Second Federal Republic of Mexico

The Second Federal Republic of Mexico was the period of Mexican history involving a second attempt to establish a federal government, beginning with the fall of the unitary Centralist Republic in 1846 at the start of the Mexican–American War, and lasting until the Second French intervention in Mexico led to the proclamation of the Second Mexican Empire in 1863. Born in the first months of that war with the restoration of the Constitution of 1824, the republic proved one of the most eventful periods in Mexican history: it endured two foreign invasions, the loss of half of the national territory — Mexico was forced to cede its northern lands to the United States by the war's end in 1848 — constitutional change, and civil war. It also saw a decisive political shift: the downfall of the Conservative Party that had predominated under the Centralist Republic and the rise of a Liberal Party hegemony that would consolidate itself for the rest of the century. The period closed when French troops took the capital and the Second Mexican Empire was proclaimed in 1863, ending the federal republic.