CHAPTER XXII
WAR OF RACES.
1849-1851.
Race Feeling — Condition of the Indian Population — Hostilities in the Sierra Gorda — A Projected Northern Republic — Border Raids — Scalp — hunting — The War in Yucatan — Attitude of British Settlers in Belize — The Bacalar Expedition — Selling Prisoners into Foreign Slavery — Dissensions among the Rebels — Inefficient Campaign Plans — of Micheltorena and Vega — Revolutionary Movements in the Southern States — Agitation for Religious Tolerance — Presidential Election — Obstacles to Reform — Character and Services of Herrera
Race feeling forms a potent element in Mexican politics. The overthrow of Spanish supremacy re moved the strongest of the irritating causes, and with a prudent, equable national policy the rest might have followed; but they were kept alive and given a new direction by that chronic evil, party strife, which with reprehensible recklessness hesitated at nothing to gain the object in view. After the achievement of independence, there remained practically only two races in the country, the aborigines, including by sympathy and other links a proportion of the lower castes, and the higher mestizos, the ruling, stirring race, embracing mixtures of all degrees, as well as those claiming to be pure whites, vanity on one side and policy on the other being 1 motives for the union. Religion had been a soothing bond that kept them all together, assuaging among the oppressed the bitterness caused by oppression; but of late it had been loosened by the more cultivated classes, in a manner that could not fail
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