sustained by a host of trained soldiers. Notwithstanding the popular pressure, headed by Grant and his party, who clamored for the fulfilment of the doctrine to the letter, and the immediate withdrawal of French troops,[1] the United States government wished by no means to rush into another war, and swell its enormous debt. It even endeavored to maintain a fair neutrality toward both of the contending parties, although officials did manage to favor the Juarists somewhat.[2]
Encouraged by this attitude, Maximilian ventured to write to President Johnson, only to find both his letter and envoy ignored.[3] In August, in connection with the Gwin colonization scheme, the American minister at Paris declared in an official note that the American people sympathized warmly with the republicans of Mexico, and looked impatiently on a continuance of French intervention. The French reply, while somewhat haughty, was reassuring; and in pursuance thereof, an effort was made two months later for a recognition at Washington of the empire, with a promise that this would hasten the departure of French troops. The United States refused, and, encouraged by the deferential tone of the notes from Paris, they assumed so hostile an attitude that the prospect of a rupture seemed to many inevitable.[4]
- ↑ The feeling is fully presented in the American journals, and in allusion to public speeches, as at the banquet given to the Juarist minister by men like George Bancroft, Dudley Field, and Fish, as reported in Romero, Banquete, 1-32.
- ↑ Although the French consul at San Francisco induced the U. S. war steamer Shubrick to overtake and bring back the Brontes, which had left San Francisco in March 1865 with several hundred volunteers and several thousand rifles, the same effects were allowed to reach Juarez by another route. Vega, Depósito, MS.; Id., Ausiliares; and Vega, Docs, ii.-iii., passim. Similar shipments were becoming more frequent across the frontier, as the attitude of the government grow more hostile toward France. See also Mex. Affairs, ii. 8, etc., 39th Cong. 1st Sess. Vega enumerates three shipments by sea from California during the summer, Vega, Docs, ii. 479-80, and 15,000 rifles with ammunition to the Colorado. Id., iii. 73-4. Imperialists were naturally treated strictly.
- ↑ Eloin went to Europe to save appearances after failing to obtain recognition for his government at Washington, observes Iglesias, Interv., 386, 441.
- ↑ The continual defeats of the Juarists, their fugitive government, and lack of means, were vainly pointed out as an argument in favor of the legality
