a worker, every worker a soldier, and every soldier a hero."[3]  The growing dissatisfaction among the inhabitants of the departments at the indifference of the central authority to their protection[4]  and the prolonged stay among the people on this frontier of the unruly army of observation against Texas, particularly since its maintenance devolved chiefly on them,[5]  seemed to afford their leaders a favorable opportunity to overthrow the Centralist yoke to whose system they attributed the loss of Texas.[6]  To those persons with strong republican inclinations, the decree of the national Congress ordering the ashes of the deposed emperor Iturbide exhumed and reinterred with national honors in the cathedral in Mexico City looked like a move toward the restoration of monarchy of which they cared to have no part.[7]

The discontent was not confined to the northern states, for occasionally revolts flared up in Jalisco, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Yucatán and elsewhere in the center and extreme southern portions of the republic, where large segments of the liberal masses came to fear the concentration of power in the hands of President Bustamante and the subversion of the federal plan of government. Ambitious politicians and military leaders with political ambitions too often took advantage of unrest growing out of heavy taxation and corruption in public office.

The revolt in the north broke out on December 26, 1837, under General José Urrea,[8]  who, in the Texas campaign of 1836, had captured Colonel James W. Fannin and his men, and had subsequently been appointed commandant general of the Department of Sonora. He raised the standard of rebellion at Arizpe in favor of the constitution of 1824 and was "elected" and installed as governor on March 14, 1838. The Congress of Sonora made him commandant general of