Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the First Session Thirty-ninth Congress
Mr. Romero to Mr. Hunter
Mr. Secretary ad interim: In addition to and in confirmation of the information I have already communicated to your department in various notes, relative to the efforts of the French government, and its agents in Mexico, to induce the malcontents of the United States who took part in the late rebellion against their government, and do not mean to submit now that it is over, to settle in Mexico and give afterwards new trouble to their country, I have the honor [Page 531] to transmit two documents, published by Mr. M. F. Maury, ex-confederate agent in Europe, and now termed “Imperial Commissioner of Colonization,” in one of which he gives a special invitation to confederates who wish to settle in Mexico, and informs them that three hundred and fifty thousand acres of land are set apart for them in the States of Vera Cruz and Puebla.
I embrace the occasion to renew to you, sir, the assurances of my most distinguished consideration
Hon. William Hunter, &c., &c., &c.
[Enclosure No. 1.]
sale of a farm by subscription.
An offer of 350,000 acres of land is made to confederate settlers who wish to establish themselves in Mexico.
These lands, the most fertile of the empire, are intersected by three rivers. They are selected on the line of the railroad from Vera Cruz to the capital, and near the road from Vera Cruz to Jalapa. They are in the healthy part of the tierrascalientes. They produce equally well coffee, cocoa, indigo, cotton, and sugar-cane, with all the tropical fruits and vegetables.
The proprietor will sell them to the settlers as soon as the latter have filed with the agents of colonisation in the United States or Mexico, subscriptions for 200,000 acres, at the following rates:
| The first 50,000 acres chosen, at | $1 75 |
| The second 50,000 acres chosen, at | 1 50 |
| The third 50,000 acres chosen, at. | 1 25 |
| The fourth 50,000 acres chosen, at | 1 00 |
The first subscribers shall have the right to choose at the above rates, with the understanding that not less than 320 acres shall be sold to any one of them.
When the 200,000 acres shall have been subscribed for and chosen, the rest shall be sold at a price to be agreed upon between the seller and purchaser.
Payment shall be made in the following manner:
One-third of the amount is to be paid in cash at Mexico, Vera Cruz, or New Orleans. The rest thereof shall be paid in four years’ time, causing the payment thereof to be effected in equal parts and yearly; that is to say, one-sixth per annum, adding thereto the interest at the rate of six per cent.
As villages and towns are established on the lands, a lot will be given gratis to each settler in said villages or towns. Said villages or towns shall be chosen and allotted by Mr. Maury, the imperial commissioner of colonisation.
The surveying and the cost of the title of the property will be at the expense of the settlers.
The hacienda offered herewith is known to be one of the finest and most celebrated in Mexico. It presents, especially to the former planters of the south, a fine opportunity for establishing a flourishing American settlement. Those who are disposed to visit the country for the purpose of colonizing it under the imperial decree to promote immigration will receive every encouragement from this office.
The offer is made by respectable parties, and persons wishing to treat will be put in com munieation by addressing the commissioner.
Apprentices, as per imperial decree of September 5, 1865, would do well here, though there is no lack of native labor.
M. F. MAURY, Imperial Commissioner.
M. F. Maury, Imperial Commissioner of Colonization, to persons wishing to settle in Mexico:
The doors of the empire are wide open, and his Majesty the emperor has, in a most liberal decree, invited immigration from all quarters, and without distinction as to nationality.
Many people, both in the Old World and the New, haying heard of this invitation, wish to change their skies and to avail themselves of its privileges. Gentlemen representing several thousand families in Europe, and hundreds in Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, in the United States, are now anxiously seeking information in regard to the country, its condition and resources, with the view of making it their home.
[Page 532]Considering that almost the only source of information open to them upon this Subject is to be found in anonymous contributions, made for the most part to a press by no means friendly to Mexico, I deem it proper to state for the information of all those, whatever be their nationality, who desire to renounce it and come to Mexico, with the intention, in good faith, of making it their home, and of planting their posterity here, that they would do well to come; for it is a land more blessed by nature in its soil and climate than any part of the United States, that great centre at present of human migration.
THE WEALTH OF THE SOIL.
The earth here yields to the care of husbandry with a profusion that would seem incredible there and fabulous in Europe. In some places it crowns the labor of the husbandman regularly with two and in others with three harvests annually; and in each one he gathers one hundred, two hundred, sometimes three hundred, and occasionally four hundred fold, and even more, according to his own skill and the kind of seed used.
Cotton and corn do well in almost all parts of the empire. But the cotton, especially of Tamaulipas, Matahuala, Fresnillo, Durango, Mazatlan, and the states north, is said to be of a better staple, save Sea-island, than any produced in the United States; indeed, the cotton of Yucatan is called Sea-island.
Under these fine climates, which give a purity and transparency to the atmosphere that makes existence itself an enjoyment, and invest the eye with the faculties of almost a new sense, the vegetable kingdom displays its’ wealth and its powers most gorgeously, and with the most marvellous vigor and concentration.
In chosen spots and upon a single hacienda may be seen crowded together, piled up in steppes one above another, in perfection, fruits, flowers, and products, which in less favored climes require as many latitudes, climates, and soils as can be found in the entire breadth of plain that lies between the sources of the Mississippi and the mouths of the Amazon.
Here, besides cotton and corn, the olive and the vine, we have the finest of wheat, with pulse and all the cereals in great perfection; also tobacco, coffee, sugar-cane, the cocoa plant, rice, indigo, cochineal, pimento, India-rubber, and henuquin, a peculiar and valuable fibre that answers many of the purposes of both flax and hemp, and, last of all, and what, moreover, no other country in the world can produce—Flora’s feat and Bacchus’s boast—the lordly maguey, or pulque plant of Anahuac.
I have seen some of the very best planters from Missouri, Tennessee, and the south, and I have conversed with the learned men from France and other parts of Europe, all of whom happen to have travelled through the northern and most healthy parts of Mexico. The Europeans report, on the one hand, an agricultural country superior to the best parts of France and Italy, and also of surpassing mineral wealth; while the Americans, on the other hand, pronounce it a grazing and cattle country to which even the blue-grass regions of Kentucky and Tennessee are not to be compared.
The mountains abound with minerals, the woods with game, and the forests with the finest of timber—with the most exquisite dye and ornamental woods, gums and spices, drugs, and medicinal plants of rare virtues.
SETTLEMENTS CONTEMPLATED.
Generals Price and Shelby, of Missouri; Governor Harris, of Tennessee, and Judge Perkins, of Louisiana, with a number of their friends, have gone to examine the country about Cordova. They are delighted with it; they intend to make it their home. The railway hence to Vera Cruz passes through it. The land is superb. It is sold by the government to immigrants at one dollar the acre, to be paid for in five equal annual instalments.
Generals Hardeman and Terry, with others from Texas, are equally well pleased with Jalisco, They are negotiating for the purchase of haciendas there sufficiently large to accommodate with land a settlement to be made up of themselves, their old neighbors and friends.
The Rev. Mr. Mitchell, of Missouri, has already commenced a fine settlement on the Rio Verdi, in San Luis Potosi. He and his comrades have gone into the cultivation of cotton, com and tobacco.
The representative of large capital, M. Dousdebes, has a grant for establishing a colony from France and Spain on the shores of Matamoras.
Mr. Lloyd, of England, equally well supported, has engaged to establish a number of colonists between Vera Cruz and the capital, and a ship-load of European immigrants have just arrived in Yucatan to form the nucleus of a settlement in that fine peninsula. They have been received with ovations by the good people there.
A disposition equally favorable towards immigration is manifested in various other parts of the country.
Patriotic citizens have stepped forth at the call of his Majesty, and offered their own private lands, many of them upon the most favorable terms for colonization.
Mr. Jimires invites five hundred European families to his estates in Durango, offering them each a house andllot, rent free, a weekly allowance of provisions without charge, and a guarantee of work at air wages for five years. At the end of that time he further promises a gratuity of $15,000 to the community, and a present to each family of a yoke of oxen.
[Page 533]Mr. Gil, of Guadalajara, invites twenty Belgian families to his highly improved and well-stocked hacienda, offering them one-half of it for cultivation on shares, he finding the stock, seed and cattle, and the colonists the labor. He offers also flocks and herds, from which to breed on halves.
Other enlightened and liberal-minded land-owners of the empire have offered their estates for colonization on terms equally liberal.
MISREPRESENTATIONS ABROAD CONCERNING MEXICO.
Many false impressions have taken root abroad about Mexico and the Mexicans. These operate greatly to our disadvantage, inasmuch as they are stumbling-blocks in the mind of the stranger, and tend to discourage immigration.
The world knows Mexico as a country that for the last half a century has been tossed by revolution. Many, listening to the stories of her troubles and the tales of her calamities as told by her enemies, have come to regard the whole land as a “God forsaken country,” inhabited by a bigoted, illiberal and inhospitable people, while, in fact, no part of the world can boast of a more refined society or a more elegant hospitality than that which is to be found in certain parts of the empire.
The Mississippi valley, even in its palmiest days, could not boast any plantation that could compare in baronial splendor, lordly magnificence and princely hospitality with your Mexican hacienda that has escaped the ravages.of war. The halls of some of them are large enough to entertain, and have entertained, several hundred guests for weeks at a time.
On some of these you will find well-appointed schools for the education of the children of the dependents at the expense of the proprietor; churches built and chapels maintained by the same munificent bounty; hospitals erected for the sick, the old servants pensioned, and all the operations of the estate carried on upon a scale and with expenditures followed by remunerative revenues such as but few farmers in Virginia or France can boast of.
But all parts of the country are not so.
For more than fifty years Mexico has been constantly torn by faction or scourged by war, and she has reaped abundantly of the harvests which always spring from such seeds—forced loans and contributions upon the rich, grievous burdens upon the poor, the spirit of enterprise in many departments of the empire well nigh crushed out of the people, the industrial energies of entire regions paralyzed, and capital itself frightened off into its hiding-places.
ABSENTEEISM.
Such a state of things long continued in any country is sure to be followed by a general absenteeism from their estates of the large land-owners. This is eminently the case in Mexico.
The effect of this absenteeism is expressed upon the landscape, and proclaimed by deserted mansions, neglected plantations, and other signs of ruin and decay, in tones that fall sadly upon many a heart. Many of these fine estates, with the walls of their noble old mansions still standing, are now offered for sale and settlement at prices varying from a few cents to a few dollars per acre. They are in the most choice parts of the country, and would, if restored to cultivation, embellish the land with a beautiful mosaic of the most lovely garden spots that the world ever saw.
With the immigrant coming to Mexico it is not as with the emigrant bound to the “far west” in the United States. There he goes to reclaim from the wilderness. Here he comes, for the most part, to reclaim from ruin and the ravages of war. Plantations that were once garden spots invite his coming. He may pitch his tent on the verge of highly cultivated districts from which he can draw his supplies until the bountiful earth, yielding to his own good husbandry, shall yield him of her increase. And this the soil of Mexico, under climates that have no winter, will do in two or three months.
One of the finest haciendas of the wasted districts is now on sale. It was abandoned some six or eight years ago in consequence of a revolution: the proprietor died, and it has not since been restored to cultivation. It yielded a regular annual profit of not less than $120,000. The dwelling-house alone cost $200,000. This hacienda is large enough to accommodate forty or fifty families with farms of one thousand acres each. It can now be had for less than five dollars the acre, and after the first payment, on long time to suit purchasers.
Other haciendas that are open to the choice and selection of the immigrant are much larger. Two, containing each more than three thousand square miles, have been offered by the proprietors for colonization.
I know of no country in which the land is held by so few and in such large tracts.
This also has produced marked effects upon the nation; it appears to have deprived Mexico entirely of what other countries consider their “bone and sinew”—their noble, enterprising, energetic, hard-working middle classes.
Some political economists divide society in Mexico into but two classes—the upper and lower; and out of a population of eight millions of people, more than seven millions are said to belong to the latter.
[Page 534]INDUCEMENTS OFFERED TO FOREIGN CAPITAL AND LABOR.
The statesmen of the country, with the emperor in their lead, desire to heal the breach rapidly. For this purpose, foreign labor, capital, and skill have been invited to our shores. Many good men of the country look upon immigration, on a large scale, as the readiest and best means of restoring the equilibrium of the classes, and of giving to this country and its institutions that stability and force which are so essential to the full development of its vast powers, capabilities, and resources. Hence the encouragement that is now offered to immigrants.
This country is now in a better state to receive immigrants than it has been for many years. The empire is daily gaining ground, strength, and support, and the armed organization against it is broken up into factions—its head and leader, ex-President Juarez, having left the country.
But now, with the dawn of a happy era of peace at last before her, Mexico, after half a century of continued change and revolution, finds herself in an exhausted state, and the immigrants who wish to cast their lot with her auspicious future must bring with them something more than brawny arms and stout hearts. They must not forget those appliances of industry, those labor-saving machines and improved modes of husbandry which scientific skill and mechanical ingenuity, under the blessings of stable government and long-continued peace, have, in other parts of the world, brought to such perfection.
ROOM FOR ALL.
There is room, with encouraging prospects, for mechanics and artisans of all sorts, as well as for agricultural labor and scientific skill. Roads are to be repaired and made, bridges restored, mills—grist and saw—to be erected, dwelling-houses to be repaired or built, machine shops, and all those establishments which are so essential in the agricultural economy of other countries, will also be extensively required.
Immigrants who come to Mexico, from whatever country, will be warmly welcomed hi many parts. They will meet with no open hostility anywhere, except from the hands of the lawless.
To resist them, and to have the full benefit of all those conveniences—such as mills and other establishments just alluded to, and which every well-ordered agricultural community requires—it is desirable that the immigrants should come in bodies and form settlements of their own.
Looking to this, the decree of September 5 invests them with a semi-military organization, and they are expected to be able to defend their settlements against robbers, who, however, rarely attack where resistance is expected.
Protestants will be drawn into communities also for the sake of schools and churches. Moreover, public interests require that each settlement should be large enough fairly to develop the whole system of domestic, social, and agricultural economy of the country whence the settlers came.
For this purpose, each settlement should be large enough to support saw and grist mills, tanyards, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and the various other artisans and machinists who, in the pursuit of their calling, contribute to the requirements of modern agriculture, with all of its improvements.
ADVICE TO FOREIGNERS SETTLING IN MEXICO
There is still another reason why immigrants from all except Spanish countries should form themselves into settlements of their own, and that reason is one of language. A farmer coming to Mexico, ignorant of the language, ignorant of the customs of the country, and of the rate of wages, and settling down among neighbors all speaking in (to him) an unknown tongue, would find himself surrounded by embarrassments, none of which would exist in a settlement made up of his old neighbors, kinsmen, and friends. It would be well, therefore, for each colony to bring with it a large portion of its own labor.
The lands of Mexico have never been surveyed, nor has there been, until now, a land office. The consequence is that the government cannot tell which lands are public and which private; and though the chief of the land office is vigorously at work organizing surveying parties, and sending them forth into the field, it is found that lands sufficient to receive the coming tide of immigration cannot be surveyed, mapped, and brought into market for some time yet. Therefore, it is recommended to those, both in Europe and the United States, who desire to come now to Mexico, to form themselves into companies consisting of not less than twenty-five families each. Then, while those at home are making their preparations, let their pioneers come to Mexico for the purpose of purchasing a hacienda or other lands, and of making ready to receive the rest.
To those who will thus come now, with their families, and form settlements sufficient to call into play all the industrial appliances, consisting of machinery, shops, and implements connected with agriculture in its most improved state, and calculated to serve as so many centres of agricultural improvement in the country, special encouragement is held out.
They are invited to send forward their agents, who will receive all the information that the office of colonization can give, and every facility that it can throw in their way as to the most [Page 535] desirable parts of the country in which to settle, the choicest localities, and the cheapest and best lands, &c.
Having made their own selections, the government will then, in case they require it, lend them pecuniary assistance, sufficient to enable them to establish themselves in their new homes, and get fairly under way.
Office of Colonization,
No.13, Calle San Juan Letran, Mexico, November 18, 1865.