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.
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