the presidential chair.

Upon the downfall of Iturbide, the malcontents in Central America
bestirred themselves to throw off the Mexican yoke. On July 1,1823, a
Congress declared the region an independent republic under the name of
the "United Provinces of Central America." In November of the next year,
following the precedent established in Mexico, and obedient also to
local demand, the new republic issued a constitution, in accordance
with which the five little divisions of Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador,
Nicaragua, and Costa Rica were to become states of a federal union, each
having the privilege of choosing its own local authorities. Immediately
Federalists and Centralists, Radicals and Conservatives, all wished, it
would seem, to impose their particular viewpoint upon their fellows.
The situation was not unlike that in the Argentine Confederation. The
efforts of Guatemala--the province in which power had been concentrated
under the colonial regime--to assert supremacy over its fellow states,
and their refusal to respect either the federal bond or one another's
rights made civil war inevitable. The struggle which broke out among
Guatemala, Salvador, and Honduras, lasted until 1829, when Francisco
Morazan, at the head of the "Allied Army, Upholder of the Law," entered
the capital of the republic and assumed dictatorial power.

Of all the Hispanic nations, however, Brazil was easily the most stable.
Here the leaders, while clinging to independence, strove to avoid
dangerous innovations in government. Rather than create a political
system for which the country was not prepared, they established a
constitutional monarchy. But Brazil itself was too vast and its interior
too difficult of access to allow it to become all at once a unit, either
in organization or in spirit. The idea of national solidarity had as yet
made scant progress. The old rivalry which existed between the provinces
of the north, dominated by Bahia or Pernambuco, and those of the south,
controlled by Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo, still made itself felt. What
the Empire amounted to, therefore, was an agglomeration of provinces,
held together by the personal prestige of a young monarch.

Since the mother country still held parts of northern Brazil, the
Emperor entrusted the energetic Cochrane, who had performed such valiant
service for Chile and Peru, with the task of expelling the foreign
soldiery. When this had been accomplished and a republican outbrea