The arms were delivered and paid for, and it is needless to state that the faithless Deputy McWard lost his official head.
PRESIDENT JUAREZ’ GOVERNMENT AT CIUDAD JUAREZ, NEAR EL PASO—1865-66.
For more than a year, in 1865 and 1866, the village of Paso del Norte (now Ciudad Juarez), opposite El Paso, was the actual capital of the Mexican Republic. Benito Juarez, the patriot President, with his Cabinet and a little remnant of his army, had been driven from his capital by the French troops and the Mexican adherents of Maximilian, and were making a last stand on this frontier, the French troops having possession of the city of Chihuahua, only two hundred and twenty-five miles to the southward.
The writer happened at that time to occupy the most important United States office on the frontier. He spoke Juarez’s own language well, and Juarez knew that he sympathized as deeply with the republican cause in Mexico as the Mexican President sympathized with the cause of the Republic of the United States. Our Government had at that time no minister near the Juarez Government. I visited the President very often. Was it strange if we held many conversations, in which each confided to the other his hopes and fears, as to the success or failure of the two simultaneous efforts then being made to destroy the two greatest Republics in the world—our own countries? In January, 1866, I informed President Juarez that I contemplated a journey to Washington City, and before I started he confided to me a letter to the Mexican Minister, Señor Romero, and also one to his wife, who, with her two daughters, were then at Romero’s house in Washington, refugees from their own country.
A VISIT TO WASHINGTON—POLITICAL CONTESTS.
This journey was made by stage coach via Santa Fe as far as Kansas City, thirteen hundred miles, in midwinter, and was not without interesting incidents, one of which I will relate. We left Santa Fe with six passengers, Judge S. Watts, two young ladies, two merchants and myself. There was also the stage driver and the driver of a wagon which carried our provisions and baggage. The weather, for the greater portion of the time, was intensely cold, the ground being covered with snow. We slept under a roof only twice during the journey of twelve days.
My brother, Anson Mills, was then a cavalry captain in the army, but I had not heard from him for many months, and had not the slightest idea in what part of the country he might be. One very cold day, about noon, when approaching the Arkansas River, we met a train of wagons bound for Santa Fe, and the wagonmaster informed us that he had the day before been attacked by a party of Indians at the crossing of the Arkansas, but had stood them off, and had moved on, uninjured. He advised us to return to Santa Fe, but, incredible as it may seem, we decided to proceed on our journey. I do not call this courage; to me, after so many years, it appears more like foolhardiness!