Ponce de Leon: The Rise of the Argentine Republic

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Ponce de Leon, by William Pilling
Note.— This book was first published in 1878, and has long been out of print. The work has been recognized as the best and most accurate description yet written of the British Invasion, and the rise of the Argentine Republic.

The Argentine Republic drew her first faltering breath in a time of universal tumult. Europe was in a blaze from the confines of Russia to the Atlantic; the air reeked with blood, the demon of war strode rough-shod over a whole continent, at each step crushing some ancient nation to the dust. The peoples of Europe, down-trodden for ages, rose in their misery and barbarism against their oppressors and wrote out their certificate of Freedom in characters of blood; they asserted their right to be men not slaves, and their voice as that of a mighty trumpet reverberated throughout the earth. In the hearts of the Spanish Creoles of America that voice found an echo.
Spain arrogated to herself unlimited power over the nations she had founded, witting not that they were nations. Though they were of her own bone and her own blood, she knew them not as children, but as bond-slaves, who existed to do her bidding.
The voice of France in the first throes of her great agony sounded in the ears of these bond-slaves, and in secret conclave they whispered one to another, asking one another wistfully, whether they were men and not slaves. To this whispered question for long there was no answer, for Spain was to them as their mother.
Can a mother sin in the eyes of her own child?
Thank God I am not a Spaniard.
Marcelino! my son! what new heresy is this?
It is no new heresy at all, my mother; it is a fact. Thank God I am not a Spaniard. I am an American, and the day will come when we Americans will show the world that we are men and not slaves.
Marcelino! Be comforted, my son; it is the fortune of war. You at any rate did your duty, and did not fly till you were left alone. I should have mourned for you if you had been killed. My heart would have been desolate, my son, if I had lost you; now I have you yet, and I am proud of you.