OPERATIONS IN TEX., N. MEX., AND ARIZ. [CHAP.XI.

Before noticing the principal points, allow me to perform the pleasant duty of reciprocating your cordial expressions of friendship and goodwill, and your desire to establish friendly relations between the Mexican States, and those of the Southern Confederacy contiguous, and which you serve as general-in-chief of the army. Let me assure you that you will meet on my part, as governor of the State of Chihuahua, the most sincere and earnest disposition to cultivate these relations as far as lies in my power, as I am convinced that it is one of the most important duties that my position and the reciprocal interests of our respective counties impose upon me, and I do not fail to credit you with similar sentiments of which I have succeeded in convincing Colonel Reily, and with which I am pleased to think he is perfectly satisfied.

As to the questions indicated in your communication already cited, I have the satisfaction of informing you relative to the one whether the Supreme Government of Mexico has within the past few months conceded to the United States the right of transit subject to the first order, and secondly to put in motion the troops and munitions of war against the Confederate States, whose forces you command, on the border of Texas, that nothing of this kind has come to my notice, nor would my Government respect it, except on the terms and with the conditions established in the general constitution of the United States of Mexico-to whom the Congress of the Union exclusively grants the privilege of permitting or denying the entrance of foreign troops in the territory of the Confederation and of consenting to the stationing of squadrons of other powers for more than one month in the waters of the republic. (Portion 16 of Article 72.) By that constitutional principle, which it is not lawful to violate in any way nor for any consideration whatever, I find myself prevented from acceding to your proposition relative to the persecution of the savage Indians by your forces and mine. Yet when it may be necessary to draw the lines of demarcation between the States of Texas and Chihuahua by the alternate introduction to the territory of one and the other, while the Indians make their depredations and retreats, if I am convinced of the advantage that such immunity will bring, I will take the steps necessary to act upon it before the Congress of the Union.

The third and last point referred to in your note has, in my opinion, the solution that you desire, by the means established of agents and contractors, who may make on the frontier purchases and storing of provisions which shall be necessary for your army, and that it may offer facilities to the population from which it draws of a commercial nature without any official intervention whatever, that may be interpreted as an act contrary to the absolute neutrality which Mexico and all the States of its Confederation must observe in the unfortunate struggle between the States of the North and South of the American Union. This is all I can lay before you, general relative to your communication of the 16th December, and in the secure confidence that you will accept it as the most frank expression of the reasons and sentiments that must regulate my conduct as governor of the State of Chihuahua, and as your sincere friend and that of the Confederate States, I conclude, by offering you renewed assurances of my highest and most cordial esteem and respect.

God, liberty, and reform.

Chihuahua, January 11, 1862.

LOUIS TERRAZAS,

Brigadier General H.H. SIBLEY, General-in-Chief of the Army of the C.S.A., Fort Bliss.