Letter to Spotswood W. Corbin, 1866

Scope and content:

Written from Paris, France. Letter regards issues with the colonization of Mexico.

Language:

English.

Other descriptive data:

Paris

My dear Corbin:

The banker with whom I had deposited my `little money' went down in the London panic week before last, and I lost all the money & more too that I brought away from Mexico. I am here trying to make some more.

My last letters from Dick are up to Apl. 6th.

No sooner had I left, than intriguers set to work and colonization was going on so badly, and the opposition of the minister was so vexatious that he talked of giving up the office. Immigrants were returning in disgust and the very thing was happening that I told the Emperor would happen unless he acted with more energy. In short complaints were being uttered against me in the U.S. so I hear. Now I had as you know been discouraging any of our people from coming unless they could come with a little ready money. And I had long ago told them not to rely upon good lands but to buy abandoned Haciendas.

All the promises and inducements that I have held out to immigrants were made by authority of H. majesty, and if they have not been made good I am the aggrieved party. Now I tell you and Nannie confidentially, that what has happened since I left Mexico has shaken my resolution about going back. I don't see what good I can do there except in the way of colonization, and if our people are flocking back as rumor has it, with curses hard & deep upon Mexico, it will be more than I can do to change such a current. I have no alternative in view- nor am I decided- Indeed I have not said anything in this view to my wife & children, and am saying it to you now, so that you too may cast about & not be taken `quite aback' should I decide that Mex. is `no go.' I do not wish you to speak of it to any one, simply because my own mind is not made up nor can it be without further & fuller information. If I should be compelled to give Mexico up, it will be a hard blow I tell you. I know not where to go or what to be at. I shall be here a week or ten days, perhaps two weeks before I set off to return to England. I must be in London 5 June, when I expect to here from Dick up to the 1st ins. 'So tider' & sleepy. God bless you both, yrs.

Subjects:

Mexico—History
Correspondence

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