the light of the progress which the nations of the world had 
 made in three hundred years, found themselves dazzled with 
 the efforts which they were forced to put forth to reach the 
 level of modern civilization. They saw that, while the world 
 .had been advancing, they, under the iron heel of Spain, had 
 lain dormant ; and when they awoke to life and breathed the 
 first inspiration of liberty, they found themselves the Rip Van 
 Winkle of the sixteenth 'century .plunged into the mad race of 
 the nineteenth. They looked around them for the elements with 
 which they were to effect their regeneration, and what did they 
 possess ? The^vhole land was a wild wreck of desolation. Who 
 were their educated men who were to grapple with this giant 
 problem ? Alas ! education had been limited to the old Spaniards 
 whom their ten years of civil strife had, as the first step toward 
 liberty, forced from the country. The abundant talent which 
 their soil had produced was as untrained as the luxuriant vege- 
 tation which runs wild in their tropical districts. It wanted 
 cultivation, and they set about the giant task ; but it was in 
 the midst of the civil hatreds which war, famine, and entailed 
 miseries had forced upon them. Where were their teachers ? 
 They had none. Where were their schools ? There were but
 
 35 
 
 a few private ones, and these under control of a 
 "Were there any public ones devoted to the expansion of tne 
 intellectual forces ? You might have traveled from San Fran- 
 cisco to Chiloe without finding one.* When schools were or- 
 ganized, to what influences were they subjected ? Suppose, at 
 the beginning of the sixteenth century, a school for the teach- 
 ing of liberal government, the laws of progress, the sciences, 
 and all those great elements of nineteenth century mental 
 development, had been established in Eome, how much military 
 force would it have required to preserve it intact ? What 
 anathemas from the Roman Pontiff! what secular power, 
 limited only by ecclesiastical effort, would have trained its ord- 
 nance upon the plague spot in their midst, until it would have 
 disappeared, if only by the centripetal attrition of the revolving 
 forces ! Yet this is ' the picture of Spanish- America when it 
 broke from the yoke of Spain ; and it has been in the midst of 
 each opposing elements that she has had to plant the germs of 
 that educational advancement which has thus far blessed her 
 efforts. " Liberty," said Rousseau, " is a succulent food, but 
 difficult of digestion." He should have added, when mingled 
 with all the old-time ideas engendered by bigoted opposition to 
 advancement. 
 
 Said General Bolivar, in his speech to the Congress of 
 Venezuela, " Morals and knowledge are the cardinal points of a 
 republic, and morals and knowledge are what we most want." 
 So thought and so think all the great men of Spanish- America, 
 and laboring in the task, they still struggle onward, at each 
 revolution sweeping some old curse from the land, and ascend- 
 ing one step higher in the scale of political progress. 
 
 Another seed which Bolivar planted in the political soil of 
 Spanish-America was, that " knowledge and honesty, not money, 
 are the requisites for exercising political power." He evidently 
 valued the brain, not for the gilding which enabled it to reflect 
 light, but for its powers of absorption. 
 
 Never were human talents put to a severer test than were 
 those of Spanish- America, and especially the Mexican portion, 
 to bring order out .of this vast pool of the gathered misrule of 
 centuries ; and never have patriots worked harder in a glorious 
 cause than have those of Spanish- America for the regeneration 
 of their land. But amid all the elements which they found 
 
 * In 1561, there was a university founded in the city of Mexico, and a few 
 schools, supposed to be public, but public only to the privileged classes, were 
 afterwards'establisbed for priests and lawyers. An excellent academy of mines 
 and mining engineers gave, to those who could gain admittance, superior advan- 
 tages in an art so essential to make the Mexican mines productive. All these 
 echools were, however, more or less controlled by the priesthood.
 
 36 
 
 wanting to aid them in their heroic struggle, that of education 
 was the foremost ; how to educate the people became the great 
 problem which has to this day agitated the first minds of the 
 country, and which has been fruitful in revolutionary opposition 
 to its progress. The first necessity was to confine within proper 
 limits the influence of the church ; and in Mexico, constant 
 hammering at its power for fifty years, although with feeble 
 force, has produced the effect, if only by abrasion, to tear off 
 some of its tentacula, which have been fixed upon every ele- 
 ment of progress in the land, and which have spread their slimy 
 curse upon every effort at mental development. Never did a 
 more bitter tide flow over a land than that of the clergy over 
 Mexico. It has thrown surge after surge of revolution from 
 one end of the country to the other in its mad efforts to, drown' 
 progress, or at least to guide upon its dark tide the elements 
 which it has been unable fully to hurl" back. Its vast monop- 
 olies of estates have held one-half of the country in mortmain, 
 and have made the whole land a palimpsist, where, age after 
 age, one curse has been rubbed in to give place to the next. 
 What wonder that their land is revolutionary ! What wonder if 
 they should take a hundred years to free themselves from this 
 leper spot upon their soil ! We, born under a happier sky, and 
 with our religious wars fought out for us by almost a half cent- 
 ury of revolutiontary conflict in Europe, should look with more 
 sympathy upon the struggle of a people for religious and civil 
 freedom. Thoughtlessly the great mass of our countrymen 
 point to Mexico and South America and wonder why the polit- 
 ical elements are so stormy. The North American child was 
 wafted across the ocean, born of the very essence of German 
 and Anglo-Saxon progress, with its religious wars all fought, its 
 laws all shaped to the times, and carrying with it but one curse 
 slavery. Even this one last curse has taken four years of the 
 brain, blood, and, though but of slight moment, treasure of the 
 country, to sink it among the dark barbarities of the past. How 
 much time, then, should we give to a people to shake off, at one 
 effort, all the curses herein enumerated ? The nursling which 
 the Spaniards brought to the New World was the very concen- 
 tration of the religious bigotry which had sought refuge in 
 Spain at the end of the fifteenth century. The child wrapped 
 in the swaddling clothes woven in the religious looms of the 
 dark ages of European history, was an exponent, a germ, of all 
 the curses which had surged around the Mediterranean from 
 the Christian era to the time that the light of modern civiliza- 
 tion broke in upon Europe. It wore a garment woven by the 
 seven crusades, which, from Marseilles or down through the 
 Adriatic, had stretched across the Mediterranean, or from Co-
 
 37 
 
 logne or Metz, had, preceded by a goat and a goose, swept 
 through the heart of Europe on the way to the Holy Land. It 
 was wrapped in all the dark mysteries which the clergy of Rome 
 could smuggle out of the light" which was at that time breaking 
 in to civilize Europe. Rocked under the upas shade of the In- 
 quisition, it breathed the polluted atmosphere which had been 
 poisoned by the ecclesiastical vengeance born of such massacres 
 as that of Lavaur, and the Church of St. Mary Magdalen. By 
 ten years of savage warfare, Spanish- America unrolled the 
 reeking rags of the fifteenth century, and the light of liberty 
 shone upon the new birth. Warped by -all that ecclesiastical 
 fanaticism, linked to Spanish *avarice, could concentrate in a 
 single element, it was plunged into the mad whirlpool of our 
 present age, and expected, at a single stride, to attain our level. 
 But to give them but fifty years to attain a point which it has 
 taken us three hundred years to reach, is to acknowledge their 
 mental superiority over us. They want time ; their revolutions 
 are absolutely essential to their progress. The Mexican Em- 
 peror, Iturbide, in his ostracism at Leghorn, aptly alludes to 
 the false view which has been taken ot Mexican aifairs. He 
 says : " Nature produces nothing by sudden leaps ; she ope- 
 rates by intermediate degrees. The "moral world follows the 
 laws of the physical. To think that we could emerge all at 
 once from a state of debasement such as that of slavery, and 
 from a state of ignorance such as has been inflicted upon us for 
 three hundred years, during which we have had neither books 
 nor instructors and the possession of knowledge has been 
 thought a sufficient cause for persecution to think that we 
 could gain information and refinement in a moment, as if by 
 enchantment that we could acquire every virtue, forget 
 prejudices, and give up false pretensions was a vain expecta- 
 tion, and could only have entered into the vision of an en- 
 thusiast." 
 
 In Mexico, up to the time of the revolution of Ayutla, 
 which resulted in the establishment of the constitution of 1857, 
 the Holy Catholic Church has been the main feature in every 
 constitution, and no reform has been attempted wherein the 
 clergy have not introduced a religious element, having a ten- 
 dency to maintain the fast-rooted bigotry of their spiritual 
 power. Their religious, linked to their moneyed influence, had 
 always enabled them to overturn all the efforts of the liberal- 
 minded, progressive party, who have, however, nobly clung to 
 the task of overthrowing^this curse upon their body politic. . In 
 1833 the combinations of the progressionists had somewhat 
 trammeled the clergy, but they, by bloody revolutions, upset 
 ihe presidents, who followed each other in quick succession, and 
 
 304822
 
 38 
 
 were enabled, through the aid of Santa Anna, to shake them- 
 selves almost entirely free from any State influence. By this 
 the bishops held sole control over all ecclesiastical property, be- 
 coming the great bankers of the country, effecting loans, taking 
 mortgages upon all kinds of property, and acting in all respects 
 like immense commercial and moneyed corporations. 
 
 In the proclamation of the " Basis of Political Organization 
 of the . Mexican Kepublic," the " Holy Catholic Faith " was 
 the most salient feature. It held in its vicelike grasp the ele- 
 ments of progress, and refused to liberate them. So early as 
 1824 an attempt was made in the State of Guadalaxera to con- 
 fiscate the church property ; but it was met by a decree from 
 the General Congress, which opposed the measure. Congress, 
 however, passed a law in 1833 abolishing Church tithes, which 
 tax upon the agricultural products of the country had yielded 
 the clergy a large revenue. This decree of Congress, did not, 
 however, have the effect intended, for a greater part of the 
 ignorant people still render into the coffers of the Church the 
 old tax, w T hich their religion teaches them it would be sacrile- 
 gious to withhold. 
 
 From 1833 revolution after revolution followed in quick 
 succession, each eating into the revenues of the Church. One 
 party trying to grasp at a portion of the Church property 
 that they might rid the country of its curse ; the opposition, 
 aided by the funds of the clergy, waging a war to retain the 
 property intact. In 1834, Gomez Farias, one of the first lead- 
 ers in reform, advocated in the legislative halls the confiscation 
 of the Church property ; but Santa Anna, in consonance with 
 his attachment to church interests, opposed the measure. Dur- 
 ing the government of Farias and Barrigan, in 1835, a fruitless 
 attempt, leading to another bloody war, was made to confiscate 
 this property, and appropriate it to the payment of the public 
 debt. The liberals had, in a succession of wars and presidential 
 overturnings, been gradually gaining ground and encroaching 
 upon the church power, which, although eminently superior in 
 financial resources, still found itself forced to make great effort 
 to hold the ascendency in face of the innovating influences 
 of nineteenth century progress and the advancing civilization 
 which from the United States was constantly impinging upon 
 its border. A law was passed on 7th January, 1847, by Con- 
 gress, to sell or mortgage a portion of the church property in 
 order to raise. $15,000,000 to carry on the war against the 
 United States. It was, however, never executed, owing to the 
 opposition of Santa Anna then in control of the government. 
 
 Hard pressed in 1854, the reactionists, through their cham- 
 pion, Santa Anna, still nursed the hope that out of the fecundity
 
 39 
 
 of Europe they might receive a royal ruler. Their efforts to 
 effect this had been increasing since the independence of the 
 country. Knocking constantly at the nurseries of the great 
 European royal families, they hoped when success crowned their 
 efforts that their rule over the land might be confirmed, that 
 the cowl might once more cover the helmet, and the saintly 
 frock conceal the sword. In 1845, under General Parades, they 
 had pressed the Spanish throne for a prince, but though the 
 measure received the secret sanction of Western Europe, the 
 moment was not propitious. But in 1854 the effort was more 
 powerful. Santa Anna, then Dictator, commissioned Gutierrez 
 Estrada, with full powers, " to negotiate in Europe for the es- 
 tablishment of a monarchy in Mexico," saying, " I confer upon 
 him by these presents the full powers necessary to enter into 
 arrangements and make the proper offers at the courts of Lon- 
 don, Paris, Madrid and Vienna, to obtain from those govern- 
 ments, or from any one of them, the establishment of a Mon- 
 archy derived from any of the royal races of those powers, 
 under qualifications and conditions to be established by special 
 instructions." Though this measure was urged by the clergy 
 with all their influence the effort was unsuccessful ; the great 
 Republic of the North was too compact, too well filled w r ith 
 the spirit which the Monroe doctrine had infused into the peo- 
 ple to allow it to look calmly on and see Western Europe un- 
 dertake an armed crusade against republicanism in the 'New 
 World. The European nations saw that the moment was un- 
 propitious too dangerous they waited. 
 
 In 1855 the liberals had so far gained upon church power 
 that General Ignacio Comonfort occupied the presidential chair. 
 The ecclesiastical party had made a heroic struggle, but their 
 great champion Santa Anna, had, upon their overthrow, been 
 forced to fly from the country. At the moment of his depart- 
 ure, the liberals being at some distance from the capital, an 
 attempt was made by the clergy to organize a government upon 
 a conservative basis, if possible, effecting a compromise with 
 their opponents, vainly hoping to protract their power by de- 
 laying the final triumph of the progressive efforts at reform 
 which the liberals were so boldly hurling against them. A 
 similar attempt will doubtless be made by them, in fact, we 
 believe is already in progress, to effect a compromise upon the 
 overthrow of Maximilian. 
 
 Urged by the church leaders, General Eomulo Diaz de la 
 Vega, who commanded the forces deserted by Santa Anna, 
 attempted to organize a government at the capital. It was a 
 weak military dictatorship of a few days, and scarcely worth 
 the dignity of mention. The plans of the conservatives fully
 
 40 
 
 arranged, Carrera was installed as nominal chief, but it was 
 for a month only that he exercised a power which extended not 
 beyond the city limits. The effort was in vain, the liberals 
 soon occupied the capital. 
 
 The great movement of this period, therefore, was that of 
 the liberals, headed by Alvarez and Comonfort, against the re- 
 actionary or Church party, headed by Santa Anna. General 
 Alvarez, the most prominent in the leaders of the revolution of 
 Ayutla, though from his infirmities taking a less conspicuous 
 part in the campaign, had, on the flight of Santa Anna, con- 
 voked an Assembly, October 4, 1855, at Cuernavaca, eighteen 
 leagues south of the city of Mexico. This Assembly appointed 
 him to the Presidency. On the 17th of the same month he 
 issued a proclamation calling an election of Deputies to a Na- 
 tional Congress to meet " for the purpose of reconstituting the 
 nation under the form of a popular representative democratic 
 republic." This Congress met on the 18th February, 1856, and 
 after prolonged sessions adopted a constitution which was finally 
 sworn on the 3d February, 1857, and became, what the con- 
 stitution of 1824 was before that time, the organic law of the 
 land. 
 
 The cares of government, old age and infirmities, had in- 
 duced General Alvarez, on the 12th December, 1855, to resign 
 and appoint General Comonfort "President Substitute." 
 Comonfort was subsequently made President by a formal elec- 
 tion under the constitution of 1857, and on the 1st of Decem- 
 ber of that year, again took oath to defend that great liberal 
 code of laws. Afterwards, under the constant assaults of the 
 clergy, and an empty treasury, which gave him no means to 
 properly construct the Government, he conceived that he was 
 fettered by this code whose great principles he believed he might 
 sustain while he abandoned their legalized expression. He 
 therefore, on the 17th December, 1857, pronounced against the 
 constitution, and, aided by the Zuloaga brigade, attempted by 
 a coup d'etat to establish a dictatorship, which he termed a 
 revolutionary government ; but he only succeeded in teaching 
 the liberal party a lesson which should never be forgotten 
 not to permit another revolution within itself. 
 
 The reactionists seized the favorable opportunity so unex- 
 pectedly offered to them ; and, on the llth of January, Zuloaga 
 and his brigade, instigated and corrupted by the clergy, pro- 
 nounced against Comonfort, who, too late, saw and attempted 
 to correct his error. He now tried to effect a compromise be- 
 tween the reactionists and liberals for the formation of a 
 moderate party, but both parties throwing him aside, he, on the 
 21st of January, 1858, abandoned the capital and voluntarily
 
 embarked for the United States, leaving to firmer hands the 
 cause he had before done so much towards bringing to a success- 
 ful issue. 
 
 The liberals, in sustaining the reforms embodied in the 
 " Plan of Ayutla," which Alvarez and Comonfort had so suc- 
 cessfully supported, had attacked, directly, the Church property 
 through the " Law Lerdo," or law of " desamortization." Under 
 this law, the author of which was Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, a 
 very able and patriotic statesman, who was at that time Minis- 
 ter of the Treasury, the Church was required to sell its lands 
 and houses to such of its tenants as should make application ; 
 or, in default of application, to such other persons as should 
 first propose for the property. The sale was to be 
 effected for such a sum as the rent then paid would be 
 the interest upon at six per cent, per annum. This sum was to 
 be placed in a perpetual mortgage, to bear ^in equal interest, 
 and to be held by the Church. The Government was to re- 
 ceive a tax of five per cent, on the amount of sale ; it being a 
 slight increase upon the existing tax on all transfers of real es- 
 tate. In this manner $18,000,000 of real estate passed into the 
 hands of private individuals who thenceforth necessarily sup- 
 ported the Constitutional Government. 
 
 The clergy, however, left no measure untried to prevent its 
 execution ; they even refused final absolution and sepulchral 
 rites to purchasers. The law, however, only changed the title 
 of the Church from a fee simple to a mortgage, and was intended 
 to secure an enlarged proprietary and consequent improvement 
 of the estates. It was not sufficiently sweeping, and the 
 tame policy of a partial attack upon the clerical domain was 
 the cause of its non-success at the moment. Naturally, at 
 that period, the minds of the people had not been fully awakened 
 to the importance of the great principles involved, and the 
 effect was a compromise between the more enlightened minds and 
 the conservative portion of the party, who were not fully pre- 
 pared to accept the tremendous responsibilities which the Con- 
 stitutional Government under Juarez afterwards assumed in the 
 issue of the sweeping " Decree of Secularization " which was 
 proclaimed at Yera Cruz in July, 1859.
 
 PAET IV. 
 
 ACCESSION OF JUAREZ TO THE PRESIDENCY BIOGRAPHICAL 
 SKETCH OF HIS LIFE CHURCH GOVERNMENT AT THE CAPI- 
 TAL THE " LAWS OF REFORM " THE TERRIBLE THREE- 
 YEARS' CONTEST FINAL TRIUMPH OF THE LIBERALS THE 
 LIBERAL AND CHURCH CREEDS THE CLERGY INTRIGUE FOR 
 A FOREIGN INTERVENTION THE " DECREE OF SECULARIZA- 
 TION " ZULOAGA AND MlRAMON ACTION OF THE DIPLO- 
 MATIC CORPS MANIFESTO OF THE LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 
 EFFECTS OF THE FINAL SUCCESS OF THE LIBERALS THE 
 CHURCH PARTY PLUNDERS THE " BRITISH BONDHOLDERS' 
 FUND" MEXICO UNABLE TO COMPLY WITH FINANCIAL DE- 
 MANDS OF THE EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS RENEWED ACTIVITY 
 OF THE CLERGY TO INDUCE FOREIGN INTERVENTION. 
 
 By a -provision of the constitution of 1857, the Chief Justice 
 of the Supreme Court, who was also Yice-President of the Re- 
 public, became President in default or by absence of the Presi- 
 dent elect. Fortunately for Mexico, Benito Juarez,* a man of 
 
 * President Benito Juarez is by birth an Indian of the ancient Zapoteco race, 
 which, at the time of the conquest, was one of the most powerful in Mexico. He 
 was born in 1 809, in the province of Oaxaca, near the village of Ixtlan. 
 
 At twelve years of age he left his father's herds, mingled in the excitement of a 
 country fair, and disgusted with the thought of again returning home, accepted 
 employment in a mule train then en route for Oaxaca. At that city he encoun- 
 tered Senor Salanueva, a merchant, who, attracted by the rare natural gifts of the 
 boy, adopted him, and gave him the best education within reach. The youth 
 soon graduated with high honors at the College of Oaxaca ; commenced the prac- 
 tice of law, and rose rapidly to distinction. In 1846 he was elected member of 
 Congress, after having occupied numerous honorary positions in his native State. 
 He soon after became President of the Supreme Court of Justice of Oaxaca, and 
 in 1847 was elected Governor of that State. In this position he urged numerous 
 public improvements, infused life into the development of mines and manufactures, 
 and, by establishing numerous schools, gave an impetus to educational interests. 
 In 1862 he filled the chair of Civil Law at the Institute of Oaxaca, and afterward 
 became permanent President of the Institute. At this time, by the advocacy of 
 liberal institutions, he attracted the attention of the reactionary government, then 
 under the Dictatorship of Santa Anna ; was exiled, and retired to New Orleans. 
 
 The Revolution of Ayutla, in 1854, enabled Juarez to return to Mexico, where, 
 in 1856, he was again elected Governor of his native State. When Alvarez be- 
 came President, ad-interim, after the overthrow of Santa Anna and the Church 
 Party, Juarez became Secretary of State for the Departments of Justice, Ecclesi- 
 astical Affairs, and Public Instruction. Under his Secretaryship was issued the 
 law abolishing military and ecclesiastical " fueros," giving for the first time in 
 Mexico equality before the law. After again having been Governor of his native 
 State, he was, in 1866, elected to the National Congress, where he assisted in 
 framing and adopting the Constitution of 1857. 
 
 In the first election under the Constitution, the progressive party nominated
 
 43 
 
 sterling integrity, was holding that position at the time of the 
 coup cFetdt of Comonfort. He refused to join the movement, 
 and was in consequence, with several other officials, imprisoned 
 until it was consummated ; but, upon the flight of Comonfort, 
 and just previous to the establishment of the government of 
 Zuloaga, he was liberated, and, with others faithful to the liberal 
 cause, succeeded in escaping from the city. He reached the 
 city of Queretaro, where he immediately issued a proclamation 
 reorganizing the Liberal Government, and calling upon the peo- 
 ple to rise to the defense of the Constitution and the principles 
 of reform to which the whole country had taken oath. This 
 was followed by a decree, on February 9th, 1858, declaring all 
 the acts of the so-called Zuloaga Government null and void. 
 
 The church party, with Zuloaga for its exponent, had gained 
 possession of the capital by the flight of Comonfort. This 
 was on the 21st of January, 1858. On the 22d, Zuloaga 
 convoked a junta of twenty -eight persons named by himself, 
 who in turn named him President of the Republic. Before the 
 30th, the machinations of the church and reactionary leaders 
 had induced the representatives* of foreign powers resident at 
 the capital, including even the minister from the United States, 
 to recognize Zuloaga as the legitimate president of the republic. 
 They apparently, either with lamentable ignorance of the great 
 principles involved in the struggle, or else blinded by the mis- 
 representations of the priest party, completely ignored the real 
 government of the country ; which, by the will of the people 
 under the constitution of 1857, was still the ruling power of the 
 land. This action of the diplomatic corps only aided in pro- 
 longing the contest, by giving a certain character and import- 
 ance to the church party before the world which it would have 
 found it impossible to obtain in any other manner at this period. 
 It virtually gave the church a three years' additional lease of 
 contest, and they availed themselves of it to the fullest measure. 
 
 The triumph of the principles of the constitution of 1857 
 it was well known would seal the fate of the vast estates of the 
 church. The hoary old giant now bared all his muscles brain, 
 
 Juarez for President, but Comonfort became the successful candidate. He was, 
 however, in November of the same year, elected President of the Supreme Court 
 of Justice, and became, by virtue of that office, Vice-President of the Republic. 
 Upon the flight of Comonfort, Juarez became President. From that date his history 
 is that of the country. 
 
 * A good authority, speaking of this diplomatic corps, says : " The French 
 Minister was a Jesuit ; the Minister of Guatemala a devoted son of the church ; 
 the American Minister, a Southern man, wanted to treat for the purchase of terri- 
 tory and became the dupe of the others ; the English Charge" was controlled by 
 capitalists who had played the game of monopoly so long that they thought it 
 could be played forever."
 
 44 
 
 sword, treasure, and spiritual power, lighted the fires of revolu- 
 tion throughout the land. It was to be the last grand struggle 
 of the wounded Hercules ; and, by the kindling of every fagot 
 of church wrath and power, it was hoped that in one grand 
 auto de fe might be consumed the constitution of 1857, and 
 with it every liberal sentiment in- the country. The liberals 
 now hurled every element into the contest against ecclesiastical 
 vengeance ; for three years the civilization of the nineteenth 
 century boldly faced the armed spectre of the middle ages, and 
 deluged, the valleys of Mexico with the blood which it was 
 hoped would wash out the stains that the maddened power of 
 the clergy had blotted upon the land. For three long years, 
 with varying fortunes, the red tide ebbed and flowed, burying 
 in its death-grapple both bigotry and advancement. The star 
 of hope for Mexico grew dim ; but her patriots, begrimed in the 
 , battle-smoke of fifty years of civil strife, still held their heads 
 above the surges, now riding the wave now in its valley, but 
 ever hopeful, ever boldly slashing at the monster which had 
 fattened its bloated carcass upon their fair land. Under Zulo- 
 aga and Miramon, the forces of the church, well supplied with 
 material of war, waged fierce conflict with the patriots who 
 gathered, half-starved, poorly-clad, and lacking in everything 
 except determination, under the banner of the constitution- 
 alists. 
 
 Driven from Queretaro, the liberal government occupied 
 successively Guanajuato, Guadalajara, and finally Vera Cruz. 
 It was here on the 6th April, 1859, while the capital was still 
 in the hands of the reactionists, that the United States recog- 
 nized the constitutional government under President Juarez as 
 the legitimate government of Mexico. It was also at Vera 
 Cruz, in July, 1859, that the great decrees known as the " Laws 
 of Reform " were promulgated. At this time there were in 
 possession of the liberals twenty-one states and one territory, 
 out of the twenty-four states and territories comprising the 
 republic, besides all the seaports both on the Atlantic and 
 Pacific. The " Law Lerdo " had been repealed by the reaction- 
 ists, after the flight of Comonfort, and the property, which had 
 been partly wrenched from the grasp of the church, had again 
 reverted to it with all its old powers intact, so far as the juris- 
 diction of the reactionists extended. But the contest had, at 
 length, through all the conflicting elements which Spain had 
 bequeathed to Mexico, narrowed itself to two great parties, and 
 the country began to see the dawn of a permanent peace. The 
 liberals, gaining ground, took heart, and through difficulties 
 which might well appall less determined patriots, their cause 
 was at length triumphant.
 
 45 
 
 The great victory of San Miguel Calpulalpan, on the 22d 
 December, 1860, where half the reactionist army was captured, 
 with forty pieces of artillery and all its munitions of war, vir- 
 tually struck the death knell of the church power, and Boon 
 after the liberals appeared before the capital. 
 
 While Juarez was closely besieging Miramon, in the capital, 
 the clergy prevailed upon France and England to offer their 
 mediation; but it was refused by the liberals, who entered 
 Mexico January 11, 1861. Miramon and other reactionary 
 chiefs fled the country. Juarez immediately proclaimed the 
 revival of the civil and religious reforms of 1857. He dis- 
 missed the ministers of Spain and Guatemala, and the repre- 
 sentative of the Holy See, M. Clementi all for machinations 
 in favor of the ecclesiastical party. On the 9th of May, 1861, 
 Juarez addressed the Congress, and" proclaimed that from the 
 efforts of the liberals " were born the laws of reform, the 
 nationalization of estates held in mortmain, liberty of worship, 
 the absolute independence of civil . and religious powers, the 
 secularization, so to speak, of society, whose march has been 
 detained by a bastard alliance, which profaned the name of God 
 and outraged human dignity." 
 
 This was the result of the terrible three years' struggle from 
 1858 to 1861 ; but the church still maintained, iinder Marquez 
 and others, small forces in the field, which committed the most 
 brutal excesses. They distinguished neither between foreigner 
 or native, but upon every one they levied contributions of blood 
 and treasure. It appeared to be their desire to make a pande- 
 monium of the land, the better to induce a foreign intervention, 
 under plea of humanity to a people whom they were crushing 
 under their bloody despotism. To the sunshine which lighted 
 the land from the banners of the liberals the church opposed 
 the dark creed which, forced into the Atlantic by the civiliza- 
 tion of Europe, had swam the ocean and sought refuge in its 
 last stronghold, Mexico. 
 
 Look ! here is the contrast between the nineteenth and fif- 
 teenth centuries : 
 
 LIBERAL CREED or REFORM AND CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Constitutional government in place of dictatorship. 
 
 Freedom of religion. 
 
 Freedom of the press. 
 
 Nationalization of church property. 
 
 Army subordinate to civil power. 
 
 Free and full opening for colonization.
 
 REACTIONIST OR CHURCH CREED. 
 
 Inviolability of church property, and re-establishment of 
 former exactions. 
 
 The military and clergy responsible to their own tribunals. 
 
 Roman Catholic the sole religion. 
 
 Censorship of the press. 
 
 No immigrants except from Catholic countries. 
 
 A central dictator, only subject to the church, or, if possible, 
 the restoration of a monarchy or a European protectorate. 
 
 Such was the political condition of the country when, in 
 1861, the constitution of 1857 again became dominant, and 
 hope shed her cheering ray over the whole land ; but the 
 
 mighty power of the church was not dead, although the liberals 
 had confiscated a goodly portion of its estates. The clergy, 
 upon their overthrow by the liberal party, had sent their ablest 
 
 emissaries to Europe to represent the evil condition of the 
 country, and to instill into the monarchists of the Old World 
 the idea that Mexico was hopelessly given over to anarchy. 
 Similar representations to the French Government in 1839 
 about the time of the French naval expedition against Mexico 
 brought forth in France a pamphlet which stated that " it is 
 known that it is to the clerical party that the differences which 
 have arisen between France and Mexico must be attributed. 
 This party wishes to bring back Mexico to monarchical rule, 
 and has pushed it to a war with us in order to arrive at this 
 end." 
 
 " The "priest party thought that by injustice, insult, and 
 outrage, it would bring France to undertake the conquest of 
 the Mexican republic, and that a monarchy would then be 
 established." How well these words, written in 1839, apply to 
 186-1, the whole history of the late French invasion proves. 
 
 The preamble of the " Decree of Secularization," issued at 
 Yera Cruz, July, 1859, stated : " That if at any previous time 
 there was room for any one to doubt that the clergy has been a 
 steadfast obstacle in the way of the establishment of the public 
 peace, to-day all men recognize that it is in a state of overt 
 rebellion against the sovereign authority." 
 
 " That in misapplying the legacies and gifts which the pious 
 have intrusted to them for sacred objects, the clergy turn them 
 to the public destruction by sustaining and rendering daily 
 more sanguinary the fratricidal dissension which is set afoot in 
 disowning the legitimate authority, and denying that the 
 republic could constitute itself into any form that the majority 
 selected."
 
 4T 
 
 In an explanatory circular from the liberal cabinet, the gov- 
 ernment stated its objects to be : 
 
 " To bring to a definite close this bloody and fratricidal war, 
 which a portion of the clergy has for a long time been foment- 
 ing in the nation, with the single object of preserving its 
 interests and prerogatives which it derived from the colonial 
 system, thus shamelessly abusing the influence which the riches 
 deposited in its hands affords it, and abusing the offices of its 
 sacred ministry ; and, in order to disarm once for all that class 
 of elements which serve as buttresses to support its mischievous 
 sway, the government hold it to be indispensable : 
 
 " 1st. To establish, as a general and invariable rule, most 
 perfect independence between affairs of state and those purely 
 ecclesiastical : 
 
 " 2d. To suppress all corporations of regulars of masculine 
 sex without any exception, secularizing the priests now embodied 
 in them : 
 
 " 3d. To extinguish equally the associations, archicofradias, 
 brotherhoods, and in general all corporations now existing of a 
 religious character : 
 
 "4th. To put a period to the novitiates in the convents of 
 monks, retaining those actually existing in "them, with the 
 means and endowments each possesses, and assigning the neces- 
 sary means for the maintenance of service in the respective 
 temples : 
 
 " 5th. To declare that all property, &c." 
 We dwell somewhat at length upon this period in the his- 
 tory of Mexico, for it is the time at which the plant of a fifty 
 years' revolutionary growth was budding into the civilizing 
 reforms incorporated into the mea'sures which sprung from the 
 Revolution of Ayutla, the constitution of 185 7, and the Laws 
 of Reform, including this Decree of Secularization. The 
 grand principles found in these had at length reached the sur- 
 face ; but the sturdy plant had yet to face another fierce blast, 
 and this time from Europe. 
 
 The clergy, as a last resort to overthrow the liberals, sought 
 the shadow of the French throne, and hoped still to write the 
 doom of Mexico with a quill plucked from the Austrian eagle. 
 The great military and political leaders of the Church party, 
 ostracised by the liberals, filled Paris with false representations 
 of their country. Miramon and Almonte, with others of the 
 Church party, who were the very exponents of the Mexican 
 revolutionary woes, and who had scourged the country with 
 fire, rapine and murder, hovered around the Tuileries ; and 
 their plans falling upon willing ears were soon perfected. M. 
 Lefevre, in a letter to the London Daily News, January 4, 1864,
 
 ably details the tyranny of the reactionary party during the 
 occupation of Mexico by Zuloaga and Miramon. First came 
 two decrees annulling the . alienation of church property, and 
 restoring the ecclesiastical and military jurisdiction as it existed 
 before 1853. M. de Gabriac, French Minister to Mexico, was 
 quite prominent at that time in rendering assistance to the re- 
 actionary party, for in a letter of February 27, 1858, he recalls 
 to the Archbisnop of Mexico the services which he has rendered 
 to the country and to the Holy Church of that ecclesiastical 
 province. " M. Zuloaga, the intimate friend of MM. Gabriac 
 and Otway, had contented himself with imposing a tax upon 
 capital of 1,000 and upwards." 
 
 February 7, 1859, M. Miramon, another, and not less inti- 
 mate friend of these gentlemen, had attacked (and as usual as 
 an " extraordinary " measure) personal property of 200 ster- 
 ling and upwards, and had included the liberal and industrial 
 professions in the impost. In May of the same year he had 
 imposed ten per cent, on real property. Then came the " Peza " 
 law, or collection of a year's taxes in advance. Then, when it 
 was found that all the financial measures were insufficient to 
 fill the void of the Danaides sieve, which was called at that 
 time the " Public Treasury," the same Miramon taxed all at 
 once, March 20, 1860 : 
 
 First. Effective capital of 200 and upward. 
 
 Second. The liberal and industrial professions. 
 
 Third. "Moral capital," or tax upon the wages of em- 
 ployees. 
 
 The amount of taxes, which had been tripled by Zuloaga in 
 
 I 1858, was quadrupled by Miramon in 1859, and in case of some 
 
 II Europeans mostly French, whose minister would not interfere 
 / was sevenfold. 
 
 The way that Miramon happened to succeed Zuloaga was 
 peculiar, both being of the reactionary party. In 1858, Zuloaga 
 had issued his " Christmas pronunciamiento " the harpies of 
 desolation had been quarreling about the spoils. The country 
 had to be pacified, and under plea that the government of Zu- 
 loaga lacked authority, they for a moment conferred it on 
 Robles, who soon found it too weighty a burden and transferred 
 it, a few days after, to the shoulders of Miramon, the most bit- 
 ter " reactionist " of his party. 
 
 The Ministers of France, Spain and England appeared de- 
 termined to recognize this bastard government, despite the fact 
 that almost the whole country was in the hands of the liberals, 
 and that almost every State adhered to the constitution of 1857. 
 Mr. Otway, who represented Great Britain, had, while Miramon 
 was General, demanded his dismissal for outrages committed
 
 49 
 
 upon British subjects at San Luis ; but so Boon as Miramoa 
 occupied the Presidential chair he formally recognized him. 
 Miramon and Marquez soon after defeated the liberals at Tacu- 
 bay a, entered the town, took seven "liberal" surgeons who 
 were attending to the sick and wounded of both parties in the 
 hospitals, and on April 11, 1859, shot them in cold blood. 
 These were the acts of the party whom the allies were to shelter 
 under their flag when a few years later the intervention was 
 undertaken to prevent anarchy in Mexico and reinstate the 
 conservative party, who, under Almonte, Miramon, Marquez, 
 Zuloaga, Mejia, Miranda, and others, had spread devastation 
 over their country. 
 
 The diplomatic corps had recognized Miramon the very day 
 of his accession to power. Mr. Otway had passed directly 
 through Yera Cruz, occupied by the legitimate government, to 
 open relations with the last tire-brand which the church party 
 was able to hold aloft at a moment when they only controlled 
 the cities of Mexico and Puebla, with a few adjoining villages. 
 So shamefully open was Mr. Otway's collusion with the clergy, 
 that it caused his recall in July, 1859. He was superseded by 
 Mr. Matthew. The church party appeared to possess peculiar 
 and fascinating charms for the diplomatic representatives of 
 foreign governments. Upon the arrival of Baron E. de Wag- 
 ner, the representative 'of Prussia, they immediately won him 
 to their support. M. Gabriac, the French minister, was so un- 
 scrupulous and powerful in support of the church that he was 
 recalled and left on the 8th May, 1860. 
 
 In the meantime Zuloaga quarreled with Miramon, and 
 demanded his restoration to power, maintaining that the Presi- 
 dency had only been delegated to the latter as "President 
 Substitute." Miramon refused to resign, and forced Zuloaga to 
 accompany him on a campaign against the liberals. The di- 
 plomatic corps recognized the claims of Zuloaga, and on the 
 llth May they (with the exception of the Papal Nuncio and 
 and the "Minister of Guatemala) declared that there was no 
 government existing in the capital. In August, upon the return 
 of Miramon from Ms campaign, he called a junta of nineteen, 
 was elected by them President of the Republic, and recognized 
 as such by M. Pacheco, envoy from Spain. The reason of this 
 recognition was obvious ; it was to maintain intact the Mon- 
 Almonte treaty which had been negotiated at Paris between 
 Spain and the Miramon government in September, 1859, and 
 which recognized claims previously ignored by every Mexican 
 government. In a protest against this treaty, 30th January, 
 1860, the constitutional government called it "unjust in its 
 essence, foreign to the usage of nations in the principles it
 
 50 
 
 established, illegal in the manner in which it was negotiated, 
 and contrary to the rights of our country." This infamous 
 treaty was afterwards to form a part of the Spanish claim 
 against Mexico, at the time of the allied intervention. 
 
 The diplomatic corps were determined apparently to give 
 the reactionists the longest possible lease of life. On the 21st 
 October, I860, the English Charge withdrew to Jalapa and was 
 soon followed by the Prussian Minister. In November the 
 French Minister, M. Saligny, arrived, and proceeding imme- 
 diately to Jalapa attempted to effect a compromise between 
 the contending parties. Failing in this, he went to the capital, 
 20th December, 1862. The diplomatic corps now held a neutral 
 position notwithstanding nearly the whole country was in the 
 hands of the liberals. They were apparently awaiting the 
 progress of events. It was at this time that their favorite, Mi- 
 ramon, broke into the British Legation and seized the " British 
 bondholders' fund," after he had been completely beaten in a 
 battle with the liberals, whose victorious troops entered the 
 capital on the 25th December, I860. 
 
 In a manifesto of the Constitutional Government, issued on 
 the 20th January, 1861, upon its restoration to power, there is 
 a spirit of reform, of progress, and the embodiment of modern 
 civilization, which no liberal and civilized foreign government 
 could ignore ; for the stability of every modern power must 
 depend upon the upholding and the propagation of such prin- 
 ciples. This manifesto says : " The social reforms decreed at 
 Yera Cruz, and which may be summed up in the nationalization 
 of the property held in mortmain, freedom of religion and the 
 consequent independence between the civil and spiritual power, 
 are sanctioned by public opinion, have been the principal objects 
 of the struggle, and in place of being in conflict with the con- 
 stitution are only the development of the germ which it con- 
 tains." " The government neither can nor could retrace its 
 steps in the path of reforms which are so conformable to the 
 spirit of the age, and that are the only means of reanimating 
 and invigorating a society almost annihilated by inveterate 
 abuses, and deep prejudices, and wasted by half a century of 
 discord. The emancipation of the civil power, the liberty of 
 conscience, and a respect for all beliefs, will assure peace, and 
 will bring to the republic new elements of riches and of pros- 
 perity." 
 
 They determined to reorganize the judicial powers, to 
 establish trial by jury, to have entire freedom of education, to 
 establish primary and public schools, endow colleges and public 
 institutes of science and progress, and grant complete liberty 
 to the press.
 
 51 
 
 Public improvements and the survey of the public lands 
 were among the measures advocated. These and a fixed fiscal 
 ^estimate were to restore the financial condition of the country 
 to a sound condition, while proper taxation, protection to trade 
 and foreign commerce, and the abolition of internal customs 
 dues, were to aid in the general movement of progress and 
 reform. 
 
 The army, instead of being swelled to such a proportion as 
 to absorb all the revenues and endanger the stability of the 
 government, was to be subordinate to the civil power, and 
 limited to the actual necessities of the republic. 
 
 Almost breathless after a fierce struggle of fifty years, 
 Mexico had at last brought these high principles to the surface 
 of her stormy political sea. 
 
 Upon the success of the liberals, and the establishment 
 throughout the whole country of the constitution of 1857, the 
 people felt that they had at length freed themselves from the 
 great curse which had borne so heavily upon them. It had taken 
 fifty years, and there now seemed to open before them that long 
 vista of prosperity for which the liberal statesmen had so long 
 sighed, and for which they had every reasonable right to hope. 
 All that was necessary for Mexico was to settle into the channel 
 and follow the liberal principles which she had espoused. True, 
 it was a herculean task which her patriots had to uphold. The 
 chariot of Mars had so long rolled its wheels over the land that 
 almost every element of stability, except the grasp of the clergy 
 which still partially lingered, had been crushed out. Morality 
 was almost a wreck ; for it had been ground to powder between 
 the ills of civil commotion and the corruption of the church. 
 The finances of the government were not ; and the liberals, 
 poised upon the goal which their heroism had at last won, were 
 forced to balance themselves by every means which might 
 enable them to maintain their position until the resources of 
 the country, trained in peaceful currents, might give them the 
 means to restore their finances to a healthful condition. Their 
 armor, torn, battered, and shattered in the greaves, through the 
 sturdy blows which the church power had unceasingly rained 
 upon it, needed repair ; but scarcely had they taken breath 
 before Europe was upon them, and again, with lance in rest for 
 a tilt against the empire, they battle to restore the civilizing 
 principles which they have unswervingly upheld, and which 
 must finally triumph. 
 
 In the long series of revolutions through which Mexico has 
 passed, the evil-minded of both parties for that every cause 
 has its traitors our late struggle with the South well proves 
 were not unmindful of their pockets. The governments, too,
 
 52 
 
 in order to maintain themselves, had negotiated loans at a 
 ruinous discount, and sold valuable privileges existing in the 
 country for almost a song. In 1841, General Bustamente 
 effected a loan of $1,200,000. He received for it $200,000 
 cash, and one million in paper credits of the government, which 
 were selling in the market for nine cents on the dollar. So 
 hard pressed at one time was the government, that it sold the 
 coining privilege of Guanajuato lor fourteen years, receiving 
 therefor $71,000 cash, when they were offered $400,000, if they 
 would take it in yearly installments of $25,000 each. The 
 " Keactionists " had stripped the country of almost every ele- 
 ment of wealth upon which they could lay hands, regardless of 
 consequences. They had maintained a perfect system of 
 brigandage in every department ; the onerous taxes which they 
 had imposed being but the very lightest part of the burden to 
 which the people were subjected. In September, 1860, M. Le- 
 fevre, a resident of Mexico at the time, relates that " General 
 Miramon called together a new assembly of twenty-six capi- 
 talists, and demanded of them, according to his invariable 
 custom, revolver in hand, the trifle of 100,000 sterling." 
 Again, the " defenders of order " determined to seize 152,000 
 sterling belonging to British bondholders. This cash was in the 
 safes of the British legation, and protected by the British seals, 
 General Marquez, charged with the task, in a letter entirely 
 unique, demanded that the funds " which might, under existing 
 circumstances, run great risks in case of disturbance," should be 
 delivered up for safe keeping to the Commissary General. The 
 legation refused to deliver it ; and the seals, bearing the arms 
 of England, were broken, and the money removed by the 
 church party. Marquez afterwards received the cordon of 
 " Commander of the Legion of Honor," probably for commit- 
 ting a deed so essential to give the allied intervention a coloring 
 of justice. 
 
 The liberal government, required by its position to gain time, 
 until, by regenerating the country, they might restore health to 
 the finances, was absolutely forced, through inability to comply 
 with the treaties which the evil rule of the reactionists had 
 foisted upon the country in an unfortunate hour, to decree the 
 postponement of the payment of interest on all foreign debts 
 for two years. So exhaustive had been the rule of their prede- 
 cessors that there was absolutely nothing left with which to 
 carry on the government from day to day. Of the revenues 
 received upon French imports but eight per cent, were available 
 for government use, while upon English imports all but twenty- 
 five per cent, had been pledged for payments to foreign bond- 
 holders. The act of the suspension of the payment of interest
 
 53 
 
 on foreign debts, linked with the mountain of unredressed 
 grievances of the previous years, enabled the French and British 
 ministers to come to an open rupture with the government. In 
 a correspondence with the latter the Mexican Secretary of State 
 said : " So great, indeed, was their respect for these funds that 
 they preferred to sacrifice their obligations to Mexicans, to 
 trample under foot the most cherished principles of their coun- 
 try nay, even to imprison persons of the highest respectability, 
 in order to obtain resources from the sum paid for their release 
 rather than touch a cent of the assignments destined for the 
 diplomatic convention and the London debt." Sir Charles 
 Wyke, in his answer, said : " A starving man may justify in 
 his own eyes the fact of his stealing a loaf on the ground that 
 imperious necessity impelled him thereto." The retort of the 
 Mexican Minister was apt : " It would be rather that of a 
 father overwhelmed with debts, who, with only a small sum at 
 his disposal, scarcely sufficient to maintain his children, em- 
 ployed it in the purchase of bread instead of the payment of 
 his bills." The Mexican government was actually so poor at 
 this time that it could not provide their minister to France 
 enough money to pay his passage home. 
 
 It appeared that foreign governments, reasoning that nothing 
 but anarchy not great principles had been established by the 
 long and dismal period of revolutionary contests between libe- 
 ral and almost obsolete ideas, were willing, at the very moment 
 when the battle had been finished, the victory won, and a liberal, 
 progressive government established over the land which had been 
 so long priest-ridden, to press to the wall the liberalists, and 
 throw a cloud over the rising sun of Mexican glory. The lib- 
 erals, exhausted of treasure, with naught left them but their 
 own good swords, and after a sanguinary and terrible struggle 
 of fifty years for principles which every civilized nation has 
 inscribed in its code of laws, now found themselves likely to be 
 assailed by a wave from those very nations which pretended to 
 teach them the science of government. It was destined to dash 
 upon them, retard their progress and add its desolation to the 
 land which Europe had already cursed. 
 
 Meanwhile the clergy were active with their machinations. 
 Miramon was busy in Spain, where O'Donnell, the prime min- 
 ister, lent a willing ear to the flattering hope that Mexico was 
 now ready, like a ripe peach, to drop into the hands of any 
 prince whom Spain might feel disposed, by the aid of a little 
 force, to place upon the throne of her former viceroyalty. The 
 hope was too much in common with the Spanish dream of res- 
 tored colonial rule to be treated lightly, and an expedition was 
 already upon the eve of organization for the benefit of the
 
 54 
 
 Mexican clergy, for the redress of manifold grievances, and for 
 the insult to her Minister, Senor Pacheco, who had been 
 expelled from Mexico for meddling in the politics of the, 
 country. 
 
 PART Y. 
 
 CAUSE OF THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN FRANCE AND ENGLAND 
 
 MOTIVES ALLEGED FOE THE INTERVENTION OBJECTS OF SPAIN 
 
 PLANS OF ENGLAND THE AUSTRIAN ELEMENT THE 
 TRUMPED-UP FINANCIAL CLAIMS SIGNING OF THE TREATY OF 
 ALLIANCE SEIZURE OF VERA CRUZ BY SPAIN DISCOURAGE- 
 MENT OF THE ALLIES TREATY OF LA SOLEDAD DEMANDS 
 OF THE ALLIES THEY QUARREL ENGLAND AND SPAIN 
 
 WITHDRAW THEIR FORCES GROSS VIOLATION OF THE TREATY 
 
 OF LA SOLEDAD BY FRANCE THE CHURCH PARTY THROW OFF 
 THE MASK DEFEAT OF THE FRENCH AT PUEBLA THE EF- 
 FECT IN FRANCE ARRIVAL OF GENERAL FOREY SIEGE AND 
 FALL OF PUEBLA THE APPOINTMENT OF NOTABLES ILLE- 
 GAL ELECTION OF MAXIMILIAN TO BE EMPEROR IT is SANC- 
 TIONED BY A PRETENDED POPULAR YoTE EuPTURE OF THE 
 
 FRENCH WITH THE CHURCH PARTY WHO ISSUE A PROTEST 
 MISTAKES OF NAPOLEON III THE PROMISED FRENCH EVAC- 
 UATION POSITION OF THE UNITED STATES ON THE MEXICAN 
 QUESTION. 
 
 WE come now to the causes of the union of France and 
 England in this expedition, whose inception was Spanish ; and 
 although it is a matter which will not admit of a clearly math- 
 ematical demonstration, owing to the lack of documents which 
 are behind the scenes, we mav hope at least to show why France 
 deemed it to her interests to* establish a throne in Mexico. In 
 the instructions to General Forey, 3d of July, 1862, after the 
 mask had been thrown off' and France had been left alone in 
 her pursuit of conquest, the Emperor Napoleon said : " In the 
 present state of the civilization of the world the prosperity of 
 America is not a matter of indifference to Europe, for it is that 
 country which feeds our manufactories and gives an impulse to 
 our commerce. We have an interest in the republic of the 
 United States being powerful and prosperous, but not that she 
 should take possession of the whole of the Gulf of Mexico, 
 thence command the Antilles as well as South America, and be 
 the only dispenser of the products of the New World." * *
 
 55 
 
 " We now see how precarious is the lot of a branch of manu- 
 facture which is compelled to procure its raw material in a sin- 
 gle market all the vicissitudes of which it has to bear." * * 
 " If, on the contrary, Mexico maintains her independence and 
 the integrity of her territory ; if a stable government be there 
 constituted, with the assistance of France, we shall have restored 
 to the Latin race on the other side of the Atlantic all its strength 
 and its prestige ; we shall have guaranteed security to our West 
 India colonies, and to those of Spain ; we shall have established 
 our friendly influence in the center of America, and that influ- 
 ence, by creating immense markets for our commerce, will pro- 
 cure us the raw materials indispensable for our manufactures." 
 * * * " Mexico, thus regenerated, will always be well- 
 disposed towards us, not only out of gratitude, but also because 
 her interests will be in accord with ours, and because she 
 will find support in her friendly relations with European 
 Powers." 
 
 Here, then, were the true causes of the expedition which, 
 condensed, meant the commercial and political aggrandizement 
 of France, and the interposition of a barrier to the extension of 
 the great Republic. There was, however, one more element all 
 powerful with the French Emperor. It was the glory of the 
 Catholic faith throughout Christendom, as the champion of 
 which France now stands foremost. We cannot forget that 
 Pepin,the son of Charles Martel, wanted the Crown of France, 
 and that a contract was made between him and Pope Zachary, in 
 752, whereby Pepin became king, and the Pope w T as freed from 
 Constantinople and the Lombards ; that the next year Pope 
 Stephen II. visited France, anointed Pepin with the " holy oil," 
 in the monastery of St. Denis, and thus indissolubly linked the 
 throne of France to the Yatican. The influence has never 
 been lost, and France, by her power, has in latter years, become 
 the exponent of the church militant in Europe ; the mantle of 
 Spain, as the " Bulwark of Christendom," falling upon her 
 shoulders. In the restoration of the Catholic power in Mexico, 
 to a healthy condition, we must find one of the most powerful 
 of the causes of the French intervention, and the chair of St. 
 Peter propped up, as it is to-day, by French bayonets, is not 
 backward in demanding of its faithful adherents the regenera- 
 tion of the Mexican church. To-day France has done in Mex- 
 ico what M. Billault, in the Corps Legislatif, Tth February, 
 1864, said she had done in China : " We have penetrated into 
 the heart of China to plant at the same time the symbol of our 
 faith, which we protect, and to open a world to our com- 
 merce." 
 
 Another powerful reason for the French occupation of Mex-
 
 56 
 
 ico, is its commanding position, which is salient above all other 
 countries, as we have shown in the opening of this paper. We 
 may point to the fact that since the rule of the Emperor Napo- 
 leon III. the policy of France has been to extend in all direc- 
 tion her colonial interests, and in common with her great rival, 
 England, whose policy she emulates, to gain possession, either 
 by force or purchase, of all the prominent and controlling points 
 of the globe. At the Isthmus of Suez, in the face of Engineer- 
 ing difficulties pronounced by English engineers insurmountable, 
 French science cuts through from the Mediterranean to the Red 
 Sea, and reconnecting the waters united by Rameses II. more 
 than a score of centuries ago, reopens this old gate to the riches 
 of the Indies, and adds one more glory to the greatness of 
 France. It is the same with Mexico on the west as with Egypt 
 on the east. France seeks the control of both these great com- 
 mercial avenues. At the mouth of the Red Sea, another great 
 point for the control of that East India route has fallen into her 
 possession, while in the Corps Legislatif a French minister 
 boasts " that between Singapore and China an immense and 
 magnificent possession takes under our flag a rapid march to- 
 wards a brilliant future." 
 
 The reasons which France gave for the Mexican interven- 
 tion were the merest bubbles upon the great ocean of other 
 interests which she saw for her future glory, providing her 
 efforts were successful, as from the then condition of the great 
 Republic she had every reason to believe they would be. M. 
 Billault, in the speech quoted above, says of Mexico : " There, 
 also, great political vistas are opened to clear-sighted eyes ; di- 
 verse interests come in contact, and it is not opportune to neg- 
 lect them." 
 
 Pressed powerfully by the emissaries of the clergy to make 
 good their cause in Mexico against the liberals, and actuated by 
 all the incentives to conquest which we have detailed, France 
 was not dilatory in deciding to become an active participant in 
 the enterprise. We shall see further on that she could not 
 carry out her views in this unless Spain should concede to her 
 the foremost position, not only as defender of the faith, but in 
 respect to the commercial and colonial policy which so largely 
 controlled the expedition. 
 
 The objects which Spain had were, in compliance with the 
 wishes of the Mexican church, to establish the old system, and, 
 if possible, to restore the lost jewels of the Spanish crown, by 
 the creation of a monarchy in Mexico, with the enthronement 
 of the Count of Flanders, younger brother of the heir of King 
 Leopold of Belgium, who was to espouse a Spanish infanta, and 
 thus, as a Madrid ministerial journal proclaimed in December,
 
 57 
 
 1861 : " If the throne of Mexico were not to be occupied by 
 a Spanish prince, it would at least be pressed by a Spanish 
 princess." M. Mon, in 1861, before the date of the allied 
 treaty of intervention, wrote to the Spanish Ambassador at 
 Paris : " The government should not conceal that this may be 
 a suitable occasion for awakening ancient recollections, and 
 placing upon the throne of Mexico a prince of the blood of the 
 Bourbons more or less intimately united to that house." Soon 
 following this (September 10, 1861) came the Spanish invita- 
 tion to the allies to join in the intervention. In the unhappy 
 revolutionary condition of Spanish America, it has been the 
 dream of Spain to restore her former viceroyal dependencies to 
 her crown, or at least, as we see here, erect monarchies under 
 the rule of Bourbon princes. Spain has never ceased to hug 
 this delusion, and it gave rise to the war which for three years 
 she lately waged unsuccessfully against San Domingo, under 
 the idea that the erring child was ready to receive again the 
 lash and rod which for centuries made her horrors a proverb. 
 Spain seizes the Chincha Islands, Peru protests, some trouble 
 occurs in the premises, and Spain demands $3,000,000 indem- 
 nity. Chile refuses to salute her flag and Spain declares war, 
 only to show to mankind how weak the quicksilver of the New 
 World has made her bones. She takes no lessons of the intel- 
 lectual giant of La Mancha, and proves herself the great Don 
 Quixote of the nineteenth century. 
 
 The plans of England were "essentially commercial. She 
 sought no conquest in the intervention ; the giant has grasped 
 at last all the territory that his muscles can defend and now 
 asks nothing but peace. The athlete has won his victories, 
 established his reputation, and now, in possession of a long list 
 of commercial outposts, and a line of island sentinels encircling 
 and commanding the world, is quite contented to be peaceful, 
 monopolize commerce and manufactures and grow fat quite 
 contented to send a ship or two to Mexico to see that the inter- 
 est on the British bonds be paid, and that his commercial rela- 
 tions shall remain undisturbed. She had an interest also in 
 preventing Spain from again gaining control over the Spanish 
 Americas, whereby the immense commerce of England with 
 them might be hampered, as it had been by Spanish policy 
 when she held the power there and for two centuries baffled 
 English attempts to gain a foothold. In the Spanish Cortes it 
 was advocated that England joined solely " to prevent Spain 
 from undertaking it alone." Great Britain was not unwilling 
 either to plant a barrier, by establishing, through " moral sup- 
 port," a stable government in Mexico, which might curb the 
 growth of her young offspring, the great Kepublic, who break-
 
 58 
 
 fasts on Louisiana, lunches on Florida and Texas, dines on New 
 Mexico, Arizona, and the Pacific slope, and, it is feared, will 
 sup upon Mexico. It is true that, as a matter of politeness, the 
 United States were invited ; but, as the allies agreed before the 
 treaty of October 31, 1861, was signed, u Operations might be 
 commenced without awaiting the answer of the American gov- 
 ernment." 
 
 The policy of France, as was well known and canvassed in 
 Paris before the sailing of the expedition, was the placing of 
 the Austrian Archduke Maximilian upon the throne of Mexico, 
 through the " moral support " of the army. During the month 
 of the signing of the treaty of intervention, the French Minis- 
 ter of Foreign Affairs, speaking of the dissolution of Mexico, 
 said : " Such an event cannot be a matter of indifference to 
 England ; and the principal means, in our opinion, to prevent 
 its accomplishment, would be the establishment in Mexico of a 
 regenerative government strong enough to arrest its internal 
 dissolution." Then, speaking of the disinterestedness of France, 
 he says : " Desirous of respecting the susceptibilities of all par- 
 ties, it would see with pleasure the choice of the Mexicans fall 
 upon a prince of the house of Austria." M. Thouvenel wrote, 
 October 15, 1861, to M. Barrot, French Ambassador at Madrid, 
 that, in case of an eventual return of a monarchy in Mexico : 
 " The Emperor, foreseeing such an eventuality, with perfect 
 disinterestedness resigned beforehand all candidature for any 
 prince of the imperial family ; and he did not doubt that the 
 other two governm ents entertained similar dispositions. Fin ally, 
 that in regard to the choice of a dynasty, in the eventuality in- 
 dicated, we had no candidate to propose, but that should the 
 fact happen, an Austrian prince would meet with our assent." 
 We shall see later how Spain, forced gradually into a secondary 
 position, instead of holding to her primary one, yielded to her 
 great rival and embarked her forces for home. It is a settled 
 fact that France formed her plans for the establishment of a 
 monarchy before the expedition was organized, and she iixed 
 upon the Archduke as the one whom she would place upon the 
 Mexican throne. 
 
 The allies being agreed, it was necessary on the part of 
 France to find some good pretext for intervention. The best 
 one upon which she could fix was the debts due to her from 
 Mexico. But notice the srnallness of these. In 1863 M. Jules 
 Favre stated before the legislative Assembly that " Mexico was 
 our debtor, according to treaty signed, for $750,000. There 
 were other claims, but they were conditional. The amount did 
 not reach 5,000,000 francs " ($1,000,000). There was also the 
 Jecker debt of $15,000,000, which France held in reserve for
 
 59 
 
 her ultimatum. We shall speak hereafter of the Jecker claim, 
 which was one of the most scandalous frauds ever perpetrated. 
 A large . number of fraudulent Mexican and Spanish claims 
 were procured insertion into the " English convention," for 
 which Great Britain now urged a settlement. This diplomatic 
 convention was for $5,000,000, of which but $266,000 belonged 
 to English subjects. 
 
 Added to all the reasons which Western Europe had for the 
 intervention, the clergy had brought all their spiritual and tem- 
 poral ordnance to bear to effect it. They left no power unem- 
 ployed ; even their old champion, Santa Anna, from his place 
 of exile, St. Thomas, still exerted his influence to the utmost to 
 seat a King upon the throne which the shade of the Monte- 
 zumas has cursed for any occupant. He wrote, October 15, 
 1861, to Estrada : "What you have to do is to remind the gov- 
 ernments near which you are accredited of your former 
 petitions, insisting especially that Mexico cannot have a lasting 
 peace until the disease is radically cured, and the only remedy 
 is the substitution of a constitutional empire for that farce 
 called a republic. Those nations can select one jointly. Re- 
 mind them also that I am now more than ever disposed to carry 
 out that idea, and that I will labor without ceasing to effect it. 
 Still true to his party, the church, he hoped also to effect great 
 benefits " by restoring the Catholic religion." 
 
 The pragmatic treaty between the allies was at length signed 
 at London, October 31, 1861. Its stipulations were peculiar, 
 and showed the jealousy with which the parties watched each 
 other. The second article stated that " the high contracting 
 parties engage not to seek for themselves, in the employment of 
 the coercive measures contemplated by the present convention, 
 any acquisition of territory or any special advantage, and not 
 to exercise in the internal affairs of Mexico any influence of a 
 nature to prejudice the right of the Mexican nation to choose 
 and to constitute freely the form of its government." How 
 well Napoleon III. kept this treaty, to which he selenmly swor'e, 
 the sequel proves. 
 
 The Power which could take the initiative in the movement, 
 and which sent the largest force, was naturally the one to direct 
 the future policy of the country which Spain and France went 
 to conquer. Both of these Powers made undue haste to reach 
 the scene of their labors ; so great, indeed, that they neglected 
 almost everything that could tend to the success of the expedi- 
 tion. The allies were to rendezvous at Cuba ; but the Spanish 
 contingent sailed before the French and English arrived, seized 
 upon the Mexican port of Vera Cruz, and on December 14, 
 1861. the Spanish commander issued a proclamation to the
 
 60 
 
 people of Mexico. It had been quick work, for the treaty of 
 of London had been signed only forty-four days before, and 
 Spain had thus gained a move~on France. The allies soon after 
 arrived ; the whole expedition numbered in soldiers, sailors and 
 marines, about 19,000. Of these the English furnished only 
 about TOO marines, France about 2,500 effective soldiers, and 
 Spain about 6,000, the balance being sailors. It is a notable 
 fact, that the nation whose grievances were greatest, and which 
 had the largest money debt due from Mexico, furnished abso- 
 lutely no regular forces for the purpose of invasion. It proves 
 that Article II., which we have quoted from the treaty of Lon- 
 don, was inserted entirely at the dictation of England, and that 
 she entered the expedition with the intention, so far as lay in 
 her power, to prevent either of her allies from stealing a march 
 upon her and affecting her future in the New World. 
 
 The allies had landed without war equipments suitable to 
 the campaign which they were about to undertake ; they were 
 unprovided with camp equipage or means of transportation. 
 The emissaries of the clergy had represented to them that the 
 whole country was ready to throw itself into their arms and ac- 
 cept any government which they might dictate ; but the mon- 
 archical party who were to effect a revolution did nothing ; on 
 the contrary, every day the liberal government grew stronger. 
 Admiral Jurien de la Graviere, seeing the falsity of the repre- 
 sentations of the " reactionists " which had been presented to 
 France, wrote to General Prim, in command of the Spanish 
 forces, saying : " I have always been disposed to agree with you 
 in recognizing the necessity we are under here to avoid embrac- 
 ing the cause of the party which composes the minority and 
 which has opposed to it the general opinion of the country." 
 France had counted upon obtaining supplies and mules from 
 the inhabitants, but found that they would not sell them at any 
 price. General Uraga, commanding the liberal forces, laid 
 waste the country around them, and they found almost the 
 whole Mexican people ready to receive them at the point of the 
 bayonet. 
 
 The allies were thus subjected to great straits for provisions, 
 which, linked to the sickness of the coast and the rapidly ap- 
 proaching season of the " vomito," made their cause look most 
 dismal. The Spanish force had already two thousand sick in 
 hospital, the English one hundred and thirty sick out of seven 
 hundred, and the French were in much the same condition. 
 They then requested from the very government which they 
 came to overthrow, the privilege of encamping their troops 
 upon the high ground inland, where, free from the miasma of 
 the tierra caliente, they might open negotiations with a govern-
 
 61 
 
 ment whose existence they had ignored before their departure 
 from Europe. It was a humility before the world which they 
 had not anticipated. They had traversed six thousand miles of 
 water to find that Mexico had a government ; and that she re- 
 quired no other form to preserve peace and maintain the laws 
 of the land. They had in Em-ope proclaimed that the govern- 
 ment of Juarez was without faith, without honor ; that no 
 treaty could be made with it without guarantees ; that it was a 
 perfect farce to treat under any circumstances with such per- 
 jurers ; and yet, the very first article of the " Treaty of La 
 Soledad," which, after the allied ultimatum had been sent for- 
 ward, was the opening of negotiations, and which received the 
 signatures of the representatives of the allied Powers, was : 
 First, " Admitting that the constitutional government, which 
 at present directs the affairs of Mexico, has manifested to the 
 commissioners of the allied Powers that it has no need what- 
 ever of the assistance so kindly offered to the Mexican people, 
 as having at its own disposal sufficient elements of force and 
 public opinion to maintain itself against all intestine revolt, the 
 allies, therefore, deem it their duty to enter upon the way of 
 treaties for the purpose of drawing up the claims which they 
 have to make in the name of their respective nations." 
 
 In article second the allies protest " that they will attempt 
 nothing against the independence, sovereignty and integrity of 
 the territory of the republic." Here the allies, then, plainly 
 admit that Mexico is perfectly able to manage her own affairs. 
 This treaty had arisen from the necessity of an ultimatum to 
 the Mexican government which should embody the demands 
 of the allies ; but it was a matter of no small difficulty for the 
 commissioners to agree upon the amounts to be demanded. It 
 was claimed on the part of France that each power had a right 
 to fix its own reclamations, regardless of the others. The truth 
 is that France and 'Spain had, in their attempts to overreach 
 each other, taken no time to consider the amounts justly their 
 due. France, taking care to have her demands cover all con- 
 tingencies, fixed her ultimatum at twelve million dollars. The 
 immediate execution of the Jecker contract, which had been 
 made with the government of Miramon when tottering to its 
 fall, was also required. Jecker was a Swiss banker who, after 
 passing through twenty years of the vicissitudes of Mexican 
 commercial life, during which time he was engaged in many 
 doubtful enterprises, at length entered into a contract with the 
 government of Miramon to negotiate a loan of $15,000,000, out 
 of which, by several very doubtful financiering moves, he 
 reaped $14,250,000 in bonds, and Miramon and his church 
 party $750,000 cash.
 
 The demands of the allies amounted, without the Jecker 
 claim, to $40,000,000, or four times the yearly revenue of 
 Mexico. The parties were surprised at each other's claims ; 
 especially did the Spanish and English commissioners demur at 
 the pressing of the Jecker fraud into the demand, which would 
 swell it to $55,000,000, a sum which they knew it was impos- 
 sible for Mexico immediately to pay. They finally were so uncer- 
 tain what to require, that they sent forward the ultimatum, which 
 was so very vague in its demands that the astute statesmen of Mex- 
 ico saw in it the germs of the confusion which was to take place in 
 the councils of their invaders, and acted accordingly. Their 
 object was to gain time, which was admirably accomplished in 
 one of the articles of the " Treaty of La Soledad " above men- 
 tioned. All negotiations were there postponed until the 15th 
 of April, 1862. 
 
 When the news reached France of the capture of Yera 
 Cruz by the Spaniards, and the march which they had stolen 
 on the Emperor Napoleon III., a reinforcement of four thou- 
 sand five hundred men was immediately dispatched to Mexico, 
 under command of General Lorencez, a brave and able officer, 
 who was, upon his arrival, to assume command of the whole 
 French contingent. General Prim, upon the unexpected ap- 
 pearance of the French reinforcements, saw Spain forced into 
 the secondary position, which crushed all the finely prepared 
 theories with which Spain had deluded herself. He therefore 
 at once began to oppose objections to the claims which France 
 demanded of Mexico, being especially loud in his protests 
 against the infamous Jecker claim, to which the minister from 
 England was also bitterly opposed. Another very serious cause 
 of complaint, and which, under the circumstances, was magni- 
 fied into a pretence for the withdrawal of Spain and England 
 from the coalition, was the presence in the French camp of Al- 
 monte, the " infamous Marquez," and others of the monarchi- 
 cal or " reactionary " party, who had, although outlawed, en- 
 tered Mexican territory under protection of the French flag, 
 and commenced issuing " pronunciamientos " and inflammatory 
 ^appeals to the people after the usual style of inciting a Mexican 
 revolution. Miramon had also landed at Vera Cruz, but the 
 English threatened to arrest him for his wholesale robbery of 
 their Legation, before mentioned, and he was obliged to flee to 
 Havana. 
 
 The constitutional government demanded that the traitors 
 and outlaws under protection of the French flag should be 
 ^iven up or leave the country ; but the French commander re- 
 fused so just a demand. He was little inclined to give up the 
 leaders of the church party, whose cause his master, the French
 
 63 
 
 Emperor, had espoused. General Prim and Sir Charles Wyke 
 considered that these demands were perfectly just, and in- 
 sisted that President Juarez had a right to consider the reten- 
 tion of these outlaws as a declaration of war against the govern- 
 ment. M. de Saligny protested that General Almonte had the 
 confidence of the French government, and that he could not be 
 expelled from their camp. The controversy grew warm ; linked 
 with the exorbitant exactions of France in the ultimatum, the 
 Spanish and English commissioners, foreseeing the result which 
 proved them to have been duped from the origin of the expe- 
 dition, retired to Yera Cruz and embarked their troops for 
 Europe in April, 1862. France was thus left to play out the 
 game, in whose primary moves she had been so successful, in 
 accordance with the course which had been fixed upon frem the 
 inception of the enterprise, v/"^ 
 
 The fourth article of the " Treaty of La Soledad " stipu- 
 lated that, " in order that it may not in the most remote de- 
 gree be believed that the allies have signed these preliminaries 
 in order to obtain the passage of the fortified positions garri- 
 soned by the Mexican army, it is stipulated that, in the unfor- 
 tunate event of the negotiations being broken off, the forces of 
 the allies will retire from the said towns, and will place them- 
 selves in the line that is beyond the said fortifications on the 
 Yera Cruz side ; Paso Ancho on the Cordova road, and Paso de 
 Ovejas on that of Jalapa, being the principal extreme points." 
 
 In gross violation of the treaty, the French refused to com- 
 ply with this article, under plea that the sick in hospital would 
 be forced to remain in Orizaba, and there be exposed to danger. 
 Totally ignoring all honorable action, they retained possession 
 of this powerful stronghold which it might have cost them 
 thousands of their best troops to capture, if we may judge from 
 the opposition they afterwards encountered in their march to- 
 wards the capital. The unhealthiness of the Yera Cruz dis- 
 trict, in which, had they returned, their forces might have been 
 almost annihilated, was another reason which no doubt caused 
 them to break faith with the Mexicans. The plea which they 
 urged was the merest subterfuge. Even General Prim pressed 
 them to fall back beyond the first lines of fortifications which 
 they had passed under solemn treaty, and through the generos- 
 ity which the Mexican government evinced in behalf of the 
 sanitary condition of the invading force. He assured them 
 that the sick would be as well cared for by the Mexicans as they 
 would be at any hospital in Paris. All effort was, however, 
 useless ; inveighing as the French did against Mexican perfidy, 
 their first act upon the soil was as perfidious as any they came 
 to avenge.
 
 64 
 
 The church party, in the French camp, now threw off the 
 mask. Almonte immediately issued a pronunciamiento to the 
 Mexicans, proclaiming himself Chief of the nation, and gath- 
 ered under his standard a few of the predatory bands which, 
 under the fostering care of the clergy, had never ceased to 
 deluge the country in blood. Almonte issued paper money, 
 dictated his dispatches, created and dismissed generals, and 
 maintained, under French protection, the complete semblance 
 of a government in full operation. The French thus commenced 
 to "pacify the country." 
 
 General Lorencez, who had replaced Admiral Jurien in 
 command of the French forces, now advanced towards Mexico 
 to afford that " moral support " to the Mexicans which they so 
 much desired. He anticipated, through the representations of 
 the ch"urch party, that he had only to march inland to be wel- 
 comed as the savior and liberator of the country ; that the peo- 
 ple who in one year, 1858, had fought in civil warfare seventy- 
 one engagements, out of which eight were pitched battles, would 
 rise en masse to welcome a foreign invading force, and that the 
 phantom of a constitutional government under Juarez would 
 vanish before him. Surely the French Emperor cannot be so 
 poor a judge of human nature, or imagine there exists so vile 
 a people on the face of this earth that they will not defend 
 themselves under any circumstances from foreign invasion ; and 
 yet how closely France has hugged this delusion for several 
 years past may 'be seen by the thousands of French troops she 
 has buried under the soil of Mexico, and the millions of trea- 
 sure she has wasted in the pursuit of an idea which it is hardly 
 her destiny to realize. 
 
 We need not detail the defeat which the brave General 
 Lorencez received at Puebla on the 5th May, 1862, the heroic 
 fortitude with which he sustained his little army in the intrench- 
 ments of Orizaba after his retreat from Puebla, and during the 
 interval in which he was obliged to await reinforcements from 
 France. The French did all that brave soldiers and a good 
 general could do with such a force against Mexico united in- 
 stead of divided. 
 
 The news of the defeat of Lorencez and the terrible slaughter 
 of the French troops before Puebla was a shock which France 
 was but poorly prepared to receive. It was suddenly discovered 
 that the French troops had something more than a promenade 
 to make in Mexico. French honor now came in as one of the 
 primary elements of the problem. General Forey was dis- 
 patched with large reinforcements, and with orders to assume 
 entire command, both political and military, of the expedition. 
 
 Upon the arrival of General Forey at Orizaba, with the
 
 65 
 
 reinforcements, he also discovered that he would be long de- 
 tained at that point before he could place his forces in such 
 marching order as might be required for the " pacification of 
 the country." He issued a proclamation from Orizaba to the 
 Mexican people. Said he : " In the name of the Emperor I 
 declared to you solemnly what I again repeat to you to-day 
 namely, that the soldiers of France have not come here to im- 
 pose upon you a government." * * * " That they have no 
 other mission but that of consulting the national wish as to the 
 form of government it may desire. What would France ex- 
 claim to-day if, against her united people, the nations of Europe 
 were to march upon Paris with such a manifesto? Now, 
 either General Forey was deceiving the Mexican people or dis- 
 obeying his orders, for the Emperor, in his famous letter of 
 instructions in July, 1862, wrote : " The demands of our policy, 
 the interest of our industry and our commerce all impose upon 
 us the duty of marching upon Mexico, there boldly planting our 
 flag and establishing perhaps a monarchy, if not incompatible 
 with the national sentiment of the country, but at least a gov- 
 ernment that will promise some stability. 5 ' Compare these in- 
 structions with the following extract from a letter of the Em- 
 peror to General Lorencez, in ] 862 : " It is contrary to my 
 interest, my origin and my principles to impose any kind of 
 government whatever on the Mexican people. They may freely 
 choose that which suits them best." 
 
 Almost a year after the defeat of Lorencez the French 
 forces under Marshal Forey again sat down before Puebla, and 
 with forty thousand men, assisted by the renegades and bandits 
 who, under Almonte and Marquez, added their strength to the 
 French troops, commenced a siege which was to take rank in 
 heroic defence with Numantia, Saguntium and Saragoza. Gen- 
 eral Ortega commanded the city, assisted by able generals and 
 able engineers, such as Generals Paz, Colombres and others, to 
 whom very much of the credit of the defence belongs. Inch by 
 inch the desperate defenders of the city contended with the as- 
 sailants ; barricade after barricade sprung up before the French, 
 and every foot of ground gained was at the cost of a score of 
 brave men ; whole blocks of buildings, with their defenders, 
 were undermined and blown into the air. It was only after the 
 most desperate onslaught that the assailants could make any 
 impression upon the works. For two months the French rained 
 an unceasing fire upon the devoted city and its convents, which 
 had been turned into forts ; for two months the Mexicans gave 
 their foes that " warm welcome" which they had been promised 
 by the clergy before they left France. The city at length suc- 
 cumbed to the indomitable valor of the " pacificators," and 
 5
 
 66 
 
 Marshal Forey soon after appeared before the capital, and en- 
 tering it, took possession June 10, 1863. 
 
 In possession of the city,. Marshal Forey immediately took 
 measures to allow the Mexicans to select the form of govern- 
 ment that pleased them. He appointed thirty -five notables, 
 twenty-two of whom were former members of the reactionary 
 government, and most of them of the junta of Miramon in 
 1863 ; all of them, however, of the church party. The nota- 
 bles immediately elected a regency of three, called the " Su- 
 preme Executive Power," designated to them by General Forey 
 as men who would meet his views. These were General Al- 
 monte, General Salas, and the Archbishop of Mexico ; they in 
 turn elected a new assembly of notables, two hundred and 
 fifteen in number. 
 
 The programme being all arranged, the Eegency met on the 
 7th July. The principal mountebanks and jugglers being all 
 in their places, up went the curtain and the farce of Maximilian 
 I., or the moral pacification of Mexico was displayed before the 
 world. The Regency named the notables, and then chose the 
 form of government, which was to be an empire. With won- 
 derful unanimity they elected the Archduke Maximilian to the 
 throne. The notables, all good representatives of the reaction- 
 ary party, confirmed the election, and, in a proclamation to the 
 Mexican people, stated their reasons for this proceeding : " For 
 forty years," said they, " Mexico has been governed by brigands, 
 vagabonds and incendiaries." They had a wonderful loss of 
 memory at that moment, for they forgot that for nearly the 
 whole period it had been their party which had ruled, and that 
 some of the very members who authorized this proclamation 
 had committed some of the most glaring outrages which have 
 blackened Mexican annals. 
 
 Thus the empire, after a terrible struggle, had birth by the 
 Caesarian process, and the next act was to ofter to Maximilian 
 the crown which the pacified Mexican people so willingly con- 
 ferred. For this purpose a commission was dispatched to Aus- 
 tria ; but the farce of allowing the Mexican people to select 
 their own form of government had been so boldly and yet so 
 stupidly enacted that, in the face of the public opinion of the 
 world, Maximilian could not accept the crown thus offered to 
 him, unless, to smooth over this most glaring outrage of the 
 nineteenth century, a vote a popular vote might be taken, 
 whereby it might be demonstrated to the nation^ that Mexico 
 was indeed pacified ; that it had welcomed its invaders ; that 
 there had in fact been no siege of Puebla,no bloody defeats and 
 equally bloody victories; that all the heroes who fought under 
 the constitutional banner of Juarez were bandits and outlaws,
 
 67 
 
 and all Christians, such as Miramon, Almonte, Marquez, Mi- 
 randa, Mejia, and other " conservatives," who had for fifty 
 years caused the country to reel in an intoxication of blood, 
 were the only people who were tinctured with civilization, and 
 who were indeed the lords of the soil ; all who, with " liberty 
 and reform " on their banners, and who would not vote for the 
 new regime, being outcasts, unworthy of consideration, except 
 through the constant and arduous employ of from forty to fifty 
 thousand French troops to keep them from overturning the 
 peaceable and unoffending clergy who represented the cause of 
 " law and order." 
 
 Maximilian said to the commissioners, on the 3d of Octo- 
 ber, 1863, " Mv acceptance of the offered throne must therefore 
 depend upon the result of the vote of the whole country." But 
 the only way to obtain this vote was to make every Mexican 
 citizen deposit his suffrage under the gleam of a French bayo- 
 net. It was reliably calculated by M. Malaspine, editor of 
 " L'Opmion Rationale," that when General Bazaine was in- 
 structed in August to take the vote, seven-eighths of the popula- 
 tion of Mexico and twenty-nine thirtieths of its territory were be- 
 yond the lines of French protection, while the territory which 
 they occupied was overrun by seventy-two hostile guerilla bands, 
 averaging from seventy to three hundred men each. General 
 Bazaine thus found it necessary to organize his forces into sep- 
 arate divisions, and make what has wittily been called u an 
 electioneering tour in favor of Prince Maximilian." The elec- 
 tion was held, the dullest brain may imagine how. The country 
 gave its popular vote for the Austrian archduke, who soon after 
 satisfied with the result, ascended the throne of pacified Mex- 
 ico. Thus the cause for which the Mexican people had for a 
 half century battled and bravely won was thrown back years 
 into the past. The Mexican Congress protested against the 
 glaring outrage which foisted upon them a monarchical govern- 
 ment through the aid of fifty thousand bayonets. 
 
 France had at length reached a point where it was necessary 
 to adopt a policy of government suitable to the country and its 
 future development ; they analyzed and found the principles of 
 the party whose cause they had espoused totally incompatible 
 with the wants of Mexico, and in conformity with their consist- 
 ency of action throughout the invasion, they now espoused the 
 principles of the very party which had been so boldly battling 
 td hold their country intact. General Bazaine came to an open 
 rupture with the church party, which had betrayed the country 
 into the hands of France. Their schemes, their guilty hopes, 
 had borne their legitimate fruits ; the clergy had expected that 
 progress would be turned back upon itself, and that the old sys-
 
 tern would be established, whereby the church might usurp all 
 power, all wealth, and all emoluments. The French com- 
 mander, with a keen insight into the troubles which environed 
 the position, was forced, by maintaining the policy of the liberals, 
 who had sequestrated the church property, to refuse its restora- 
 tion to the clergy. Thus the invaders came to an open rupture 
 with the bishops, and virtually acknowledged the justness of 
 the cause for which the constitutionalists were battling. The 
 archbishop of Mexico was removed from the regency to which 
 Marshal Forey had appointed him. After some correspondence 
 between the archbishop and General Bazaine, the prelates of 
 Mexico issued a joint protest, which is in every view a remark- 
 able document. Opening with a reproach to the French for 
 having betrayed their holy Catholic faith, which the Emperor 
 Napoleon III. had promised them should be restored in all its 
 former rights and privileges, they protest at the treatment it 
 has received, and state that it suffers " a compulsion in its most 
 holy rights and in its canonical liberties entirely equal to that 
 which it suifered when the authorities emanating from the 
 Plan of Ayutla (the liberals) were in power." " Then," said 
 they, " the government frankly manifested its principles ; it ap- 
 peared to the view of this Catholic people in the character of 
 an opposition armed with a power against religion and the 
 churcn ; and the latter, as a victim immolated by the govern- 
 ment, defended itself heroically, suffering the consequences of 
 a terrible persecution, and perishing nobly for the holy cause of 
 justice. Then the prelates leaving our 
 
 country, carried with them the hope that the first political 
 change which should take place would bring with it a complete 
 moral and religious restoration. To-day, returning after such a 
 change, to be present at the immolation of all our principles, 
 the consummation of the ruin of the church, we have received 
 a blow such as is only received at the death of all human hope. 
 Then the church had only one enemy the government that 
 persecuted it. To-day it has two that same government which 
 still lives in the country, which still has resources of its own ; 
 an army that contends hand to hand for every foot of ground, 
 and that counts upon the aid of its principles and interests in 
 the enemy's camp, and in the capital ; an enemy whose first 
 occupation it is to carry into effect the destructive plans of its 
 opponents, in religious and moral affairs. 
 
 Then we received a blow from the hands of an open enemy ; to- 
 day we are attacked by those who call themselves friends of 
 the church and protectors of its liberties. * * * 
 Then we could publish our protests and our pastorals ; to-day 
 the press is bound in such a manner that it is only open to those
 
 who favor the intervention." The whole document is a wail of 
 woe at the betrayal of their hopes by those into whose hands 
 they had betrayed their country. Seldom in history can we find a 
 document so replete with the exasperation of disappointment. 
 They acknowledge, too, finally, that the wars waged by the lib- 
 erals are only against the opposition of the church to " liberty 
 and reform." The clergy had thrown their bope before the 
 lions of Europe, and now they were doomed to see it despoiled 
 of its meat as strip after strip it was wrenched off. They had invi- 
 ted the invader to oppose the constitutional reforms of the lib- 
 erals, only to see them, when firmly in power, espouse those re- 
 forms. It was a case of the most glaring inconsistency on all 
 sides. France had proclaimed that she espoused the cause of 
 the " reactionists ;" she no sooner reached the capital than she 
 overturned the cause she had espoused, and espoused the cause 
 she had overturned, while at the same moment, with 50,000 
 troops, she battled against the brave defenders of these very 
 principles which she now inscribed upon the code of Mexico. 
 It was a bold proof that it was might not right which dictated 
 the invasion, and that the ruler of France and his advisers were 
 either in a most lamentable state of ignorance in reference to 
 the history and political condition of the country, or else they 
 warred for an idea, and chose to waste some of the best blood 
 of France upon a soil which could yield them no return for the 
 prodigal outlay, either in honor, justice, glory or wealth, but 
 which might fix an indelible stain upon that glorious escutcheon 
 which is almost as much the pride of the United States as of 
 France. 
 
 On the 18th October, 1864, the Roman Pontiff addressed a 
 letter to Maximilian, urging him to agree with the Mexican 
 clergy ; but Maximilian, in his instructions to his Minister of 
 Justice, December 27th, 1864, totally disregards it, proposing 
 on the contrary to declare religious tolerance, and confirm the 
 reform laws "of Juarez. This was followed on the 26th 
 February, 1865, by a decree confirming these instructions; the 
 protests of the clergy being useless. These measures had the 
 effect upon the Mexican mind to bind them more firmly to the 
 constitution of 1857, and to support the liberals upholding it, 
 who were thus by their very invaders adjudged to be fighting 
 for the right. 
 
 But Maximilian is enthroned, and we find it is necessary 
 for France to retain 50,000 troops to sustain him where the 
 suffrages of the people have placed him. It has now become a 
 matter of pride to the French ruler to at least, if he cannot 
 consolidate the monarchy which his "moral pacification" 
 /scheme has erected, to continue the farce with the hope that
 
 70 
 
 some lucky turn of fortune may enable him to reap the honors 
 of a drawn game, where the liberals play as well with their 
 knights and pawns as Napoleon with his king and bishops. 
 
 Napoleon III. made a great mistake in the character of the 
 people whose territory he invaded. He should have taken a 
 lesson from Napoleon I., whose genius was not sufficient to m- 
 pose upon Spain a government with King Joseph at its head. 
 The invasion of Spain by the great Napoleon at the opening 
 of this century, was wonderfully similar in all its phases to the 
 invasion of Mexico by his nephew in 1862 ; the same appoint- 
 ment of notables, and the same farce of imposing a foreign 
 prince upon the people. The period of occupation of the coun- 
 tries will doubtless correspond very nearly. Said Talleyrand to 
 the great Emperor, " Your Majesty will never hear the last shot 
 fired in a war with a people who have fought eight hundred 
 years with the Moors." Mexico, from the hearts of the liberals, 
 echoes the same sentiment in reference to its own soil. The 
 French monarch has forgotten that when France invaded the 
 Peninsula Spain had but eleven million inhabitants, that she 
 was in immediate contact with France, which might easily sup- 
 ply her invading forces with means to prosecute the war, or to 
 rapidly reinforce any threatened point, and that, notwithstand- 
 ing she poured some of her largest veteran armies into Spain, 
 she could not conquer her. If France thus failed to conquer a 
 kingdom lying at her very door, how could she hope to subdue 
 a republic six thousand miles distant, with a territory nearly 
 four and one-half times as large, and which contains eight mil- 
 lions of people, united in a common cause against her, and 
 possessing a country eminently adapted to the partisan style 
 of warfare which so harassed and cut up the troops of France 
 in the Peninsula ? In topographical features which might en- 
 able partisan bands to maintain a destructive warfare, Mexico 
 is eminently like Spain. Her mountain ridges, her waterless 
 deserts, her fastnesses, her numerous large towns and cen- 
 ters of population which cannot all be held at once by an in- 
 vading force render her capable of a brilliant defence and 
 capable, too, to work out her own salvation against any num- 
 ber of troops which Napoleon may be able to bring against 
 her in the present political condition of Europe. 
 
 We believe that all that France ever planned in reference 
 to the future development of Mexico will be realized, but not 
 through the influence of any invading Power ; for, to hold and 
 direct the energies of Mexico in a monarchical channel, you 
 must change the political condition of the United States, and 
 also its form of government. It would take a standing army of 
 one hundred thousand foreign troops in Mexico to crush out the
 
 71 
 
 leaven of dissensions which would constantly impregnate the 
 people from contact with us ; and, as we are ceaselessly advanc- 
 ing westward with our civilization, and building up powerful 
 States in our march, the effort to establish upon our frontiers a 
 monarchy, under the shadow of any European flag, must, by 
 the very abrasion of progressive ideas, fall in its own tracks, 
 which denote a backward instead of an advancing pace in the 
 order of the world's march westward. 
 
 We believe that there is a great law regulating the progress 
 of the human race, and that, like the spheres which whirl 
 round it, it has its orbit of revolution. May not its constant 
 march westward gather to its folds an ever increasing civiliza- 
 tion, as its resistless activity develops and calls forth a steady 
 growth of brain force? Does not this advance of the human 
 element, forcing before it the great wave of intellectual im- 
 provement, indicate that in future ages, when in its course it has 
 swept across the Pacific and impinged upon the eastern Asiatic 
 border, that the worn-out nationalities there found must move 
 westward towards Europe westward, westward, until, in the 
 ceaseless revolution, they meet our American nationalities 
 then as dead as Asia is to-day and, with a civilization and im- 
 provement which will have- gained immensely in its revolution 
 of the world, force us in our turn before its irresistible onward 
 march ? The effects of such invasions as that of France in 
 Mexico may impede, but scarcely exert a perceptible influence 
 upon, the course of the race. 
 
 In the French expedition the French Emperor has played 
 one of those far-reaching games so characteristic of him. A 
 man who could reach the throne of France as he did must be 
 blessed with a wonderfully good fortune, backed by a brain that 
 has a deep insight into the fortuitous phases of any problem 
 which may interest him ; but in this Mexican problem he made 
 a very excusable mistake, which altered its conditions entirely ; 
 this was, the predetermined result which, in common with 
 Europe, he affixed to our civil war. It was, from the very out- 
 break of the rebellion, accepted as a foregone conclusion that 
 the United States were divided never more to be united. Rea- 
 soning from all precedent, they had every right to draw this 
 conclusion. It was supposed that the South, following the ten- 
 dency of the institutions which existed there in 1860, would 
 naturally gather the dominant classes into a powerful aristo- 
 cratic faction, which, in consonance with their education and 
 natural tendencies, would form a limited monarchical govern- 
 ment. It could not have been entirely outside of the vista of 
 Napoleon III. that in such an event the South might have found 
 it to her advantage to link herself to Maximilian, and form with 
 Mexico a great empire, of which the latter country would have
 
 72 
 
 been a dependency. France could then have more than enjoyed 
 the reality of one of her dreams in reference to her Mexican 
 conquest not only the obtaining of cotton for herself, but al- 
 most its entire monopoly. It was also a very wise plan during 
 our great contest to be within easy reach at the bursting of the 
 Western stars. There were mighty and valuable fragments to 
 be gathered up in such an event. They could not see the result 
 through the convex achromatic lenses of liberty, in the nine- 
 teenth century; but chose rather to look at the movement 
 tlirough the concave goggles which monarchical Europe puts 
 on whenever she looks at anything republican in the Old or 
 New World. 
 
 It is worthy of consideration that, in April, 1861, the first 
 gun thundered" against Fort Sumter ; in June the French le- 
 gation pushed the liberal Mexican government to the wall ; in 
 October the allied treaty of intervention was signed ; and, in 
 the December following, Yera Cruz was occupied by a part of 
 the allied force. 
 
 We are officially informed that the French troops will all 
 be removed from the- Mexican soil by November, 1867; "the 
 first being intended to depart in November, 1866." There is 
 an immensity between intention and action. We do believe 
 that the French troops will be withdrawn, providing there are 
 no further troubles in the United States before the time fixed ; 
 for the French people are thoroughly disgusted with this Mexi- 
 can expedition, which draws so heavily both upon their pockets 
 and their honor. There are, however, elements in the problem 
 which place the Emperor Napoleon in a most embarrassing 
 position the honor of France and the prestige of his constant 
 successes, which, if here broken, will cut loose the ties which 
 have bound his name with so much firmness to that country. 
 The French people have long been dazzled with the bright sun 
 of the house of Bonaparte ; once let them clear their eyes of 
 this blindness, and there is little doubt what direction the er- 
 ratic and highly organized brain of France would take. Heaven 
 was in a prodigal mood when it shaped French intellect ; and 
 if in 1789 it surged in one wild wave beyond the level which 
 liberty should occupy, it did no more than other nations have 
 done before it ; the reflux naturally brought back monarchy, 
 but the tide vibrates still in its course to a proper equilibrium. 
 
 The withdrawal of the French troops does not necessarily 
 involve the withdrawal of the French population in Mexico. 
 The French troops, if naturalized there, may become Mexican 
 troops under the banner of Maximilian. The time also of many 
 of the French regiments may expire before November, 1867, 
 and it is not a matter of compulsion that they should return 
 home. Any foreigner may in Mexico to-day, or next year, en-
 
 T6 
 
 list under the Mexican flag of Maximilian ; and although he 
 might have an army of thirty to forty thousand Frenchmen in 
 his service, there might not be a single one of its soldiers borne 
 upon the military roll of France. We believe, therefore, that 
 whatever troops are withdrawn will be very few, and only those 
 who cannot be persuaded to remain in the service of Maximilian. 
 This is something to which we could not take exception, for 
 France could justly say she no longer held a direct interest in 
 the expedition, however large a quantity of funds she might 
 furnish to support the bogus monarchy against the stalwart 
 blows of the heroic liberals. 
 
 France labors under another difficulty : there is no reason- 
 able course which she can pursue to obtain indemnity for the 
 immense outlays which she has made in this expedition. She 
 has, as it were, with an invading army, proclaimed Maximilian 
 Emperor of Mexico ; but he, never having been in possession of 
 a square foot of ground which French troops have not for the 
 moment occupied, has been unable to exercise his so-called 
 function unless guarded by the bayonets which not only pro- 
 tect, but think and dictate his policy, making him the most 
 perfect android of this century. What right has he to acknowl- 
 edge a debt of 270,000,000 francs on the part of Mexico to 
 France, or yet to negotiate a Mexican loan, as has been done on 
 the French Bourse ? Being a mere puppet in the hands of the 
 military power, he is, as it were, an officer of the invading force, 
 who, within a mobilized encampment, with guns shotted and 
 troops ready to spring to arms at the sound of the " long roll," 
 signs a treaty and binds the country he invades to a course of 
 action which the real government cannot, for a moment, sanc- 
 tion. Deny the existence of the liberal government all they 
 may, the fact that fifty thousand French troops, with all their 
 splendid discipline, war material, and equipment, cannot, or do 
 not, to-day, hold one-third of the country against the half- 
 starved and poorly supplied patriots opposed to them, is the 
 most tangible and powerful recognition that can be granted 
 that there is a force superior to their own, which, if the French 
 Foreign Minister does not recognize, the Treasury of France 
 does, and that, too, every day, with immense and constantly 
 increasing additions to the debit side of the account, while the 
 credit side is as blank as the soul which gave the expedition 
 birth. The truth is, France sends an expedition to Mexico, sets 
 up her android upon what she classifies as a throne, writes out 
 her bill of indemnitv, orders it to be signed, and lo ! Mexico 
 owes France at least $200,000,000. 
 
 If France evacuates Mexico and Maximilian follows, with 
 whom can Napoleon treat ? The allies acknowledged the exist- 
 ence of the liberal government by the treaty of La Soledad,
 
 when they first entered the country ; and, as we have said, fifty 
 thousand troops have recognized it ever since; but if, by a 
 treaty 011 any subject, they again recognize that government 
 they have so constantly ignored, it will be a virtual acknowl- 
 edgment that they have never, in truth, been able to foist upon 
 the country their bogus monarchy, and therefore its acts must 
 fall with it, including the debts which have been contracted in 
 the attempt to maintain it upon such unpromising soil. In 
 truth the constitutional government has ever been since the 
 French invasion the real government, and never has there been 
 at any moment one-third of the country under the shadow of 
 foreign bayonets. 
 
 The Emperor Napoleon is unfortunately bound, to a certain 
 degree, to protect the prince of Austria, who was induced to 
 place himself in so doubtful a position ; the honor of France is 
 here also at stake. In a discussion in the French Chambers, in 
 January, 1864, M. Thiers boldly stated, that " when a prince is 
 taken from one of the greatest reigning families of Europe, when 
 that family is asked for a prince to be delivered up 'to the haz- 
 ards of those civil wars so frequent in Mexico, to pretend that 
 there is no obligation contracted towards him and his, is to ad- 
 vance a theory not very honorable to France." France, then, 
 is assailed by a double dishonor. If she withdraws from Mexico 
 and abandons Maximilian to his fate, she acknowledges her 
 Mexican expedition a complete failure, and sinks much glory, 
 much treasure, and much prestige on this side of the Atlantic, 
 while, on the other side, it is equivalent to almost open war 
 with Austria. French treasure and Austrian troops naturally 
 become the next expedient. When that policy fails, will not a 
 European war be necessary to give employment to the French 
 mind and gloss over the Mexican failure ? It is far from im- 
 probable that the reaction of the French Mexican scheme may 
 cause Europe some trouble, and may lead to complications not 
 to be measured by words, but by swords. 
 
 In our present condition in tht United States, the result of 
 four years of civil strife and terrible carnage, we are naturally 
 left in a position where the elements are still simmering under 
 the latent heat which produced the great rebellion. Aside from 
 our abstract views of foreign interference in the governments of 
 our Western World, we have a home interest to look to, which 
 is not among the least important. All unsettled as we are, and 
 seeking, as yet, to mingle the States into a more homogeneous 
 nationality, the presence of a foreign monarchical element upon 
 our southwestern frontier is a constant source, if not of alarm, 
 at least of suspicion, which calls our earnest attention to its re- 
 moval at the earliest moment. We do not want a war with 
 France ; we are too closely bound in the ties which were woven
 
 75 
 
 in our War of Independence to wish to live in other than the 
 most amicable relations with her ; but it is the feeling of the 
 whole nation that this French-Mexican scheme is a constant 
 threat against our people, which, if long continued, can bat ripen 
 into bitter fruit and destroy a friendship which we highly prize 
 so long as we can enjoy it with honor. We feel, that the time 
 set for the withdrawal of the French forces is too distant, and 
 that it is fixed more with reference to the hope that some lucky 
 turn of events in the United States may leave the Mexican ex- 
 pedition undisturbed, than it is with a view to an abandonment 
 of the Mexican scheme of empire. We hazard little in predict- 
 ing that the Mexican question has scarcely yet reached its 
 secondary phase. 
 
 Notwithstanding our warning to Austria not to embark 
 troops to replace those of France in Mexico, reliable news 
 reaches us that the first shipment of such troops has already 
 taken place. There is, moreover, no law which prevents Ger- 
 mans from emigrating where they please ; and there is no law 
 which prevents France and Austria from supplying Maximilian 
 with all the material of war he may demand. The truth is 
 that the liberals, unless they receive assistance, must depend 
 upon their own good swords for some time yet. It is but justice, 
 however, that they should receive assistance, and that, too, from 
 our Government. We have long enough nursed the selfish 
 policy of non-intervention in the affairs of the Spanish- American 
 Eepublics ; long enough seen them browbeaten and plundered 
 by monarchical Europe, which has taken advantage of our self- 
 ishness in forcing all the struggling republics to the south of 
 us from enjoying any ray of light from us excepting that which 
 has given them their revolutionary impetus. Sisters in a com- 
 mon cause, we have acted most unkindly towards them, and the 
 results we every day witness in such acts as the invasion of 
 Mexico, and the bullying of the whole Pacific coast by Spain, 
 which, the news just reaches us, has added the appendix to the 
 long list of horrors which, through her hands, have cursed 
 Spanish-America, by the disgraceful bombardment of Val- 
 paraiso. Surely we lack generosity, surely we are without 
 common humanity even, if we permit these constant and glar- 
 ing outrages upon a people who are struggling to raise their 
 heads above the inherited curses of Europe. Even in a selfish 
 point of view the benefits which we might reap in throwing a 
 protecting influence over Spanish-America would more than 
 repay all warfare which we might have to wage on their ac- 
 count ; for, once be it known that we stood as the champion of 
 justice between them and the European nations, there would be 
 no causes given for any active interference. The nation that 
 lives entirely for itself can make but a poor mark in the history
 
 76 
 
 of the world, and the jingle of its money bags will scarcely throw 
 its echoes so far into the future as would the broad policy of 
 protection to human progress. 
 
 France recognizes the government of Maximilian as the 
 legitimate ruling power ot Mexico ; we recognize that of the 
 liberals, under Juarez. France 1 is not making war against < 
 Mexico, but is furnishing troops to what she calls the legitimate 
 government, for a stipulated price according to a written con- 
 tract. Now, if France has the right to furnish the government 
 which she recognizes with mercenary troops and money to 
 carry on the war and this right is recognized in Europe by 
 other governments why have we not a similar legitimate right 
 to furnish war materiel and cash to the government which we 
 recognize ? The liberals are not in want of men. They could 
 to-day raise an army of three hundred thousand had they the 
 means for supplying it with munitions of war. They want 
 money, and we as a people would onlv be doing them and their 
 cause simple justice were we to furnish it to them in whatever 
 quantities may be required. "We do not advocate this course 
 that we may gain any foothold in the Northern provinces of 
 Mexico, for we have quite territory enough to suit the mass of 
 the American people ; although there be many who have made 
 large investments in Sonora with the hope that the schemes of 
 President Buchanan, in 1859, might redound to the advantage 
 of those who were in the secret. These men are now willing 
 to argue for any government which promises stability, without 
 reference to its principles. We believe, however, that their 
 only hope of stability in the Northern provinces, unless they 
 are annexed to the united States, is in the liberal government, 
 for they will assuredly be the battle ground of the contending 
 parties until Maximilian is driven from the country. 
 
 The present .condition of Mexico is scarcely changed from 
 what it was at the first occupation of the French troops and 
 the crowning of Maximilian. The Emperor can scarcely travel 
 five miles in any direction without a large escort, as a protec- 
 tion against the guerrilla bands, which keep the foreign troops 
 constantly employed, even in the most pacified districts. Of 
 the war in the Northern provinces, we hear the most conflicting 
 accounts ; but judging even from those most in favor of the 
 Imperialists, they are waging an exhaustive warfare against the 
 large and constantly increasing forces of the liberals, who ap- 
 pear to be rapidly gaining ground. 
 
 ^The Pall Mall Gazette of March 9, 1865, says : " It looks 
 as if we might hope for peace and civilization when there are 
 no more Mexicans. Mexico had her dawn of civilization and 
 peace at the very moment that France invaded her soil in 1862, 
 and the true hope for her is when there are no more foreign
 
 77 
 
 bayonets upon her soil to thrust her back into the darkness from 
 which she had just emerged. From calculations made from 
 official dispatches, published in the Mexican imperial journals, 
 it appears that there took place, during the year 1865, three 
 hundred and twenty -two encounters of arms, or about on an 
 average, a battle or a skirmish for every day in the year. Is 
 Mexico under control of Maximilian or the liberalists? 
 
 The war which has been waged by the French troops is in 
 no manner superior in character to that civil warfare which 
 was in Europe so much condemned before the landing of a 
 foreign force. The mercenaries of Maximilian have, if we may 
 believe all accounts, been as rigorously cruel in their treatment 
 of the Mexicans opposed to them as ever England was in the 
 treatment of the Sepoy troops during the East India rebellion. 
 The barbarous order of Maximilian, in October, 1865, to mer- 
 cilessly shoot down all liberals found under arms shows not 
 only how hard the imperial forces have been pressed, but also 
 the sanguinary character of the struggle which they are forced 
 to maintain to preserve even a show of European-reflected roy- 
 alty upon the soil which had been so dishonorably usurped. 
 The liberals are, however, fast effecting the recovery of the 
 country. This is shown by the fact that the battles are con- 
 stantly increasing in number, and that where there was one 
 battle in the opening of 1865, there are now two. No quarter 
 has been the rule of warfare, and the result has been a terrible 
 loss of life on both sides. The desperate resolve of the Mexi- 
 cans to free their soil from the invader makes the task of the 
 latter to pacify the country almost a hopeless one, while the 
 "moral support" which the Emperor Napoleon furnishes to 
 the government he has so generously permitted the Mexican 
 people to unanimously choose, is fast losing ground before the 
 sturdy blows of a people who prefer the enshrinement of a 
 different kind of morality upon their political altars. 
 
 From reliable information the imperial treasury of Max- 
 imilian is almost as hard pushed for funds as was that of the 
 liberals when the invaders first landed. It appears that they 
 have already been obliged to resort to that plan to which their 
 predecessors in power have been forced before them the sell- 
 ing of the orders of the Minister of Finance on the Custom 
 Houses at a discount to obtain means to meet the demands on 
 the Treasury. There is but one hope. Maximilian again turns 
 his eyes towards Napoleon, and Napoleon towards the French 
 people. Will the latter, already depleted in purse by this heavy 
 drain in support of an idea, again respond, and aid the Mexican 
 Imperialists in the formation of a foreign legion with which to 
 continue their policy of Mexican pacification ?
 
 78 
 
 SUPPLEMENT. 
 
 SUCCESSES or THE LIBERALS MAXIMILIAN GROSSLY DECEIVED 
 FINANCIAL CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH PARTY 
 WITH SANTA ANNA AGAIN IN THE FIELD EFFECTS OF THE 
 INVASION DISPUTE ABOUT THE PRESIDENCY GRANT OF 
 EXTRAORDINARY POWERS TO JUAREZ MEXICO FIGHTS THE 
 REPUBLICAN BATTLE FOR THE WHOLE CONTINENT CON- 
 CLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 The late information from Mexico informs us that the so- 
 called empire is tottering to its fall ; and yet, we believe that 
 efforts will be made to maintain it in the face of every obstacle ; 
 the liberals are, however, overrunning the whole country j and 
 the strong strategic positions of the various States are rapidly 
 falling into their hands. Were the Emperor Napoleon famed 
 for his honor, we might anticipate some new move in favor of 
 the unfortunate prince Maximilian, to whom he has presented 
 a " sacred white elephant ;" but we are too well instructed in 
 his history to believe that the man who could approve of per- 
 fidy in the first act at LP Soled ad, can blush at the desertion of 
 the archduke in the present condition of the tragic-comedy called 
 the Empire. As we have before remarked, European complica- 
 tions may be necessary to gloss over the failure ; and there is 
 more of Mexico to-day in the present hostile attitude of the 
 great powers of Europe, than is seen upon the surface. 
 
 The archduke Maximilian was~grossly deceived by all par- 
 ties, as to the condition of Mexico, before he crossed the Atlan- 
 tic. The misrepresentations of the interested European powers 
 were only made patent to him when he found that the part 
 of Mexico which he governed was only ruled under the gleam 
 of foreign bayonets : and yet it appears that, in the treaty 
 which he made wi h Napoleon III., for the retention of a whole 
 corps <V armee, he was somewhat doubtful of the truth of the 
 picture of Mexico which the clergy photographed upon the 
 the monarchical retina of Europe. Perhaps he even dis- 
 trusted the truthfulness of Santa Anna's words, who, on the 
 22d December, 1863, wrote to him " I may also assure your 
 Imperial Highness that the voice raised in ^Mexico to proclaim 
 your respected name is not the voice of a party. An immense 
 majority of the nation desire to restore the empire of the Mon- 
 tezumas with your Imperial Highness at its head, believing it 
 to be the only remedy for existing ills, and the ultimate anchor 
 of its hopes.''
 
 79 
 
 The financial condition of the so-called empire is to-day 
 worse than that of any party which ever occupied the capital 
 during any revolutionary overturning in the country. The so- 
 called empire has attempted to load Mexico with a mountain of 
 debt, many times exceeding that which the nation owed in 
 1861 ; while the immense increase of expenditures for this 
 bastard government compares very unfavorably with the more 
 democratic outlays for the support of republican institutions. 
 
 Up to January 1st, 1866, official data, published at Wash- 
 ington, shows : 
 
 First. That France has charged to Mexico for 
 
 expenses of invasion to July 1st, 1864. . $50,000,000 
 Second. That loans have been negotiated for 
 
 Maximilian in France, amounting to. . . 150,000,000 
 Third. That the claims of France, admitted by 
 
 the constitutional government before 
 
 the intervention, were only 2,859,917 
 
 Fourth. That the French claims recognized by 
 
 Maximilian already amount to 192,962,962 
 
 We have also the following 
 
 COMPARISONS. 
 Foreign debt, as attempted to be recognized by 
 
 Maximilian $271,735,605 
 
 Foreign debt, as recognized by the constitutional 
 
 government 81,632,560 
 
 Attempted increase by Maximilian $190,103,045 
 
 Annual interest required to be paid by Maxi- 
 milian $12,966,204 
 
 Annual interest under the government of the 
 
 Eepublic 2,760,022 
 
 Attempted increase by Maximilian $10,206, 1 82 
 
 Annual expenditures under Maximilian $49,929,326 
 
 Annual expenditures, fixed by the national 
 
 Congress, under the Republic 11,087,440 
 
 Annual increase under Maximilian $38,841,886 
 
 Annual salary of Maximilian, so called Em- 
 peror of Mexico $1,500,000 
 
 Annual salary of the President of the Republic. 30,000
 
 80 
 
 It will be here noticed that the interest alone, which is re- 
 quired to be paid by Maximilian, exceeds by almost two millions 
 of dollars the total annual expenditures sanctioned by the con- 
 stitutional Congress, before the invasion. 
 
 The result of these considerations shows with severity 
 against the attempted foisting of a monarchical government 
 upon the country. To make this indebtedness good, there is a 
 combination of a powerful moneyed interest to uphold the em- 
 pire, upon which they put almost their total dependence for 
 future payment of claims. This moneyed interest is very nearly 
 equal in amount, although not equal in power, to that which 
 the church held, while for so many years it contested the rights 
 of cash against high political principles. In support of the 
 empire there is also a considerable party of Mexicans who em- 
 barked their fortunes in it ; others who have received titles and 
 distinctions under it ; others who have grown rich from its con- 
 tracts ; others who have entered the country from foreign lands 
 and accepted from it peculiar and valuable privileges ; all com- 
 bined forming a powerful party, not entirely to be ignored, even 
 after the promised withdrawal of the French troops. But we 
 believe that the postponement of this withdrawal to so late a 
 date, is to give all these interests time to consolidate, with the 
 hope also, that, in eighteen months, the additional interests that 
 may be brought to work in harmony with the others, may en- 
 able the imperial government to make head against all oppo- 
 nents. In view of this, we question the wisdom of our govern- 
 ment in allowing the longer continuance of this bastard usurp- 
 ation of the rights of a people, and the enduring of this stand- 
 ing insult to the whole Western continent. 
 
 The church party are also in the field with new political com- 
 binations, with the hope that, by some extraordinary turn of 
 fortune, they may regain some of their lost power, and re-estab- 
 lish a reactionary government in place of that to which they 
 betrayed their country, and which in turn betrayed them. 
 Again, as of old, their exponent is Santa Anna ; and this retro- 
 gressive champion issues a pronunciamiento* crying " Down 
 with the empire ! " which he helped establish and " Long live 
 the republic ! " which he helped overthrow. The clergy, 
 with the hope of driving from the soil the power which 
 has broken faith with them, are now making one grand 
 rally to free themselves from its weight ; therefore they 
 cry Union of all parties and all political creeds, but 
 they want Union and the Leadership ; this, ,we believe, 
 
 See New York Herald, June 14, 1866.
 
 81 
 
 would be ruin to the liberal cause, and we see in it, therefore, 
 the reasons for the distrust with which all the liberals look at 
 the attempted foisting of Santa Anna upon the republican plat- 
 form. The clergy, finding that they cannot establish a church 
 party, and that intervention and monarchy fail to drown the 
 the republic in their waves, very naturally seek for a footing 
 under the republican standard, and demand a position which it 
 would be fatal for the liberals to grant them. 
 
 Growing out of French invasion and the consequent dis- 
 tracted condition of the country, there are other combinations 
 in the field derogatory to the true interests of Mexican civiliza- 
 tion and progress. Among these has been the inability of the 
 Mexican people to hold a constitutional election for President 
 before the expiration of the late presidential term. The result 
 has been that, by virtue of the constitution, General Ortega, as 
 " President of the Supreme Court of Justice," considered him- 
 self entitled, on the 1st December, 1865, to the presidential 
 chair. On that date, however, he was absent from the country, 
 and, therefore, could not assume the duties of the office. He had 
 claimed that he was entitled to the seat in 1864; but the 
 decision of the cabinet was against him, and to this he appar- 
 ently acquiesced like a true patriot. 
 
 It is easy to sit quietly in one's study and render a decision 
 of 'what is the right in time of peace ; but in time of great 
 public peril, when, by civil commotion, by foreign invasion, and 
 by a struggle that saps the life-blood of a nation, the whole 
 conditions of the problem become changed, a point at least 
 should be yielded to that stern military law which is the growth 
 of the moment, and which, unwritten, is still to be considered 
 when the destinies of a people perhaps hang upon the firmness 
 of the hand that presses the helm. A true patriot never leaves 
 his post at that moment, no matter what personal considera- 
 tions may influence him. 
 
 It is not within our province to decide the question of 
 Ortega's right to the presidency, but we believe that a strict 
 rendering of military law would cause his arrest for desertion 
 and trial by court martial were he to return to Mexico ; for, 
 nearly twelve months previous to the time at which the cabinet 
 of Juarez decided that the presidential term should be extended, 
 General Ortega applied for, and received from his government, 
 a " leave of transit " from Chihuahua through the United States 
 to another part of Mexico, for the purpose of organizing 
 some military expedition against the enemy. Ever since this 
 leave was granted Ortega has been in the United States. 
 Instead of standing beside the other heroes of Mexico who have
 
 82 
 
 so bravely fought in the cause of freedom, he has apparently de- 
 serted the cause of his country. General Ortega is a brave man, 
 with many good qualities of head and heart ; but his place was 
 by the side of Juarez, battling for the overthrow of the empire, 
 that, in case of the death of the latter, he might take up the 
 standard and continue the contest. Should Juarez die, there is 
 no one to fill the chair, according to the letter of the constitu- 
 tion, unless, by virtue of the powers vested in him by the 
 National Congress, he has appointed some one. The decrees of 
 Congress, for this and every purpose, have been more than 
 ample, and show what confidence has been centered in the 
 present incumbent of the presidential chair. On December 11, 
 1861, Congress granted extraordinary powers to the President, 
 only limiting him to the preservation of the national territory 
 and the independence of the country intact, and the support of 
 the constitution. On December 13, 1861, a supplementary 
 article was added, even granting power " to conclude treaties 
 and conventions, and place them in the course of execution/' 
 Again, May 3, 1862, and October 27, 1862, and still again May 
 27, 1863, Congress reconfirmed these extraordinary powers to 
 the President, who, on the 8th Nov., 1865, by their virtue, 
 issued a decree extending his term of office, and also that of the 
 ".President of the Supreme Court of Justice," until " the condi- 
 tion of the war may permit an election to be constitutionally 
 held." ^ 
 
 Besides the reasons given in this decree for the extension, 
 there were other and powerful ones, born of the situation 
 and potent in their solution of the contest against the 
 invaders of the soil. It was a case of imperious necessity that 
 Juarez should continue to govern ; for, it was his government 
 that the French proclaimed war against, and not against the 
 Mexican people who had with an overwhelming majority 
 placed him in the presidential chair. The wish of every true 
 Mexican was, therefore, that the man of their choice should 
 remain at the head of their government, in the face of all for- 
 eign opposition ; providing that, in addition to this wish, there 
 were good and sufficient constitutional reasons forhis so doing. 
 In this view then, Juarez represents the will of Mexico in 
 opposition to the will of France. It was, moreover, necessary 
 to have a sterling man in the position, that required a persistent, 
 unwavering purpose, with unfaltering nerve, to wage a contest 
 of years against the bastard empire of Maximilian ! Fortunate 
 has it been for Mexico that she found the man whose sterling 
 integrity was proof against all the dazzling allurements of the 
 empire ; who could not be bought, nor yet deceived ; whose
 
 S3 
 
 sole purpose of life appears to be to free his country from her 
 invaders, and restore the cause of order and civilization which 
 foreign intervention so rudely hurled aside, at the moment it 
 was established, after the terrific battle of half a century. 
 
 The attempt of France to overthrow the government of the 
 people has, thus far, been unsuccessful, and it should be the 
 effort to-day of every real Mexican patriot to prevent the ma- 
 chinations of the French Emperor from establishing any govern- 
 ment in place of the present liberal one whereby, upon the 
 exodus of Maximilian, he may be able to attach to the Mexican 
 national debt the long^nd unfortunate bill he has contracted 
 in his foolish attempt to establish an empire in the heart of the 
 Western Republican World ! 
 
 Mexico is to-day fighting the great battle of republicanism 
 against imperialism. The direct insult which France offered 
 to the Mexican people, in the attempt to establish a government 
 not of their cJtmce, is also an indirect insult to every republic 
 on this continent, and most of all to the United States. The 
 conquest of Mexico was to be a foothold for the propagandism 
 of monarchical ideas in the New World. One after the other 
 the republics were to fall until human liberty and republi- 
 canism became a transient bubble of the past, that showed its 
 bright colors in the sunshine, but burst at the first blast ; but 
 the wave of imperialism has broken against a rock ; lashed into 
 foam, it hurls itself in vain against an unaided and poverty- 
 stricken republic which fifty years of civil strife have torn and 
 wounded to the heart. Shame ! shame ! that we, as a people, 
 look on quietly and see Mexico fight the battle of both North 
 and South America. Shame ! to the Great Republic that we 
 bind our sympathies in the shroud of selfishness and see im- 
 perial Europe scourge, without cause, the young republics to 
 the south of us, who, just struggling into the lignt of civiliza- 
 tion, are baffled and thrown back into the past because the 
 Colossus of the North lies dead to their appeals against a com- 
 mon enemy. 
 
 With the overthrow of Maximilian, there will naturally 
 arise new complications, born of the evils which have dropped 
 from the folds of the French flag. The whole political atmos- 
 phere, driven into cloud and whirlwind by the invasion, will 
 not settle into calm under the first ray of sunshine. 
 
 Our own civil war, and its present phase, should teach us to 
 have patience with a people whose political fortunes have been 
 stirred to more tragic action by five decades of contest and the 
 solution of a dozen curses in its one great crucible of revolu- 
 tion. Grant them a few years to restore their country ! first,
 
 to the condition in which the allies found it in 1861, when 
 they cursed it with their presence ; then the reorganization of 
 the whole civil and political forces overturned by the invasion ; 
 and, finally, the restoration of the organic law of the land, the 
 constitution of 1857, with all the civilizing reforms that 
 attended it. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 LOT Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 QL'OCTl? 1994 
 
 315 
 
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