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Mexican Commander Requests Armistice

and that only about one-fourth of the usual revenue was obtained at the customhouse for the area, and, hence, the principal support for the Centralist army in the north had greatly declined. He was in favor of encouraging and promoting the contraband trade as a means of weakening the Centralist party; and, therefore, was not inclined to facilitate legitimate trade. Finally, however, Carrasco gave way on this point and the other, for ending hostilities, and Morris and Van Ness, thinking that their mission had been accomplished, started for home.

No sooner were they across the river than they were overtaken by an express from Arista, bearing passports and a note urging them to proceed immediately to Monterey to confer with him. Morris and Van Ness, accompanied by the other Americans, proceeded to Monterey, but Seguin was ordered to remain at Guerrero. Chevallie, who was sick with the fever, had to remain with him, until the return of his associates.

Well might Arista embarrass Bustamante's government by dealing with the hated colonials in the face of rising revolution at home, and especially when it was being publicized in Mexico that a Texan military expedition had headed toward Santa Fé with the object of "closely uniting it with the rest of the Republic," so that "the supremacy" of the Texan constitution and laws might be asserted equally over the entire tract of country embraced within the claimed limits of Texas and all public property there taken possession of by force if necessary.[18]  Already Arista had ordered troops marched from Matamoros to San Fernando to strengthen the northwestern defenses against the advance of the Texan expedition toward Santa Fé.

In Texas it was believed that Arista was on the verge of instituting a revolt against the Centralist government, headed by Bustamante, and that if he did issue a pronunciamiento it would be under the banner of "Federalism."[19]  Colonel Juan N. Seguin had engaged, it was said, the services of about seventy volunteers to join the standard of Arista in the event he broke with the Mexican government. But, at this time, Arista and Ampudia seemed anxious to remove all suspicion of such an act, and, consequently, in the face of published reports of Seguin's activities, which were bound to make their way into Mexico,



18. Samuel A. Roberts to William G. Cooke, Antonio Navarro, Richard F. Brenham, and William G. Dryden, Commissioners, Department of State, Austin, June 15, 1841, in Smither (ed.), Journals of the Sixth Congress of the Republic of Texas, III, 289-294.

19. Telegraph and Texas Register (Houston), June 9 and 16, 1841.

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AFTER SAN JACINTO: The Texas-Mexican Frontier, 1836-1841
Joseph Milton Nance, 1963