Soldier of Misfortune — William Walker and the FilibustersToday a filibuster is a very familia

Soldier of Misfortune — William Walker and the FilibustersToday a filibuster is a very familiar term among Americans, as Senator Rand Paul recently spent 13 hours filibustering the nomination of John Brennan as head of the CIA, and many Republican’s are threatening to filibuster the debate on gun control policy.  Today to a filibuster is generally an event in which politicians continuously talk on a subject to forestall or obstruct the vote on a certain policy or law.  However, in the 1800’s a filibuster had a completely different meaning.  Rather a filibuster was a soldier of fortune who conducted illegal military campaigns for power, politics, or profit.One of the most famous filibusters of all time was William Walker.  Born in Tennessee in 1824, Walker was an extremely well educated man who graduated summa cum laude from the University of Nashville and also studied medicine and law throughout Europe.  For many years he worked as a doctor, lawyer, and journalist. An ardent supporter of both manifest destiny and slavery, Walker wanted a life of adventure.  By the 1850’s he concocted various schemes to annex Latin American territories for the United States, thus adding more slave states to the Union and disrupting the tenuous balance between north and south.  In 1853 he requested a grant of land from the Mexican government in which him and a large group of American settlers could colonize.  The Mexicans, wary of what had happened in Texas, refused his requests. Walker recruited an “army” of 45 men and captured the small town of La Paz, capitol of the sparsely populated province of Baja California.  Though Walker and his filibusters did not control the surrounding countryside, Walker declared the territory as the “Republic of Sonora” and set up a new system of law and administration based upon that of the State of Louisiana.  Unfortunately for Walker, the local Mexicans were not apt to being forced to become American citizens, and a rebellion aided by the Mexican government forced Walker to retreat back to the US.  Walker was arrested and tried for violating the Neutrality Act of 1794, but the jury acquitted him after 8 minutes of deliberation.During the mid 1800’s a major trade route between the Atlantic and Pacific ran through Nicaragua, as steamships would run supplies up the San Juan River and through Lake Nicaragua.  From there supplies would be offloaded and shipped over a small strip of land to ports along the Pacific.  When Nicaragua fell into civil war between the Legitimist Party and the Democratic Party, Walker smelled opportunity.  Despite the failure of his last expedition, Walker raised another “army” of 60 men.  Once in Nicaragua he was met with another 100 American adventurers as well as 170 locals.  Walker’s band was able to defeated the Legitmists, and Walker was named commander of the Nicaraguan Army.  Through President Jose Santos Guardiola, Walker ruled over Nicaragua as a virtual dictator.  Afterwords he became president himself after conducting a fraudulent election.  Once in power Walker began to enact his dream reforms of turning his newly conquered nation into a slave-holding American state.  He launched a program that legalized slavery, encouraged American immigration to Nicaragua, adopted American currency, and made English the nation’s official language.Walker’s ambition would soon prove to be his undoing.  In an attempt to expand his empire, Walkers forces attacked Costa Rica.  Seeing Walker’s regime as a threat, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador formed the Central American Alliance and pushed back against Walker.  Worse yet, the Alliance was funded by the wealthy American industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt, because earlier Walker had seized Vanderbilt property and assets for his conquests.  Under attack from all sides by the Central American Alliance and unable to stand up to the money and resources of Vanderbilt, it was inevitable that Walker would be defeated.  In 1856 4,000 Alliance troops surrounded the Nicaraguan capitol of Grenada, causing Walker to burn his own city and retreat.  The next year in 1857 he surrendered to the US Navy and returned to America.Six months later Walker organized an expedition to retake his empire, however his plot was discovered by state department agents, and he was arrested by the US Navy and once again returned to the United States.  In 1860 Walker again mounted another expedition, this time to the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras, where British settlers feared Honduras would take control over their land.  This time Walker was apprehended by British authorities who turned him over to the Honduran government.  The Hondurans, who like the rest of Central America was sick and tired of his shenanigans, executed Walker on September 12th, 1860.After Walker’s death the United States would begin their own Civil War between the Union and Confederacy.  Southerners hailed Walker as a hero, Northerners viewed him as a dastardly pirate.  Though mostly forgotten now in the US, Walker is a common name among Central Americans, who view his defeat and overthrow as a type of patriotic war for independence.  Today Walker is buried in  the Old Trujillo Cemetery, Colón, Honduras. -- source link

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