The Hispanic Nations of the New World: A Chronicle of Our Southern Neighbors

years. Now comes a period in which the plight of their big northern neighbor, rent in twain by civil war and powerless to enforce the spiri

the new state any more than it had done in the case of its western foes. The Haitians had lapsed long since into a condition resembling that of their African forefathers. They reveled in the barbarities of Voodoo, a sort of snake worship, and they grovel

ed as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine. In 1861, however, the outbreak of civil war in the United States appeared to present a favorable opportunity to obtain protection from abroad. If the Dominican Republic could not remain independent anyway, reunion with the old mother country seemed altogether preferable to reconquest by Haiti. The President, therefore, entered into negotiations with

rebellion. Spain, too, sent over a crowd of officials who could not adjust themselves to local conditions. The failure of the mother country to allow the Dominicans representation in the Spanish Cortes and its readiness to levy taxes stirred up resentment that soon ended in revolution. Unable to check this new trouble, and awed by the threatening attitude of the United States, Spain decided to withdraw in 186

slaves, who could hardly relish the thought that, while the mother country had tolerated the suppression of the hateful institution in Santo Domingo, she still maintained it in Cuba. A bureaucracy, also, prone to corruption owing to the temptations of loose accounting at the custom house, governed in routinary, if not in arbitrary, fashion. Under these circumstances dislike for the suspicious and repressive admin

d much headway, however, when the provisional government of the mother country instructed a new Governor and Captain General-whose name, Dulce (Sweet), had an auspicious sound-to open negotiations with the insurgents and to hold out the hope of reforms. But the royalists, now as formerly, would listen to no compromise. Organizing themselves into bodies of volunteers

t twelve years of age he could not read or write or even speak Spanish. His employer, however, noted his intelligence and had him educated. Becoming a lawyer, Juarez entered the political arena and rose to prominence by dint of natural

ivileges, both ecclesiastical and military, and organized the country on sound bases worthy of a modern nation. Mexico seemed about to enter upon a rational development. But the newly elected President, yielding to the importunities of the clergy, abolished the constitution, dissolved the legislature, and set up a dictatorship, in spite of the energetic protests of Juarez, who had been chosen Chief Justice of the Supre

uch in advance of their time to insure a ready acceptance. Although Juarez obtained a great moral victory when his government was recognized by the United States, he had to struggle two years more before he could gain possession of the capital. Triumphant in 1861, he carried his anticlerical program to the point of actually expelling the Papal Nuncio and other ecclesiastics who refused to obey his decrees. By so doing he leveled the way for the clericals, conservatives, and the militarists to invite foreign intervention on behalf of their desperate cause. But, even if they had not be

rvene. According to their agreement the three powers were simply to hold the seaports of Mexico and collect the customs duties until their pecuniary demands had been satisfied. Learning, however, that Napoleon III had ulterior designs, Great Britain and Spain withdrew their forces and left him to proceed with his scheme of conquest. After capturing Puebla in May, 1863, a French army numbering some thirty thousand men entered the

of the pretender. Nor could Maximilian be sure of the loyalty of even his supposed adherents. Little by little the unpleasant conviction intruded itself upon him that he must either abdicate or crush all resistance in the hope that eventually time and good will might win over the Mexicans. But do what they would, his foreign legions could not catch the wary and stubborn Juarez and his guerrilla lieutenants, who persistently wore down the forces of their enemies

romise never to return, he asked Escobedo, his captor, to treat him as a prisoner of war. "That's my business," was the grim reply. On the pretext that Maximilian had refused to recognize the competence of the military court chosen to try him, Juarez gave the order to shoot him. On the 19th of June the Austrian archduke paid for a fleeting glory wi

r with chieftains who aimed at setting up little republics of their own in the several states, Juarez had to contend for some time before he could establish a fair amount of order. Under his successor, who also was a civilian, an