We were astounded; but there was the fact in plain black and white.
Some weeks later an express rider came in great haste from the Governor of Sonora, with a letter to Mr. Zubiran, asking why such delay about the rifles, and urging haste, and stating that the money to pay for them was already at Conalitos.
We finally got at the explanation of this chapter of misunderstandings. A former Governor of Sonora had espoused the cause of Maximilian, had fled from his country, and taken refuge at Tucson, carrying with him some of the stationery of the State, and had become intimate with Deputy McWard, who had betrayed to him the contents of Zubiran’s letter, thus enabling him to prepare and forward the bogus reply, with such appearance of genuineness.
The arms were delivered and paid for, and it is needless to state that the faithless Deputy McWard lost his official head.
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PRESIDENT JUAREZ’ GOVERNMENT AT CIUDAD JUAREZ, NEAR EL PASO—1865-66.
For more than a year, in 1865 and 1866, the village of Paso del Norte (now Ciudad Juarez), opposite El Paso, was the actual capital of the Mexican Republic. Benito Juarez, the patriot President, with his Cabinet and a little remnant of his army, had been driven from his capital by the French troops and the Mexican adherents of Maximilian, and were making a last stand on this frontier, the French troops having possession of the city of Chihuahua, only two hundred and twenty-five miles to the southward.
The writer happened at that time to occupy the most important United States office on the frontier. He spoke Juarez’s own language well, and Juarez knew that he sympathized as deeply with the republican cause in Mexico as the Mexican President sympathized with the cause of the Republic of the United States. Our Government had at that time no minister near the Juarez Government. I visited the President very often. Was it strange if we held many conversations, in which each confided to the other his hopes and fears, as to the success or failure of the two simultaneous efforts then being made to destroy the two greatest Republics in the world—our own countries? In January, 1866, I informed President Juarez that I contemplated a journey to Washington City, and before I started he confided to me a letter to the Mexican Minister, Señor Romero, and also one to his wife, who, with her two daughters, were then at Romero’s house in Washington, refugees from their own country.