Señor Don Domingo F. Sarmiento to DAVENPORT, Captain Commanding Congress, September 26, 1874
president sarmiento’s message to congress.
I have the honor to inform you that a revolution, of which we had previous information, broke out by the commander of one of the new gunboats seizing the commander of the other, and after a series of disagraceful proceedings the matter ended thus:
We have just received telegrams from Colonel Roca that General Ivanowski has been assassinated by General Arredondo, who, pretending infirm health, had some time since solicited permission for an interview with government, and to retire to his own house. His petition was backed by influential persons, and General Ivanowski had himself gone bail for the honorable conduct of his guest.
The plan of the revolt was the sooner made known to us by the efforts of conspirators to corrupt the army. A letter from the Cordoba frontier, dated September 21, had the following paragraph:
“The programme, as I learn from a leading commander in the army, is, that General Mitre will surrender his dsipatches on October 12, either to put himself at the head of the movement or to join as a private citizen.”
Yesterday at noon we received a petition, without any date, from General Mitre, requesting to be rubbed off the army-roll as brigadier-general, and resigning his salary as such. The inspector of arms at once sent an officer with a sealed letter intimating his arrest, but the officer could not find him. Up to the present he has not obeyed the, order as a soldier is bound to; for a person who has so long governed as he has must know that it is not enough to resign his rank to acquit him of the duties attached to same.
The gunboat stolen by the rebel officer pretends to blockade the port, and exercises acts of jurisdiction, giving orders to vessels that approach.
The government counts on all the divisions of the army, although as yet we have no tidings of the forces under General Rivas.
The governments of the various provinces have responded with spirit, and are raising forces. State of siege having been declared, the national guards are called out to support the excellent line regiments.
We can at once put 20,000 men under arms, without counting the upper provinces. We consider it necessary to declare all the republic in a state of siege, so that even in remote provinces the authorities may be able to crush any effort toward prolonging a war begun in crime and treachery.
Ten years of progress have been written on the face of the country in railways, telegraphs, home and foreign loans, joint-stock companies, and enterprises that have brought hundreds of millions of dollars into play, while the credit of the republic was on so solid a basis as to promise security and tranquillity for the future.
In three months not a stone will be left on another of so splendid an edifice, raised and completed with such labor. In my idea the situation and cause are the same as the rebellion of the Confederate States of North America. There as here some individuals had been accustomed to govern the country, and regarded it as their exclusive right. When Lincoln was elected President, they refused to admit him, saying he was elected by the multitude, and applying such coarse epithets as passion suggested.
For the last month those papers edited by the revolutionary party unanimously spoke of the incoming government and the actual Congress as a government and Congress of fact. Unhappy the republic where any colonel in command of a battalion may assume to himself the right to say what authorities he is to obey!
We shall firmly do our duty, however painful, up to the moment of handing over power to the new President.
But we must warn the people and Congress that if the revolution triumph it will be the ruin of the country, exposing any future government to be upset by incendiaries like those of the present moment, who have renounced every sentiment of morality and every feeling of honor before the idol of their own passions, whether embodied in men or in ideas.