Henrytown, Jefferson.
Henrytown is a major port city in the Mexican state of Jefferson. It was named after Patrick Henry of Virginia. Henrytown was established in the 1790s on the Gulf Coast at the mouth of the Trinity River to serve as an entropot for Jefferson's growing cotton crop. By 1800 the port had 4,000 inhabitants.
After the creation of the United States of Mexico in 1820, the nation's founder and first President, Andrew Jackson, conceived an ambitious plan of internal improvements financed by French loans. Jackson's plans included an expansion of Henrytown's port facilities, and a publicly funded road system to connect the port with the rest of the U.S.M. An unintended side effect of Jackson's program was the growing demand for industrialization by Henrytown's business community. This was contrary to Jackson's vision of the U.S.M. as a nation based on agriculture and mining. George McDuffie and other Henrytown businessmen broke with Jackson's Continentalist Party in 1832 to form the Progress Party. The following year, McDuffie formed an electoral alliance with the Liberty Party, the main opposition party, to contest the 1833 Mexican elections.
The discovery of gold in California in 1838 demonstrated the need to improve transportation links between that remote state and the rest of Mexico. President Jackson finally relented and agreed to support the creation of a railroad link between California and Jefferson. A group of French and Jeffersonian businessmen organized the Jefferson & California Railroad soon after the discovery of gold, and received government support in the form of land grants and subsidies. The first rails were laid in Henrytown on 4 February 1839, while a second crew began construction from San Francisco, California on 11 April. French engineers supervised construction at both ends, and French iron and steel was imported to build the rails and steam locomotives of the railroad. The rail link between Henrytown and San Francisco was completed in 1848.
The California Gold Rush led to a general prospecting boom throughout the U.S.M. in the early 1840s, leading to the discovery of copper, zinc, lead, sulpher, and phosphate in various parts of the country. These minerals were exported through Henrytown, which developed shipbuilding companies, insurance companies, and banks as a result. Along with Tampico in Durango, Henrytown became one of the U.S.M.'s major commercial centers.
The members of the Jefferson state Continentalist Party chose Henrytown for the site of their annual political convention in May 1843. It was in the course of this convention that Assemblyman Pedro Hermión of Lafayette gave his stirring Scorpions in a Bottle speech on 7 May, which instantly catapulted him to the leadership of the Continentalists and paved the way for his presidential run in the 1845 Mexican elections.
The outbreak of the Rocky Mountain War in the fall of 1845 brought an abrupt halt to Henrytown's commercial growth as the port was blockaded by the navy of the Confederation of North America. Unlike Tampico, however, Henrytown was spared occupation by the North Americans, and it became a center for smuggling and blockade running.
Prosperity resumed after the war, aided by a revival in cotton exports and the discovery of petroleum in the Tiempo de Dios region of Jefferson. During his first term in the late 1850s, President Arthur Conroy gained passage of the Harbors Act, which funded the widening and dredging of Mexico's ports, including Henrytown.
Former Senator Carlos Concepción launched his revolutionary movement, the Moralistas, after losing the 1875 Mexican elections to incumbent President Omar Kinkaid. The primary targets for Moralista raids were Mexico City and the nations ports, including Henrytown. By 1878, Henrytown was suffering regular attacks by the Moralistas. The assassination of Kinkaid in December 1879 resulted in the formation of a national police force called the Constabulary by Kinkaid's successor, George Vining. The Constabulary was able to end the Moralista attacks on Mexican cities, at the cost of transforming the country into a police state. After Vining's death in September 1881, Constabulary Commandant Benito Hermión launched a coup d'état, making himself Chief of State, the absolute ruler of the U.S.M.
The overthrow of the French monarchy shortly after Kinkaid's assassination unleashed a decade of revolution and chaos across Europe, and on top of the Great Depression that preceded and in part caused it, Mexican exports to Europe fell sharply. The result was a severe depression in Henrytown, and only the police state imposed by the Constabulary prevented political unrest from appearing in the city among unemployed workers.
It was only toward the end of the decade, as unrest in Europe died down and the global economy recovered, that business in Henrytown picked up again. The recovery in Henrytown was aided by the signing of the 1884 Kitteridge-Cardenes Treaty, which lowered trade barriers between Mexico and the C.N.A.
The Chapultepec Incident of January 1916 sparked fears of a slave uprising throughout Mexico. President Victoriano Consalus was forced to institute a program of internal passports, and by the summer of 1916 any Negro who was found in an Anglo or Hispano neighborhood was at risk of being murdered. After slavery was abolished by the 1920 Manumission Act, there were riots and demonstrations between the act's supporters and opponents. Most of the freed slaves who had worked on the docks in Mexico's ports, including Henrytown, were driven out by Mexicano dockworkers.
Henrytown does not have an entry in in Sobel's index. The city is mentioned on pages 50, 105, 107, 113-14, and 118 of For Want of a Nail ....