Mr. Forsyth, the American minister to Mexico, took pains to investigate
the matter, and laid before his own Government and that of Mexico the
results of his inquiry. He pronounced the execution of the prisoners
"legal murder," a conclusion which apparently satisfied both parties,
the Americans because it was "legal," and the Mexicans because it was
"murder," and so the matter was allowed to drop. It ended filibusterism
in that country. The American apostle of liberty no longer heeds the
cry of the oppressed of any faction. Nor is it likely, since the world
was shocked by the execution of the Austrian archduke, that many
Europeans will be found treading the wine-press for what they have been
pleased to term the "regeneration" of Mexico.
With the expulsion of the filibusters terminated for a time the war in
Nicaragua. The Allied states formed a kind of protectorate over the
republic, having first rewarded themselves, after the fashion of
greater powers, by gathering a goodly share of the fruits of victory.
Costa Rica was rewarded by the possession of Guanacaste and a strip of
land bordering along the lake and the southern side of the San Juan
river, a sufficiently small return for her outlay in the war, which had
entailed a loss of so many thousand men, women, and children slain by
cholera. The "Tiger of Honduras" was given material aid in driving from
power at home the partisans of Cabañas. General Martinez, a descendant
of the apocryphal heroine of San Carlos, was appointed President of
Nicaragua, and at once sent a minister to Washington, who was received
without question. Mr. Buchanan thus gave himself a plausible excuse for
declining to recognize the claims of Walker. Señor Yrissari, the new
minister, negotiated a new treaty for the construction of a canal, the
terms of which not being considered favourable to Costa Rica, that
state and Nicaragua were soon again preparing to grapple each other's
throats.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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