Civil War
Each of the Reform Laws met strong resistance from Conservatives, the Church and the military, culminating in military action and war. After the Juárez Law, General Tomás Mejía rebelled against the Liberal government in the defense of the Catholic identity of Mexico in the Sierra Gorda region of Querétaro. Mejía would conduct operations against Liberal forces for the next eight years.
Opposition to the Lerdo Law and the 1857 Constitution culminated in a take over of Mexico City by Conservative forces. This operation was called the Plan of Tacubaya. When the military took control of Mexico City, then president Ignacio Comonfort agreed to the Plan’s terms, but Benito Juárez, then president of the Supreme Court, defended the 1857 Constitution. Juárez was arrested. Comonfort was subsequently forced to resign and army general Félix Zuloaga was put in his place. After arriving in Mexico City, Zuloaga’s supporters closed Congress and arrested liberal politicians, preparing to write a new constitution for the country. The Plan of Tacubaya deeply divided the country, with each state deciding whether to support the Liberals' 1857 Constitution or the Conservatives' takeover of Mexico City. Juárez escaped prison and fled to the city of Quéretaro. Júarez was recognized as the Liberals' interim president. As Zuloaga and the army took over more of the central part of Mexico, Juárez and his government were forced to the city of Veracruz. From there, the Liberal government had control over the state of Veracruz and a number of allied states in the north and central-west. The Liberal government would be located in the city of Veracruz from 1858 to 1861.
Full hostilities between Liberal and Conservative forces raged from 1858 to 1861 and is known as the Reform War. The conservatives controlled Mexico City, but not the city of Veracruz. From here, Juárez directed the opposition movement, from which the Liberals obtained supplies and money through duties received in the port city.
At the beginning of the war, Liberal leaders and armies lacked the military experience of the Conservatives, who were backed by Mexico’s official military. However, as hostilities continued, Liberal forces gained experience that eventually would enable victories for the Liberal side. Twice in 1860 conservative forces under General Miguel Miramón tried to take Veracruz but without success. In the same year, conservative forces were defeated in Oaxaca and Guadalajara. In December 1860, Miramón surrendered outside of Mexico City. Liberal forces reoccupied the capital on 1 January 1861, with Benito Juárez joining them a week later. Despite regaining control of the Capital, bands of Conservative guerrillas operated in rural areas. General Miramón went into exile to Cuba and Europe. However, General Márquez remained active and Mejía operated from his stronghold in the Sierra Gorda until the end of the French Intervention in Mexico.
Read more about this topic: Reform War
Famous quotes related to civil war:
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage’s earthquake.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)