Page:Vol 5 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/793

Rh The reactionary president was enthusiastically greeted at Guadalajara by his partisans, and started with about 3,000 men and a few artillerymen for Colima, where the liberals under Ogazon, Rocha, and others, to the number of about 5,000, were concentrated in the barrancas of Atenquique and Beltran. He flanked the position on the 18th of December at a place called Èl Perico with two battalions, went to Tuxpan River defended by Rojas' forces, whom he defeated, and on the 22d entered Colima. The next day Miramon attacked his opponents on the opposite height of the barranca of Tonila, and on the 24th drove them hence, capturing prisoners and artillery. After that Miramon hastened on to Mexico, where he arrived on the 7th of January, 1860, and began preparations for a campaign in Vera Cruz. The reactionists now believed themselves invincible. At the end of 1859 they held sway as far as Aguascalientes, Zacatecas, and San Luis Potosí; at the lastnamed place Vega's brigade of Woll's division had arrived on the 25th of November. Woll himself had reoccupied Zacatecas the 21st.

President Juarez began to fear that he would be left without the means to cure the maladies of his country. This apprehension brought him at last to give a willing ear to the proposals of the American minister, McLane, and to accept United States volunteers in the liberal ranks. President Buchanan and his cabinet, setting aside the neutrality laws, permitted the exportation of war material, giving further evidence of their protection to the liberal party in the treaty that bore the name of McLane-Ocampo, signed the 14th