he departed from the capital, leaving his friend General Canalizo as president ad interim. Hardly had he reached his plantation in the midst of friends and faithful troops, when a revolt burst out in Jalisco, Agnas Calientes, Zacatecas, Sinaloa and Sonora, against his government, headed by General Paredes. Santa Anna rapidly crossed the country to suppress the rebellion, but as he disobeyed the constitutional compact by taking actual command of the army whilst he was president, without the previous assent of congress, he became amenable to law for this violation of his oath. He was soon at enmity with the rebels and with the constitutional congress, and thus a three fold contest was carried on, chiefly through correspondence, until the 4th of January, 1845, when Santa Anna finally fell. He fled from the insurgents and constitutional authorities towards the eastern coast, but being captured at the village of Jico, was conducted to Peroté, where he remained imprisoned under a charge and examination for treason, until an amnesty for the late political factionists permitted him to depart on the 29th of May, 1845, with his family, for Havana.
Upon Santa Anna's ejection from the executive chair, the president of the council of government, became under the laws of the country, provisional president of the republic. This person was General José Joaquim de Herrera, during whose administration the controversies rose which resulted in the war between Mexico and the United States.
The thread of policy and action in both countries is so closely interwoven during this pernicious contest, that the history of the war becomes, in reality, the history of Mexico for the epoch. We are therefore compelled to narrate, succinctly, the circumstances that led to that lamentable issue.
The first empresario, or contractor, for the colonization of Texas, was Moses Austin, a native citizen of the United States, who, as soon as the treaty