Page:Vol 5 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/556

536 The government not only found the greatest difficulty by reason of scanty resources, but had also to struggle against revolution which now showed its head in San Luis Potosí, and threatened to invade other states. An anarchical plan was proclaimed by the vice-governor on the 12th of January, to the same effect as that which Deputy Zubieta once moved in congress, and was formally rejected. It was the resumption of autonomy, and a revolt against the national sovereignty at the same time that its authors pretended to respect that sovereignty. The government at Querétaro was now in a most difficult position. Fortunately the revolution was strangled at its birth. The vice-governor resigned on being imprisoned, and the legislature sensibly disavowed his seditious plan. Other seditious attempts were initiated elsewhere, whose object was to upset the government. In the Sierra Gorda revolution had become chronic, and was getting to be more and more bloody every day. It could not be stopped, though a heavy force was sent there to check it. Crimes were of daily occurrence. Fears were entertained that disorderly and plundering parties would appear in several places, particularly in the regions thickly populated by Indians.

The condition of Yucatan, suffering from a war of races, caused great alarm, there being good reason to apprehend that the insurgents would be successful in destroying every vestige of European civilization.

The rebellion of 1847 had its origin in the unappeasable hatred of the Mayas toward their rulers from the earliest time of the Spanish conquest. In republican days their chiefs had often been invited to aid one party or another in the civil wars so constantly