Chapter 5 - Securing the Peace
The Cabildo became the principal instrument of popular sovereignty in the United Provinces and the heart of its democratic system
The General Assembly’s term had originally been for two years, but the ongoing fighting in the Oriental Provinces and the heavy Spanish raiding left little appetite in Buenos Aires or the provinces to hold new elections. But by 1814, the royalist threat had been cleared from most of the country save for a stretch of land in Upper Peru, and the
morenists wanted to capitalize on their popularity as the victors of the war and the leaders who - with distinguished generals like Castelli and Artigas - led the fight for liberation.
As the third anniversary of the Assembly’s first session approached, the body sent invitations to the cabildos of the country to elect new delegates, also formalizing some rules for the next General Assembly: it ratified that any city with more than 15,000 inhabitants had the right to convene a Cabildo and elect a delegate and officialized the distribution of delegates for provincial capitals. The cities of Colonia, Rosario, San Luis, San Juan, La Rioja, Catamarca, Santiago del Estero, Jujuy, Tarija, Oruro, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz would elect a single delegate to the assembly; provincial capitals like Santa Fe, Paraná, Salto, Corrientes, Posadas, Córdoba, Mendoza, Tucumán, Salta, Potosí and La Paz would elect two; and as the most important cities of the nation, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Asunción and Chuquisaca would elect four delegates each.
While far from unanimous in its support for Moreno, the outgoing Assembly had convened at a time of war and danger to the nation, and it supported his wartime government to the hilt. The 1814 election didn’t have any formal parties, and nominally none campaigned in opposition to the revolutionary government, but factionalism was seeping in as it seemed the war was winding down. The
morenist faction still triumphed, but its political opponents were beginning to organize and would secure delegates in several provinces.
While the
saavedrist faction had disintegrated upon its leaders’ fall from grace, they’d ultimately drift close to the position of the Paraguayan delegates, as they sought a similar level of autonomy for their own provinces; this faction would secure delegates from each of the Littoral provinces and even win over one of the delegates elected from Montevideo, totaling 8. La Paz, Santa Cruz and Oruro would provide the biggest surprises however: despite the popularity of the
morenists and Castelli’s reforms in Potosí and Chuquisaca, the persistent fighting in the north and the radicalism of the reforms was beginning to turn conservative criollos against the revolution. While they did not dare openly sympathize with the royalists, they prioritized peace with Peru over independence, and would focus their arguments on the legality of independence with the return of Ferdinand VII to the Spanish throne. Disparagingly called the peninsular faction, they’d elect 3 delegates in the north and, to the horror of the
morenists, would manage to elect a delegate each in Córdoba and Mendoza as well.
The Assembly would reconvene in November with its new composition: the
morenists had retained an absolute majority of 37 delegates, more than enough to govern as they saw fit, but cracks were forming in its ranks as well, particularly as Moreno’s trade policies seemed to aggravate economic problems in provinces that depended on overland trade. Nonetheless, he’d be reelected comfortably to the position of General Secretary.
When it came time to vote for Supreme Director, the Assembly demurred: the original position of Supreme Representative had originally been meant as a sop to the notion that the United Provinces was not intended to be an independent republic, a pretense they were all eager to drop. The position of Supreme Director had been created as a stopgap as the Assembly rushed to independence, and then had only really worked because of a personal arrangement between Saavedra and Moreno. Paso’s appointment as Supreme Director had rendered the position virtually superfluous, as he served as Moreno’s right hand man in the Assembly.
As popular as Moreno was, the General Assembly wanted to rein him in, at least enough that he couldn’t have every decision rubber stamped. They would turn to Antonio González de Balcarce, a member of Castelli’s staff and one of the most popular military commanders of the country. His bravery at the Battle of Suipacha had been instrumental in the victory that liberated Alto Peru, and the Assembly hoped to consolidate the Supreme Director’s position as Commander in Chief of the armed forces as well as the chief executive of the country. The division of powers between the positions of Supreme Director and General Secretary were more clearly defined, and much to Moreno’s chagrin, the former was also given a role in the nomination of secretaries and the power to sign or veto legislation.
On December 10, 1814, the United Provinces’s second patriotic government was officially sworn in, with Moreno and Balcarce recreating the gesture from years prior and greeting the crowd from the balcony of the Fort. Balcarce, a strong supporter of recruiting freed slaves, would sign the law abolishing slavery in the United Provinces starting on January 1, 1815; the Assembly would rush to amend its language to strike a provision
inviting slaves to escape to the country after protests from the Brazilian court, but the Littoral and Oriental provinces would become the destination for slaves fleeing plantations in the empire.
The end of combat in the Rio de la Plata would prove to be a life saver for the United Provinces: trade could start to recover - quickly outpacing pre-independence figures - and the government’s coffers would begin filling up for the first time; Moreno reinvested it enthusiastically into the country, increasing funds for Brown’s efforts to build a navy - his duties now expanded to include the enlargement of the nation’s merchant navy and the continuation of hostilities with the Spanish overseas - and infrastructure to improve commerce. The most ambitious of these projects was the construction of the Panamerican Highway, a monumental project to pave the road from Buenos Aires to Potosí.
Balcarce would undertake significant reforms of his own, reorganizing the army with the threat from Montevideo dealt with. Half the Oriental army was redeployed to reinforce the Army of the North, which was placed under the command of José de San Martin. The revolutionaries would marshal a commanding force of nearly 8,000, but as San Martin discovered upon his arrival in Chuquisaca, they remained poorly equipped and lacked discipline. Rather than lead the army on an immediate offensive, San Martin would instead task his subordinates Manuel Artigas and Güemes to take their cavalry and harass the Spanish forces across the Desaguadero while he stayed behind and procured supplies for his infantry and drilled his artillery.
The flag adopted by the revolutionaries in Cuzco[*]
This expedition would be the precursor to the revolution’s most radical policy: it would signal loud and clear to the other revolutionaries up in arms against the continued Spanish control of the American colonies that, as far as the United Provinces were concerned, its war against Spain was still ongoing. The Spanish for their part shared this view, and refused any and all attempts to end the wars in the colonies: Ferdinand insisted that he would hold the rebels to their earlier oaths or hang them for breaking them. Despite only crossing into Peru proper with just 400 cavalrymen, Güemes’ gauchos - bolstered by San Martin’s grenadiers - arrived in time to rout a royalist army attempting to subdue a rebellion in Cuzco. The outnumbered royalists were hit in the rear as they pressed into a native army ten times their size, forcing the Spanish army to retreat to Lima.
The victory in the Puno would further undermine the Viceroyalty in Lima, which was also reeling from an earlier rebellion in Tacna[1] in the south. The Revolution would wrest control from the royalists in Lima slowly but surely, as support from Buenos Aires poured into the north. To accelerate construction of the Panamerican highway, San Martin would also employ part of his army in its construction, drawing from architects and masons to create a corps of engineers capable of keeping up with military discipline.
To make matters worse for the royalist stronghold, Brown’s fleet had crossed the Magellan Strait and had started to raid the Peruvian coast; his naval campaign would take him as far north as Guayaquil, and although Brown would turn back with his ships laden with spoils, ships flying the flag of the United Provinces would continue to prowl the Pacific in pursuit of Spanish ships and occasionally even attack and “liberate” small towns and villages as far north as California and as far east as the Philippines[2]. Moreno and Balcarce both felt strong ties of camaraderie with the other revolutionary governments of Latin America, sending embassies to both the United Provinces of New Granada[3], Chile[4] and the Republic of Haiti[5], but distance kept it from supporting New Grenada against the Spanish expeditionary force sent to reconquer the country.
But at home the United Provinces sprang back to life slowly but surely: as militias demobilized, agricultural production grew quickly, and these products would find willing buyers in the British; traffic between the provinces and along the rivers would increase dramatically as the Highway advanced and dredging began for canals to connect the Littoral and Central provinces and improve domestic trade[6]. In a decision that would have dramatic repercussions for the country’s relationship with the natives that inhabited the vast territories the provinces claimed but did not control, it proclaimed the interior of the country “open to settlement for any man wishing to be free and willing to work it” as a way to raise funds and encourage colonization, in addition to establishing a special commission meant to encourage immigration from Europe.
Starting in 1815, the General Assembly began to plan a new capital: striving to soften the blow to Buenos Aires’ prestige for losing its capital, the Assembly instructed its commission to select a location within the Province of Buenos Aires to establish the capital, compensating the former capital with two extra delegates “in recognition of its revolutionary honors” and a substantial financial compensation for the plot of land the new city would occupy that amounted to a significant cut of revenue from the customs its port produced. The small town of San Nicolas, on the border with Santa Fe and commonly known as the meeting point between Buenos Aires and the interior, is eventually chosen. On May 25, 1815, the government of the United Provinces broke ground on its new capital of La Plata on the banks of the river Parana[7].
OTL's plan of La Plata, Buenos Aires' planned capital to replace the eponymous city. The inspiration drawn from DC and the masonic ties of those involved are just as strong ITTL, even if it's being built earlier and for a different purpose.
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[1] Both the rebellion in Tacna and in Cuzco are OTL; the rebellion in Tacna doesn’t just dissolve ITTL since the revolutionaries haven’t been defeated in Upper Peru - meaning that Peru’s control of its southernmost regions is tenuous - and the intervention of the Argentine troops is enough to swing the balance of the battle and prevent the rebellion in Cuzco ending in its infancy.
[2] The exploits of Hyppolite Bouchard are too great to leave them out of TTL. They’re also helpful to illustrate that “export the revolution” was very much a throughline of even the more conservative revolutionary governments of the time, so it makes sense that a more stable revolution would dedicate more resources to the goal; material support for the revolution in Peru was the most consistent foreign policy of the Argentine revolutionaries IOTL.
[3] Unfortunately, the 10,000 strong expeditionary force that’s arriving in April of 1815 will doom the revolutionary republic much like IOTL.
[4] Chile’s revolution avoids the royalist reconquest of OTL due to the more precarious position of the Viceroyalty of Perú. I will go into greater detail about the changes to Chile’s independence in a later update, but for now it’s enough to know that the country hasn’t fallen to the royalists.
[5] The Latin American revolutionaries were quite friendly with and sympathetic to the Haitian government that considered itself a descendant of the Haitian Revolution (less so with the monarchist Haitian government that set up in the north of the country). This was evidenced by Bolivar’s decision to flee to the Republic of Haiti IOTL, and his Haitian benefactor’s decision to support his renewed campaigns in New Granada with supplies and men.
[6] I’m basing these policies on those implemented by High Federalists in northern USA, given that - allowing for the different origins of their liberalism and different underpinnings for their beliefs - Moreno would govern in a way that they would certainly find recognizable, believing as he did in the use of state resources to actively improve the national economy.
[7] The controversy over the status of Buenos Aires persisted well into the 19th century IOTL, until the eventual transformation of the city into a special district administered by the federal government separate from the behemoth that was the province it led. ITTL, the controversy is resolved much sooner, since the revolutionary government isn’t as concentrated there, but the selection of a location within the province is a sort of capitulation to Buenos Aires, as are the two extra delegates.
[*] The flag is the OTL flag of the short lived rebellion, with a Sun of May mostly as an artistic license