Authors: H.W. Brands
By the tens, then scores, then hundreds, men who thought wealth came too slowly in California signed up with Walker. Unfortunately for his plans, all the interest attracted the attention of federal officials in San Francisco, who felt obliged to enforce American neutrality laws prohibiting private wars launched from American soil. Accordingly, on September 30, 1853, a company of U.S. soldiers boarded the
Arrow
, the brig Walker had hired, and took possession of the ship and its cargo of guns and ammunition. Walker sued for the return of the vessel and its cargo but meanwhile prepared another brig, the
Caroline
, for surreptitious departure. In the dead hours before dawn on October 16, the
Caroline
slipped away from the wharf and out the Golden Gate. Between the needs for haste and stealth, however, Walker took only forty-five men with him.
Such a puny force was far too small to subdue Sonora, especially with the Mexican army awaiting him there. So Walker ordered a landing at La Paz, on the Gulf of California near the southern tip of Baja California. Disguising their approach with a Mexican flag, Walker and his men entered the town before the governor or anyone else realized something was amiss. Walker arrested and jailed the governor, preempting resistance. He proceeded to issue a series of proclamations, starting with: “The Republic of Lower California is hereby declared Free, Sovereign and Independent, and all allegiance to the Republic of Mexico is
forever renounced
.” Walker went on to appoint himself president of the new republic, and adopted the civil code of Louisiana as the law of Lower California.
It wasn’t lost on outside observers, especially those in the American South, that the Louisiana code embraced slavery, and that Walker, in adopting it for his putative republic, aimed to restore slavery to this part of
Mexico. Nor was it lost on Walker that many southerners, for this very reason, would applaud his actions.
From his base in Baja, Walker sought to extend his realm. He declared the annexation of Sonora to the Republic of Lower California, which was then rechristened the Republic of Sonora. The laws of Lower California (that is, of Louisiana) were extended to Sonora, including slavery and the rule of President William Walker.
Back in (upper) California, Walker’s exploits elicited diverse reactions. The
Alta California
snickered, “He is a veritable Napoleon, of whom it may be said, as of the mighty Corsican, ‘he disposes of courts and crowns and camps as mere titulary dignitaries of the chess board.’ Santa Anna must feel obliged to the new president that he has not annexed any more of his territory than Sonora. It would have been just as cheap and easy to have annexed the whole of Mexico at once, and would have saved the trouble of making future proclamations.” Editorial disdain, however, had little effect on the hundreds of disappointed gold-seekers who preferred plunder in Mexico to wage-work in the mines. Walker bristled at being called a “filibuster,” a term descended from “freebooter,” or pirate; and indeed it may not have been the best description for one as megalomaniacal as he. But it certainly described those who joined him on his voyage from San Francisco, and the many more who now prepared to follow him south.
Because the U.S. Departments of State, War, and Justice continued to object to private wars of conquest, Walker’s reinforcements had to dodge soldiers and sheriffs in making their getaway from San Francisco, literally by the light of the moon. “The scene at the departure was one of the most remarkable on record,” wrote William Wells, a Walker supporter.
About half way down from Front Street a door was thrown open, and, as if by magic, drays and carts made their appearance. Files of men sprung out and passed quantities of powder from the store, besides ammunition of all kinds. A detachment stood guard the while in utter silence, and the movements were made with such celerity that the observer could scarcely perceive where and how
the articles made their appearance. A heavy squall of rain had just passed over the city, which was succeeded by a clear blue sky, allowing the rays of the moon to light up this singular picture, and giving it the appearance of some smuggling scene in a drama.
The silence held only so long, however. As the conspirators drew near the ship that was to take them away, they were met by friends who wished them favorable weather and happy fighting.
As the moment of sailing approached, the confusion and noise increased, and all the efforts of the officers to keep silence were unavailing. Several of the men were drunk, and gave vent to the exuberance of their spirits by songs, and denunciations upon the “Greasers” who had made the reported attack upon the party then in the Southern country…. When the fasts were cast off, the vessels swung round to the tide, and the expedition was fairly under way. Nothing could now restrain the men, and loud and repeated cheers rose from the vessel, which were heartily responded to from the wharf.
Despite the reinforcements, Walker’s first attempt at filibustering failed. He tried to establish a foothold on the Mexican mainland but encountered resistance from his new subjects. (He called them citizens but hardly made them feel that way.) Meanwhile his soldiers discovered that the reality of Sonora fell considerably shy of their imaginings. They began to curse themselves for coming and Walker for enticing them there. Some mutinied, provoking Walker to order their execution. “We had to shoot two men today,” wrote one of the troops, “because they so far mistook the object of our coming down here as to attempt to make up an organization, the object of which was to desert and go on a stealing, robbing and murdering expedition.”
Between the firing squads and the scant pickings, Walker’s army dwindled from three hundred to three dozen. Food ran out, clothing wore out, courage gave out. Walker, reduced to hobbling about on a single boot, led
the miserable remnant north to the American border, where he turned himself over to the local American military commander.
He was transported to San Francisco for trial on charges of illegal war- making. The evidence was overwhelmingly with the prosecution, but the jury was with Walker, and after deliberating eight minutes it acquitted him. The failed filibuster and erstwhile
presidente
emerged a popular hero.
The hero lived quietly in California till opportunity again called, as it did soon enough. From independence in the 1820s, Nicaragua had never been a rock of stability, but the Gold Rush, by swamping the Central American isthmus with foreign travelers, unsettled the country unusually. Additional aggravation came from competing American transit companies, which vied for control of the traffic. The leading contender in the mid-1850s was the Accessory Transit Company headed by Cornelius Vanderbilt, the brass-knuckled steamboater who was just discovering railroads. Amid the turmoil, every party angled for any edge it could get. One faction in Nicaragua’s chronic civil war sent an emissary to San Francisco to invite Walker to enlist an army and come south. He and his soldiers would receive monthly pay for the duration and grants of land upon victory. Walker agreed, and began recruiting. This time he cleared his expedition with the American authorities, showing them the written invitation from an arguably legitimate regime in Nicaragua (the argument, of course, was the essence of the civil war there). But still he had trouble getting away. The owner of the ship he chartered owed money, and the creditors placed a lien on the vessel, which the sheriff enforced. Yet Walker overpowered the sheriff’s deputy (albeit with good humor and hospitality: “There, sir, are cigars and champagne,” he said, “and here are handcuffs and irons; pray take your choice”) and the ship got away. Again the complications surrounding departure prevented Walker from filling out his ranks; the army of intervention totaled precisely fifty-eight (although a miscount caused the group to be labeled—by themselves more than anyone else—the “Immortal Fifty-six”).
Walker’s second war went better than his first. He benefited from Indian allies, who may have been persuaded that Walker was the one referred to in their legends about a gray-eyed man who would redeem them from
oppression (it was at this time that Walker began to refer to himself as the “gray-eyed man of destiny”). On the other hand, they may simply have reckoned that Walker couldn’t be worse than the other whites. He benefited even more from the logistical and financial backing of Vanderbilt’s Transit Company, which owed its concession to the faction that invited Walker.
Yet Walker had more in mind than mercenary work. After seizing the enemy stronghold, Granada, he made himself the military master of the country. And following a rigged election in June 1856, he was inaugurated president.
This high-handed action had the historically unprecedented effect of uniting nearly all Nicaraguans in a common purpose: to oust Walker. Moreover, by now Vanderbilt had likewise gone into opposition. Vanderbilt’s partners in the Transit Company were as unscrupulous as many in the American transport business (including Vanderbilt himself), and during the first vacation of his life they tried to steal the company out from under him. “Gentlemen,” he responded, in a note that entered the annals of boardroom warfare, “you have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you.” And so he did, in the process blockading steam navigation to Nicaragua and depriving Walker of resupply for his unpopular regime.
Walker appealed to the American South. He rescinded Nicaragua’s ban on slavery and prepared to reopen the African slave trade. “A beleaguered force,” he explained after the fact, “with no ally outside, must yield to famine at last, unless it can make a sally and burst through the enemy which confines it.” His pro-slavery decrees constituted his sally, being calculated, as he put it, “to bind the Southern states to Nicaragua as if she were one of themselves.”
Although Walker made plain he did not intend for Nicaragua to be annexed to the United States—his Napoleonic complex was too advanced for that—the prospect of a slave republic in the Caribbean couldn’t help winning the approval of American southerners. Unluckily for him, the disapproval of Vanderbilt mooted the issue, for the private navy of the Commodore—as Vanderbilt was coming to be called—kept reinforcements
away. Walker spoke of attaching the other Central American republics to Nicaragua; those republics immediately banded together against him. As the noose tightened, and hunger and disease exacted their toll, morale plummeted. Walker’s aloof style of command contributed to the decline. “Instead of treating us like fellow-soldiers and adventurers in danger…” explained one veteran (who deserted), “he bore himself like an Eastern tyrant—reserved and haughty—scarcely saluting when he met us, mixing not at all, but keeping himself close in quarters—some said through fear, lest some of his own men should shoot him, of which indeed there was great danger.” The outcome was the same as in Sonora. Unable to hold his army together, Walker abandoned Nicaragua, taking refuge from his enemies with forces of the U.S. military.
Yet though he abandoned Nicaragua, he didn’t relinquish the presidency. And after a triumphal tour across the American South, culminating in an audience with President Buchanan in Washington, he recruited a fresh army to help him retake his lost republic. Despite the southern enthusiasm for his cause, however, the federal government, under pressure from Britain—which had its own designs on Nicaragua—ultimately decided it didn’t need to encourage unrest in Central America. After Walker’s new force landed on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, American marines followed it in. Walker surrendered and was returned once more to the United States.
Remarkably, this didn’t quite end the saga of William Walker. Three years later, in 1860, he went south again, landing in Honduras to evade the fleets of both the United States and Britain. Proceeding carefully along the coast, he nonetheless was spotted and arrested by the British, who turned him over to the Honduran government. On September 12, 1860, he was stood against a wall and executed. As the smoke from the fusillade cleared, the great seal of the Republic of Nicaragua was discovered among his effects.
W
HATEVER THEY ACCOMPLISHED
for the cause of hemispheric slavery, the exploits of William Walker made life for California’s Repub
licans—Leland Stanford in particular—more difficult during the latter 1850s. Stanford served as a delegate to the 1856 state convention of Republicans, held in Sacramento. The gathering endorsed Frémont and the national Republican platform, resolving “that we inscribe on our banner ‘Freedom, Frémont and the Railroad,’ and under it we will fight until victory shall crown our efforts.” Of the three items on that list, the second and third generated the most excitement—Frémont for his California connection, and the railroad for the connection it would create between California and the rest of the country. Freedom—that is, opposition to slavery—was a harder sell in California, where pro-slavery Democrats controlled politics and pro-slavery filibusters like Walker captured the popular imagination.
Yet Stanford and his comrades looked forward to the election, expecting that their party’s support of the railroad would give them an advantage the Democrats would have difficulty countering. As one of Stanford’s Republican colleagues explained, “I have strong hopes that the Republican ticket will carry the state. The railroad question will have immense influence. The people of this state have dwelt upon the subject of an Atlantic and Pacific railroad until it has become a kind of mania with them. It is universally understood that nothing whatever is to be hoped from the Democratic party, and that everything is to be feared from it, as far as the railroad is concerned.”
Frémont’s poor showing in California—he won only 20,000 votes, of more than 100,000 cast—suggested that the mania for the railroad still didn’t trump the obsession with slavery. It also suggested that distinction among California Republicans was a dubious honor. Yet Stanford judged that the party was on the right track, and with his customary lack of conspicuous enthusiasm, he climbed the Republican ranks. He was nominated, without opposition, for state treasurer in 1857; he was duly buried in the general election by a margin only slightly less than Frémont’s the year before. In the summer of 1859 he was nominated for governor, again without opposition. By all indications another trouncing awaited him in the autumn; accordingly he wasn’t being modest when he told the convention that he hadn’t sought the nomination, and only accepted it as the responsibility
of one who believed in the Republican message. He went on to explain what he—and the California Republican party—stood for. It was antislavery, but also anti-black.