About Mexico - Past and Present/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI.
MEXICAN INDEPENDENCE.
THE fall of Morelos seemed a deathblow to the insurgents. Under his bold leadership men of different ranks in society and of varying shades of opinion had marched shoulder to shoulder, Creole and Indian, priest and layman, monarchist and republican, united by one bond only—"Death to gachupines and independence for Mexico!"
But now all these were scattered to the four winds. In the guerilla warfare that became general during the reign of anarchy which followed, the Indios bravos, or savage tribes, had their opportunity. The open country was given up to banditti, and every ranche and every hacienda was a citadel in danger of siege. The cities were so infested with robbers that the streets were deserted at nightfall, and few rich men escaped being kidnapped for the heavy ransom extorted from their families. But men were thinking. The standard of liberty raised by Hidalgo had floated over the capital but sixty-six days, yet during that time the liberals had used the just-unfettered press to great advantage. Newspapers and handbills were scattered with a lavish hand, and truths were taught that burned in the hearts of men like smouldering fire, needing only one breath of free air to kindle into flame.
One of those who stood by when Morelos was put to death was Agustin Iturbide, a handsome, dashing young officer from the hills of Valladolid, in Southern Mexico. He had commanded the government troops when the patriot was captured.
In 1820, when the news of the revolution in Spain sent a thrill throughout the colonies, the viceroy of Mexico received orders from the Council of the Indies to proclaim throughout his dominions that the constitution enacted by the Spanish Cortes in 1812 was again the law of the land. Anxious lest his own power should be curtailed, and counting on the support of all the royalists in Mexico, Apodaca resolved to oppose these measures, and so far as was in his power to reinstate the Bourbons on the throne. But Iturbide, though a thoroughgoing royalist, saw fit to disobey both Apocada and the Cortes. Whatever may have been his motives, God's time had come for another blow to be struck for the independence of Mexico, and Iturbide, though an enemy of true liberty, was the instrument prepared for the work.
Leagued with the Church party, Iturbide contrived to get possession of half a million dollars of public money, and proceeded to set up a new kingdom on these Western shores with the design of perpetuating here the old despotism of Europe, and at the same time to free Mexico from dependence on the mother-country. He devised what is known as the "plan of Iguala," so named from the little town near Acapulco where it was first set forth. Three ideas are embodied in this plan—first, Mexican independence; second, the abolition of caste; third, the maintenance of the Roman Catholic Church. The country was to be governed by a junta, or council, until there could be imported from Europe a king whose blue blood would command the respect of all parties.
Priests and monks were now in love with Mexican independence. Church property had been confiscated in Spain, and there was good reason to fear that the vast estates, jewels, money and plate of the Church in Mexico would soon go the same way if the ties which held the two countries together were not sundered. Indeed, the Spanish Cortes had already commanded the Mexican prelates to disgorge their ill-gotten gains. It may well be supposed that Iturbide's response to the viceroy's orders aroused the slumbering hopes of every revolutionist in the land. With the eight hundred men with whom he started and thousands more who joined him on the way, the gay young general came marching into the capital with banners and music, and once more the war-cry of Hidalgo rang out through the streets of Mexico.
Iturbide found the Cortes torn with the dissensions of three parties, each eagerly claiming his support. A few urged a return to the old Bourbon principle of one-man power; other royalists insisted that, whoever was king, Mexico should have a constitutional government; and others, again, wished to throw overboard all these monarchists and establish a republic, taking the United States as an example. The tide of enthusiasm over the revolution ran high, with Iturbide on its topmost wave.
The scattered patriots who fought under Hidalgo and Morelos now came out of their hiding-places to join in the shout of "Independence for Mexico!" Among these was Guadalupe Victoria. After the death of his friend Morelos every, effort had been made by the government to seduce this brave patriot. He was offered high rank in the army and a rich reward if he would swear allegiance to viceregal authority. But he could not be bought. A price was set on his head, and he was hunted like a wild beast. Deserted at last by every follower, Victoria fled to the most inaccessible mountains, to retreats where his Indian friends did not follow him. Here, in utter loneliness, he lived for two years a hermit's life, subsisting only on nuts, berries, roots and such birds and animals as he could entrap. He was one of that great army of martyrs for truth who in all ages and lands have been "destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was not worthy); who wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth."
When the news of Iturbide's proclamation rang through Mexico, two faithful Indian followers went in search of Victoria to tell him of the new day which had dawned for their country. It was just three hundred years since the heel of the oppressor had been set on the neck of their race. Hope of freedom from their foreign masters had long since died out, but hope of freedom with them was now bringing Creole and Indian into new fellowship, and for the first time in the history of Mexico the two races rejoiced together.
Victoria's retreat was at last discovered in a cave in one of the wild gorges spanned now by the national 
Iturbide's arrival in the capital had so roused the populace there that the viceroy was obliged to acknowledge the independence of Mexico to save the gachupines from violence. When this was reported in Spain, the timid official was promptly recalled; but the man sent to fill his place fared no better in the hands of his new subjects. Mexico had for ever shaken off the yoke of Spain, and was now launched on the stormy sea of revolution as an independent nation. To conciliate their old rulers, and at the same time to carry out their plan, the Mexicans despatched an invitation to the Bourbons to send one of their spare princes over to fill the new throne. But not one of them would accept the offer. In the general confusion which ensued, a grateful people, dazzled by the splendid qualities of their liberator, Iturbide, on May 1, 1822, pushed him into the seat just vacated by the viceroy, giving him the title of "emperor." The Mexican Congress, glad to see any way open toward a settlement, legalized this disorderly movement of the people, gave Iturbide the title "Agustin I.," declared his crown hereditary and conferred royal honors on the whole Iturbide family. An order of nobility was created, so that the regalia of a Creole nobleman could equal—in glitter, at least—the regalia worn by the long-envied gachupines.
Agustin I. might have gained a firm footing for himself and for his children but for the arrogance with which he treated his new subjects and for his indifference to their constitutional rights. He soon quarreled with the Cortes and arrested a number of the members, then dissolved the body and replaced it with a set of men who would obey him without question. These high-handed proceedings opened the eyes of the people to the true character of their favorite. The northern provinces were first to turn upon him; he was now styled "the usurper Iturbide." Santa Anna, governor of Vera Cruz, uniting with Guadalupe Victoria, joined the disaffected party and hoisted the flag of the republic; and when troops were sent from Mexico by the emperor to put down the revolt, they too joined his enemies. Iturbide saw his mistake when it was too late. In March, 1823, after a reign of only ten months, he offered his abdication to the old Congress. Congress ignored the fact that he had ever worn a crown, but accorded him the honor due to his first title—"Liberator of Mexico"—and sent him and his family quietly over-sea on a pension of twenty thousand dollars a year.
One more sad act, and the curtain falls on poor Iturbide. Too restless to stay in Italy, whither he had betaken himself, the ex-emperor secretly came back, hoping, no doubt, to gain his old place in the hearts of his countrymen. He was discovered by one of his former generals, arrested as an outlaw by the State of Tamaulipas under a law passed by Congress forbidding him on pain of death to set foot on Mexican soil, and shot by State authority.
The year 1824 is one of the bright points in this dreary history of turbulence. About that time a galaxy of Spanish colonies had declared for independence— Chili, New Granada, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela. The spirit of republicanism had been spreading like fire on dry grass. Mexico for the first time decided to be a republic, and was formally recognized as such by Spain. In the constitution which the whole country then adopted, although patterned after that of the United States, the people show themselves still ignorant of the first principle of liberty. All religions but the Roman Catholic faith were prohibited, the property of the clergy was put beyond the reach of secular law, and none but gachupines were allowed to fill high offices in the Church.
The republican reaction after the fall of Iturbide resulted in the expulsion of the old Spaniards from the country. When the Spanish flag was hauled down from the castle of San Juan d'Ulua, not a vestige remained of the old colonial power of Spain, this fortress, her last foothold on this coast, having held out against the revolutionists several years longer than any other part of the country. By a strange ordering of Providence, its keys were finally given into the hands of General Barrancas, the husband of a lineal descendant of the Aztec chief Montezuma. The fall of this castle was thus announced by the president of the republic in his proclamation: "The standard of the republic now waves over the castle of Ulua! I announce to you, fellow-citizens, with indescribable pleasure, that now, after a lapse of three hundred and four years, the flag of Castile has disappeared from our coasts." Thus ended what is known as "the war of independence." Mexico was now a member of the family of nations, and, though still wearing the fetters of the greatest despotism on earth, had already entered on that mighty struggle constitutional liberty which after a lapse of more than forty years has ended in its complete overthrow.
It would be perplexing and unsatisfactory to trace the varying fortunes of those professed friends of Freedom in Mexico who
"Presumed to lay their hands upon the ark
Of her magnificent and awful cause."
The story of Benito Juarez, the reformer of Mexico, will give all needed details of its revolutionary struggles and show that, as liberty there had its birthplace in the heart of one Indian, so it reached its glorious consummation through the undying and incorruptible patriotism of another.
Benito Juarez was a pure-blooded Zapotec Indian, born in 1806 in the little village of San Pablo Guetatao, among the mountains of Oaxaca. His tribe held the lands of its fathers and maintained a sturdy independence during three hundred years of colonial oppression. This was one of the tribes before whom the proud Aztecs trembled. A few of the men now spoke Spanish well enough to do business when they took their produce to market, but the women and children understood only their old Indian tongue. Young Juarez thus grew up in the atmosphere of the past. The simple herdmen among whom he lived went on the even tenor of their way when Hidalgo raised the standard of independence among the uprooted vines and mulberry trees of his parish, though their hearts were no doubt stirred with the thought that it was an Indian's hand which had lifted their trailing banner, and that one of the same despised race might yet plant it beyond the reach of a Spaniard's grasp.
The lad Benito had already won a reputation for honesty and enterprise when he went, an orphan boy, to Oaxaca, in 1818, to seek his fortune. He was then but twelve years old, modest and thoughtful beyond his years. His great desire was to obtain an education, as many of his own people had done at that time. He could neither read nor speak Spanish correctly. He soon found a place as a house-servant in the family of a teacher, and paid with his services for his board and schooling. In a year's time he had mastered Spanish and was studying Latin. His teacher, who had resolved to make a priest of young Juarez, put him in an ecclesiastical seminary near by.
On the threshold of his public life, Juarez caught a glimpse of the deep-rooted hatred of Rome for that which leads the people to think for themselves. In 1826 the State Legislature gave expression to its liberal principles by founding the Institute of Arts and Sciences of the State of Oaxaca. The fears of the priests were not groundless: the institute proved to be a focus of revolution and so-called heresy.
Miguel Mendez, a young friend of Juarez, was among the first to forsake the seminary for the broader field of thought and action opening at the institute. He too was a pure-blooded Indian, a youth whose fine talents and noble character were full of promise for his race and his country. A warm friendship which sprang up between the two young men no doubt influenced Juarez to abandon his studies for the priesthood. Mendez, however, was cut off in the morning of his days. His early death made an impression upon Juarez which was never effaced through those long and eventful years in which he was permitted to illustrate to the world the great possibilities of the Indian character. Juarez had found a home and a congenial circle of friends. His horizon widened; he became an intelligent defender of those principles of social
and political reform which were then agitating the civilized world.
At twenty-three Juarez was elected to the chair of natural philosophy in the institute, and, still pursuing his legal studies, he came out in 1828 a full-fledged attorney. From this time he rose rapidly, until, after filling several positions of honor and trust, he was chosen as one of the triumvirate which governed Oaxaca when it seceded from the monarchists under Paredes. Finally, when that rebellion was crushed and the republic again rose from the dust, he was sent to represent his State in the general Congress.
Juarez and his friends did not come a moment too soon to save their country from ruin. The selfish ambition of party-leaders overruled every other consideration. Public credit was at its lowest ebb. Nothing more could be drained from the overtaxed and poverty-stricken people, and, although the government repudiated its debts, it had been obliged to call on the Church to give money as well as prayers for the defence of the country. An appeal to the great banker of the nation was a necessity. At this time it held untaxable property in lands, plate, jewels and money worth three hundred millions, with an annual income of twenty-five millions, besides mortgages on real estate all over the country which yielded millions more.
In this time of national distress one of the purest patriots of Mexico, Farias, proposed that fourteen millions of dollars should be raised on this Church property— if possible, by a loan; but if that could not be obtained, to sell enough of it to raise that amount. The bill was fiercely attacked as a radical measure. Juarez and others pleaded eloquently in its behalf. We can imagine some of their arguments as they looked on thousands of lazy and dissolute monks fattening on the spoil of centuries, while poor laborers and mechanics forced to leave their families for the perils and hardships of the battlefield had been so long unpaid that the whole army was in a state of revolt. The burning words with which this bill was commended to Congress carried it through by a small majority among the politicians, but the people were too wild with anxiety to know much of Juarez, their great defender, until years had proved his worth and given him a place among the world's great reformers. The churchmen, having failed in the defence of their property, now appealed to the passions of the mob. There were riots in the capital and elsewhere. Yucatan seceded and Indian raids harassed the northern States, while foreign guns thundering against Mexican ports along both the Gulf and the Pacific shores added their terrors to the scene. Some great public calamity was needed in this crisis by which these warring States and people should be united by a sense of common danger to defend their country against a common enemy.
Amid all this fierce internal strife, Mexico was drawn into a war with her powerful neighbor the United States. Until boundary questions were settled between the two countries, in 1819, the Rio Grande had been claimed as the southern border of Louisiana. To rejoin this vast territory, justly yielded then to Spain, and to devote it to the extension of slavery, had become the aim of a large party in the United States. There was room in the cotton- and the sugar-producing lands of Texas and the country west of it for a tier of States larger than all New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina.
When Mexico became a republic, slavery was prohibited in its first constitution, although in Texas this law had been a dead letter. There was now a growing public sentiment against all class-distinctions which led to the reenactment, in 1825, of an old viceregal law against the sale and importation of slaves. Two years later the twin-States of Texas and Coahuila, governed by a joint Legislature, passed a similar law; freedom was also given to all children born in slavery within their bounds after that date. In 1829 every slave in Mexico was unconditionally manumitted.
The drift of these events caused great uneasiness among the American colonists in Texas, who by this time had so increased in numbers and in influence as to have a controlling voice in the politics of that State, although its union with Coahuila was a constant hindrance to their schemes. The avowed purpose of the Texans to wrest the State from Mexico led the government in 1830 to shut the door against further immigration from the North. Contracts between citizens of the two countries were as far as possible ignored, and all who resisted the laws were imprisoned. The fierce border warfare to which this policy gave rise led, first, to the severing of the tie between the rebellious State and loyal Coahuila, and then to the independence of Texas and its recognition by France, England and the United States. And now the "Lone Star" of a new republic shone out across the stormy sea of American politics. How little hope it brought to the friends of human progress may be seen from the fact that of the fifty- seven signers to its declaration of independence fifty were men from the United States pledged to extend the area of slavery. By a law passed a few days afterward this institution was declared to be perpetual.
This formidable revolt drew the attention of all Mexico to the North. President Santa Anna set out for San Antonio de Béjar—then occupied by the Texans—with all the forces he could muster. The brutality of Mexican warfare was displayed in the siege of the Alamo, a strong fortress near the town. With the exception of three persons—a woman, her child and a negro servant—the whole garrison, numbering one hundred and eighty, were mercilessly slaughtered. This massacre cost Mexico far more than the men whose lives were lost. A few days afterward the Texans defeated Santa Anna at San Jacinto, taking as spoils of war all the land which but a short time before the United States had offered to buy, and extending their borders southward to the Rio Grande. But, greatest loss of all, the lawlessness and the barbarity of her leaders now stood confessed before all the world, alienating those whose sympathies she most needed and giving enemies of republicanism fresh occasion to triumph.
Mexico had now been for nearly thirty years struggling toward freedom. Much of the time the cause of the people had been lost sight of save by a few patriots who deserved the name. The blindness, the ignorance and the folly of her political leaders had excited now the world's pity and now its scorn or anger.
About ten years after the scenes of the Alamo all eyes were turned to where the forces of Mexico and those of the United States were gathering for conflict on the debatable land between the two nations. As an independent republic, Texas was much dreaded by the United States, as she might at any time fraternize with Mexico or accept an English protectorate, which was quite as much to be feared. The annexation of Texas by the United States, in 1845, led before long to war with Mexico. That government had never recognized the independence of her revolted State. She had good reason, besides, to know that Texas proper was but a small part of the territory coveted by her neighbor: California also was threatened. The Hon. Waddy Thompson, United States minister to Mexico, testifies that when the Mexican government ordered the expulsion of his countrymen from California "a plot was arranged, and was about being developed by the Americans and other foreigners in that department, to re-enact the scenes of Texas." That he felt "compunctious visitings" when he insisted that Mexico should revoke the order to expel those who were plotting her ruin is not to be wondered at. Pretexts for war were not wanting when it was found that Mexico would not sell nor pawn her property. It was claimed that she was encouraging Indian raids into Texas; and the "accumulated wrongs" of American citizens were also dwelt upon. These could be atoned for only by the payment of a total of fourteen millions of dollars. After examination by a commission appointed by the two governments in 1840, five-sevenths of these claims were found to be spurious. Between this decision and the actual commencement of hostilities, in 1845, scheming politicians of the United States were doing their utmost to gain possession of Texas and California.
The annexation of Texas was no sooner consummated than the Mexican minister in Washington demanded his passports and went home. United States troops sent for the protection of Texas had already taken a position on soil claimed by Mexico. While thus menacing the border the administration in Washington despatched an envoy to Mexico empowered to make an offer of twenty-five millions of dollars for California. Tempting as was this offer, the Mexican government refused to hear of anything but a settlement of the Texan question. This rebuff was followed by an order from the United States government to General Taylor to march directly to the Rio Grande and try war.
It does not fall within the purpose of this volume to describe the scenes of bloodshed which marked this two years‘ conflict with Mexico. Peace was concluded between the two nations at Guadalupe Hidalgo in February, 1848. Mexico ceded to the United States an area of more than six hundred and fifty thousand square miles. In consideration of this, the United States paid her fifteen millions of dollars and assumed the payment of her debts to American citizens not exceeding two and a quarter millions.[1] California had been seized in 1846 without the loss of a single life.
Juarez was left by our narrative pleading for means to carry on war with the United States, while Santa Anna, at the North, was endeavoring to stay the enemy's advance. The clergy, unmindful of the nation's peril, were stirring up insurrection at home, which was quelled only by the return of Santa Anna. Taking sides with the enraged priests, this arch-plotter found the opportunity for self-advancement which he was ever seeking. With the army behind him, he became dictator, and dissolved the Congress. In the uproar which followed in the State of Oaxaca and elsewhere, Juarez was sent home to restore order. He was immediately elected governor, which office he filled for five years with great acceptance.
While at home among his own people Juarez became known as one of the ablest and most patriotic statesmen in the republic. He found Oaxaca in wild disorder. The conservatives had seized every office and bade defiance to constitutional law. The State forces had been defeated at Molino del Rey, and it had been invaded by United States troops. But when the strong hand of Juarez was felt at the helm, rightful authority was everywhere restored. With the energy and practical common sense for which he was noted, he set the people at work to provide arms and ammunition wherewith to defend their State. He established a foundry, and with ore dug from their own hills a battery was soon provided. By patient and systematic economy the public debt was wiped out before his term of office expired, and a balance of fifty thousand dollars was left in the treasury, Juarez retired to the practice of law as poor and as modest as when he first left it for public service, but more loved and honored.
While fulfilling the duties of his office as governor with unflinching regard for the public weal, Juarez offended Santa Anna. When the latter came once more into power, in 1853, he immediately caused Juarez's arrest. He was seized while pleading in court, and, without being allowed to take leave of his family, was hurried away to a loathsome prison-cell in the castle of San Juan d'Ulua, and from thence he was sent, a penniless exile, on board of a British steamer to work his passage to New Orleans. It was soon the dictator's turn to flee for his life. The country called back its old leader from exile, and in July, 1855, we find Juarez in Acapulco on the road to Mexico. His old friend General Alvarez was now president of the republic, and Juarez was made minister of justice. He now found himself side by side with men who were clinging to the army as the safeguard of the nation, together with those who believed that the Church should be independent of secular law.
But the trust of Juarez was in the people. Six-sevenths of them were at his back. What if some of them did not yet see in him their appointed deliverer? He was none the less responsible for their salvation. His keen eye had from the outset detected the weak spot in the constitution of the republic; it was in open conflict with that fundamental principle of liberty that all men are equal before the law. Until the army and the clergy were shorn of those special privileges which enabled them to bid defiance to constitutional authority the republic would be a failure. What Mexico needed was "a government of the people for the people by the people." This thought was embodied in the famous law for the administration of justice now known by the name of its Indian author—"the law of Juarez." The key-note of progress was struck on the passage of this bill by the Mexican Congress in 1857, and millions of the long-enslaved people of Mexico joined in the shout of joy with which it was received. This law awoke the bitterest opposition from those classes whose privileges it attacked.
Juarez was now dismissed from the cabinet as a dangerously popular man, to serve his State again as governor. But his enemies and his timid friends thus gave him an opportunity to put his theories into practice. He immediately set to work to educate his fellow-citizens up to the true idea of liberty. He built up the common schools, encouraged the Institute and urged upon the people the principle, untried before, of direct suffrage in the election of their governor. The grateful people of Oaxaca exercised their new privilege by electing Juarez as the first constitutional governor of their State, and soon after he was chosen chief-justice of the nation. Only a month later, by an overwhelming pressure of public opinion, Comonfort, who was then dictator, was obliged to make him minister of public government. One of the first duties of Juarez in this high position was to ask extraordinary powers for the executive. Congress hesitated, and but for the confidence felt in Juarez as a member of the cabinet the request would have been denied.
The outcome of the reformer's seed-sowing at this time was the suppression of the Jesuits, the confiscation of their property, and liberty for all religious creeds. These radical measures evoked rebellion even in the liberal camp, and Comonfort himself joined the insurgents. The triumph of the "old régime" seemed complete; the capital, the army and the treasury were in their hands. In the near future was a European protectorate.
As early as 1858 the clericals had sent agents to Europe to ask for aid in establishing a monarchy. They represented that peace between the contending parties was impossible, that the liberals would throw the country into the hands of the United States, and that the only hope of warding off annexation was by strengthening the hands of the Church. Mexico was deeply in debt to England, to France and to Spain, and these powers now agreed on a scheme of intervention. The pretext was an act of the Mexican Congress passed in 1860 authorizing a suspension of payment of the public debt for two years. It was a desperate measure and unlike Juarez, who proposed it, but the only thing possible under the circumstances, and as such was unanimously approved by the members. The allies took the opportunity to carry their scheme into effect while the United States had its hands full with a civil war. In 1861 their fleet appeared off Vera Cruz. Finding, on their arrival, that the people of Mexico were opposed to their interference, had repudiated the schemes of the monarchists and if let alone could manage their own affairs, the English and the Spanish forces were withdrawn without waiting to consult the authorities in Europe. The French, however, remained. Louis Napoleon was ambitious to show his skill in settling the vexed Mexican question; he had a wife who was anxious to show her devotion to the Church of Rome by rescuing this portion of the flock from the clutches of the heretics.
The door seemed open. After the departure of their allies the French army crossed the mountains to the capital, and there set up a provisional government. It was their decision that a prince must be imported from Europe to rule this refractory people, and the choice of the man was left to Napoleon III. With his inherited taste for king-making, the French emperor gladly set about the task. He soon fixed upon Maximilian, a young archduke of Austria, then residing with his wife, Carlotta of Belgium, in a beautiful and happy home on the shores of the Adriatic.
When the Mexican ambassadors came to offer him a crown, Maximilian looked coldly on the proposal; but Carlotta, like Eugenie of France, loved her Church and as a sincere Catholic was deeply moved by the sad story of her visitors. They told of a beautiful land most loyal to the Church; how its churches and its monasteries had been despoiled by ungrateful children; but that now the nation, though rent with faction, the prey of heretical wolves, needed only a royal hand to bring it safely and soundly into the fold of mother-Church. The young couple were persuaded to accept the invitation.
After securing the benediction of the pope, they set sail for America on their pious errand, and arrived in Vera Cruz in June, 1864. A magnificent welcome awaited them from the clerical party, and even the people, united as they were in their protest against foreign intervention, received the fair Carlotta with smiles. The royal pair were heralded from point to point on their mountain-road by the thunder of guns and the waving of banners. It was a time of great rejoicing to the monarchists of Mexico and of Europe.
But now began the war of intervention; the war of reform had ended in 1860. Throughout both these conflicts Rome displayed her antagonism to the liberty for which Mexico was struggling. To see this we have only to read the instructions given by the pope to Maximilian. Reminding the new-made emperor of his promise to protect the Church, Pope Pius IX. claims for her the right to rule not only over individuals, but over nations, peoples and sovereigns. He denies the right of private judgment to the people and justifies emphatically all the cruel persecutions which have made Rome "drunk with the blood of the saints." His fierce denunciations remind us of that impious usurper whom in prophetic vision Paul beheld sitting in the temple of God and setting himself forth as God.
It was against foreign intervention of popes and kings that the constitutionalists of Mexico had now taken up arms. Stimulated by the unswerving faith and patriotism of Benito Juarez, a small party pledged to support the constitutional rights of the people rallied about him. He had voiced the advanced thought of the age, and was determined to live and to die by it. After he was forced to evacuate the capital, in 1863, he was for four years a fugitive, fleeing from city to city with a handful of brave patriots who constituted the republican government. What with timid friends and malicious foes, he seemed at times to stand alone, as though the republic existed only in the faithful heart of its Indian president. When he was penned up in some city on the borders or hiding in the wilderness, if he could not do anything else, he would keep alive the wavering faith of friends abroad and write words of dauntless courage and sublime trust in the future of his country. For two years and a half while Juarez and his cabinet were in the State of Chihuahua they had no communication with their many friends in the South and the West except through Señor Romero, their faithful minister in Washington.
The liberals averaged a battle a day for a whole year. Unaided and unrecognized save when a friendly cheer came now and then from some sister-republic at the North or the South, Mexico's battle for freedom was fought alone. In our war for independence France came to the rescue and turned the scale. Poor Mexico! Ridiculed, upbraided, despaired of, yet when was there ever a braver, truer struggle for liberty than was hers? Thrilled by the voice of a few patriot-statesmen —themselves poor and hunted like deer in the forest, yet determined to break down the barriers to the nation's progress— six millions of people who could neither read nor write, with the fetters of paganism still clinging to them, and with burdens of poverty and debt which found no helper, arose against their enemies and successfully grappled with the craft and greed and despotism of Rome, and the well-trained soldiery of France, and the timidity and ambition of would-be leaders.
No trumpet that Juarez blew ever had an uncertain sound. With that tenacity of purpose which is so characteristic of his race, the salvation of the republic became with him a master-passion. At one time, when enemies in disguise were urging him to yield to the mediation of England, he saw in their proposition a compromise with the clericals. His reply was worthy of an indomitable patriot. Declaring his unalterable purpose to be governed only by the will of the nation, lawfully expressed, he uttered these memorable words: "I am not the chief of a party: I am the lawful representative of the nation. The instant I set aside law my powers cease and my mission is ended. I cannot—I do not desire to, and must not—make any compromise whatever. The moment I
should do so my constituents would cease to acknowledge me, because I have sworn to support the constitution, and I sustain with entire confidence the public opinion. When this shall be manifested to me in a different sense, I shall be the first to acknowledge its sovereign deliberations."
There were rifts at last in the dark cloud which hung over the republic. Discord in the capital among its enemies was the means appointed by God for the deliverance of the patriots. The only support given to the empire was from the clericals, who hoped that when Maximilian was firmly seated on his throne he would restore to the Church party their lost estates. But the emperor soon discovered that he had been deceived by these monarchists. The people had repudiated the monarchical form of government and were opposed to foreign rule either in Church or in State. Although very friendly to the priests, Maximilian chose to conciliate the liberals, whose power he recognized, hoping thus to unite all parties. To please them, therefore, he determined to sustain the national laws enacted in 1857. This gave mortal offence to the Church in Mexico, though the French priests who accompanied the court saw the propriety of the measure. Several of the largest buyers of Church property sold under that law were French subjects. The pope agreed with the Mexican priesthood, who declared that they were worse off under the empire than they had been under the republic. They finally gave vent to their feelings by excommunicating the French government, the French army, the French puppet on the throne and every Mexican who believed in Frenchmen.
Maximilian's independence had angered Louis Napoleon also, and his forces were withdrawn. This was a deathblow to the empire. Affairs grew desperate. The emperor's fears of a revolt among his Mexican friends were excited in order to draw him completely to the Church party, who alone could save him. Every effort was made to turn the tide by awaking the old fear of annexation to the United States, now at peace.
What with the curses of the Church, the distrust and divisions of his party and the fierce determination of the liberals to overthrow the empire and to build again the republic, Maximilian grew desperate. Unable to leave his post, he sent his wife, Carlotta, to plead with Louis Napoleon and the pope for aid; both were cold and obdurate. Carlotta's last hope was a personal appeal to the head of the Church, at the Vatican. But its doors were shut in her face. All night the young wife sat in anguished uncertainty in the waiting-room of His Holiness. The answer given her at last sent her out into the world a maniac. Weighed down with anxiety for Carlotta, Maximilian set out to go to her relief, but his sense of duty to his friends impelled him to remain and share their fate.
The French army having left Mexico, the emperor retreated to Queretaro; fearing to remain in the capital, he chose this city because of its adherence to the clerical party. Here he was entrenched in a fortress-like church surrounded by high walls enclosing beautiful gardens. Had it not been for the treachery of one of his own generals, he might have escaped to a place of greater safety; but he was betrayed to the liberal army under Juarez. He was condemned to death as an enemy of the country, on account of a cruel edict, promulgated by him two years before, outlawing all republicans. Every effort was made to save him by the consuls of the European governments, the United States joining in the general protest against this sacrifice of a comparatively innocent man. Carlotta was not there to plead for her husband's life, but the wife of Prince Salm-Salm, one of Maximilian's staff-officers, flung herself at the feet of the Indian president to plead for the life of her sovereign. Juarez wept as he put aside her clinging hands and turned away. He did what he believed to be his duty to his country. Maximilian was shot to death, with his associates Miramon and Mexia, in June, 1867.
Up to this time, though religious liberty had been formulated as law, it never had been realized in practice. The Church party, deprived of the Inquisition and of the Wealth which made them the landlords and the bankers of the nation, now found a stronghold in the superstitions of the people whom they had trained. When an avenue was to be lengthened in the capital, a large convent was found to be in the way. Congress ordered the building to be torn down, but the laborers employed, overawed by the priests, who threatened excommunication, refused to obey orders. Finding himself powerless to enforce the law, Juarez went to his old home in Oaxaca, drilled a regiment of Indians and came marching back with them to the capital, where they went to work with a will, unhindered by the populace. By such expedients as these, and in the face of many difficulties, Mexico at last was established on a republican basis.
Since the war of independence began, under Hidalgo, in 1810, ten changes had taken place in the form of government. More than fifty persons had been emperors, dictators and presidents. Repeatedly, two distinct governments had existed at the same time, at war each with the other. Secession of States was a chronic trouble; Texas and Yucatan were altogether lost. Both of the emperors were shot. There had been more than fifty revolutions and about three hundred pronunciamientos. The first great principle evolved from this chaos was that Mexico should be an independent nation; the second, that sovereign power should be vested in the people. The divisions in the great national party advocating democracy are mostly to be traced to the machinations of the Church party in its struggles for power, now throwing its weight on one side of the scale and now on the other with the dominant idea of securing the control of the nation. In 1873-74 the liberal constitution framed in 1867 was so amended and improved as to be in several respects superior to its model, the Constitution of the United States. It is now the organic law of Mexico.
Juarez, the unswerving friend of republican institutions, died in office in 1872, after having been for fourteen years president of the republic. His pure character, his fidelity to trust and his lofty patriotism have given him the title of "the Washington of Mexico." In 1880, Manuel Gonzales, another Indian, was elected to the presidential chair, being the first man who has taken that seat without bloodshed.
Mexico is now a confederation of twenty-seven States, one Territory and a federal district. The legislative power is vested in a Congress composed of a House of Representatives and a Senate. All respectable male adults are voters, sending one member to Congress for every twenty thousand inhabitants; these members hold their places two years. The president holds office for four years, and cannot be re-elected without an interval of four years after his term has expired. The present executive is General Diaz, who took the chair December 1, 1884. "Except the immortal Juarez," says a missionary observer, "no man was ever more generally beloved and honored than General Diaz, a tall, dark, half-Indian hero." The members of his cabinet are nominal liberals, "but Romanists have taken fresh courage since his inauguration, and are openly clamoring for an avenger of Maximilian to arise." There is much said of perfidy and abuse of power. The Protestants are daily accused of plotting to annex Mexico to the United States. The enemies of progress and reform are still found in the bosom of the Church of Rome. But with a free press, free schools and a free gospel Mexico cannot go back to the darkness of the past. She may fall for a time, but the prophecy of Abraham Lincoln for the United States will yet be realized for Mexico: "This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and a government of the people for the people and by the people which shall not perish from the earth."
- ↑ The war cost the United States the lives of twenty thousand men and the expenditure of one hundred and sixty millions of dollars.