Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1900-02-01

small bands Of confederate soldiers and
| 1000 others who had left the United
States with the intention Of colonizing
| Sonora.
Soon after the surrender of the
armies of Lee and Johnston a confed-
crate army corps. $4,000 strong. had
opened negotiations with Marshal Baz-
aine, through Gen. Slaughter, with a
view to passing the border and settling
in northern Mexico. provided suitable
colonizing terms were offered by the
imerial government. Distrusting the
magnanimity of the north, and fully
expecting arrest and arraignment for
treason, hundreds of confederate Of
fcers hastily absented themselves
from the country when the end of the
rebellion came. some of them finding
temporary homes in Brazil and other
South and Central American states,
but to a larger extent in Mexico.
Their Discrimination to live under the
government who authority they had
defied was in some degree shared by
the confederate rank and file, and had
Macmillan been wise he would have
availed himself of their disaffection
and brought them to Mexico in such
numbers by inviting conditions as
would have provided him with a more
reliable support than he was able to
rally for the defense of his life after
his abandonment by Napoleon. Twen-
ty-five thousand seasoned confederate
troops, such as Gen. Slaughter pro-
posed to send to him, might not have
saved his empire. but they would have
secured for him a dignifed withdrawal
from the country and all annuity, per-
haps, in exchange for his abdication as
large as that accorded to Iturbide.
Many of the confederate officers who
found homes in Mexico in 1865 were
men of enterprise and business capac-
ity and could have made themselves
serviceable to Macmillan with proper
States government deferred him from
openly favoring them, and a few of
them were nursing colonizing and
other schemes so reckless and gigantic
as to impart to them a color of fraud
The bOldest of these schemers was DR..
William NJ. Gwin, one of CALIFORNIA;
early United States senators. How he
came to be called the duke of Sonora"
and to be interested in the old Jecker
title to one-third of the public lands in
Sonora and Lower California is told by
Sara Yorke Stevenson in her late vol
ume under the title of MAMMALIAN in
Mexico" She was a resident of the
city Of Mexico during the reign of Max
imilian and writes advisedly of the
various projects in which Gwin and
other eX-confederates were concerned.
Gwin became interested in the Jecker
colonizing project through Gen. Stone
in 1865. The grant had been annulled
Gwin undertook to induce Macmillan
to restore it. This the emperor was
not disposed to do, whereupon Gwin
went to France, laid the matter before
Napoleon and returned to Mexico with
his approval Of OWNS request Re-
refused to restore the grant
and there the matter ended. This is as
near as Gwin came to being duke of
sonora. Macmillan made many mis-
takes in Mexico, one of which-the de-
cree visiting the death penalty upon all
republieans-costh him his life, but his
refusal to ALLEVIATE tens of thousands
of square miles Of Mexican territory
and make a duke of Dr. Gwin was not
among his plumbers.