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there were not lacking those who desired to carry the stain, to use the words of General O'Donnell, o£ ceding a Mexican province, as a gratuitous guarantee in financial combinations of a certain class. But amongst those men who thus lost all shame, and who thus stained their reputations, Benito Juarez is not to be included, if history is to form the impartial narration of events, and is to be the reflection of the truth. The names and the nationality of those men are revealed very clearly by Don Francisco de Arrangoiz.
The patriotism of Juarez and the energy and courage of the national party which supported him, saved not only Sonora, but the whole territory of the Republic, seriously menaced as it was by the servile complacency of those who brought and aided the invaders.
These are the historic facts which make the personality of Juarez shine out in all his patriotism and love for the independence and the integrity of his country. We now proceed to discuss the absurd accusations made against him by Cesar Cantú, when he refers to the delivery of the body of Maximilian.[1]
- ↑ As a still further confirmation of what is stated in these last pages, we can add that Mr. Romero, the Mexican Minister in Washington, in an official note addressed to the Mexican Government then in Chihuahua, on the 19th of January. 1865, mentioned the project at that time attributed to Maximilian, of ceding to France a large part of the national territory. The same Mr. Romero also addressed to Secretary William H. Seward a protest, under date of February 6th, 1860, "against the cession which the Archduke of Austria, Ferdinand Maximiliam, has made, or is about to make, of several States of the Mexican Republic to the French Government."
With regard to the projects of Napoleon, Maximilian and their partisans and agents, relative to the cession of territory, the parties mentioned afterwards disguised these plans under the projected colonization of Mr. Gwin. The fifth volume of the correspondence of the Mexican Legation in Washington may be consulted concerning these combinations. It contains data and details of the greatest importance respecting those events.
