“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

universal laws that would further restore the political and social bonds of the old viceroyalty.
The end result would be a prosperous, modern polity. 39
Throughout the early 1820s, the unitarists in Buenos Aires established their hold
over the provincial assembly. By 1824, they sought to extend their constitutional
innovations beyond their home province and reunite the interior together under a new
constitutional government seated in Buenos Aires. 40 The debates over a sovereign
framework quickly reignited the fissures between unitarists in the capital and federalists
throughout the interior. For the moment, the unitarists held sway in the constitutional
convention. They elected Rivadavia the first president of the United Provinces in February
of 1826. The congress then granted the new president broad powers over the economy,
foreign affairs and questions of internal security. 41 The efforts to forge a new republic
culminated when the assembly, under Rivadavia’s direction, proposed a new constitution
later that same year that took direct aim at the remaining elements of provincial sovereignty.
In particular, it nationalized the election of deputies, proposed a federal judiciary and
formally established the seat of government once again in Buenos Aires.
Federalists in the new United Provinces loudly complained about the direction of
their putative national government. With tensions already running high, renewed warfare in
the Río de la Plata borderlands signaled the demise of Rivadavia’s unitarist project almost as
soon as it appeared. Following their defeats in 1823, many orientales had taken refuge across
the Uruguay River in Entre Ríos. Opposition leaders such as Juan Antonio Lavalleja and
39 Jeremy Adelman, Republic of Capital: Buenos Aires and the Legal Transformation of the
Atlantic World (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 98-99.
40 Emilio Ravignani, "El Congreso Nacional de 1824-1827: La Convención Nacional de
1828-1829, Inconstitución y Régimen de Pactos," in Historia de la Nacion Argentina, ed.
Ricardo Levene (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1949), 37.
41 Ibid., 138.
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