Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/420

Rh The first act of the restored President was to eulogize his foe and friend, and his last, (in the brief power allowed him,) to exercise his influence in controlling an election to the chief magistracy, by which this skillful Warwick was elevated to supreme power on the 16th of May, 1833.

Santa Anna was not, however, to be safe from the perils that had beset his predecessors. He had given a fearful example of discontent to the country, and—notwithstanding his known and dreaded vigor—in the first year of his presidency, a "Pronunciamiento" (central in its character,) was made by Escalada, at Morelia, in favor of the "fueros" of the church and army. About this period he was proclaimed Dictator by the army at Cuautla—an office he refused to accept—and, immediately marching a sufficient force against the insurgents, he suppressed the revolutionary movement at Guanajuato.

In 1835, there was another "Pronunciamiento" against the Government in Zacatecas, which was quelled; and, in a few days after the victory over General Garcia, there was another declaration, known in the history of the country as the "Plan of Toluca," which is generally believed to have been favored by the President himself.

This Plan struck a fatal blow at the Federative System. It destroyed the Constitution of 1824;—it vested the power in a Central Government; abolished the Legislatures of the States, and changed those States into Departments, under the control of military commandants and governors, who were responsible to the chief authorities of the nation alone. This was the last great act in Mexico of the military President, and its principles formed the basis of the "," adopted in 1836, in lieu of the Federal Constitution of 1824.

While these things were occurring, the revolt in Texas had become so formidable, that it appeared necessary for the Mexican Government to strike a decisive blow against the rebellious province. Accordingly, as soon as Santa Anna had assured himself of the establishment of Central, ism, he departed with the flower of his troops to reconquer Texas. The fate of that memorable expedition is too well known to require notice in this sketch. The regulator of his own country and the conqueror of the Spaniards, lost both his liberty and his reputation in a conflict against another race at the battle of San Jacinto; and it is perhaps owing to the private interposition of our own President, and the popularity, at that period, of Houston, that his life was preserved from a population infuriate with the memory of massacres that emulated the butcheries of Calleja. But he was both spared and liberated, and returned, through the United States, to his farm at Manga de Clavo, where, suffering under exceeding unpopularity with his countrymen, he buried himself for a long period in obscurity and retirement.

When Santa Anna departed from the Capital on this luckless adventure, he left the administration in the hands of General Barragan, as President. This person, however, shortly died, and the government was