The archbishop and five bishops were also peremptorily ordered into exile, and the liberal party approved the president's course as energetic and worthy of the occasion. Moreover, the prelates were most disrespectfully treated by the mob on their arrival at Vera Cruz on the 21st of January, 1861.[1] The work of reorganizing the government, so as to place it in consonance with the requirements of the constitution, was begun at once. The president reiterated his decree of November 6, 1860, for elections, and fixed the third Sunday in the following April for the assembling of the second congress under the constitution of 1857. The time allowed was too short.[2] The organization of political clubs inspired hopes that the people were aroused, and would take an active and direct part in the choice of their next president and legislators. The newspapers[3] advocated the merits of their favorite candidates for the executive chair, the most prominent being Gonzalez Ortega, Juan Antonio de la Fuente, and Miguel Lerdo de Tejada. Degollado and Uraga also had friends working for their candidacy. But Benito Juarez, the patriot, full of courage and faith in the regeneration of his country under free institutions, was evidently the favorite of the great majority.[4]
- ↑ The Spanish minister wrote his government that neither he nor his colleagues of Guatemala had received personal violence; but the ecclesiastics were hooted at and stoned. The mob assented to the papal legate and his auditor departing, but refused to let the others go. However, they remained unmolested in the house that had sheltered them till the next day, when they were transferred to San Juan de Ulúa by the local authorities. Arrangoiz, Méj., ii. 382–4; Córtes, Diario Senado, i. no. 9, 81.
- ↑ The decree was dated Jan. 11, 1861. Archivo Mex., Col. Ley., v. 27-8. Many had advocated the idea, which was abandoned for obvious reasons, that Juarez should revive the congress that was sitting at the date of Comonfort's coup d'état, thus obliterating the period since that event as if it had never existed.
- ↑ By the middle of Jan. there were in the capital fourteen political journals in Spanish, besides one in English, The Mexican Extraordinary, and one in French, L'Estafette. A number were issued throughout the republic, some of them, like the Pájaro Verde, defending the defeated principles. Rivera, Hist. Jalapa, v. 378.
- ↑ His bitter reactionary enemies ridiculed his origin and color, made caricatures of and applied nicknames and epithets to him. The fools had not sense enough to see that they were thus increasing his popularity.
