The South American Republics. Thomas Cleland Dawson
sure sign of swiftly approaching anarchy. Power fell more and more into the hands of the military leaders, and war became almost the normal condition of the country. During the four years from 1820 to 1824, there was no material change in the position of the contending forces. The provinces much desired to make a confederation of which Buenos Aires should be an equal member, but the latter refused and only waited for an opportunity in order to renew her pretensions to hegemony.
Two opposing tendencies were, however, at work which soon created two parties within the walls of Buenos Aires itself. Commercial interests had suffered so severely in the civil wars, and communications were so uncertain and so burdened with arbitrary exactions by the provincials, that the property-holding classes began to press hard upon the office-holders of the oligarchy with demands for an accommodation and some sort of a union with the provinces. This was the beginning of the federalist party, which naturally found efficient support among the cattle-herding inhabitants on the great pampas of the province of Buenos Aires.
On the other hand, the unitarians were becoming more compact, more determined, and more definite in their purposes. Rivadavia, the greatest constructive statesman of the era, undertook the reform of the laws and the administration. He created the University of Buenos Aires; founded hospitals and asylums; introduced ecclesiastical and military reform; bettered the land laws, and infused into the legislation a modern spirit. The improved tone of political thought tended to stimulate a more general and rational discussion of a modus vivendi with the provinces. The federalists favoured the establishment of a system like that of the United States, while the unitarians clung to the idea of a nation organised more after the model of the French Republic.
In 1825 the provinces were represented at a general constituent congress which assembled in Buenos Aires. After much discussion the unitarians, with Rivadavia at their head, finally obtained control. In 1826 he was elected executive chief of the federation. This election, however, did not make him president in fact. Recognition from the Cabildos and the caudillos was practically of greater importance than the vote of a congress of delegates who were unable to insure the acquiescence of their constituencies. Rivadavia's favourite plan of placing the city of Buenos Aires directly under the control of the central government excited bitter opposition among the federalists of Buenos Aires. Under their leader, Manuel Dorrego, they protested vehemently against the dismemberment of their home province.
Meanwhile the crazy fabric was subjected to the strain of a serious foreign war. In 1825 the country districts of Uruguay rose against their Brazilian rulers. The Argentines went wild with joy when they heard of the victory which the gauchos won over the imperial forces at Sarandi. Congress promptly decreed that Uruguay had reunited herself to the confederation. The Emperor's answer was a declaration of war and a blockade of Buenos Aires. The fighting Irish sailor, Admiral William Brown, again came to the front, and his daring seamanship rendered the Brazilian blockade ineffective. He destroyed a large division of their fleet at the battle of Juncal, while fast Baltimore clippers, commanded by English and Yankee privateer captains, swept Brazilian commerce from the seas. Late in 1826 an Argentine army of eight thousand men was assembled for the invasion of Rio Grande do Sul. Alvear, now returned from exile, was entrusted with its command, and on the 20th of February, 1827, the Brazilians were overwhelmingly defeated at Ituzaingo, far within their own boundary. The Argentines were not able to follow up their victory, and shortly returned to Uruguayan territory, but the Emperor was never again able to undertake an aggressive campaign. Negotiations for peace were begun, and Rivadavia's envoy signed a treaty by which Uruguay was to remain a part of the empire of Brazil. A storm of indignation broke forth at Buenos Aires, and Rivadavia had to disavow his minister and continue the war. The blow to his prestige was, however, mortal; the federalists had, indeed, never ceased to make war against him; and the unitarian constitution which Congress had adopted at his dictation was rejected unanimously by the provinces. He resigned, and Dorrego, chief of the unitarians, succeeded him as nominal executive chief of the confederation. In reality, however, the Republic was divided into five quasi-independent military states. Dorrego ruled in Buenos Aires, Lopez in Santa Fé, Ibarra in Santiago, Bustos in Cordoba, and Quiroga in Cuyo.
Many of the officers of the army which had been victorious at Ituzaingo were dissatisfied with the triumph of Dorrego at Buenos Aires. They belonged to the unitarian party, and they were anxious themselves to usurp the places of the various caudillos. The first division that reached Buenos Aires after the signing of the preliminary peace with Brazil raised the standard of rebellion in the city itself. General Lavalle declared himself Governor, while Dorrego fled to the interior, only to be pursued, captured, and shot, without the form of trial, by Lavalle's personal order. This began the fiercest and bloodiest civil war which ever desolated the Argentine. The gauchos of the southern provinces rose en masse to fight the unitarian regulars, while the generals of the latter began a series of campaigns against all the federalist provincial governments and caudillos. General Paz advanced on Cordoba to give battle to Bustos, while Lavalle's forces invaded Santa Fé. Rosas, the chief of southern Buenos Aires, had rallied the federalists of that province. He himself joined Lopez, the caudillo of Santa Fé, while he left behind a considerable force of his gauchos to threaten the city from the south. Lavalle sent some of his best regiments against the latter body, but to his surprise his veterans were completely cut to pieces by the fierce riders of the plains. He himself had to retreat to Buenos Aires, while Rosas and Lopez defeated him under the very walls of the city.
These victories made the Buenos Aires federalist leader, Juan Manuel Rosas, the chief figure in Argentine affairs. Thenceforth, for more than twenty years, he was the absolute dictator and tyrant of Buenos Aires. The most bitterly hated man in Argentine history, probably no other leader had as profound an influence in preparing the Argentine nation for the consolidation which was so shortly to follow his own fall from power. His personal characteristics and his public career are equally interesting. The scion of a wealthy Buenos Aires family, from his childhood he devoted himself to cattle-raising on the vast family estates of the southern pampas. He became the model and idol of the gauchos. By the time he was twenty-five, he was the acknowledged king of the southern pampas, with a thousand hard-riding, half-savage horsemen obeying his orders. In 1820 he and his regiment were chief factors in the revolution that placed General Rodriguez in power at Buenos Aires. Through the more peaceful years that followed, his power grew until he was the acknowledged head of the country people of Buenos Aires province and their champion against the city. He had been fairly well educated, his information was wide, and his intellectual abilities were of a high order. But he thoroughly identified his tastes and prejudices with those of his rude followers, and in politics he was fiercely unitarian. The victories of 1829 over Lavalle placed him in supreme power at Buenos Aires and made him the nominal head of the whole Argentine.
His real power was, however, far from extending over the whole territory. General Paz with his veterans of the Brazilian war had expelled Bustos from Cordoba and firmly established himself as ruler of that province. Quiroga, the redoubtable caudillo of the Cuyo province, gathered his swarms of fierce gauchos from the western pampas in the slopes of the Andes, and descended to the very walls of Cordoba, there to be twice defeated with awful slaughter by General Paz. The latter followed up his victories by establishing unitarian governments in the north-western provinces. In Cuyo he was not so successful, and Quiroga managed to sustain himself. Rosas came to the rescue of the despairing federalists with the whole force of Buenos Aires. In that province all opposition to him had been crushed and he was able to send a strong army against Cordoba which surprised and captured General Paz himself. This misfortune demoralised the unitarians. The federalists and the terrible Quiroga again triumphed in most of the western provinces. It is estimated that more than twenty-three thousand unitarians fell in battle. Part of Paz's army retired to Tucuman and were there surrounded by an overwhelming force under Quiroga. Though their position was hopeless they did not offer to surrender, nor would quarter have been given them had they asked it. In these internecine conflicts, the beaten side usually fought it out to the last man, selling their lives as dearly as possible. Five hundred prisoners taken at Tucuman were shot in cold blood, and only a few small bands escaped to Bolivia.
Rosas filled the offices in the provinces with his partisans, while the obsequious authorities of the capital conferred upon him the high-sounding title, "Restorer of the Laws." He made a feint or two of resigning the governorship, and in fact