Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the Second Session of the Fortieth Congress
Mr. Romero to Mr. Seward
Mr. Secretary: I have the honor to remit to you a copy of No. 36 of the official paper of the constitutional government of the Mexican republic, of the [Page 484] 3d November last, in which are published some documents which bear relation to the conduct which Don Jesus Gonzalez Ortega has observed abroad, and which I think will be read with interest by the government of the United States.
I avail of this occasion to renew to you, Mr. Secretary, the assurances of my most distinguished consideration.
Hon. William H. Seward, &c., &c., &c.
We publish in the official portion what relates to a permission which General Ortega pretended to give for the coming of Mexican money abroad. Putting aside the pretension of this gentleman to be President of Mexico, and the attempt to exercise acts of authority within the territory of a foreign country, the idea of permitting the money of a nation to be coined abroad is such a thing as needs not be analyzed; at once one perceives the degradation of consenting to the coinage abroad of the type of a national sovereignty, as well as the incalculable responsibility and innumerable abuses to which this might give place. Mr. Ortega said in his manifesto that although it belonged to him to exercise the presidency of the republic, he did not desire to come to exercise it, in order not to introduce discord among the defenders of the nation; the very style of the manifesto gave the lie to the sincerity of these expressions, and, as was to be supposed, he has taken upon himself promptly to go on giving them the lie by actions.
He has not come to the republic, seeing that all repelled him; but he pretends to the exercise of authority in foreign countries, and there conspires to procure others to support him. Already various evidences of this have been published, and now we place in continuation copy of an intercepted letter of his, which he was sending to General Negrete, according to the direction given therein.
We leave to the readers to pass upon the measures by which Mr. Ortega seeks to gain some partisans, by appealing to suppositions which are belied the next day, as that the government of the United States, for instance, had recognized him. Nothing need now astonish one as to those who resolve to employ such measures.
Mr. McKee to Señor Iglesias
Esteemed Sir: Enclosed herein I forward to your excellency a copy of the agreement into which I have entered with General J. G. Ortega for the establishment of a mint in San Francisco. As I have neither the wish nor the expectation that said Señor Ortega may succeed insetting up his authority and cabinet within the Mexican republic, as he contemplates doing, and as I desire to obtain this right of coining Mexican money in San Francisco, I hope that your excellency, as well as President Juarez, will deem it of great advantage to grant me this privilege on the conditions expressed in the copy which I forward herewith. All the papers, as well as the $60,000 referred to therein, are to pass through the hands of Minister Romero. * * * Señor Ortega goes to Matamoras to-morrow or the day after, and Señor Ochoa will be accredited to Washington as soon as Señor Ortega shall have set up his government at Matamoras.
We are quite elated here, because the latest news leaves no room for doubt as to Maximilian’s departure and the ultimate triumph of the liberal cause.
Señor Don J. M. Iglesias, Minister of the Treasury, &c., Chihuahua.
Señor Oriega to General Huerta
In the exercise of ample power for such purposes, I have given permission to Dr. William H. McKee to coin in the city of San Francisco, California, United States, money having the [Page 485] form, value and legality of the Mexican currency, on the conditions which you will settle in accordance with the instructions which I have given you. I reserve to myself the ratification of the contract. For this purpose I hereby commission and authorize you to act in the premises, and this note shall serve as your credentials therefor.
Independence and constitution!
Citizens General Epitacio Huerta, Governor of Michoacan, and Fernando Maria Ortega, Governor of Puebla.
[Enclosure No. 4.]
The conditions agreed upon are as follows:
Article 1. The Mexican government concedes to Señor McKee the privilege of coining Mexican money in the city of San Francisco, California, United States.
Art. 2. The money so coined shall have the same form, value, and legality as that which is now current in Mexico, and Señor McKee, or the company he represents, shall be held responsible therefor.
Art. 3. The government shall appoint an employé, to be paid out of the public treasury; he shall represent said government in said mint.
Art. 4. The present grant is for the term of thirty years from date: and no other similar one shall be made for a mint in any place within the United States.
Art. 5. Señor McKee shall pay $60,000 in consideration of this privilege, as soon as the Mexican minister, appointed by said President, shall be recognized at Washington.
Art. 6. There shall be two copies of this agreement made out, and signed by both parties, one for each.
I approve and ratify the foregoing contract, in the name of the republic of Mexico, as constitutional President of that nation.
[Enclosure No. 5.]
Enclosed in your communication of August 28 last, which I received long after due, were copies of the documents relating to a contract into which General J. G. Ortega went through the forms of making with you for the establishment of a mint in San Francisco, California.
General Gonzalez Ortega, who calls himself the constitutional President of the Mexican republic, and who pretends to govern said republic from abroad, exercises therein no public authority of any kind whatsoever, nor has he the right to exercise any. Hence the acts by which he aims at exercising the authority of legitimate governor of Mexico are null and void.
As to the request which you make that the citizen President of the republic, Benito Juarez, will grant the privilege for the establishment of a mint in San Francisco, in California, on the same conditions as those contained in the contract which General Gonzalez Ortega pretends to have made with you, it is impossible to accede to such a request. The coinage of money being one of the attributes of the national sovereignty, it should not take place outside of the national territory over which such sovereignty is exercised. No motive nor any condition can justify such a concession.
Independence, liberty, and reform!
Dr. Wm. H. McKee.
[Enclosure No. 6.]
Dear Friend: I venture to address you this letter; but I do so on account of the urgency of the affair, and because I am aware of your patriotism.
The United States government has refused to recognize Don Benito Juarez, on account of [Page 486] his lack of any legitimate title or constitutional power to negotiate with said government a. Joan of $50,000,000, and in consequence of this it has recognized me as the constitutional President. I believe that before ten days the loan of $50,000,000 will be all settled.
It is important that you send word immediately to Garcia de la Cadena, to Auza, and to Sanchez Roman, urging that they issue proclamations recognizing the constitutional government of Mexico, and setting forth that such has always been the sentiment of the State of Zacatecas, whose guide is always the law, and whose standard is the constitution, and stating that this proclamation is made at the present time in order to solemnly record that sentiment of the people of Zacatecas, and to aid the national cause. Have them to publish the proclamation, so that not only the attention of the public but that of the press may be attracted thereto. I wish that the State of Zacatecas may occupy a worthy rank in the salvation of our law, our independence, and the forms of republican government. I desire that the State of Aguas Calientes should figure in the same position.
Tell Garcia de la Cadena that Ferniza acted with shrewdness and prudence, and did not deliver the letters to those tor whom they were intended, but he retains them still in his possession; so Señor Cadena is not in the least compromised. Ferniza will set out in a few days, and will cross the deserts on the frontier. He will bear with him instructions for the arrangement of some way to forward arms and means on a scale corresponding to an affair of so great magnitude as the present. Send word also to Aureliano, and give him a copy of this note.
In a few days I will set out for Mexico. I will cross the frontier; and, should not any obstacle be put in my way by the United States, I mean to cross with a lot of American volunteers. Still, I do not think that any difficulty will arise, judging from the letters which I receive.
The personal interests of Don Benito Juarez have prevented Mexico from realizing her salvation. She could have secured it had he not broken the order established by law. The blood that has been uselessly spilt these last few months is exclusively upon him; for the efforts made by the Mexican people have proved feeble and sterile through the fault of said Don Benito Juarez.
We should learn from a foreign nation how to respect law. Tell all our friends, in my name, that before six or eight months we shall have finished our work.
Your friend,
J. G. ORTEGA.
General Don Miguel Negrete.
September 10, 1866.
True copy:
R. Garcia Hernandez, Secretary.
To the Editor of the New York Tribune:
Sir: If Ortega has done nothing on United States soil which may be properly construed into conspiracy against a neighboring power with which we hold friendly relations, and has been guilty of no other act violating the neutrality laws, then I concur with you in the opinion that our government has no right to interfere by arresting him. His conduct, after crossing the Rio Grande, is the affair of Mexico; and it does not alter the law of the case that the Mexican people, with a unanimity far greater even than that which was shown in our own recent elections, have already decided against him and for Juarez.
But I do not agree in the view you seem inclined to take of that decision. I think the Mexicans decided rightfully as well as unanimously. It would be superfluous to debate this here, in the United States, were it not that an opinion favorable to Ortega’s claims, if given in a paper so influential as the Tribune, must place serious embarrassments in the way of the Mexican liberals. This, I know well, is a result furthest possible from your intentions.
But thus it acts. For four years past the French invaders have had possession of the Mexican seaports, and have seized and appropriated all the revenue from imports. But nearly four-fifths of the public revenues of the Mexican government is derived from the tariff. Add to this that the people, harassed and pillaged, have had little means left, however well disposed, to contribute support to the constitutional government. That government, thus nearly beggared, had nothing left but the resort to which all civilized nations have at times been forced—a public loan. She needs imperatively arms, munitions, and military appointments; but she has nothing with which to pay for these except her bonds, duly authorized by Juarez and certified by his accredited minister. Though her entire public debt does not exceed $100,000,000, yet, because of her uncertain fortunes, her credit is low, and she has to dispose of these bonds at 60 cents to the dollar in payment of the supplies she needs. You make it very difficult for her to do even this; you strengthen the hands of [Page 487] speculators who seek to impose upon her still harder conditions, for you supply to them arguments going to depreciate the credit of the Juarez government. It is bad enough for an exhausted nation to have to receive 60 and pay some day 100 in return, with seven per cent interest on the 100 till paid. You aggravate the hardship when you intimate that perhaps Juarez has no rightful claim to the position he holds.
If he had, in point of fact, no such claim, good and well; let the truth be told, no matter whom it injures. But is that so?
The technical period when Juarez’s term expired was the 1st of December last. Seven months later Ortega put forth his claim in a pamphlet, in Englu, published here; an appeal, in fact, against his own nation to ours. This pamphlet had an appendix of twenty-six pages, entitled “Letters in ratification of his position.” It discloses the fact that, after seven months’ delay, Ortega could muster but nine indorsers, every one Mexican refugees— four living in Texas, five in New York. There were two ex-governors of States, two ex brigadier generals, one ex-postmaster general, one ex-colonel — all disaffected officials like Ortega himself, and, like him, all absent from their native country in her hour of danger and suffering. Three more, an ex-editor and two unknown individuals, made up the list.
To this pamphlet the friends of Juarez issued a reply. Its appendix contains letters from every governor of a State in Mexico, then acting as such, to the number of twelve, besides despatches from the principal corps commanders then in the field, and communications from other public men. Every one of these sanctions Juarez’s action, and approves, in unqualified terms, his continuance in office as legal and in accordance with the will of the people, so far as it was possible to ascertain that will.
The pamphlet further says: “Not a governor of a State, not a town or city under native rule, but has declared for the continuance in his present position of President Juarez. Nay more—not-a Mexican citizen, resident in Mexico, has, in public harangue or in private communication, expressed disapprobation of the extension of Juarez’s term of office.”
The grounds upon which this acquiescence rests (aside from the love and trust borne by the nation for their long-tried leader, Benito Juarez) seem to be the following:
The Mexican constitution differs from ours in this, that no one but the man actually voted for as President is, under any circumstances, permanently to occupy the presidential chair. In temporary default of a President, (Art. 79,) the president of the supreme court of justice shall serve. If the default of President be absolute, (Art. 80,) a new election shall be forth-with held. If the election of President shall not have been published by the 1st of December, (Art, 82,) the president of the supreme court shall be President provisionally. The word in the original is intermamente, strictly translated temporarily.
Taken alone and according to its letter, article 82 gives the presidency temporarily to Ortega as chief justice. But, taken in connection with the articles which precede it, and in view of the well-known intent of its framers, and yet more especially interpreted in the light of that policy which distinguishes the Mexican constitution from ours, namely, that he only shall permanently act as President who was elected to be President, not he who was elected as a temporary substitute, it would have been a direct violation of the spirit of the constitution had the substitute, in a crisis like the present, become the principal.
The default of the President, in his case, was absolute, not temporary; and, in such a case, there is but one constitutional remedy—a new election shall be held. That could not be because of the French invasion. The case provided for in article 82 is not one in which it was impossible to hold an election, but one in which an election, being possible, was not held or was not published. The intent was to guard against some intrigue of an unscrupulous incumbent, a contingency much more likely to happen under an unsettled government, like the Mexican, than among us. But no one doubts Juarez’s great desire, had it been possible, to hold an election; and as little can we doubt that, in case of such an election, he would have been, by an overwhelming majority the people’s choice.
These are the arguments of Juarez’s friends. Good or bad, they have been indorsed by the Mexicans themselves, the sole judges in this case. To go behind their decision is to do them an injury by increasing the difficulty of re-establishing among them constitutional rule.
Perhaps you doubt whether they are steady and patriotic enough to do this. I do not doubt it. I think we are too much inclined to undervalue other races than our own, and top little disposed to make allowance for the difficulties under which such races often labor. The Mexican race, when Cortez found them, mild and friendly, had made encouraging advances towards civilization. Since then they have been trodden under the heel of despotism. The French usurpation is but the last in a long series of outrages. For nearly three centuries they suffered under Spanish viceregal rule, intensified by religious bigotry, as odious a government as the world ever saw and when relieved from that, they fell into the hands of an unscrupulous church, with vast temporal possessions — $300,000,000 of real estate, including half the city of Mexico. The ecclesiastical revenues from this source amounted to $25,000,000 annually, amply sufficient in that country to carry on war, and employed by the Mexican church throughout the last thirty years for that very purpose against the liberals who sought to throw off so grievous a burden. These last succeeded in that attempt only in 1859, under Juarez; all the church property beyond its legitimate means of support being then secularized— that is, disposed of for the public benefit.
The Mexicans had their slavery as well as we; only ours was secular, theirs ecclesiastical. [Page 488] They, like us, have rid themselves of it, and are prepared, as we are, to enter untrammelled on a new career of progress. Let us bid them God-speed. Let us place no stumbling-block in their way; that is the least we can do for them.
That the Mexican republicans will ever recognize, or that we in any shape shall ever assume the $300,000,000 of debt incurred by France and by Maximilian in an iniquitous attempt to subvert a republic and erect by force a monarchy on its ruins, is incredible. No Mexican congress will ever ask for such assumption, and no American congress will ever agree to it.
New York, November 17, 1866.