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Santiago Vidaurri and the Confederacy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
On June 26, 1861, Juan A. Quintero, special agent for the Confederate States of America, sat in the palace in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, listening to Governor Santiago Vidaurri relate a familiar but nevertheless surprising story. He had long been searching for some method whereby he could effectively resist the federal government, Vidaurri began, and now he hoped that he had found it. Initially he had thought that a Republic of Sierra Madre might be the solution, and many observers on both sides of the Rio Grande felt that this was the course he would pursue. But, for various reasons, that had been discarded. The new Confederacy presented a different alternative—one that he believed might be feasible. Would Southern President Jefferson Davis agree to annex the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León and Coahuila? Thus began a relationship that endured for over three years and did not end until the powerful caudillo fell from power.
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- Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1969
References
1 Quintero to Confederate Secretary of State R. M.T. Hunter, Richmond, August 17, 19, 1861, in the John T. Pickett Papers [JTPP] (Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.). For a good discussion from the Confederate viewpoint, see also Owsley, Frank Lawrence, King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America (2nd ed. rev.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), pp. 113–133.Google Scholar
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3 Quintero to Vidaurri, Monterrey, June 19, 1861, in JTPP. Vidaurri also published this and related documents in the Boletín Oficial (Monterrey), July 3, 1861, insuring that Quintero was well-known as a Confederate agent.
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48 Quintero to Benjamin, Monterrey, February 28, 1864, in JTPP.
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