Page:Vol 5 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/563

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DEPARTURE OF THE INVADERS.
543

States was in the wrong; all the world knows it, all honest American citizens acknowledge it. The Mexican republic lost a large portion of its territory, and with it many citizens, but retained its nationality and independence, with an immense extent of country, more than enough to render it happy and powerful in the future.

Soon after the signing of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a convention was concluded on the 29th of February by generals Worth and Smith on the part of the United States army of occupation, and generals Mora and Quijano on the part of Mexico's military authorities, for a provisional suspension of hostilities, which was ratified by General Butler, and by Anaya, the Mexican minister of war, on the 6th and 7th of March. It contained seventeen articles, and the object, as it implied, was a cessation of arms pending the exchange of ratifications of the aforesaid treaty, and further to enable the Mexican authorities to restore constitutional civil government in the places occupied by the United States forces.[1] By virtue of the armistice, and under the special appointment made by the president on the 6th of March, of Juan M. Flores y Teran as governor of the federal district, the latter restored the ayuntamiento of 1847, regulated the collection of municipal taxes, and called the people to choose deputies and senators to the national congress, as well as to elect a president of the republic.

The preparations for the departure of the United States troops had begun about the middle of May; and on the exchange of ratifications of the treaty of peace being published by their general-in-chief, the detachments at Toluca, Cuernavaca, and Pachuca were retired. Patterson's division left Mexico for Vera Cruz on the 30th of May; the other divisions departing in the first days of June, and on the 12th of that

  1. Text of the convention in Méx., Derecho Intern., 1st pt, 250-4; Méx., Legisl. Mej., 1848, 94-101; Méx., Col. Ley. y Dec., 1848, 96-163; Dublan and Lozano, Leg. Mex., v. 345-8.