Domingo Faustino Sarmiento takes office on October…

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento takes office on October 12, 1868, and sets about the task of revamping the national school system and helping to stabilize liberal institutions.

Argentina’s economy, legal system, communications infrastructure and education system had grown rapidly under Bartolomé Mitre.

Despite victory in the Paraguayan War, Mitre's popularity had declined severely because of it, since a broad section of the Argentine population was opposed to the war due to the alliance with Brazil (Argentina's historic rival) that had taken place during the war and the betrayal of Paraguay (which had been until then one of the country's most important economic allies).

One of the major hallmarks of Mitre's presidency is the "Law of Compromise", in which Buenos Aires joined the Argentine Republic and allowed the government to use the City of Buenos Aires as the center of government, but without federalizing the city and by reserving the province of Buenos Aires the right to secede from the nation if conflict should arise.

The worldly Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, while governor of Argentina’s San Juan province, has developed roads and infrastructure, built public buildings and hospitals, encouraged agriculture and allowed for mineral mining.

He had also resumed his post as editor of El Zonda.

In 1863, Sarmiento had fought against the power of the caudillo of La Rioja and found himself in conflict with the Interior Minister of Mitre's government, Guillermo Rawson.

Stepping down as governor of San Juan, Sarmiento had run unsuccessfully for president of the Argentine Republic in 1864 against General Mitre.

He had, however, become the Plenipotentiary Minister to the United States, where he had been sent in 1865, soon after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

Moved by the story of Lincoln, Sarmiento had ended up writing his book Vida de Lincoln,  and it was on this trip that Sarmiento had received an honorary degree from the University of Michigan.

(A bust of Sarmiento will stand in the Modern Languages Building at the University of Michigan until multiple student protests prompt its removal. Students had installed plaques and painted the bust red to represent the controversies surrounding his policies towards the indigenous people in Argentina. There still stands a statue of Sarmiento at Brown University.)

While on this trip, he had been asked to run for President again, which he does, and wins, despite the maneuverings of his predecessor Mitre.