Empire by Invitation: William Walker and Manifest Destiny in Central America 9780674985032

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E M P I R E by I N V I TAT I O N

E M P I R E by I N V I TAT I O N WILLIAM WALKER AND

MANIFEST DESTINY I N C E N T R A L A M E R­I­C A

Michel Gobat

Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts London, E ­ ngland 2018

Copyright © 2018 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca First printing Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Gobat, Michel, author. Title: Empire by invitation : William Walker and Manifest Destiny in Central Amer­i­ca / Michel Gobat. Description: Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts : Harvard University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017045245 | ISBN 9780674737495 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Walker, William, 1824–1860. | Filibusters—­Nicaragua—­ History. | Manifest Destiny. | Nicaragua—­History—­Filibuster War, 1855–1860. | D ­ emoc­ratization—­Nicaragua—­History. | United States—­Relations—­Nicaragua. | United States—­Relations—­Central Amer­i­ca. | Nicaragua—­Relations—­ United States. | Central Amer­i­ca—­Relations—­United States. Classification: LCC F1526.27 .G625 2018 | DDC 327.7307285/09034—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2017045245 Jacket design: Lisa Roberts Jacket illustration: “Street view in Leon—Calle de San Juan,” from E. G. Squier, Nicaragua: Its People, Scenery, Monuments, and the Proposed Interoceanic Canal (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1852). Courtesy of the Darlington Digital Library Collection, University of Pittsburgh Library.

For Laura

Contents Introduction

1

1 “The Apple in Our Eden”

12

2 Inviting the Filibusters

46

3 “Walker Is the United States”

75

4 The Colonists

102

5 ­Imagined Empire

139

6 Creating a Filibuster State

164

7 The Promise of Development

190

8 Filibuster Revolution

215

9 The Fall

252

Epilogue

280

abbreviations 295 notes 297 acknowl­edgments  353 index 357

E M P I R E by I N V I TAT I O N

Introduction

On July  12, 1856, a crowd gathered in the Nicaraguan capital of Granada to celebrate the inauguration of William Walker as president. The Tennessee native had become the strongman of Central Amer­i­ca’s largest nation when his group of U.S. expansionists helped the Liberal Party overthrow the Conservative Party government in October  1855. ­After first ruling through a local puppet, Walker seized the presidency via an election marred by “the California style of ballot stuffing.” In the meantime, thousands of U.S. residents had flocked to his tropical realm, lured by the promise of rich mines and land bonanzas. Walker himself was drawn to Nicaragua ­because it was the likely site of an interoceanic canal destined to become the world’s main commercial highway. Although the United States eventually built the canal in Panama (1904–1914), in the mid-­nineteenth ­century it deemed Nicaragua the better site. Walker embodied U.S. interest in annexing a country of ­great geopo­liti­cal importance. Yet U.S. annexation was also championed by many Nicaraguans in the hope that it would end the civil wars plaguing their country since it gained independence from Spain in 1821. The desire to join the Union as a nonslave state was especially strong among Nicaraguan Liberals, who 1

2 Introduction

admired the United States as their model republic and sought to entice U.S. citizens to ­settle in the resource-­rich but sparsely populated country.1 The crowd at Walker’s presidential inauguration was highly diverse, ranging from Nicaraguan priests, merchants, and peasant rebels to U.S. fugitives on the run, farmers, temperance activists, and proslavery advocates, and to Eu­ro­pean socialists and Cuban in­de­pen­dence fighters. As dif­fer­ent as they ­were in their origins and views, most backed Walker’s goal of forging a Central American empire in the name of spreading U.S.-­ style democracy and pro­gress to a “down-­trodden and oppressed” ­people.2 The prodemocracy discourse of Walker’s movement was no charade. It even found its way into private letters, as when a surgeon told his ­family in Ohio “not to fit” about him for he was “right side up with care fighting for the liberty and regeneration of Nicaragua.” Walker attracted U.S. Southerners who maintained that democracy was for white ­peoples only and saw no contradiction in their efforts to spread liberty and slavery to a region where slavery had been abolished in 1824. Yet many more of Walker’s followers not only opposed the expansion of slavery but also sought to uplift the native masses and f­ree them from allegedly despotic elites. And it was their more inclusive yet also paternalistic form of democracy that mainly marked Walker’s rule. Hence the apparent paradox of a U.S. expansionist enjoying the support of local radicals of ­humble origins.3 Walker’s movement lasted for only two years before succumbing to a massive Central American army determined to oust him and his followers. The episode was nonetheless a watershed in U.S. relations with the world; it represented the first time that U.S. citizens had seized control of a nation outside the continental United States and sought to create an overseas empire. Walker’s exploits electrified the United States, which was enthralled with the expansionist spirit of Manifest Destiny. In retrospect, it is astounding that he enjoyed support from U.S. groups that in a few years would stand on opposite sides of a brutal civil war. Much like his putative successors in liberal-­internationalist and neoconservative circles a c­ entury l­ater in Washington, DC, Walker’s imperial quest inspired a fierce anti-­U.S. backlash; it pushed the Eu­ro­pean powers in the Ca­rib­bean to nearly wage war against the United States. In Latin Amer­ i­ca, his conquest engendered a continental alliance against the “northern colossus” that gave birth to the very idea of Latin Amer­i­ca. Many who

Introduction

3

had admired the United States for its democracy now deemed it a rogue nation. ­Because Walker’s movement was short-­lived, its efforts to spread Thomas Jefferson’s acclaimed “empire of liberty” abroad is a largely forgotten story. Already in 1906, a popu­lar U.S. writer moaned that “the name of William Walker conveys absolutely nothing” to his compatriots; ­little has changed since. In Central Amer­i­ca, by contrast, the Walker episode remains deeply e­ tched in local memory. Much of the region still celebrates the 1857 defeat of Walker as its main war of in­de­pen­dence, and Nicaragua’s principal civic holiday remains the annual commemoration of the first native victory over Walker’s army: the B ­ attle of San Jacinto. Yet few Central Americans remember that some Nicaraguans once embraced Walker’s men as saviors who sought to uplift the local poor by promoting democracy, land reform, public health, education, public works, and so on. For generations, Central Americans have been taught to view Walker’s men as oppressors who brought, to cite the famous poet Rubén Darío, “only the barbarity of blue eyes, cruelty, and the ­rifle.” Walker’s men clearly wreaked havoc, as exemplified by their razing of Granada, one of the oldest cities in the hemi­sphere. But to reduce their enterprise to wanton vio­lence would be to ignore the seductive nature of what we now call U.S. liberal imperialism.4 Local support for Walker’s enterprise has been overlooked by scholars in both Central Amer­i­ca and the United States. Many simply dismiss Walker and his men as international criminals. O ­ thers see them as pawns in the “war of the commodores” fought among U.S. tycoons for control of a lucrative interoceanic route, with the war’s devastating effects being the tragic price Nicaraguans paid for the cap­i­t al­ist development of the United States. Yet o­ thers deem the Walker episode a wacky affair where an egomaniac sought to rule a hapless ­people with the help of a handful of bloodthirsty mercenaries. This was the image promoted by the 1987 Hollywood movie Walker, which used the episode to denounce the undeclared war the administration of President Ronald Reagan was then waging against Nicaragua’s revolutionary government.5 Most scholars, however, link the Walker episode with efforts of the U.S. South to spread slavery abroad. And since this form of U.S. expansion died out with the South’s defeat in the Civil War, the Walker episode was

4 Introduction

long deemed to have ­little con­temporary relevance. But just as some have recently highlighted slavery’s centrality to the rise of U.S. capitalism, ­others now argue that proslavery expansionism helped s­ haped modern U.S. imperialism, which flourished in the post-1898 era. Buttressing this view is Walker’s decree of September 1856 that relegalized slavery in Central Amer­i­ca. Walker cemented his proslavery infamy with an 1860 book that equated his Nicaraguan venture of 1855–1857 with the expansion of slavery. And since the book is arguably the best firsthand account of his reign, it has heavi­ly ­shaped studies of the Walker episode. Yet Walker’s book not only erases his long-­standing opposition to slavery’s expansion but also exaggerates the role of slavery in his reign. In real­ity, Walker issued his slavery decree only t­ oward the end of his rule. This turnabout shocked his Northern supporters, appearing “like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky.” Even then it remained unclear ­whether Walker was promoting an “empire of the lash,” as his foes charged.6 ­Until the time of his proslavery decree, Walker’s imperial proj­ect was mainly identified with the promotion of democracy and free-­labor capitalism. Hence his movement enjoyed support among a wide range of ­Nicaraguans. ­T hese included members of the local elite who hoped that Walker and his men would spread to their country the liberal institutions that, in their eyes, enabled the United States to become the most prosperous country in the Western Hemi­sphere. In certain re­spects Nicaragua’s po­l iti­cal order was similar to that of the United States: it was a republic with a presidency and congress made up of elected representatives from the country’s Liberal and Conservative Parties. In practice, however, Nicaragua had a very weak institutional order. As elsewhere in Latin Amer­i­ca, the end of Spanish colonial rule in the early 1820s ushered in a long period of unrest that stymied the country’s po­liti­cal and economic development. In fact, in few countries was the unrest more protracted than in Nicaragua. ­Because Walker promised elite Nicaraguans not only pro­gress but also stability, many of them embraced him as their “guardian angel.” Even more critical to Walker’s fortunes ­were ­those who elite Nicaraguans claimed ­were responsible for their country’s “anarchy”: leaders of peasant-­based movements that ­were fighting for a more demo­ cratic and equitable society. Walker’s reliance on one such Nicaraguan radical of ­humble origins—­José María Valle—­was even noted in the U.S.

Introduction

5

musical Nicaragua, or General Walker’s Victories, which thrilled audiences from New York to California during the summer of 1856. Walker’s liberal image compelled many prodemocracy adherents from the United States to join his movement in Nicaragua. Among the most fascinating was Sarah Pellet, a suffragist, temperance lecturer, and abolitionist now best known for the misogynist rebuke she received from the president of Harvard University for daring to be the first ­woman to apply to its college. ­A fter having spent two months in Nicaragua, Pellet gave countless speeches in the United States defending Walker’s efforts to spread “liberty.” Her message was echoed by many of his followers and his bilingual newspaper, El Nicaraguense. For most of Walker’s reign, his movement championed an empire that sought to uplift Central Americans. And it was this nascent U.S. liberal imperialism in the form of overseas settler colonialism that so alarmed the international community.7 ­Little suggested that Walker’s movement would attain this global attention when he and fifty-­nine other U.S. adventurers arrived in June 1855 from San Francisco at the invitation of Nicaragua’s Liberal Party. Walker was to help the Liberals win the war against the ruling Conservatives; in exchange, his group was promised not only money but also vast tracts of uncultivated land in the country’s frontier regions. This offer reflected the long-­standing desire of Nicaraguan Liberals to promote the so-­called Americanization of their country. The prospect of Americanizing Nicaragua interested Walker, who joined the French emperor Napoleon III and many o­ thers in believing that this strategic Central American country was destined to become a geopo­liti­cal power. Walker accepted the invitation of Nicaraguan Liberals to not only wage war on their behalf but also to create a new “Americanized” polity that would eventually span all five states of Central Amer­i­ca—­a goal symbolized by the five-­pointed star on his flag. Nowadays Walker’s empire appears as a historical anomaly. We tend to associate U.S. overseas endeavors with the post-1898 era, when the United States created colonies and protectorates in the Ca­rib­bean and the Pacific. Moreover, we usually view modern imperial ventures as undertakings of the state. Yet Walker’s followers ­were hardly the only private U.S. citizens seeking to create an empire by sea. If empire is a pejorative word in the present-­day United States, it was readily embraced by

6 Introduction

F igu r e I . 1 ​School students in Granada, Nicaragua, on September 14, 2006, preparing to march in the annual cele­bration of the Nicaraguan victory over Walker’s troops at the B ­ attle of San Jacinto. This cele­bration is the country’s main civic holiday. The flag with the red star in the m ­ iddle represents Walker’s polity; the other flags represent the nations of Central Amer­i­ca and the municipality of Granada. Credit: Photograph by Michel Gobat.

a­ ntebellum society. Anti-­imperial ideals certainly infused a nation born from a revolution against the era’s largest empire. Yet such ideals reflected opposition to British power more than to imperialism per se. Hence, the idea of a colonizing empire was widely accepted in the antebellum United States. This was, a­ fter all, the age of Manifest Destiny expansion. But the era also witnessed the spread of Eu­ro­pean liberal imperialism in Africa and Asia. Since both pro­cesses molded Walker’s empire, his polity is a vantage point for illuminating the hidden connections between Manifest Destiny and the global rise of liberal imperialism.8 The Walker episode challenges the stubborn notion that Manifest Destiny entailed expansion by land only. In real­ity, the U.S. victory over Mexico in the Mexican-­American War (1846–1848) pushed many agents of Manifest Destiny to go overseas. A few sailed farther west, driven by their

Introduction

7

interest in the legendary China market. Thousands of ­others headed south. ­These attacks did not end u­ ntil the U.S. Civil War broke out in 1861. Since the overseas invaders ­violated U.S. law and ­were not condoned by their government, they ­were called filibusters, which comes from filibustero, the Spanish word for freebooters. (Only ­after the Civil War did the term gain its current meaning as a legislative tactic.) All ventures except Walker’s failed to seize power. His was thus the only filibuster expedition to mutate into a movement of settler colonists who sought to make the isthmus their permanent home. In the United States, Walker’s conquest was celebrated as a testimony to Anglo-­American racial superiority. Yet Walker’s men managed to take power only ­because they enjoyed local support.9 The polity that Walker’s group created in Nicaragua was literally an “empire by invitation.” This concept, coined by the Norwegian historian Geir Lundestad, is used by scholars to explain how liberal imperialism ­shaped the rise of the United States as a global power in the twentieth ­century. They stress that countries throughout the world embraced U.S. dominance not only out of strategic concerns but also b­ ecause they admired U.S. democracy, market economy, technological superiority, and mass culture. A similar phenomenon occurred in the antebellum era, when liberal elites in Latin Amer­i­ca sought to join the U.S. ­union in order to resist the region’s main hegemon—­Great Britain—­and improve their socie­ties. The call for U.S. annexation was especially strong in Nicaragua, as elites hoped it would fulfill their country’s own destiny: the construction of a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.10 Walker’s newspaper claimed that poor Nicaraguans also embraced him ­because they believed he was the “gray-­eyed man” who, according to a “traditional prophecy,” would deliver Central American Indians “from oppression and cruelty.” Very quickly, the U.S. press linked this legend to the idea of Manifest Destiny by turning Walker into the much-­acclaimed Gray-­Eyed Man of Destiny. Such prophecies are often in­ven­ted by conquerors who want to be seen as liberators. In this case, it was concocted in the 1830s by British imperialists eyeing Nicaragua’s Ca­rib­bean coast. Ultimately, Walker’s local support had ­little to do with this legend.11 But Walker’s proj­ect did draw heavi­ly on Jefferson’s empire of liberty. This idea famously linked the extension of the United States with the spread of republican democracy. Less known is Jefferson’s vision for an

8 Introduction

alternative path of expansion: the creation of republics by U.S. colonists that w ­ ere in­de­pen­dent of the United States. This path s­ haped the creation of the Republic of Texas (1836–1846) and Mormon efforts to form the State of Deseret. But if many U.S. citizens valorized Jefferson’s path, few associated it with overseas expansion. The American Colonization Society had turned Liberia into a quasi-­U.S. colony in the 1820s, but Liberia served as a “homeland” for African Americans, while Walker’s polity was to be dominated by white settlers.12 Antebellum observers wondered how Walker’s group would tackle the key challenge facing empire builders throughout world history: to incorporate other p ­ eoples into their polity while sustaining distinctions and unequal power relations among them. Walker might have sought to replicate the genocidal war then being waged against Native Americans on the U.S. frontier, especially in California. Yet such a war was rejected by Walker and many of his followers. Balancing “empire” with “liberty” was a challenge that would vex his movement.13 Ultimately Walker attracted about twelve thousand settlers from the United States. This was one of the largest-­ever overseas exoduses of U.S. colonists, yet we have known ­little about them. Walker’s Tennessee origins and his proslavery decree have led many to assume that they w ­ ere mainly Southerners bent on spreading their region’s “peculiar institution” abroad. In real­ity, the majority w ­ ere Northerners opposed to the extension of slavery. Like settler colonists elsewhere in the world, most sought to enhance their own lot. ­Others, however, went to Nicaragua to uplift Central Americans. This was especially true of the colonists who ­were affiliated with the reform movements then engulfing the United States. Such reformers spanned a wide spectrum, from abolitionists and suffragists to temperance and ­labor activists. Antebellum reformism drew much strength from westward expansion, but with the exception of Protestant missionaries, the role of reformers in overseas expansion has gone unnoticed, even though their ideals molded Manifest Destiny’s mission to ­regenerate the world. The Walker episode underscores the understanding that Manifest Destiny was driven not solely by the U.S. belief in its innate superiority but also by a utopian impulse. When a Demo­cratic Party journal coined the term in 1845, it stressed that it was the “manifest destiny” of the United

Introduction

9

States to spread its “­great experiment of liberty” abroad. Many of Walker’s followers who implemented this experiment had belonged to the Whig Party, which initially mocked Manifest Destiny. In the end their presence in Walker’s movement was not incongruous. Whigs not only quickly embraced Manifest Destiny but also dominated moral reform movements. Their Demo­cratic rivals in turn often opposed such movements, deeming moral reformers elitist snobs who sought to control the laboring classes. The flow of reformers to Walker’s realm made his movement more than just an unusual experiment in U.S. expansion. It intensified the contest over what kind of democracy the movement should stand for.14 Ironically, some of the followers of Walker who most strongly spread U.S.-­style democracy w ­ ere non-­U.S. natives. T ­ hese included Cuban revolutionaries who had fled north ­after their aborted 1851 uprising against Spanish rule. Many more w ­ ere veterans of Eu­rope’s failed revolutions of 1848. While most hailed from France and Germany, they also included Hungarians, Irish, and Poles. What unified t­ hese émigrés was their admiration for U.S. democracy, social reformism, and an inclusive vision of U.S. nationality. In their eyes, Walker’s empire was not to be a race-­based polity in which they—­and Central Americans—­would be dominated by U.S. natives but one where all men would have equal rights. This suggests that U.S. liberal imperialism began as a more cosmopolitan undertaking than commonly assumed, even though—or perhaps precisely ­because—it emerged when U.S. nativism (Know-­Nothingism) reigned supreme. The international bent of Walker’s enterprise was reinforced by the efforts of his regime to model its polity ­after the liberal imperialism of Eu­ro­pean powers. Walker’s group was mainly enthralled with the “civilizing” mission and the economic reforms that the British carried out in India. Given the zeal with which U.S. expansionists championed Walker’s polity as “our Indian empire,” their failure to notice the similarities between the wars against the two empires is telling. It strains credulity to equate Walker’s ephemeral polity with the “crown jewel” of the British empire. Still, it is revealing that the Central American war against the filibusters and the Indian Rebellion of 1857 targeted empires that, in the eyes of Walker’s supporters, w ­ ere similar. Unlike Walker’s group, the British survived the anti-­imperial revolt. Many ­factors explain the contrasting outcomes, yet one difference worth highlighting was the

10 Introduction

British reluctance to carry out the kind of revolution attempted by Walker’s movement. The mid-­nineteenth ­century was the tail end of the Age of Revolution. When Walker seized power, his radical Nicaraguan and non-­Nicaraguan supporters ­were yearning to unleash a revolution in the name of the local poor. But only ­after Walker became president did his regime confiscate elite properties and officially open up the po­liti­cal system to nonelite groups in Nicaragua. Like other revolutions, this assault polarized society and disintegrated into vio­lence, leading many of Walker’s former Nicaraguan allies to support the broader Central American war against the filibusters. If Walker’s revolution precipitated his fall, it was also key to his efforts to create a tropical empire of liberty. Among t­hose pressuring Walker to radicalize his imperial proj­ect w ­ ere his lower-­class Nicaraguan followers, such as José María Valle. This filibuster revolution remains ­little known, in part due to the difficulties of locating rec­ords that illuminate the Walker episode through the eyes of his followers. Walker carries much of the blame, as he destroyed most of his regime’s papers before fleeing the isthmus. (His naval commander Callender Fayssoux preserved some papers that are now held at Tulane University.) Fortunately, the digitalization of many nineteenth-­ century U.S. newspapers has made it easier to track the many colonists who migrated to Walker’s tropical realm. Information on his Cuban and Eu­ro­pean followers can be further found in U.S. immigrant newspapers. And while much historical documentation has been lost in Nicaragua due to warfare and natu­ral disasters, the end of the country’s last war, in 1990, has permitted rec­ords to resurface, with some illuminating the local roots of Walker’s movement. This is especially true of documents held in the resurrected municipal and prefecture archive in Granada, the city that was then Walker’s capital. Another impor­tant, but underutilized, source is his own newspaper, El Nicaraguense, which was issued in Granada in both En­glish and Spanish. This propaganda organ is problematic, especially as it lied through its teeth when reporting on the war against Walker. Still, its articles provide a win­dow on the ideology of his movement as well as detailed information on his followers and daily life u­ nder filibuster rule. Other little-­k nown sources that elucidate Walker’s local support are the newspaper Boletín Oficial, which was published by Nicaraguan Liberals

Introduction

11

in León, and reports written by Central American officers serving on the Nicaraguan war front. Thanks to this multinational array of rec­ords, it is pos­si­ble to explore how the uplift agenda of Walker’s movement garnered local support—­and precipitated his empire’s demise. Central Amer­i­ca’s encounter with Walker illuminates the international origins of U.S. liberal imperialism. To be sure, the effort of proslavery U.S. Southerners to spread their illiberal institution abroad marked Manifest Destiny on the eve of the Civil War. Yet too ­great a fixation on this tyrannical regionalism comes at the cost of realizing that antebellum imperialism was ­shaped by an international conversation about “pro­gress” and “uplift.” And this was a conversation that involved not only the North Atlantic powers but also Latin Americans, including Walker’s Nicaraguan followers. As much as slavery molded antebellum views of the non-­ European world, U.S. efforts to impose “democracy” in Central Amer­ i­ca via filibusterism played a perhaps greater role in turning the United States, to quote the British prime minister, into a nation of “rogues.” Walker’s global infamy cannot be understood u­ nless we address a paradox that long marked U.S. liberal imperialism: the extraordinary threat and promise it represented to ­peoples outside the United States.15

1 “The Apple in Our Eden”

William Walker and his followers went to Nicaragua convinced that they w ­ ere the “advance guard of American civilization.” In real­ity, Nicaraguans had already encountered such “civilizers” with the California Gold Rush that broke out in 1849. Thanks to its waterway, Nicaragua became a popu­lar transit for gold rushers navigating between the East Coast and California. U ­ ntil the U.S. transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, this Nicaraguan transit and its Panamanian counterpart ­were the fastest and most secure pathways connecting both U.S. coasts. The Gold Rush was a product of imperial expansion, having broken out shortly a­ fter the United States seized California from Mexico. But it also resulted from the era’s transportation revolution, as the rise of ocean steamers allowed ­people from around the globe to converge in the gold fields. And it was this unpre­ce­dented global event that put Nicaragua on the world map. By the time of Walker’s arrival, about two thousand travelers w ­ ere passing through the country e­ very month, with some making it their new home. Many of the U.S. visitors impressed the local population with their entrepreneurialism, technological innovation, and modern lifestyle. Nicaraguans viewed such traits as the hallmark of U.S.-­style 12



“The Apple in Our Eden”

13

“civilization” and eagerly embraced them. The Gold Rush triggered what contemporaries called the Americanization of Nicaragua.1 Nicaraguans had certainly encountered the United States before the Gold Rush. New ­England w ­ halers had stopped at the Pacific port of ­Realejo for de­cades, and some U.S. missionaries, merchants, mahogany cutters, and farmers had settled in the country. At the same time, a few rich Nicaraguans had been to El Norte (the North); U.S. goods circulated in Nicaragua from early on. Overall, however, Nicaragua’s contact with the United States remained limited. The Gold Rush and the transit paved the way for Walker’s empire. His interest in the region had every­thing to do with how the Gold Rush intensified U.S. efforts to build an interoceanic canal through Nicaragua. The transit, in turn, was Walker’s lifeline to U.S. recruits. Thousands flocked to his realm precisely ­because the transit led the U.S. public to see Nicaragua as the new El Dorado. If news coverage reflects public interest, Nicaragua was higher on the U.S. m ­ ental map in the 1850s than it is t­ oday, even though it then had only about 250,000 inhabitants. At the same time, Nicaraguans’ infatuation with the gold rushers explains why they invited Walker to their shores. As modern-­looking fortune hunters poured into their country, it was easy for Nicaraguans to ignore a compatriot’s warning: “The waterway across the Isthmus of Nicaragua is the apple in our Eden. It ­will be our curse.”2

I Nicaragua’s transit followed a land-­sea route that had been used for centuries. Its eastern terminus was the small port of San Juan del Norte, which lay at the southern edge of the country’s Ca­rib­bean coast. Large dugouts (bongos) took westbound travelers through deep jungle 120 miles up the San Juan River and then another 100 miles across the shark-­infested Lake Nicaragua, past the island of Ometepe with its two majestic volcanoes, to the old trading city of Granada resting on the lake’s northwestern shore. The travelers then switched to ox carts, mules, or ­horses that carried them for about 140 miles through the country’s most populated zone and well-­ cultivated fields to the Pacific port of Realejo. The total journey took between seven and twenty days. Despite long-­standing Spanish plans to

14

“The Apple in Our Eden”

develop the transit into a transoceanic canal, Nicaragua remained a backwater. In the early nineteenth ­century, such transit suddenly became central to U.S. canal proj­ects. Still, the country remained l­ ittle known to the United States public prior to the Gold Rush. California gold was discovered in January 1848, yet the Gold Rush did not begin u­ ntil President James Polk confirmed the findings on December 5. Most gold rushers hailed from the East Coast and took the overland route but could not set out ­until winter ended in April. About twenty thousand gold seekers refused to wait and departed immediately via the more expensive journey by sea. While the bulk of them went around the tip of South Amer­i­ca or across Panama, the U.S. press also encouraged gold rushers to take the unfamiliar route through Nicaragua.3 No one did more to publicize the Nicaragua route than Henry Simpson, whose Emigrant’s Guide to the Gold Mines came out days ­after Polk’s confirmation. It was one of the first guides for gold rushers and quite persuasive, even though Simpson lied about having been in California. The popu­lar guide also made its way to Nicaragua, where its rosy account pleased elites hoping to benefit from the gold fever. The country’s official newspaper stated that Simpson’s description of the Nicaraguan transit was “very exact.” Actually, it was quite misleading, with its biggest lie being that travelers could easily obtain passage from Realejo to San Francisco.4 This misinformation proved fatal for the first gold rushers who brought “American civilization” to Nicaragua: the 116 members of Gordon’s California Association. Except for George Gordon’s wife and ­daughter, all ­were men—­a gender imbalance that marked the first wave of gold rushers. Typical of seaborne gold seekers, many ­were also well off. When Gordon’s men left New York in February 1849, they hoped to reach California within sixty days. Instead it took them eight months, as they spent a month in San Juan del Norte fixing the steamboat that took them to Granada and another three months in western Nicaragua waiting for a San Francisco-­ bound ship to arrive in Realejo.5 The group’s delay in getting to California discredited the Nicaragua route in the United States. This was largely b­ ecause Gordon’s men sent letters home that w ­ ere published in newspapers throughout the u­ nion. They lauded Nicaraguans for their hospitality and admired the country’s

N

HONDURAS

Nueva Segovia

NIC AR AGUA

Gulf of Fonseca

Mosquito Kingdom

Estelí Matagalpa

El Realejo

Chinandega Chichigalpa León

Caribbean Sea

Lake Managua

La Libertad

Managua

Bluefields

Chontales

Granada Ometepe Is.

La Virgen

Lake Nicaragua

San Juan del Sur PACIFIC OCEAN

Santa Rosa

San Carlos El Castillo S an Jua nR i ve r

San Juan del Norte (Greytown)

C O S TA R I C A San Jacinto

Puntarenas

Tipitapa

Lake Managua

San José

Managua

Chontales

Original route, 1849–51

Masaya

Vanderbilt’s route

Granada Masatepe Diriomo Jinotepe Mombacho Volcano

Nandaime

0

Lake Nicaragua Zapatera Island

Ometepe Island

Rivas 0

Ma p 1 . 1 ​Nicaragua

10 miles

San Jorge La Virgen

50 miles

16

“The Apple in Our Eden”

natu­ral beauty, rich agriculture, and healthy climate. The line “none sick in the com­pany” often appeared in one way or the other in their letters. Overall, however, the letter writers presented a dim view of Nicaragua’s potential as a major transit for California-­bound travelers. They noted that it lacked adequate accommodations and that its dirt roads turned into mud banks during the rainy season, which lasted from May to November. Above all, they stated that the country suffered from ­great instability that made travel dangerous. Their own journey had been impeded by what they called a revolution. Some thought the unrest was one of the many elite-­led civil wars then plaguing Latin Amer­i­ca, while o­ thers deemed it mass banditry. In real­ity, the gold seekers had walked into the tail end of a popu­lar rebellion.6 Gordon’s men had reason to believe that disorder was endemic to Nicaragua, for the country—­ ­ a nd Latin Amer­ i­ ca more broadly—­ experienced much po­liti­cal vio­lence ever since three centuries of Spanish colonial rule had collapsed in 1821. While the protracted wars of in­de­ pen­dence that began in 1809 devastated Mexico and much of South Amer­i­ca, they hardly affected Central Amer­i­ca. Still, in­de­pen­dence brought de­cades of turmoil to the isthmus. By the time Gordon’s men arrived in postin­de­pen­dent Nicaragua, the country had experienced seventeen years of civil war and only eleven years of relative peace.7 Like most U.S. and Eu­ro­pean observers of the era, Gordon’s men did not realize that t­ hese conflicts had a strong ideological dimension, as distinct groups battled to create a new polity on the ruins of the colonial state. The conflict basically pitted conservatives, who idealized the colonial order, against liberals fighting for the secularization of society, democracy, po­liti­cal decentralization (federalism), ­free trade, and the privatization of land owned by the church and indigenous communities. In Nicaragua the strug­gle over the new state was particularly intense, as it was waged by two equally power­ful regional elites. One was centered in Granada, the bastion of the Conservative Party. Thanks to its access to the San Juan River, this old colonial city had become a major port for international trade and home to some of the most prosperous merchants on the isthmus. Its tiny elite also owned cacao, indigo, and sugar estates in the plains that spread from Managua to Rivas as well as sprawling ­cattle ranches and mines in the highlands of Chontales. The other regional elite



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17

was based in the Liberal Party stronghold of León, which was Nicaragua’s largest city and had long served as its main po­liti­cal, educational, and religious center. Its elite was similarly linked to the international economy via Realejo, and its members held the same kind of rural estates as their Granadan rivals, with their hinterland stretching from the lowlands of Chinandega to the mountains of Nueva Segovia, where they also owned gold and silver mines. Complicating ­matters, elite conflicts helped the Nicaraguan poor form movements that challenged the existing order. Their strength was most vis­i­ble in the popu­lar rebellions of the late 1840s, which opposed elite efforts to impose new taxes, regulate the commercialization of common goods, curb the po­liti­cal autonomy of rural communities, and forcibly recruit rural laborers, who w ­ ere in short supply due to the abundance of land in most of the country. At times the revolts ­were led by Indians, as was especially true of ­those in the central highlands of Matagalpa. In the more-­densely populated Pacific littoral, the popu­lar rebels included ­Indians as well as the urban poor. But the revolts w ­ ere driven by nonindigenous peasants—­t he country’s largest social group—­who produced mainly corn, beans, plantains, and the popu­lar cane liquor aguardiente. If the revolts had long been confined to small areas, by 1849 they had become so widespread that they spurred Nicaragua’s warring elites to jointly confront what they claimed ­were communist movements. Gordon’s group happened to arrive when a Liberal-­Conservative army was about to crush the last such popu­lar uprising.8 The letters written by Gordon’s men made vio­lence and disorder appear to be inherent in local culture. Their letters w ­ ere gleefully used by U.S. newspapers to denigrate Nicaraguans as bloodthirsty “demi-­ savages,” “assassins,” and as “roving tribes of thieving Indians.” Such racist images hardly reflected the experiences of Gordon’s group; instead they had every­thing to do with prevailing U.S. views of Latin Americans as racially inferior p ­ eople. The press reports only reinforced the negative reputation of the Nicaragua route in the United States.9 In Nicaragua the group’s lengthy stay strengthened pro-­U.S. sentiments. Nicaraguans ­were not always happy with Gordon’s men. They ­were mainly troubled by the disrespect some showed for their Catholic religion, as when the overwhelmingly Protestant visitors refused to kneel

18

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and remove their hats for religious pro­cessions. Yet such complaints w ­ ere rare. Apparently none of the transients provoked brawls with local residents; this contrasted with the way alcohol and racial prejudices led gold rushers to commit violent acts elsewhere in Latin Amer­i­ca. In their letters, Gordon’s men claimed they tried hard not to wear out their welcome. And many did socialize with Nicaraguans, who, w ­ hether rich or poor, ­were overwhelmingly Spanish speakers. Most of Gordon’s men used interpreters, while a few took Spanish lessons and eventually w ­ ere able to communicate in Spanish; and some elite Nicaraguans spoke En­glish.10 The Nicaraguans who encountered the U.S. visitors hailed mainly from Granada and León, the two places where Gordon’s men resided the longest. Since both cities ­were also elite bastions, it is not surprising that the gold rushers deemed Nicaragua a highly stratified society. Most transients stayed at mansions owned by local elites, who typically lived in the center of town, close to the main square (plaza). By U.S. standards they lived modestly. One of Gordon’s men noted how “very ­little furniture is used, a few chairs and ­tables, beds and hammocks sufficing. The city rejoices in two pianos, but, I believe, contains no carpet.” By local standards, however, they ­were extremely wealthy. Figures from l­ ater de­cades suggest that elites of Granada and León comprised less than 3 ­percent of the urban populace; the 1846 census lists Granada’s population at ten thousand and León’s at thirty thousand. Elite membership was determined not just by wealth but also by social criteria—­especially kinship ties and access to the exclusive ­family salons (tertulias). While the elites of Granada and León incorporated some rich Nicaraguans of nonelite origins and foreigners into their ranks, they usually married among themselves. Hence ­were they commonly equated with aristocracies or oligarchies.11 Among ­those most loudly denouncing their exclusivity ­were members of the next social strata: merchants, master artisans, ­owners of medium-­ size farms, and professionals—­especially officers, priests, physicians, and ­lawyers. This middling class was far larger than the elite group yet still represented less than 10 ­percent of the populations of Granada and León. Most lived beyond the urban core in plebeian neighborhoods. Their ­houses ­were usually small and made of cane, albeit reinforced with plastered walls and tile roofs. Some became wealthy enough to acquire man-



“The Apple in Our Eden”

19

sions near the plaza. Yet even ­these parvenus ­were usually excluded from the “aristocratic” tertulias and not deemed part of the local elite.12 The vast majority of urbanites ­were poor and lived in what ­were already called suburbs, where dirt lanes contrasted sharply with the cobblestone streets marking the center of town. Suburban homes typically consisted of “mere huts of cane thatched with palm leaves” surrounded by yards that produced fruit, plantains, and other basic foods. T ­ hese Indian-­style dwellings could not be more dif­fer­ent from the elite mansions, which showcased their Spanish origins with their tiled roofs, thick stone walls, iron-­barred (yet glassless) win­dows, high rooms, and airy corridors built around a large courtyard. The urban poor held a wide range of occupations, from peddlers, servants, and day laborers to washerwomen, muleteers, and artisans. Many ­were small-­scale farmers who, as one visitor noted, walked “two, four, and six miles daily to ­labor in their fields.” But even if the living conditions of the urban classes differed greatly, they hardly led segregated lives, as all intermingled in public spaces such as the main market in the plaza, churches, taverns, cockpits, and festivals.13 This fluid social space allowed Gordon’s men to encounter urban ­Nicaraguans from all walks of life. As their letters reveal, the transients became especially well acquainted with Granada’s market ­women from the Indian suburb of Jalteva, as well as plebeian artisans and merchants in León’s mulatto neighborhood of San Felipe. In the end, they mainly socialized with the elites. And this was not just ­because they stayed at their homes but also ­because the rich expressed ­great interest in the transients and their country. One visitor reported that the upper classes “look to our government as an example which they are desirous to follow and wish to receive from it protection.”14 Elites in Granada and León mainly hoped that the United States would dislodge the British from Nicaragua’s Ca­rib­bean coast. When Spanish colonialism ended in the 1820s, ­Great Britain greatly expanded its influence over Latin Amer­i­ca, becoming its leading hegemon. While the British used economic, po­l iti­cal, and military coercion, they usually refrained from establishing colonies—­a form of expansion often dubbed informal imperialism. In the Ca­r ib­bean, however, the British sought to actually seize land formerly ­under Spanish rule.

20

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F igu r e 1 . 1 ​Approach to the suburb of Zaragoza in León, with a dirt road and Indian-­ style cane huts that typfiy the dwellings of the urban poor. Source: “Saragossa, Vorstadt von Leon,” from Charles A. Dana, ed., Meyer’s Universum; or, Views of the Most Remarkable Places and Objects of All Countries (New York: Herrmann J. Meyer, 1852). Courtesy of The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

British claims to Nicaragua’s sparsely-­populated Ca­rib­bean coast date back to the seventeenth ­century. Yet their encroachments did not truly begin u­ ntil 1841, when they created a protectorate called the Mosquito Kingdom and whose capital was Bluefields. This entity had existed for several centuries and was headed by the king of the Miskitu Indians, a mixed-­race group of African descent that inhabited the coastal stretch from northern Honduras to the San Juan River—­a region marked by tropical rain forests and lagoons. The Miskitus had long resisted Spanish colonization and had ­l ittle in common with highly Hispanized Nicaraguans from the distant Pacific zone. In January 1848, the British occupied San Juan del Norte, which they renamed Greytown ­after Charles Edward Grey, the governor of Jamaica. With this takeover the British sought to prevent the United States from controlling the Atlantic terminus of the



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21

F igu r e 1 . 2 ​View of a cobblestone street in the center of León depicting the tiled roofs, thick stone walls, and iron-­barred win­dows characterizing elite-­owned homes. Source: “Street view in Leon—­Calle de San Juan,” from E. G. Squier, Nicaragua: Its ­People, Scenery, Monuments, and the Proposed Interoceanic Canal (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1852). Courtesy of the Darlington Digital Library Collection, University of Pittsburgh Library.

projected canal. For many Nicaraguans the occupation jeopardized their canal dreams. Once Gordon’s men arrived in Granada, they quickly noted how local residents ­were “very ­bitter against the ­En­glish” and hoped U.S. forces would expel the occupiers.15 Nicaraguan hopes in the United States w ­ ere reinforced by the friendships that Gordon’s men forged with native elites. Such ties are illuminated in letters written by the twenty-­three-­year-­old Roger Baldwin, who had recently graduated from Yale Law School and hailed from an elite New Haven ­family (his ­father was a sitting U.S. senator who had defended the Africans of the Amistad rebellion before the Supreme Court). A U.S.

22

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envoy arriving in Granada just a­ fter the departure of Baldwin’s group noted that local elites w ­ ere “anxious to know w ­ hether the party of Californians . . . ​­were ‘gente comun,’ common ­people, or ‘caballeros,’ gentlemen.” Still, as the tenor of Nicaragua’s main newspaper suggests, ­there was much truth to the bonds that Gordon’s men had forged with elites. Moreover, the “Americans,” so a female innkeeper stressed, had “much money, and paid double what other folks did, without grumbling.” To attract more spendthrift visitors from the north, the government tried hard to improve the transit. Yet as long as ­there was no dependable passage from Realejo to San Francisco, the Nicaragua route remained, as a U.S. paper put it, a “humbug.”16 Nicaraguans nonetheless benefited from the Gold Rush. While some sought their luck in the gold fields, many more became rich by exporting food, wood, and cigars to California and Panama, which quickly filled with gold rushers. Their ability to exploit t­ hese emerging markets reveals that the Nicaraguan economy was more developed than was often depicted by the U.S. press. Not only had Nicaraguans long exported indigo, cacao, and Brazil wood to Eu­rope, they also produced sugar, ­cattle, basic grains, and tobacco for the Central American market. Although Latin American export booms are often seen to benefit only the rich, in Nicaragua the Gold Rush enriched elite and small-­scale producers alike. Yet this event mainly excited Nicaraguans by resurrecting their age-­old dream of a canal. And since the United States was the power most interested in the canal, Nicaraguans strove to forge even closer ties with El Norte.17

II Plans to build a canal across Nicaragua had existed since the sixteenth ­century. But only with the post-1830s expansion in global trade and the steamship revolution did Eu­ro­pean powers and the United States truly consider building a canal that promised easy access to the fabled Asian market. Nicaragua was then widely considered a better site for an interoceanic canal than Panama largely ­because its climate was deemed healthier and b­ ecause the swath of earth that had to be dug up would have been significantly shorter. All plans had the Nicaraguan canal g­ oing up the San Juan River and into Lake Nicaragua, which was separated from



“The Apple in Our Eden”

23

the Pacific by the narrow isthmus of Rivas. Some then had the canal cut across this isthmus, while o­ thers had it continue through Lake Managua and across the plains of León to the Gulf of Fonseca or the Pacific. Among the canal’s greatest promoters was Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the f­ uture French emperor Napoleon III, who proclaimed in 1846 that “Nicaragua can become, better than Constantinople, the necessary route for the g­ reat commerce of the world.”18 All ­these foreign-­led proj­ects w ­ ere championed by local elites, as they believed the canal would make theirs the most prosperous nation in the region. They also trusted that it would bring “civilization” in the form of immigrants from the more developed North Atlantic nations. ­A fter its 1848 victory over Mexico, the United States took the lead, deeming the canal indispensable to its survival as a continental nation and its global ambitions. In consequence, Nicaragua’s sense of destiny became entangled with that of the United States. It was with ­g reat interest that the Nicaraguan government received David Brown, the first U.S. canal agent to appear ­after the outbreak of the Gold Rush. Arriving in March 1849, the New Yorker mesmerized his hosts with extravagant promises. Within two weeks his com­pany received the exclusive privilege of passage through the country’s rivers and lakes. The canal promised by Brown raised huge expectations and led Nicaragua’s main newspaper to rhapsodize how it would transform “our huts into palaces” and make them “the emporium of the world.”19 The ink on the contract had barely dried when another U.S. canal agent, David White, created an even greater commotion, as he represented one of the era’s richest tycoons: “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt, the New Yorker who had risen from h­ umble origins to build a shipping empire that spanned the Atlantic. The Gold Rush compelled him to expand ­toward the Pacific. Since rival New York cap­i­tal­ists already controlled the Panama route, he set his sights on Nicaragua. Like o­ thers, Vanderbilt ­believed it was an ideal site for a canal. While his quest was profit driven, he also hoped to create a monument that would “enshrine his name in glory forever.”20 Upon reaching Nicaragua in April 1849 White pressured the government to revoke its contract with Brown and sign a new one with Vanderbilt’s American Atlantic and Pacific Ship Canal Com­pany. Local elites

24

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­ ere thrilled with the visit of yet another U.S. canal agent, as it showed w how Nicaragua had become “the most in­ter­est­ing nation in the world.” Yet White made ­little headway ­until the U.S. envoy Ephraim George Squier arrived in July. This New York journalist-­cum-­archaeologist-­cum-­ diplomat had been sent by President Zachary Taylor to help White secure the canal contract.21 Squier quickly convinced the Nicaraguan government to transfer the canal contract to White. The new agreement granted Vanderbilt’s com­pany similar privileges as t­ hose given to Brown’s group. But it also committed Vanderbilt to colonize uninhabited lands contiguous to the San Juan River with U.S. immigrants. Many Nicaraguans believed they had secured the guarantee that the United States would fulfill their country’s destiny. This belief was reinforced by the U.S.-­Nicaraguan friendship treaty of September 3, 1849. Designed by Squier, the treaty committed the United States to protecting Nicaraguan sovereignty over the canal route.22 If Squier’s treaty challenged British control of San Juan del Norte, it also opened the door to U.S. intervention. Nicaraguan officials had hoped the treaty would secure U.S. protection over the ­whole country, thus leading to its annexation to the United States as a nonslave state. Their proannexationist views ­were not unusual. Prior to Squier’s arrival, local elites had already broached with U.S. envoys “the possibility of Nicaragua’s adopting ­union with the North American Republic.” Similar sentiments ­were expressed by nonelite sectors, as when leaders of León’s indigenous community told Squier they hoped “the flag of the United States may become the shield of Nicaraguans.”23 How can we explain this desire for U.S. annexation? ­A fter all, the “northern colossus” had just waged a war against Mexico that resulted in the greatest loss of Latin American territory to a foreign power. The war clearly troubled Latin Americans. Yet the continent’s liberals continued to valorize the United States (i.e., the nonslave north) as their model state. Some believed Mexicans would only benefit from U.S. rule, as when a Bolivian paper asserted that they would be provided with greater pro­gress, democracy, and stability. Such views ­were echoed by Central American newspapers. Yet proannexationism was unusually strong in Nicaragua, largely ­because its elites ­were unified in seeking U.S. support to build the canal and dislodge the British.24



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25

This strength also meant that the idea of an in­de­pen­dent Nicaragua remained weak. In fact, the country did not become an in­de­pen­dent republic u­ ntil 1838. Previously it had been part of the Central American Federation, which was founded in 1824, only to be torn apart fourteen years ­later by centrifugal forces. When Squier arrived in the country, some Nicaraguans w ­ ere still seeking to revive this panregional entity. Yet many more had come to view the municipality as their primary polity—an identification that reflected how late colonial reforms and in­ de­pen­dence from Spain had empowered elected municipal governments throughout Central Amer­i­ca.25 Proannexationist Nicaraguans expected that they would enjoy the same rights as U.S. citizens. In hindsight, it is easy to say that they gravely underestimated the strength of U.S. nativism and racism. Yet this exclusionary bent of antebellum society became apparent to many foreigners only ­after the Know-­Nothing Party burst on the scene in 1854. Nicaraguans’ support for joining the U.S. u­ nion had been reinforced by their admiration for the proannexationist and antislavery Squier. Yet ­because his superiors in the Taylor administration opposed overseas expansion, he had to reject Nicaragua’s request for greater U.S. protection.26 Squier’s treaty nonetheless advanced the Americanization of Nicaragua. Above all, it made it easier for U.S. citizens to obtain land, especially beyond the country’s heartland, which stretched from Rivas to Chinandega. This concession, together with the colonization clause in the canal contract, underscored how Nicaragua sought to attract U.S. settlers. This was even true of the Catholic Church, which elsewhere in Latin Amer­i­ca often opposed the immigration of Protestants. The country’s Catholic bishop confided to Squier that Nicaraguans wanted “an infusion of your p ­ eople, to make this broad land an Eden of beauty, and the garden of the world.” The bishop knew what he was talking about, as he had visited the United States in 1838.27 Squier further fueled Nicaraguan desires for closer relations with El  Norte by invoking the Monroe Doctrine. Through speeches and newspaper articles, he reiterated the doctrine’s main point: the republics of the New World needed to jointly oppose the colonizing schemes of the Old World’s monarchic powers—­especially ­Great Britain. This idea of continental unity was embraced by Nicaraguan officials, who helped

26

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Squier spread it to the rest of Central Amer­i­ca. That the doctrine was then ­little known might seem puzzling, for President James Monroe’s message of 1823 is now considered “as foundational to U.S. foreign policy as is the U.S. Constitution.” And Squier did sell it as if it ­were a U.S. tradition. In real­ity, Monroe’s declaration made ­little impact at the time. Not ­until 1845 did President Polk reinvent the Monroe Doctrine to justify U.S. annexation of Oregon, Texas, and the Mexican states of New Mexico and California.28 Squier easily convinced proannexationist Central Americans about the merits of the Monroe Doctrine, and he had no trou­ble swaying t­ hose leery of U.S. annexation, as the doctrine seemingly echoed the continentalism of Latin Amer­i­ca’s main in­de­pen­dence hero Simón Bolívar. In real­ity, the Bolivarian ideal implicitly excluded the United States, while the Monroe Doctrine celebrated the po­liti­cal unity of the Western Hemi­sphere. Yet this difference appeared minor at the time, for few Latin Americans recognized the perils of a doctrine that championed U.S. unilateralism in the name of republicanism, democracy, and anticolonialism. Only with the 1850s spread of U.S. filibusterism did Latin Americans realize how the Monroe Doctrine promoted, as a Guatemalan diplomat cynically noted, “the wonderful idea, that the happiness of the p ­ eople of the w ­ hole continent of both Amer­i­cas, depends on their subjection to this [U.S.] republic, maintaining that the manifest destiny of the latter, is to make the princi­ples and interests of all other nations, to conform to her own princi­ples and interests.”29 Indeed, the Monroe Doctrine is closer to Manifest Destiny than commonly thought; not by chance ­were both names coined in the same year. In 1849, however, Manifest Destiny still remained a vague idea to many Latin Americans. Moreover, few Central Americans realized that Squier shared Manifest Destiny’s unstated belief that Anglo-­Saxons ­were the most superior race and that race mixing doomed Latin Amer­i­ca to backwardness.30 Squier’s racist views ­were not readily apparent to Nicaraguans, as he was anything but the ste­reo­typical ugly American. Unlike other U.S. envoys, the gregarious twenty-­eight-­year-­old did not confine himself to the capital and its elite circle but traveled throughout the country and interacted with all sectors of society. He l­ ater recorded his travels in books and articles that w ­ ere popu­lar in the United States, although he never pub-



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licly acknowledged his de­pen­dency on his African American interpreter Benjamin Harris. Among the envoy’s closest Nicaraguan acquaintances ­were mulatto Liberals from León and members of its indigenous community (Sutiava), who peppered him with questions about the fate of indigenous ­peoples in the United States. Squier is now best known for his archaeological excursions to pre-­Columbian ruins, especially ­those situated on the island of Zapatera in Lake Nicaragua. But he also conducted extensive ethnographic research, compiling an indigenous vocabulary and observing bullfights, street theater, and religious festivals.31 Squier’s published accounts ­shaped U.S. perceptions of Nicaragua. Given his own racist beliefs, it is ironic that his repre­sen­ta­tion of local race relations led prominent black emigrationists, such as Martin Delany, to deem Nicaragua an ideal home for African Americans seeking to flee U.S. racism. What most impressed them was Squier’s depiction of the isthmus as a racial paradise. Not only had slavery been abolished in 1824 following in­de­pen­dence from Spain but “the fusion among all portions of the population of Nicaragua has been so complete, that notwithstanding the diversity of races, distinctions of caste are hardly recognized. The whites, in social intercourse, maintain a certain degree of exclusion, but in all other relations the completest equality prevails.” In Squier’s eyes, this equality would not exist “if the white population was proportionably greater, and possessed the physical power to keep up the distinctions which naturally separate the superior and inferior families of men.”32 In real­ity, local race relations ­were far more charged. Squier rightly noted that the vast majority of Nicaraguans ­were nonwhites of the Pacific littoral—an area encompassing less than a quarter of the country. Drawing on the 1846 census, he calculated that “whites” made up about 10 ­percent of Nicaragua’s 250,000-­some inhabitants, “negroes” 6 ­percent, “Indians” 32 ­percent, and “mixed” 52 ­percent. T ­ hese percentages should be viewed with caution, for not only w ­ ere censuses of the era notoriously inaccurate but racial identities ­were highly fluid. Still, Squier correctly surmised that many “mixed” Nicaraguans ­were not just mestizos (offspring of Indians and whites) but also mulattoes who in the United States would be considered ­free blacks.33 “Indian,” however, was a more unstable category than that ­imagined by Squier. Indianness had long been defined by cultural markers—­especially

28

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distinct language, dress, and religious customs—as well as membership in communidades indígenas (indigenous communities), which elected their own officials and whose lands ­were held collectively. By the mid-­ nineteenth ­century ­these markers had weakened in much of the Pacific littoral. In addition, indigenous communities ­were being undermined by the expanding rural economy—an expansion that not only intensified the emigration of non-­Indians (ladinos) into areas controlled by such communities but also drove elites and ladino-­controlled villages to attack their autonomy in order to secure land and ­labor. The resulting tensions helped fuel the popu­lar revolts witnessed by Gordon’s men—­and would complicate Walker’s efforts to forge a new state.34 Squier overlooked how racial issues fed the Liberal-­Conservative conflict as well. Contrary to his belief, Conservative leaders, who tended to be wealthy “whites” from Granada, fretted about the country’s racial diversity. Many followed f­uture president Fruto Chamorro (1853–1855) in maintaining that “the desire to reestablish absolute equality between the races c­ auses ­g reat detriment to social well-­being.” They insisted that whites ­were superior to nonwhites and should lead the nation. Liberal leaders, by contrast, strug­gled for the racial equality so fiercely denounced by Conservative oligarchs. The Liberal Party had recently been taken over by upwardly mobile mulattoes from León who shared a history of racial discrimination and pursued “a strategy of deracialization.” Perhaps ­because Squier spent so much time in their stronghold, he failed to fully grasp the racialized nature of local politics.35 As much as leading Liberals of African descent championed racial equality, they nonetheless joined Conservative oligarchs in believing that their sparsely-­populated country could only benefit from the massive immigration of white settlers from Eu­rope and the United States. And both groups believed that Squier was paving the way for U.S. settlers to flock to their shores. This helps explain why a deeply divided Nicaragua showed such unity in championing the envoy as their savior. Squier’s dealings certainly engendered anti-­U.S. sentiments. Dissident elites unsuccessfully sought to provoke a popu­lar uprising by claiming his treaty would allow U.S. settlers to overrun Nicaragua, usurp farms, and ruin the “soldier, artist, artisan, worker, and priest.” Yet most con­temporary



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29

accounts stress that Nicaraguans of all classes celebrated the treaty as the start of an era of unimagined prosperity.36 Nicaraguan hopes for closer ties with El Norte ­were dampened by events in Washington, DC. The ruling Whigs rejected Squier’s treaty, fearing it would lead to U.S. annexation of Nicaragua. Then, in April 1850, the U.S. and British governments signed the Clayton-­Bulwer Treaty to check their rivalry over the isthmus. Both pledged to jointly realize and control the Nicaraguan canal, with the Taylor administration expecting the British to fund the massive undertaking. Vanderbilt was happy, for the treaty ensured British support for his canal proj­ect. Nicaraguans, by contrast, resented how it minimized their participation in the canal. The treaty also called on both powers not to occupy or colonize any part of Central Amer­i­ca. This was the only time the U.S. government signed a treaty that forbade U.S. territorial expansion. To the chagrin of Nicaraguans, the treaty hardly weakened British control of their Ca­r ib­bean coast.37 Still, Nicaragua’s leaders continued to believe in the United States. Their optimism stemmed mainly from their enchantment with Squier. Local newspapers asserted that the ex-­envoy—­not his superiors—­ embodied the spirit of the U.S. p ­ eople and reported on his crusade against the Clayton-­Bulwer Treaty in the United States. In addition, the treaty’s vagueness about the f­ uture of the British protectorate allowed Nicaraguans to hope that the United States would help them recuperate control of San Juan del Norte. Most impor­tant, the treaty committed the United States to realizing Nicaragua’s destiny—­the canal—­and did not preclude it from becoming more Americanized through settlement by U.S. colonists.38 Shortly ­after the treaty’s conclusion, Nicaraguan hopes ­were buoyed when Vanderbilt not only sent engineers to survey the canal but also dispatched river and lake steamers to the isthmus. Nicaragua’s envoy in the United States predicted that Vanderbilt’s actions would unleash a wave of “immigration of active men, who w ­ ill bring us industry and the arts”—­a prediction that came true in the form of Walker’s colonists.39

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III At first Nicaraguans feared the commodore had abandoned them. In ­November  1849 Vanderbilt had promised that his steamers would be plying their ­waters within sixty days and that “a complete line of communication from New York to California” would be up and r­unning within ninety days. Yet not u­ ntil July 1851 did he inaugurate his route, and by then Nicaragua had already experienced a flood of U.S. visitors, as many gold rushers started to return home and the vast majority could afford the journey by sea. While most chose the Panama route, from about May 1850 onward returnees increasingly crossed Nicaragua, largely ­because it was cheaper to sail from San Francisco to Realejo than to Panama. The Nicaraguan transit became so popu­lar that, by January  1851, over four thousand returnees had used it. ­These overwhelmingly male transients introduced Nicaraguans to what ­later became known as “the American way of life.” 40 The transit’s revival pleasantly surprised Nicaraguans. Many joined a local newspaper in believing the North Americans ­were bringing “new hope” to their country. As was true of Gordon’s men, the visitors delighted Nicaraguans by being big spenders. A Leonese newspaper estimated that each transient spent at least forty U.S. dollars—­a figure that dwarfed the 12.5 cents a local laborer typically earned per day. And with over a thousand travelers passing through each month, the transit generated monthly sales about four times the size of the government’s monthly revenues. A transient noted that the sums “left ­here by the Americans” benefited “all classes,” while the British consul in Realejo claimed that “the money which has lately been thrown into circulation has been in a ­great mea­sure among the poorer classes.” The transit enriched small-­scale farmers, food sellers, cartmen, and sailors, as well as indigenous ­women who rolled cigars and artisans who produced transit-­related goods such as hammocks, hats, and saddlebags.41 The U.S. visitors represented more than economic hope. They ­were destined, as the Nicaraguan government stressed, to “civilize” the country by making it more like the United States. This Americanization took vari­ous forms. For Nicaraguans it was first noticeable in the rise of U.S. businesses, which often flew the Stars and Stripes. All along the overland



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CANADA Missouri

Boston Mis

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

siss ipp

M is sou ri

i

Sacramento

Chicago

Council Bluffs

San Francisco

Mineral Point

Philadelphia Pittsburgh

New York

Washington, DC

KANSAS TERRITORY

Nashville Missis sipp i

CALIFORNIA NEW MEXICO TERRITORY

TEXAS

Charleston

Dallas

SONORA

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Mobile

New Orleans Galveston

BAJA CALIFORNIA

Gulf of Mexico

Havana CUBA (SPAIN)

MEXICO

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

Camagüey HAITI

YUCATÁN

JAMAICA (GB) BRITISH HONDURAS (GB)

Acapulco PACIFIC OCEAN

Trujillo

HONDURAS

GUATEMALA EL SALVADOR

Caribbean Sea

NICARAGUA

San Juan del Sur COSTA RICA

San Juan del Norte Aspinwall Puntarenas Panama City PANAMA (NEW GRANADA)

Ma p 1 . 2 ​Nicaragua and Panama routes

route, U.S. citizens established ­hotels with En­glish names such as the American H ­ otel and Travelers Home. Some also tried to corner the market for the transportation between Realejo and Granada. Yet ­others aimed to carry transients across the internal waterway on boats brought from California. U.S. entrepreneurialism quickly spread beyond the transit sector. Numerous transients bought farms and mines, with some located far off the beaten track. ­Others settled in towns, where they established businesses ranging from dry goods stores and pharmacies to a “machine shop for the purpose of manufacturing and repairing arms.” 42 Nicaraguans and foreigners further noted the country’s Americanization in the number of c­ hildren fathered by U.S. transients. A returning gold rusher recorded in his diary that Nicaraguan w ­ omen “showed us their white picaninies [sic], & said Americano. They feel very proud of

32

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them.” This statement echoed the widespread belief of U.S. expansionists that the Americanization of Latin American nations could be accomplished through sexual u­nions between U.S. men and native ­women—­unions that, due to the alleged racial superiority of Anglo-­ Saxons, would presumably produce ­children more like the f­ ather.43 Some Nicaraguans appear to have valorized such form of racial whitening. Thus asserted an elite individual from the town of Masaya, a popu­lar stop for transients, that indigenous families “rent[ed] their d ­ aughters to whites . . . ​on the condition that the child of such a ­union remain with the ­family of the m ­ other.” ­There is evidence to suggest that Masaya Indians promoted such a whitening of their population. Moreover, similar views ­were expressed by proimmigration elites throughout Latin Amer­i­ca. So even if Americanization via sexual relations was a U.S. fantasy, it was one likely shared by some Nicaraguans.44 Nicaraguan ­women had ample opportunities to maintain sexual relations with U.S. visitors. Some encountered their partners in private homes that rented rooms to the travelers, while ­others met them in gambling dens. But such sexual encounters ­were mainly initiated at so-­called fandangos. Originally the name of a lively Spanish American dance, in the California gold fields fandango came to mean a rowdy dance hall and the goings-on therein. In Nicaragua, most fandangos took place in h­ otels, inns, and boarding h­ ouses. As in California, they ­were events where transients not only sang, danced, and drank with native ­women but also found sexual partners.45 Not all sexual liaisons ­were fleeting, for U.S. transients married local ­women. This was the kind of Americanization that some elite Nicaraguans hoped for, though most ­women entering such marriages reportedly came from “the poorer classes.” A few transients took their Nicaraguan brides back to the United States; many more stayed put. A good example was the Connecticut native John Deshon, who founded a f­ amily that has belonged to the Nicaraguan elite up to the pres­ent day. According to f­ amily lore, the thirty-­n ine-­year-­old Deshon and his younger b­ rother Francis ­were California-­bound gold seekers who had fallen in love with w ­ omen from León. While ­little is known about Francis’s subsequent life, John joined the city’s elite via marriage to a native ­woman.46



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33

The case of Deshon illustrates how transients could reinforce Nicaraguans’ valorization of U.S. entrepreneurialism. Shortly ­after his arrival, he acquired a sugar plantation that mea­sured about forty thousand acres and employed around 150 workers. Deshon bought the estate with the wealthy U.S. Jewish merchant Henry Myers. While Deshon ran the estate, Myers provided the necessary funds and lived in León. The two had met in Mobile, Alabama, where Deshon owned one of the largest steam sawmills in the South. While Deshon possessed slaves, he was also known for using modern machinery. A ­ fter spending much money on expensive mill equipment, Deshon went bankrupt. He never recuperated from this disaster—­that is, ­until he moved to Nicaragua. With the help of Myers’s capital, Deshon reinvented himself as the paradigm of U.S. entrepreneurialism and became famous for modernizing Nicaragua’s sugar industry and introducing U.S. products such as the steel plow and the sewing machine.47 Indeed, the transit deepened the Americanization of Nicaragua by introducing U.S. goods. Some w ­ ere imported by Nicaraguan visitors to the United States. Far more w ­ ere brought by the transients, who sold them to local residents. Nicaraguans showed such interest in them that the government clamped down on contraband sales by forcing the transients to pay an import tax. Most of all, Nicaraguans desired U.S.-­made clothes, including the red flannel shirts so popu­lar among the gold rushers. ­Nicaraguans cared ­little that they ­were inappropriate for the tropics. Elite men and ­women eagerly bought tight-­fitting heavy clothes made for colder climates, such as tailcoats with stiff neckbands or high-­neck dresses with long sleeves. Their embrace of “intolerable” attires led a German observer to joke that “the propaganda of the fashions makes many more converts than that of religious faith.” The popularity of U.S. fashion in Nicaragua underscores the claim that the growing uniformity of the world during the nineteenth ­century was readily evident in the adoption of “Western dress.” 48 The desire of Nicaraguans to imitate the North Americans also led them to embrace U.S. cultural forms. This was especially true of songs and dances that Nicaraguans learned from the transients. Among the most popu­lar songs was “Oh! Susanna,” the unofficial hymn of the Gold Rush.

34

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As to the dances, the polka had perhaps the most enduring impact. It is likely that Nicaraguans copied other pastimes from the Gold Rush, such as the games of chance played in the gambling dens that former gold rushers established along the transit route. Another pastime was bowling, whose commercial potential seemed so g­ reat that a U.S. resident sought to construct an alley with four lanes in the plaza of Granada. Nicaraguans might have even been introduced to prize fighting, as one of the era’s most famous U.S. bare-­k nuckle fighters, Christopher Lilly, lived with his wife for several years in Realejo.49 The interest of Nicaraguans in U.S. culture was noticeable in their eagerness to learn En­glish. Transients often reported that ­people from all walks of life uttered En­glish words. While most picked up En­glish on the fly, some wealthier Nicaraguans took classes taught by the U.S. visitors. ­Others learned it by reading U.S. newspapers that, thanks to the transit, circulated widely. Yet o­ thers drew on English-­language Bibles. One thriving U.S. Bible seller admitted that his success had less to do with the religious fervor of Nicaraguans than with their “­g reat desire . . . ​to learn the En­glish language.” So many Nicaraguans sought to learn En­ glish that a Spanish envoy moaned the language of Cervantes had “completely dis­appeared.” With Nicaragua becoming Americanized, he feared it would soon “be part of the United States.”50 Spanish was hardly disappearing. Moreover, the envoy overlooked how the visitors began to trou­ble Nicaraguans, leading some to equate North Americans with “brutes.” The misconduct of U.S. visitors included the religious insensitivity previously shown by Gordon’s men. Many U.S. entrepreneurs proved to be first-­class swindlers, leading even some U.S. travelers “to patronize no more American ­houses.” Then t­ here ­were the drunken transients who wreaked havoc. To “uphold public morality,” the government prohibited the sale of foreign liquor outside urban centers. Anti-­U.S. sentiments ­were fanned by abusive employers. A U.S. cotton farmer on the island of Ometepe was so despotic that his workers r­ ose up, murdered his U.S. wife, and torched his ­house. Yet anti-­U.S. vio­lence was rare. More common ­were complaints about how the influx of transients sent food prices soaring. Some politicians sought to prohibit the export of food to California and Panama. Their efforts w ­ ere to no avail, precisely b­ ecause many Nicaraguans benefited from the Gold Rush.51



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35

IV Americanization often engenders anti-­A mericanism, as was true of Gold Rush Panama, which quickly came u­ nder control of U.S. transportation companies. Yet if local newspapers are to be believed, most Nicaraguans welcomed U.S. visitors. The transit through the heartland remained in native hands and enriched members of all social classes. In addition, the United States was seen as defending Nicaraguan sovereignty against the British. Transients often noted how Nicaraguans w ­ ere “very friendly and [thought] much of the Americans,” eagerly opening their homes to them. Up to Walker’s arrival, Nicaraguans continued to tell visitors how they valorized los Americanos.52 Transients may have misrepresented Nicaraguan views. Still, local newspapers clearly supported the influx of U.S. immigrants. This was also true of Nicaragua’s two main institutions: the church and the state. The church allowed Protestants to marry natives and be buried in cemeteries, while high-­ranking clergy called for religious tolerance and the embrace of U.S. immigrants. The government in turn passed laws to ensure that U.S. citizens could fully participate in the economy.53 Many elite Nicaraguans hoped the transients would follow the example of Squier and pressure the U.S. government to end the British occupation of San Juan del Norte. The visitors did not disappoint. A group of ninety-­four transients sent a petition to their Congress demanding that the U.S. military expel the British occupiers. This petition was subsequently published in León’s Correo del Istmo.54 The petitioners stressed that the Nicaraguan transit was destined to be the “principal line of communication between the United States of the East and California,” for it was “easier, faster, cheaper, and more healthy” than the Panama crossing. They asserted that Nicaragua was “the only feasible route for a maritime canal.” Such views reflected greater U.S. interest in constructing a canal through Nicaragua than through Panama. The warm reception also stemmed from Nicaraguans’ valorization of U.S. entrepreneurialism. The Correo del Istmo exalted two men from Mineral Point, Wisconsin, who sought to reach California with a schooner aptly named Enterprise. A ­ fter carry­ing the boat to the Mississippi, they journeyed downriver and across the Ca­r ib­bean to San Juan del Norte.

36

“The Apple in Our Eden”

From ­there they planned to sail to Granada and then carry the Enterprise to Realejo. The paper marveled at such ingenuity and viewed the Wisconsinites as the “vanguard” of U.S. entrepreneurs who would soon flock to Nicaragua. In the end the men crossed the isthmus at Panama. Their failure to use the local transit did l­ ittle to dampen Nicaraguans’ idealization of U.S. entrepreneurialism; nor was it curbed by the many U.S. businesses that went awry. U.S.-­style enterprises ­were not inherently better than local ones, yet few rich Nicaraguans shared this view.55 The Correo del Istmo echoed elite views—­and prevailing U.S. ­prejudices—by contrasting Yankee entrepreneurialism with the laziness supposedly marking poor Nicaraguans. The greatest elite ste­reo­type was that the poor wanted nothing more than to sleep in hammocks. To root out this “cursed indolence,” the government sought to inculcate the masses with the “spirit of industry” that had allegedly made the United States so prosperous. Local officials believed the poor would best acquire the “speculative genius” by coming into contact with enterprising Yankees. And many Nicaraguans did. Some even opened businesses with them, as when a Nicaraguan and a U.S. citizen established the largest ­hotel in León, which they fittingly named the Friendship H ­ otel.56 Far more Nicaraguans proved to be entrepreneurial without U.S. aid. Local newspapers often reported how some Nicaraguans founded ­hotels and transportation lines while ­others built roads, wharves, and docks. A few even forged new types of businesses, such as an ice cream parlor that served “delicate sorbets” to the transients. Such proj­ects ­were often undertaken by elite individuals. Yet ordinary Nicaraguans also participated in the transit business. This was true of the many peasants who produced food for the hungry transients; the muleteers, cartmen, and bongo men who transported the travelers; the market w ­ omen who sold food and other products to the spendthrift transients; and the carpenters who helped build and restore h­ ouses to accommodate the visitors. So strong was the entrepreneurial spirit of ordinary Nicaraguans that a foreign observer noted how “native speculation and energy . . . ​assumed even something of the character of Yankee extravagance.” Yet local elites insisted that the masses desperately needed an injection of Yankee entrepreneurialism.57 Such views reflected the way many elite Nicaraguans stressed their Eu­ ro­pean heritage and saw themselves as members of a superior white race,



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37

while deeming the nonwhite majority racially inferior subjects. But they ­were also ­shaped by the popu­lar rebellions of 1845–1849, which posed an unpre­ce­dented threat to elite power. Rich Nicaraguans hoped that the influx of white U.S. settlers would reinforce their hold over the rebellious folk. ­Little could they foresee that U.S. colonists led by William Walker would help poor Nicaraguans launch a revolution against them. Valorizing U.S. entrepreneurialism would prove to be a double-­edged sword for elite Nicaraguans. The U.S. trait that Nicaraguans most openly admired was technological advance. This valorization was on vivid display when Granadans thronged the city’s beach to greet the first steamer to ply Lake Nicaragua: Vanderbilt’s 120-­ton Director, which arrived on New Year’s Day, 1851. ­Locals marveled at the sight of the “ingenious machine” whose large wheels beat the lake into “sparkling foam” and bright lamps lit up the night. The double-­deck steamer conveyed up to four hundred passengers across the lake in eigh­teen hours—­a trip that took the smaller bongos up to ten days when facing headwind. (The com­pany l­ ater inaugurated a steamer that carried fifteen hundred passengers.) 58 Like many ­peoples of the era, Nicaraguans deemed steamers the symbol of U.S. technological superiority and thus of Manifest Destiny. True, the U.S. public viewed the train as the embodiment of their country’s “expansive, progressive, inventive” character. Trains stand at the center of U.S. paintings celebrating Manifest Destiny, such as John Gast’s iconic American Pro­g ress. Elsewhere, however, U.S. expansion came by sea. Steamers often dominate non-­U.S. depictions of Manifest Destiny, as is true of the famous images of Matthew Perry’s expedition to Japan. If railroads ­were “the greatest revolutionists of the age,” steamers also represented a “radical technological break” and ­were seen as “the product of a high state of civilization.” Nicaraguans had good reason to believe the Director’s arrival would usher in a new era of unpre­ce­dented material and technological pro­gress.59 Its appearance strengthened the Nicaraguan belief that Vanderbilt was committed to the canal. Any lingering doubts ­were erased by his surprise visit to Nicaragua a few weeks a­ fter the Director’s arrival. In Granada the commodore met with authorities to discuss the canal proj­ect. He also visited his engineers in Rivas, who had not yet completed their work.

38

“The Apple in Our Eden”

Nicaraguans expected that Vanderbilt would meet with government officials in León and inspect potential canal routes in that region. But ­because his engineers ­were still in Rivas, he told the Nicaraguan head of state that it made ­l ittle sense for him to travel north. His failure to visit the capital deeply disappointed León’s elite, as it did Granadans who ­were stunned when the commodore returned to New York ­after spending not even two weeks in their region.60 Nicaraguans nonetheless looked to the f­ uture with confidence, proud of how the burgeoning transit put them on the global map. Such views ­were echoed from afar, as when Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote in a German journal that San Juan del Norte and León together with New York and San Francisco ­were “becoming what Tyre, Carthage, and Alexandria ­were in antiquity, what Genoa and Venice ­were in the ­Middle Ages, and what London and Liverpool have been hitherto—­the emporia of world commerce.” Eu­ro­pe­ans did not simply wax lyrical about Nicaragua but sought it out. Among such visitors was the famous Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, who lived in Granada and León for five months. As its head of state claimed, Nicaragua was becoming a “cosmopolitan nation.” 61

V Yet just when the f­uture looked brighter than ever for Nicaraguans, Vanderbilt broke faith with them by redirecting the transit away from the country’s heartland to a sparsely populated region. By transforming the transit into a U.S.-­dominated enclave, the tycoon jeopardized Nicaragua’s sense of destiny—­and its close ties with El Norte. Vanderbilt ushered in his enclave with the inauguration of the Nicaragua line on July 14, 1851. To ­g reat fanfare the Prometheus and the ­Pacific departed from New York and San Francisco. While the Prometheus sailed into San Juan del Norte with Vanderbilt aboard, the Pacific did not anchor at Realejo as expected but went farther south to the empty beach of San Juan del Sur. The transients ­were put on mules that carried them twelve miles to the village of La Virgen (Virgin Bay), on the shore of Lake Nicaragua, from where they took the Director to the San Juan River. Twenty-­five miles downstream, they transferred to bongos that carried



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39

them over three rapids. They then took a stern-­wheel steamer to San Juan del Norte, where the Prometheus awaited them. They arrived in New York twenty-­nine days ­after leaving San Francisco, besting the fastest run of the Panama route by two days. The new line coordinated the schedule of Nicaragua-­bound steamers that departed e­ very two weeks from New ­Orleans, New York, and San Francisco. By 1853 it was carry­ing over twenty-­five hundred transients per month, making it as popu­lar as the Panama route. Vanderbilt’s route became “one of the most lucrative lines of transportation” in U.S. history—­and he did every­thing to block Nicaraguans from sharing the wealth.62 Vanderbilt’s route shocked Nicaraguans. They assumed that his engineers had been working on the canal survey when in fact their main task was to construct a road between La Virgen and San Juan del Sur. The new route shortened the transit by about 150 miles. Since it went through a sparsely-­populated area, it allowed Vanderbilt to exert greater control over the transit at the expense of Nicaraguans. With the new transit, the torrent of travelers passing through the heartland turned into a trickle. Most transit-­related ventures folded, hurting the rich and the poor. New businesses emerged along Vanderbilt’s route, yet most w ­ ere U.S.-­owned. The German resident Julius Fröbel spoke for many Nicaraguans in asserting that the new route “could have but l­ittle influence on industrial development. Even the contact into which the natives are brought with foreigners, by that road, is of very inconsiderable effect. Passengers are transported in a rapid and w ­ holesale manner, and generally not even a conversation is pos­si­ble.” A market ­woman put it more bluntly: “Why does el presidente let this com­pany take p ­ eople through our country, and make so much money, when they w ­ on’t let the passen63 gers stop and buy our ­things from us?”  Vanderbilt endangered Nicaragua’s canal dreams. On August 14, 1851, his agent got the government to revise the contract so that his mono­poly over the transit was no longer linked to the canal. The tycoon sought this change b­ ecause of rumors that the Nicaraguan government was so upset over delays to his canal proj­ect that it was about to transfer the transit mono­poly to another com­pany. He returned to Nicaragua in July 1851 not so much to celebrate his new line as to save it. In Granada, Vanderbilt and his associate Joseph White met with government officials. Some

40

“The Apple in Our Eden”

observers claimed that the commodore encouraged dissident elites to rise up. ­W hether true or not, a military revolt broke out the day he left for New York. White used the uprising to renegotiate the canal contract. In exchange for arms and bribes, he swayed the beleaguered government to transfer the mono­poly to the newly-­founded Accessory Transit Com­pany (ATC), which was owned by Vanderbilt yet in­de­pen­dent of his canal com­pany.64 With the revised contract, Vanderbilt’s ATC turned the transit into an Americanized enclave. When Walker arrived in 1855, the enclave already appeared as if it w ­ ere part of the United States. As an ATC employee noted, the com­pany’s “steamers ­were American vessels, bearing the United States flag, commanded by citizens of the United States, and ­were exclusively engaged in the transportation of United States mails, passengers, specie, and freight.” The carriages hauling the passengers ­were painted in the colors of the Nicaraguan and U.S. flags, while their interiors w ­ ere “ornamented with emblematic paintings of scenes in California and Nicaragua.” This was the com­pany’s ideal image of the transit: the only t­ hing Nicaraguan about it was the landscape.65 The ATC tried hard to exclude Nicaraguans from the transit business. If U.S. transportation companies in Panama relied on non-­U.S. laborers, the ATC filled even the most menial positions with U.S. citizens, paying them salaries “usually fifty p ­ ercent more than in New York.” Its man­ag­ers preferred to hire the more expensive U.S. workers, as they deemed their compatriots more productive, competent, and reliable than Nicaraguans. But with its hiring practices the ATC also sought to minimize Nicaraguan influence over the transit.66 At the same time, the ATC supported U.S. businesses along the transit route. While some w ­ ere farms that provided food for the transients, most ­were U.S.-­style ­hotels, taverns, and stores. Perhaps the most popu­lar was the American ­Hotel, a halfway ­house on the transit road. A number ­were owned by ATC steamboat captains. Travelers often complained that the captains delayed their departures to sell liquor, food, and, lodging. That this was a lucrative business is suggested by the sum of about three thousand dollars that transients typically left ­behind when stopping at the two ­hotels in El Castillo, where they took the short railway to bypass the rapids.67



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41

F igu r e 1 . 3 ​Transients gathered in front of the American ­Hotel, located at the halfway point of the transit road between San Juan del Sur and La Virgin. Source: “Half-­way ­house on road to San Juan,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, August 16, 1856. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZ62-60933-A).

Thanks to the new route, Americanized towns sprung up in lifeless areas. No spot was more transformed than San Juan del Sur. When transients first landed t­ here in 1851, they found “only a very few thatched-­roof huts,” but by 1855 it had well over five hundred residents and was filled with U.S.-­style frame h­ ouses and U.S.-­owned businesses. It even had an “American cemetery.” U.S. residents w ­ ere mostly single men, but a number came with their wives and c­ hildren. So Americanized was the town that one of Walker’s men claimed it was “entirely the creation of the Nicaragua Transit Com­pany.” 68 Actually, San Juan del Sur was not a com­pany town. Why e­ lse ­were its residents able to block the ATC from imposing a U.S. citizen as their mayor? Moreover, the ATC owned no stores and hardly any

42

“The Apple in Our Eden”

buildings in the port, while few of its employees lived t­ here. Rather, the town was built by p ­ eople who had been lured by the transit yet w ­ ere in­de­pen­dent of the ATC. Its population included Chinese, Eu­ro­pe­a ns, and South Americans. It also had a strong local bent, for most residents ­were Nicaraguans who lived in native-­style huts. While some worked for U.S. employers, many o­ thers sold food, beverages, sex, and laundry ser­v ices to the transients. Much of the fare consumed in the port came from Rivas and Granada, which also provided food for transit towns as far away as San Juan del Norte. As much as Vanderbilt’s enclave hurt the Nicaraguan heartland, it generated large demand for local products.69 Even the ATC could not do without Nicaraguan workers. This was manifest the moment the transients sailed into San Juan del Sur. ­Because the steamers had to anchor half a mile from shore, the passengers w ­ ere brought in by native boatmen; to the shock of many white U.S. travelers, especially w ­ omen, they rode the last bit on the bare backs of men of color. For the trip to La Virgen, the ATC hired about a hundred native muleteers working for a com­pany run by Nicaragua’s f­uture president Evaristo Carazo (1887–1889). The ATC used Nicaraguans to guard the California gold shipped across the transit, and it depended on Nicaraguans to run its steamers. Former bongo men helped steer them up and down the tricky river, while native woodcutters delivered the fuel and local farmers provided fresh food. The ATC relied on native workers to macadamize the transit road so that heavy rains no longer caused mules and transients to get stuck in the mud.70 In helping to create this lucrative enclave, Nicaraguans earned wages far higher than ­those offered by native employers. In exchange, they had to adapt to a U.S.-­style ­labor regime. The ATC promoted the U.S. princi­ple of rationalization, which sought “to systematically or­ga­nize economic life, individual h­ uman beings and nature itself to achieve maximum efficiency in production.” If ATC man­ag­ers bent the Nicaraguan land-­and waterscape to the transit’s needs, they pushed their employees to achieve maximum efficiency, reliability, and productivity in order to better compete with the Panama route.71 The Americanization of ATC’s native workers grabbed the attention of Squier when he returned to Nicaragua in 1853. He noted that former



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43

bongo men who manned his U.S.-­built launch “­were more serious, never sang, and seldom said their prayers”—­unlike t­ hose who had carried him in 1849. The boatmen, who used to work scantily clad, now had to conform to U.S. sensibilities by wearing clothes. They also endured a new time discipline. As Squier noted, Nicaraguans typically used “time as if  each man had an eternity in store, and the stranger, accustomed to the . . . ​energy of their countries is confounded, annoyed, in fact almost crazed by the hateful inattention and carelessness of the ­people, but particularly t­ hose who work for wages.” Nicaraguans working for the ATC, in contrast, had their work hours recorded by their U.S. supervisors—­a practice that, as E. P. Thompson famously argued, is a hallmark of industrial capitalism. The com­pany’s hierarchical culture—­and its higher salaries—­divided the tight-­k nit community of bongo men, who had long valorized a communal spirit that stood against the individualism marking the corporate culture emerging in the United States. Squier viewed their Americanization not as a sign of creative adaptation but as a cultural loss resulting from the “subordination [of] the swarthy inferior races . . . ​to the white man.”72 ATC’s efforts to Americanize native workers came up against re­sis­ tance. While the com­pany never experienced a major strike, it was constantly plagued by low-­level challenges to abusive U.S. overseers. The ATC faced its greatest opposition from the indigenous community of the island of Ometepe, whose forested shores provided it with wood used to fuel the lake steamers. Over seventy men from the community worked as woodcutters and did not hesitate to denounce their U.S. supervisors. ATC operations also angered the bongo men plying the San Juan River. At first they feared being driven out of business. This became a moot point once they realized that the com­pany was uninterested in the San Juan del Norte–­Granada route. Tensions instead centered on the waves generated by the steamers. T ­ hings came to a boil in May 1854, when an ATC captain fatally shot a leader of Granadan bongo men ­after his steamer rammed the latter’s bongo. This murder was the exception. While conflicts between bongo men and steamboat captains ­were common, they rarely turned violent. And b­ ecause the ATC did not threaten their livelihoods, bongo men never developed the anti-­U.S. sentiments of Panamanian

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boatmen who had been ruined by the transisthmic railroad that was completed in 1855.73 The greatest thorn in the ATC’s side was the Nicaraguan state. From the start, the com­pany opposed state authority over the transit. To bolster its power, the ATC helped local communities undermine the encroaching state. In par­tic­u­lar, its agents hindered state officials from pressing members of rural communities into military ser­vice or forcing them to work on public proj­ects for f­ree. In exchange, the ATC gained access to native laborers. Along the transit, then, the ATC enjoyed relatively good relations with local communities, as both sought to resist greater state intervention.74 The ATC further clashed with the government over its refusal to pay the required annual fee of ten thousand dollars plus 10 ­percent of profits. Vanderbilt privately admitted that his capital in the com­pany was “better invested than any eleven millions in the United States.” Yet his ATC insisted it was losing money and thus not required to make the payments. This blatant lie angered cash-­strapped Nicaraguan officials, and as the conflict escalated, local resentment of the com­pany intensified. When Walker arrived in 1855, its relations with the government had deteriorated to the point that, as an ATC official put it, “the impression is general, almost universal, in this country that the Com­pany is not disposed to deal fairly with the State.” The com­pany’s “unfair” treatment intensified anti-­U.S. sentiments more generally. The Nicaraguan president most hurt by the conflict, Fruto Chamorro, was also the most critical of the U.S. transients and proposed special mea­sures to control t­ hose settling along the transit route.75 The ATC’s heavy-­handedness notwithstanding, pro-­U.S. sentiments prevailed. In fact, it pushed members of Chamorro’s government to seek closer relations with El Norte, with some even calling for Nicaragua’s ­annexation to the United States. Such calls sprung from their belief that the U.S. government supported their strug­gle against the ATC. And a few U.S. diplomats did take their side, albeit only in private. The ex-­envoy Squier had no qualms about openly denouncing the ATC; in a letter published in Nicaragua’s main newspaper, he stressed that Washington would look forward to transferring the transit concession to a more pliable U.S. com­pany. What most pleased Nicaraguans was his claim that the new



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com­pany would restore the transit’s original route. ­Little did they know that the U.S. government remained bent on protecting Vanderbilt.76 By the time of Walker’s arrival, Nicaraguan experiences with Vanderbilt’s transit had been largely negative. Still, few viewed the waterway as a curse. ­After all, many had been enriched and Americanized by the transit that first went through the heartland. They resented Vanderbilt’s betrayal. When Walker promised to restore the original route and build the canal, he easily gained their support. Only by distinguishing between the two routes, and understanding their impact through local eyes, can we grasp why Nicaraguan support for U.S. annexation remained strong—­and why even before Walker’s arrival, other Central Americans feared Nicaragua had “passed over into the hands of Americans.”77 Yet the main way the ATC paved the way for Walker was by introducing a new form of U.S. expansion: filibusterism.

2 Inviting the Filibusters

Cornelius Vanderbilt hardly in­ven­ted filibusterism. Well before he forged his commercial empire, private expeditions had invaded foreign territories in the Amer­i­cas. Yet the attackers w ­ ere rarely called filibusters. In 1846, the term was used suddenly by South American officials and newspapers to denounce the thousands of Eu­ ro­ pean invaders amassed in Spain by Juan Flores, ex-­president of Ec­ua­dor. Flores had recruited mercenaries to help him not only regain power but also establish a monarchy with himself at its head. Since South Americans vilified monarchic rule as a relic of Spanish colonialism, they had good reason to equate Flores’s mercenaries with the Eu­ro­pean freebooters ( filibusteros in Spanish) who had haunted the continent’s coasts over a ­century ago. Flores’s men ­were blocked from leaving Spain by the British Navy. Yet the label filibuster stuck and quickly became identified with the private U.S. expansionists who invaded Latin Amer­i­ca ­a fter the end of the Mexican-­ American War in 1848. The image of U.S. filibusters was highly negative; even many of their compatriots joined Eu­ro­pe­ans and Latin Americans in deriding them as brutes driven by plunder, drink, and sex.1 46



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Filibusterism gained such notoriety ­because it went against international efforts to suppress nonstate vio­lence. Emerging nation-­states ­famously sought to monopolize the means of vio­lence by strengthening the military and police at the cost of private armed groups. But the criminalization of nonstate vio­lence also had an international dimension. From the 1790s onward, Eu­ro­pean nations and the United States passed laws restricting mercenary activities and private military expeditions against other countries. Ironically, the United States spearheaded the prohibition of filibusterism with its Neutrality Acts of 1794 and 1818. The weakness of the antebellum state, the duplicity of local officials, and filibusterism’s popularity in port cities ensured that U.S. filibusters faced few obstacles in launching their invasions.2 Given the notoriety of filibusterism, why did Nicaraguans invite William Walker into their country? This question would vex Nicaraguans long a­ fter Walker had left their nation in ruins. And rightly so, for nowhere ­else in Latin Amer­i­ca had U.S. filibusterism enjoyed greater support. The best answer came from an anti-­Walker Nicaraguan who claimed that “the common ­people” trusted that the filibusters w ­ ere “civilizers.” Their trust reflected pro-­U.S. sentiments prevailing in Nicaragua since the California Gold Rush. But many Nicaraguans also believed that the filibusters would “regenerate” their country by settling its frontier. Walker’s rise to power hinged on the connections that Nicaraguans drew between two phenomena rarely linked by scholars: filibusterism and settler colonialism.3

I Nicaraguans first encountered U.S. filibusters in the nation’s civil war of 1851. The war broke out on August 4, when the army chief, General José Trinidad Muñoz, overthrew a Liberal-­Conservative government that had sought to reduce the power of the military. But the coup also reflected popu­lar anger at the government’s inability to block Vanderbilt from moving his transit route away from the heartland. The rebels installed a revolutionary regime in León, while the existing government entrenched itself in Granada. Thus began a war that lasted u­ ntil November, when the arrival of four hundred Honduran troops invited

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by Granadan Conservatives forced the rebels to surrender. However brief, the war was a turning point as it introduced a new actor: U.S. filibusters.4 Vanderbilt’s transit com­pany actually introduced the idea of filibusterism. With the war’s outbreak, it pressured the Granada government to renegotiate the canal contract so that the lucrative transit business ­became disconnected from the costly canal proj­ect. In exchange, the ­Accessory Transit Com­pany (ATC) was to deliver two thousand muskets and two hundred troops from New York. Although the beleaguered government feared the new contract jeopardized Nicaragua’s canal dreams, it accepted the offer. It also hoped that Vanderbilt’s men would remain as settlers. The government-­controlled Congress accepted the arms deal but rejected the offer of troops. Had Vanderbilt’s men gone to Nicaragua, they would have been filibusters in all but name. Hence a U.S. newspaper accused the ATC of scheming “a l­ ittle filibustering affair.”5 This affair emboldened the rebels to seek their own U.S. filibusters. Their leader was “Col­o­nel” John McLane, a veteran of the Mexican-­ American War who had settled in Realejo. ­After recruiting about twenty U.S. residents, McLane sailed for San Juan del Sur, where he enlisted additional U.S. citizens; he aimed to seize the new transit road and then attack Granada. Yet just as he and his men sought to leave the port, they ­were captured by e­ nemy troops. They w ­ ere spared death a­ fter McLane agreed to sail for California and never return. In the Mexican port of Acapulco, he jumped ship and returned to Nicaragua with some one hundred U.S. adventurers. His force now became a true filibustering ­expedition. McLane and his men could not prevent Muñoz’s defeat. Although U.S. minister John Kerr despised filibusterism, he ensured that his compatriots could leave the country unscathed.6 The 1851 war might now appear as a minor event in the annals of U.S. expansion. Yet it illustrates how Nicaraguans linked filibusterism with settlerism. Few made this link more clearly than the rebel foreign minister, Catholic priest Estanislao González. If U.S. envoy Kerr derided McLane’s men as mercenaries who “disgraced humanity” and compromised the United States “before the world,” González valorized them as would-be settlers fighting for “the pro­gress of this country.” His government viewed the filibusters as “­brothers, sons of the same continent, inspired by identical princi­ples, and moved by the noble desire to establish



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liberty and order in e­ very part of the common fatherland, and to develop its resources by industry.” In linking filibusterism with settlerism, González drew on the hemispheric ideals of the Monroe Doctrine, and his logic would be used four years l­ ater by the Liberal Party to justify its embrace of Walker.7 When Nicaraguans reencountered filibusterism in 1855, the phenomenon had soared. U.S. expansionists w ­ ere now attacking the entire ­Ca­rib­bean basin and Pacific nations as far south as Ec­ua­dor, while ­others went as far west as Hawaii. Some even set their sights on the Amazon basin of Brazil. Many Latin Americans shared the fear expressed in a Costa Rican newspaper that U.S. filibusterism would soon lead them to “dis­appear from the face of the earth . . . ​just like the unfortunate Indian tribes of the north” standing in the way of Manifest Destiny. ­T here is ­little won­der that ­those Latin Americans who continued to clamor for U.S. annexation came u­ nder fierce attack from other Latin Americans. Proannexationism was most loudly denounced by conservatives, who had long clashed with the United States, the hemi­sphere’s liberal bastion. Yet proannexationism also frustrated liberals who equated filibusterism with the “exterminating” impulse of the “rapacious Yankee democracy.” What they failed to grasp was how other Latin Americans could link filibusterism with “civilization.” For the Nicaraguans who invited Walker, this association had much to do with their recent encounters with two groups of immigrants: Eu­ro­pe­ans and African Americans.8

II The military skills displayed by McLane’s group strengthened the local reputation of filibusters. Yet ­these armed men ­were not identical to the era’s classic settler colonists, who forged communities in “empty” lands—­a pro­cess that, in real­ity, entailed the dispossession if not extermination of conquered ­peoples in places as dif­fer­ent as Algeria, Australia, South ­Africa, and the U.S. West. Since most colonists hailed from Eu­rope, it was no coincidence that Walker profited from Nicaraguans’ encounter with Eu­ro­pean settler proj­ects. Like most cases of settler colonialism, ­these proj­ects focused on acquiring land, not native l­abor, with the expectation that the settlers would eventually reign supreme in their new

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home. But they also demonstrated that settler colonization could be ­carried out as a private enterprise and thus did not have to entail subjugation to a foreign power. This helps explain why Nicaraguans leery of U.S. annexation could embrace Walker.9 Eu­ro­pe­a ns had sought to create private settler colonies in Central Amer­i­ca ever since Spanish colonialism ended in 1821. But not ­until the Gold Rush put the isthmus on Eu­ro­pe­ans’ ­mental map did such proj­ects proliferate. Reinforcing this boom was the anti-­immigrant wave then sweeping the United States, as it pushed Eu­ro­pean colonization agents to train their eyes on Latin Amer­i­ca, which they deemed more welcoming. The colonization proj­ects gained much publicity in Europe from mass events that showcased Central Amer­i­ca. These included the Costa Rican exhibit at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1855, which led four hundred working-­class families to sign up for a private colonization venture. Even more popu­lar was the Cyclorama of North Amer­i­ca, which thrilled crowds as it traveled across Eu­rope from 1852 to 1857. By featuring large paintings of the Nicaraguan transit, this massive pa­norama in the round heightened interest in the isthmus for would-be colonists.10 Such interest was exploited by colonization associations in Belgium, France, Germany, G ­ reat Britain, Italy, and Switzerland. T ­ hese organ­ izations ­were in turn aggressively courted by Central American envoys based in the Old World. In the case of Nicaragua, the government signed contracts with French and German companies seeking to create farming colonies in the frontier region of Segovia. Ultimately, Eu­ro­pean colonization proj­ects w ­ ere only realized in Belize (British Honduras) and Costa Rica. Yet they served as precursors for Walker’s Department of Colonization, which or­ga­nized the influx of U.S. settlers and whose leading members included Nicaraguans previously invested in Eu­ro­pean colonization.11 ­These colonization proj­ects benefited Walker directly, as some of its Eu­ro­pean members helped shape his enterprise. A good example is Bruno von Natzmer, a former officer in the Prus­sian Army who became one of his most trusted intermediaries with Nicaraguans. In 1851 the twenty-­ year-­old aristocrat immigrated to the isthmus with the Berlin Colonization Society for Central Amer­i­ca, which was led by Baron Alexander von Bülow. This private association sought not only to strengthen German influence in the world but also to spread “civilization” to non-­white



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­ eoples—­a civilizing mission that was becoming a hallmark of Eu­ro­pean p liberal imperialism. Unlike their British and French counter­parts, however, German liberal imperialists relied nearly exclusively on the private sector to create overseas settler colonies, as their ventures enjoyed l­ittle if  any state support following the defeat of the liberal revolutions of 1848–1849.12 Natzmer’s group first sought to establish its agricultural colony on Nicaragua’s underpopulated Ca­r ib­bean coast but was swayed by a Costa Rican envoy to go to his country, which offered the Prus­sians much land in an undeveloped region. The colonists planned for four thousand German families to join them each year, so that within twenty-­five years their colony would have about half a million settlers, who would constitute the vast majority of Costa Rica’s population (in 1850 the nation had some 100,000 inhabitants). Their dream quickly clashed with real­ity and the colony folded within a few years. While most colonists settled in the capital of San José, Natzmer joined the Costa Rican Army as commander of a fort on the northern border. In February 1855, he fled to Nicaragua to avoid trial for having embezzled money from his troops. Natzmer made his way to the gold fields of Honduras, where he met Byron Cole, who had secured Walker’s contract with Nicaraguan Liberals. Upon hearing that Walker was about to land in Realejo, Cole hurried back to Nicaragua, taking the Prus­sian with him.13 Natzmer proved to be a godsend to Walker. The filibuster ­later wrote that he esteemed his Prus­sian right-­hand man for his military training, local knowledge, and ability to speak Spanish, En­glish, and French. But perhaps more impor­t ant, Natzmer helped infuse Walker’s proj­ect with German notions of settler colonialism that w ­ ere more secular and cosmopolitan than t­ hose typically upheld by Walker’s U.S. followers. Indeed, some Central Americans deemed the German “civilizing mission” more inclusive than Manifest Destiny, even if the latter had a stronger prodemocracy bent. As Bülow’s Costa Rican friends noted, German colonists ­were “more supple . . . ​than Yankees.” The adaptability of Germans like Natzmer would prove valuable to Walker as he sought to expand his support among Nicaraguans.14 Walker benefited perhaps even more from Nicaraguans’ encounters with another group of immigrants: African Americans who settled in San

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Juan del Norte. Their numbers remain unclear, as they ­were often mistaken for the hundreds of black Jamaicans who settled in the port ­after its 1848 takeover by the British. The African Americans w ­ ere a heterogeneous group, consisting of men and w ­ omen from the North and the South, urban workers and middle-­class professionals, as well as fugitive slaves, freed slaves, and ­those born ­free. In Nicaragua their livelihoods depended on the transit, with most taking on low-­wage jobs. A few prospered by becoming riverboat captains or opening ­hotels, restaurants, or stores. Even fugitive slaves could strike it rich, as was true of Barney Ford, a former ­house servant and riverboat steward-­cook who ran the United States H ­ otel with his wife, Julia Lyons, a f­ ree black who had worked as a ­hotel chambermaid in Chicago. The entrepreneurialism of immigrants like Ford and Lyons only enhanced the interest of Nicaraguans in attracting more U.S. settlers.15 This African American influx built on long-­standing efforts of ­free blacks to secure the citizenship denied to them in the United States by emigrating to Africa or the Ca­rib­bean, where some sought to create their own state. Many African Americans followed Frederick Douglass in denouncing emigration as a betrayal of the enslaved. O ­ thers, however, insisted that f­ree blacks could find “relief from the oppressions of the American ­people” only by emigrating. They echoed Eu­ro­pean liberal imperialists in imagining a polity that would be led by African American settlers who would uplift a non-­U.S. population deemed less civilized. Emigrationism became prevalent ­after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the concomitant hardening of Black Laws, as both dramatically curbed the po­liti­cal rights, economic opportunities, and geographic mobility of ­free blacks. Now, however, black activists identified Nicaragua as a potential homeland. The most famous plea came from the Pittsburgher Martin Delany in June 1852. Such calls became so widespread that Douglass l­ ater quipped that Nicaragua could have become a “Nigger-­agua.”16 The sudden interest of African Americans in Nicaragua resulted from the rise of the transit. It led many to view the resource-­rich isthmus as the new El Dorado, while some hoped the region’s proximity would facilitate the armed strug­gle against slavery in the United States itself. As one activist put it, “­there would be near at hand a nation to whom a black Kossuth [liberator] might appeal for ‘material aid.’ ” ­Others appreciated



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that Nicaragua’s Ca­rib­bean coast had become a British protectorate, as they believed the world’s leading antislavery power would block the United States from implanting slavery ­there. But the interest of African Americans in Nicaragua mainly reflected their belief that it was a racial paradise where “black and white interchange all the civil and social relations on the same platform.” This rosy view stemmed from recent U.S. travel accounts, such as ­those by Ephraim George Squier, that stressed the population’s nonwhite makeup, the absence of racial prejudice, and the prevalence of “colored” men in official positions all the way up to the presidency.17 Nicaragua appealed to African American emigrationists precisely ­because they believed its inhabitants w ­ ere, to quote Delany, the “same ­people” and had e­ very reason to “make common cause with us.” But Delany also insisted that Nicaraguans, like other Latin Americans, ­were “susceptible of pro­gress, improvement and reform of ­every kind” emanating from the United States. If Delany and his supporters played up the unity of the hemi­sphere’s “colored ­peoples,” they still thought that African Americans w ­ ere better qualified to govern thanks to their Americanization. They shared the sense of cultural superiority that marked previous generations of black emigrationists as well as that of white agents of Manifest Destiny—­both of whom frequently emphasized the civilizing and demo­cratizing mission of U.S. Protestantism. As a black reverend from Detroit proclaimed, “our best policy is to migrate immediately to Central Amer­i­ca, intercept the farther pro­gress of the Anglo-­ American, southward, and prepare to inaugurate a new era in the world, by developing the colored races on the southern portions of the continent to a higher degree of Chris­tian­ity and civilization than the world has very yet introduced.”18 African American efforts to create a homeland in Nicaragua ­were led by Delany’s friend and fellow Pittsburgher David Peck. Like Barney Ford, Peck developed close ties with Nicaraguan Liberal Party members who would ­later embrace Walker. But if Ford stood for the self-­made entrepreneur, Peck embodied the freeborn professional. A ­ fter studying at Oberlin College and Rush Medical College, he became the first African American to receive a medical degree in the United States. He then opened a medical practice and drug store in Philadelphia, where he continued

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his advocacy for the rights of African Americans. In 1851, the twenty-­five-­ year-­old was convinced by Delany to s­ ettle in Nicaragua; it remains unclear w ­ hether his wife of two years accompanied him. In all likelihood, Peck’s decision to emigrate had to do with U.S. racism—an incident of “colorphobia” involving Peck even found its way into the press. It was surely no coincidence that Delany made his case to Peck by stressing that in Nicaragua “his color would be in his f­ avor.”19 Peck arrived in San Juan del Norte at an opportune moment, for he encountered a cosmopolitan community seeking greater self-­determination from its British rulers. With the rise of the transit, the port’s population had expanded to include black and white U.S. Americans, Eu­ro­pe­ans, Haitians, and black Jamaicans. In March 1852 the residents wrested the right from the British to create a city-­state with their own elected officials. They also passed a new constitution that enshrined male suffrage “without regard to color or property.” By then Peck had become the leader of the “colored” residents who sought to win the elections of April 1852. Their chief opponents ­were white U.S. Southerners of the “cotton” party who, as Peck’s group noted, used “their utmost exertions to deprive us of our rights as citizens . . . ​[and] to subject us if pos­si­ble to a system of slavery.”20 The 1852 elections appeared to have laid the foundations for a new state dominated by African Americans. Early reports indicated that Peck’s group had won “by a large majority, nearly two to one.” The winners asked Delany, then living in New York, to head the new government and bring “his own council of state as the native material . . . ​was not suitable for ‘cabinet-­work’ ”—­a request that underscores how Peck and his followers considered themselves superior to the local population. Delany ­later claimed that he ended up not ­going b­ ecause he could not find enough African American colonists to join him. In the meantime, the electoral victory achieved by Peck’s group had been annulled “on some pretext of illegality.” Their setback notwithstanding, African Americans continued to shape local affairs.21 African American dreams to create a homeland in the isthmus ­were crushed when the U.S. warship Cyane razed San Juan del Norte in July 1854. Garnering worldwide censure, this act was in retaliation for the alleged mistreatment of a racist U.S. envoy at the hands of port officials led by the prosperous h­ otel owner James Lyons, a freeborn black from



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Chicago who headed the local militia. The town’s destruction brought its African American residents closer to Nicaraguan Liberal Party members who would l­ ater embrace Walker, as many fled to the country’s interior. The Fords, for instance, settled in La Virgen, where they established a thriving ­hotel and got to know Liberal strongmen (the Cantón b­ rothers) who would ­later join them in supporting Walker. ­Others went further north to the Liberal bastion of León, which was ruled by middle-­class mulattoes who would become Walker’s principal native allies. This was true of Peck, who had left San Juan del Norte prior to its bombardment. Upon moving inland, Peck first lived in Granada, where he met some of Nicaragua’s most influential men—­and perhaps also ­women, such as Irene O’Horan Espinosa, who would become a key supporter of Walker.22 Peck became a quasi-­fi libuster ­a fter joining the Liberal Party’s war against the ruling Conservatives. Fighting broke out in May 1854, when Liberals led by Leonese mulattoes rebelled against Conservative efforts to create a centralized state dominated by oligarchs who valorized whiteness. Elite Conservatives had sought to restrict citizenship to their social class by passing a new constitution that increased the property requirements to vote and hold office. In addition, the constitution no longer protected communal lands, thus making the rural poor—­the country’s largest social group—­vulnerable to elite encroachments on their land. So greatly did ideological differences fuel this war that it was one of the most violent in Nicaraguan history. Peck was among the twenty or so U.S. members of the Liberal Army who, as another U.S. volunteer put it, enlisted out of “youthful enthusiasm for that most fallacious of h­ uman illusions, popu­lar liberty.” He served as surgeon ­until his death in the Liberal siege of Granada, which ended in February 1855 with Liberals retreating to León.23 Even though Peck had died by the time of Walker’s arrival, he indirectly helped Walker by strengthening the infatuation of local Liberals with U.S. settlers-­turned-­filibusters. Above all, the black physician embodied a dif­ fer­ent kind of Americanization. If gold rushers impressed Nicaraguans mainly with their entrepreneurialism, Peck stood out for his educational and po­l iti­cal experience. Mulatto Liberal Party leaders of León valued higher education, yet none had his level of training. Unfortunately, we know nothing about how they viewed Peck’s participation in the African

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American strug­gle for equality, democracy, and moral reform. But they clearly shared his goal of creating a deracialized yet civilized order, where, as Peck put it, “virtue is not designated by colors.” And since many of ­these Liberals had recently embraced Freemasonry, they may have appreciated his deep involvement in Philadelphia’s black lodge. Peck embodied a more cosmopolitan form of Americanization than did most white U.S. expansionists. This was evident in the multinational alliance of “colored ­peoples” he helped forge in San Juan del Norte. His cosmopolitanism reflected the international outlook of many African Americans, such as when northern ­free blacks celebrated the transnational dimensions of the antislavery strug­gle in their annual commemorations of the 1834 emancipation of slaves in the British Ca­r ib­be­a n; Peck had helped lead such an event before leaving for Nicaragua.24 Thanks to ­people like Peck, León’s Liberal leaders ­were primed when in October 1854, amid Nicaragua’s civil war, Byron Cole offered to provide them with three hundred U.S. filibusters in exchange for land that the latter would colonize at the war’s end. The twenty-­five-­year-­old Maine native had arrived from San Francisco and was headed for the Honduran gold fields, where he sought to establish a U.S. settler colony. He was among a growing number of white, largely antislavery U.S. colonization agents surveying the isthmus. Illness compelled Cole to remain in León, where he quickly became interested in local affairs. As the ex-­publisher of a Free-­Soil newspaper, Cole felt much affinity with the city’s Liberals. He was also a fervent U.S. expansionist who had supported Walker’s recent filibuster incursion into Mexico. Despite the disastrous outcome of the foray, Cole continued to admire Walker and hired him as editor of his San Francisco newspaper.25 Walker was on Cole’s mind when he made his offer to León’s Liberals, who readily accepted it. In their eyes, the filibusters would help win the war against the “oligarchy” and would “civilize” their country. Cole left immediately for California to get his friend to lead the expedition. Walker was very interested. Yet he agreed to go only a­ fter Cole returned to León and had the Liberals modify the contract so that the filibusters ­were promised more land and given Nicaraguan citizenship. A new phase in Manifest Destiny expansion had begun.26



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III Like his Nicaraguan patrons, Walker viewed filibusterism as a means to spread U.S. settler colonialism. He was among the many U.S. filibusters seeking to forge a new society in Latin Amer­i­ca. He was the only one who succeeded in seizing power ­because the transit and settlers-­turned-­ filibusters had paved the way for him by providing Nicaraguans with reasons to support him. But the success of his foray also had to do with Walker himself. U.S. accounts of the era often explained Walker’s transformation into the world famous “king of filibusters” by focusing on his personal appearance. They emphasized that Walker did not fit the ste­reo­type of the hypermasculine filibuster. Typically they noted his short and slim physique, drab dress, taciturn ways, and soft voice. One observer claimed that Walker was “as unprepossessing-­looking a person as one would meet in a day’s walk.” For many U.S. newspapers, it was precisely ­t hese “unmanly” qualities that had allowed the teetotaling Walker to gain the trust of the Nicaraguan masses, as the latter w ­ ere deemed similarly effeminate and unassuming. The U.S. press also stressed that Walker, thanks to his gray eyes, benefitted from an ancient myth according to which Nicaraguan Indians ­were waiting for a “gray-­eyed man” to liberate them from their local oppressors (this legend was actually in­ven­ted in the 1830s by British imperialists eyeing Nicaragua’s Ca­rib­bean coast). U.S. accounts correctly suggest that Walker seized power only with the help of Nicaraguans. But they downplay the fact that this support had much to do with the filibuster’s po­liti­cal views.27 ­Because Walker, born in 1824, hailed from Nashville, Tennessee, it is easy to dismiss him as a proslavery expansionist. In real­ity, he spent much of his adult life in antislavery settings, and t­ hose environments ­shaped his outlook. Already as a child, Walker imbibed the antislavery views of his ­father, a prosperous businessman who had migrated from Scotland. Walker’s ­mother did hail from the local slaveholding elite, but she and her husband employed only ­free blacks—­a telling fact since most of Nashville’s white h­ ouse­holds held slaves. In 1841 Walker moved to Philadelphia to study medicine. For two years he lived in an abolitionist hotbed that was home to one of the nation’s largest f­ ree black communities. A ­ fter graduating

F igu r e 2 . 1 ​Portrait of William Walker taken at Mathew Brady’s photo studio in New York in June 1857. Apparently, employees of Brady’s studio painted over Walker’s face, “prob­ably to minimize the tanned skin and age lines from almost two years of hardship in tropical Nicaragua” (Paul Bolcik, “William Walker: Nothing as It Seems,” The Daguerreian Annual [2012]: 183). Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZC4-10802).



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Walker spent the next two years in Eu­rope, where antislavery sentiments prevailed. He spent most of his time in Paris. While t­ here, he came to admire not only the Old World’s brand of liberal imperialism but also the liberal demo­cratic ideals that would ­later drive the revolutions of 1848.28 In 1845, Walker returned to the United States and settled in New Orleans, where he became a ­lawyer and journalist. In this bastion of proslavery expansion, he directed a newspaper opposed to such expansion, the New Orleans Crescent (his pre­de­ces­sor was none other than the “bard of democracy,” Walt Whitman). While Walker defended the South’s “peculiar institution,” he feared that its spread would unleash a civil war. “Our only object,” he stressed, “can be to preserve the slave property we possess; we can never hope, even if we wished it, to extend slavery to New Mexico or California. Whenever we become the propagandists of slavery, we jeopardy the rights we at pres­ent possess.” Like Whitman, Walker embraced the burgeoning Free-­Soil movement, which advocated for the white settlement of territories ­free of slavery.29 Walker’s work in New Orleans reflected his growing expansionist outlook. He continued to valorize Eu­rope’s liberal demo­cratic ideals and its liberal imperialism. With the defeat of the 1848 revolutions, however, he believed it fell to the United States to convert “the world to democracy.” And by democracy he meant not just republican rule and universal male suffrage but also the destruction of the privileges enjoyed by the “aristocrats” then ruling Eu­rope and, in his mind, Latin Amer­i­ca. The U.S. victory over Mexico and the Gold Rush strengthened his interest in creating U.S. settler colonies in Latin Amer­i­ca, especially on Nicaragua’s Ca­rib­bean coast. He maintained that the United States was destined to conquer the entire hemi­sphere, with New Orleans becoming the center of a new “empire—­far mightier and more extensive than the Roman.” He also supported filibusterism by claiming “­there is no law of nations . . . ​ which deprives a man of the right . . . ​to take his share in a foreign quarrel, which appeals to his love of liberty, or detestation of tyranny, or even to his mere sordid estimate of glory or gain.” Walker embraced the racial ideas of Manifest Destiny but did not advocate the extermination of Latin Americans. Instead he called for their assimilation into a “regenerated” society that would be “blended” into the United States.30

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Walker’s interest in colonizing Latin American territory was well developed when he joined the Gold Rush in June 1850. But only in California did he begin to envision his own Latin American realm. Rather than toil in the crowded gold fields, Walker remained in San Francisco, where he edited newspapers identified with the Free-­Soil wing of the Demo­cratic party. He also ran for po­liti­cal office, though without success. In California, Walker modified his liberal imperial views. He now claimed that the ­future of the U.S. empire lay in the Pacific, not the ­Caribbean—an empire that, in his eyes, could encompass the entire Pacific Rim. More impor­tant, he no longer equated filibusterism with the expansion of the U.S. nation-­state. His “utter astonishment” at California’s rapid development led him to believe that U.S. settlers could successfully forge polities that remained in­de­pen­dent of the United States. Walker’s re­sis­t ance to the expansion of slavery might have also hardened, as he often defended Free-­Soil Demo­crats against party rivals bent on introducing slavery to California (like other Free-­Soilers, he opposed the immigration of ­free blacks). At the same time, the new state strengthened his cosmopolitan outlook. He not only valorized its multinational population for adding “im­mensely to the foreign influence and cosmopolitan reputation of the American Union” but also criticized its strong anti-­ Chinese sentiments and the anti-­Catholic Know-­Nothings. California only intensified his belief in regeneration through assimilation, as was evident in his endorsement of Spanish-­speaking candidates ­r unning for ­po­liti­cal office.31 The “immorality” of gold rush society (drinking, gambling, prostitution, ­etc.) intensified Walker’s concern with social control, thus drawing him to moral reformers who would ­later shape his Nicaragua enterprise. They included suffragists who surely appreciated his assertion that “­woman . . . ​is and of right ­ought to be the equal of man.” Walker even identified prison reform with “the progressive spirit of the age” and stressed that “humanity requires that convicts . . . ​should be allowed the means of strict cleanliness.” On the other hand, California’s high crime rates led him to embrace the vigilantism then terrorizing towns and mining camps. He linked the lynching of suspected criminals with democracy, claiming that “the g­ reat object of the p ­ eople is to strike terror 32 into evil-­doers.”



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Yet California changed Walker primarily by turning him into a filibuster. This was no coincidence, for the new state had become the nation’s hub of antislavery filibusterism. Between November  1853 and May 1854, Walker sought to conquer the Mexican states of Baja California and Sonora with about two hundred men. He had been inspired by the 1852 example of Count Gaston de Raousset-­Boulbon, who had led a failed filibuster expedition of French gold rushers against Sonora u­ nder a banner of freedom and civilization. Like the count, Walker aimed to create a settler colony in a frontier region known for its gold and silver mines. He justified the invasion by claiming that Mexicans w ­ ere “an indolent and half civilized ­people” who had failed “almost entirely to develop the resources nature has placed at their command.” Upon landing in Baja California, Walker proclaimed himself president of a new republic. ­Because he ­adopted the civil code of Louisiana, some claim that he sought to introduce slavery. Yet none of Walker’s declarations indicate that he had abandoned his opposition to slavery expansion. Indeed, following his Mexican foray, Walker continued to denounce proslavery expansionists as “the most active and efficient agents abolitionists can have in the southern States.”33 Walker’s Republic of Lower California was never more than a phantom entity. His group was often on the run, enjoying ­little support from a population with strong anti-­U.S. views. But even if Walker’s expedition was an utter failure, it turned him into a well-­known filibuster. This fame helps explain why he ended up in Nicaragua a year ­later. By then he had come to deem Central Amer­i­ca a more propitious place for his imperial dreams.

IV Walker’s spirited welcome in Nicaragua contrasted sharply with his cold reception in Mexico. He had planned to sail from San Francisco in March 1855 yet delayed his departure for two months due to lack of funds and a foot injury sustained in a duel. In the interim, the military situation of his Nicaraguan patrons had deteriorated, making them ever more anxious for his help. So even though Walker sailed into Realejo on June 16 with fifty-­nine filibusters rather than the hundreds promised by Cole, Liberals rejoiced at their arrival. Walker’s men included a young Hawaiian,

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an Irish immigrant, a Chilean gold rusher, and a sixty-­five-­year-­old African American cook. The rest ­were Anglo-­Americans, with some having participated in the Mexican-­A merican War and ­others in filibuster expeditions to Cuba and Mexico. As they marched to the town of Chinandega, rural dwellers came out of their huts to greet them, while the townspeople welcomed them with church bells. Walker continued on to León, where he was warmly received by the Liberal leader Francisco Castellón, who gave him ­free reign to fight the ruling Conservatives in the name of “liberty.”34 Walker had learned from his Mexican fiasco, and he refrained from insulting the native populace. Instead he stressed the prodemocracy ideals that united his men and local Liberals. A few days ­later, his ­l ittle army—­now called the American Phalanx—­began its campaign, accompanied by about one hundred Liberal troops. From the start, the filibusters enjoyed local support. Above all, Walker gained the trust of the most radical wing of the Liberal Party. As a result, some leading Liberals feared that Castellón had granted the filibuster too much freedom. This was especially true of army chief Muñoz, who had squashed the popu­lar rebellions of the late 1840s. Yet Castellón thought he had ­little choice. ­After the failed siege of Granada, the situation of the Liberals worsened dramatically. Only with the help of Walker’s men did Castellón believe that the Liberals could avoid being “exterminated” by the Conservative Army—­a fear that reflected the war’s extreme brutality, as both sides hesitated ­little in slaughtering prisoners, killing civilians, raping ­women, or razing towns. On the other hand, Castellón noted that Walker had gained the backing of what he called “a mob of reckless men” who in real­ity ­were radical Liberals with strong lower-­class support. Castellón claimed that this mob not only prevented him from dismissing Walker but also ensured that the filibusters could operate with autonomy. Indeed, among Walker’s first allies was Mariano Méndez of León, whose name was “a terror to the Aristocrats of Nicaragua.” By the time Walker seized power in October 1855, he had gained the support of radicals elsewhere in the country.35 The most power­ful radical to back Walker was Chinandega’s José María Valle, also known as El Chelón. Although Valle had lost a leg during the Liberal siege of Granada, he became so essential to Walker’s fortunes



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that it was even noted in the f­ uture 1856 Broadway hit Nicaragua, or ­Gen. Walker’s Victories. Now around forty-­five years old, Valle had helped lead the uprisings of the late 1840s. As a result, local elites deemed him a communist bent on destroying the local aristocracy. Valle admired the sansculottes of the French Revolution, yet he hardly espoused communist views. Rather, he saw himself as a liberal fighting for democracy.36 Valle was a popu­lar caudillo—­that is, a strongman who appealed to the lower classes. Not by chance did elite Nicaraguans label his followers the “naked.” ­Little is known about his upbringing other than that he was a medium-­scale farmer of indigenous and mulatto origins. Walker claimed that the gregarious caudillo was illiterate; if true, this did not prevent him from publishing manifestos ­under his name. The rural poor of his native Chinandega provided Valle with his strongest backing, but he also enjoyed much support in nearby León, especially in the indigenous community of Sutiava and the mulatto suburb of San Felipe. If Sutiavas stood out for defending their autonomy, Felipeños mainly strug­gled for po­liti­cal, social, and racial equality.37 Like other radicals, Valle justified his support for Walker by claiming that both ­were fighting for “true democracy.” Valle never spelled out the demo­cratic ideals he shared with the filibuster. But in earlier proclamations, he identified democracy with an inclusive order that would abolish the privileges of an aristocracy seeking to impose “the most ominous slavery” on the poor. Valle called for the abolition of the property and income requirements that excluded most male Nicaraguans from elections. He also linked democracy with the defense of communal autonomy against the expanding state and encroaching elites. His enthusiasm for an interoceanic canal traversing the region of León-­Chinandega suggests that he might have also backed Walker ­because the filibuster vowed to redirect the transit route through the heartland—­a route that had enriched nonelite producers. Walker promised not just a more demo­cratic ­future but the return to a prosperous past.38 Together with Valle, Walker replicated the strategy that the U.S. filibuster McLane had tried to carry out in 1851: sail from Realejo to San Juan del Sur, seize the transit road to gain recruits from the hundreds of transients crossing the isthmus, and then attack the e­ nemy’s capital of Granada. Walker had first sought to implement this strategy on his own. Yet once

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his men approached the town of Rivas, just north of the transit road, they ­were routed and forced to return to Realejo. Walker’s defeat stemmed mainly from the refusal of his native soldiers to join the ­battle. He claimed they had been ordered by General Muñoz to desert as soon as the filibusters engaged with the ­enemy. But one filibuster believed his chief could have “shown more regard for, and reliance on, our native troops.” Walker was so dispirited that he contemplated returning to San Francisco.39 Then Walker met Valle. This was also when the Prus­sian ex-­colonist Natzmer entered Walker’s ranks and helped him deepen his ties with the popu­lar caudillo. On August 23 Walker and Valle sailed for San Juan del Sur with forty-­five filibusters and 125 native troops. Within two weeks they seized the transit road. That Walker captured it only on his second attempt underscores the debt he owed Valle for his success—­a nd how quickly he learned to trust his native allies. Even Conservatives who loathed Valle admitted that he had secured Walker’s victory at the decisive ­battle of La Virgen.40 He further enhanced the capacity of Walker’s army by recruiting native troops from the transit region. In securing ­volunteers, Valle drew on his popularity in a region where many ­people had joined the popu­lar rebellions of the late 1840s. But he had to convince them that Walker was fighting for democracy. Apparently he carried out this task with success. Already in Chinandega, Walker noted that Valle obtained recruits for him by riding through the city’s streets and rural hamlets “speaking of the generous Americans, who had come to help them in their strug­gles.” 41 Valle’s championing of Walker was critical given that the Conservative government was waging a propaganda campaign against the filibusters. Conservatives tried to turn the civil war into a “national war” by invoking the two dominant, if contradictory, Latin American images of U.S. filibusterism: that Walker’s men ­were at once godless vandals out to loot ­Nicaragua and rape its ­women and Protestant crusaders bent on destroying Catholicism and enslaving if not exterminating all Nicaraguans. They buttressed their case by linking Walker’s filibuster enterprise with that of Henry Kinney, who had been threatening to invade Nicaragua’s ­Ca­rib­bean coast with hundreds of men ever since 1854 but did not reach San Juan del Norte with eigh­teen filibusters ­until July  1855. B ­ ecause Kinney sought to create a settler colony with the apparent support of the



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Liberal leader Castellón, he and Walker appeared to be allies (in real­ity, they w ­ ere ­bitter rivals). Although Conservatives also recruited U.S. filibusters, their efforts remained unknown to most Nicaraguans. Hence the need for Valle to ­counter their propaganda campaign against the American Phalanx.42 The Nicaraguan caudillo knew how to wage this ­battle on Walker’s behalf. The revolts of the late 1840s prepared him to refute the slur that he was a terror-­sowing bandit attacking “the holy religion of Jesus Christ.” Valle further helped the filibuster by orchestrating the assassination of General Muñoz. When shortly thereafter Castellón died of cholera, moderate Liberals ­were left with no leader to challenge Walker and his radical allies. By now the filibuster had secretly set his sights on ruling an empire that would encompass all of Central Amer­i­ca. W ­ hether or not Valle knew about this grandiose plan, he had put Walker in a position to realize it.43 Walker owed his a­ ctual capture of power to Vanderbilt’s transit com­ pany. Convinced that the filibusters would attack Granada by land, the Conservative general Ponciano Corral amassed about a thousand troops in Rivas, just north of Walker’s camp at La Virgen. From captured documents and spies Walker knew that few troops remained in Granada, and he deci­ded to attack it by sea. On October 12 he loaded an ATC steamer with about one hundred filibusters and 350 native troops. A ­ fter sailing for six hours at night, the steamer landed unnoticed just north of Granada. Guided by the local radical Ubaldo Herrera, Walker’s force easily captured the city the next morning. President José María Estrada (who had assumed office a­ fter Fruto Chamorro’s death) managed to escape. But many prominent Conservatives fell into Walker’s hands, including the families of Corral and other se­nior officers.44 Walker threatened to kill his hostages if the Conservative Army did not surrender. To show he meant business, he ordered the execution of Foreign Minister Mateo Mayorga. Reflecting the ­bitter divisions plaguing local society, Herrera insisted on putting his fellow Granadan to death. Fearing for their kin’s lives, Corral and his ­officers surrendered. With most Liberals in his corner and Kinney’s enterprise floundering, the fate of Nicaragua was now in Walker’s hands. Since the ATC steamer was essential to Walker’s conquest of Granada, many observers maintained that the com­pany had been in cahoots with

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him. Some even accused the ATC directors in New York of masterminding his expedition to Nicaragua. Such charges speak to the much-­ debated relationship between economic and military expansion carried out by imperial powers. In Panama the creators of the greatest U.S. commercial empire of the antebellum era loathed filibusters as criminals causing g­ reat turmoil; they preferred a nonterritorial form of domination than to have filibusters “liquidate” local sovereignty. In Nicaragua the ATC directors similarly viewed Walker and Kinney as “marauders” and sought to drive them out of the country. Still, they did not reject filibusterism per se. Moreover, local ATC agents—­all U.S. citizens—­defied their superiors by secretly helping Walker once he seized the transit road. Three weeks before the fall of Granada, Costa Rica’s foreign minister stated that Walker and ATC agents “agree with each other even though they pres­ent themselves as enemies.” Any doubts about the com­pany’s stance w ­ ere erased when Walker consolidated his rule and the transit became his lifeline to U.S. recruits.45

V Walker knew he could wield power only with local backing. His aura was enhanced by his lightning capture of Granada—­a seemingly “impregnable fortress” that had just withstood the Liberal siege of nearly nine months. He gained even more support with his benign treatment of the conquered populace. As a foreign resident noted, Granadans had “thought a general massacre, incendiarism, ­etc., would take place, and they ­were perfectly bewildered to see that nothing of the sort took place.” They saw how Walker personally blocked Valle’s men from looting the mansions and stores of the country’s wealthiest elite. He even sentenced a filibuster to death for killing a local boy while on a drunken spree. Granadans w ­ ere equally surprised that, ­after Mayorga’s execution, Walker spared the lives of high-­ranking Conservatives, especially since their troops reportedly burned captured filibusters alive, and his leniency gave much credence to his stated goal of reconciling the divided country. So impressed w ­ ere elite Granadans by Walker—­and so desperate was their situation—­that they tendered him the presidency. A similar offer was made by Valle.



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Maintaining the support of t­ hese two antagonistic forces would be Walker’s greatest challenge as he waited for U.S. colonists to fill his realm.46 To the surprise of all, Walker refused the presidency. He preferred to rule through a puppet regime headed by a pliable Nicaraguan. With the peace treaty of October 23, he forced the warring parties to form a unity government headed by the Conservative Patricio Rivas, a fifty-­n ine-­ year-­old mulatto l­ awyer who was to serve as president for fourteen months or ­until an election was called. While Rivas was a po­liti­cal lightweight, his government included two power­ful generals—­Corral as minister of defense and the Liberal Máximo Jérez as minister of foreign affairs. Still, Walker was the power b­ ehind the throne. As commander of the Army of Nicaragua he pressured Liberals and Conservatives to disband all their troops except ­t hose led by Valle. This mea­sure allowed Walker to concentrate power into his own person, while enhancing his popularity among the poor, who dreaded nothing more than forced military ser­vice. The first challenge to Walker only reinforced his rule. On November 5 Valle provided Walker with intercepted correspondence revealing that Corral was secretly beseeching the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to invade Nicaragua and expel the filibusters. This was a dramatic turnaround for Corral, who ­until recently had hoped to use Walker in his own quest for the presidency. His trust in Walker stemmed from his incorrect belief that he was a fellow Freemason. It also resulted from Walker’s ac­cep­tance of his candidate—­R ivas—to become president. So buoyed was Corral with his own success that he allegedly told a friend, “We have beaten [the Liberals] with their own cock.” Very soon, the physically imposing general realized he could not turn the modest-­looking filibuster into his tool. Upon reading the letters, Walker had Corral court-­martialed for treason. On November  8, Granadans crowded the plaza to see the fifty-­year-­old fall to a U.S. firing squad.47 The filibusters risked much by killing the popu­lar Corral. Even someone as cold as Walker was stunned when Granadans of all classes begged him to spare the general’s life. Such a spectacle had not occurred with the execution of Mayorga. Indeed, Corral differed greatly from ­Mayorga and other Conservative “aristocrats.” Having married into an oligarchic ­family, he acquired the trappings of a local aristocrat: a

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­ ansion in the center of Granada, a valuable cacao estate on its outskirts, m and a large c­ attle ranch in Chontales. On the other hand, Corral resembled popu­lar caudillos such as Valle, for he was a nonwhite of h­ umble ­origins (born to a poor mulatto ­father and a former slave) who socialized with the poor and eagerly partook of popu­lar culture. Yet Walker remained firm, claiming ­later that “mercy to Corral would have been an invitation to all the [Conservatives] to engage in like conspiracies.” 48 The general’s death shocked Granadans. One noted that “the ­people of the city surrounded his corpse, a large majority of them being w ­ omen, who cut all the hair of his head in ­little locks, and imbued their kerchiefs and portions of their clothing in his blood, to be kept as relics.” The slain general had all the makings of a martyr whose killing could have easily sparked a revolt.49 Corral’s death posed an international threat to Walker. A ­ fter all, his crime had been to seek a Central American military intervention. A similar call had been made a week earlier by deposed president Estrada. And since no Nicaraguans participated in the sentencing and shooting of the popu­lar general, Corral’s death lent credence to the claim of Central American officials that the filibusters ­were bent on exterminating the region’s population. Their governments broached the possibility of a joint attack. Such talk never translated into action, largely b­ ecause they could not overcome their differences.50 Walker’s g­ amble paid off. By killing Corral he eliminated his main rival. More impor­tant, the execution crippled the local opposition. ­Unable to rally Nicaraguans to their cause, many leading Conservatives went into exile. Their flight only emboldened t­hose elite Granadans who remained b­ ehind to deepen their ties with Walker. And it was ­these elites who enabled the filibuster to forge his own state. Few better articulated the pro-­Walker views of elite Granadans than the city’s leading priest, Agustín Vijil. Even though the fifty-­four-­year-­old cleric was a Liberal in a Conservative stronghold, he wielded ­great influence over its elite thanks to his oligarchic origins, moderate po­liti­cal ­outlook, extraordinary intellect, and high-­ranking ecclesiastical position. A day a­ fter Walker’s conquest, Vijil delivered a sermon that is now infamous for valorizing the filibuster as the “guardian angel” of Nicaragua. What has been forgotten is that the sermon, made in Granada’s most



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exclusive church (La Merced) in the presence of Walker and his officers, publicized the filibusters’ success in gaining the support of Nicaragua’s wealthiest men.51 As the sermon reveals, Walker profited from elite Nicaraguans’ idealization of the United States, which was in turn fostered by the transit. Like other elites, Vijil had supported the Americanization of his country well before the arrival of Walker. In imploring his parishioners to support the filibuster, he reiterated the main argument made by local proponents of U.S. immigration: Walker’s men ­were “civilizers” who would end the turmoil ravaging the country since in­de­pen­dence and infuse it with U.S.-­ style entrepreneurialism. This message resonated deeply with Granadans, for no other city dwellers had suffered greater devastation during the recent civil war. Just as impor­tant, Vijil maintained that Walker would help Nicaragua realize its manifest destiny by securing U.S. support for the construction of the canal. With Walker at its helm, the priest concluded, Nicaragua would fi­nally join the “civilized world.”52 Elites’ embrace of Walker grew stronger once the Rivas government was recognized by U.S. and Eu­ro­pean envoys, and when they saw officers of visiting British and U.S. warships fraternizing with the filibuster chieftain in Granada.53 Although local elites helped Walker consolidate his rule, the filibuster continued to depend heavi­ly on Valle and other nonelite radical leaders. He knew that some Leonese Liberals of oligarchic origins w ­ ere plotting against him and ordered Valle to squash this endeavor with the help of the city’s lower classes—­especially mulattoes from the barrio of San ­Felipe. Walker then appointed Valle prefect of a frontier region (Segovia) where Conservative leaders w ­ ere trying to turn indigenous communities 54 against the new regime. In the ensuing months Walker and his native followers forged a state that reached into communities well beyond his capital of Granada. Thanks to its wide presence, the Walker regime restored a remarkable level of stability. It also began to reconstruct the war-­ravaged country and implement an ambitious public works program. Such efforts reinforced the view of Nicaraguans that the filibusters ­were “civilizers.” Walker’s rule certainly faced challenges, as when Matagalpa’s indigenous community rebelled against state efforts to curtail its autonomy. Yet his regime managed to quell the uprisings, through force and mediation.

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VI Nothing better underscores the consolidation of the filibuster regime than its ability to survive the Costa Rican invasion of April 1856. Thanks to its booming coffee economy, Nicaragua’s southern neighbor had become the richest country in Central Amer­i­ca and had the means to create its best-­equipped army. Already a month ­after Walker’s conquest, President Juan Rafael Mora proclaimed the filibusters a mortal threat to his nation and vowed to expel t­hese “scums of all p ­ eoples.” To prepare Costa ­R icans for war, the Mora government spared no means “to fan the enmity entertained t­oward citizens of the United States.” Yet not u­ ntil February 28, 1856, did it declare war and mobilize an invasion force of about twenty-­five hundred militiamen, consisting largely of peasants and urban artisans. Mora had wanted to first complete the coffee harvest, which lasted from November to March and required resources (especially manpower and mules) needed for the invasion. By February, ­however, Mora began to worry about reports that the filibuster army had swelled to over one thousand troops, that Walker’s agents ­were inciting the po­liti­cal opposition to overthrow his government, and that the filibusters ­were about to invade Costa Rica. Mora now had no doubt that Walker wanted to “seize all of Central Amer­i­ca, exterminate its population and populate it with Yankees.”55 Walker did feel ready to create his Central American empire and used Mora’s war declaration to attack Costa Rica. He countered Mora’s claim that the filibusters ­were “invading that State, with ferocious and insatiable appetites, hunting their wives, their ­daughters and their properties” by reassuring Costa Ricans that his troops came “to regenerate, not to destroy.” Reflecting their sense of racial superiority, Walker and his men expected to conquer Costa Rica within a few weeks. Yet shortly a­ fter an advanced force of about 250 filibusters crossed the border, they ­were routed at Santa Rosa on March  20 and the survivors straggled back to ­Nicaragua in a “pitiful” state. This victory led the inexperienced Costa Rican troops to no longer fear the filibusters as “veritable cannibals” or “American tigers” and instead view them as “cowards [who] do not resist when attacked with courage and vigor.”56



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The Costa Rican Army, led by President Mora himself, immediately advanced into Nicaragua. By April 12 it controlled the transit road and the town of Rivas. The Costa Ricans ­were poised to attack Granada, where Walker had amassed his remaining troops. Panic seized his followers, as they believed the invaders would “cut down ­every American they encountered,” as they had done at Santa Rosa and Rivas. And the Costa Rican Army did distribute handbills declaring—in En­glish, French, German, and Spanish—­that all captured filibusters would be shot on the spot. Moreover, many Costa Rican troops believed that “all Americans,” including civilians, w ­ ere filibusters and needed to die. They especially resented agents of the transit com­pany—or what they called “the filibuster com­pany”—­for facilitating Walker’s rise to power. When the Costa ­R icans attacked the ATC building in San Juan del Sur, they hunted down its agent by “thoroughly ­r unning their bayonets into mattresses and supposed places of concealment,” to no avail. At the same time, rumors swirled in Granada that the armies of El Salvador and Guatemala ­were invading from the north, while British and French troops had landed in Costa Rica to join the war against the filibusters. So greatly did Walker’s U.S. followers fear for their lives that many took the next ship home. By all accounts, the filibuster regime was doomed.57 As the Costa Ricans prepared to deliver their deathblow, they counted on Nicaraguans to rise up against Walker. Costa Rican officials recognized that Rivas and other elite Nicaraguans supported the filibusters, yet they ­were convinced that the masses detested the godless “conquistadores,” for the poor w ­ ere more religious and appeared to bear the brunt of Walker’s reign of terror. Their views ­were reinforced by news of the Matagalpa uprising, reports of other revolts, and claims made by deserters from Walker’s army that the Nicaraguan masses supported the Costa Rican invasion. Such news also led officials from El Salvador to reassure Costa Rican envoys that “all of Nicaragua [was ready] to revolt against the filibusters.”58 Yet once the Costa Ricans advanced into Nicaragua, they ­were shocked that few natives rallied to their cause. As one officer fumed, “­these are guilty ­people that hardly move.” Actually, some rural inhabitants in Rivas joined the invasion force while o­ thers attacked filibusters in the area. But

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as Costa Rica’s foreign minister correctly asserted, “except for some small and honorable exceptions, our army . . . ​did not receive in Nicaragua the sympathy, aid and active cooperation it expected from . . . ​a ­brother country.” Making ­matters worse, about five hundred Liberal troops rushed from León to defend the filibusters holed up in Granada. Other Liberal forces defeated Conservative exiles who had entered from ­Honduras to briefly occupy towns in the northern frontier. With much glee did a pro-­Walker Nicaraguan note that the Costa Rican troops w ­ ere “disgusted to see that the Nicaraguan p ­ eople did not support them as they had been led to believe.” Costa Rican officials explained away their lack of local support by claiming that Walker had struck such fear into Nicaraguans that they ­were not only para­lyzed but also considered the filibusters to be invincible.59 In real­ity, the Costa Rican government was greatly misinformed about conditions in Walker’s realm. This was mainly b­ ecause it had restricted travel between both countries by establishing in June 1855 a sanitary cordon to prevent Nicaragua’s cholera epidemic from spreading across the border. Costa Rican officials did not realize the exaggerated nature of reports about local discontent with Walker. ­Little did they know that most of the stated revolts had not occurred and that many Nicaraguans benefited from the presence of foreigners to whom they could sell their products and ser­vices. They also underestimated Nicaraguan resentment over Costa Rica’s 1824 annexation of the province of Guanacaste and its ­recent efforts to seize the San Juan River—­a nd thus the projected canal route—­from Nicaragua.60 Above all, Costa Rican officials failed to realize that Walker had created a functioning state on native shoulders. Many Nicaraguans feared that the Costa Ricans would punish them for having collaborated with the filibusters. For t­ hese Nicaraguans, as a prominent Salvadoran stressed, “it was better to have a master than an executioner.” Even though the invasion provided Nicaraguans with a unique opportunity to revolt against Walker, few seized it.61 In the end, the Costa Rican Army never moved beyond Rivas. For some well-­informed observers, Mora’s hesitancy reflected his concern over the rise of antiwar sentiments in Costa Rica. Indeed, Costa Ricans increasingly resented the war’s high costs and denounced their president for in-



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vading Nicaragua without waiting for the arrival of Guatemalan and Salvadoran troops. Yet what mainly stymied the Costa Rican advance was the cholera that broke out within its ranks and quickly claimed the lives of nearly five hundred troops. Unable to control the disease, Mora ordered his terrified men to return home. Costa Rican officials claimed the filibusters had waged biological warfare by filling the wells of Rivas with corpses during a bloody b­ attle. In real­ity, the scourge stemmed from unsanitary conditions, especially ­water that had been contaminated with ­human feces containing the bacteria. For the filibusters, the cholera outbreak was nothing short of a miracle that saved them from certain death.62 The failed Costa Rican invasion boosted Walker’s fortunes. Not only did cholera wreak havoc on his main e­ nemy but the invaders spread the disease back home, thus triggering an epidemic that killed up to 10 ­percent of Costa Rica’s population. President Mora’s inability to mitigate this catastrophe nearly led to his downfall. Fueling antigovernment sentiments was the widespread view that Mora had deceived the nation into believing the invasion would be supported by the Nicaraguan masses. He had sought to prevent his troops from sending home letters describing their dire situation in Nicaragua, to l­ ittle avail. Moreover, Costa Rica’s unilateral attack on Nicaragua soured its relations with the other Central American states and hampered the creation of a regional alliance against Walker. For some Costa Ricans, the epidemic was “divine punishment” for a misconceived invasion. It also reinforced their “dread of Walker’s demonist power.” 63 Governing elites of Central Amer­i­ca ­were especially troubled by ­Nicaragua’s embrace of filibusterism, which became clear to them in the course of the failed invasion. This local support stemmed from the belief held by many Nicaraguans that Walker was bent on spreading U.S.-­style democracy and pro­gress. Indeed, one of South Amer­i­ca’s most influential newspapers, El Comercio of Lima, Peru, warned its readers that even though “nobody believes it,” Nicaraguans w ­ ere convinced that Walker’s men ­were “universal patriots who had come to Nicaragua to civilize and moralize it.” It was precisely this local support for Walker that alarmed the editors of El Comercio, for it made them fear that filibusterism in the name of democracy could eventually conquer the entire continent.64

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With Costa Rica para­lyzed, Walker was once again ­free to pursue his imperial dreams. But his regime first had to be officially recognized by the U.S. government; such recognition would allow Walker to legally circumvent the U.S. neutrality acts that stymied the flow of recruits and arms needed to conquer the other Central American states. To his surprise, gaining U.S. diplomatic recognition proved to be a ­great strug­gle. ­After turning Nicaragua into a filibuster nation, Walker and his followers now had to do the same with the United States.

3 “Walker Is the United States”

William Walker’s campaign to have President Franklin Pierce recognize his regime came at a volatile moment. Ever since the Kansas-­ Nebraska Act of 1854, the United States had become deeply divided over the expansion of slavery. Given the proslavery bent of earlier filibuster expeditions, this explosive issue complicated Walker’s effort to gain diplomatic recognition. Yet it hardly determined the outcome of his campaign. Up to this point, most of his U.S. detractors deemed him not a proslavery expansionist but a thug who was destroying their country’s image as the world’s leading democracy, while his supporters insisted that his enterprise only furthered the U.S. mission of spreading democracy. Walker’s quest to gain diplomatic recognition triggered a fierce strug­gle over filibusterism’s place in U.S. identity, one centered not so much on competing visions of empire—­rooted in ­Free Soil versus slavery—­ than on the global role of U.S. democracy. The strug­gle over filibusterism preoccupied the international community, as well. Prior to Walker’s conquest, Eu­ro­pean and Latin American governments fretted over the popularity of filibusterism in the United States. They felt reassured by the antifilibuster stance of President Pierce. 75

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Like his pre­de­ces­sors, Pierce deemed filibusterism an unruly force that undermined not only the government’s authority at home but U.S. expansion. Indeed, Walker’s failed invasion of Sonora had prevented the Pierce administration from acquiring more Mexican territory than it would obtain with the Gadsden Purchase of 1854. Hence, the president refused to legitimize a regime led by what his attorney general called “a monomaniac, buccaneer, robber and pirate.”1 On May 14, 1856, Pierce abruptly recognized Walker’s government and received its envoy in the White House, the Nicaraguan priest Agustín Vijil. The president’s turnabout appeared to be a rare instance when public mobilization changed U.S. foreign policy. It fulfilled Walker’s hope by massively boosting the flow of U.S. settlers to his tropical realm. It also triggered one of the first anti-­U.S. moments in world history. To both ­Eu­ro­pe­ans and Latin Americans, Pierce’s act confirmed that the United States was bent on conquering the entire Western Hemi­sphere. No longer could Walker’s men be dismissed as a small group of crazed misfits; on the contrary, they appeared to incarnate the spirit of the U.S. ­people. The transformation of Walker’s filibuster expedition into a settler movement hinged on the ability of Vijil and his U.S. backers to turn the United States into a filibuster nation. As the prominent Chilean liberal Francisco Bilbao thundered at a rally protesting Pierce’s act, “Walker is the invasion, Walker is the conquest, Walker is the United States.”2

I Walker’s campaign to obtain U.S. diplomatic recognition encountered its greatest re­sis­t ance from the Central American envoys based in Washington. Even before Walker’s seizure of power, the Nicaraguan minister José de Marcoleta had unleashed an antifilibuster crusade that appealed to the United States’ self-­image as a beacon of hope for the rest of the world. Through diplomatic channels, the press, and friendly members of the U.S. Congress, Marcoleta pressured U.S. officials to implement the Neutrality Acts of 1794 and 1818, which prohibited the organ­ization of filibuster expeditions on U.S. soil. He reminded them of the anticolonial princi­ples that had defined their country’s foreign policy since President James Monroe’s famous proclamation of 1823, and also warned that



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filibusters ­were undermining the efforts of peaceful U.S. citizens to spread “their ­labor, toil, industry and capital” to all parts of the world. In his public interventions, Marcoleta sharply distinguished between “evil” filibusters and peaceful U.S. settlers, whose migration to Nicaragua he supported. Yet he knew only too well that the differences between filibusters and settlers ­were anything but clear-­cut.3 Marcoleta initially shared Secretary of State William Marcy’s view that the inability of U.S. authorities to curb filibusterism reflected the difficulties facing a central state seeking to exert its authority over an ­expanding nation. Over time, he came to believe in a more nefarious motive: the White House was secretly promoting expansion into Latin Amer­ i­ca while hiding ­behind “the hypocritical mask of its neutrality laws.” 4 With Walker’s conquest of Nicaragua, Marcoleta swiftly gained the support of his Central American colleagues, Costa Rica’s Luis Molina and Guatemala’s Antonio José de Irissari. All ­were convinced that Walker’s next step was to conquer the entire isthmus, making war inevitable. Their campaign gained even greater urgency when the U.S. minister in Nicaragua, John Wheeler, recognized the Rivas government on November 8, 1856. Such recognition, the envoys feared, would embolden the U.S. military to intervene on Walker’s behalf. The envoys pressured the White House to disavow its minister. Although President Pierce championed an aggressive form of U.S. expansion into Latin Amer­i­ca, the envoys seemed to have pressed their views on him. On December 8 Pierce proclaimed that Wheeler had acted without his approval and advised U.S. citizens against “connecting themselves with [Walker’s] enterprise.”5 A few weeks l­ ater Walker’s first envoy, the former California newspaper editor Parker French, came to town. Once again the Central American envoys campaigned vigorously against U.S. recognition, and once again they prevailed. No ­matter how many power­f ul men lobbied on French’s behalf, he failed to obtain a meeting with the president and the secretary of state. Even though he stressed that Walker’s group of filibusters had been invited to Nicaragua, the administration insisted that, as a U.S. native, French could not represent his ­adopted country. Once French realized the futility of his mission, he returned to Nicaragua. El Nicaraguense blamed his failure on “slanderous” reports that the Central American envoys had spread in the U.S. press. Shortly ­after French’s arrival in

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Washington, articles appeared in U.S. papers describing his “dark past” as a notorious thief and swindler. Such information was likely fed to the press by Marcoleta and his chief lobbyist, the Philadelphia merchant Samuel Fisher.6 French’s ostensibly shady character and U.S. origins w ­ ere not the main reasons why Pierce balked at recognizing Walker’s regime. He was far more concerned about ­whether it could stay in power. ­A fter snubbing French, the president sent a secret agent to Nicaragua to ascertain the regime’s stability. That Pierce’s rebuff did not remove pro-­Walker views from the White House was clear to the Central American envoys.7 The envoys knew their victory meant ­little if they could not curb the enthusiasm of the U.S. public for Walker. Already in December 1855 Molina had warned that even if the White House w ­ ere to reject French’s mission, Walker’s popularity would allow the filibusters to “hope, not without cause, to be received with open arms tomorrow, arrayed in holiday attire for annexation.” Making ­matters worse was Pierce’s own vulnerability, as he was blamed by fellow Demo­crats for their crushing defeats in the elections of 1854 and 1855. Few doubted that Pierce would have to fight hard at the Demo­cratic National Convention of June 1856 to obtain the party’s nomination for the upcoming presidential elections. And since Demo­crats aggressively supported overseas expansion, the envoys feared that a further surge in Walker’s popularity would push Pierce to make a Faustian bargain. To prevent this outcome, the Central American envoys tried to turn U.S. public sentiment against the filibuster by spreading articles that contradicted pro-­Walker accounts of the rosy ­future awaiting would-be colonists in Nicaragua.8 The filibuster’s popularity continued to grow, however. According to Marcoleta, most U.S. papers defended the right of Walker and his men to seize foreign land “against the w ­ ill of their owner.” While this claim is hard to prove, Walker did enjoy support from papers throughout the United States. Most w ­ ere Demo­cratic publications, reflecting the governing party’s enthusiasm for overseas expansion. His cause was also championed by nonpartisan papers in wide circulation, such as Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. What remains unclear is how strongly Walker was backed by newspapers affiliated with the other major parties



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of the era: the disintegrating Whigs and the fledging Republicans and Know-­Nothings. Since all three had strong antiexpansionist tendencies, their newspapers largely opposed Walker. But as his popularity soared, many softened their opposition, as was the case with the New York Times, a leading Republican paper.9 What vexed Marcoleta more was that no U.S. statesman appeared brave enough to ­counter Walker’s public support. In real­ity, prominent U.S. politicians continued to oppose filibusterism. But Marcoleta’s criticism was on the mark, as fewer and fewer public figures dared to condemn Walker. This was even true of Senator William Seward, a prominent antislavery Whig turned Republican from New York who, like other leading Republicans, had long denounced filibusterism. As one British observer noted, such Republicans “abominate it on two grounds—­first, as tending to strengthen slavery and the slave-­interest; and, secondly, as casting an undeserved slur on the American nation at large.” As Walker became more popu­lar outside the slaveholding South, Seward and like-­ minded politicians moderated their antifilibuster stance, to the dismay of Marcoleta and his colleagues.10 The Central American envoys further noticed that the more Walker consolidated his hold over Nicaragua, the brasher U.S. military and judicial authorities became in supporting his cause. ­After news of the war’s outbreak in Central Amer­i­ca reached Washington in April 1856, they realized that l­ ittle more could be done to check Walker’s popularity. When Molina’s superior demanded to know why he could not convince the U.S. government to stem the flow of Nicaragua-­bound filibusters, he responded, “It is very difficult to obtain this result, for the Government is nearly impotent against the ­will of the masses.” The United States had become, so the envoy moaned, a “monstrous nation.”11 For Molina, filibusterism was now a “social cancer” plaguing all classes and regions of the United States. Like other Latin Americans, he believed the country’s “insatiable passion for expansion” reflected how U.S. Anglo-­ Saxons deemed themselves a superior race. If the United States justified expansion in demo­cratic terms, California and Texas proved it could result only in “the total extinction of our race.” With Manifest Destiny expansion leading U.S. citizens to lose any “sense of what is just and unjust,”

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they easily embraced the “demoralizing” force of filibusterism. This onetime admirer of U.S. democracy concluded that filibusterism—­not slavery expansion—­threatened to destroy both Latin Amer­i­ca and the United States.12

II By May 1856 the groundwork had been laid for Agustín Vijil to take Washington by storm. Walker’s envoy had sailed north during the Costa Rican invasion of the previous month, which had brought the filibusters to the brink of defeat. To secure much-­needed reinforcements, Walker swallowed his pride and tried once again to obtain U.S. recognition. He claimed that he alone made the decision to send Vijil, but in real­ity he did so with the encouragement of President Pierce’s secret agent, John Heiss, an influential Demo­cratic newspaper editor who escorted Vijil to the United States. Ostensibly Heiss had gone with his wife to Nicaragua in February 1856 to acquire mines. Yet his true goal was to let the White House know if the stability of Walker’s regime was “a ­matter beyond peradventure,” a key condition for U.S. recognition. L ­ ittle could Pierce foresee that such recognition would r­ ide on the viability of Walker’s enterprise in the U.S. popu­lar mind.13 Heiss’s mission reveals that Pierce was reconsidering his nonrecognition well before Vijil arrived in the capital. Pierce was mainly concerned about ­whether Walker could safeguard U.S. interest in the interoceanic transit. Two days before giving Heiss his secret ­orders, Pierce had met with Amory Edwards from the Honduran Interoceanic Railway, which had been created by ex-­envoy Ephraim George Squier. The com­pany sought not only to build an interoceanic route but to establish a settler colony that would eventually be annexed to the United States. Edwards presented Pierce with a novel by Squier about Nicaragua’s Ca­r ib­bean coast. When he returned ten days ­later, the president stated that the novel had “enlightened” him by demonstrating that the natives ­were “nothing but a set of mulatoes.” It most likely reinforced his concern about Walker’s ability to control a region deemed critical to the existence of the United States. Once in Granada, Heiss impressed upon Walker the necessity of



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sending an envoy who could secure U.S. recognition for his embattled regime. Yet Walker acquiesced only ­after the invasion was in full swing.14 Walker made a shrewd choice in entrusting the delicate mission to Vijil. Unlike Parker French, the highly educated priest was a Nicaraguan of impeccable character. Moreover, he spoke En­glish and was an ardent admirer of the United States. The patrician Granadan even defied men of his own class in defending the controversial marriages between filibusters and native elite ­women, stressing that “we can learn a lot from the Americans, [whose] customs should guide us.” The influential priest was well suited to ­counter fears among the U.S. Catholic hierarchy that Walker was bent on destroying Nicaragua’s church in the name of Anglo-­Saxon Protestantism. The filibuster regime further trusted that Vijil’s liberal views would be well received by the U.S. public. Perhaps Walker also hoped that his compatriots would be more likely to embrace a native envoy whose skin color was markedly lighter than that of most Nicaraguans.15 Vijil arrived in the U.S. capital on May 5 and kept a low profile, patiently waiting for an audience with the president. In the meantime, Walker’s supporters in the North and South waged a public campaign to force Pierce’s hand. Perhaps ­because pro-­Walker papers had previously sought to legitimize the filibuster’s cause by highlighting the inferiority of Nicaraguans, they went overboard in valorizing not only Vijil’s “polished” manners and intellect but also his light skin. As the Boston Daily Advertiser noted, “unlike the mass of his countrymen, [Vijil] has no negro blood.” ­Others sought to make him palatable to anti-­Catholic sectors, especially the surging Know-­Nothing Party, by stressing the distance of ­Nicaragua’s Church from the “absolutist” Vatican and its “despotism.”16 The campaign on Vijil’s behalf drew force from two recent Central American incidents that inflamed the U.S. public. The first concerned revelations about covert Eu­ro­pean support for the war against Walker. In March Walker forwarded to his U.S. friends captured correspondence that exposed British efforts to sell arms to Costa Rica. It became a national topic when Demo­cratic senator John Weller of California read the letters in Congress, adding that his constituents had been pressuring him to attack Pierce’s nonrecognition of the filibuster regime. Pro-­Walker papers further stirred “national prejudice” against the Eu­ro­pe­ans by falsely

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claiming that British, French, German, and Spanish officers had led the Costa Rican invasion of Nicaragua. Such sentiments grew even stronger when the U.S. public learned that British officers had boarded a U.S. steamer in San Juan del Norte. This was a rare instance when a Eu­ro­pean warship sought to prevent the influx of filibusters to Nicaragua. Yet the incident was represented by U.S. papers as an escalation of the allegedly European-­led war against Walker. They claimed that the monarchies of the Old World ­were bent on destroying “democracy,” as embodied by Walker, and on restoring “the aristocratic regime in Central Amer­i­ca.”17 The other development was two “massacres” perpetrated in early April against U.S. travelers crossing the isthmus. One occurred at La Virgen on Lake Nicaragua, when Costa Rican troops killed California-­bound passengers, including four w ­ omen and one infant. U.S. papers denounced the attack as a “slaughter” of unarmed travelers that underscored how the Costa Ricans “openly avow their wish to exterminate the Anglo-­Saxon race in Central Amer­i­ca”—­a claim popu­lar magazines bolstered with dramatic images. The second bloodbath took place in Panama City, when four drunken U.S travelers started a brawl that culminated in an attack of poorer city dwellers against hundreds of transients waiting to be taken to California. The riot claimed the lives of at least two Panamanians and fifteen transients. Many in the crowd w ­ ere driven by the false rumor that the transients w ­ ere pro-­Walker filibusters bent on conquering Panama. Yet most U.S. newspapers claimed that the event reflected nothing but “the savage bloodthirstiness of the halfbreeds.”18 Both massacres led the U.S. press to highlight their government’s inability to secure the Central American transits. Such views found their way into letters that citizens sent to their congressional representatives, as when a Buffalo resident told Senator Seward, “I need not remind you that t­ hese words ‘I am a Roman citizen’ once had the power to protect a Roman in any part of the world. Now the words ‘I am an American citizen or a citizen of the U.S.’ instead of being a protection, are sure to bring upon the individual who utters them scoffs, blows and death.” His comparison of the expanding U.S. nation with the ancient Roman Empire was a view shared by other antebellum Americans. Even anti-­Walker newspapers denounced the “slaughter” of U.S. travelers at the hands of “greasers” and demanded the transfer of warships to the isthmus.19



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F igu r e 3. 1 ​“Virgin Bay. Slaughter of Americans, and burning of the pier by the Costa Ricans,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 17, 1856. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZ62-60922).

Pro-­Walker papers wanted President Pierce to go further by recognizing the filibuster regime. If Walker ­were to fall, the United States would be left with no choice other than to annex Nicaragua and Panama. The papers stressed that Walker’s polity was a cheaper alternative to U.S. annexation and obviated the explosive question of ­whether Nicaragua should be incorporated as a ­free or slave state.20 Walker’s supporters so successfully hyped Eu­ro­pean intervention and the massacres of U.S. transients that they ­were able to take their campaign to Congress. The so-­called Central American imbroglio immediately dominated congressional politics. It was the president’s fellow Demo­crats who most loudly blamed the “blood of ­every American slain in Nicaragua”

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on his refusal to recognize Walker’s regime. They insisted that U.S. interests in the region could only be safeguarded “by the diffusion of Anglo-­Saxon blood” and thus championed Walker’s effort to “Americanize” the isthmus. Their speeches softened the antifilibuster stance of Republicans, who quickly agreed with pro-­Walker Demo­crats that the United States needed to maintain firm control of the Central American transits. Ironically, members of Congress traditionally opposed to filibusterism strengthened the case for Vijil—­largely ­because they wanted to avoid a slippery slope of U.S. intervention that would end in annexation.21 Pro-­Walker forces further increased the pressure on Pierce to receive Vijil by holding public meetings, a key feature of antebellum po­liti­cal culture. T ­ hese mass rallies troubled the international community, for they revealed just how popu­lar Walker had become throughout the United States. The most publicized meeting was held in New York on May 9, 1856, when nearly two thousand p ­ eople gathered at National Hall. Its main messages w ­ ere encapsulated by two banners posted to the hall’s exterior: “No British Interference on the Continent of Amer­i­ca” and “Enlarge the Bound­aries of Freedom.”22 The meetings highlighted how U.S. citizens had come to see overseas expansion as integral to Manifest Destiny. A good example was the speech made at the May 9 rally by Hiram Walbridge, a former Demo­cratic congressman from New York. Like o­ thers, Walbridge stressed the liberal bent of U.S. expansion: “the nature of our institutions is expansive—­a new system, resting upon h­ uman rights, vindicated as they are by the sublime teachings of Chris­tian­ity. In this confederated ­family we invite the down-­trodden, the oppressed; we open the door to their po­liti­cal regeneration.” Invoking the racist ideas of Manifest Destiny, he claimed that “the depraved ignorance and depraved character of [Central Amer­i­ca’s] heterogeneous population of Indians, whites, negroes and ladinos rendered them incapable of forming any stable government.” Hence did ­Nicaraguans have e­ very reason to invite a U.S. “regenerator” like Walker. Walbridge also appealed to the cartographic imagination of his audience. “By looking upon the map of Amer­i­ca, the eye of any man ­will be called to that narrow isthmus which divides two oceans.” He acknowledged that “ten years ago . . . ​[Central Amer­i­ca] was as foreign to us as the interior of Africa.” Yet every­thing changed with the conquest of Cal-



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ifornia, as “our Pacific annexations [have] extended the vision of our statesmen to the absolute necessity of a g­ reat inter-­oceanic communication.” This necessity, he concluded, made it indispensable that the United States annex Central Amer­i­ca.23 That Walker’s conquest strengthened his compatriots’ belief in the viability of overseas expansion was noticeable in the changing nature of U.S. maps of North Amer­i­ca. With the outbreak of the California Gold Rush, maps began to depict the Central American isthmus as if it ­were naturally connected with the U.S. mainland via the interoceanic routes. Walker’s ability to consolidate his rule led mapmakers to go a step further by including images that situated his exploits squarely within U.S. history; one map connected Walker not only with the Founding ­Fathers but also to some of the most celebrated events in U.S. history, such as the ­Battles of Bunker Hill and New Orleans. T ­ hese maps suggested a seamless link between territorial and overseas U.S. expansion—­a message echoed by speakers at pro-­Walker rallies.24 The pro-­Walker press celebrated t­ hese meetings as clear evidence of the filibuster’s public backing. And Walker’s popularity was undeniably high. U.S. newspapers opposed to Walker nonetheless dismissed the rallies as failures. In the case of the New York meeting, they claimed that the crowd consisted of the “­great unwashed” who had been herded like “­cattle” by leaders of gangs affiliated with the city’s Demo­cratic machine (Tammany Hall). Some pro-­Walker gang leaders, such as Isaiah Rynders of the notorious Empire Club, w ­ ere indeed ruthless mobilizers of the Demo­cratic working-­class vote who used vio­lence to terrorize their opponents. Yet anti-­Walker papers missed the broader significance of the meetings. No ­matter how antidemo­cratic they may have been, the large and well-­publicized rallies in Northern and Southern cities reinforced the impression that Walker’s cause enjoyed widespread support—­a nd enhanced the pressure on the White House to recognize Vijil.25 During the first nine days of Vijil’s stay in the capital, Pierce’s cabinet met three times to discuss w ­ hether it should receive the envoy. Most of the cabinet supported such a move, yet Pierce kept on postponing the decision. ­After the third inconclusive meeting, many papers believed that the tide had turned against Vijil. Pro-­Walker forces blamed their failure on the anti-­Vijil campaign waged by the Central Americans and their allies

F igu r e 3. 2 ​“Maps of Nicaragua, North and Central Amer­i­ca: population and square miles of Nicaragua, United States, Mexico, British and Central Amer­i­ca, with routes and distances; portraits of Gen. Walker, Col. Kinney, Parker H. French, and views of the ­Battles of New Orleans and Bunker Hill,” 1856. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, Washington, D.C. (LCCN 2004629019).



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in the U.S. press. If some articles attacked Vijil as “a man of no standing in Nicaragua,” ­others appealed to the racism of white readers by claiming the priest had a “very dark complexion” or, at the very least, “a drop of the African in his veins.” A few of Vijil’s supporters, including John Heiss, expressed their anger by physically assaulting editors of anti-­Walker papers. Such bloody attacks reveal just how rattled pro-­Walker forces had become by their inability to obtain U.S. recognition of the filibuster regime.26 Suddenly, on May 14, the president announced that he would receive Vijil that eve­ning. Secretary of State Marcy accompanied the priest to the White House, where he presented his credentials. It was a quick ceremony. Some journalists claimed Vijil had been given “a cordial reception.” ­Others had a dimmer view. One compared it to “a stolen marriage [made] with as much haste and quiet as pos­si­ble . . . ​very much as if ­those engaged in it ­were ashamed of what they had undertaken.”27 The next day Pierce explained his shift to Congress; he stressed the importance of the Nicaraguan transit to the consolidation of the United States as a transcontinental nation, yet denied any interest in annexing the isthmus. He made sure to invoke Vijil in arguing that the Rivas government was not just a de facto regime but “the government de jure of that republic.” In the end, the president fulfilled the main demands of pro-­ Walker forces: he recognized the filibuster regime, while ordering U.S. warships to intensify their presence in the Atlantic and Pacific terminals of the Nicaraguan and Panamanian transits. News of this turnabout came as a bombshell, as it appeared to signal a new phase in U.S. expansion. A Vermont newspaper claimed that Pierce’s message was “of more importance than any that ever emanated from an Executive of this Republic.”28 But to many observers Pierce’s message was puzzling. His claim about the greater stability of the Rivas government made ­little sense. Given the Costa Rican invasion, the government seemed less stable than in December 1855, when Parker French had unsuccessfully sought to obtain U.S. recognition. What most confused members of the U.S. public, ­however, was that in the previous week Pierce’s cabinet had repeatedly refused to recognize the filibuster regime. What accounts for the president’s turnabout? Pierce rightly noted strategic concerns, as Eu­ro­pean support for the Central American war against Walker threatened U.S. control of the transit. Since Pierce and

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most of his cabinet opposed annexing the region, they came to view the filibuster regime as a low-­cost alternative. But if he justified his recognition by highlighting the regime’s stability, the real reason pointed in the opposite direction: to prevent its downfall. At the same time, Pierce’s change of heart seemed determined by domestic politics. Most  U.S. ­papers believed that his decision was a ploy to secure the presidential nomination at the upcoming Demo­cratic convention, for it was widely believed that he would not be able to defeat his main rivals (James Buchanan and Stephen Douglas) without the support of the party’s power­ful expansionist wing, which demanded recognition of the Walker regime. Yet evidence suggests that the president had been planning to recognize the Walker regime for some time and that his support for filibusterism might have been deeper than commonly believed. It was surely no coincidence that Pierce sent an ardent expansionist—­Heiss—to Nicaragua on a secret mission intended to improve U.S. relations with Walker. Moreover, Pierce never told the public that he had met with Vijil four times prior to the official reception of May 14. According to Vijil, their first meeting took place on the day he arrived in Washington, and it lasted for three hours. The priest went to the White House at a late hour when his visit would go unnoticed. The secrecy suggests that Pierce wanted to wait for the right envoy and the appropriate moment before embracing Nicaragua’s filibuster regime. Already in April 1856 the president had confided to a foreign envoy that he was ­going to recognize the filibuster regime. If Pierce’s embrace of Walker’s envoy appeared as a capitulation to pressure from below, in all likelihood it was a long-­planned act.29

III Most foreign observers had good reason to believe the U.S. public had pushed the White House to endorse Walker’s “piratical” enterprise. Secretary of State Marcy confessed that he “was in arrear of public opinion” in opposing such recognition. Even Walker’s men ­were stunned by Pierce’s change of heart, which they celebrated with torch-­light pro­cessions, the ringing of church bells, and cannon shots as if it was the panacea to their ills. A corporal in the filibuster army captured his comrades’ relief and renewed optimism with the following words:



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At last our call has reached them! And the East Responds at once—­the patriot’s gathering cry; While Western ­waters, rolling to the sea, Bear sturdy arms and hearts aspiring high. The die is cast. The gloomy clouds that lowered In ominous darkness o­ ’er our onward path Are now dispelled by friendly greetings showered By ­those who’ve known our fears and shared our wrath; Who’ve wept sad tears for ­fathers, b­ rothers, sons— A holocaust of dead in freedom’s war— And knew, though ­dying, they w ­ ere feebler given, Their latest cheer was for their country’s star!  . . . It comes—­not from one section of our Union g­ rand, But all combine in wishes for our weal;  . . .

As the poem predicted, Pierce’s act enabled the filibusters to receive massive U.S. reinforcements, thus leading them to believe “freedom’s war” had turned in their ­favor. Above all, the poem rightly states that Walker enjoyed support from throughout the Union, indicating that the United States had become a filibuster nation. ­There is l­ ittle won­der that Pierce’s turnabout triggered a major anti-­U.S. moment, with the foreign press, as Marcy wearily noted, “pouring out its indignant anathemas against us.”30 Walker’s national support was evident in his ubiquitous presence in popu­lar culture. Following Pierce’s turnabout, the United States witnessed the spread of theater shows that celebrated the filibuster’s exploits. The most popu­lar was Nicaragua, or Gen. Walker’s Victories, a musical first performed on July 21, 1856, at New York’s Purdy’s National Theatre and then staged elsewhere in the United States. Featuring Walker as the “Gray eyed man of Destiny,” the racist spectacle showcased the “heroism” of Walker’s men, “the enthusiastic devotion of the P ­ eople to General Walker,” the failed Costa Rican “war of extermination,” and “En­glish complicity with Nicaraguan treachery.” It highlighted the liberal bent of Walker’s cause by stressing that he embodied “the hope of freedom” and that his regime defended “­women’s rights.” It is telling that the show identified the Nicaraguan radical José María Valle as the filibuster’s main “native ally,” even though Valle was ­little known to the U.S. public.

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Walker’s popularity further manifested itself in songs that championed him and his men as “sons of freedom.” Businessmen seized on his popularity to market their products, as when a Jewish liquor distributor promoted his cognac ­bitters in New York with the lines “O’er Nicaragua Walker waves / The glorious ‘stars and stripes,’ / Whilst Steinfeld by his ­bitters saves / From fevers, agues, gripes.”31 What most troubled foreign observers w ­ ere the meetings held throughout the nation to celebrate Pierce’s embrace of the Walker regime. Once again, the largest rally occurred in New York, where up to twenty thousand ­people crammed into City Hall Park. Following the rally, a group accompanied by a ­music band marched up Broadway to the Metropolitan ­Hotel to fete Vijil, who had just arrived from Washington. From the ­hotel balcony, the priest implored the crowd to migrate to his country. As in the past, the rallies w ­ ere exploited by Walker’s agents to collect arms, clothes, funds, and provisions. But now they could also be used to openly enlist recruits. Hence, the gatherings struck fear in the Central American governments opposed to Walker. As the Guatemalan foreign minister warned his Salvadoran colleague, “the ­people, the newspapers, the meetings, they all are for Walker, and they all talk about dispossessing the Indians and other races that ­people ­these countries in order to establish a North American government.”32 Many white Southerners celebrated Pierce’s recognition of Walker’s regime as a key step in their efforts to expand slavery abroad. Yet, foreign observers ­were right to highlight the antislavery bent of the Walker movement in the United States. Indeed, the main pro-­Walker tract appearing in the United States shortly ­after Pierce’s turnabout was penned by William Wells, a scion of the famously abolitionist Adams f­ amily of Boston; Wells’s book made its way across the Atlantic and was translated into German. Its antislavery view of Walker’s movement had much credibility with both U.S. and foreign observers, precisely ­because the author had been in Nicaragua when his colonization partner and fellow New En­ glander Byron Cole secured the contract that brought Walker to the isthmus.33 Some pro-­Walker rallies showcased abolitionists who had spent time in Walker’s tropical realm and could credibly claim that the filibusters ­were freedom crusaders and not agents of slavery. Among the most active

F igu r e 3. 3 ​Playbill, Nicaragua or, Gen. Walker’s Victories, performed at New York’s Purdy’s National Theater, July 1856. John P. Heiss Papers, Tennessee Historical Society Collections. Courtesy of the Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.

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was Sarah Pellet, another Mas­sa­chu­setts native who had worked with antislavery activists as famous as Frederick Douglass. ­After having spent about two months in Nicaragua, Pellet sailed north on the eve of the Costa Rican invasion. Upon arriving in New Orleans, she gave lectures championing Walker’s men for waging war on behalf of “Democracy” and for their efforts to “Americanize” Central Amer­i­ca. She was still in the South when Pierce received Vijil at the White House. As Pellet made her way to New York, she continued to give talks in order to raise funds for Walker and entice her audiences to ­settle in Nicaragua. That her speeches could quicken the pulse of both Southerners and Northerners suggests just how swiftly the Walker movement had become a national force.34 Still, the country’s embrace of filibusterism was not as firm as feared by foreign observers. Among t­ hose U.S. citizens most loudly denouncing the president’s turnabout ­were anti-­Catholic groups who accused him of promoting the “despotic” force of “Romanism.” Equally critical w ­ ere abolitionists who dreaded that Pierce’s act would lead to the annexation of Central Amer­i­ca and Cuba as slave states. Unlike Pellet and Wells, they deemed Walker an agent of the Slave Power rather than an apostle of freedom.35 The largest group of domestic critics feared that Pierce’s embrace of a “pirate government” greatly damaged the international standing of the United States. As one paper warned, the president’s act was “liable to be construed as a sanction of the spirit of wild and lawless adventure, that has already given us a bad name with the peaceful part of the world.” Even military officials privately denounced the White House for turning their country into a rogue nation. An officer on the very warship that Pierce had ordered to Nicaragua believed the filibusters ­were thugs committing “outrage and pillage upon friend or foe” and therefore “it is shameful that our country should have recognized a government upon the footing of Walker.”36 Since filibusterism had long been identified with proslavery expansion, it is surprising that among ­t hose most opposed to Pierce’s recognition ­were leading Southern slaveholders. Their opposition stemmed mainly from fear that the president’s turnabout would destroy their region’s economy by provoking a war with the Eu­ro­pean powers in the Ca­rib­bean. This was especially true of cotton planters whose main market was G ­ reat



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Britain. So even if the expansionist New Orleans Delta celebrated Pierce’s act by claiming “the cause of Nicaragua is the cause of the South,” some of the region’s most power­ful elites thought other­wise. As the mouthpiece of South Carolina’s slaveholding aristocracy—­the Charleston Mercury—­ responded, “We are at a loss to see how ‘the cause of Nicaragua is the cause of the South.’ . . . ​The cause of the South is at home, in battling with an abolitionised North. . . . ​Besides, let us look at the movements in New York in behalf of Walker, and ask, ­whether that is the quarter from whence aid to ‘the cause of the South’ is to be expected.” The proslavery Semi-­Weekly Mississippian more explic­itly feared that Pierce’s act would lead the U.S. government “to send forth [antislavery] moral and po­liti­cal reformers to reclaim the unenlightened from the abyss of darkness and degradation in which they may repose.” Such criticism only reinforced the prevalent view in the United States that Walker’s movement was promoting not the expansion of slavery but the emigration of Free-­Soil settlers to the tropics.37 Walker’s national appeal explains why U.S. recognition of his regime so threatened the international community. Pierce’s act was immediately denounced by Eu­ro­pean and Latin American envoys in Washington and eventually by their governments. Their protests reflected simmering anger at the post-1848 spread of U.S. filibusterism. In addition, Eu­ro­pe­ans and Latin Americans resented the White House’s rejection of the Paris Declaration of April 1856—an antiprivateering treaty that “created international law as we know it t­oday.” U.S. recognition of the Walker regime only reinforced the country’s rogu­ish image.38 The international community deemed Pierce’s act a watershed, as its popu­lar under­pinnings suggested that the U.S. government was now in thrall of “the mob.” For G ­ reat Britain’s foreign minister Lord Clarendon, filibusterism’s mass appeal represented a global threat that might only be solved by the creation of an unpre­ce­dented international alliance. “That nation of Pirates,” he warned upon hearing of Pierce’s turnabout, “is e­ very day becoming a more formidable nuisance and ­there is no country which ­will not in its turn be exposed to American insolence and encroachment ­unless the commercial and dollarmaking classes t­ here are made to feel that their Government w ­ ill end by turning all mankind against them and t­ here ­will be a universal league to compel them to observe the usages of civilized nations.” Much of the international community followed Clarendon in

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believing that U.S. filibusterism now sprang more from the country’s demo­cratic institutions than the South’s “peculiar institution.”39 But even if “that nation of Pirates” endangered “all mankind,” its embrace of Walker menaced Eu­rope and Latin Amer­i­ca differently. For the Eu­ro­pe­ans, it primarily threatened their strategic interests in the Ca­rib­ bean, a longtime geopo­liti­cal hot spot. The British and the French feared that it would doom their efforts to construct the Nicaraguan canal, which they considered to be key to their control of international trade. Spain, in turn, feared that Walker’s realm would become a starting point for filibuster expeditions against its prized colony of Cuba. The press on both sides of the Atlantic panicked about the outbreak of a European-­U.S. war that, as a German magazine warned, “could easily become a world-­ historical tragedy.” The war panic only intensified when, two weeks ­after recognizing the Walker regime, the Pierce administration expelled the British minister. Many feared that war was especially unavoidable if the Eu­ro­pe­ans ­were to send troops to fight Walker. And Spanish diplomats in Central Amer­i­ca and the United States called precisely for such an intervention. They ­were seconded by the Spanish general who visited Costa Rica in June 1856 and promised to send troops to the war front.40 In the end, no Eu­ro­pean armies landed in Central Amer­i­ca. As much as Spain advocated for war against Walker, it was dissuaded by France and G ­ reat Britain. Both powers had not only just waged the costly Crimean War but remained bogged down by their colonial enterprises in Africa and Asia. Moreover, they did not want to jeopardize their trade relations with the United States. The Central American governments turned to Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Prus­sia, and Sardinia for troops, but to no avail. Even as fears of a transatlantic war dissipated, Eu­ro­pe­ans continued to deem the United States, as the British prime minister put it, a nation of “rogues.” 41 Such anti-­U.S. views swept Latin Amer­i­ca as well. But unlike the Eu­ ro­pe­ans, Latin Americans feared for their very existence. That Central Americans associated U.S. expansion with an “exterminating impulse” is not surprising, given their apprehensions about Walker. But why did Pierce’s act ensure that this fear would be shared by their southern counter­parts? South Americans had not only shown ­little concern over the U.S. annexation of Mexico’s northern half but also paid l­ittle atten-



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tion to Walker’s seizure of power. They certainly worried about the southward spread of U.S. filibusterism and w ­ ere troubled by the 1854 treaty that briefly turned guano-­rich Ec­ua­dor into a U.S. protectorate—­a treaty that, in their eyes, reflected U.S. desires to colonize all of South Amer­ i­ca. Still, their fears of U.S. expansion paled next to ­t hose of Central Americans. As late as March 1856, South American governments ­were denounced by Central Americans for being “blind” to the dangers of Manifest Destiny. This complacency evaporated with U.S. recognition of the Walker regime.42 Now South Americans, too, viewed the United States as a genocidal threat to the entire “Latin race” inhabiting the Amer­i­cas. Granted, filibuster invasions ­were often undertaken “in the name of civilization and liberty.” But as an influential Peruvian paper stressed, this justification suggested that “nature has reserved liberty solely for the Anglo-­Saxon race.” With Pierce’s turnabout, South Americans feared that the southward march of the “northern colossus” would not stop u­ ntil, to quote Peru’s foreign minister, “the New World would be left with only one nation—­the American Union.” 43 Pierce’s act pushed South American governments to join Central Americans in forging the largest anti-­U.S. alliance in Latin American history. The alliance was designed u­ nder the nose of the White House, as its main architects ­were the Central American envoys in Washington. They had begun their secret proj­ect in February 1856, when their countries ­were gearing up for the war against Walker. The alliance sought to both secure South American aid for the war and forge a pan-­Latin American confederation that would include Portuguese-­speaking Brazil. The envoys’ proj­ect was first stymied by South American passivity. Pierce’s embrace of Walker provided the impetus to finalize an alliance that, as a Mexican diplomat put it, sought to c­ ounter “the ‘manifest destiny’ proclaimed by the oracles of Anglo-­A merican democracy.” 44 Pierce’s turnabout provoked even greater South American outrage in the nongovernmental realm. It galvanized liberal intellectuals and politicians to or­ga­nize meetings that denounced U.S. democracy as a threat to a continent they ­were beginning to call “Latin Amer­i­ca.” They constructed this entity in opposition to what some Latin Americans termed “Anglo Amer­i­ca” and ­others “Saxon Amer­i­ca.” A similar reaction

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o­ ccurred among South American exiles in Eu­rope. At an anti-­U.S. protest in Paris held on June 22, 1856, the Chilean Francisco Bilbao proclaimed that “Walker was the United States” and castigated “Saxon Amer­i­ca” for seeking to exterminate the ­peoples of “Latin Amer­i­ca.” This was one of the first uses of the term Latin Amer­i­ca, leading some to believe he had in­ven­ted it. In real­ity, South Americans across the Atlantic had also begun to invoke “Latin Amer­i­ca” at meetings protesting Pierce’s act. Already in February  1856 a Costa Rican newspaper denounced Walker as a threat to the “Latin American race.” Then, however, the term was still used as an adjective, to identify a race. Only with Pierce’s turnabout did Latin Amer­i­ca come to denote a continent.45 The idea of Latin Amer­i­ca was the most enduring outcome of the anti­U.S. moment triggered by Pierce’s recognition of the Walker regime. For South Americans like Bilbao, this idea was firmly linked with the defense of a continental democracy against what he and ­others deemed the most democratic—­and most dangerous—­form of U.S. expansion: filibusterism.

IV Vijil reinforced the link between filibusterism and democracy by using the U.S. recognition to shore up Walker’s support among U.S. reformers affiliated with the Republican Party. The priest spent only six more weeks in the north before sailing back home. And during this brief period he was completely shunned by Washington’s diplomatic community. Eu­ro­ pean and Latin American envoys believed his exclusion had so unnerved Vijil that it led him to abandon his diplomatic mission. Actually, he left the United States as anything but a defeated man. Vijil had never planned to stay in the United States for much time. All along, his main goal had been to obtain diplomatic recognition, which he accomplished in less than three weeks. Moreover, Vijil’s ostracism hardly prevented him from carry­ing out other tasks that remained hidden from public view. One key charge was to secure a large shipment of arms for Walker’s army. Another was to enhance Walker’s cause by meeting with leading public figures.46 Among the most impor­tant of such encounters was the visit that Vijil paid to Archbishop Francis Kenrick of Baltimore on June 17. Vijil’s Nicaraguan enemies ­later claimed the archbishop had treated his visitor with



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much hostility. Accordingly, the archbishop asked him: “Is it pos­si­ble that a Catholic priest should come to this country to ­labor against his religion and his patria?” ­These words have been repeated by latter-­day historians. Yet they ­were most likely never uttered by Kenrick. Available rec­ords indicate that their meeting was amicable, and the archbishop acceded to Vijil’s request that he be allowed to serve mass. With this visit, Vijil not only appeared to have gained the support of the U.S. Catholic Church but also showed that his government would receive with open arms the masses of Irish and German Catholics unhappy with their condition in the United States, especially since they ­were the main victims of Know-­ Nothing’s anti-­immigration crusade.47 Even more impor­tant ­were Vijil’s meetings with liberal reformers in the New York–­Washington corridor, whose support the priest and like-­ minded Nicaraguan Liberals believed was key to Walker’s Americanization proj­ect. One meeting took place at the home of Elizabeth Oakes Smith in New York. Most likely it had been or­ga­nized by her son, Appleton, who headed the city’s pro-­Walker forces and served as Vijil’s translator. Among the attendees was her friend Sarah Pellet. Both ­were radical suffragists, abolitionists, temperance reformers, and effective public lecturers, yet Oakes Smith was far better known. She was not only a famous writer, with friends like Edgar Allen Poe, but she also edited with her husband the influential United States Magazine. Like other liberal journals, the magazine celebrated Walker’s exploits by claiming that he was spreading “liberty” and “pro­gress” to Central Amer­i­ca. Oakes Smith was also known for holding soirées that included liberal revolutionaries from Eu­rope and Cuba. One frequent guest had been Domingo Goicouría, who l­ater led Walker’s Cuban contingent. Thanks to Oakes Smith, Vijil was able to meet some prominent liberal reformers.48 Vijil even encountered the standard-­bearer of Northern reformers: the Republican presidential candidate John Frémont. Their meeting took place on June 24, Vijil’s final day in the United States. Frémont ostensibly went to New York’s harbor to accompany California-­bound friends who boarded the same ship taking Walker’s envoy back home. Just a week earlier, he had secured his party’s presidential nomination. Campaigning ­under the banner of “freedom,” Frémont’s candidacy stirred a reformist fervor rarely seen previously in U.S. politics. His campaign drew much

F igu r e 3.4 ​“Nicaragua and General Walker,” The United States Magazine 3 (New York: J.M. Emerson & Co., July 1856). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.



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force from the antislavery movement, which spread rapidly in the North as the vio­lence in “Bleeding Kansas” escalated over the summer of 1856. His candidacy also excited temperance advocates and ­women’s rights activists, as well as agrarian socialists and Eu­ro­pean veterans of the 1848 revolutions. Frémont’s campaign spoke to the kind of liberal reformers who supported Walker’s quest to spread “freedom” to the tropics.49 That Republicans would support Walker’s enterprise might seem odd, for their antislavery party is rarely associated with U.S. expansion by sea. Many Republicans actually resisted such expansion, as they opposed incorporating nonwhite and non-­Protestant ­peoples into the Union. But influential sectors of the inchoate party endorsed expansion into Latin American territories where slavery was prohibited. Some w ­ ere motivated by economic and strategic reasons, as was true of Senator Seward. O ­ thers sought to bring freedom to Latin Americans living u­ nder despotic rule, as evident in speeches made at the Republican National Convention of 1856.50 A third group supported overseas expansion in the name of bringing freedom to African Americans. Among the most prominent of such ­Republicans who backed Walker ­were Senator James Doolittle of Wisconsin and former congressman Cassius Clay of Kentucky. In their eyes, white voters so feared race mixing and the economic competition of ­free blacks that they would not endorse abolition ­unless emancipated slaves left U.S. soil. They proposed that the United States create a colony in Central Amer­i­ca that would become a new homeland for African Americans. Such expansion, they hoped, would precipitate the end of U.S. slavery, block Southern efforts to expand slavery abroad, strengthen U.S. control of a strategic region, allow African Americans to enjoy the rights denied to them in the United States, and turn the United States into a white nation. Their proj­ect gained traction only a­ fter the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857. Yet it appears to have been hatched in mid-1856, precisely when Walker was at the height of his power. Since white-­led overseas colonization schemes had previously focused on Africa, the filibuster’s success might have inspired Republicans to turn t­oward Central Amer­i­ca. But they ­were also inspired by Senator Robert Walker of Mississippi, who as early as 1844 had already called for the removal of African Americans to Mexico and Central Amer­i­ca. Although a Southern Demo­crat, the senator was close to Republican colonizationists, such as Francis Blair.51

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So even if many Republican politicians and newspapers fiercely opposed Walker’s regime, Frémont and other influential Republicans had multiple reasons for embracing his goal of forging a liberal, antislavery empire in Central Amer­i­ca. Frémont had met Walker in San Francisco in April 1855, just before the filibuster left for Nicaragua. According to Walker, Frémont “thought well of [his] undertaking.” A year l­ater some Republicans believed that Walker had moved to the proslavery camp. Hence, a Republican campaign song of June  1856 denounced him for promoting “the slave regeneration of the Nicaragua nation.” Yet leading Republicans still considered Walker to be “opposed to the institution of slavery.” As Doolittle stressed, the filibuster was then well known for having “labored in California to make that a free-­State, and to resist the introduction of slavery t­ here.”52 In June, Frémont had good reason to seek out Vijil. He might have even gone to New York’s harbor deliberately to bid farewell to the priest (no rec­ord of their encounter has survived). It is also pos­si­ble that both had met earlier that day—at the gathering of pro-­Walker figures or­ga­nized by Oakes Smith. If so, Pellet surely helped to orchestrate their meeting. She was an old acquaintance of Frémont and worked on his presidential campaign. In fact, she had just helped ensure that the party’s platform would not condemn Walker by informing Republican luminaries, such as Senator Seward, that the proslavery “Ostend Manifesto policy is no part of the disign [sic] of Gen. Walker.” Once back in New York, Pellet lobbied prominent Republicans to meet with Vijil.53 What tran­spired at ­t hese meetings remains a mystery, though Vijil surely used them to promote Walker’s imperial designs. The meetings also allowed liberal U.S. expansionists to sway the priest, as when Pellet instructed Vijil to “influence the Nicaraguans and the ­people of the neighboring Republics” upon his return home. Although she did not state what she meant by “influence,” she likely referred to U.S.-­style democracy and the purported benefits it held for Central Americans. Without doubt, liberal expansionists like Pellet had a strong impact on Vijil. As the priest ­later told his son, he returned to Nicaragua with a new mission: to spread the “knowledge of that g­ reat world [the United States] to your unfortunate country where they destroy men like animals, and where they do not know that term po­liti­cal society.”54



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Vijil’s departure appeared to provide an opening for the Central American diplomats to pressure the White House to rescind its recognition of the Walker regime. Yet Pierce steadfastly resisted such pressure. His refusal to officially receive Vijil’s successors suggests that his administration had revoked its support for the Walker regime. But this was not the view of Latin American governments. As late as December 1856 the Central American envoys w ­ ere still urging “upon the Government of the United States the non-­recognition of Walker as President of Nicaragua”— to l­ ittle avail. When President James Buchanan took office in March 1857, few foreign envoys believed he would end U.S. support for Walker. On the contrary, many feared that this support would only increase. Costa Rica’s Luis Molina cautioned that the U.S. government, with Buchanan at its helm, would fi­nally throw off its “transparent mask” and “instead of . . . ​publicly condemning the filibuster enterprises it w ­ ill openly praise them.” The White House’s unwillingness to truly break with the Walker regime led Molina to conclude that the United States “has ceased to be the model Republic, the beacon and hope for all friends of pro­gress; it has become an object of universal fear.”55 Ironically, Pierce’s recognition of the Walker regime led much of the world to view the United States as an immoral nation precisely when moral reform movements held sway in the “model Republic.” That Walker could appeal both to antislavery reformers and their fiercest detractors reveals that the United States, however divided over the extension of slavery, could still come together to back overseas expansion made in the name of “democracy.” Hence did Pierce’s turnabout lead thousands of U.S. residents to migrate to Nicaragua, where they sought to help Walker build his tropical empire.

4 The Colonists

Two days ­after President Franklin Pierce recognized William Walk-

er’s regime, the New York Herald reported that over five thousand men ­were ready to sail for his realm. They w ­ ere, so it stressed, “men with families, and young men who seek, not the excitement of war, but a settlement in life and a homestead. They to go Nicaragua instead of Kansas or Wisconsin or Iowa, simply b­ ecause they believe they can do better t­ here.” That migrating to Central Amer­i­ca seemed as natu­ral as ­going west reflected the transformation of Walker’s filibuster expedition into a settler movement. It was with good reason that El Nicaraguense called the newcomers not immigrants but colonists and settlers, for immigrants typically seek their incorporation into an existing po­liti­cal order while the latter aim to found new and, from their perspective, better polities. By 1857 about twelve thousand U.S. residents had joined Walker’s ranks. Just when the United States was becoming the world’s greatest immigrant nation, it experienced an unpre­ce­dented outflow of seabound settlers.1 Walker’s colonists ­were driven by the quest for a better life in the tropics. Yet many also believed they w ­ ere helping Walker—as a w ­ oman from Iowa put it—­“Americanize that garden of the world.” ­Because his colonists 102



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often understood Americanization very differently, they ensured that his imperial proj­ect would be racked with internal tensions. Ironically, t­ hose who proved most critical to Walker’s fortunes are now rarely if ever associated with his movement: antislavery reformers. But it was this diverse group, ranging from U.S. missionaries and temperance activists to abolitionists and Eu­ro­pean socialists, that perhaps best embodied the promises—­and perils—of Manifest Destiny’s mission to Americanize the world.2

I The flow of U.S. residents to Walker’s realm appeared to have every­thing to do with the popularity of the Nicaraguan transit in the United States. Central Americans called it the highway of filibusterism, for the transit allowed Walker to recruit followers among the hundreds of U.S. travelers crossing the isthmus ­every two weeks. It also enabled his U.S. supporters to go to Nicaragua on their own account. But perhaps most impor­tant, the transit had led Nicaragua to already capture the U.S. imagination. Ever since the Gold Rush, the U.S. press had depicted the isthmus as if it w ­ ere a tropical paradise where untapped mines, rich land, and alluring ­women awaited northern visitors. Nicaragua’s image as the new El Dorado was reinforced by letters that Walker’s men wrote to U.S. newspapers and that ­were reproduced in other papers, including Eu­ro­pean ones. Such reports exerted “their seductions” similarly to the ways emigrant letters ­were then fueling Eu­ro­pean migration to the Amer­i­cas. Still, Walker’s effort to attract U.S. settlers was far more or­ga­n ized than often thought.3 The Walker regime first drew on the network that had provided recruits for earlier filibuster expeditions to Mexico and Cuba. The recruiters ­were based in San Francisco, the California gold fields, Mississippi and Ohio River valley towns from New Orleans to Pittsburgh, and port cities along the Atlantic Seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico. They mobilized hundreds of men with the promise of adventure and good pay. And while it was illegal to recruit mercenaries on U.S. soil, the agents easily circumvented the neutrality laws by disguising their recruits as settlers.4

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Very quickly the Walker regime began to court would-be U.S. settlers who had no intention of serving in its army. This task fell to agents working for its Department of Colonization, which was established right ­a fter Walker’s conquest. It was led by the Mas­sa­chu­setts native Joseph ­Fabens, who had already sought to promote the influx of settlers to Nicaragua while serving as U.S. commercial agent in San Juan del Norte from 1853 to 1855. Initially, Fabens’s department sought to attract settler colonists—­men and ­women—by waging a public relations campaign in the United States. With the help of newspapers, his department publicized the regime’s colonization decree, which promised 250 acres of state-­owned land to each colonist, and an additional one hundred acres to each ­family. Much of the uncultivated land that it proposed to distribute was located in the frontier regions of Chontales and Matagalpa. Fabens’s department also sent copies of El Nicaraguense to about four hundred U.S. newspapers on a regular basis, including small immigrant newspapers such as the German-­language Der Lecha Patriot of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Since t­ hese papers often republished articles from El Nicaraguense, they helped to spread a rosy image of Walker’s realm to potential colonists.5 Even anti-­Walker papers acknowledged how “by dint of extensive advertising” the filibuster regime compelled many U.S. residents to migrate to Nicaragua.6 Yet Fabens’s department soon realized that it needed agents to or­ga­ nize the flow of settlers to Nicaragua. By February 1856 the department had placed colonization agents in the U.S. terminals of the Nicaragua route (New Orleans, New York, and San Francisco). It also communicated with colonization agents in Eu­rope, where the recent rise of the nativist Know-­Nothing movement in the United States led emigration agents to train their sights on Central Amer­i­ca. If most w ­ ere businessmen, a few agents ­were radicals who deemed Walker a kindred spirit. A good example was the Swiss Wilhelm Joos, who had joined the French Revolution of 1848 and then worked for six years as a doctor in Brazil and Colombia. Upon returning home, Joos promoted the emigration of poor Swiss to Central Amer­i­ca, where he hoped to establish a farming colony of five hundred families. Walker’s conquest only heightened his interest in the region, as he believed filibuster rule would allow it to become stable and



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acquire the liberal institutions of the United States. Joos was unable to implement his colonization scheme, and Walker received very few settler colonists directly from Eu­rope. The contacts that his regime forged with Eu­ro­pean agents nonetheless reveal the widespread appeal of its colonization proj­ect.7 Unlike his military recruiters, Walker’s U.S. colonization agents did not violate the neutrality law and could operate in the open. Most set up offices in busy districts and advertised their ser­vices in local newspapers, in ­hotels, on trains, and on steamboats. In New York they plastered posters on walls and hung large flags over their office on Broadway that displayed messages such as “­Free farms and ­free passage to Nicaragua on the steamer Tennessee leaving the 26th instant.” They also answered letters from potential mi­grants, met with leaders of emigration groups, and helped or­ga­nize pro-­Walker rallies that publicized their colonization proj­ects.8 In August 1856 the Walker regime centralized its recruitment efforts by putting the New York saloon and ­hotel owner Alexander Lawrence at the head of the Nicaraguan Emigration Com­pany. It was no coincidence that the com­pany’s headquarters ­were located in New York. Unlike San Francisco, where the populace was still largely male, the Empire City attracted families seeking a new life in the tropics. New Orleans also drew families, especially from the Midwest. But ­because land pressure was greatest in the Northeast, the filibuster regime believed most colonists would leave from New York. Moreover, the city held many poor immigrants. Hence did Lawrence heavi­ly advertise in papers like the Irish News and the New-­Yorker Staats-­Zeitung.9 The emigration com­pany quickly expanded beyond New York. From his office on Broadway, Lawrence oversaw agents on the Atlantic Seaboard, in the Deep South, and in the Midwest. In exchange for paying their passage the com­pany received about half of the land promised to the emigrants. It then handed two-­thirds of this land to the shipping com­ pany that brought them to Granada. Lawrence’s com­pany regularly sent off colonists ­until January 1857, when the Costa Rican capture of the transit severed Walker’s lifeline to the United States.10 Thus ended one of the largest overseas emigrations from the United States. It remains unclear exactly how many U.S. residents settled in

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Walker’s realm; the flow was not tracked by the filibuster regime or the U.S. government. Nor did the Nicaraguan Emigration Com­pany leave ­behind relevant rec­ords. The shipping com­pany claimed to have taken over twelve thousand recruits and settlers to Nicaragua. Since it charged the regime for each emigrant, it had ­every reason to keep an accurate tab. Who, then, ­were ­t hese U.S. residents who, through the sword and the plough, sought to help Walker forge his empire?11

II Many of Walker’s men fit the classic profile of antebellum filibusters: single, white, urban workers facing an uncertain economic f­ uture. Consider the 1857 register of his army, our only surviving muster roll that lists the age, birthplace, “complexion,” and occupation of his enlisted men (but no officers). Comprising 1,027 names, it confirms that very few of Walker’s soldiers ­were nonwhite and that a bit over half belonged to the urban working class, while only about one-­tenth identified as farmers even though about 80 ­percent of the U.S. population was rural. The register nonetheless challenges some of the era’s most ingrained views about filibusterism.12 Among the strongest myths undermined by the 1857 register is the firm association of filibusterism with reckless youth. To be sure, the ­great influx of rural and Eu­ro­pean mi­grants to the filibuster bastions of New Orleans, New York, and San Francisco reflected young men e­ ager to be ­free “from parental restraints that might have other­wise inhibited them from engaging in expeditions.” Boys as young as eleven years of age w ­ ere caught ­running from their homes to join Walker. ­There is ­little won­der that antebellum Americans could deem filibusterism a form of “teen rebellion.” Yet the average age of Walker’s soldiers was twenty-­six—­a high figure for a society where the average life expectancy was forty-­seven years. Moreover, t­ here ­were twice as many soldiers over the age of thirty than ­there w ­ ere teen­agers. Clearly Walker’s movement was not driven by brash youngsters but rather courted U.S. residents of “old age,” both for their experience and capital.13 Walker’s fiercest U.S. opponents—­Northern abolitionists—­were wrong to claim that his movement was dominated by proslavery Southerners.



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Only a third of the recorded soldiers hailed from slaveholding states (a  proportion slightly below the South’s share of the U.S. population). More than any other filibuster expedition, Walker’s army attracted followers from all U.S. regions—­largely b­ ecause his was the only one to sustain itself in power. And while nearly all its members w ­ ere white, ­there ­were a few African Americans, Native Americans, and what appear to be Mexican Americans. In addition, the army included about as many non-­U.S. natives as Southerners, with 30  ­percent of the registered soldiers consisting of European-­born immigrants to the United States (mainly Germans and Irish)—­a figure nearly three times larger than the foreign-­born share of the U.S. population. The a­ctual percentage of non-­U.S. natives in Walker’s army was even higher, for the register excluded nearly all of his Latin American soldiers, who came from places as dif­fer­ent as Chile, Cuba, Ec­ua­dor, and Panama. The register reveals that Walker’s army had a wider social base than commonly thought. As expected, the majority belonged to the urban working classes, with many hailing from slums. One U.S. newspaper noted that Walker could not “rake up . . . ​a more miserable lot of unmistakably hungry rowdies.” Yet, one-­fi fth listed white-­collar occupations (clerks, ­engineers, merchants, l­awyers, planters, druggists, physicians, overseers, grocers, ­etc.) associated with the m ­ iddle and upper classes. Better-­off ­filibusters constituted a higher share of the officer corps and included gradu­ates from elite universities such as Prince­ton and Yale. They often resented being lumped with the “hungry rowdies” who flocked to Walker’s army. As one officer retorted, “a filibuster in Nicaragua may be a ruffian . . . ​but he is just as likely to be a gentleman.”14 Since the filibusters hailed from diverse backgrounds, their goals varied considerably. They included many crooks who deemed Nicaragua a safe haven. Few better used Walker’s realm to adopt a new persona than did Col­o­nel William Kissane, who had fled murder charges resulting from an insurance scam that involved the torching of a Mississippi riverboat. In Nicaragua he called himself William K. Rogers and spread the rumor that Kissane had been killed in ­battle; this rumor found its way back to his victims in the United States. A fellow officer claimed that Kissane, who controlled the regime’s finances, had left Nicaragua with an illicit fortune worth “half a million dollars.” Perhaps it was no coincidence that he

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became a millionaire rancher and winemaker in California. Walker even attracted a criminal gang of twenty-­five “Texas Rangers.” ­After two weeks of military ser­vice, the Texans went on a robbing expedition in the mining region of Chontales, from where they planned to go to San Juan del Norte and take a steamer back home. For a week or so they ransacked ­cattle estates, villages, and mining towns, “persecuting innocent residents and hanging ­those who fell into their hands.” Yet just as the deserters headed for the coast, they ­were killed by a group of Nicaraguans and French miners—­a “merited retribution,” so Walker’s El Nicaraguense stressed.15 The claims of the anti-­Walker press notwithstanding, most soldiers ­were driven by licit motives. Many ­were attracted by the promise of decent wages. When the fifteen-­year-­old Robert Acker, who drove a milk truck in New York, found out that “boys could get three dollars a day” serving in the filibuster army, he and other “hard case” teen­agers enlisted immediately. The allure that Walker’s realm exerted on the urban poor is echoed in the song “I’ve Been to Nicaragua.” Walking down Broadway, a downtrodden New Yorker encounters one of Walker’s recruiters who promises him a better life. The narrator “scarcely knew what to do or say / No money I had / My boots was bad / Hat was gone / My pants w ­ ere 16 torn / So I was off for Nicaragua.” However good the pay, many more of Walker’s recruits w ­ ere enticed by the prospect of acquiring ­free farmland a­ fter completing their ser­vice in his army. With landownership a key means of enrichment, Walker’s land decree even excited t­ hose with no farming experience. This was true of a teenage runaway from the wealthy Du Pont ­family whose ­mother claimed he was “ignorant of every­thing relating to farming.” Most recruits lured by the land decree ­were more like William Miller, an Austrian-­born New Yorker who claimed to have “no clothes or baggage except what is on my back.” Many hoped to receive an established farm and thus avoid the arduous and expensive task of clearing land, as would have been the case had they gone west. As one newspaper quipped, “to myriads of young men, it seems a slow business to delve ten or fifteen years for a scanty farm, when a ‘rancho’ and a ‘hacienda’ may be speedily had . . . ​by simply knocking over the own­er.”17



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That the promise of ­free land and regular pay drove many men to join Walker’s army had much to do with the economic distress plaguing much of the U.S. population. This was chiefly the case of the poor living in cities that overflowed with Eu­ro­pean immigrants. As the new arrivals overwhelmed l­ abor markets in the United States, wages stagnated and unemployment ­rose. Moreover, the unceasing expansion of factories continued to destroy artisanal workshops, forcing skilled artisans to compete with mi­grants for low-­paying jobs. If this ­were not enough, the 1854 recession hit the urban poor especially hard. Urbanization and industrialization also led to the rise of crowded, filthy, and crime-­ridden slums. The contrast between such urban plight and the glowing reports of Walker’s El ­Dorado could not have been more striking.18 ­These reports fell on ­eager ears in the countryside, too. Although the 1850s ­were “unusually good years” for U.S. farmers, many fretted about their ­future. In the Northeast farmers worried that their western counter­ parts benefitted from better farming conditions and the spread of ­railroads and canals. In the South, the booming cotton economy only made slaveholders richer, while nonslaveholding whites resented both the growing competition from slaves for low-­skilled work and rising slave prices, which blocked their entry into the coveted ranks of slaveholders. In California, the end of the Gold Rush produced misery among the thousands dependent on the mining economy. Throughout the United States, men abounded who ­were easy prey for Walker’s promise of a better life in the tropics.19 Yet desperate men flocked to Nicaragua not just for easy riches. They also sought to redeem their virility, for antebellum society deemed few ­things manlier than the colonization of new territories. Some believe that Walker’s soldiers ­were largely “economic failures” who embraced his cause in order to display a “martial manhood” that celebrated physical strength. And many did stem from the so-­called sporting culture, which valorized unruly thrills such as “boxing, gambling, cockfighting, membership in volunteer fire companies and gangs, raucous theater productions, and visits to brothels.”20 Among the best known of Walker’s sporting men ­were the Demo­cratic councilman James Kerrigan from New York’s notorious slum of Five Points and Christopher Lilly, a famed prizefighter,

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F igu r e 4 . 1 ​“Scene in the ­Battle of Rivas, from a sketch made on the spot by our artist correspondent,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 17, 1856. This ­battle was waged on April 11, 1856, between Walker’s men and Costa Rican forces. Scrapbook, John P. Heiss Papers, Tennessee Historical Society Collections. Courtesy of the Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.

saloon owner, and cockfight promoter in San Francisco. Both had fought in the U.S. war against Mexico. Indeed, many filibusters ­were destitute veterans longing for not only a job but “the male camaraderie of camp life and the battleground”—an allure that the pro-­Walker press keenly highlighted.21 Yearnings for the “romance of war” similarly motivated Eu­ro­pean veterans to fight for Walker. His army attracted, a British traveler noted, “Hungarians who had bled at Segedin; Italians who had fought at Novara; Prus­sians who had gone through the Schleswig-­Holstein campaigns; Frenchmen who had fought in Algeria; En­glishmen who had been in our own artillery in the Crimea.” Among Walker’s most hardened soldiers of fortune was his second-­in-­command, the British-­born Charles Frederick Henningsen, who had fought in the Spanish Civil War of the mid-1830s before joining the Rus­sian campaign against Muslim tribes in the Caucasus and the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. Some had more far-­flung



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F igu r e 4 . 2 ​“Nicaragua.—­Fillibusters [sic] reposing ­after the b­ attle in their quarters at the convent,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 3, 1856. This image depicts Walker’s soldiers relaxing in Granada’s Convent of San Francisco, with some men playing cards and ­others drinking, eating, smoking, debating, or reading a newspaper. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photo­graphs Division, Washington, D.C. (LC-­USZ62-108152).

combat experiences, as was true of a veteran of the British war against the Xhosa in southern Africa and another who had fought in the Bengal Army of the British East India Com­pany.22 The thrill of violent adventure also drove men and some boys with no military experience to join Walker. Many modeled themselves a­ fter the gallant knight of medieval times. The romantic pirate was an even more alluring figure. Walker’s enemies in the United States used this figure to denounce his enterprise, but many young men w ­ ere enticed by the pirate’s rebellious aura as it invoked fantasies of adventure, quick riches, sex, and freedom. It was with good reason that El Nicaraguense recommended a pirate song to its readers by stating that “if the metre is occasionally defective, the philosophy is by no means so.”23 On the other hand, many joined Walker’s army for po­liti­cal reasons, “impelled,” as one stressed, “by the prestige of ‘manifest destiny.’ ” Some

F igu r e 4 . 3 ​“Ye Popu­lar Idea of Gen. Walker, of Nicaragua,” Young Amer­i­ca 1, no. 2 (New York: T. W. Strong, January 12, 1856). Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.



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stated that they went to Nicaragua in the belief that, as an officer put it, “Walker was literally suffering self-­martyrdom for liberating a down-­ trodden, suffering nation.” More typically, they wanted to help Walker Americanize the isthmus. But what they understood as Americanization was more ambiguous than commonly thought. Not surprisingly, Americanization was intertwined with the explosive issue of slavery expansion. For Walker’s white Southern recruits, it often meant the expansion of slavery to Nicaragua—an expansion they hoped would buttress the South’s “peculiar institution.” One such Southerner was the rich Texan slaveholder and cotton planter Richard Swearingen, who spent several months in Nicaragua before returning home in April  1856. He travelled north to recruit other Texans to s­ettle in Walker’s realm, where they would establish plantations and promote the reopening of the international slave trade—an issue impor­tant to Texan planters, as their booming cotton industry desperately needed laborers. Swearingen also hoped that a new influx of Texans would ensure the annexation of the isthmus to the United States, most likely as a slave state. As he stressed, “Central Amer­i­ca is bound to come u­ nder the jurisdiction of the North American. It is manifest destiny.”24 Yet even proslavery officers acknowledged that most of their comrades opposed slavery’s expansion and instead equated Americanization with U.S. annexation of Central Amer­i­ca as a nonslave state. Many such annexationists identified with the expansionistic Demo­cratic Party, especially its North-­based Young Amer­i­ca wing, whose members reportedly thronged the streets of Granada. Countless ­others, however, belonged to the Whig Party, even though its leaders opposed filibusterism. Among the most prominent w ­ ere the officers Charles Webber and James Whelpley, both of whom had recently edited the American Whig Review. Like their Northern Demo­cratic comrades, they supported Walker’s goal of turning Central Amer­i­ca into a nonslaveholding U.S. settler colony, with Webber even helping to found the Young Amer­i­ca Pioneer Club of Nicaragua.25 Walker’s army also included members of two parties that had recently burst on the scene. The first was the nativist Know-­Nothing Party. ­Because it defined the United States as a Protestant, Anglo-­Saxon nation, its leaders opposed the annexation of Nicaragua. Still, many Know-­Nothings joined Walker’s army, such as Thomas Fisher, who had established the party’s

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California branch and vowed to “purge the natives of their Catholicism, and to establish the princi­ple that [U.S. colonists] ­shall rule Nicaragua.”26 Other newcomers ­were antislavery Republicans, who associated Americanization with uplift. This was true of the New York sailor Watson Haynes, who became famous with his 1849 campaign to abolish flogging in the Navy and then worked for the temperance, abolitionist, and l­ abor movements. In 1855 he cofounded the party’s Brooklyn branch, only to leave shortly thereafter for Nicaragua. Other Republicans followed. Yet most belonged to a group rarely linked with filibusterism: settler colonists.27

III U.S. authorities had always found it difficult to separate filibusters from seabound settlers. And once Walker seized power, t­ hings became even blurrier. If many went as military recruits in order to grasp the ploughshare ­after their ser­vice ended, o­ thers went as prospective farmers only to be forced into the army. Moreover, the social makeup of Walker’s troops resembled that of his civilian colonists. According to the surviving register that rec­ords their professions, about two-­thirds of the civilian colonists belonged to the working classes and a quarter to the m ­ iddle and upper classes, while about one-­tenth ­were farmers—­a breakdown similar to that of the army’s 1857 register. Despite this blurriness, Nicaraguans managed to distinguish between Walker’s troops and his civilian colonists—­precisely ­because they placed so much faith in the latter.28 For Nicaraguans the most noticeable of Walker’s nonmilitary colonists ­were ­women. While their exact numbers remain unknown, a well-­ informed observer reported that at least four hundred ­women had gone to Nicaragua with their husbands. To this estimate we need to add ­those who migrated on their own. Although Walker’s female colonists barely appear in the historical rec­ord, they strengthened his regime’s legitimacy by allowing it to proj­ect an image of domesticity. True, this image was undermined by t­ hose who became prostitutes, but the l­ittle we know about them suggests that their numbers w ­ ere very small.29 More is known about the ­women married to Walker’s troops. Like other nonmilitary colonists, they lived in civilian housing and had more oppor-



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tunities to mingle with the native population. Many ­were wed to Walker’s officers. In fact, at least twenty-­five of the about 250 officers in the filibuster army went to Nicaragua with their wives. Some came with ­children, including teen­agers, such as the eighteen-­year-­old Elizabeth Swingle from Boston, who would marry one of Walker’s generals. A few who arrived alone also wed filibuster officers. Such marriages w ­ ere ­eagerly publicized by El Nicaraguense, as they suggested that the filibuster regime was fostering ­family stability and harmony.30 Less pres­ent in the historical rec­ord are the wives of Walker’s soldiers who went to Nicaragua. That they existed is revealed by the unusual history of twenty-­one-­year-­old Ida Altman, who had migrated from Prus­sia to Texas in 1850 with her f­ uture husband, August von Hedemann. If Ida came from h­ umble origins, August hailed from an aristocratic f­ amily that counted among its members the world-­famous naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. ­After marrying in 1851 the ­couple settled in Galveston, where August worked as a butcher, thus suggesting that he slipped from his lofty ­family origins. In November 1856 he joined a group of Nicaragua-­bound Texas Rangers, accompanied by his pregnant wife and their two-­year-­old ­daughter. Its leader claimed that the Rangers sought to defend slavery in Nicaragua. Yet if August was like other Germans in Texas, this issue mattered l­ittle to him. Instead he was most likely enticed by the promise of ­free farmland. A ­ fter surviving many ­battles, he died in combat three days before Walker surrendered on May 1, 1857; a month earlier, Ida had given birth to another ­daughter. Unlike most of Walker’s colonists, Ida remained in Nicaragua, where she married a rich German merchant. In 1878 her privileged life was turned upside down when the breakup of her d ­ aughter’s marriage to an elite Nicaraguan triggered a diplomatic imbroglio that culminated in a German naval intervention. U.S. officials deemed the incursion a threat to their country’s hegemony. L ­ ittle did they realize that the episode was rooted in Walker’s efforts to Americanize the isthmus with the help of German families such as the Hedemanns.31 Nonmilitary families also migrated, yet their numbers remain unclear. Only three registers of Walker’s settler colonists have survived, and none give a view as detailed as the army register of 1857. The first consists of 726 settler colonists recorded by the New Orleans agency of the Nicaraguan Emigration Com­pany at the end of Walker’s reign. In this register,

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men with wives or ­children comprised 5 ­percent of all emigrants; the rest ­were largely single men. The second register lists 314 colonists who left New Orleans on December 28, 1856; the percentage of f­amily members is once again 5 ­percent. The third mentions 176 mi­grants who departed from New York on October 25, 1856; this time the percentage of ­family members is nearly three times higher than that in the previous registers. The higher figure reflects the greater propensity of families to leave from New York than from New Orleans. If we assume, as the shipping com­ pany asserted, that about five thousand civilian colonists migrated to Walker’s realm, and we then take the average ­percentage of all registers, at least four hundred mi­grants went as members of a f­amily. This figure does not include married men who, like many California-­bound gold rushers of previous years, had sailed for Walker’s realm on their own in order to assess its appropriateness as a home for their families.32 ­Because the influx of settler families was so critical to Walker’s Americanization proj­ect, U.S. newspapers supporting his cause liked to highlight groups of families migrating to Nicaragua. They typically depicted this flow as a Free-­Soil movement that reflected the antislavery stance then marking the Walker regime. This was even the case if the migrating families ­were slaveholders, as was true of at least one of the six families from Council Bluffs, Iowa, that in April 1856 sailed down the Missouri and Mississippi to New Orleans, where they took a steamer to San Juan del Norte. As they journeyed southward, the group received much press coverage. Yet the fawning reports of Northern and Southern papers about the Iowa farmers with their “wives, ­daughters, and sucking babes” failed to mention that one ­family took a “­little slave boy” with them. The head of the group was Lyman Tarbox, who had gained a fortune operating stagecoach lines in Texas, but a­ fter the loss of a contract ruined his business he had moved his ­family to Council Bluffs in 1855. Very quickly, Tarbox realized that Iowa was “too cold for a Southerner.” Feeling “too proud to return to Texas as poor as when we left,” Tarbox, his wife, their young d ­ aughter, his wife’s b­ rother and s­ ister, and their slave left for Nicaragua.33 As the coverage of the Tarbox f­amily reveals, even proslavery papers depicted the migration of settler colonists to Walker’s tropical realm as a Free-­Soil enterprise. So when Tarbox sent a letter from Nicaragua to a



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Texan newspaper calling on his former neighbors to join them, it made no mention of slavery. Instead the letter played up the country’s economic potential, claiming that Nicaragua “is far ahead of Texas in every­thing.” While Tarbox’s call was directed to Texans, it also reflected Nicaraguan desires.34 Indeed, as impor­tant as domesticity was to the Walker regime, Nicaraguans ­were more enthralled with the entrepreneurial spirit they had come to associate with U.S. citizens ever since the Gold Rush. In consequence, Walker’s Nicaraguan supporters called on his regime to promote the mass immigration of U.S. colonists who stood out for their “work and industry.” And Walker’s realm attracted entrepreneurial-­minded colonists such as Tarbox, who hoped to establish a stagecoach line along the transit road as well as one between the urban centers of Granada and León. This promise of economic in­de­pen­dence drove countless U.S. settlers who had fallen on hard times to seek their luck in Walker’s El Dorado.35 If the prospect of land bonanzas motivated many of Walker’s settlers, most ended up living in urban areas, where they patiently waited for the filibuster regime to finish surveying the promised land before it could be distributed. The few who acquired farms tended to ­settle in the regions of Granada and Rivas. They typically received their plots from the filibuster state or bought them from Nicaraguans. Their properties ranged from small ­cattle ranches to large estates that produced mainly cacao, coffee, corn, indigo, plantains, rice, sugar, and tobacco. O ­ thers settled in the mining district of Chontales. One prospector was the l­awyer and former gold rusher Henry Worthington, who l­ater would become Nevada’s Republican representative to Congress and serve as one of President Abraham Lincoln’s pallbearers.36 The vast majority of colonists, however, lived in Walker’s capital of Granada. If the dream of economic in­de­pen­dence drove them to Nicaragua, they often ended up working for the filibuster state. This was true of Tarbox, who never established his stage line and instead served as the regime’s wagonmaster general. Still, a large number founded businesses that ranged from clothing and hardware stores to barber shops, doctor offices, and pharmacies and to bars, ­hotels, gambling parlors, and the city’s first daguerrean photo studio. The few businesses run by female colonists tended to be boarding­houses.37

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Some colonists also hoped that Walker’s polity would offer them greater freedom than was then pos­si­ble in the United States. This was especially true of German and Irish Catholics who bore the brunt of the U.S. nativist campaign waged by the Know-­Nothings. Only a few Eu­ro­pean immigrants explic­itly stated that the Know-­Nothings had pushed them to go to Nicaragua. Yet throughout Walker’s reign, U.S. immigrant newspapers consistently denounced the Know-­Nothings for making life miserable for newcomers. They encouraged their readers to migrate to the filibuster’s realm, as its leader valorized Catholic immigrants and opposed the Know-­Nothings. In addition, Walker’s polity allowed the scorned immigrants to display their Americanization. As a German supporter of Walker stressed, “we, too, even if we are not Anglo-­Saxons, believe in ‘manifest destiny’ and—we add for the nativists—­‘manifest destiny’ also believes in us.”38 A similar fear of being unwelcome in the United States led Walker’s perhaps most unusual followers to ­settle in Nicaragua: two African Americans from his hometown of Nashville, twenty-­nine-­year-­old barbershop owner James P. Thomas and his twenty-­one-­year-­old nephew John Rapier Jr. (They ­were joined by another black colonist from Connecticut; ­whether ­there w ­ ere ­others remains unknown.) Though Rapier was born ­f ree, Thomas was a former slave who did not gain his freedom u­ ntil 1851 (his biological f­ather was a slaveholding U.S. Supreme Court justice). Both ­were enticed by press reports of the “­grand opportunities” awaiting them, yet what mainly drove them was their hope that Walker’s polity would offer them greater freedom. Nashville had long been marked by “interracial cooperation between industrious blacks and prominent whites.” With the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, however, “the prejudice entertained by the white, against the black race,” as Rapier put it, grew “more exacting and restrictive e­ very day.” ­Free blacks had to choose “between submission and emigration.” Rapier’s choice was clear: “in this Country I can not live.”39 Thomas and Rapier trusted that their old acquaintance (Thomas had known Walker since childhood) opposed the expansion of slavery. They arrived in Nicaragua in February 1856 and left it during the Costa Rican invasion in April for fear that, if captured, they would meet the same fate as other U.S. prisoners: execution, if not decapitation. Back in the United



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States, they remained loyal to Walker and thought repeatedly of returning to his realm. Like earlier African American mi­grants to Nicaragua, both ­were driven by the myth of racial equality prevailing in Latin American countries where, as Rapier put it, “color debars no person from the highest offices within the government.” And mulattoes did occupy key positions in Walker’s regime, as Rapier and Thomas noted. In all likelihood they had learned about Nicaraguan race relations from Harper’s New Monthly and other Northern publications circulating in their ­family. Moreover, since Thomas’s older ­brother (a fugitive slave) had collaborated with Martin Delany, they w ­ ere surely aware of how the black emigrationist depicted ­Nicaragua as an ideal home for African Americans seeking to flee the United States. They might have known also from the black press that the transit business had allowed African Americans to thrive in Nicaragua.40 As much as Thomas and Rapier idealized Nicaraguan race relations, once in Walker’s realm they expressed racist views similar to ­those of his white colonists. They denigrated Central Americans as “semi-­savages” who belonged to a “degenerate and mongrel race” and singled out local mulattoes for being “treacherous” and “duplicitous.” To them “the only ­people that seemed to make any attempt to work are the Indians.” Yet they deemed Indians hopelessly backward with “habits . . . ​about the same as . . . ​­people used two thousand years ago.” Both insisted that Central Americans could only benefit from “the introduction of [the] northern ele­ ment with all its vigor, energy and industry into their decayed and weak society.” 41 Thomas and Rapier saw themselves as agents of “manifest destiny.” Like many of Walker’s white followers, they believed “in the truly patriotic and praiseworthy effort to awaken the American public to its true policy, and interests, viz: the Colonization with Americans, of Central Amer­i­ca.” Such colonization was essential in securing “our Western Empire of California.” They also had faith in the U.S. mission to redeem the world: “we, as the most power­ful republic in the world, should feel a pride in fostering and assisting all other republics that need our aid.” Concerning Walker’s realm, Rapier claimed that “by instilling American ele­ments into her system . . . ​we would soon see her occupy that eminence to which her geo­graph­i­cal position, genial climate, and luxuriant soil, entitles that republic.” Accordingly, Walker was “the embodiment of ‘Progressive

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Amer­i­ca,’ ” a man who had gone to Nicaragua “in defense of liberty, and a down-­trodden and oppressed ­people.” As with their Eu­ro­pean comrades, Walker’s polity offered Thomas and Rapier a means to underscore their Americanness. But if they hoped to improve their standing, the primary goal of o­ thers was to uplift Central Americans. And it was t­ hese reformers who put a strong liberal stamp on Walker’s imperial proj­ect.42

IV The reformers who flocked to Walker’s realm embodied the diversity marking antebellum reform, so t­ here is ­little won­der that their visions of Americanization could differ greatly. What most unified them was their impulse to improve—­and control—­the lives of ­people deemed less fortunate. Their ethic of self-­constraint contrasted sharply with the martial manhood marking filibusterism. Nevertheless, many reformers joined Walker’s ranks. In fact, he himself identified with their ethic and exhorted his officers to serve as an “example of self-­restraint.” Since his followers rarely self-­identified as reformers, it is impossible to estimate their numbers. Yet we can single out key individuals who embodied the dif­fer­ent—­and often overlapping—­reform groups that ­shaped the so-­called revolution Walker unleashed a­ fter seizing the presidency in July 1856.43 Walker’s best-­known reformer was arguably the New York l­ abor activist George Wilkes, who gained fame as the editor of the National Police ­Gazette. While this sensationalistic magazine focused on “pornography, prostitution, and crime,” it also advocated for prison reforms and other progressive ­causes. Moreover, Wilkes was a supporter of the National Reform Association, which sought land re­distribution on behalf of the urban poor. Compared to most U.S. expansionists, Wilkes showed greater commitment to “inter-­racial egalitarian republicanism,” as when he unsuccessfully opposed the banning of Latin Americans from the California gold fields or when he guaranteed “equal po­liti­cal, l­egal, social and religious rights to all settlers of what­ever race” in his failed effort to colonize Mexico’s Baja California. Although Wilkes never recorded his Nicaraguan sojourn, he likely deemed Walker’s realm a vantage site not only for “American homesteading” but also for spreading his brand of egalitari-



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anism to non-­U.S. p ­ eoples oppressed by “aristocrats.” ­After two months in Walker’s realm, Wilkins joined ­others in fleeing Nicaragua during the Costa Rican invasion of April 1856. Upon returning to New York, he became a leader of its pro-­Walker committee.44 Wilkes was hardly the only l­abor reformer in Walker’s ranks. A less-­ known but perhaps more typical activist was the printer and journalist Charles Callahan, who was born in New York and l­ater moved to New Orleans, where he joined its combative Typographical Union. Callahan went to Nicaragua to help repel the Costa Rican invasion; he died in b­ attle the following September a­ fter serving as collector of customs. Like Wilkes, Callahan believed in the U.S. mission to “regenerate” the rest of the Western Hemi­sphere by spreading its demo­cratic ideals. His trust in racial equality was undoubtedly weaker than that of Wilkes, especially when it came to ­peoples of African descent. Still, unlike other white Southerners, Callahan advocated for the “moral regeneration” of all races—as long as it occurred u­ nder the tutelage of white colonists.45 That Walker appealed to men like Wilkes and Callahan indicates how he was deemed a social reformer in the United States—an image that drew much strength from his well-­k nown links with prolabor politicians such as New York’s Mike Walsh and San Francisco’s David Broderick. It remains unclear how ­labor activists concretely ­shaped his proj­ect in ­Nicaragua. But given Wilkes’s ties with the National Reform Movement, it is pos­si­ble they helped design the land reform that the filibuster regime carried out in mid-1856 as it sought to “revolutionize” local society. Far clearer was the impact of temperance reformers, who put a strong moralizing stamp on Walker’s revolution. Not by chance did they constitute the largest group of reformers within his ranks, as temperance was the most popu­lar of antebellum crusades. Walker himself was a teetotaler bent on curbing the rampant alcoholism among his ranks, and eagerly embraced temperance activists. The most famous was the Methodist minister Israel Diehl, a national leader of the Sons of Temperance, then the largest U.S. temperance organ­ization. In September 1856 the Pennsylvania-­ born clergyman settled in Nicaragua, only to flee a few weeks l­ater for fear of being killed by the advancing Central American armies. During his brief stay Diehl founded a chapter of the Sons in Granada that had about

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fifty members. Its best-­known member was Col­o­nel George Hall, whose ­father, then the mayor of Brooklyn, had been a leader of the New York Sons since 1845.46 Not surprisingly, Walker’s realm attracted the quin­tes­sen­tial antebellum moralizers: Protestant missionaries. For de­cades, U.S. missionaries had been promoting an evangelical order overseas; with Walker’s conquest their attention turned to Nicaragua. A good example was the Louisiana branch of the proslavery Methodist Episcopal Church, South. While their mission focused on African Americans and French-­speaking Catholic Creoles, Louisiana’s Methodists also sent five missionaries to China. Like other U.S. evangelicals, the church’s leaders deemed Walker a Protestant crusader and encouraged its young men to learn Spanish “with a view to the establishment of missions in Central Amer­i­ca.” 47 Ultimately they sent only one missionary to Walker’s realm: William Ferguson, who had served as a pastor for plantation slaves. In June 1856 Ferguson departed with his wife and their young ­daughter in tow. His wife ­later claimed that poor health had led Ferguson to migrate to Nicaragua. Yet the church also wanted to get rid of a disgraced minister, as it had recently suspended him for embezzling missionary funds and for fathering a child with a slave. In all likelihood his evangelizing work in Nicaragua had the same anti-­Catholic bent marking his home church, with uplifting defined as religious conversion.48 More critical to Walker’s proj­ect was the liberal strand of Methodism embodied by the Spanish-­speaking David Wheeler. This Indiana native not only belonged to the antislavery branch of the Methodist Episcopal Church but also worked for the American Bible Society based in New York. Founded in 1816, the society focused on spreading religious tracts rather than on conversion. By the 1850s it had distributed more than a million copies of the Bible, which for many U.S. families was their only book. By fostering literacy the society promoted demo­cratic politics—­a liberal form of evangelicalism that Wheeler first spread from the ports of Valparaiso, Chile, and Aspinwall, Panama. For Wheeler the “moral destitution” of Latin American socie­ties explained why ­there ­were “none who appear so glad to obtain the bible as the Spanish population.” He envisioned that the spread of religious tracts would soon lead Latin Ameri-



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cans to create their own “prosperous missions” that would bring about the “complete reformation of the ­people.” 49 Wheeler wanted to move to Nicaragua ­after Walker’s conquest, but did not arrive u­ ntil August 1856. Making Granada his new home, he distributed religious tracts and joined the temperance crusade. He befriended Walker and viewed the f­ uture of his polity with g­ reat optimism. Within two months Wheeler was murdered by Central American troops. By then, he prob­ably realized that Walker was not the Protestant hero championed in the United States and was loath to break with Nicaragua’s Catholic clergy. Ultimately the evangelical influence on the filibuster regime was more limited than i­ magined by the U.S. public.50 In fact, the U.S. reformer with the greatest impact was adamantly opposed to evangelical reform: the thirty-­five-­year-­old Jewish surgeon Israel Moses. This scion of a wealthy New York ­family was just one of many reform-­minded physicians drawn to Walker. They included gradu­ates of elite medical schools like Moses, who went to Columbia University, as well as ­those from alternative medical schools such as the Eclectic Medical Institute of Cincinnati, which championed herbal medicine and was a bastion of medical reform thinking. A ­ fter arriving in February 1856 Moses took charge of Walker’s Medical Department and spearheaded the regime’s public health campaign. He enjoyed Walker’s trust largely due to his lengthy experience as an army surgeon. ­After participating in the Mexican-­American War, Moses served on the western frontier, where he implemented sanitary reforms. In May  1855 he joined the new Jews’ Hospital in New York (­today Mount Sinai Hospital), only to leave ten months l­ater for Walker’s realm. In Nicaragua he founded a military hospital, carried out medical experiments, devised vaccines to combat smallpox, and improved sanitary conditions in urban centers. In May 1856 he contracted cholera and, a­ fter barely surviving it, returned to New York. Despite Moses’s brief stay, Walker stressed that the “good effects” of his health reforms “­were felt long ­after he ceased to act as surgeon-­general.”51 Moses identified with Manifest Destiny and shared Walker’s racial paternalism, maintaining that Central Amer­i­ca was “peopled by a degenerate mongrel race” and thus “sunken in barbarism and superstition.” Yet his Jewish background ensured that he would be dif­fer­ent from most of

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Walker’s reformers. If many Jews joined the filibuster’s ranks, they rarely belonged to national reform movements, as they ­were repelled by their evangelical bent. The Jews’ Hospital was created precisely to c­ ounter the conversion efforts of Protestant missionaries controlling New York’s welfare institutions. Like other found­ers of the hospital, the Moses f­ amily belonged to Shearith Israel. Although this Orthodox congregation resisted Jewish religious reform, its members supported moral reform and ran the city’s main Jewish charity. For a U.S. public that celebrated Walker as a Protestant hero, it must have been surprising to see a reformer as steeped in Jewish tradition as Moses play such a leading role in his enterprise.52 Perhaps more astounding was Walker’s ability to attract the most radical of antebellum reformers: abolitionists. Walker certainly counted antislavery crusaders among his fiercest foes, yet this hardly prevented abolitionists from settling in his realm. Some enlisted in Walker’s army, as was true of the twenty-­four-­year-­old ­lawyer Claiborne Rorer, who died in April  1856 at the B ­ attle of Rivas. Rorer had grown up in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, the son of a judge who had been a slaveholder but then became a prominent abolitionist. It is pos­si­ble that Rorer’s antislavery views ­were further ­shaped by his interactions with Mt. Pleasant’s small community of African Americans. They w ­ ere surely reinforced by his education at the hands of Samuel Howe, who had been a congressional candidate for the antislavery Liberty Party and the publisher of the Iowa Freedman and whose students (and two sons) apparently joined the armed strug­gle that the abolitionist John Brown was waging in “Bleeding Kansas” at the time of Rorer’s death.53 Abolitionists ­were also found among Walker’s officers. Perhaps the most prominent was Captain John Sleight, a New York surgeon who migrated with his wife and their two c­ hildren to Nicaragua, where they hoped to obtain a large farm. Sleight had a long history as an abolitionist, as his f­ather operated the underground railroad in Poughkeepsie, New York. At age twenty he joined the American Anti-­Slavery Society. In 1840 he helped found the Liberty Party, which broke away from the society largely over its refusal to engage in partisan politics, as it believed slavery could be abolished only through moral suasion. Over the next de­cade Sleight’s politics shifted to nativism and, by the time of his departure for



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Nicaragua, he had become a leading Know-­Nothing, albeit without abandoning his abolitionist views.54 While Sleight and Rorer sought to improve their own fortunes and perhaps to redeem themselves, other abolitionists viewed Walker’s realm as an ideal place to spread their reformist fervor. This was true of the Mas­ sa­chu­setts native Sarah Pellet (1824–1898), who is now best known for being the first ­woman to apply to Harvard University, only to be rudely rebuked by its president. Following her 1851 graduation from Oberlin College, she worked for the abolition, suffrage, and temperance movements. She drew much attention for wearing bloomers, whose masculine aspect made them a symbol of ­women’s emancipation. She was among the few abolitionists who advocated the use of arms to liberate fugitive slaves captured in the North, stating that she “would tear up her skirts to make wadding for the fire-­arms.” In 1854 Pellet moved to California, perhaps to escape the male backlash against w ­ omen who helped pass the 1851 Maine Law, the first statewide prohibition law. ­Going from one mining hamlet to another, she gave over three hundred lectures on temperance, ­women’s rights, “true” democracy, and abolition. She gained national fame for promising to bring five thousand marriageable ­women from New ­England to the mining camps—­but only if the miners would outlaw liquor. In January 1856 Pellet sailed for Nicaragua, where she became an enthusiastic supporter of Walker’s imperial enterprise.55 That Pellet could join Walker’s movement can only be understood by recognizing how the divide between the so-­called moral and po­liti­cal abolitionists had begun to break down with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Reflecting her Oberlin College background, she first worked with leading moral abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. In June 1854 she joined Garrison in speaking at a mass meeting in Boston that demanded the release of Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave whose return to captivity had attracted national attention. Pellet scolded local “ladies” for failing to block Burns’s reenslavement. “Had the w ­ omen of Boston turned out en masse,” she moaned, “and placed themselves before the cannon’s mouth, would any man have dared to fire at them?” Pellet further demonstrated that the strug­gle for abolition and ­women’s rights could go hand in hand when she took the stage with Frederick

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Douglass at the 1853 W ­ omen’s Rights Convention in Rochester, New York. Soon, however, she forged ties to po­liti­cal abolitionists, especially ­those from the Republican Party. Her new confidants included Senator William Seward of New York and John Frémont, who in 1856 became the party’s first presidential candidate. ­After her return from Nicaragua, she stumped for Frémont and the Republican Party, leading a U.S. paper to call her “a politician in petticoats.”56 Pellet’s embrace of Walker’s imperial enterprise reflects her willingness to merge moral agitation with po­liti­cal action. As in California, she traveled throughout Nicaragua giving speeches, especially on temperance and democracy. Apparently the local population was struck by the sight of a ­woman lecturing in public. Upon returning to the United States in March 1856 she became one of Walker’s leading propagandists. Time and again she claimed that his regime was seeking to extend the “blessings of civil and religious liberty” throughout Central Amer­i­ca. She stressed that Walker was not a proslavery invader but a Free-­Soiler who had been invited by “the ­people of Nicaragua” in order to introduce “American princi­ples.” Pellet was no aberration; her views ­were shared by other prodemocracy liberals who went to the filibuster’s realm and deemed him a kindred Free-­Soiler.57 Pellet’s defense of Walker as a champion of democracy was ­shaped by her longtime advocacy for ­women’s rights and abolition. Even if she did not advocate Walker’s cause “as a feminist stroke,” her suffrage activism molded her understanding of democracy, especially concerning the importance of universal suffrage, equal opportunities in public life, public accountability of elected officials, and grassroots mobilization. She might have anticipated U.S. suffragists of the late nineteenth ­century who supported annexation of overseas territories not only to uplift non-­U.S. ­women but also to ensure that U.S. ­women would gain the right to vote. Pellet joined prominent abolitionists such as Theodore Parker in believing that U.S. annexation of Central Amer­i­ca as a f­ ree state would enhance the domestic strug­gle against slavery and thus strengthen its democracy. But if Parker deemed Walker a proslavery agent, Pellet’s two-­month stay in ­Nicaragua convinced her that he was a genuine Free-­Soiler.58 Pellet’s ties with Garrisonian abolitionists and their transatlantic network of reformers helped her embrace a cosmopolitan notion of U.S. na-



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tionality. Yet she, too, was an agent of Manifest Destiny at heart. Like most of Walker’s followers, she maintained that the United States was destined to spread its democracy. Her belief in her country’s special mission was rooted in the Protestant ideals underpinning Manifest Destiny and antebellum reform. Hailing from a Mayflower f­ amily steeped in Congregationalism, Pellet’s religiosity was reinforced by her education at Oberlin, the nation’s first interracial and coeducational college, whose founding mission was “to reform the world.” This Protestant hotbed of antebellum reform trained many abolitionist missionaries who served on the U.S. frontier and overseas—­especially Jamaica and Sierra Leone. Pellet knew them and surely identified with their “civilizing” mission.59 When Pellet touted Walker’s mission to promote democracy, she echoed U.S. missionaries like David Wheeler in believing that the filibuster was bent on disseminating evangelical reformism in Catholic Central Amer­i­ca. So even though her radical views on ­women’s rights and abolition set her apart from most antebellum reformers, she upheld a U.S.-­ centered vision of democracy embedded in Protestant religiosity. This vision, while popu­lar among Walker’s U.S. followers, clashed with the prodemocracy views of another group of U.S.-­based reformers who flocked to his realm: liberal émigrés born in Eu­rope.

V Walker’s image as a prodemocracy crusader attracted Eu­ro­pe­ans who had fought in the revolutions that convulsed the Old World in 1848. While the revolutionaries sought to overthrow conservative anciens régimes in the name of democracy, they also tended to champion social reforms. ­Others further fought for the unification of their countries or for in­de­pen­ dence. By 1850 their uprisings had been squashed and many fled to the United States. ­These so-­called Forty-­Eighters provided Walker with some of his most radical followers. A number of Forty-­Eighters certainly opposed Walker, denouncing him as a tool of the “slave oligarchy.” Yet many ­others viewed his enterprise as part of the global strug­gle that demo­crats ­were waging against aristocrats who “beggared, bled and starved the p ­ eople.” While Forty-­ Eighters went to Nicaragua from all parts of the United States, most hailed

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from New York. This was no coincidence, for the Empire City lay on the Nicaragua route and had the country’s largest immigrant community. It was also a stronghold of émigré socie­t ies run by Forty-­Eighters. They ranged from the German Socialist Turners, a gymnasts’ society, whose New York section had over five hundred members, to the smaller French La Montagne and the Polish Demo­cratic Society. In 1851 they w ­ ere joined by the Cuban Demo­cratic Athenaeum. Once Walker consolidated his power, members of ­these socie­ties relocated to his realm.60 That radical expatriates embraced Walker’s cause had much to do with their belief that democracy was universal and could be spread by force. They proudly displayed their fiery internationalism by marching in street parades, waving the red flag that stood for “the solidarity and ­fraternity of nations,” and singing the era’s leading revolutionary hymn, “La Marseillaise.” In 1853 New York’s émigré socie­ties banded together in the Society of Universal Demo­cratic Republicanism, which aimed to secure “the rapid spread of Republicanism all over the world” and whose universalism echoed the prodemocracy discourse of Manifest Destiny. In an 1853 book, two German émigrés celebrated the United States as the “New Rome” destined to liberate oppressed ­peoples. Compared to most U.S. natives, the émigrés stressed the universalistic rather than nationalistic impulses of Manifest Destiny. Initially, their crusade targeted the monarchies that ruled Cuba and Eu­rope. By 1855 their revolutionary hopes had dimmed, as the old regimes proved more resilient than expected.61 Walker’s conquest gave the émigrés’ sagging spirits an unexpected boost, and many headed south in order to liberate the region’s masses from the yoke of local “aristocracies.” Their first recorded departure occurred on February 25, 1856, when about one hundred Cuban, French, and German exiles sailed from New York. Two days ­later another group left from New Orleans. Both groups sang “La Marseillaise” as they entered Walker’s realm. Liberal émigrés continued to flock to Nicaragua ­until October 1856, when news of Walker’s proslavery decree reached U.S. soil. Among the last to go ­were the more than one hundred French, Irish, German, and Polish émigrés who left New York on September 12, and the slightly smaller party of French and German exiles who departed from San Francisco a week ­later.62



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In Nicaragua the émigrés served the Walker regime in vari­ous ways. Some occupied key positions within the filibuster state; this was true of the German Forty-­Eighters, who carried out surveys designed to promote Nicaragua’s public infrastructure and the settlement of colonists. ­Others furthered Walker’s proj­ect of settler colonialism by taking their families and establishing new businesses. A good example was Joseph Manovill, a Jewish veteran of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. In January 1856 he departed from San Francisco and within a month opened Manovill’s ­Hotel in Granada. In June he returned to San Francisco to fetch his ­family and, by the end of the month, was back in Granada ­r unning his popu­lar inn.63 Yet liberal émigrés mainly furthered Walker’s proj­ect by joining his army. The most famous was the New York merchant Louis Schlesinger, a Jewish veteran of the Hungarian Revolution who led the disastrous invasion of Costa Rica in March 1856. Like other Forty-­Eighters, Schlesinger claimed to have joined Walker in order to defend “the glorious princi­ples of Freedom and true Democracy.” The military experience of Schlesinger and his kind was appreciated by Walker, for many had waged revolutionary warfare in their homelands. They had often honed their military skills in the United States by joining émigré militias. The Irish clerk and journalist Michael Flood Nagle was exemplary; a lieutenant in Walker’s army, Nagle had fought in the 1848 Young Ireland rebellion against British rule. In New York, Nagle led the Fitzgerald Guard, which carried out military drills in preparation for an invasion of Ireland. In September 1856 Nagle and other members of his Irish militia joined Walker’s ranks.64 Few émigrés proved more impor­tant to Walker’s fortunes than the German officers who had served in monarchic armies before switching sides in 1848. Especially valuable ­were ­those who knew how to ­handle technologically sophisticated weapons, as was true of Adolph Schwartz, who led Walker’s artillery division. This well-­educated German typified the Forty-­Eighters in Walker’s ranks. Trained as an engineer, Schwartz had been an artillery lieutenant in the Army of the ­Grand Duchy of Baden when the revolution broke out. Like other ju­nior officers, the then twenty-­ year-­old joined the Revolutionary Army of Baden. Following the revolution’s defeat, Schwartz moved to New York, where he worked as an

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architect and married a Baden native. In February 1856 Schwartz left his wife and two young ­children to join other exiles headed for Nicaragua. He first served as an artillery captain in Walker’s army and then joined the German-­led group of government surveyors. Thanks to his artistic talents, Schwartz became its leading mapmaker.65 Unfortunately, Eu­ro­pean radicals rarely wrote about their Nicaraguan experiences. To better understand their motives, we need to turn to the writings of Forty-­Eighters who supported Walker yet did not go to Nicaragua. Of such émigrés, none was more prominent than the German Julius Fröbel. His prestige stemmed from his leading role in Germany’s revolutionary parliament, the Frankfurt National Assembly of 1848–1849. Following the revolution’s squashing, Fröbel fled to the United States, where he edited German newspapers in New York and San Francisco. In October 1855 Fröbel left California and returned to New York via Nicaragua. ­There he met Walker on the eve of his conquest. Fröbel was tempted to join his campaign but continued on in order to fulfill existing commitments. In February 1856 the fifty-­year-­old sought to migrate to Walker’s realm, where he and his wife planned to “invest some fifteen or twenty thousand dollars in property or in some useful enterprize.” Not ­until January 1857 could they sail off, but by then conditions had changed and they went to Honduras instead.66 Throughout his 1856 stay in New York, Fröbel was a vocal promoter of Walker. His championing of the filibuster’s cause in German-­language newspapers likely enticed numerous émigrés to sail for Nicaragua prior to Walker’s proslavery decree. Like o­ thers, Fröbel was shocked by the decree and ­later wrote that this “­great m ­ istake” had doomed Walker’s enterprise. Yet Fröbel continued to defend the filibuster’s original proj­ect of regenerating ­Central Amer­i­ca through the spread of democracy. Fröbel believed that, had Walker stuck to his Free-­Soil program, his “federation of regenerated states of Hispanic-­A merican origins . . . ​would have soon included Mexico and perhaps even California.” 67 Fröbel’s reflections provide insight into the ways that Eu­ro­pean liberal imperialism could align with Manifest Destiny, and help explain how Walker’s Eu­ro­pean radicals could reconstitute themselves as agents of U.S. expansion. Some Eu­ro­pean émigrés certainly worried about the colonial nature of Walker’s cause. Such concerns ­were expressed in a letter



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to New York’s Irish News, whose editor, Thomas Meagher, had led the Young Ireland rebellion against British rule. The writer wondered ­whether Walker was “not ­doing what the Anglo-­Normans did in Ireland”: turning Nicaragua into a colony. Meagher denounced the comparison as “ridicu­lous,” maintaining that “Walker goes to Nicaragua to elevate, not to pull down—to spread and consolidate Republicanism—to ­free the ­People, not to enslave them.” Non-­Irish Forty-­Eighters had fewer qualms about the colonizing bent of Walker’s enterprise. Fröbel found it natu­ral that U.S. citizens, who had once been colonial subjects, ­were now trying to colonize Central Amer­i­ca, for “colonies of [former] colonies is nothing new in history.” He was not alone. A month before Walker’s conquest, New York’s La Montagne society had called on U.S. colonists to create a “republic” that would span Central Amer­i­ca, Cuba, and Mexico. Moreover, Walker’s goal of creating an empire in the name of “civilization” and “democracy” echoed the way French socialists justified their country’s brutal colonization of Algeria. This underscores how Manifest Destiny both influenced and drew on the “civilizing mission” marking Eu­ro­pean liberal imperialism.68 Even Forty-­Eighters from nonimperial powers ­were committed colonizers before arriving in the United States. This was true of the largest group of émigrés to join Walker: German expatriates. At the Frankfurt National Assembly, Fröbel and other German revolutionaries championed the creation of overseas settler colonies, especially in Latin Amer­ i­ca, claiming they ­were essential to the formation of strong liberal nations and the “civilization” of the non-­European world. They invoked Manifest Destiny to argue that settler colonialism could promote democracy, albeit admitting that U.S. western expansion revealed how the spread of “civilization” could lead to the “vanishing” of “inferior” races. Once in the United States, it was easy for them to embrace Manifest Destiny’s turn ­toward overseas expansion—as long as it did not entail the spread of slavery.69 Fröbel invoked the spirit of Manifest Destiny to defend Walker’s original imperial proj­ect. Echoing Sarah Pellet, he stressed that the filibuster was an antislavery Free-­Soiler who had gone to Nicaragua as the invited “champion” of its Liberal Party and the “Indian” masses. In his eyes, nothing better underscored Walker’s “freedom from prejudice, in reference

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to race” than the filibuster’s willingness to have a “colored gentleman” (the Jamaican-­born Carlos Thomas) serve as one of his highest-­ranking officers. But like Walker, Fröbel maintained that Central Amer­i­ca could be “regenerated” only ­u nder the tutelage of U.S. colonists. “Anglo-­ Americans,” he asserted, w ­ ere not only model demo­crats but also racially superior to “Hispanic-­A mericans” and thus the “vanguard of ­civilization” in the New World. He further shared Manifest Destiny’s anti-­ Catholic bent, claiming that Catholicism “makes men unfit for self-­ government, and uses them to rely on the support of authority.”70 Fröbel made sure to emphasize the impossibility of reintroducing slavery to Central Amer­i­ca. He did this largely to allay the concerns of German émigrés who sympathized with Walker’s uplifting mission yet feared he could fall prey to the machinations of proslavery forces. Such concerns ­were voiced by the Turn-­Zeitung, the most influential U.S. newspaper run by Forty-­Eighters. The paper lauded Walker’s efforts to “colonize” Central Amer­i­ca via the influx of “thousands of entrepreneurial Americans,” for it believed that the region could be “regenerated” only by having the “indolent Spanish-­Indian mixed race be subjected to the w ­ ill of the energetic and inventive Anglosaxons.” Still, it feared that Walker’s proj­ect could be hijacked by “southern statesmen” who deemed Central Amer­i­ca “a propitious site for the creation of new slave-­ holding states.” Fröbel stressed that such fears ­were baseless, as Central Amer­i­ca’s “colored” population would effectively resist any attempt to reintroduce slavery. “The whites [making] such a criminal attempt,” he warned, “would be exterminated.”71 In defending Walker’s mission, Fröbel also departed from some of Manifest Destiny’s most cherished ideals. Most palpably, he viewed expansionism as a secular phenomenon. Like other German Forty-­ Eighters, Fröbel opposed the evangelical Protestantism of U.S.-­born expansionists. He found it “odd” that even the most radical U.S. reformers celebrated a spirituality that Forty-­Eighters associated with Eu­rope’s reactionary forces. Nor did Fröbel follow U.S. agents of Manifest Destiny in denigrating Latin Amer­i­ca’s mixed races. He believed that “the mixing of races” instead produced racial “greatness.”72 But Fröbel mainly diverged from Manifest Destiny in upholding a multicultural notion of Americanization. Granted, he echoed most U.S.



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e­ xpansionists in believing that nonwhites w ­ ere less civilized than “Caucasians” and should not have the same po­liti­cal rights. Unlike other Forty-­Eighters, he urged Germans to assimilate into Anglo-­American culture by giving up key aspects of their culture, especially drinking. But if Fröbel did not associate cosmopolitanism with the U.S. nation, he invoked it in championing Walker; he stressed that, even if Central Amer­i­ca was destined to be “Anglo-­Americanized,” Eu­ro­pe­ans should help lead Walker’s multiethnic polity and enjoy the same po­liti­cal rights as U.S.-­born colonists. This explains why Fröbel so strongly supported Walker’s ­efforts to create a polity that was in­de­pen­dent of the United States. His cosmopolitan understanding of Walker’s enterprise was undoubtedly shared by Forty-­Eighters who went to Nicaragua.73 In fact, some deemed Walker’s realm a better place to achieve a more demo­cratic form of Americanization, as they feared that the United States had come ­under the spell of bellicose nativists. One such Eu­ro­pean was the Swiss socialist Karl Bürkli, who would play a prominent role in the First International. By the time of Walker’s conquest, Bürkli had already gained attention for founding Eu­rope’s first major consumer cooperative and for his unsuccessful campaign to enshrine two princi­ples of direct democracy in the constitution of his native canton of Zu­rich: the popu­lar initiative and the referendum. Bürkli embraced demo­cratic socialism during his 1845–1847 sojourn in Paris, where he became an adherent of Fourierism and its call for the transformation of society into phalanxes, that is, self-­contained cooperative communities. In 1855 Bürkli became so disillusioned with Eu­rope’s antidemo­cratic turn that he moved to a Fourierist colony near Dallas, Texas, but when he reached the French-­run colony, its experiment in communitarian socialism had begun to fall apart. Its demise had much to do with the harsh environment, internal conflicts, and inept leadership, but the antislavery Eu­ro­pe­ans also faced fierce opposition from local Know-­Nothings and proslavery zealots.74 In January 1856 Bürkli left for Nicaragua, hoping it would be a better place for a “social demo­cratic state.” He was enticed, he ­later claimed, by Walker’s embrace of “socialist ideas,” which the filibuster was introduced to during his 1844 stay in Paris. Press accounts of Walker’s victorious American Phalanx may have led Bürkli to believe that the filibuster sympathized with Fourierism. We know ­little about Bürkli’s activities

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in Nicaragua other than that he fought in the filibuster army and remained at Walker’s side u­ ntil about March 1857. Since Bürkli not only had experience with colonization but also spoke En­glish, French, German, and Spanish, he was a g­ reat asset to Walker. Perhaps he also hoped to replicate French Fourierists’ efforts to forge a “new system of colonization” in Algeria by having Eu­ro­pean settlers establish phalanxes that would bring “the light of civilization to a barbarous country . . . ​without the unjust oppression of the native population.” Bürkli believed that three hundred years of Spanish rule had done ­little to “civilize” Central Americans. His thinking shows that some of Walker’s greatest proponents of grassroots democracy w ­ ere not immune to racism, and had no qualms about embracing the filibuster’s brand of liberal imperialism.75

VI Racist views did not mark all émigrés fighting for an inclusive form of Americanization in Walker’s empire. This was mainly true of the about a hundred Cuban exiles who, thanks to their fluency in both En­glish and Spanish, occupied key positions in the filibuster regime and army. They went to Nicaragua in the belief that Walker would help them liberate Cuba from Spain. Their anticolonial strug­gle had been plagued by the repeated failures of Cuba-­bound filibuster expeditions. By 1855 their morale had sunk so low that a number of them accepted the amnesty offer of Spain and sought to return home. Yet once they learned of Walker’s triumph, many sailed for Nicaragua—to further the cause of “Cuba libre” and the universal strug­gle for democracy.76 Walker’s Cuban followers saw ­little contradiction in si­mul­ta­neously rejecting Spanish colonialism and supporting Manifest Destiny. In fact, they had long clamored for Cuba’s annexation by the United States, which they idealized as “the archetype of all republics.” Like many of their Eu­ro­pean comrades, they had a cosmopolitan understanding of Americanization and believed that the spread of U.S.-­style democracy and the influx of enterprising U.S. immigrants would regenerate Latin Amer­i­ca. But unlike most of Walker’s Eu­ro­pean and U.S. followers, they insisted that Nicaraguans—­whether white or not—­should enjoy the same rights as ­those of settler colonists hailing from the United States.77



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Their idea of Americanization valorized not just the cultural pluralism of the Eu­ro­pean Forty-­Eighters but also racial pluralism. The leader of Walker’s Cuban contingent, the antislavery Domingo Goicouría, certainly upheld racist views, as was evident in his earlier efforts to stem the growth of Cuba’s black population by recruiting thousands of poor white immigrants from the Canary Islands and Eu­rope. Yet he hardly typified Walker’s Cuban followers, for he hailed from the power­ful elite of Havana and had helped lead Cuba’s two main separatist organ­izations: the Club de La Habana and, l­ ater, the U.S.-­based Cuban Junta. His unsung compatriots in Nicaragua, by contrast, w ­ ere largely provincial elites or nonelites (skilled laborers and white-­collar workers) who did not belong to the exclusive leadership of the Cuban anticolonial movement. This helps explain why their po­liti­cal views tended to be more radical than ­those of Goicouría, with some embracing socialism and demanding that African slaves not only be freed but also granted citizenship rights. Since the leadership of the Cuban exile community included proslavery elites with more conservative views than Goicouría, it is noteworthy that Walker appealed to the most radical Cuban émigrés.78 One such radical was the fifty-­year-­old journalist Francisco Agüero Estrada, who became Walker’s main Cuban follower. Arriving in February 1856, Agüero served as the Spanish editor of El Nicaraguense and then as governor of Granada. His radical views w ­ ere steeped in the po­ liti­cal culture of his native Puerto Principe (­today Camagüey). Puerto Principe then had relatively few slaves, as its economy was driven by ­cattle estates. As a result, its ranching elite, which included the Agüero ­family, tended to be more strongly opposed to slavery than elites elsewhere on the island. Puerto Principe was also a bastion of anticolonial re­sis­tance. According to Spanish officials, the region was so rebellious b­ ecause it was home to Cuba’s most Americanized elite, which enjoyed close commercial ties with U.S. cities—­especially New York. In 1851, Agüero and his cousin Joaquín Agüero Agüero led an anticolonial uprising whose ranks included former slaves. While the rebels fought for in­de­pen­dence from Spain, they also hoped that the new Cuban nation would become part of the U.S. Union. Like most Cuban separatists, they viewed the United States not so much as a nation-­state than as a confederation of autonomous states—­a view then shared by most U.S. citizens. B ­ ecause other uprisings

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on the island did not materialize as planned, the rebels w ­ ere easily defeated by the Spanish Army. While Joaquín Agüero was captured and executed, Francisco managed to flee to New York.79 ­There Agüero developed the radical ideas that he would implement in Walker’s Nicaragua. Scraping by as a language teacher, Agüero immersed himself in émigré politics and wrote for Cuban exile newspapers. Thanks to his leading position in the Cuban Demo­cratic Athenaeum, he became close to the Society of Universal Demo­cratic Republicanism. ­These ties likely radicalized his views, as evinced in his writings for El Mulato, which championed the socialist princi­ples of the French phi­los­o­pher Étienne Cabet and his Icarian movement. Agüero’s views became even more revolutionary once he took over the newspaper El Pueblo (The P ­ eople). Time and again, the paper attacked the leaders of the Cuban Junta as antidemo­ cratic oligarchs defending the interests of the island’s native-­born elites at the expense of the masses. Agüero stressed that the “Cuban revolution” could succeed only if the anticolonial movement cut its de­pen­dency on the rich. In 1855 he put his words into action by calling for the creation of a grassroots revolutionary organ­ization, Joven Cuba (Young Cuba), which was to include Cubans in the United States and on the island. Although Joven Cuba remained ineffectual, it cemented Agüero’s reputation as a radical social demo­crat.80 Ultimately Agüero most stood out for his antiracism. By the time of his departure for Nicaragua, he had come to champion citizenship rights for Cuban men of all races, including slaves. Just as impor­tant, Agüero valorized Cuba as a racially mixed nation. He certainly shared the Haitiphobia of Cuban elites and their paternalist attitude ­toward ­peoples of color, but he denounced anticolonial leaders for imagining the island as a white nation and for deeming African slaves unworthy of citizenship. He even criticized the martyred hero of Cuban exiles, the filibuster Narciso López, for refusing the ser­vices of ­free blacks. As Agüero stressed, ­free blacks and slaves should not be excluded from the anticolonial movement “just ­because . . . ​the whim of fortune led them to be born . . . ​of a color dif­fer­ent than that of the dominant race.” 81 As harshly as Agüero denounced the racism of exile leaders, he had shared their ideals of whiteness when arriving in New York in 1851. What explains his conversion? This is a critical question as Agüero’s antiracism



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s­ haped the Americanization proj­ect that Cubans sought to realize in Walker’s realm. His New York articles suggest that strategic reasons led him to embrace antiracism, for he insisted that Cuba’s anticolonial strug­gle was doomed ­unless it was backed by the black masses. Yet other ­factors ­were also at play. Not coincidentally, he came to venerate Cubans of color when ­free blacks on the island began to regain the po­liti­cal and economic clout they had lost with the antiblack repression that followed the failed antislavery conspiracy of 1844.82 Agüero’s racial views ­were also radicalized by his stay in New York. He lived and worked in the city’s Fifth and Eighth Wards, which ­were home to many African Americans and possibly to Cubans of color who had fled the island in 1844. Since he hailed from what was perhaps Cuba’s whitest region, his daily interactions with the ward’s black residents likely transformed his racial views. In addition, he became acquainted with the antiracist views of Martin Delany, who then resided in New York. He shared Delany’s call for black Cubans to wage an antiracist and anticolonial revolution on the island. He also identified with Delany’s belief that nonwhites ­ought to promote a more demo­cratic form of Manifest Destiny expansion to Latin Amer­i­ca. Like Delany, Agüero might have even come to believe that the United States was no longer a welcoming place for white Cubans like himself. And this was not just b­ ecause of U.S. nativism but also due to the tendency of Anglo-­Americans to denigrate white Latin Americans as ­either inferior whites or nonwhite “mongrels.” If Agüero’s U.S. experience was like that of most white Latin Americans, he experienced racism firsthand. Elite Latin Americans often responded by identifying ever more strongly with whiteness. Agüero instead embraced a po­liti­cal proj­ect of racial mixture that ­later came to be known in Latin Amer­i­ca as mestizaje.83 Agüero’s growing antiracism changed his views of Americanization. Like most Cuban exiles, he arrived in New York supporting U.S. annexation of Cuba. Five years ­later he left for Nicaragua, no longer a committed annexationist. Agüero still insisted that Latin Americans could greatly benefit from Americanization via the influx of U.S. settlers. But now he—­a nd other Cuban émigrés—­believed it would be best for Latin American nations to retain their in­de­pen­dence from the United States. His turn against annexation reflected the growing frustration of Cuban

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exiles with the unwillingness of the U.S. government to back their filibuster attacks against Spanish Cuba. It also resulted from the Kansas-­ Nebraska Act of 1854, which intensified their fears that U.S. annexation would uphold Cuba’s slaveholding regime. Agüero and other Cuban émigrés further worried that annexation would enhance the power of the island’s wealthy elites at the cost of the common ­people. Above all, they dreaded that annexation would lead to the “extinction” of their “race,” as they now better understood how harmful it had been to the Spanish-­ speaking ­peoples of California and Texas.84 For Agüero and other Cubans, the only way they could ensure that Americanization would not lead them to replicate the experiences of Californios and Tejanos was by maintaining in­de­pen­dence from the United States. It was this form of Americanization that Agüero and other Cuban radicals believed Walker was bent on realizing in Nicaragua. They thus sailed south in the hope of forging an empire where nonwhites would have the same rights as whites. Theirs was just one of many Americanization proj­ects upheld by Walker’s highly diverse group of followers. If the Cubans and their radical Eu­ro­ pean comrades shared the prodemocracy agenda of U.S.-­born reformers such as Pellet, they embraced a more inclusive—­and secular—­notion of Americanization. Of course, U.S.-­born reformers espoused very dif­ fer­ent Americanization proj­ects. Some even refused to recognize one another as reformers, as was true of how evangelical temperance crusaders viewed hard-­drinking ­labor activists. And then ­there ­were the many proslavery Southerners in Walker’s ranks who identified Americanization not with uplift but with the expansion of their region’s “peculiar institution.” And ­there ­were ­those supporting U.S. annexation and ­those favoring the creation of their own empire. Central Americans had e­ very reason to won­der what kind of Americanized polity Walker’s group would end up establishing in their region.

5 ­Imagined Empire

After William Walker seized power, many Nicaraguans hoped that the filibusters would bring U.S.-­style stability, prosperity, and democracy to their ravaged country. It remained unclear what kind of Americanized polity the filibuster chieftain planned to create. The uncertainty reflected the ideological diversity of his colonists, but it also stemmed from the fact that p ­ eoples of the era could imagine a wide range of polities. If the rise of nation-­states in the nineteenth ­century now seems inevitable, it was then an unstable concept that competed with other formations, especially multiethnic empires. Central Americans themselves had experienced four polities since the turn of the c­ entury. They first belonged to the General Captaincy of Guatemala, which with the 1821 collapse of colonial rule was annexed by the Mexican empire of Agustín Iturbide. Three years ­later the region saw the birth of the Central American Federation, which in 1838 gave way to the republics of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Los Altos, and Nicaragua. Except for Los Altos, ­these republics proved to be long lasting. Many Central Americans nonetheless continued to imagine other kinds of polities. The Argentine statesman Domingo Sarmiento quipped that Central Americans wanted to make 139

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“a sovereign state of e­ very village,” but some Central Americans actually wished to realize Simón Bolívar’s famous call for a polity spanning all of América. ­W hether their dream was large or small, proponents of ­these competing imaginaries gained an unexpected boost when Walker conquered Nicaragua.1 Complicating ­matters was the ambiguity that marked Walker’s views. Already prior to his conquest, he hoped to head a Central American empire that would be in­de­pen­dent of the United States. Yet he revealed this plan only to his closest confidants. Perhaps he sensed that such a personalistic empire would not be accepted by most of his followers. In his public remarks, Walker claimed to be fighting for U.S. annexation, only to turn around and defend Nicaraguan in­de­pen­dence against the United States.2 And then ­there w ­ ere Walker’s Nicaraguan supporters, who hardly saw themselves as passive actors. On the contrary, they took seriously his prodemocracy discourse and expected to be treated as equals. Throughout Latin Amer­i­ca, liberals fighting for a more demo­cratic order had long deemed the United States their model. Yet the plight of Mexicans in the recently U.S.-­conquered territories of California and Texas led some Nicaraguans to fear that Walker could turn them into second-­class citizens, while ­others highlighted the fate of African Americans and Native Americans to assert that he could turn them into “slaves” or exterminate them. Similar anx­i­eties ­were voiced in other Central American states, even if it remained unclear how far the filibusters would seek to expand their realm and by what means. With good reason did a Salvadoran newspaper note that “the issue consuming every­one is Nicaragua and the North-­Americans.”3 The nature of Walker’s polity also gripped the U.S. public. True, the press generally assumed that his conquest would lead to annexation and thus transform the United States into a seaborne empire. Yet many wondered ­whether Walker would instead forge a Jeffersonian “empire of liberty” in­de­pen­dent of the United States—­a feat hitherto never realized abroad. For p ­ eoples well beyond Nicaragua, it mattered greatly what kind of polity the Walker regime sought to forge in the isthmus. Not only would it control a region seemingly destined to be the center of global commerce. It could radically transform the place of the United States in the world.



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I The polity ­imagined by the Walker regime is best grasped by exploring the views expressed in its newspaper, El Nicaraguense (The Nicaraguan). From the start, the regime’s leaders believed that the press was vital to their enterprise. The editors of El Nicaraguense went so far as to declare that “the power of the press at the pres­ent day is greater in all its effects and influences upon the affairs of the world than that of any other instrument used by man.” El Nicaraguense was established right a­ fter Walker’s capture of Granada on October 13, 1855, and came out just about e­ very Saturday morning. It published articles in En­glish and Spanish, with its En­glish section usually r­ unning five pages and the Spanish part around three pages. The two sections w ­ ere not identical and appealed to very dif­ fer­ent audiences. While Walker exerted much influence over its content, most articles w ­ ere likely penned by other journalists from the United States and, in the case of the Spanish section, by Cubans and Nicaraguans. At its peak, the paper had over six individuals writing articles for its En­glish section; the number in the Spanish department remains unknown.4 El Nicaraguense was an organ of propaganda that aimed to enhance the legitimacy of the Walker regime among Nicaraguans. Its first issue called on the local population to submit articles of “any public interest, ­whether it be for our benefit or for that of the community.” And for the next thirteen months, the paper published proclamations and letters by local supporters. Its Spanish section often published translations of pro-­ Walker articles appearing in the U.S. press—­surely to show Nicaraguans that his enterprise enjoyed massive support in the United States. It reprinted articles from liberal newspapers in Latin Amer­i­ca and Spain, as well as ­those appearing in Spanish-­language U.S. newspapers. With ­these reprints, El Nicaraguense highlighted the similarities between Walker’s po­l iti­cal proj­ect and that of liberals elsewhere in the Spanish-­speaking world—­all to help ­counter the charge of his enemies that the filibusters ­were bent on “snatching away [Nicaragua’s] in­de­pen­dence, its properties, its religion, customs, e­ tc.”5 Just as El Nicaraguense drew on foreign papers, it sought to shape public opinion abroad. According to its international distributor, over

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fifteen hundred copies ­were sent to the eastern part of the United States, while another thousand w ­ ere distributed throughout Central Amer­i­ca. This figure was certainly inflated, but we do know that the paper was read by officials in the other Central American states and that it circulated within the Washington, DC, po­liti­cal establishment, including the president’s cabinet. It was also frequently cited by U.S. newspapers, with about four hundred receiving copies of it on a regular basis. As Walker hoped, the U.S. press drew on his paper to disseminate a rosy picture of Nicaragua, thus enticing many North Americans to join his ranks.6 Yet El Nicaraguense claimed that its main purpose lay elsewhere: to create a new po­liti­cal order in Central Amer­i­ca. Above all, it saw itself as a key “medium between the Government and the p ­ eople.” It was bent on not just “feeling the public pulse . . . ​but guiding and directing it.” Nor was it ­going to “cringe” to the Walker regime. In short, El Nicaraguense was to become the pillar of a nascent civil society. It acknowledged that “po­liti­cal differences of opinion exist in ­every Republican country,” but it assured its readers that when such differences are “shielded by an untrammeled press the peace of the nation is secured.” At the same time, the paper alleged that the Nicaraguan masses w ­ ere quite uneducated. Hence it purported to “inculcate a law-­abiding and loyal spirit” among the lower classes so that they could fulfill their duties as “citizens.”7 Walker’s paper unabashedly promoted an idyllic image of his realm. A deserter claimed that “the Nicaraguense is generally one huge falsehood from beginning to end.” It clearly exaggerated the country’s natu­ral wealth as well as the accomplishments and popularity of Walker’s regime. Time and again, El Nicaraguense reported on the construction of railroads, aqueducts, and other public works that existed only on paper. It portrayed U.S. settlers as living in a tropical paradise, when many actually faced severe medical and economic prob­lems and sought to return home as quickly as pos­si­ble. Elections ­were depicted as clean, ­free, and highly participatory when in fact they ­were anything but. The paper’s lies reached their apex in its coverage of the Costa Rican invasion of April 1856. ­After the filibusters suffered their first major loss, the paper’s headline screamed, “Total Route [sic] of the E ­ nemy!” 8 Despite its lies, El Nicaraguense provides unparalleled insight into the ideology of the filibuster regime. It published not just government decrees



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but articles that illuminate the regime’s view on major issues, ranging from democracy, economic development, and race to public health, education, morality, and ­women’s rights. Contrary to what one would expect, it was more than a mouthpiece of the regime. The paper even reprinted anti-­Walker articles from other Central American newspapers as well as proclamations made by its enemies. It also disseminated the views of Walker’s heterogeneous group of followers in the form of letters, poems, and opinion pieces. Not surprisingly, the dominant views ­were ­those of Walker’s U.S. followers. But thanks to the paper’s Spanish section, Cubans and Nicaraguans had a strong voice. El Nicaraguense put on public display the diverse—­a nd often divergent—­proj­ects marking Walker’s movement.

II From the moment that Walker seized power, many newspapers and politicians in the Amer­i­cas and Eu­rope assumed that Nicaragua—­and eventually all of Central Amer­i­ca—­would be annexed to the United States. In their view, the isthmus could not but replicate the recent path of California and Texas, where the influx of U.S. settlers led to the incorporation of t­hese territories into the u­ nion. Such views gained a critical boost when the U.S. government recognized Walker’s regime in May 1856. As the U.S. presidential campaign heated up over the summer of 1856, the clamor for annexation reached new heights. The victory of the expansionist Demo­crats in the November elections ensured that this clamor would remain strong.9 Annexation did enjoy strong support among Walker’s men. Vari­ous articles in El Nicaraguense suggested that the influx of U.S. settler colonists to Nicaragua was paving the way for annexation—­just as had been the case in California and Texas. ­Others emphasized that prominent supporters of Walker in the United States advocated the annexation of not only Nicaragua but of Central Amer­i­ca as a ­whole. The paper published articles advocating U.S. annexation of other parts of Latin Amer­i­ca—­ especially Cuba, Mexico, and Panama.10 Proannexationist claims made in El Nicaraguense typically invoked the spirit of Manifest Destiny. But if Manifest Destiny is now often considered

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an ideology unique to the United States, Walker’s paper represented it as one shared by other expansionist powers of the era. Above all, it claimed that the idea of “manifest destiny” was driving Rus­sia’s recent expansion, as evident in the Crimean War, which the Rus­sian empire had just waged against the Ottomans and their British and French allies. According to the paper, “all conquest comes from the North Southward, and ­will retain that direction ­until the mission of humanity is complete.” So just as Rus­sia was expanding ­toward “Constantinople and the Euxine [Black Sea] with distant glimpses of the Indian possessions of ­Great Britain,” El Nicaraguense maintained that “just as surely the current of Amer­i­ca [sic] life ­will set Southward and Westward ­until the resting place and place of the sun are attained.” The paper went so far as to predict that ­because “­every Rus­sian looks Southward and Eastward [and] ­every American looks southward and westward . . . ​they may yet meet to ­settle the world’s destiny on the shore of the Pacific.” El Nicaraguense’s favorable view of Rus­sian expansionism was no accident: it reflected the cultural affinity between two expanding continental empires.11 Yet the Walker regime showed ­little zeal for annexation. Proannexationist articles appeared less frequently in El Nicaraguense than in pro-­ Walker newspapers published in the United States. Eventually the paper openly opposed annexation. In January 1856 its Spanish section claimed that the initial refusal by the White House to recognize the Walker regime stemmed from the nefarious desire of President Franklin Pierce to “annex Nicaragua” and stressed that this goal was not shared by Walker and his men.12 The En­glish section did not come out against annexation ­until late May 1856, when it sought to reassure the British and French governments, stating, “The idea of the ultimate absorption of Nicaragua into the American Union is a contingency so impracticable that it should never have obtained a thought in the mind of the most timid Eu­ro­pean.” The article appeared just as public support for annexation began to soar in the United States following Pierce’s recognition of the filibuster regime. With this article, the regime signaled its in­de­pen­dence from the United States.13 Walker himself never publicly renounced annexation. Only a year ­after his conquest did the U.S. public become aware of his antiannexationist stance. This occurred in November 1856, when a disgruntled envoy of



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the filibuster regime leaked to a New York paper a letter in which Walker admitted that “we are not engaged in any scheme for annexation.” This revelation startled the U.S. public and diminished his popularity in the United States. Yet if his U.S. supporters had paid closer attention to ­Nicaraguan affairs, they would have realized that the filibuster regime had done ­little to secure annexation.14 El Nicaraguense never explained why Walker opposed annexation. But he had power­ful reasons. Annexation risked antagonizing some of his Nicaraguan supporters who feared that it would disempower them as had been the case with the native populations of California and Texas. Pro-­ Walker Nicaraguans did not articulate this fear in El Nicaraguense, yet it was expressed by other Central American newspapers. At the time, the annexation of a large Catholic and nonwhite population would have been bitterly opposed by U.S. nativists grouped in the power­ful Know-­Nothing Party. In addition, the escalating U.S. conflict over slavery’s expansion into “Bleeding Kansas” made this an inopportune moment to seek annexation of another territory that might become a battleground between pro-­and antislavery forces. It would have further antagonized the Eu­ro­ pean powers in the region and increased the likelihood of their waging war against the Walker regime. But most impor­tant, annexation would have deprived Walker and his followers of their autonomy. The history of U.S. continental expansion showed that annexed territories quickly came u­ nder the control of federal officials who ruled in a heavy-­handed manner. In fact, the U.S. territorial system was even more authoritarian than the British one that had caused the American Revolution. Only with statehood did settlers in annexed territories acquire the right to determine their own affairs. Since no territory in the U.S. West, except California, had yet achieved statehood, Walker and his men had reason to fear that annexation would rob them of their “liberty.”15

III Annexation enjoyed support among Walker’s Nicaraguan followers. But many more hoped that the filibuster would strengthen, not abolish, the existing Nicaraguan state by promoting the influx of U.S. settler colonists

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and introducing U.S. institutions and cultural practices. This form of Americanization would ensure, as a group of wealthy Granadans noted in El Nicaraguense, that their sparsely populated and poor nation would “soon have, like other countries of the civilized world, Agriculture, Industry and Commerce.” Perhaps its most out­spoken promoter was the Granadan priest Agustín Vijil. Both at the pulpit and in El Nicaraguense, Vijil reiterated the main points of the famous sermon he gave the day ­after Walker’s capture of his beloved city. The filibusters, he stressed, would bring stability, prosperity, and democracy to war-­torn Nicaragua. And once U.S. settler colonists flocked to their shores, the newcomers would secure the construction of the interoceanic canal and thus allow Nicaragua to join the “civilized world.”16 The filibuster regime did much to reinforce the view of Vijil and other leading Nicaraguans that it sought to strengthen their nation-­state. It not only maintained the structures and symbols of the existing state but ensured that Nicaraguans continued to occupy the highest state positions, including the presidency, as well as most municipal posts. The only state institution that became “de-­Nicaraguanized” was the military, which was Walker’s main basis of power. He made sure to transform his American Phalanx into a new “Nicaraguan” army—­a volunteer force manned nearly entirely by his foreign followers. This transformation enjoyed strong support among the local population, especially since it abolished the brutal practice of pressing the poor into ser­vice. Walker perhaps best demonstrated his defense of Nicaraguan sovereignty by requiring his followers to become Nicaraguan citizens. This was an unusual mea­sure, for imperial powers of the era typically maintained a strict boundary between their citizens and subjugated p ­ eoples or incorporated the latter by granting them citizenship rights. The Walker regime did neither, as it forced its non-­Nicaraguan followers to assimilate into local society.17 A number of Walker’s native allies hoped that the filibusters would limit themselves to strengthening the Nicaraguan nation-­state. Yet they ­were aware that the foreigners harbored a greater ambition: to rule all of Central Amer­i­ca. At first the filibuster regime promoted its expansionist goal by invoking the former Central American Federation, an entity that continued to be dear to Liberal Party leaders throughout the isthmus.



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Hence was this view voiced more forcefully in the Spanish section of El Nicaraguense. Still, authors writing in the paper’s En­glish section expressed support for the restoration of the Central American Federation. Such views echoed the strong support that U.S. diplomats had expressed for Central American unity ever since Ephraim George Squier arrived in 1849. And since Central American Liberals often identified their ­unionist efforts with t­ hose pursued by the German revolutionaries of 1848, they surely appreciated the prominent place such Germans came to occupy in the Walker regime. It was with good reason that leading promoters of the former Central American Federation trekked to Nicaragua to gain Walker’s support. The most impor­tant visit was made in December 1855 by José Trinidad Cabañas, the recently deposed president of Honduras, who was widely viewed as the successor to the region’s greatest martyr of Central American unity, Francisco Morazán. Like other Central American Liberal chieftains, Cabañas deemed Walker a kindred spirit and supported his efforts to Americanize the isthmus. As he confided to the prominent Leonese Liberal Máximo Jérez, Central Amer­i­ca could find “its salvation only in the auxiliary forces of the North Americans, and in consequence we need to do every­thing to secure the greatest pos­si­ble immigration of ­these men, as they alone can bring about the reestablishment of the demo­ cratic cause in Central Amer­i­ca.” Of course, Cabañas also saw in Walker’s triumph a chance to regain the Honduran presidency. On December 3, 1855, he arrived in Granada and was warmly received by Walker and other high-­ranking filibusters. For twenty days he sought to convince the foreigners to help him restore the federation by waging war against the Conservative governments of Guatemala and Honduras. Cabañas left town secure of their support. A few days l­ ater, however, Walker proclaimed that his army would desist from invading Nicaragua’s neighbors.18 Walker insisted that he still supported Central American unity but stressed that he now wanted to realize this goal through peaceful means. Echoing this new view, El Nicaraguense asserted that the main way to unify the isthmus was by creating a demo­cratic and prosperous Nicaragua. “In this manner her example ­will win a bloodless victory, and lead the adjoining States to imitate her beneficent institutions, and seek a closer ­union with her fortunate ­people.” Walker’s refusal to wage war so

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angered Cabañas that upon returning to El Salvador he strove to turn its government against the filibusters. As El Nicaraguense reported, Cabañas was inciting Salvadorans “against the Americans. He proclaims a fierce war of extermination against the army of Gen. Walker and considers its destruction the only safety of Central Amer­i­ca.”19 The claim of Cabañas that the filibusters sought to “destroy the nationality of all of Central Amer­i­ca” was prescient, yet based more on intuition than on facts. When Cabañas visited Granada, Walker only had about four hundred U.S. followers in the country—­far fewer than the nearly twelve thousand who would eventually flock to Nicaragua. In addition, Nicaraguans continued to hold most government positions at all levels. Most impor­tant, Walker and El Nicaraguense still openly defended the liberal proj­ect of a Central American federation. At the same time, many Nicaraguans appeared to maintain their faith in Walker’s Americanization proj­ect. A Eu­ro­pean visitor noted that “the prospects of [U.S.] Americans gaining the ascendancy in the country seemed to be regarded with indifference. Indeed, many of the upper classes, tired of their constant revolutions and the ruin and misery attendant upon them, longed secretly for the presence of any foreign influence which should guarantee peace in the country.” But as more and more U.S. settlers made Nicaragua their new home, El Nicaraguense advocated less the restoration of the Central American Federation than the creation of a new Anglo-­Saxon empire.20

IV That the filibusters sought to forge their own empire was apparent to some U.S. newspapers shortly a­ fter Walker seized control of Nicaragua. Already in December 1855 the San Francisco Daily Herald maintained that within the next ten years the “American race” u­ nder Walker’s leadership would forge a “first class power” that stretched from the Yucatán to the Panamanian isthmus. While it used the term “confederacy” to denote this new polity, other U.S. newspapers explic­itly invoked the concept of empire. Some believed that Walker’s imperial quest was being orchestrated by his alleged patron: Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Accessory Transit Com­pany (ATC). That Walker was bent on creating a corporate empire would not



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have surprised his contemporaries. ­After all, similar empires had been carved out by Eu­ro­pean trading companies in the Amer­i­cas and Asia, most famously by the British East India Com­pany in India. And it was this British corporate empire that some U.S. commentators thought Walker sought to replicate.21 In real­ity, the Walker regime ­imagined an empire in­de­pen­dent not only of the United States but also of Vanderbilt’s com­pany. Even though ATC agents had facilitated Walker’s rise to power, his support came mainly from Nicaraguans. And once in power he proved to be anything but the com­pany’s pawn. In fact, he confiscated all of its properties in Nicaragua—­a brazen act that turned Vanderbilt into one of Walker’s fiercest enemies. Moreover, many of Walker’s supporters among the local elite had long resented the ATC’s arrogant treatment of them and its steadfast refusal to pay taxes. The last ­thing they wanted was to become vassals of Vanderbilt’s corporate empire. El Nicaraguense was slow to acknowledge the imperial designs of the filibuster regime. In late December 1855 its En­glish section first hinted at Walker’s imperial ambitions when it wrote about a city that had belonged to a pre-­Columbian empire and whose ruins ­were buried in the wilderness of Chontales, precisely a region that the filibuster regime planned to populate with U.S. settler colonists. The article suggested that with the massive influx of immigrants Walker and his men would resurrect a “tropic empire” as significant as that of the ancient world. Shortly thereafter El Nicaraguense reprinted an article from the U.S. press about “an Empire worthy of rivalry with our own [the United States]” that Walker and his men w ­ ere establishing in Central Amer­i­ca. For the next months, El Nicaraguense made no further mention of Walker’s imperial designs, except to note that he was building a “strong American auxiliary to the United States on this Isthmus.”22 Every­t hing changed in May 1856 when the U.S. government recognized the filibuster regime as the legitimate government of Nicaragua— an act that promised to dramatically increase the flow of U.S. emigrants to Walker’s realm. Once news of this recognition reached Nicaragua, El  Nicaraguense no longer hesitated to play up the regime’s quest to forge a tropical empire that would be populated mainly by U.S. settlers. On the contrary, it celebrated the U.S. recognition as Nicaragua’s “first

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g­ reat step in her march of empire.” Several weeks ­later, the paper underscored its belief in the inevitable triumph of Walker’s imperial proj­ect, asserting, “The fatality of empire directs its consolidation, and time ­will witness its consummation. We hope to live u­ ntil our prognostics are fulfilled, and we religiously believe that the hand of providence has created and given to us the man whose iron nerve and untold resources w ­ ill bring 23 about the decrees of fate.” Walker’s goal of creating an empire that would encompass all of ­Central Amer­i­ca became readily apparent in August 1856, when his regime replaced the Nicaraguan flag with a new one. The old flag had consisted of two sky-­blue stripes with a white one in the ­middle; in the center of the white stripe was a sun rising above several volcanoes, a token of the country’s volcanic range. The new flag maintained the blue-­white-­ blue striped pattern but the ­middle of the white stripe now consisted solely of a five-­pointed red star, with the five points representing the Central American states of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The five-­pointed star evoked the Lone Star flag of the Republic of Texas as well as the Cuban flag created in 1849 by supporters of the filibuster Narciso López. As El Nicaraguense admitted, the volcanoes ­were eliminated from the old flag “with the view prob­ably to annexing a few more.”24 In defending Walker’s budding empire El Nicaraguense drew on the Jeffersonian idea of U.S. expansion. But it also cited Eu­ro­pean cases to underscore that Walker’s empire represented a broader trend in ­human history. Like many other U.S. expansionists of the era, the paper’s editors invoked the ancient Greeks and Romans. “We find,” they claimed, “that a revolution, having its origin in Nicaragua, is leading to a concentration of all the old provinces of Spain in North Amer­i­ca. As the Greek and Roman empires extended their realms ­until the history of the times became their history, so the war of princi­ples on this continent, is taking to itself the same aspect, and ­future writers ­will only discourse of the victories achieved in the name of Democracy.”25 Yet El Nicaraguense linked Walker’s imperial designs mainly with ­those of con­temporary Eu­ro­pean powers—­especially the British in India. As the paper stressed, “we are ­here through the same impulse, or instinct, that impels the En­glish to push their colonies to the remotest corners of



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the earth”—­that is, to promote “the cause of civilization.” Similar connections ­were made by the U.S. press, which used the term “our Indian empire” to refer to Walker’s Central American realm. Such comparisons ­were designed to blunt Eu­ro­pean criticism about the “piratical” nature of Walker’s enterprise. But they also highlighted real similarities, especially concerning their “civilizing” proj­ects. Of course, t­ here w ­ ere key differences; perhaps the greatest was, as the German Forty-­Eighter Julius Fröbel noted, that the filibuster empire would be led by settler colonists who had once been colonial subjects.26 Strikingly, El Nicaraguense mentioned Walker’s empire only to its En­ glish readers; in the Spanish section the term “confederation” prevailed. The paper’s U.S. and Cuban editors probably feared that the concept of empire would alienate Walker’s Central American followers. Perhaps they ­were unaware that leading Central American ­unionists w ­ ere not categorically opposed to the idea of empire. In fact, when the governments of El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua sought to re-­create a unified Central American state in 1849–1850, Nicaragua’s official paper declared that such a polity could take the form of an empire.27 El Nicaraguense had good reasons not to publicize Walker’s imperial designs to its Spanish readers. Walker championed a centralized empire, with Granada as “the fountain of its power in Central Amer­i­ca.” The other Central American states, El Nicaraguense maintained, “must of necessity adopt [the] colonial and civil policy [of the Walker regime], or fall perforce into the subordinate and dependent rank.” By contrast, “confederation” implied a decentralized entity. Walker’s empire could thus alienate two local groups that ­were crucial to his fortunes but opposed a strong central state: Central American Liberal elites and rural community leaders.28 The concept of confederation indicated that Walker’s designs remained confined to Central Amer­i­ca, while empire implied the annexation of even more countries. In its En­glish section, El Nicaraguense suggested that Walker’s empire could include Mexico and Panama. Some of his followers also hoped that the empire would eventually spread to Cuba. For obvious reasons, El Nicaraguense had ­little interest in showcasing ­these expansionist designs to its potential victims. And news of such designs would have torpedoed Walker’s plans to forge an alliance with Mexico’s liberal

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government in late 1856, when both regimes came ­under severe military pressure from outside forces (Spain, in the case of Mexico).29 But perhaps the main reason why the Spanish section of El Nicaraguense remained s­ ilent on Walker’s imperial proj­ect was due to its racial underpinning. In theory, Walker’s multiracial empire rested on liberal princi­ples that ­were universal: the development of the market economy, the creation of more demo­cratic forms of governance, and the promotion of public education, health, and transportation. Yet the paper’s En­glish section stressed that Walker’s empire was to be led by U.S. Anglo-­ Saxons, who w ­ ere deemed superior to the “half-­civilized” races of Central Amer­i­ca. As one article crudely put it, “we might . . . ​say, with truth, that the most ignorant [U.S.] American has more natu­ral intelligence than education can possibly confer upon the inferiorly developed Indian, or half-­breed of Central Amer­i­ca.” El Nicaraguense made this statement only ­after the large influx of U.S. settler colonists had emboldened Walker to begin replacing native officials with what he called the “new ele­ments in Nicaraguan society”—­that is, “Anglo-­Saxons.”30 Echoing Manifest Destiny, the racist views of Walker’s U.S. supporters took on religious overtones. To justify their enterprise, a prominent compatriot stressed, “I ­don’t believe [God] gave us a white face for nothing. I believe He built up the Caucasian race for the purpose of promoting the g­ reat cause of Chris­tian­ity.” As El Nicaraguense clarified, it was above all the “Anglo-­Saxon race [which was] created for carry­ing out to its ultimates the doctrines of Christ.” In its view, Anglo-­Saxon superiority was not just military, po­liti­cal, and economic but also moral. And since U.S. Anglo-­Saxons w ­ ere, to quote the paper, “the ­great moral redeemer of the world,” they had e­ very right to lord over Walker’s empire. Such racial hierarchies are the hallmark of imperial rule. Indeed, the very concept of empire presumes it.31 That white U.S. Americans ­were more entrepreneurial and “civilized” was a view then shared by many Latin Americans. Yet they tended to attribute this superiority not to inherent racial differences but to the superior institutions of the United States. As a leading South American liberal stated in Walker’s paper, “I have always believed that that strength of expansion possessed by the North Americans . . . ​proceed[s] from their demo­cratic institutions.”32



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In contrast, articles in El Nicaraguense penned by U.S. journalists drew on Manifest Destiny to explain that Anglo-­Saxon superiority was based on genes and that U.S. superiority could never abate. Typical of antebellum society, many filibusters had an especially negative image of racially mixed ­peoples, whom they deemed the dominant force in Nicaraguan society. Parroting the widespread U.S. belief that “amalgamation” perpetuated the worst features of each race, a filibuster told New York’s Life Illustrated that “the va­ri­e­ties of the ­human species to be met with ­here in Granada are truly incalculable. As you are aware, ­there are the three distinct types, Indian, Spaniard, and Negro . . . ​but the g­ reat mass of the inhabitants are the degraded offspring of mingled nationalities, possessing the characteristic vices of all, but the virtues of no individual type. The laziness of the negro, the treachery of the Indian, and the ­superstition of the Spaniard.” Walker’s paper tried hard to keep ­these racist views from its Nicaraguan readers. The word “mongrel” appeared only once in its entire run, even though U.S. citizens of the era frequently used it to denigrate Latin Americans.33 El Nicaraguense nevertheless publicized, in its En­glish and Spanish sections, a race-­based concept undergirding its imperial vision: that the superior Anglo-­Saxon race was destined to “regenerate” Central Amer­ i­ca. The idea of regeneration fueled antebellum reform movements and was part of a U.S. frontier myth that powerfully s­ haped westward expansion. It stands at the heart of settler colonial proj­ects more generally. But the concept of regeneration was also upheld by Latin Americans of the era, especially liberals. In fact, leaders of Nicaragua’s Liberal Party invoked it to justify their initial invitation to Walker. Accordingly, the filibusters ­were to help regenerate Nicaragua by promoting its Americanization. A ­ fter Walker seized control of Nicaragua, t­hese Liberal Party leaders continued to valorize his colonists as regenerators.34 Many Anglo-­Americans believed that the redemption of the “American spirit” was to be achieved by wars of racial extermination. Such a genocidal war was then raging in California, where U.S. settlers ­were killing thousands of indigenous ­peoples. ­T here is ­little won­der that some of Walker’s followers asserted that regeneration in the isthmus entailed the violent displacement of “degenerate” Central Americans. This was true of New York’s Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, one of the most popu­lar

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pro-­Walker publications, which stressed, “we have no mawkish sympathy with any semi-­barbarians, ­whether they live on this continent, China or Japan. The only way to purify and enlighten such ­people is with powder and ball: they are the g­ reat corrective and reformatory mea­sures of the age.” Such views mark Walker’s The War in Nicaragua, which appeared three years ­after his 1857 expulsion from Nicaragua. In the book’s conclusion he famously states that “the history of the world pres­ents no  such Utopian vision as that of an inferior race yielding meekly and peacefully to the controlling influence of a superior ­people. Whenever, barbarism and civilization . . . ​meet face to face, the result must be war.”35 Yet as much as genocide marks settler colonialism, Walker never publicly expressed his support for “regeneration through vio­lence” while he ruled Nicaragua. A war of racial extermination was not advocated by El Nicaraguense, nor did the paper call for the creation of racially segregated spaces in Walker’s realm, as was true of Anglo-­Americans then promoting the so-­called Indian removals and the creation of black colonies within North Amer­i­ca. For most of its existence, El Nicaraguense instead championed the regeneration of Central Amer­i­ca’s land and its p ­ eople. The paper stressed that Walker’s empire was to “expand by force, not of arms, but of attraction.” It was to serve as a beacon for the rest of Central Amer­ i­ca by spreading democracy and cap­i­tal­ist development—­two hallmarks of a liberal empire.36 For El Nicaraguense, regeneration mainly entailed the introduction of liberal princi­ples and institutions then in vogue in the United States. As the paper succinctly put it, “the firm establishment of the ­legal authorities, the rigid enforcement of a just and comprehensive system of revenue, the amelioration of the condition of the poor, the protection of property, and enjoinder of personal outrage, ­will soon re-­create confidence and perfect the peaceable naturalization of the Anglo-­Saxon race in Nicaragua.” This liberal agenda was eagerly endorsed by Walker’s Nicaraguan supporters, who had no doubt that a U.S.-­style institutional environment would greatly develop the region’s natu­ral wealth and regenerate the native populace. Their confidence was shared by Walker’s U.S. followers. Even the New York Tribune, which typically denounced his men as pirates, admitted that many Nicaragua-­bound colonists



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“­ believed that the Isthmus was about to be regenerated, and American institutions planted on it.”37 If Walker’s proj­ect of regeneration was rooted in U.S. traditions, it also drew on the radical ideals of Eu­ro­pean Forty-­Eighters. In par­tic­u­lar, El Nicaraguense identified democracy as more than the s­ imple expansion of po­liti­cal rights; it also entailed the destruction of the “hereditary power” of the local “aristocracy,” which the paper maintained stood “opposed to the many, claiming their birthright of freedom and self-­ government.” This antielitist discourse echoed the ways in which Nicaraguan Liberal Party members had framed the civil war of 1854–1855 as a strug­gle between demo­cratic and aristocratic forces. But El Nicaraguense followed the Forty-­Eighters in insisting that Walker’s enterprise was part of the global crusade for democracy. Hence did it “caution our neighbors against the power of that universal demo­cratic sentiment which now agitates the world.”38 For Walker’s foes this prodemocracy discourse was nothing but a sham, and their claim was not without reason. ­Toward the end of Walker’s reign the U.S. press learned, via a leaked letter, that Walker hoped to forge an antidemo­cratic polity “based on military princi­ples.” The possibility of such a dictatorship had been broached by newspapers prior to the revelation of the filibuster’s secret plans. Perhaps the most prescient was the London Morning Post, which in early September 1856 stated, “It is manifest that republican institutions cannot exist where a conquered country is to be governed by an armed minority and the consequence would be that Walker and his companions would have to disenfranchise the Nicaraguans, and constitute themselves a military oligarchy.” Authoritarian rule did in fact mark the last phase of Walker’s reign.39 But in the summer of 1856, at the peak of its power, the filibuster regime still enjoyed strong local support. Just as impor­tant, Walker’s movement still attracted prodemocracy reformers from the United States. So even if his demo­cratic credentials proved highly suspect, this was not the case for many of his followers. Eu­ro­pean radicals and antebellum reformers who supported Walker continued to push for demo­cratic reforms, including public education, better public health and working conditions, greater rights for ­women, and a more equitable distribution of land. El

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Nicaraguense’s prodemocracy discourse captured the spirit that animated many of Walker’s radical Nicaraguan and non-­Nicaraguan followers. No ­matter how loudly El Nicaraguense denounced Eu­rope’s “aristocratic” powers, it conceded that much could be learned from con­ temporary British and French imperialism. In fact, it declared that the Walker regime was seeking nothing more than “the same path of regeneration in Central Amer­i­ca, which has been productive of so much benefit in India, Africa, and islands of the sea, u­ nder the impulse of Eu­ro­pean expansion.” Given this similarity, El Nicaraguense insisted that the Walker regime had ­every right to demand that the Eu­ro­pean powers stop supporting its Central American enemies. “We are,” the paper claimed, “of the same ­family of nations and to doom us to live contiguous to the anarchy of the adjoining States, to subject us to their jealous whims, retard us by their restrictive policy, would be to tie a stone about our feet and forbid our access to the bright path of f­ uture awards. Not only this, but the world at large would suffer, and more particularly ­those nations which are supposed to be offering the greatest obstacles to the regeneration we propose.” For El Nicaraguense, a key purpose of Walker’s nascent empire was to bolster the efforts of existing Eu­ro­pean empires to “civilize” the world regions populated by nonwhite races.40 Walker’s newspaper highlighted the economic benefits that the world would derive from such imperial cooperation: “The regeneration of Spanish Amer­i­ca throws open to the communication and commerce of the world, twenty-­five millions of ­people, with whom ­there is at pres­ent but an insignificant trade. It brings into the market millions of acres of land adapted to the cultivation of the necessaries and luxuries of life, and thus cheapens living. With all t­ hese results comes contentment. . . . ​With cheap living famine is banished, and revolution goes with it. T ­ hese are the fruits we promise to work out for Eu­rope.” Po­liti­cal stability via ­f ree trade, the development of agro-­export economies, and other liberal reforms—­all ­these ­things, as El Nicaraguense rightly stressed, linked Walker’s imperial proj­ect with the civilizing mission of Eu­ro­pean empires. For liberal imperialists of the era, racial hierarchy and uplift ­were not “contradictions but complementary po­liti­cal impulses.” 41 Yet El Nicaraguense did not fail to emphasize that Walker’s empire departed from its Eu­ro­pean counter­parts in central ways. His was repub-



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lican and demo­cratic, while t­hose of Eu­rope w ­ ere monarchic and antidemo­cratic. His sought to uplift the native poor, while the Eu­ro­pean powers backed, at least in Central Amer­i­ca, the local “aristocracy.” Above all, Walker’s i­magined empire was not one that foreign invaders would impose on a conquered p ­ eople but rather something clamored for by the Central American masses living ­under the thumb of allegedly despotic elites. Hence did El Nicaraguense and many of Walker’s non-­Nicaraguan followers stress that, unlike con­temporary Eu­ro­pean imperialists, they ­were not invaders but had been invited to the isthmus by freedom-­seeking Nicaraguans clamoring for entrepreneurial Yankees to populate the country’s vast frontier regions. El Nicaraguense made sure that this message was reiterated by Nicaraguans, as when the native editor of the paper’s Spanish section emphasized that Walker’s men ­were not typical filibusters for they “had come at the invitation of the Demo­cratic [Liberal] Party . . . ​in order to defend liberty . . . ​against the attacks of a foolish oligarchy.” 42 El Nicaraguense was right to stress the differences between Walker’s imperial proj­ect and Eu­ro­pean ones. British and French imperialism of the era generally excluded colonized ­peoples from po­liti­cal participation, while the Walker regime sought to create a more demo­cratic system that, in theory, gave unpre­ce­dented rights to the Nicaraguan masses. Walker eventually endorsed the princi­ple of the direct popu­lar vote and dispensed with the property and income requirements that had previously excluded the overwhelming majority of Nicaraguans from the po­liti­cal pro­cess. And if France and ­Great Britain tended to back Latin Amer­i­ca’s most entrenched elites, Walker unleashed a “revolution” against local elites in the name of the “poor.” His so-­called revolution ultimately failed to bring freedom and social equality to the masses, but the prospect of demo­cratic change led many poor Nicaraguans to long maintain their faith in him.43 Walker and his movement sought to create an empire where the colonists would adopt the nationality of the native population, with both groups theoretically holding the same po­liti­cal rights. This made it quite dif­fer­ent from other imperial proj­ects of the time. This notion of imperial citizenship presumed that Walker’s U.S. colonists would eventually constitute the majority of the region’s population. It was also undercut by filibuster racism. Some may be right to deem Walker’s proj­ect an

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“absurd spectacle,” yet such views overlook the strong support the proj­ect enjoyed from Nicaraguans. In the end Walker’s liberal empire began to crumble not so much due to its internal contradictions, and certainly not ­because it sought to exterminate the native population. Far more impor­ tant was the fierce re­sis­tance it elicited from the region’s elites. This opposition led Walker to centralize power in his own hands, sharpen distinctions between his non-­Nicaraguan and Nicaraguan followers, and unleash a reign of terror—­thus undoing the liberal empire many of his followers had hoped to forge.44

V That the filibuster regime sought to create a liberal empire is now a forgotten story. Its designs are mainly identified with “the empire of the lash” that Walker’s detractors insisted he had been seeking to forge in Central Amer­i­ca ever since he seized power in October 1855. Lending credence to such views w ­ ere Walker’s Tennessee roots, his vocal support from U.S. newspapers and politicians championing the overseas spread of the South’s slave regime, and the large influx of white Southerners to Nicaragua. In real­ity Walker remained true to his Free-­Soil roots for most of his reign. Only when his situation became more precarious did he relegalize slavery, on September 22, 1856. But his regime took no steps to implement this decree, nor did Walker make any declarations defending the decree. This reticence was shared by El Nicaraguense. The only time it explic­itly broached the slavery question was when it justified Walker’s decree relegalizing slavery. Thereafter, the paper followed its leader in remaining stubbornly ­silent on one of the era’s most explosive issues.45 Yet t­ here had been signs of proslavery sentiments in El Nicaraguense that, in hindsight, make Walker’s proslavery decree less surprising than it was to his antislavery followers in the United States and Nicaragua. Such sentiments ­were first noticeable when, in November 1855, El Nicaraguense highlighted the “dangers of idleness” by castigating Central Americans for their unwillingness to carry out the work necessary to regenerate the region—­a claim that would ­later underpin Walker’s slavery decree. True, the paper’s complaint that “idle moments” promoted “vices” could have also been directed at Walker’s undisciplined men. Yet subse-



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quent articles clarified that its main target ­were the Central American masses, as when it justified detaching U.S. members of Walker’s army to ­labor on public works by claiming that “the natives of the country are neither sufficiently industrious or energetic to fulfill the demands of the day, and they must therefore be temporarily superceded by more competent persons.” ­Later El Nicaraguense suggested that a more permanent solution could lie in the import of Chinese “coolies” (indentured workers), who ­were deemed not only productive and cheap but also “peculiarly adapted to the climate of Central Amer­i­ca.” Had the filibuster regime embraced this solution, it would have followed the example of G ­ reat Britain, which had been using coolies from China and India to address the ­labor shortage plaguing its Ca­rib­bean colonies following the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.46 African slaves w ­ ere never mentioned as a solution to the ­labor shortage by El Nicaraguense in the many issues published prior to Walker’s slavery decree. Other Central American papers nonetheless feared that El Nicaraguense’s criticism of native idleness was paving the way for Walker to restore slavery in the isthmus. Among the first to voice this concern was Costa Rica’s Boletín Oficial, which in February 1856 warned that Walker’s recruiting agents in the U.S. South ­were claiming that the only way to make productive use of Central Amer­i­ca’s “lazy” and “degenerate” mass of “colored p ­ eople” was by spreading slavery to the isthmus. Such racist views had long been invoked by proslavery expansionists from the U.S. South. Yet similar criticisms ­were made just as frequently by Latin American elites advocating for other forms of indentured servitude—­ especially debt peonage. Thus, El Nicaraguense’s denunciation of native idleness was not inherently an endorsement of chattel slavery.47 Walker’s paper appeared to more clearly embrace slavery when covering the U.S. presidential campaign of 1856. Among the most explosive issues roiling the campaign was Northern opposition to Southern efforts to expand slavery into the U.S. West and the Ca­rib­bean. El Nicaraguense had a surprisingly favorable view of John Frémont, the eventual Republican nominee and standard b­ earer of antislavery forces. It suggested that Frémont was uniquely prepared to unite the torn nation, for the famed western expansionist was not only a native Southerner leading a Northern party but also “one of the richest men in the Union of the world.” At the

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same time, the paper attacked Frémont’s Republican Party for “its inflexible determination to carry out the fundamental princi­ples of its creed, which is, an uncompromising opposition to negro slavery.” As the presidential campaign heated up over the summer, the filibuster paper ­denounced ever more loudly the Republican attacks on the South’s peculiar institution.48 But what most concerned El Nicaraguense was the fate of “popu­lar sovereignty” in the United States. This princi­ple was then mainly identified with the Kansas-­Nebraska Act of 1854, which repealed the 1820 prohibition of slavery in territories north of the thirty-­sixth parallel. The act did not automatically legalize slavery in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, which spanned the present-­day states of Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, and Wyoming. Instead, it called for the slavery question to be deci­ded on the basis of popu­lar sovereignty by giving settlers in each territory the right to decide w ­ hether to permit the institution. This pro­cess became explosive in Kansas, which experienced a massive influx of pro-­and antislavery forces that did not hesitate to use terror to promote their cause. The escalating vio­lence in “Bleeding Kansas” over the summer of 1856 made the presidential campaign even more fiery. By supporting the proslavery camp in Kansas, Walker’s paper demonstrated that it linked popu­lar sovereignty with the South’s right to expand slavery.49 Yet El Nicaraguense rightly stressed that the U.S. b­ attle over popu­lar sovereignty went beyond the issue of slavery’s expansion. For many Northerners, the conflict focused on efforts by the South’s slaveholding elite—­the so-­called Slave Power—to enhance its influence over ­free states by violating popu­lar w ­ ill. In their eyes, nothing more symbolized the Slave Power’s antidemo­cratic bent than the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required officials in all states to return captured fugitive slaves to their masters. This act was seen by many Northerners as an attack on “basic civil and demo­ cratic rights” in states where antislavery sentiments ran high. In sharp contrast, white Southerners tended to view the national strug­gle over popu­lar sovereignty as centering on Northern efforts to abolish an institution—­ slavery—­that enjoyed ­great legitimacy among the region’s voters. To them, abolitionists ­were not just fanatics but antidemo­crats.50



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In this ­battle over the meaning of U.S. democracy, El Nicaraguense sided with the slaveholding South. It denounced the more populous North for using the banner of democracy to impose its antislavery agenda on the South, as when it complained that “the majority s­ hall rule, says the new phase of tyranny, and on this outrageous instinct, for reason it is not [,] the minority are grossly abused.” As a result of this demo­cratic tyranny, the paper noted, “the South is abused and her domestic institutions reviled.” A victory of the Republican Party in the November elections, so El Nicaraguense warned, would mean that “the right of self-­government is directly abolished.”51 Walker’s paper did not simply cast the South as the victim of Northern aggression; it also championed the South as a bulwark of “liberalism.” In par­tic­u­lar, it lauded the liberal thrust of the so-­called Young South movement, which took its name from Young Amer­i­ca, the ultra-­expansionist wing of the Demo­cratic Party that advocated for social reform and supported prodemocracy movements abroad. According to El Nicaraguense, the proslavery Young South movement not only “leaves all [white] men ­free to occupy what sphere of life they choose” but also “curbs all centralization of power” and “raises the power, redresses the injured, and guarantees equal privileges to all.” El Nicaraguense saw no contradiction in the South’s marrying liberalism with slavery. Like many proslavery apologists of the era, it claimed that the freedom of white Southerners rested on black slavery. It insisted that “all men are not equal; they w ­ ere not created so in the beginning. . . . ​ If he is a slave . . . ​let him so remain, for Providence has assigned the bond of his condition.” And by identifying freedom with whiteness, the paper could link Southern efforts to expand slavery abroad with the demo­cratic revolutions that had swept Eu­rope in 1848, as when it claimed that “the Caucasian race everywhere should be f­ ree—­the white nations should realize their aspirations for liberty. [The Young South] sympathizes with Hungary and Ireland—it rejoices with France in her movements of ­jubilation—it recognizes all ­people who ask for freedom.”52 By mid-­June El Nicaraguense explic­itly linked the fate of Walker’s budding empire with Southern expansion, claiming that “Nicaragua is the first triumph of the Young South.”53 Still, this did not necessarily mean

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that the paper championed the restoration of slavery in Central Amer­i­ca. Why e­ lse did it stress Nicaragua’s need for white nonslaveholding settlers from the South without ever stating that, to quote Walker’s 1860 book, their “permanent presence” in Central Amer­i­ca depended on “the re-­ establishment of African slavery”? Nor did the paper mention anything about a promise “to cleanse the South of a nonwhite population” by having slaves be removed to Nicaragua. Instead the paper’s vision of imperial whiteness echoed ongoing efforts of Free-­Soilers to turn California into a white state by blocking the influx of enslaved and ­free African Americans.54 Prior to Walker’s slavery decree, then, El Nicaraguense’s defense of the South’s peculiar institution appeared to have less to do with a desire to restore slavery to Central Amer­i­ca than with the right of U.S. colonists to forge an in­de­pen­dent empire abroad in the name of popu­lar sovereignty—​ ­and whiteness. This would help explain why Walker’s antislavery colonists in Nicaragua remained at his side even as El Nicaraguense backed the U.S. South in its “­grand strug­gle” with the North.55 Since Walker’s followers w ­ ere such a mixed group, it is not surprising that the filibuster regime pursued competing po­liti­cal proj­ects. All sought to promote the influx of U.S. settler colonists to Nicaragua. At specific moments, however, the regime championed par­tic­u­lar proj­ects of settler colonialism over ­others. The shift in the regime’s preferences reflected the evolution of Walker’s own views, but it responded mainly to the changing nature of his followers. Initially the regime relied heavi­ly on the support of elite Nicaraguans. Hence, it first advocated for a stronger, more Americanized Nicaraguan nation-­state—­not U.S. annexation, as hoped for by most of Walker’s followers in the United States. At the very end, the filibuster regime came to depend on support from the U.S. South. This was thus the moment when it came to be identified with a proslavery empire that would span all of Central Amer­i­ca and perhaps even Mexico and Cuba. Yet the proj­ect that the Walker regime advanced with greatest force was the liberal empire it pursued at the height of its power, when it was backed by antislavery reformers from the U.S. North as well as radical Nicaraguans bent on destroying elite power. Walker’s supporters in the North



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firmly believed in the viability of such an empire. Even as his regime began to crumble in late 1856, New York’s largest newspaper insisted that “Walker’s vision of [a nonslaveholding] empire seems anything but chimerical. It is quite realizable, and the chances in its ­favor are evidently greater than ­those against it.”56 The liberal empire ­imagined by Walker and his followers was hardly a historical anomaly. On the contrary, their proj­ect brought together two liberal tenets of U.S. expansion: the antistatist Jeffersonian ideal of a republican empire and the prostatist American System of cap­i­tal­ist development. It also drew on con­temporary Eu­ro­pean liberal imperialism—­ especially its ideas of ­f ree trade and its mission to “civilize” nonwhite ­peoples. It was with good reason that El Nicaraguense and the U.S. press stressed the similarities between Walker’s enterprise and Eu­ro­pean empires, as exemplified by their use of the term “our Indian empire.” Ultimately, Walker’s i­ magined polity was part of the mid-­nineteenth c­ entury international trend that merged liberalism with imperialism.57

6 Creating a Filibuster State

It was one t­ hing for William Walker and his followers to imagine their “empire of liberty,” and another to realize it. A strong army was clearly necessary. But what they deemed even more essential was the creation of a liberal state that would lead the Central American masses to embrace their empire. As El Nicaraguense put it, “our extension of territory is an extension of ­free institutions, of po­liti­cal and social liberties, of enterprise and ­f ree thought.” Following Walker’s conquest, his followers worked hard to forge a state that would allow them to extend their control over all of Central Amer­i­ca.1 El Nicaraguense echoed Walker and many of his followers in asserting that the filibuster state was modeled ­a fter its U.S. counterpart and reflected “the g­ reat princi­ples of American republicanism.” In real­ity, the filibuster state resembled more the colonial entities created by antirepublican Eu­ro­pean powers of the era. It certainly shared similarities with the expanding United States, as many of Walker’s men had participated in the U.S. conquest of the “American West.” Yet ­there was a fundamental difference: the filibuster state depended far more on the collaboration of the native population. Such a de­pen­dency also marked the rule of the 164



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British in India, the French in Algeria, and the Rus­sians in Central Asia. This similarity responded to the fact that both Walker’s colonists and Eu­ro­pean imperialists remained vastly outnumbered by the local population. U.S. westward expansion, by contrast, entailed the rapid and massive immigration of colonists into sparsely settled regions. Hence, the expanding United States depended far less on the collaboration of conquered ­peoples and could easily impose its institutions on them. In Nicaragua, Walker’s men did not begin to displace local authorities ­until May 1856, when U.S. recognition of his regime greatly increased the influx of U.S. settlers. But even then, the filibusters continued to follow the path of Eu­ro­pean powers by standing their state on native shoulders and institutions.2 Some Nicaraguans collaborated mainly for opportunistic reasons. Yet many ­others believed the filibuster state would indeed promote “po­liti­cal and social liberties” as well as “enterprise.” Walker’s willingness to create a liberal state helps explain the support of native radicals. Anti-­Walker Nicaraguans insisted that local participation in the filibuster state was nothing but a charade, for all power was concentrated in the hands of the filibusters. In fact, the authority of Walker’s group was not unlimited. Just as his local supporters had enabled him to seize power, so ­were they essential to the creation of a state that reached into communities beyond his capital of Granada. Moreover, ­these Nicaraguans ­were not passive collaborators. Only by putting a face on local support can we grasp Walker’s most overlooked feat: the creation of a functioning state.3

I Walker’s detractors in the United States often depicted the filibuster state as if it w ­ ere a sham meant to fool the U.S. public and government into supporting Walker’s “piratical” enterprise. It certainly had all the trappings of a state, such as a flag, official stationery, ministers, and government bonds. It staged parades and rallies designed to highlight its legitimacy to national and international audiences. In letters penned for U.S. newspapers, Walker’s men tried hard to convince a skeptical public that their state was real. As one wrote, “it is wonderful to see with what fa­cil­i­ty the new government now moves on. The Government House on the Plaza . . . ​is

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F igu r e 6. 1 ​“Reception room of General Walker, in the President’s House, city of Granada,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, March 15, 1856. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photo­graphs Division, Washington, D.C. (LC-­USZ62-60914-­A).

r­ eally a bee hive of industry. . . . ​Every­thing is moving on with as much regularity as if the government had been established fifty years.” This message of bureaucratic bliss was reinforced by images appearing in pro-­ Walker papers. Yet, Walker’s foes insisted that talk of an existing filibuster state was pure propaganda. As the Washington, DC, Eve­ning Star stressed, Walker was nothing but a “dictator” who sought “to disguise the piratical character of his enterprise [by having] some two hundred native prisoners constantly within the range of the r­ ifles of his filibusters, and [calling] them his native functionaries.” 4 Some claim that the real power ­behind the throne was Walker and his army. The filibuster army did exert much power, especially once its ranks swelled with recruits from the United States. Although most troops lived in Granada, many w ­ ere stationed in other towns, along the transit route, and in major ports. In addition, groups of filibusters regularly patrolled the countryside. The army had a presence in the most impor­tant regions of Nicaragua, with some of its officers acting as state agents. Still, ­t here was a real division between the filibuster army and the filibuster



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state; the latter was an in­de­pen­dent institution that exerted effective authority and reached into rural communities. And if the army was essentially non-­Nicaraguan, most state officials ­were Nicaraguans. That Walker’s state was a functioning entity is evident from the correspondence produced by Nicaraguan officials operating the four government ministries: War, Finance, Foreign Relations, and Public Credit. Though most of this correspondence was destroyed in the war that ended Walker’s reign, surviving rec­ords indicate that each ministry had its own staff. At first, nearly all state employees ­were Nicaraguans. Over time, positions ­were increasingly filled by Walker’s U.S. followers. As the state apparatus expanded, the filibuster regime even sought to recruit employees of the U.S. government to come to Nicaragua. In August 1856 its agent in the United States was told to find “a few good men who are accustomed to government accounts.” The regime claimed that the current “heads of department” ­were “good accountants and business men” but lacked the necessary experience. To improve the efficiency of the state apparatus, its agent was to entice “a few of the clerks from the [government] departments at Washington” to migrate to Nicaragua and work for the filibuster state. The regime was serious about its efforts to “Americanize” the state apparatus.5 The state nonetheless continued to be dominated by native officials ­until the end of Walker’s reign. This was the case not only of the four ministries but also of vari­ous state agencies. The Ministry of War, which was in­de­pen­dent of Walker’s army, included the Military Audit Agency and the Commissary of War, which purchased from local producers foodstuffs, clothing, shoes, and other materials needed by the army. Other Nicaraguan-­dominated agencies included the Courts of First Instance, the postal ser­vice, and the custom h­ ouses. The filibuster regime also created new agencies, such as the Surgeon General’s Office, the Office of the Recorder of Deeds and Mortgages, and the Department of Colonization, which catered to the thousands of settlers flocking to Walker’s realm. While ­these new agencies tended to be run by U.S. officials, they depended on local collaborators. Many had branches in the country’s main towns and, in the case of the trea­sury, in the ports of Realejo, San Juan del Norte, and San Juan del Sur. Some even had their own buildings, as was true of Granada’s post office, which reportedly

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had “fine mahogany ­counters and desks with pigeon holes and shelves in abundance.” 6 In the end the filibuster state exerted its authority mainly through subnational entities, which w ­ ere controlled by Nicaraguans. At the level of departments, its most impor­tant agents ­were prefects, subprefects, and military commanders (who ­were not part of Walker’s army). Their responsibilities included collecting taxes, upholding civil order, maintaining interdepartmental roads, organ­izing ­labor drafts for public works proj­ ects, and issuing identity cards. The filibuster state also appointed officials to departmental boards that oversaw public education. A plethora of appointed officials served at the subdepartmental level, such as port masters, trea­sury officials, rural judges, and police agents. Members of municipal councils w ­ ere crucial to the filibuster state, though they ­were selected by the local population rather than by national authorities.7 Walker and other high-­ranking filibusters conferred with Nicaraguan state officials at all levels. Not surprisingly, they interacted primarily with President Patricio Rivas and his ministers. But they also corresponded with native authorities from the departmental rank all the way down to the community level. Such interactions are evident in the surviving correspondence of Bruno von Natzmer, who occupied high-­ranking positions in the army and the government. Thanks to his lengthy stay in León, the Prus­sian developed close relationships with local authorities and the city’s Liberal Party leaders; he even became engaged to a ­woman of the local elite. The interactions between Walker’s men and native authorities often suffered from language difficulties. But like Walker and Natzmer, a number of filibusters spoke and wrote Spanish, while some Nicaraguan officials knew En­glish. Moreover, the filibuster state and army used translators, especially Cubans who ­were familiar with the cultural practices of its U.S. members and Nicaraguans.8 That high-­ranking filibuster officials corresponded directly with low-­ level authorities comes across in an order that Walker sent to the Nicaraguan military commander of the lakeside village of La Virgen, located at the eastern end of the transit road. Walker’s missive responded to a letter written in Spanish by the villa­ger José María Cheves, who complained about the corrupt dealings of the area’s former military commander. He was upset about how the ex-­official had confiscated his plot of corn in



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order to compensate a neighbor whose four pigs Cheves had allegedly killed—­a charge he vehemently denied. Since his livelihood depended on this plot, Cheves claimed that the ex-­official’s wanton act had turned him into a “beggar.” As the complaint of Cheves was quite minor, Walker could have easily ignored it. Instead he ordered the local commander to investigate. For a week or so, the commander and two police agents questioned villa­gers (who provided conflicting testimonies) and then sent their report to Walker. The paper trail ends t­here, but the case reveals how national authorities corresponded with low-­level officials in places well beyond the capital. And it underscores Walker’s concern about abusive officials who could undermine the legitimacy of his regime.9 Thanks to its wide range of officials, the filibuster state was able to perform tasks as vital as maintaining public order, collecting taxes, modernizing the economy, and facilitating the immigration of U.S. settlers. Over time it waged a moralizing campaign to “civilize” Nicaraguans by promoting public hygiene, better work habits, temperance, and education. The state’s proj­ects of economic modernization, colonization, and moral “uplift” w ­ ere pursued by state officials largely of U.S. origins. Tax collecting, policing, and judging, by contrast, w ­ ere mainly carried out by local officials. It was ­these native agents who did so much to ensure that the filibuster state could exert its authority well beyond Granada. Tax collectors w ­ ere among Walker’s most ubiquitous state agents precisely b­ ecause they w ­ ere key to his fortunes. He needed taxes not only to finance the state apparatus but also to bankroll a professional, well-­ maintained army as well as an ambitious modernization proj­ect. True, his regime raised funds by imposing forced loans on the rich. But from the start, it also issued an array of new taxes. In addition, it gave local officials greater authority to collect taxes on tobacco and c­ attle slaughter and to suppress contraband trade in both products. T ­ hese taxes w ­ ere critical: together with import tariffs and the tax on aguardiente they made up the bulk of state revenues. Ultimately, it collected less in taxes than expected and repeatedly reprimanded agricultural producers for failing to pay their taxes.10 Surviving rec­ords nonetheless indicate that many of Walker’s tax collectors fulfilled their duties. And ­t hese Nicaraguan authorities had no qualms about forcing U.S. colonists to pay taxes. They ­were spread

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throughout the country, operating not just in towns and ports but in rural areas as well. This was especially true in the regions of Granada and Rivas, where filibusters regularly patrolled the countryside. Perhaps the best proof that Walker’s agents effectively collected taxes from the local populace was the fact that some of them w ­ ere ­later accused, by the post-­ Walker government, of having pocketed the monies for themselves.11

II The tax policies of the filibuster state reveal the caution that marked its effort to exert authority over the all-­important countryside, where the majority of Nicaraguans lived. Time and again it failed to aggressively enforce its tax mea­sures for fear of alienating peasant communities that had supported its rise to power. Early on Walker saw that taxation could, as he put it, “create disaffection among the ­people.” His Nicaraguan allies, in turn, ­were keenly aware that government efforts to increase the tax burden on rural communities in the late 1840s helped trigger rural uprisings that terrified Conservative and Liberal elites alike. Perhaps for this reason, the filibuster regime did not initially tax aguardiente, which had hitherto been the largest source of state revenue (the cane liquor was extremely popu­lar with the poor). Over time it even decreased the tax rate on the slaughter of ­cattle so the poor would have enough meat. The filibuster state respected the autonomy of rural communities far more than the previous Conservative government had. This appeal to the poor illustrates how Walker and his followers sought to expand their rule by “attraction.”12 Ever since Walker seized power his leading Nicaraguan supporters had insisted that the filibusters would not follow the example of the deposed Conservative “aristocrats” who used the state to “tyrannize” the rural poor. With Walker at its helm, so they claimed, the state would no longer encroach on their lands, charge them high rents, curb their ability to sell cash crops, force them to work as “slaves,” or conscript them into military ser­v ice. The filibuster regime hardly kept all ­these promises. In par­tic­u­lar, it continued to force poor ­people to work on public proj­ects, such as road construction. Still, it did away with some unpop­u­lar state policies. The most impor­tant was its abolition of military conscription.



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But it also courted rural sympathy by reducing taxes, granting pensions to war invalids and the immediate relatives of fallen soldiers, and promising to re­spect the autonomy of rural communities. It was with good reason that communal leaders trekked from as far away as Matagalpa to seek his support.13 One telling case involved the indigenous community of Masatepe, then an impor­tant producer of two goods that the previous governments had heavi­ly taxed: tobacco and aguardiente. Located in the fertile hills west of Granada, the village had participated in vari­ous antitax revolts, most recently in 1853. Like other indigenous communities, Masatepe feared that its ladino (nonindigenous) neighbors ­were seeking to grab its land. In late December 1855 indigenous leaders of Masatepe met with Walker in Granada, seeking to secure the return of tobacco that had been taken from their community by tax agents of the previous government; they also hoped the filibuster state would break with the practice of taxing their tobacco. In pleading with Walker, they stressed that they ­were “poor Indians [Indígenas]” and that the deposed government was a “Tyranny, ­enemy of the villages [pueblos].” In their telling, the “contempt” shown for indigenous ­peoples was widespread in Nicaragua. Whenever they had met with state officials, their demands had always been “rudely rejected.”14 It remains unclear ­whether Walker acceded to their demands. In all likelihood his regime continued to tax Masatepe’s tobacco producers, for at the time of its downfall much tobacco was found in the deposit of the agency that collected this tax. In addition, the filibuster state l­ater reestablished its mono­poly over the aguardiente manufactory at Masatepe. This mea­sure surely displeased the community’s aguardiente producers and distributors, most of whom ­were ­women. Moreover, some of the worst enemies of the Masatepe Indians—­their nonindigenous neighbors—­ joined Walker’s army, suggesting that his regime may have taken the side of t­ hese land-­grabbing ladinos.15 Still, the rural community leaders trusted Walker to consider their demands. This trust had nothing to do with the myth promulgated by the filibuster’s U.S. supporters about how Nicaraguan Indians w ­ ere “taught by tradition that a gray-­eyed man was to deliver them from Spanish rule.” Instead, rural leaders believed that the Walker regime was far more willing

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to help uphold the autonomy of their communities than was true of previous state authorities. This willingness helps explain why the filibuster state was able to initiate ties with rural communities that had long resisted state authorities.16 The case of Masatepe also shows that the fate of the filibuster state hinged on its ability to diffuse conflicts plaguing rural communities. Two types of communal conflicts preoccupied the filibuster state and both involved access to economic resources (usually land and ­labor). The first concerned conflicts between rural communities, while the second pitted members of the same community against each other. Although both types of conflict had existed for a long time, they had intensified in the past de­ cade as the rural economy boomed. Especially acute ­were conflicts bound up with ethnic differences, as when Indian communities resisted efforts of nonindigenous ladinos to grab their communal lands or when ladino-­dominated councils forced Indians to work on local public proj­ ects, such as maintaining roads, repairing churches, cleaning wells, and building schools. According to pro-­Walker Liberals, the previous Conservative government had stoked the flame of ethnic tensions in order to gain the support of Indian communities.17 To control such vio­lence the filibuster state appointed many Nicaraguans as police agents and rural sheriffs. In some cases, the security force was quite large. In Masaya, Walker gave police chief Francisco Bravo the authority to raise a force of fifty natives in order to maintain order in the region. According to surviving rec­ords, Walker’s police agents w ­ ere quite effective, with most arrests involving theft, ­cattle rustling, assault, and destruction of property. A few p ­ eople ­were also arrested for illegal 18 gambling. The filibuster state further upheld rural order via local courts—­ institutions that played a key if understudied role in the making of Latin American states. That the judiciary could function throughout Walker’s reign is laid bare by court cases held in Diriomo, a predominantly indigenous village that produced beans, corn, fruit, hay (zacate), rice, sugar, and tobacco. The villa­gers marketed most of their products in nearby Granada, with many customers consisting of Walker’s colonists. Some also sold their goods in the town of Rivas, which was a key market for transit travelers and merchants from Costa Rica, where the nascent coffee



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economy triggered a boom in Nicaraguan food imports. As in other rural communities, the expanding market for foodstuffs heightened conflicts among Diriomeños over land, access to ­water, and debt. In addition, the recent influx of non-­Indians to this indigenous community intensified ethnic tensions, especially ­because the newcomers coveted its communal lands, which ­were in indigenous hands. Within this tense context, Diriomo’s court adjudicated a range of conflicts and contributed to the consolidation of the filibuster state.19 A final set of native officials helping the filibuster state exert its authority ­were municipal councils in urban and rural areas. They typically included a mayor and his deputies, several aldermen, a syndic, and a secretary, who ­were usually elected but in some cases may have been appointed by the filibuster state. Their responsibilities consisted mainly of organ­izing elections; defending communal interests against the state; and managing courts, tax collection, public works, garbage removal, and the market (which included price controls). Councils further regulated “everyday practices of birth, child rearing, work, leisure, marriage, sex, and death,” with some also involved in more nefarious affairs like upholding debt peonage.20 Surviving rec­ords indicate that many councils functioned during Walker’s reign. They show that council members ­were in close contact with departmental officials of the filibuster state and, in some cases, with Walker. Most typically this meant that local officials exchanged letters with higher-­ranking state agents. But local officials also met with national authorities in the departmental capitals or Granada. Conversely, national authorities conferred, at times, with local officials in their communities. While such visits usually occurred in the region of Granada, national authorities also met with local officials in more remote areas, such as Chontales. It remains unclear how strongly council members sympathized with the filibuster regime. A number eventually joined the anti-­Walker re­sis­tance, but ­others continued to support Walker and had to go into hiding following his ouster.21 An array of native officials allowed the filibuster state to function well beyond its capital of Granada. Some Nicaraguans claimed ­after Walker’s surrender that this state had exerted so l­ ittle authority that, as one put it, “the citizen could not count on any guarantee, nor even of his own life,

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due to the headless state in which we found ourselves ­under filibuster rule.” This image of anarchy is belied by the ability of the filibuster state to secure stability ­until about October 1856, when not only did Central American armies take their war against the filibusters deep into the Nicaraguan heartland but Walker’s revolution from above wreaked havoc in the countryside. And while the state apparatus experienced much turnover, numerous positions w ­ ere occupied by the same native official for much of Walker’s reign. Court proceedings, arrest rec­ords, financial reports, and the correspondence of municipal councils underscore that Walker built his state with local support.22

III When Walker seized power in October 1855, many Nicaraguans thought that his most impor­tant native collaborators would be radical liberals bent on unleashing a social revolution. So real was this promise of revolutionary change that it inspired leading liberals throughout Central Amer­i­ca to rally to Walker’s cause. The most prominent was the Honduran José Trinidad Cabañas, who spent much of December 1855 plotting with Walker in Granada. The likes of Cabañas had good reason to believe that the filibuster sought to spark a revolution in the isthmus. Some of his main ­Nicaraguan followers ­were radicals like José María Valle. Moreover, El Nicaraguense endorsed the liberal Ayutla Revolution, which had triumphed in Mexico in August 1855. Even some high-­ranking filibuster officers called for a revolution that would bring about, as one put it, “the amelioration of the condition of the poor.” But as Cabañas and other Central American liberals quickly realized, the newly established filibuster regime refused to carry out its promised revolution. To justify this inaction, El Nicaraguense claimed that Walker was being driven by “the princi­ples of a sound conservatism.”23 In real­ity, Walker embraced conservatism in the opportunistic hope that Conservative Party elites would help consolidate his rule. He most aggressively courted the Conservative oligarchy based in Granada, as ­these wealthy merchants and plantation o­ wners wielded much power well beyond their home region. To Walker’s chagrin, many Conservatives rejected his overtures and fled the city. While some sought refuge



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in the country’s mountainous interior, most escaped to Costa Rica and Honduras, where they helped to or­ga­n ize the armed re­sis­t ance to the filibusters. A large group, however, remained in Granada and collaborated with Walker. As a result, Conservative “aristocrats” came to occupy key positions within the filibuster state. The most prominent was President Rivas, who, as Cabañas bitterly learned during his stay in Granada, opposed wide-­ reaching liberal reforms. Other prominent Conservative officials included José Anzoateguí, who headed the staff of the Ministry of War; Juan Jesús Bermúdez, who first served as military commander of Granada and then of Rivas; Jacinto Chamorro, who as provider general of Walker’s army ensured that the filibusters would have food, clothes, and other vital goods; José María Hurtado, the prefect of Rivas; Jesús de la Rocha, the minister of finance; and Hilario Selva, the prefect of Granada. Prominent Conservatives also served on Granada’s municipal council. They included Francisco Calonje, who had been the city’s mayor ­under the previous regime and, following Walker’s conquest, continued to serve on the city council as its secretary. Calonje also derived much income by renting rooms in his ­house to Walker’s men. Apparently he developed such close relations with the filibusters that he invited some to the “sumptuous” party celebrating the baptism of his son.24 If Conservatives boosted Walker’s state-­making proj­ect, they also strengthened his po­liti­cal position vis-­à-­vis the country’s divided elites. His success in obtaining the support of influential Conservative oligarchs weakened the efforts of ­others seeking to or­ga­nize the antifilibuster re­ sis­tance. Among the most prominent was General Tomás Martínez. A ­ fter rejecting Walker’s offer to join his government, Martínez fled north to Nueva Segovia, where he demanded that the prefect—­another prominent Conservative—­hand over his military arsenal to the anti-­Walker re­sis­ tance. Instead, the prefect remained loyal to the new regime. This refusal so demoralized Martínez that he took off for Honduras, where he hoped to find more support for the anti-­Walker cause.25 The presence of Conservatives in the filibuster state also allowed Walker to keep his Liberal allies in check. Walker’s agents tried to sway Conservative oligarchs to serve in the filibuster government by telling them “the time had come for the legitimists [Conservatives] to rule and

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take revenge against the demo­crats [Liberals].” Given how viciously both parties had fought one another, it is not surprising that Walker’s courting of elite Conservatives antagonized his Liberal allies, leading some to break with him. This was true of Minister of War Buenaventura Selva (­brother of Hilario Selva), who responded to the appointment of the Conservative oligarch Manuel Argüello as prefect of Granada by resigning his post and leaving for El Salvador, then ­under Liberal rule.26 The Selvas ­were hardly the only elite ­family that became divided as a result of Conservative collaboration with Walker. Perhaps the most famous case involved the ­family of President Rivas. To the disbelief of anti-­Walker Conservatives, the president steadfastly maintained his loyalty to the filibuster chieftain. His son Ramón, by contrast, joined the armed Conservative re­sis­tance shortly ­after attending his ­father’s inauguration. In December  1855 Ramón launched a rebellion from San Juan del Norte with the aim of setting up base in Chontales. Yet shortly ­after departing, Ramón and his fourteen coconspirators ­were captured by a small U.S. naval force that had pursued them at the behest of the transit com­pany. Rather than hand the rebels over to filibuster authorities, the U.S. commander let them flee to Costa Rica. Such ­family conflicts as ­those plaguing the Rivas played into Walker’s strategy of divide and rule.27 But this strategy also allowed Conservative oligarchs to shape Walker’s state proj­ect; their influence was especially noticeable in the symbolic realm. They successfully pressured Walker not to yield to the demand of Liberal allies that the country’s capital be moved from Granada to the Liberal bastion of Léon. Conservative oligarchs ensured that Walker did not adopt Liberal symbols (especially the color red) as t­hose of the nation. More impor­tant, they worked hard to curb the demo­cratizing tendencies of Walker’s Liberal followers. Prior to their seizure of power, Walker and his Liberal allies had promised to open up the po­liti­cal system to the masses and disempower Conservative “aristocrats.” Yet as long as Walker enjoyed Conservative support, his regime failed to dispense with the property and income requirement that excluded the vast majority of native men from elections. It also refused to abolish the elite-­dominated electoral colleges that appointed the president, congressmen, and municipal authorities. In consequence Conservative oligarchs ­were able to control the first election carried out ­under Walker’s rule: the election of



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Granada’s city council. As El Nicaraguense explained, the regime believed that the “masses” ­were not yet educated enough to fulfill “their duties as citizens.” ­Were they to participate in elections, it warned, anarchy and chaos would follow. Only ­after Nicaragua reached the educational level of the United States, the paper insisted, would it make sense to de­moc­ra­tize the po­liti­cal system.28 El Nicaraguense’s negative view of the local masses helps explain the initial conservative bent of the filibuster state. But this conservatism was also the d ­ oing of Walker’s new elite allies. He unleashed his “revolution” only ­after the Costa Rican invasion of April 1856 led many elite Conservatives to turn against him (President Rivas being a key exception). Up to this turning point, Nicaragua’s most entrenched oligarchs had ensured that the filibuster state would indeed be run on “the princi­ples of a sound conservatism.”

IV For many local and foreign observers, the initial conservativism of the filibuster state was most noticeable in its close relations with the Catholic Church. T ­ hese ties shocked Conservative exiles who led the anti-­Walker opposition. They could not understand why local priests would support a regime dominated by U.S. Protestants who, in their eyes, w ­ ere virulently anti-­Catholic. Deposed president José Maria Estrada even claimed that “the preaching of some of the ministers of religion in ­favor of the filibusters” had been key to Walker’s rise to power.29 But Walker’s proclerical policies also troubled some of his own men, albeit for the opposite reason. They could not fathom why he would embolden what they deemed was a reactionary institution. This was true of Charles Doubleday, a founding member of Walker’s army who claimed to have embraced the filibuster’s cause out of a “desire to see the p ­ eople freed from the tyranny of a dominant ecclesiasticism.” Just before Walker conquered Granada, he confided to Doubleday that the Catholic Church would play a key role in his upcoming regime. So shocked was Doubleday over this revelation—­and Walker’s latent dictatorial tendencies—­that he abandoned the filibuster’s cause and returned to the United States. In his view, Walker’s alliance with the church was not just a “conspiracy against

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popu­lar liberty.” It was utterly anachronistic, for Walker’s “affiliation of power with the Church in a time when freedom of thought had made pro­ gress . . . ​came at too late a day in the world’s history.”30 The alliance contradicted how much of the U.S. public deemed Walker a Protestant hero waging a crusade against Catholic “tyranny.” But it also stood out within Latin Amer­i­ca, where most Liberal parties sought to curb the influence of the church by proscribing the po­liti­cal participation of the clergy, forcing the church to sell its large properties to private individuals, and secularizing the educational system. And though Walker presented himself as a fervent liberal, his regime respected the properties and schools of the church. It enhanced the clergy’s po­liti­cal influence by appointing priests to impor­tant government positions, with two even serving as ministers of government. Walker and his U.S. followers further underscored their ties with the clergy by making well-­publicized visits to churches. Some filibusters even converted to Catholicism, as was true of Walker’s younger ­brother, who died of rheumatism and whose funeral took place in Granada’s main church. For ordinary Nicaraguans, the cozy nature of church-­state relations ­under Walker was perhaps most apparent in the prominent place that high-­ranking state officials occupied in religious processions—­especially ­those marking Holy Week.31 Thanks to Walker’s proclerical policies, the leader of the Nicaraguan church, Vicar General José Hilario Herdocia, became one of his most impor­tant native allies. Although Herdocia lived in the Liberal bastion of León, he had been a well-­k nown supporter of the previous Conservative government. In fact, he was a close friend of the Conservative oligarch Mateo Mayorga, whom Walker had executed shortly a­ fter his takeover of Granada. ­These ties notwithstanding, Herdocia endorsed Walker’s rise to power. And when León’s Liberal leadership turned against Walker in June 1856, Herdocia beseeched the city’s masses to maintain their allegiance to the filibuster. He ordered local priests to use the pulpit to denounce the Liberal leaders for falsely claiming that the filibusters ­were seeking to destroy their churches and religion. The vicar general ensured that church funds w ­ ere funneled to Walker’s cash-­strapped regime. In February 1856 he apparently gave the regime 963 ounces of fine silver bullion drawn from the altar of Granada’s most aristocratic church, La Merced; the regime was to sell this silver in ­England so that it could buy



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arms. But Herdocia mainly helped Walker by allowing priests to participate in his state-­making proj­ect.32 Walker’s alliance with the church reflected his attempt to consolidate power at all costs. Granted, he told Herdocia that “without the aid of religious sentiments and religious teachers ­there can be no good government; for the fear of God is the foundation of all social and po­liti­cal organ­ ization.” This quote could have reflected Walker’s true beliefs. But ­after having waged war in Nicaragua, he knew how critical the clergy was to his fortunes. In par­tic­u­lar, pro-­Walker priests had undermined efforts of the previous government to paint the filibusters as “ungodly p ­ eople” bent on destroying the country’s religion and on transforming its churches into sites of “filthy orgies.”33 From the start, Walker used priests to expand his state into the countryside, where the clergy wielded g­ reat influence. The church insisted that its hold over rural society stemmed from the religious fervor of the masses, yet its authority had more to do with economic f­actors. Since many priests owned rural estates, they ­were vital sources of l­ abor, food, and credit. They further exerted power through cofradías, which w ­ ere lay brotherhoods of colonial origins that owned large farms. ­These male-­only institutions provided welfare and sponsored local festivities, especially patron saint festivals. That priests ­were rural powerbrokers was clearly recognized by Walker; ­after seizing power, he quickly entrusted the clergy to help his regime control a seemingly unruly countryside.34 Nothing better evinces Walker’s reliance on the clergy than his decision to have a priest, Juan Manuel Loredo, peacefully end the first major rural unrest facing his regime. The conflict erupted in December 1855 in the indigenous community of Matagalpa, a mountainous region located near the Honduran border that took about four days to reach by ­horse from Walker’s capital of Granada. The unrest posed not only a po­liti­cal threat but an economic one, for urban centers from Granada to León relied on Matagalpa for corn, rice, sugar, and wheat. The unrest originated with the appointment of two Liberal outsiders, the Leonese physician José Salinas and the Granadan caudillo Ubaldo Herrera, to serve as prefect and military commander, respectively. The regime showed ­little consideration in nominating two avid Liberals to rule a Conservative stronghold. When Salinas tried to curtail the community’s autonomy, residents took

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up arms and forced the prefect and military commander to flee the region. The community’s anger was further fueled by the arrival of a surveying mission led by three U.S. officials from Walker’s Department of Colonization. Local Indians viewed this expedition with ­great concern, as it suggested that the filibuster regime was planning to hand over their lands to U.S. settlers.35 To quell the unrest Walker first sent troops to distant Matagalpa. Their arrival only exacerbated the conflict. According to El Nicaraguense, “the native soldiers committed all kinds of depredations on the ­people they ­were sent to protect,” while the presence of filibusters struck such fear among Matagalpa Indians that some apparently believed that the foreigners “would snatch their ­women and eat their ­children.” The rebels reportedly beheaded two or three captured “Yankes,” leading the filibusters to retaliate by executing about a dozen Indians. Rather than intensify the repression, Walker withdrew his troops and sent Loredo to mollify the region’s inhabitants.36 Walker had e­ very reason to confide in the priest’s mission. As even a fervent anti-­ Walker Nicaraguan conceded, Loredo was well liked by Matagalpa Indians, having once served as their priest. Moreover, leaders of the community had recently met with Walker in Granada, demonstrating their desire for a peaceful resolution. ­After lengthy negotiations, Loredo persuaded the rebels to lay down their arms and resume food production. In exchange, the regime promised to re­spect their autonomy and, as a sign of its good faith, it allowed a local resident to serve as prefect. Loredo’s success was loudly celebrated by El Nicaraguense. It proved to be short-­lived, for in a few months Matagalpa Indians would once again rise up against Walker. Still, his mission reveals just how strongly Walker relied on the priesthood in bringing the filibuster state to the countryside.37 Walker’s cordial relations with the church ­were not as incongruous as they appeared at first sight. Nicaraguan priests often espoused conservative views and some joined the armed re­sis­tance to Walker. Many o­ thers, however, sympathized with the Liberal Party, and some ­were even persecuted by the previous Conservative government. One such victim was Loredo. More generally, the Nicaraguan church stood out within the region for its liberal policies, as when it allowed Protestant foreigners to be buried in Catholic cemeteries. We also know from confidential correspon-



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dence that Nicaragua’s church leaders admired such liberal Eu­ro­pean Catholic thinkers as Juan Donoso Cortés, Alphonse de Lamartine, and Charles de Montalembert.38 The church’s unusually liberal outlook stemmed from its relatively weak economic power; a leading filibuster even claimed that “the priesthood are poor, and depend entirely on the charity of their parishioners.” This was an exaggeration, for the church owned much real estate. Yet its properties, especially the rural ones, ­were hardly as wealthy as ­those of many other Latin American churches. As a result it had less to fear from liberal reforms designed to privatize church properties. But perhaps more impor­tant, the liberal outlook of many Nicaraguan priests reflected the country’s enthusiasm for U.S. colonization proj­ects as well as its hope that the United States—­the model nation of liberals—­would realize Nicaragua’s destiny: the interoceanic canal. It was precisely this cosmopolitan attitude that led the influential priest Agustín Vijil to hail Walker as the country’s “guardian angel.”39 How pro-­Walker priests shaped the filibuster state remains uncertain. They clearly inhibited it from curtailing the autonomy of rural communities. This had been the case with Loredo’s mission to Matagalpa, which diffused a conflict triggered by zealous state officials. Pro-­Walker priests also appeared to have soothed the anti-­Catholic sentiments harbored by U.S. Protestants working for the filibuster state. If El Nicaraguense is to be believed, the more ­these state agents got to know pro-­Walker priests, the more they came to appreciate Catholicism. As a filibuster reported, “the padres [are not] the class of men whom we have heard described; some of whom I have become intimate with, are learned, quite, pious, unobtrusive gentlemen, fond of a joke and a good glass of wine as other persons. . . . ​Many of them are strong friends of ours.” Priests also offset the anticlericalism of Walker’s most radical native allies, which, as the filibuster knew, could easily turn the poor against his regime.40

V As much as Walker courted Conservatives, Liberals remained his main native allies. Even when his alliance with Conservatives was at its strongest, the filibuster state relied largely on the Liberals, who occupied most

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state positions. But not all Liberals ­imagined the state in the same way. ­These differences ­were critical, as they could jeopardize Walker’s imperial designs. Such differences ­were not easily identifiable to Walker’s non-­Nicaraguan followers—­especially t­ hose from the United States. For the most part, U.S. filibusters simply equated pro-­Walker Liberals with the party’s leaders based in León. And leading Leonese Liberals with prior government experience did occupy many high-­ranking positions within the filibuster state. But Walker’s support among ­these Leonese Liberals went well beyond elite circles and reached into the region’s popu­lar sectors. This was most noticeable when, early in Walker’s reign, the “popu­lar masses” of León rallied to his side by pressuring the city’s Liberal leaders not to support Conservative efforts to forge a bipartisan alliance against the filibuster. Despite his current proslavery infamy, Walker enjoyed strong backing from León’s mulatto neighborhood of San Felipe, which had about seven thousand inhabitants. Among the leading San Felipeño mulattoes who held key positions in the filibuster state ­were Cleto Mayorga and the ­brothers Basilio and Sebastian Salinas. Not surprisingly, most of the official positions held by Leonese Liberals w ­ ere located in their home department. ­These Liberals helped the filibuster state consolidate its hold over a well-­populated and wealthy region where the presence of Walker’s army was weak.41 Leonese Liberals of all classes believed that Walker was creating a U.S.-­ style polity that would bring about greater democracy and economic pro­g ress. Even anti-­Walker Conservatives noted how León’s Liberal leaders successfully convinced “the s­ imple folk that the filibusters w ­ ere the civilizers of the country.” It is also likely that many rank-­and-­file Liberals from León assumed that Walker’s appointment of mulattoes to high-­ ranking positions would make the filibuster state more racially inclusive than had been true of the previous state. This was a critical issue for the Leonese, as theirs was (together with Rivas) the most mulatto city in ­Nicaragua. They trusted that Walker would forge a federalist state that contrasted with the centralized state proj­ect of the previous Conservative regime. A ­ fter all, Walker and El Nicaraguense repeatedly touted the United States as their model, a polity that was celebrated by Liberals throughout Latin Amer­i­ca for its decentralized structure. In fact,



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many leading Latin American liberals equated democracy with federalism. That decentralization was dear to Nicaraguan Liberals was readily apparent in the way they continued to fight for the restoration of the Central American Federation of 1824–1838. Few believed in this decentralized polity more fervently than the Liberal leaders of León.42 Leading Liberals who supported Walker came not just from León, however. A second key group consisted of caudillos (strongmen) who enjoyed much support from the urban and rural poor in other parts of the country. Despite their notoriety as anarchic despots, popu­lar caudillos ­were critical to Walker’s state-­making efforts, especially in the countryside. The most impor­tant remained José María Valle, who had been at the filibuster’s side ever since he landed in Nicaragua and became his prefect of Nueva Segovia, a frontier region home to rebellious Liberal-­dominated rural communities. Another influential popu­lar caudillo was Francisco Bravo, who served as Walker’s police chief of Masaya, located halfway between Granada and Managua. Like Valle, Bravo was a die-­hard Liberal of lower-­class origins with much support in the poorer neighborhoods of Granada and Masaya. According to an anti-­Walker Conservative, Bravo mobilized the masses “via games, liquor, and other vices.” That Bravo knew how to throw a good party was vis­i­ble in his organ­ization of ­horse races and other forms of entertainment for filibusters stationed in Masaya. As much as games and liquor helped enhance his appeal, he and other popu­lar caudillos represented lower-­class aspirations and espoused an ideology identified with the demand for po­liti­cal inclusion, communal autonomy, and social reforms.43 But t­ here w ­ ere some pro-­Walker caudillos who actually belonged to the rural elite. A good example was the Liberal Máximo Espinosa, approximately sixty years old, who owned cacao, c­ attle, and indigo estates in his native region of Rivas and whose ­family had belonged to its elite for over a ­century. Despite his social origins Espinosa played a leading role in the popu­lar rebellion of 1849. He made common cause with popu­lar caudillos like Valle not so much b­ ecause he shared their reformist agenda than ­because he opposed state efforts to curb the power of regional caudillos. ­After helping Walker rise to power, Espinosa served as his prefect of Rivas. Like wealthy priests, Espinosa had the means to wield ­g reat ­influence over the rural poor but, unlike the priests, he also headed a

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family-­based clientelistic network. And it was this caudillo network that enabled Espinosa to spread the authority of the filibuster state into the countryside. His most impor­tant associate was his son-­in-­law, the Liberal caudillo Ramón Umaña, who served as Walker’s military commander for the region.44 The caudillo network controlled by the Espinosa-­Umaña clan stretched deep into communities of the Rivas region. In exchange for credit, jobs, and protection, Espinosa and Umaña secured the loyalty of grassroots caudillos who could mobilize peasants. Consider the Cantón ­brothers (Clemente, Daniel, and Tranquilino), who hailed from the village of San Jorge on the western shore of Lake Nicaragua and who helped lead the region’s popu­lar rebellions in the late 1840s. T ­ hese Liberal caudillos ­were loyal clients of Espinosa and fought ­under his command in the civil war that culminated in Walker’s conquest. During the filibuster’s reign, the ­brothers controlled the village councils of not only San Jorge but also of neighboring La Virgen, a key site on the transit route.45 In much of Nicaragua, then, the filibuster state rested on three distinct yet interconnected levels of caudillo networks; Walker headed the national network, while caudillos like Espinosa controlled the regional level and local strongmen like the Cantón ­brothers managed its grassroots level. It made sense that officials within this web would call Walker a “caudillo.” This pyramid-­like structure became the basis of liberal states elsewhere in late nineteenth-­century Latin Amer­i­ca, with the most prominent being that headed by Mexico’s long-­serving dictator Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911).46 Like Leonese Liberals, pro-­Walker caudillos trusted the filibuster state would be a decentralized entity that upheld regional autonomy. But a major difference separated both groups: Leonese Liberals, or at least their leaders, longed for the kind of state institutions they believed had turned the United States into a demo­cratic and prosperous nation. Liberal caudillos like Espinosa, by contrast, practiced—­and most likely valorized—­a personalist form of rule that militated against an institutionalized state. Reconciling t­ hese competing state visions represented a key challenge to Walker as he sought to expand his power. Complicating ­matters, Walker’s state-­making efforts relied on a third group of Liberals: ­those based in the Conservative bastion of Granada.



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­ hese Liberals proved to be his most loyal and—in certain ways—­most T radical Nicaraguan supporters. While Granadan Liberals ­were united in their hostility ­toward Conservatives, they ­were hardly a uniform group. They encompassed popu­lar caudillos from the formerly indigenous barrio of Jalteva, which was dominated by local artisans and petty merchants. Such was the case of Ubaldo Herrera, who had been Walker’s main guide during his capture of Granada. He first served as Walker’s military commander in Matagalpa and, following the indigenous uprising t­ here, was transferred to Granada, where he helped the regime consolidate its authority over the region. From June  1856 onward, Herrera and other Granadan popu­lar caudillos helped carry out Walker’s antielite “revolution” in their home region. Pro-­Walker Liberals from Granada also included a small group of wealthy merchants and estate ­owners. Some belonged to the city’s oligarchy, as was true of the priest Agustín Vijil and the English-­speaking Selva ­brothers (Domingo, Pedro Higenio, and Raimundo), who ­were deemed “Yankeeized” Nicaraguans and occupied a range of positions in the filibuster state, including prefect of Granada. ­Others, however, w ­ ere 47 never truly accepted by the city’s oligarchy. This was the case of two wealthy individuals who would become some of Walker’s most impor­tant local allies: Fermin Ferrer and Carlos Thomas. Ferrer (1823–1897) was a ­lawyer and merchant who hailed from the small town of Chichigalpa, near León, and was most likely of nonelite origin. ­After marrying into a wealthy Granadan ­family, he came into gold mines and a ­cattle estate in Chontales; he was also a prominent Liberal politician who, in 1851, had been prefect of Granada and then the country’s foreign minister. In addition, Ferrer served as l­awyer to Joseph Allen, who was one of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s closest friends and agents in Nicaragua. As a private citizen and government official, Ferrer had championed the Americanization of his country; ­there is thus l­ ittle won­der that he quickly became a staunch follower of Walker. Invoking the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine, Ferrer insisted that Nicaraguans and the filibusters ­were “the ­children of a common ­mother—­republican Amer­i­ca.”  48 Following Walker’s rise to power, Ferrer served the filibuster regime as prefect of Granada, minister of finance, minister of foreign relations, and Nicaraguan minister

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to the United States, with a brief interlude as the country’s president in June 1856. During Walker’s reign, Ferrer often held lavish dinner parties for high-­ranking filibusters and other prominent residents at his mansion. Yet for all his wealth and po­l iti­cal influence, Ferrer was still looked down upon by Granadan oligarchs as an upstart whose riches had stemmed from his “marriage of con­ve­nience.” 49 His tense relations with Granadan oligarchs helps explain why he held strong views about social and po­liti­cal inclusion. In sharp contrast to the city’s Conservative oligarchs, Ferrer openly celebrated how poor, nonwhite Granadans strug­ gled for citizenship rights “with dignity,” even if they w ­ ere of “the lowest 50 social condition.” Like Ferrer, Carlos Thomas was not a native Granadan; he hailed from Jamaica. More impor­tant, he was of African descent, a fact that Walker never revealed in his 1860 book on Nicaragua. In con­temporary documents, Thomas was mainly identified as a mulatto. He was born in Kingston around 1820 to a Mr. Thomas and Leonore Rossignol, a ­free black originally from the French colony of Saint Domingue (­today Haiti) who fled to Jamaica during or a­ fter the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804. It is pos­si­ble that Leonore was born into the rich Rossignol clan of ­free blacks. In 1831, she moved to San Juan del Norte and then Granada with three sons in tow: the twins Carlos (Charles) and Emilio (Emil), and Hilario Goussen (born Hilaire Gousse in 1815 to a ­father from St. Domingue).51 In Granada, Rossignol and her sons became prosperous as traders and moneylenders. They exported local products such as cacao and hides to Jamaica and the United States, while importing goods ranging from medical drugs to iron. In the early 1850s the ­brothers became even richer when they acquired from the Nicaraguan government the mono­poly of liquor imports for five years. Since most of their goods flowed through San Juan del Norte, Carlos and his ­brothers often visited the port, where they most likely befriended the black Jamaicans and African Americans who influenced its politics in the early 1850s. The b­ rothers also benefited from their close ties with Vanderbilt’s transit com­pany, though they usually used bongo men to ship their goods between Granada and San Juan del Norte. Thanks to their multiple connections, they wielded much influence over the transit route, owning valuable land at its terminals and La Virgen. By the time Walker seized power, the ­brothers had become so



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rich that they w ­ ere deemed the “leading merchants” of Granada and owned a mansion close to the plaza. Yet despite their wealth and having lived in Granada for over twenty years, the local “aristocracy,” as a prominent Nicaraguan stressed, “looked down upon” them b­ ecause of their “race.”52 This oligarchic disdain helps explain why the Thomas twins—­a nd other rich black Jamaicans of Granada—so eagerly supported the filibuster regime. (Hilario’s views remain unclear, and their m ­ other had already died.) The ­brothers sympathized with the Liberals, yet only ­after Walker’s conquest did they become po­liti­cal actors. While Emilio served the filibuster state ­behind the scenes, Carlos occupied the position of trea­ surer general, which gave him control of state finances. Carlos also was Walker’s main writer of proclamations and his interpreter. (All three ­brothers spoke En­glish, French, and Spanish.) But perhaps the main way Carlos publicized his ties with the filibuster regime was in the social realm. His luxurious mansion was the site of frequent dinner parties thrown for leading filibusters, Nicaraguan state officials, and foreign envoys. It was also the meeting place for the Young Amer­i­ca Pioneer Club of Nicaragua, a social club where filibusters and civilian colonists intermingled with the native rich.53 In his book Walker stated that Carlos Thomas had greatly aided the filibuster state for “his knowledge of men and ­things in Granada.” What he failed to mention was that the Thomas twins, like Ferrer, would play a key role in strengthening its antielite thrust. All three resented the elitism of Granada’s oligarchy. But if Ferrer sought to forge a socially and racially more inclusive state, the Thomas ­brothers appear to have been driven by their belief that Spanish American elites, as members of a “lost race,” needed to be “civilized” by Anglophones like themselves and Walker’s U.S. colonists. This belief reflected, in part, the idea of Anglo-­Saxon superiority underpinning Walker’s proj­ect. That Jamaicans of color could believe in an idea associated with white supremacy was not unheard of. This idea ­shaped the colonization proj­ect that African American followers of Martin Delany had sought to realize on Nicaragua’s Ca­rib­bean coast.54 For vari­ous reasons, then, Granadan Liberals w ­ ere among the most radical agents of the filibuster state. They also proved to be among the most loyal of Walker’s native followers—­precisely ­because they had so

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much to lose from his downfall. It remains unclear w ­ hether they favored the more decentralized state proj­ect advocated by Leonese Liberals or the opposite proj­ect promoted by Granada’s Conservative oligarchs. But we know that Granadan Liberals shared the view of their Leonese counter­ parts that Nicaragua’s po­liti­cal system should be more inclusive and demo­ cratic. At the same time, the Granadan Liberals w ­ ere more willing than ­those of León to attack the power of Conservative oligarchs. Their stronger antielite bent responded to the pronounced elitism of Granada’s Conservative oligarchy as well as their persecution by the previous Conservative regime. The antielitism of Granadan Liberals was reinforced by their close encounter with the thousands of colonists who settled in their midst. The newcomers included Cuban, Eu­ro­pean, and U.S. radicals bent on disempowering the local “aristocracy.” This mixed group helped radicalize Walker’s proj­ect ­after the failed Costa Rican invasion of April 1856. At first, however, they subordinated their revolutionary zeal to his quest for stability. In September 1856, just as the renewed Central American war began to undermine Walker’s rule, a British newspaper claimed that the filibuster state was “a species of organ­ization analogous to the feudal system.” Indeed, some argue that modern states did not truly establish themselves ­until they had crushed filibusterism, piracy, and other transnational forms of nonstate vio­lence. Filibusterism was clearly a violent phenomenon and a grave threat to the international states system. Still, Walker’s group managed to construct a functioning state and restore a surprisingly high level of stability. This is not to say that Walker’s rule went uncontested. The son of President Rivas led a failed uprising while Matagalpa Indians revolted against zealous state authorities. Another rebellious indigenous community was located on the island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua. We also know that ­t here was periodic unrest in Chontales, Managua, and Rivas. Overall, however, this level of instability paled next to that plaguing pre-­Walker Nicaragua.55 Rather than dismiss Walker’s state as a premodern entity, it makes more sense to deem it a harbinger of liberal state formation. Its reliance on local collaborators and institutions presaged the liberal state-­building proj­ects



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marking U.S. military occupations from the early twentieth c­ entury onward. Of course, ­there is the huge difference that the latter-­day occupations did not promote settler colonialism nor carry out the kind of antielite revolution that the filibuster regime would soon unleash. At first, however, Walker’s state stood out for its “sound conservatism.” It could thus be seen as a harbinger of the so-­called liberal oligarchic states that dominated Latin Amer­i­ca during the late nineteenth c­ entury. True, as much as ­these states promoted the immigration of white settlers (mainly Eu­ro­pe­ans), they never allowed the newcomers to take over the reins of government. They nonetheless share key similarities with Walker’s polity. Both incorporated Liberal and Conservative elites into the government in unpre­ce­dented ways. Both also rested on seemingly contradictory foundations: liberal, modern institutions and multilayered caudillo networks. Fi­nally, both sought to modernize the economy by opening it up to foreign investment and promoting infrastructure development. This promise of development enabled the filibuster state to enjoy widespread local support, while leading thousands of U.S. settlers to flock to Nicaragua. At the heart of Walker’s state-­making efforts stood a modernization proj­ect that has been eclipsed by the havoc he and his men would ­later wreak.

7 The Promise of Development

Nowadays William Walker and his followers are remembered as nothing more than destroyers and plunderers. At the time, they w ­ ere seen by many Nicaraguans as builders and modernizers. And the Walker regime did undertake mea­sures to modernize the local economy and to create a state capable of bringing about material pro­gress. Its recruitment of “scientific men” from Eu­rope and the United States presaged an idea that Eu­ro­pean intellectuals would pop­u ­lar­ize in the late nineteenth ­century: modern imperialism entailed “the action of engineers and doctors rather than conquistadors.” It is easy to overlook Walker’s development proj­ect, as his regime never bothered to advertise it in the form of a coherent program. Its ambitious scope only becomes apparent when we piece together information culled from articles and decrees published in El Nicaraguense.1 Echoing the prejudicial spirit of Manifest Destiny, El Nicaraguense frequently contrasted the filibusters’ modernizing impulse with the allegedly antidevelopmentalist attitude of the Spanish colonizers who had ruled the isthmus for three centuries. Accordingly, the Spaniards “never 190



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sought to enrich and beautify the country of their adoption by any broad and liberal system of agriculture, [and] manufacture engaged not their attention.” With the rise of the Walker regime, the paper claimed, “a new era has dawned,” in which Nicaraguans “have invited to their aid, in the development of its riches, their ­brothers of the North.” But just how “new” was this era? According to his U.S. supporters, Walker represented a clean break with the past. Prior to his arrival, Nicaragua was reportedly an undeveloped El Dorado. Only with the rise of the filibuster regime and the influx of U.S. settlers did the resource-­rich country begin to become “developed.” This was a s­ imple but power­ful image that Walker’s boosters deployed to entice thousands of U.S. colonists to sail for Nicaragua. It was also misleading.2 No ­matter how grandiose Walker’s modernization scheme may have been, Nicaragua was anything but undeveloped when his group set foot ­there. The country already had an export economy that expanded with the California Gold Rush. Local producers benefited from Californians’ appetite for Nicaraguan corn as well as from the needs of the thousands of U.S. transients crossing their country. Moreover, many Nicaraguans had embraced the idea of development long ago. And to them it meant the establishment of a thriving agro-­export economy, the creation of an urban-­based manufacturing industry, and the construction of the interoceanic canal, which would turn their country into a center for international commerce. With the influx of U.S. transients, Nicaraguans further came to identify development with U.S. entrepreneurialism. This identification helps explain why Liberals invited Walker’s group in the first place.3 Nicaraguans’ valorization of U.S.-­style development helped the Walker regime maintain legitimacy. At no time was this more evident than in April 1856, when Costa Rican troops invaded Nicaragua. The Costa ­R icans firmly believed Nicaraguans would welcome them with open arms and help them expel the filibusters. To their ­great surprise, the opposite happened. What the Costa Ricans failed to grasp was just how strongly Nicaraguans still believed in Walker’s promise of development. His modernization proj­ect was key not just to his effort to Americanize the isthmus but to his own po­liti­cal survival.

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I In broad terms, the Walker regime pursued three modernizing goals. Above all, it sought to improve the transportation system—­especially the transit. This emphasis reflected the belief of Walker and his followers that Nicaragua was destined to become the “highway of the world’s trade.” Then the regime enacted policies to entice enterprising U.S. settlers to flock to Nicaragua and help develop the economy. Fi­nally, its modernization proj­ect had a moralizing component, as the regime believed that the native masses—­and many colonists—­were not ready for the rigors of the market economy and the duties of citizenship. It sought to improve the “social virtues and moral duties” of the populace by promoting education, antivagrancy laws, temperance, and public hygiene. This program reflected the modernization proj­ects that liberal governments elsewhere in Latin Amer­i­ca ­were then carry­ing out—­one that valorized ­free trade, agro-­export production, and the influx of (white) immigrants from Eu­rope and the United States.4 But the regime’s focus on internal improvements and moral betterment also echoed the so-­called American System. This government-­ sponsored program had been championed by U.S. statesman Henry Clay and his Whig Party from the 1820s onward. It rested on three pillars: government support for the construction of roads, canals, and railroads; a tariff on imported manufactured goods to promote the domestic industry and subsidize the government’s modernization program; and a national bank to stabilize currency. While the system is most known for its domestic dimensions, it also sought to secure U.S. hegemony over Latin Amer­i­ca. The Whiggish roots of Walker’s modernization proj­ect are quite surprising, for historians usually identify his movement with the Whigs’ principal rival, the Demo­cratic Party, which opposed the American System. In general, Demo­crats feared that a strong, paternalist state would f­avor the rich, curb local autonomy, and impose cultural ­homogeneity on a heterogeneous nation. Hence did Walker, too, rail against “the doctrine of internal improvements” when writing for Demo­ cratic papers in California. Yet once he became ruler of Nicaragua, he embraced Clay’s vision of an interventionist state.5



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The state agency primarily responsible for directing Walker’s modernization proj­ect was the Department of Colonization. While the department was charged with promoting immigration, its main goal was to direct the colonization pro­cess within Nicaragua. As a result, it became responsible for planning and implementing public improvement proj­ects that would turn Nicaragua into one of “the most civilized countries of the New World.” Its director was Joseph Fabens, who came from a Mas­sa­chu­setts ­family of shipowners with old trading ties to French Guiana and who had most recently served as U.S. commercial agent in San Juan del Norte. Yet elite Nicaraguans played a leading role in his department. When the filibuster regime restructured the department in April 1856 by establishing a directorate that possessed “more extended and varied powers than t­hose heretofore accorded to the Director of Colonization,” all six members ­were Nicaraguans and included the f­ uture foreign ministers Gregorio Juárez (a Liberal) and Pedro Cardenal (a Conservative).6 From the start, Fabens’s department undertook ­great efforts to develop Nicaragua’s agro-­export economy. While it promoted cacao, sugar, and other cash crops, it mainly strove to develop the nascent coffee industry, for it believed this crop was destined to become the region’s main export product. It also anticipated that many U.S. colonists wanted to become coffee planters, as they would not need much land to make large profits (one acre reportedly yielded twelve hundred dollars per year). Ironically, the department looked to Walker’s main Central American foe, Costa Rica, to learn how to develop the country’s coffee culture. Thanks to aggressive government mea­sures, Costa Rica’s coffee exports had soared in the last de­cade, turning it into the region’s most prosperous state. But ­Fabens’s department also drew on the experiences of Nicaragua’s budding coffee planters—­especially t­ hose who had established coffee plantations on the outskirts of Granada.7 As much as the department prioritized agro-­export crops, it did not neglect the agricultural sector geared ­toward the internal market. On the contrary, it sought to massively increase the production of beans, corn, rice, wheat, and other foodstuffs—­all in the hope that the regime would no longer have to import provisions from the United States in order to

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feed the booming immigrant population. The department aimed to increase the yield of traditional crops by importing improved seeds from the United States and redistributing them to Walker’s colonists. This occurred not only with basic grains but also with tobacco, then a key source of state revenue. Indicative of its innovative bent, Fabens’s department sought to exploit the country’s vast banana fields in an unusual way. Rather than produce bananas solely for consumption, it aimed to use the trunk of the banana tree to make paper. According to El Nicaraguense, this banana-­based paper had a potentially large and lucrative market in the United States. Even more ambitious was the department’s plan to hold a ­Great Central American Fair in Granada, where producers from the entire isthmus could exhibit and sell their goods.8 Fabens’s department knew that its efforts to develop the local economy meant ­little if producers could not easily ship their products abroad. As a result, it developed a program to improve the transportation system. For a high-­ranking member of Fabens’s department, this program was the raison d’être of the filibuster state. Echoing the ideals of Clay’s American System, he maintained that “the first and princi­ple [sic] duty of a State is to establish roads and communication, so as to render it pos­si­ble for its inhabitants to transit easily, and cheaply, produce from one part of the country to the other, by which means agriculture, commerce and industry ­will be promoted.”9 The department’s most grandiose plan was to enable ocean steamers to cross the isthmus. At first it drew on preexisting canal proj­ects identified with the transportation tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt and the former U.S. envoy Ephraim George Squier. The department proposed constructing the canal by way of the San Juan River and Lake Nicaragua. Yet unlike Vanderbilt’s proj­ect, it did not seek to dig a ship canal parallel to the transit road. Instead it followed Squier by having the canal continue into Lake Managua via the Tipitapa River. But if Squier proposed constructing a ship canal across the plains of León that would have connected Lake Managua with the Pacific port of Realejo, the department sought to build a railroad capable of transporting ships. And rather than use Realejo as its terminus, it envisioned a new port that was larger and would provide better access to the Pacific. In the department’s opinion, a railroad across the plains of León was more cost effective than Squier’s



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canal, as it not only entailed lower construction and operation costs but also was a faster means of transportation.10 By mid-1856 Fabens’s department scrapped the canal altogether in ­favor of a railroad that would cross the entire isthmus, from San Juan del Norte to the new Pacific port near Realejo. This novel plan expanded on the department’s original proj­ect for the construction of a railroad between Granada and Realejo; in certain ways it prefigured recent efforts of ­international consortiums to build a “dry canal” across the Nicaraguan isthmus—­that is, a high-­speed railroad designed to transport containers taken from ships that are too large to pass through the Panama Canal.11 But unlike the modern dry canal and most canal proj­ects of the nineteenth ­century, Fabens’s department sought to create a route that did not simply serve foreign shipping companies. Just as impor­tant, it was to provide local producers with better access to overseas markets. The interoceanic railroad was to be connected via roads to the country’s traditional agricultural regions as well as frontier regions with ­g reat economic ­potential. Over time it hoped to build a branch railroad to the Gulf of Fonseca in order to better integrate the Nicaraguan economy with t­ hose of El Salvador and Honduras. This goal of using the interoceanic route to bolster the region’s agro-­export economy was perhaps the most visionary aspect of Walker’s development program. Yet the regime’s modernization zeal also targeted urban centers. Much of it focused on Granada, which was home to most of Walker’s colonists. At first it simply sought to develop the existing city, which was founded in 1524 by Spanish conquistadores. Its first major proj­ect was the construction of a new market in the heart of Granada. The regime then tackled the city’s acute ­water shortage by seeking to construct an aqueduct that would deliver spring ­water from the extinct volcano Mombacho about five miles away. It hoped to build in the main square a well that was four to five hundred feet deep, leading El Nicaraguense to exclaim, “The public squares of Paris have been beautified with fountains in this way, and we see no reason why Granada should not be equally favored.” Both undertakings would relieve poor ­women from their daily treks to the lake, where they filled large jugs with ­water that they carried back on their heads.12 Eventually the regime sought to create a “new Granada” on undeveloped land located between the city’s eastern limits and the lake. According

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F igu r e 7. 1 ​Undeveloped land between Granada’s eastern limits and Lake Nicaragua upon which the Walker regime sought to create a “new Granada.” The mountain in the top right-­hand corner is the Mombacho volcano, located south of the city. Source: “Lake of Nicaragua and Volcano of Mombacho—­From the Hacienda Sandoval, near Granada,” from E. G. Squier, Nicaragua: Its ­People, Scenery, Monuments, Resources, Condition, and Proposed Canal (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1860). Courtesy of the University of Pittsburgh Library.

to El Nicaraguense, this new site was “con­ve­nient for commerce” and the new wharf currently ­under construction would “greatly facilitate the discharge of vessels.” While the regime’s main purpose was to transform Granada into a center of international commerce, it wanted the new city to shine as a monument of pro­gress. Hence did Fabens’s department plan to establish “a beautiful system of public streets and squares.”13 Over time its vision for Granada became even bolder, as it contemplated turning the city into a Nicaraguan “Venice.” Its idea was to expand the “new Granada” to the isletas, a cluster of 365 small islands situated just off the shore. According to El Nicaraguense, “canals ­will occupy the place of streets, and light fairy-­like plea­sure boats w ­ ill supercede h­ orses. H ­ ere, instead of a Wall street, we ­will have a Rialto.” The newspaper predicted that the islets would soon be “full of h­ ouses, stores and commercial ware-­ rooms . . . ​where vessels of considerable tonnage can move from one depot



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to another with more ease than the ox-­carts now used in Granada move from one street to another.” One reason why the regime wanted to create this Nicaraguan Venice was to improve public health: it was convinced that on the isletas “pure cool ­water ­will be always con­ve­nient, and it would be impossible for impurities or infections to exist in its vicinity.”14 This quest for a pure, infection-­free Venice in the tropics underscores the delusional nature of the regime’s modernization proj­ect. One of the world’s richest men—­Vanderbilt—­had failed to construct the canal. Why, then, did Walker and his U.S. followers think they could succeed with plans that w ­ ere even more ambitious? Lest we dismiss Walker’s men as crazed dreamers or shameless propagandists, we should not forget that they hailed from a country that had recently experienced a transport revolution, as evident in the widespread construction of canals and railroads. In addition, many had seen with their own eyes how the California Gold Rush had rapidly transformed the sleepy village of Yerba Buena into the bustling city of San Francisco. The filibusters belonged to a generation that had come of age when the United States underwent unpre­ce­dented economic modernization. Many of Walker’s compatriots believed that theirs was, as Ralph Waldo Emerson famously declared in 1844, “a country of beginnings, of proj­ects, of vast designs, and expectations.” This confident vision guided the grandiose plans hatched by Fabens’s Department of Colonization.15 This vision was shared by many of Walker’s Eu­ro­pean followers. ­Indeed, perhaps the most ambitious private initiatives to modernize Nicaragua came from Eu­ro­pe­ans who sought to create entirely new towns in the countryside. A good example was the group of thirty families from Switzerland that wished to migrate to Walker’s realm. They consisted mainly of men and w ­ omen active in the Swiss silk industry, which had fallen on hard times due to a recent silkworm disease (pébrine) that wreaked havoc throughout Eu­rope. But the group also included carpenters, engineers, farmers, merchants, printers, and weavers. Their leader was Rudolf Knecht, a manufacturer from Zu­r ich who in­ven­ted “aircleaning machines” to improve ventilation on ships and in hospitals. In mid-1856 Knecht visited New York City to promote and patent his latest invention. While t­here he presented to Walker’s recruiting agent

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Appleton Oaksmith a detailed plan for a new city that his group hoped to found in Nicaragua. The city was to be called New Helvetia (Helvetia is the Latin name for Switzerland).16 Knecht’s proj­ect reveals that not just the filibuster state but also the ­colonists themselves could come up with proj­ects of “vast designs.” ­According to Knecht, the settlement would consist of a new town surrounded by 460 farms. Since the group planned to produce goods for the international market, they requested that the regime provide them with 10,220 acres situated near a river and railroad. Like other colonization agents interested in Walker’s realm, Knecht most likely hoped to establish his colony in the hills of Chontales, close to the San Juan River. The city itself was to occupy 240 acres and was to be built on three terraces with sprawling gardens and rows of fruit trees. Its center would consist of a main square where the group would establish a church, a state­house, a bakery, and other stores. Most of the townspeople would earn their living by silk weaving, producing fine embroideries, and manufacturing ventilators and other machines. Knecht was concerned about public hygiene, for his plan called for the construction of not just “washing ­houses” but a canal so that “­there ­will never exist a nasty unhealthy smell in the City.” It further envisioned that much of the city’s waste ­water would be used as fertilizer on the surrounding farmland. The group had a clear idea of how to divide the 9,820 acres of farmland. Just outside the city they planned to establish 160 silkworm farms. Each projected farm was to mea­sure five acres and be covered with mulberry trees, whose leaves provide food for silkworms. The next ring would consist of thirty-­six farms, each mea­sur­ing six and a half acres. They w ­ ere to be used as silk factories, where the silk would be unwound from the cocoons, turned into small bundles of silk, and then taken to the silk mill in the city. The remaining 268 farms w ­ ere of three dif­fer­ent sizes (25, 50, and 100 acres) and w ­ ere to produce crops for internal consumption as well as for the regional market. All farms w ­ ere to be connected by roads and grouped into villages that ­were to assist each other in case of “fire, sicknesses, school businesses, and . . . ​to keep off robbers and so forth.” Given the detailed nature of this plan, it is striking that Knecht had nothing to say about its costs. This was no coincidence, for he admitted that “we cannot say that we w ­ ill bring a ­great sum of money.” Hence, he



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requested that the filibuster regime pay for the group’s transatlantic passage. Since it failed to do so, the Swiss never made it to Nicaragua. L ­ ittle did Knecht know that his request hit the weak spot of Walker’s modernization proj­ect; while the filibusters had plenty of vision and confidence, they sorely lacked capital.

II Walker’s modernization agenda required huge investments. The construction of a new interoceanic route alone called for millions of dollars: the estimated cost for Vanderbilt’s proposed canal ranged between $30 million and $100 million, and ­there is ­little reason to believe that the regime could have built it for much less. Even if it deci­ded on a cheaper route based entirely on railroads, the funds involved would have still been enormous given that it cost some $8 million to build the Panama railroad, which was about eight times shorter than the projected railroad between San Juan del Norte and Realejo. Furthermore, the Walker regime planned to build roads, develop cities, and found settler colonies in the countryside. On top of all this, it had an expensive army to maintain; in ­October 1856 alone, it sought $250,000 to buy arms in the United States. It is no won­der that Walker constantly sought funds—­a quest that would lead him to make power­f ul enemies in Nicaragua and beyond.17 The filibuster regime first sought to obtain funds within Nicaragua by issuing an array of new taxes and tightening state control over tax collectors. Even before seizing power, Walker had observed that tax collectors often diverted funds into their pockets, so he now strove to reform the pro­cess of tax collection. “The habit of cheating the State,” he stressed, “leads to the mal-­administration which produces revolution; and the habit of revolution in turn reacts and increases the disposition of officers to make as much as pos­si­ble for themselves at the public expense, since the tenure of their offices must, necessarily, be short.”18 Walker’s views on state revenue foreshadowed ­those of latter-­day U.S. officials who controlled the public finances of Latin American states during the heyday of dollar diplomacy (1910s–1920s). Like Walker, ­these officials believed that the “chronic” instability plaguing Latin Amer­i­ca was primarily due to the strug­gle of local elites for control of the national

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trea­sury. Both Walker and the so-­called dollar diplomats believed that a key way to modernize Latin Amer­i­ca was by depoliticizing access to state resources via institutional reforms. In real­ity, such reforms w ­ ere a form of imperial control ­and tended to produce more, not less, instability.19 A major institutional reform pursued by the filibuster regime was the creation of a national bank. The first attempt occurred in late December 1855, when the regime unsuccessfully tried to establish a national mint in Granada that would issue gold and silver coins. In late February 1856, it resurrected its plan to establish a national mint in conjunction with a national bank. The bank was to open in May and an agent of the regime went to New York to procure “the necessary printing” and, one would assume, the necessary funds. But nothing came of this initiative. As a result, the only bankers in Nicaragua continued to be private ones and consisted mostly of foreign merchants. If previous governments had depended financially on the British merchant Thomas Manning, the main bankers serving the filibuster regime ­were the Germans George Beschor and Henri Wiedemann, who jointly owned a trading ­house in Granada.20 The regime was more successful in its effort to increase state revenues via taxes. Right ­after coming to power, it levied a 20 ­percent duty on imported goods, especially liquor. Thanks to the transit, Nicaragua had become so cosmopolitan that it imported an array of liquor ranging from French absinthe and U.S. whiskey to German kirsch, Italian grappa, and Peruvian pisco. The regime exempted from duty ­those imports that ­were ­either vital to its developmental efforts (agricultural hardware, machinery, and seeds) or dear to colonists (baggage, furniture, stoves, church organs, ­etc.). It also levied a 10 ­percent tax on the export of silver and jewelry. The export of gold, by contrast, was declared f­ ree of duty, a mea­sure designed to lure gold rushers to Nicaragua. To improve the collection of customs duties, the regime constructed a new custom­house at Realejo. It undertook mea­sures to prevent the smuggling of goods into Nicaragua—­ especially across the Gulf of Fonseca and via San Juan del Norte.21 Nor did the regime neglect to tax goods geared ­toward the internal market. It passed decrees that gave officials greater power to collect two taxes that previous governments had heavi­ly relied on: ­those on tobacco and c­ attle slaughter. In addition, it levied taxes on the many Nicaraguans active in the transportation sector, and especially t­ hose who hauled goods



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in urban areas or on the country’s waterways. Although the regime initially acknowledged that the rich had long suffered from exactions, it quickly resorted to this age-­old mea­sure. The forced contributions ranged widely, in one instance from $250 to $12,000, and ­those who balked w ­ ere thrown in prison. When the regime’s financial trou­bles deepened with the outbreak of war, it forced Walker’s soldiers to accept half of their monthly salaries in the form of scrip (credit). Eventually it issued scrip that covered their entire wage. Fi­nally, it sought to raise funds by leasing aguardiente distilleries to foreign entrepreneurs. Since this cane liquor was very popu­lar, such leases provided the state with “a very handsome revenue.”22 Yet no m ­ atter how hard the regime tried to raise funds within Nicaragua, it collected far less than expected. The constant threat of war undermined tax collection. Moreover, the regime failed to aggressively enforce its tax mea­sures for fear of alienating peasant communities. But even if it had managed to collect all its taxes, the total would have hardly surpassed $150,000, which was the average state revenue for the 1860s. To finance his ambitious modernization proj­ect, Walker had to look overseas.23 At first his regime sought to raise money in the United States by selling bonds that w ­ ere secured by Nicaragua’s public lands. If the bonds w ­ ere not paid off in the years stipulated, the land would be divided among the bondholders. This effort echoed Clay’s American System, which called for the U.S. government to pay for its public work program by selling federal land. The regime’s use of bonds also reflected the financial practices of other filibuster expeditions. But since Walker’s was the only one to succeed, his was the only one that controlled the state-­owned land given in guarantee. As a result, it was in a good position to sell bonds in the United States. The first time it issued bonds appears to have been in February 1856; produced in San Francisco, the bonds w ­ ere “embellished with a fine engraving of Virgin Bay [La Virgen]; a head of Washington; an American Ea­gle; and other pictures emblematic of commerce.”24 Very quickly, the regime sought to sell bonds in Eu­rope as well. This responded to its initial failure to obtain U.S. diplomatic recognition. The rebuff complicated Walker’s efforts to raise capital, for U.S. financiers hesitated to invest in a government that the White House deemed illegitimate. In consequence, his regime began to court Eu­ro­pean financiers—­even though it had previously denounced British and French cap­i­tal­ists as

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agents of Eu­ro­pean expansion into Central Amer­i­ca. El Nicaraguense even claimed that the new policy “of inviting the cap­i­tal­ists of Eu­rope to engage in constructing . . . ​vast works of internal improvements as the State most needs, assumes a paramount interest, and becomes the most impor­tant civil question to be deci­ded by the government.” It stressed, “we require a ship canal and certain railroads—we must have quartz machines and saw mills—­all of which the State is too poor to build, and we must therefore solicit the aid of foreigners.” Heavi­ly criticizing U.S. “cap­i­ tal­ists” for failing to provide funds, El Nicaraguense wondered “why should we not go direct to Eu­rope?” Old World capital had helped fuel the recent expansion of the U.S. transport system. So greatly did the Walker regime mistrust U.S. cap­i­tal­ists that it continued to court Eu­ro­pean investors even ­after obtaining U.S. diplomatic recognition in May 1856.25 This was the case when, in the summer and fall of 1856, the Walker regime tried to secure its largest loan. Totaling $2 million, it was designed to subsidize “the development of [Nicaragua’s] riches and ele­ments of pro­ gress.” The twenty-­year loan was to be financed by selling government bonds with an interest rate of 7 ­percent interest per year, payable at a bank in New York. The bonds w ­ ere guaranteed by 2.3 million acres of public land, including mines, timber, and “all other natu­ral products” located thereon. And though the regime expected to sell most of the bonds in the United States, it sought out Eu­ro­pe­ans by publicizing the loan in London and Paris newspapers.26 To make t­ hese bonds more attractive, the regime identified the location of the land that would be used to guarantee the loan. This proved to be a major error. For outside observers, the location seemed innocuous, as it lay in the northern frontier. But the local populace knew all too well that the undeveloped land was valuable; this became evident de­cades l­ ater when it emerged as a major coffee growing zone. Moreover, the area rested just north of Matagalpa’s indigenous community. The regime clearly did not want to alienate this power­f ul community and thus ensured that the secured area did not encroach on its vast landholdings. Yet Walker’s enemies among the Nicaraguan elite exploited the area’s location near Matagalpa’s communal lands to claim that the filibusters w ­ ere stealing precious land from the rural poor. If the specification of the secured land was meant to reassure foreign bondholders, it greatly alarmed the local



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population. It was not by chance that Matagalpa Indians became some of Walker’s fiercest enemies.27 Making ­matters worse, the $2 million loan failed to provide much-­ needed funds for the Walker regime. True, bonds for the loan ­were engraved and some New York bankers ­were interested in issuing them. Walker’s agent in New York, Appleton Oaksmith, claimed to have secured the ser­vices of “three prominent gentlemen as Trustees and of a distinguished financial ­house for the negotiation” of the $2 million loan. He also stated that he had found “a leading financial journal” to promote the loan. Oaksmith was interested in selling ­these bonds precisely b­ ecause he believed in Walker’s modernization proj­ect. As he told Walker, “­those extended plans of internal improvement of which we conversed in Granada [in July 1856] . . . ​have never left my mind and have grown with constant reflection.” And though Oaksmith maintained that the bonds had “good prospect,” none of the New York bankers ended up issuing them. According to Oaksmith, their reluctance responded to the “very unfavorable news” generated by the defeats that Walker’s army began to suffer in late 1856. And Walker’s efforts to issue ­these bonds in ­England or France came to naught when his envoy to Eu­rope turned against him. The only bonds that generated significant income for his regime ­were ­those issued by a New Orleans bank for a loan of $500,000.28 Walker’s desperate search for funds engendered one of his most ill-­fated decisions: to seize the Accessory Transit Com­pany from “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt and transfer its property and the transit rights to the shipping entrepreneurs Charles Morgan and Cornelius Garrison. Occurring in February 1856, this fatal act pushed Vanderbilt to seek the destruction of the filibuster regime. According to Walker and many of his men, the wrath of the “commodore” was the main reason why they lost the war, for he delivered much funds and arms to their Central American enemies while discouraging New York cap­i­t al­ists from providing them with loans. As a filibuster bitterly recalled, “Walker owes his defeat, not to the natives of Central Amer­i­ca, but to his own countrymen.”29 Since Walker’s seizure of Vanderbilt’s com­pany contributed greatly to his downfall, historians have tried to make sense of his motive. Walker’s leading U.S. biographer claims the seizure highlights the quixotic nature of his mission: the filibuster was defying not merely a power­ful tycoon

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but the “onset of a new age”—­that of “the money-­power.” O ­ thers argue that the filibuster chieftain sought to punish the transit com­pany for having sent, in mid-1855, a group of armed New Yorkers (mainly Eu­ro­ pean immigrants) to help the previous Conservative government defend itself against Liberal forces led by Walker. Some claim that the seizure stemmed instead from his belief that Vanderbilt pressured the U.S. government not to recognize his regime. Yet o­ thers believe that he sought to ensure that the transit com­pany would transport U.S. recruits to Nicaragua for ­f ree. A few insist that Walker was not the manipulator but the manipulated. In their view, he was a pawn in the so-­called War of the Commodores, which began in 1853 when Charles Morgan seized the transit com­pany from Vanderbilt only to have the latter recapture it in November 1855. This ­bitter strug­gle between the two New York “commodores” underscores how lucrative the Nicaragua transit had become.30 What all t­ hese explanations downplay is the main rationale offered by Walker’s newspaper: that the cash-­strapped regime seized Vanderbilt’s com­pany primarily b­ ecause of its large outstanding debt ($412,589) to the Nicaraguan government. “The ­whole history of the Transit contract,” El Nicaraguense complained, “is a series of frauds and aggressions on the part of the com­pany.” Indeed, the com­pany not only had failed to pay its annual dues of $10,000 for 1855 but had never given the required 10 ­percent of its annual profits to the Nicaraguan government (let alone fulfill its promise to build the canal). As a U.S. colonist astutely noted, “when the history of the Transit Com­pany is properly written, it ­will pres­ent the most barefaced rec­ord of systematic fraud ever conceived of. The c­ areer of the British East India Com­pany . . . ​or the more recent atrocities of the China companies, are not parallels.” Like many of Walker’s men, the filibuster regime saw the seizure of Vanderbilt’s com­pany as a just means to finance its expensive army and its ambitious development agenda.31 The seizure improved the regime’s finances yet hardly produced the expected windfall. It remains unclear how much the regime received when it sold the com­pany to Morgan and Garrison in August 1856. Although the regime declared that it had received $400,000 from the entrepreneurs, Walker ­later claimed that they had not paid a cent. Rather, they had acquired the com­pany by allowing the filibuster regime to cancel its debt of about $500,000 that it had incurred for ser­vices provided by Morgan



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and Garrison—­especially the transport of colonists to Nicaragua f­ree of charge. But shortly ­after the two acquired the com­pany (renamed the Nicaragua Transportation Line), the filibuster envoy Appleton Oaksmith claimed that they had “paid a very large sum” to Walker’s go-­between ­Edmund Randolph.32 Walker envisioned that the newly configured transit com­pany would further his modernization proj­ect not just by serving as a cash cow. In 1860, he justified the seizure of Vanderbilt’s com­pany by stressing that he had resented how it “aimed at being the master of the [Nicaraguan] government.” In consequence, he sought more compliant o­ wners who w ­ ere to function as “servants of the State and the agents of its policy.” He failed to specify which policies he had in mind, but he surely expected that the com­pany would provide the equipment and technological expertise necessary to realize his development plans. Hence did Walker have no qualms in provoking the wrath of one of the world’s wealthiest men.33

III Lack of funds did not deter the Walker regime from undertaking concrete mea­sures to show Nicaraguans that it was serious about fulfilling its promise of development. It encouraged Eu­ro­pean and U.S. scientists, engineers, medical professionals, and other experts to ­settle in Nicaragua. Among ­those Walker most courted was his fellow Nashville native John Berrien Lindsley, who had been his classmate at the University of Pennsylvania. This founding member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science had just become chancellor of the University of Nashville a­ fter having served five years as dean of its medical department as well as professor of chemistry and geology. A firm believer in the American System, Lindsley stood out for advancing public education, public health, and prison reform in Tennessee. He was the very kind of modernizer whom Walker hoped to enlist. In requesting his help, the filibuster stressed that “this government needs scientific men.” Walker’s pleas w ­ ere to no avail, however, and Lindsley stayed put. But ­others rallied to ­Walker’s cause and ­shaped his modernization efforts.34 Most of ­these “scientific men” ­were ­either surgeons or engineers. Perhaps the best known was James Davenport Whelpley (1817–1872), who,

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like Lindsley, was a medical professional active in scientific research. This native New Yorker received his medical degree from Yale University and then edited the influential American Whig Review. As a scientist, Whelpley conducted research in metallurgy, physics, and tropical diseases. His most impor­tant publication was an 1845 essay on atomic theory that appeared in the American Journal of Science. (In 1867, he would be elected to the prestigious American Acad­emy of Arts and Sciences.) Whelpley was also an ardent U.S. expansionist who, from 1849 onward, sought to establish a settler colony in Honduras. To obtain emigrants and financial support for his colony, he moved to San Francisco, where he worked as a newspaper editor, surgeon, and researcher of tropical diseases. In 1855 he sailed to Honduras a­ fter he and his U.S. associates had secured a large tract of land rich in gold and other minerals. Following Walker’s conquest, Whelpley left for Granada, where he served as a surgeon in the filibuster army. While in Nicaragua he continued with his scientific research—­especially that on tropical diseases. Whelpley was hardly the only medical researcher who joined the Walker regime; perhaps the most impor­tant was the Jewish surgeon Israel Moses, who headed the army’s medical department.35 To realize its public works program, the filibuster regime needed not so much medical researchers as civil engineers, and a number of them ended up in Walker’s realm. Many ­were Eu­ro­pean Forty-­Eighters, as was true of the “scientific man” who carried out the most impor­tant work of Walker’s Department of Colonization: the German surveyor Maximilian von Sonnenstern. This Eu­ro­pean was such an excellent engineer that, his ties with Walker notwithstanding, he continued to serve Nicaraguan governments up to his death in 1895. In 1874 he went to Washington, DC, to discuss his plans for an interoceanic route through Nicaragua; apparently he even met with President Ulysses S. Grant. So greatly did Nicaraguans appreciate Sonnenstern’s ser­vices that his funeral was attended by government ministers and other native luminaries; by then, few remembered that he had been a leading official in the Walker regime.36 In all likelihood, Sonnenstern embraced Walker’s cause ­because he deemed the filibuster a kindred liberal bent on bringing “democracy” and “pro­gress” to Central Amer­i­ca. His biographer speculates that Sonnenstern—­a longtime officer in the Army of the King of Württemberg—



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was forced to migrate to the United States for having participated in the failed revolution of 1848. Supporting this theory is the fact that his closest collaborators in Walker’s Nicaragua ­were three other German Forty-­ Eighters: the civil engineer Eugene Hesse, who participated in vari­ous U.S. government surveys, such as the Mexican Boundary Commission of 1850; the military engineer Adolph Schwartz; and the Bavarian civil engineer Max Ströbel, who had worked for survey parties in the U.S. West, including the Frémont expedition of 1853–1854. The survey reports that Sonnenstern produced in 1856 reveal that he strongly supported the modernizing agenda of the filibuster regime. In par­tic­u­lar, he was an avid proponent of using state resources to promote the colonization of Nicaragua by Eu­ro­pean and U.S. immigrants, the construction of an interoceanic canal, and the development of a comprehensive railroad network that would link the country’s agro-­export regions with the international market.37 In theory, the regime’s modernization proj­ect was geared t­oward the countryside. Yet for Nicaraguans, its outcomes w ­ ere mainly vis­i­ble in urban areas. As the U.S. minister wrote from Granada, “the noisy roll of the Yankee carts through the Streets, advise the natives of Nicaragua, that indolence must yield to interprize [sic].” This racist envoy was prone to exaggerations, but his observation correctly suggests that the advance of “Yankee” modernization was most manifest in towns like Granada.38 From early on, the regime began to reconstruct towns that had been ravaged during the Nicaraguan Civil War of 1854–1855. Most efforts focused on Walker’s capital, which had suffered greatly from the war. With the help of local laborers and soldiers from Walker’s army, the regime began to rebuild Granada’s destroyed churches, other damaged public and private buildings, and war-­ravaged streets. This undertaking included the removal of barricades that had “long been an eye-­sore to the city.”39 Granadans noticed how Walker’s Eu­ro­pean and U.S. followers contributed to the regime’s modernization effort by importing new machinery from abroad. According to El Nicaraguense, the city’s population admired corn mills and sawmills as well as such labor-­saving machines as rotary pumps. Underscoring how crucial the print media was to Walker’s fortunes, the first main machine that his regime imported from the United States was a steam-­powered printing press, which allowed El Nicaraguense

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F igu r e 7. 2 ​Lake steamer operated by the Accessory Transit Com­pany docked at Granada’s wharf, which was built by the Walker regime; the mountain in the background is the Mombacho volcano. Source: “Landing at Granada—­Lake Nicaragua pier, built by order of General Walker,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, July 19, 1856. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photo­graphs Division, Washington, D.C. (LC-­USZ62-60929-­A).

to print as many copies (over a thousand) in an hour as other Nicaraguan papers had done in two days.40 Reconstruction efforts further took place beyond Granada. Above all, the filibuster regime began to restore roads that connected the country’s main towns, and it improved transportation across Lake Nicaragua by building new wharves in Granada and La Virgen. In addition, it repaired the twelve-­mile transit road between La Virgen and the Pacific port of San Juan del Sur and provided transients with new vehicles to travel across it. The regime even began constructing new light­houses at the country’s two major Pacific ports, Realejo and San Juan del Sur.41

IV The main outcome of the regime’s modernization efforts, however, consisted of land surveys and maps. T ­ hese seemingly mundane tasks w ­ ere key instruments of statecraft during the nineteenth ­century. They helped



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imperial powers not only control foreign territories but also justify their rule by representing the conquered land as devoid of history—­the proverbial blank spaces to be developed by the colonizers. Surveying and mapping activities w ­ ere at the heart of settler colonialism in the nineteenth ­century. But they ­were also crucial to the formation of states in postin­de­ pen­dence Latin Amer­i­ca. They enabled national authorities to rule more effectively, especially over disparate regions. Maps and surveys further ­facilitated state and private efforts to promote economic development. Government surveyors w ­ ere among the main agents of the central state with whom rural ­peoples had direct contact, and in often tense encounters ­these agents sought to enhance the state’s reach and its legitimacy. The surveys carried out by Walker’s Department of Colonization contributed significantly to the formation of a filibuster state.42 The initial surveys targeted the mining region of Chontales. This focus reflected the California background of Walker and his earliest U.S. followers, who had participated in the Gold Rush. About a month a­fter Walker’s conquest, Fabens’s Department of Colonization sent a surveying team to the mines of Chontales; it consisted of three U.S. filibusters, three Nicaraguans, and two ­others of unknown nationalities. Their leader was George Campbell, a former county judge in the heart of California’s gold country. Upon completing his trip, Campbell wrote a report that provided information not just on the region’s mining industry but also on its agricultural economy, roads, and rivers. Campbell had obtained much information by interviewing local inhabitants—­especially ­those from the mining center of La Libertad, where his team spent a week. In his report, Campbell suggested that their endeavor did not cause any friction. Yet this could not have been the full truth. Why e­ lse did Campbell state that he had found gold even though local inhabitants had “insisted that no gold would be found where I desired to dig”? Shortly ­after returning to Granada, Campbell fell ill and died of “congestive fever.” His unexpected death slowed down the department’s effort to survey the agricultural region of Rivas as well as the land upon which it planned to create its “new Granada.” 43 Instead the next major surveys continued to focus on the Chontales mining region. In February 1856 a team went to San Carlos, a village of about fourteen “huts” located at the confluence of Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River. The survey aimed to facilitate the construction of a

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new road from San Carlos to the mines located in the interior of Chontales. But the team also surveyed land where the regime planned to construct a new town along the transit route. Walker personally ordered this undertaking; he expected that the new San Carlos would become a bustling commercial city once the mining and agricultural economies of Chontales w ­ ere connected to the U.S. market.44 As more and more U.S. settlers arrived in early 1856, the surveys moved to agricultural regions deemed most appropriate for colonization. If the regime first targeted sparsely populated Chontales, it quickly shifted its focus to the country’s most populated regions: León and Chinandega in the north, and Granada and Rivas in the south. Much land in t­ hese core regions was already claimed by farmers and villages, yet vacant public or state-­owned land (baldíos) still abounded and the filibuster regime could distribute t­ hese to Walker’s colonists. To prepare the Nicaraguan heartland for colonization, the surveyors w ­ ere to create topographical plans “so that the public land may be distinctly designated from the private as well as the amount allotted to each pueblo for plantation and pasture.” 45 This shift was reinforced by the decree of March 29, 1856, that established property registries in each of the country’s five departments. The regime was concerned that the “continual influx of colonists” was producing land conflicts or, as El Nicaraguense diplomatically put it, “many delicate points at issue relative to land titles.” It wanted to reassure wouldbe colonists that “the titles obtained by them to the grants they occupy, ­will be perfect.” Such a reassurance, the paper insisted, “gives additional guarantee to our friends abroad that Nicaragua is in earnest in inviting emigration to her shores.” But the regime also sought to assure Nicaraguans that their lands would not be taken over by the immigrants. Hence did the decree create a “native tribunal” consisting of “the best l­egal talent of the country” who w ­ ere to peacefully resolve potentially volatile land disputes. To avoid land conflicts, the decree required that all land sales be recorded in the newly created land registries. It called for government surveyors to mark “with the consent of ­those interested” the bound­aries between private properties and public lands allotted to colonists.46 The March decree greatly politicized the work of government surveyors. In addition to promoting Walker’s modernization proj­ect, they ­were to secure po­liti­cal stability by ensuring that the land issue would not trigger conflicts among his native and foreign followers. When Walker



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launched his “revolution” in July 1856, the duties of government surveyors expanded even further, as they w ­ ere charged with assessing valuable properties confiscated from elite Nicaraguans accused of “treasonable conduct.” Most of ­these properties consisted of ­cattle, cacao, and indigo estates located in Chontales, Granada, and Rivas.47 The government official charged with the delicate mission of surveying the heartland was neither a U.S. filibuster nor a Nicaraguan but the German ex-­revolutionary Sonnenstern. ­Under his direction the surveying and mapping activities of the filibuster regime reached unpre­ce­dented heights. In March 1856 Sonnenstern and his German, Nicaraguan, and U.S. assistants had conducted a survey of Chontales that resulted in a new map of the region. The multinational team then moved back west to survey the heartland. In May and June 1856, Sonnenstern’s group crisscrossed the large department of León, which spanned the entire northwestern corner of Nicaragua. ­A fter completing their work, Sonnenstern’s team moved south and began surveying the rich region of Granada, including the city itself.48 In late September their mission came to a sudden halt when a Guatemalan-­Salvadoran invasion force began to advance deeply into the Nicaraguan heartland with the aim of expelling the filibusters from the isthmus. In response, the Walker regime abandoned its modernization proj­ect and focused its energy on repelling the ­enemy. Some of Sonnenstern’s men became full-­time members of the filibuster army, such as Adolph Schwartz, who took over as commander of its artillery division. ­Others, like Ströbel, continued to work as surveyors, but now their main task was to create new roads that facilitated the movement of Walker’s troops in the war zone. Sonnenstern, by contrast, lost faith in the filibuster’s cause and fled to El Salvador.49 Despite their truncated mission, Sonnenstern and his men undertook the hitherto most complete surveys of western Nicaragua. Their reports describe in detail roads, paths, rivers, streams, lakes, hills, mountains, plains, villages, and towns (including the number of inhabitants, huts, ­houses, and churches, as well as distances between towns and villages). They also provide much information on agriculture, geology, vegetation, medicinal plants, and the estimated height of mountains and hills. The reports indicate ­whether roads ­were suitable for carts or ­whether they ­were only passable for h­ orses or mules, and w ­ hether they w ­ ere at all

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traversable during the rainy season (May to November). Sonnenstern and his men made detailed surveys of potential railroad and canal routes. Indeed, it was his group that suggested the filibuster regime abandon its canal proj­ect altogether and replace it with an interoceanic railroad route.50 Unlike past surveys, t­ hose of Sonnenstern w ­ ere designed to promote the country’s colonization by U.S. and Eu­ro­pean immigrants. His reports provided detailed information on the areas that his team considered most suitable for settler colonists. He and his men devoted special effort to identifying which regions ­were well cultivated, enjoyed good soil and drinking ­water, and had climates suitable for northern immigrants unaccustomed to the tropics. Like most of Walker’s foreign supporters, Sonnenstern justified the creation of settler colonies by claiming that N ­ icaraguans ­were “not capable of improving this splendid country” and needed the influx of “an industrious and active population.” He did stress, however, that native “Indian” men would make for ­great laborers, claiming they ­were both “intelligent” and possessing “­g reat bodily strength.”51 Sonnenstern had a rosy view of Nicaragua’s potential for colonization. He even claimed that the country, thanks to its propitious climate, soil, and geographic location, was a more favorable place for immigrants than the United States. Although it was left unstated in his reports, he likely shared the view of other Eu­ro­pe­ans that Know-­Nothingism had made the United States a hostile place for immigrants. Sonnenstern asserted that the surveys conducted by his team would help ensure that Nicaragua would soon become one of “the most civilized countries of the New World.” Like other members of Walker’s Department of Colonization, he maintained that the public infrastructure necessary to promote colonization “has to be done by the government.”52 If Sonnenstern’s dreams of colonization ­were to be cut short by war, his team bequeathed Nicaraguans an impor­tant legacy: the hitherto best topographical map of Nicaragua, which was published in New York in 1858. A revised version of this map (estimated scale of 1:500,000) would serve as the country’s official map ­until the first de­cades of the twentieth ­century. The original map depicts the w ­ hole country except for the northern half of its Atlantic coast, which Sonnenstern claimed was inhabited by nomadic “half-­wild Indians.” It also contains insert plans for the cities of Granada and León as well as that of abandoned León Viejo (Old



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F igu r e 7. 3 ​Mapa de la república de Nicaragua levantado por orden del gobierno por Maximilian v. Sonnenstern 1858 (New York: Kraetzer, 1858). Courtesy of the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, Washington, D.C. (LCCN 2012586638).

León), where the filibuster regime planned to establish a settler colony. The map that resulted from Sonnenstern’s mission was hardly perfect; the most obvious inaccuracies concerned the positioning of towns, mountains, rivers, and other relief in the northern regions of Estelí, Matagalpa, and Nueva Segovia. T ­ hese errors w ­ ere not an accident, for they occurred in ­those regions that ­were not surveyed by Sonnenstern’s team. Yet despite its flaws, the map represents a milestone in the history of Nicaraguan cartography; it not only showed more villages, roads, rivers, and lake routes than previous maps but was far more accurate.53 In the end, Sonnenstern’s surveys w ­ ere a double-­edged sword for the filibuster regime. They showed Nicaraguans that the regime was serious about carry­ing out its modernization program. Undoubtedly, Sonnenstern’s team interacted a g­ reat deal with the local populace in order to obtain the necessary data; like other mapmakers affiliated with the Walker regime, the team prob­ably showed drafts of its maps to local inhabitants in order to improve their accuracy. Such encounters may

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have enhanced the legitimacy of the regime—­that is, if local inhabitants felt their opinions w ­ ere taken seriously. It is also pos­si­ble that the team’s use of sophisticated instruments (sextants, astronomical ­tables, ­etc.) enhanced the modernizing image that the regime sought to proj­ect to the local populace. In the United States, the widespread circulation of Sonnenstern’s surveys via the press clearly reinforced the resolve of would-be settlers to migrate to Walker’s realm.54 If the surveys strengthened the regime’s image in and beyond Nicaragua, they also turned power­ful landowners against the modernization proj­ect. True, the surveys could have intensified conflicts among the rural poor, as was then true in Guatemala, where neighboring communities entangled government surveyors in their land disputes. But Sonnenstern’s surveys mainly antagonized wealthy estate o­ wners, especially in the region of León, Walker’s initial bastion of local support. Leonese elites had endorsed the regime’s modernization proj­ect, albeit in the belief that Walker’s colonists would s­ ettle in the frontier regions of Chontales, Matagalpa, and Nueva Segovia. Never did they envision that the immigrants would create, as Sonnenstern proposed, settler colonies in their own backyard. Moreover, it is pos­si­ble that estate o­ wners ­were worried that the rural poor would use Sonnenstern’s surveys to claim land they considered to be their own. T ­ here is ­little won­der that the land issue would help push León’s Liberal leadership to break with Walker. If the filibuster’s promise of development led elite Liberals to embrace him as their country’s regenerator, the means he used to fulfill that promise eventually drove them to seek his expulsion.55 Like most modernization proj­ects, that of the filibuster regime created tensions within local society. It ensured that thousands of U.S. settlers would make the journey to Nicaragua, and since ­those colonists seemingly embodied U.S. entrepreneurialism and innovation, they reinforced the faith of many Nicaraguans in Walker’s promise of development. But if his modernization proj­ect helped shore up his support among ordinary Nicaraguans, it slowly but surely antagonized local elites. ­These tensions would break out into the open in July 1856, when Walker launched a “revolution” against local elites, including his former Liberal allies.

8 Filibuster Revolution

W

hen William Walker seized power in October  1855, revolution was in the air. He had begun his campaign four months earlier by promising an antielite revolution on behalf of the Nicaraguan masses. As such, he enjoyed strong support from the country’s leading radical, José María Valle, who was deemed a dangerous communist by his elite enemies. In addition, many of Walker’s followers who had come from the United States ­were fiery revolutionaries. This was especially true of Eu­ro­pean Forty-­Eighters who sought to continue their strug­gle for universal democracy in Nicaragua. But Walker’s rule was first marked by a policy of “sound conservativism” that reflected his alliance with Conservative Party members of Granada’s oligarchy. Only a­ fter t­hese oligarchs turned against Walker during the failed Costa Rican invasion of April 1856 did he unleash his promised revolution. The filibuster revolution produced an unpre­ce­dented assault on elite power. In the end it also led to the relegalization of slavery. The revolution proved to be Walker’s undoing.1 215

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I The filibuster revolution was unplanned and began silently with the cultural changes wrought by the mass arrival of U.S. colonists. The newcomers settled in all parts of the country, including remote hamlets and mining towns, yet the vast majority lived in Walker’s capital of Granada. Once again Granadans encountered countless ­bearers of U.S. culture, only this time their influx was far greater and the foreigners ­were ­here to stay. It was their daily activities and routines that did so much to erode the authority of Nicaragua’s most power­ful regional elite, laying the basis for Walker’s revolution. This erosion of local elite power was first apparent in the colonists’ takeover of the center of Granada. As elsewhere in Latin Amer­i­ca, the city core was dominated by a large square—­the plaza—­that was surrounded by the main institutions of power: the Parochial Church, the President’s House, town hall, the court­house, and the military barracks. Just beyond the plaza lay most elite mansions. Elite control of the city’s center had already weakened prior to Walker’s conquest; the brutal siege of 1854–1855 by León-­based Liberal Party members destroyed countless mansions. When Walker’s followers arrived from the United States, they ­were shocked to see the “dilapidation” of a once beautiful and bustling city, but enough battle-­scarred buildings remained to h­ ouse the colonists. By the time Walker had seized the presidency in July 1856, his followers had taken over the city center, ensuring that Granada assumed “the air and appearance of an American city.”2 The takeover reflected less the “self-­consciously spatializing proj­ect” marking other imperial endeavors of the era than the willingness of elite Granadans to sell or rent their homes to the new arrivals. Most filibusters lived in the barracks on the plaza and in the nearby Convent of San Francisco, while many of Walker’s officers and all of his civilian colonists lived in private homes. Some had snatched deserted mansions or expelled their ­owners, at times with the help of pro-­Walker Granadans. Many more bought or rented their abodes. ­Those with lesser means rented rooms or hammocks in elite homes, as was true of John Mennicke, who lived in the home of Mercedes Sandoval, where he ran a “barber and hair-­dressing saloon.”3

N

vine Aduana Ra

SANTA LUCÍA*

OTRABANDA*

3

20

5

Calle Real

11

17 13

15

23

beach 2

14

16 8

12

10

22

25

6

1

18

24

beach

7

N i c a r a g u a

4

9

19

L a k e

Calle Atravesada

21

JALTEVA*

Za

c

ne avi eR ü g eli at

400 meters

0

1

Augustus Post’s drug store and practice of medicine, surgery & midwifery

13

Mansion of José Antonio Lacayo

14

Parochial Church

2

Church of Guadalupe

15

Plaza (main square)

3

Church of Jalteva

16

President’s house and office of El Nicaraguense

4

Church of La Merced

17

Residence of Carlos and Emilio Thomas

5

Cockpit

18

Residence of Fermin Ferrer

6

Convent of San Francisco

19

Residence of Hilario Goussen

7

Court house & Town Hall

20

Residence of John Lawless

8

Hospital

21

Residence of James Smith’s family

9

Irene O’Horan’s boardinghouse (served as Walker’s first abode)

22

Residence of U.S. minister John Wheeler

10

John Mennicke’s Barber and Hair-Dressing Saloon (located in home of Mercedes Sandoval)

23

Walker House tavern

24

Wharf

11

Lone Star saloon

25

William Teller’s general store

12

Manovil Hotel

* Suburb

Source: Mapa de la República de Nicaragua levantado por orden del gobierno por Maximilian v. Sonnenstern, 1858

Ma p 8. 1 ​City of Granada. Based on detail from Mapa de la república de Nicaragua levantado por orden del gobierno por Maximilian v. Sonnenstern 1858 (New York: Kraetzer, 1858).

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Walker’s followers had ample opportunities to socialize with “the cream of the native population.” Such interactions appeared to strengthen the authority of rich Granadans, as they suggested that the foreigners ­were assimilating into elite society. El Nicaraguense stressed that “nothing tends more to knit the two races together than t­ hese l­ittle social gatherings.” The socials w ­ ere often hosted by foreign o­ wners of restaurants and ­hotels, but filibuster officers also threw parties attended by rich Granadans. ­Others took place in elite homes, as when Walker’s men attended ­family salons (tertulias), where they and their hosts would pass the ­eve­ning drinking, eating, conversing, and dancing. Some socials drew larger crowds, as when officers held a New Year’s Eve ball at the mansion of the merchant and estate owner José Antonio Lacayo.4 Very quickly Walker’s colonists created social spaces that not only competed with elite-­dominated ones but also admitted Nicaraguans previously excluded from elite tertulias. This was especially true of social clubs, which ranged from Masonic lodges to jockey clubs. The most prominent was the Young American Pioneer Club in Granada. Although the club took its name from an ultra-­expansionist U.S. movement, its ranks included Granadan oligarchs and the new rich, such as the Jamaican-­ born mulatto Carlos Thomas, whose home served as its first meeting place. Compared to the tertulias, the clubs represented a socially more inclusive space. To be sure, ­these all-­male clubs ­were more gender exclusive than the ­family salons, yet they promoted more inclusive notions of manliness through their rituals, ceremonies, and activities. If kinship ties and social origins determined access to the “aristocratic” salons, the clubs placed greater value on economic success and po­liti­cal influence in accepting Nicaraguans of nonelite origins. Some of the clubs even admitted popu­lar caudillos who ­were feared by local elites, as was true of Francisco Bravo, Walker’s police chief of Masaya who served as vice president of the Jockey Club. The presence of radicals such as Bravo made the clubs created by Walker’s colonists social spaces where the authority of local elites could be challenged.5 A similar threat was posed by the sexual relations that Walker’s men maintained with elite w ­ omen. This is not surprising, for “­matters of the intimate are critical sites for the consolidation of colonial power.” Memoirs penned by Walker’s men stress that many of their comrades forged



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sexual u­ nions with rich “ladies of Castilian blood.” Such binational relationships are integral to Nicaraguan memories of the era. The most famous concerns Walker’s alleged affair with Irene O’Horan Espinosa, an elite Granadan who owned a boarding­house that served as Walker’s first abode. Not coincidentally, the most popu­lar song of the era remains “Mama Ramona,” which denounces a female boarding­house owner for “falling in love with a yanke.” Such lore needs to be treated with caution, for if memories of imperial conquest often single out native w ­ omen for sexual treachery, U.S. filibusters tended to exaggerate their own sexual conquests. The regime’s persecution of rape cases underscores the vio­ lence that could mark the foreigners’ sexual encounters with Nicaraguan ­women. In a few cases, however, Walker’s men and Nicaraguan elite ­women formed sexual relationships that led to marriages sanctioned by local priests.6 ­These binational marriages w ­ ere often condemned by local elites. A good example was Rosario Córdova of Granada, whose elite ­family opposed her engagement to a U.S. colonist. The twenty-­three-­year-­old nonetheless went ahead with her marriage and eventually gave birth to a ­daughter. As a result, she was cut off from her ­family and elite society. Similar marriages occurred in other towns; apparently, some elite w ­ omen even left their husbands to live with U.S. colonists. Such cases may give credence to a rumor that circulated widely in Nicaragua: the filibusters ­were seeking to acquire rural estates by demanding “that the Vicar of León authorize divorces so that U.S. ­women could marry Nicaraguan landlords, and that rich native ­women could marry Americans,” especially if the w ­ omen ­were “proprietors.” While the rumor remains unsubstantiated, it correctly suggests that the marital ­unions formed by Walker’s men threatened elite power.7 That such sexual ­unions could undercut elite authority is evident in a case involving one of Walker’s principal native supporters: the Granadan Justo Lugo. Of oligarchic origin, Lugo was a rich merchant, moneylender, ­cattle rancher, and owner of a ­hotel that prospered during the transit boom of 1849–1851. He was also a leading Liberal who occupied high-­ranking positions in the filibuster state. His wife Josefana Bermúdez de la Cerda hailed from an oligarchic ­family, too, and ran his store in Granada. In their eleven years of marriage, they had four c­ hildren. Shortly ­after Lugo died

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in November 1856, Bermúdez married the twenty-­three-­year-­old merchant James Thomas, a white colonist from upstate New York. In all likelihood, Bermúdez and Thomas initiated their relationship prior to Lugo’s death, for the latter complained on his deathbed that his wife had embarrassed him by being unfaithful and that her “bad conduct” had led him to seek a divorce.8 The filibuster revolution also built on everyday interactions between the colonists and poorer Nicaraguans. Many of Walker’s men had intimate relations with nonelite w ­ omen, including prostitutes. Sexual encounters w ­ ere often initiated at the beach of Granada, located near the suburb that ­housed the city’s brothels. On Sundays and holidays, the beach attracted a throng of men and ­women seeking relaxation, while during the week it was reportedly crowded with scantily dressed washerwomen who ­were joined in the lake by Walker’s soldiers taking a bath. Not all relations ­were of a sexual nature, however; many male and female colonists employed native w ­ omen as domestic servants, cooks, and laundresses (though such employment could lead to sexual en­ counters).9 Ultimately Walker’s immigrants socialized mainly with the common folk in public settings. A popu­lar space was Granada’s plaza, which came to life in the mornings when it metamorphosed into the city’s main market. Each day around two hundred marketwomen congregated in the plaza, where Walker’s soldiers and colonists came to buy food as well as cigars, hammocks, hats, and other artisanal products. Con­temporary accounts note that the foreigners spent much time with the marketwomen—­enough that the latter came to speak some En­glish.10 Nicaraguan men from the lower classes tended to socialize with male colonists in gaming establishments. Among the most popu­lar w ­ ere billiard halls and ­houses specializing in card games such as monte. The principal game of chance that allowed lower-­class Nicaraguans to mix with Walker’s men was cockfighting, the national pastime. In Granada the cockpit was located close to the plaza, directly b­ ehind La Merced, Granada’s most aristocratic church. E ­ very Sunday it drew hundreds of men who placed bets “ranging from five to one hundred dollars.” According to a colonist, much bantering and haggling took place between Nicaraguan o­ wners of gamecocks and the multinational bettors. This Sunday ritual often provoked brawls between Walker’s men and Granadans, es-



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F igu r e 8. 1 ​Market-­stands located in the southwest corner of Granada’s main square. Source: “Market Place on Granada Plaza,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, June 21, 1856. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photo­g raphs Division, Washington, D.C. (LC-­USZ62-60925).

pecially if liquor was involved. It also enabled them to forge closer ties with one another.11 Another place where Granadans encountered the colonists ­were the businesses run by foreigners. Such establishments ranged from William Teller’s general store on the plaza to Augustus Post’s drugstore opposite the Convent of San Francisco. Especially popu­lar was the daguerrean photo studio of John Kingwell, a twenty-­four-­year-­old from Kentucky; it was ­housed in the Granada ­Hotel, located on the city’s main commercial street, the Calle Atravesada. The studio was such a novelty that Granadans frequently crowded around it to look at the photos ornamenting its win­ dows. Kingwell did not introduce the daguerreotype camera to Nicaragua, but he was prob­ably the first to establish a photo studio, thus allowing local residents to have their portraits taken. Previously this had been pos­si­ble only for elite Nicaraguans traveling abroad. Novel businesses established by mi­grants like Kingwell helped de­moc­ra­tize local culture.12 Granada’s common folk further encountered Walker’s colonists at musical dances and theaters or­ga­nized by the latter. They w ­ ere especially

F igu r e 8. 2 ​Portrait of Lawrence Poland, a twenty-­two-­year-­old soldier in Walker’s army who was born in Ireland and migrated with his f­ amily to the United States in 1847, eventually settling in Ohio; this portrait could have been taken at John Kingwell’s daguerrean photo studio in Granada (Paul Bolcik, “Lawrence T. Poland and the American Veterans of the Nicaragua War,” The Daguerreian Society Newsletter 21, no. 3 [2009]: 17). Courtesy of the personal collection of Paul Bolcik.



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taken by the Nicaraguan Metropolitan Minstrels, a group of six white performers with blackened ­faces whose songs and dances ridiculed African Americans. They performed on weekend eve­nings in a hall on the Calle Atravesada that was packed with colonists and Granadans. It might seem odd that blackface entertainment electrified lower-­class Granadans, as they ­were often of African descent and deemed “darkies” by Walker’s colonists. Local musicians reportedly played in other contexts “some of the negro melodies that the dif­fer­ent minstrels have rendered popu­lar.” Granadans may have not truly comprehended—or interpreted differently—minstrelsy’s racist repre­sen­t a­t ions of African Americans. They had their own blackface dances that ridiculed the Spanish colonizers. Granadans ­were nonetheless susceptible to minstrelsy’s racist message, for even local mulattoes denigrated “black” Mosquito Indians of the ­Ca­rib­bean coast as “primitives.” If in the United States minstrel shows of the era tended to be all-­white affairs that reinforced racial bound­aries, abroad their audiences w ­ ere often nonwhite, allowing U.S. blackface performers to cross such bound­aries. In vari­ous ways, minstrelsy helped Walker’s colonists forge closer ties with lower-­class Granadans.13 Granadans socialized with Walker’s colonists at the countless religious festivals as well. To the foreigners’ surprise, religious holidays in Nicaragua w ­ ere not “the gloomy, miserable times” they associated with t­ hose in the United States but “joyous occasions.” And it was at t­ hese cele­ brations that they seem to have most fully encountered Nicaraguan popu­lar culture. At the Fiesta de San Juan Bautista many of Walker’s men marveled at how Granadans performed the baile de la yegua (dance of the mare). In the distant past, local Indians had performed this dance before ­going to war against the Spanish conquistadors; centuries ­later Granadans continued to perform it to the tune of a song titled “Guerra” (War). Apparently Walker’s followers did not realize that they valorized a dance symbolizing anticolonial re­sis­tance.14 ­T hese festivals publicized, at times, how Walker’s men ­were undermining elite authority. Perhaps nowhere was this erosion more apparent than at the start of Holy Week in Rivas. The cele­bration began with the Palm Sunday pro­cession commemorating Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. As always, local authorities played a prominent role, but this time the main official was James Cole, a U.S. physician who had been

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living in Rivas since 1854 and had married a young ­woman from the city’s elite. He had been just appointed governor of the department. ­After the pro­cession passed through a crowd, Cole received from the officiating priest the reins of the donkey with an image of Christ seated on top. For a U.S. observer, “this was quite a brilliant achievement for Dr. Cole, as the natives have no par­tic­u­lar veneration for Americans in religious affairs, and ­were struck with amazement to find that the American Prefect was in truth a Christian.” More striking was the fact that a U.S. colonist had taken over a function traditionally reserved for local elites. This minor episode foreshadowed the revolution that Walker would soon unleash against native elites.15

II Walker launched his revolution to end the power of elite Nicaraguans during the Costa Rican invasion of April 1856. The invasion enjoyed the support of Conservative oligarchs who viewed with dismay how filibuster rule was eroding their power. The invasion also compelled Conservatives who had fled to Honduras ­after Walker’s conquest to invade Nicaragua from the north. The outbreak of cholera ultimately thwarted the Costa Ricans. But just as impor­tant was the victory of Liberals led by José María Valle over the Conservative invaders in the north—­a victory that made Walker even more beholden to his most radical Nicaraguan followers. From the start the filibuster revolution was marked by a key tension: Walker wanted U.S. colonists to replace native elites at the helm of the local state and economy, while Valle’s group sought to use the revolution to empower the masses. At first the filibuster revolution targeted only the po­liti­cal order. It began with El Nicaraguense’s call for the democ­ratization of the electoral system. The paper was responding to the elections of April 27, which Liberal leaders held thinking they could easily defeat the Conservatives, who ­were discredited for backing the failed Costa Rican invasion. The elections ­were an elite-­controlled pro­cess, in which male property ­owners voted for about five hundred electors who would select the new president and congress in a second round. Walker’s paper denounced the system



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as undemo­cratic and demanded the direct popu­lar vote, albeit without reiterating earlier support for female suffrage.16 El Nicaraguense’s promotion of direct elections reflected the po­liti­cal practices of Walker’s U.S. followers. But it was also rooted in Nicaraguan history, as the demand for direct elections had driven the popu­lar rebellions of the late 1840s. Following the squashing of t­ hese rebellions, Liberal and Conservative elites banded together to restrict the popu­lar vote. In the ensuing years, Valle and other radicals pressed for direct elections and the elimination of property requirements, often invoking the examples of the short-­lived French republic, Switzerland, and the United States. With Walker’s conquest, their demands metamorphosed into a call for a revolution of the poor against the rich. Although El Nicaraguense publicized the radicals’ demands, its editors did not advocate for direct elections ­until the outbreak of war with Costa Rica.17 ­After the first round of voting, El Nicaraguense intensified its criticism of the electoral system. This was when Walker began to eye the office of the presidency. He believed he could win a popu­lar vote, as the failed Costa Rican invasion strengthened his local support and the colonists ­were acquiring Nicaraguan citizenship en masse. The paper sought to promote Walker’s candidacy at the cost of the two leading vote-­getters of April 27: President Patricio Rivas and Mariano Salazar, a wealthy Liberal from León. It also echoed Walker’s Eu­ro­pean radicals by invoking the “universal demo­cratic sentiment which now agitates the world.” The paper quickly radicalized its stance so that by mid-­May it was calling for a full-­blown revolution against the local “aristocracy,” claiming that “the ­will of the majority must rule, and the reign of the few must cease.”18 This antielite revolution was most loudly championed in the Spanish section of El Nicaraguense. Some articles ­were penned by Nicaraguans demanding a revolution that would “level the interests of the rich with ­those of the poor.” O ­ thers w ­ ere reprints of articles appearing elsewhere in Latin Amer­i­ca, suggesting that Nicaragua’s strug­gle for democracy was part of a continental pro­cess. Yet ­others ­were written by Cubans tied to Nicaraguan radicals in León and Granada. Among the most prolific was Francisco Agüero Estrada, who took over as El Nicaraguense’s Spanish editor during the Costa Rican invasion. The fifty-­year-­old émigré had

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already stood out for his radical views back in New York. ­After he joined its editorial board, El Nicaraguense further radicalized its discourse by advocating revolutionary vio­lence. “No ­great revolution,” so it stressed, “was ever perfected without injury to a few; and it is useless, therefore, to deny that so impor­tant a revolution as that which signalizes the transition of a State from an aristocracy to a democracy must inflict some considerable evil.”19 El Nicaraguense’s call for revolution and the growing power of popu­lar caudillos alarmed Liberal leaders in León. Their fears had already been stoked by the land surveys Maximilian von Sonnenstern’s team of German Forty-­Eighters had conducted in the region of León-­Chinandega. While the Germans claimed that their work was to promote colonization, local elites feared that it would help the poor seize their estates. Elite Liberals worried about the rising “communist” tendencies among the masses as well as the explosion of antielite sentiments in Costa Rica, stemming from its failed invasion of Nicaragua.20 Such fears drove León’s Liberal leaders to plot against Walker. In late May they secretly reached out to the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala, which had long deemed the filibusters a grave threat to their sovereignty. Even though León’s Liberal leaders had just helped repel the Costa Rican invasion, they now wanted the Salvadorans and Guatemalans to march into their country, both to expel the filibusters and control the masses. This plotting gained the attention of Walker in Granada, who rushed north with about two hundred troops.21 Upon entering León on June 2, Walker received an enthusiastic reception. But if Walker’s visit strengthened his bonds with the city’s lower classes, it had the opposite impact on its elite. During his ten-­day stay, Walker frequently spoke with President Rivas and his ministers. He berated them for negotiating with the ­enemy and insisted that they back his po­liti­cal revolution. If they refused, he threatened to unleash Valle and his radical supporters against them. Liberal leaders also asserted that Walker talked about confiscating elite estates and then reselling them to U.S. cap­i­tal­ists in exchange for much-­needed funds.22 ­T hese meetings reinforced the fears of León’s Liberal leaders that Walker sought to destroy their class. So ­great was their concern of a betrayal that a group led by Minister of War Máximo Jerez tried to assassi-



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nate Walker. The undertaking was stymied at the last moment by Rivas’s son-­in-­law, Cleto Mayorga, a prosperous Leonese merchant who would ­later claim that he owed Walker “a debt of gratitude for having saved his life” during the filibuster’s capture of Granada in October 1855. Since Mayorga hailed from Leon’s radical neighborhood of San Felipe, it is pos­ si­ble that his intervention reflected sympathy for Walker’s proj­ect—or fear that the filibuster’s murder would expose him and other Liberal leaders to the wrath of the masses. Walker never got wind of this attempt on his life, and he returned to Granada on June 11 believing he had driven León’s Liberal leaders into submission.23 Walker gravely misjudged the situation. A day a­ fter his departure, an insurrection broke out in León that was led by the city’s Liberal leaders and targeted the two hundred filibuster troops ­under the command of Bruno von Natzmer. Presidential candidate Salazar reportedly rode through the streets proclaiming that “the Americans . . . ​­were about to murder the President and his Cabinet [and] burn down the churches and destroy the religion of the country.” A standoff ensued, as the rebels failed to subdue Natzmer’s men. Valle rallied his followers to support the filibusters and resist “the old enemies of liberty,” while the clergy pleaded with the common folk to remain loyal to Walker. T ­ hese efforts bore some success, for an anti-­Walker resident conceded that the “masses continue to sympathize with the Americans.” The situation became even messier when armed residents from San Felipe tried to take ­matters into their own hands. On June 19 Natzmer’s group abandoned the city with Valle and other local radicals. Walker had ordered the retreat so that Natzmer’s troops could join his counterattack against León.24 Walker jeopardized his entire enterprise by putting off the attack. The onset of a fierce rainy season made it difficult for him to move his troops along muddy roads. But Walker also waited in order to first consolidate his rule while awaiting the arrival of U.S. recruits. His inaction allowed twelve hundred Guatemalan and Salvadoran troops to enter León unhindered. Fortunately for Walker, the heavy rains led t­hese troops to stay put in León for over two months. The Guatemalans and Salvadorans had hoped that Rivas’s break with Walker would spell the latter’s end. Instead the filibusters retained control over much of the Nicaraguan heartland.25

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Thanks to the passivity of the Guatemalan-­Salvadoran Army, Walker deepened his revolution with ­little re­sis­tance. Upon returning to Granada, he named as provisional president Fermin Ferrer, a Liberal parvenu sharply critical of the city’s oligarchy. The most prominent member of the new cabinet was the Liberal priest Juan Manuel Loredo, whose nomination underscored the clergy’s ongoing importance to Walker. Its other members ­were the Guatemalan Liberal Manuel Carrascosa and the Leonese Liberal Mateo Pineda, an ally of Valle. Since both shared Ferrer’s hatred of the oligarchy, their inclusion revealed the growing influence of radicals in Walker’s enterprise. Ferrer vowed to help Walker advance his revolution so that Nicaragua could become “the vanguard of democracy.” His sentiments ­were shared by other Granadan Liberals, as was evident in broadsides and letters published in El Nicaraguense. Their views reflected ­those of Granada’s electoral convention, which had just nominated Walker for the presidency. The convention demonstrated that Walker maintained strong support among elite Liberals of the region. It also highlighted the rise of radicals who had hitherto remained in the shadows.26 Walker’s po­liti­cal revolution culminated with his “victory” in the presidential election of June  22–24. According to El Nicaraguense, about twenty-­three thousand Nicaraguans (including Walker’s naturalized followers) took to the polls. Just over two-­thirds cast their vote for Walker, while Ferrer received nearly 20 ­percent; the rest went to Rivas and Salazar. For El Nicaraguense, the election was a demo­cratic festival, with Nicaraguans in the remotest hamlets ­going “to the polls in solid phalanx.”27 Actually, the election was a sham, with Walker’s men voting multiple times and more votes being “returned from some localities than ­there ­were persons of all ages and sexes living in them.”28 The fraud dealt a blow to Walker’s standing in Nicaragua. As a female U.S. colonist noted, “his popularity with the native population decreased in a degree, as rapidly as it had increased up to that time.” A U.S. correspondent similarly maintained that the rigging was a “fatal ­mistake,” as Nicaraguans “who ­were his firm adherents have left him, and swell the ranks of his opponents.” The fraud also troubled Walker’s U.S. followers in Nicaragua who had identified his enterprise with democracy. One colonist moaned, “it is not improbable that the cause so dear to ­every true



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American heart was injured more by this than by any or all other acts [Walker] committed.”29 The flawed election did not produce a mass exodus among Walker’s U.S. pro-­democracy adherents, however. Some justified the fraud by claiming that the native poor w ­ ere not yet ready to exercise their rights. Walker retained the loyalty of the Eu­ro­pean Forty-­Eighters as well. In fact, they became more central to his state-­making proj­ect, as was evident in the work of his German surveyors. The threat of a Central American invasion led by conservative elites helped Eu­ro­pean radicals close ranks ­behind Walker. They further appreciated his insistence that the strug­gle for “universal freedom . . . ​must continue to spread u­ ntil it embraces not only all this continent, but the continents of the old world.” Many ­were liberal imperialists who believed that the Nicaraguan masses ­were less “civilized” than themselves and in need of their tutelage. Moreover, Walker had run against two opponents—­Rivas and Salazar—­who, in their eyes, had allied themselves with the main threat to democracy: the aristocracy.30 The sham election did indeed challenge the old order. Most notably, it ensured that elite Nicaraguans no longer represented the nation. This message was conveyed at the inauguration of Walker as president on July 12. Of the twenty dignitaries seated on the main stage, only two ­were Nicaraguans: the officiating priest and Ferrer, who loathed the local “aristocrats.” Upon delivering the presidency to Walker, Ferrer proclaimed him the savior of a ­people who had long suffered from elites opposed to “pro­gress and liberty.” Walker then announced that he would destroy the “miserable relics of a once power­ful aristocracy.”31 The election appeared to have empowered the masses by introducing the direct vote. With this princi­ple, power shifted from elite-­dominated electoral colleges to communal authorities. However rigged, the election gave Nicaragua’s popu­lar sectors a new means with which to challenge elite rule. Perhaps this helps explain why Walker retained the support of local radicals fighting for democracy. Some certainly joined León’s Liberal leaders in breaking with Walker. The most prominent was Mariano Méndez, who denounced the filibuster for seeking “the foreignization of the territory of our native land, the extinction of our religion, and the perpetual slavery of our race.” Yet o­ thers followed Valle in siding with

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Walker. Right ­a fter the election Valle sneaked back into León “with the view of raising the ­people against the Rivas authority,” only to be arrested. Upon receiving news of his capture, Walker ordered one hundred mounted rangers to liberate his ally. Occurring just before the Guatemalan-­Salvadoran Army entered León, the raid to rescue Valle was a success. That Walker risked his best troops to save Valle underscores his de­pen­dency on native radicals.32 Their influence did not diminish even when Walker began to fill government positions with his U.S. followers. Walker retained Ferrer and Valle’s ally Pineda in his cabinet. Valle did not occupy an official position, as he was recaptured ­after returning to León. ­Because León was by then occupied by Guatemalan and Salvadoran troops, Walker was unable to liberate Valle a second time. And so he came to rely ever more on popu­lar caudillos from the region of Granada. This was especially true of Francisco Bravo, the police chief of Masaya, and the Granadans Ubaldo Herrera and Gervacio Sandino.33 The leading radical in Walker’s government was Francisco Agüero, whom Walker appointed governor of the all-­important department of Granada. His appointment reflected the growing role of Cubans in the filibuster state. Cubans also increased their influence in the army, as was evident in the creation of a Cuban com­pany that served as Walker’s bodyguard. At a reception given by Granada’s municipal council, Agüero stressed his support for Walker’s po­liti­cal revolution. He championed a proj­ect of “social regeneration” designed to empower the “poor” and eliminate the “vices that corrupt and demolish socie­ties.” U ­ nder Agüero’s aegis, reformers of distinct stripes helped Walker radicalize his revolution in the bastion of Nicaragua’s wealthiest elite.34

III With the Guatemalan-­Salvadoran force holed up in León, Walker wasted no time in attacking the landed base of elite power in the rest of the heartland. In his first week in office, he proclaimed En­glish an official language, required the registration of properties, and ordered the confiscation of estates owned by his enemies. ­These decrees sought “to place a large portion of the land of the country in the hands of the white race.” Walker



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had U.S. colonists control the property registries, the courts adjudicating land conflicts, and the Board of Commissioners directing the confiscations. The confiscation decree greatly expanded the land available to colonists who had to be “white.” Previously, they had been offered uncultivated land in frontier regions, but now they could obtain rich estates in the Nicaraguan heartland. By auctioning off the seized estates, Walker hoped to raise over $500,000 and also destroy the native “aristocracy.” As El Nicaraguense stressed, Walker’s land policies aimed to establish a Central American empire run by “Anglo-­Saxons.” It was with good reason that León’s Liberal leaders denounced the land decrees as promoting settler colonialism “on the ruins of our race.”35 The racial turn in Walker’s revolution was countered by his de­pen­ dency on Nicaraguan radicals. He needed their help mainly to identify elite properties, for Walker did not want to antagonize the lower classes. As El Nicaraguense stressed, the regime “­w ill not enforce its decrees strictly against the poor.” Yet “from the wealthy,” it warned, “the State ­will demand clear and unimpeachable evidences of title.” The prob­lem facing Walker was the messy state of property bound­aries in the Nicaraguan countryside. Not only did usufructuary rights prevail over clearly defined private landownership, but peasants often moved their plots ­every few years, “allowing fields to lie fallow and regrowth to restore the soil’s fertility.” Walker had Sonnenstern’s team survey the confiscated estates so that nonelite lands would not be seized by m ­ istake, yet the Germans could not carry out their work without local support.36 Walker’s de­pen­dency on Nicaraguans in reshaping society was evident in the composition of the all-­i mportant Board of Commissioners. The board determined which properties would be seized and then supervised their confiscation and sale. It also heard testimonies from rich Nicaraguans who contested the loss of their properties by proving they had not committed “treason against the Republic.” The review pro­cess was no charade, for some landlords persuaded the board to revoke its original decision. The board was led by three U.S. commissioners who had recently arrived in Nicaragua and likely did not understand Spanish. They thus relied heavi­ly on the board’s local clerk, the Granadan Liberal ­Domingo Selva, who spoke En­glish. Since Selva hailed from an oligarchic ­family, he might have tried to attenuate the decree’s antielite thrust.

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If so, he faced stiff opposition from other Nicaraguans bent on destroying the local “aristocracy.”37 Two local groups spearheaded the confiscation pro­cess. The first comprised the popu­lar caudillos, with the Granadans Herrera and Sandino leading the charge. Herrera was killed in August while carry­ing out confiscations, but Sandino continued to confiscate estates up u­ ntil November, when Guatemalan and Salvadoran forces closed in on Walker’s capital of Granada. The second group consisted of parvenu elites from Granada. The most prominent ­were Ferrer and the merchant Emilio Thomas, whose twin b­ rother Carlos served as the regime’s trea­sury general. Ferrer and Thomas ­were accused of pushing Walker to not just confiscate the properties of local oligarchs but also “enslave” or “hang” them. The Thomas twins w ­ ere Jamaican-­born mulattoes who shared Ferrer’s deep hatred of the city’s “aristocrats.” Another parvenu elite leading the confiscation pro­cess was Juan Sole, a foreign (likely Italian) merchant residing in Granada. This was not the first, or last, time upwardly mobile elites of Granada exploited a revolutionary situation to disempower if not humilitate their “aristocratic” counter­parts.38 Thanks to local help, Walker’s regime carried out an assault on elite power that would not be replicated ­until the Sandinista Revolution of 1979–1990. Ultimately 132 estates and over 82 ­houses w ­ ere confiscated, affecting at least eighty elite families. They included the f­ amily of Walker’s alleged lover, Irene O’Horan Espinosa, who had fled the country during the Costa Rican invasion. Most seized ­houses w ­ ere located in Granada and Rivas, with a few in Managua, Masaya, and San Juan del Sur. Expropriated estates consisted mainly of cacao, coffee, indigo, and sugar plantations in the region of Granada-­R ivas and ­cattle ranches in Chontales. If most estates ­were owned by Conservatives, a few Liberals ­were also affected. This was even true of two Liberals landlords who had joined the popu­lar rebellions of the late 1840s.39 That the confiscations targeted the wealthy is evident from the average value of the seized properties: about $9,000 for farms and $5,000 for urban homes. T ­ hese ­were enormous amounts for a country as poor as Nicaragua. In fact, the average value of confiscated estates was about three times higher than that of farms in the United States. The value of the confiscated properties ranged widely; the two most expensive ones ­were owned



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by the ­family of former president Fruto Chamorro and consisted of the cacao estate Mercedes near Granada ($50,000) and a ­cattle estate in Chontales ($41,000), while one of the cheapest properties—­a plantain farm worth $200—­was owned by Chamorro’s successor, José María Estrada, who was not of oligarchic origin.40 The regime planned to auction off the seized properties in November  1856. It promised that they could be purchased with cash or military scrip, which the army issued as a form of payment. Though many properties ­were worth far more than the colonists could afford, the board declared that they would be sold at about a third of their value. A colonist believed the a­ ctual discount would be even greater, for “haciendas offered for sale worth from $50,000 to $100,000 . . . ​­will not prob­ably fetch $10,000.” And though the board never publicly broached the division of estates into smaller farms, this was certainly a possibility, especially if an estate was acquired by a group of colonists.41 Walker’s men harbored ­great hopes of acquiring the farms. One soldier who had resided on a confiscated estate while recuperating from an illness wrote to a friend in California that he had enough scrip to “have me such a hacienda.” He assured him that, once in its possession, “I ­will send you such a package of cacao, from which you can make such choco­ late as you never tasted.” That Walker’s troops sought to buy seized estates is confirmed by a large batch of intercepted letters wherein they requested from their friends and families loans reportedly ranging from $25 to $75,000. To facilitate the purchases, three U.S. ­lawyers opened a practice in Granada.42 The regime hoped that properties would also be bought by “cap­i­tal­ ists” based in the United States. It had U.S. newspapers advertise the estates and pres­ent a glowing picture of their economic potential. Making such purchases even more attractive w ­ ere reports that Walker’s cash-­ strapped soldiers ­were selling their scrips at huge discounts, with some ­going as low as ten cents on the dollar. “At this rate,” noted a U.S. correspondent, “property valued at $5,000 would actually cost the purchaser but $500.” B ­ ecause the board of commissioners wanted to give U.S. investors time to reach Granada, it pushed the auction back to January 1, 1857.43 Meanwhile, the filibuster regime benefited from the confiscated estates by turning them into state farms. In regions close to Granada, the farms

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­ ere often administered by Walker’s military officers. In fact, some dew serters from the filibuster army claimed that “the majority of its officers are involved in work on the haciendas.” In remote regions such as Chontales, the farms w ­ ere run by Walker’s local supporters. The seized estates ­were critical to the well-­being of the filibuster army, as they provided a regular supply of provisions. They also generated much-­needed funds for the state. This was especially true of cacao estates, which produced monthly incomes of up to five thousand dollars. In Rivas alone, they ­were to generate over a million dollars in revenue. Apparently the filibuster regime sold some of this cacao on the lucrative market of New Orleans.44 Well before the projected auction of January 1857, a few confiscated properties had been acquired by U.S. colonists. One of the first purchases occurred in August 1856, when the Mas­sa­chu­setts native Levi Hamblin bought a mansion in Granada seized from a s­ ister of Walker’s alleged lover. With his wife and their two teenage sons, Hamblin turned the property into a corn mill. Perhaps the colonist who most benefited from the confiscations was the New Yorker George Bowley, who had owned a general merchandise store in San Juan del Sur since 1851. By 1856 his business had come to generate annual profits of about ten thousand dollars. This capital allowed Bowley to purchase several confiscated h­ ouses in Granada and Rivas, as well as a cacao plantation in Rivas. Upon acquiring the estate, Bowley made huge profits exporting cacao to California and selling flour and other provisions to Walker’s army.45 Some properties w ­ ere bought by U.S.-­based investors. The best known was the former Louisana senator Pierre Soulé, who visited Nicaragua for two weeks in August. The ardent U.S. expansionist’s main objective was to finalize a $500,000 loan that Walker sought to secure from the Bank of Louisiana. But Soulé also bought, for $50,000, the cacao estate “Mercedes” in Nandaime (fifteen miles south of Granada) and indicated that Nicaragua would be his new home within six months. For El Nicaraguense this purchase underscored how Walker’s realm was attracting U.S. colonists of national stature.46 Reinforcing this belief was the colonization proj­ect that Walker had just forged with two other prominent U.S. expansionists: William Cazneau and his wife, the journalist Jane Mc­Manus Storm (aka Cora Montgomery), who is considered to have coined the term Manifest Destiny. Already in



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1853 the c­ ouple had sought to create a U.S. settler colony in the Gulf of Fonseca, which borders El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The Cazneaus reached Granada on the eve of Walker’s inauguration and left on the day of Soulé’s arrival. During their five-­week visit, the ­couple signed a contract authorizing them to bring one thousand white U.S. colonists who w ­ ere to create settlements along the transit route. They also bought a coffee plantation on the island of Zapatera in Lake Nicaragua. The ­couple returned to the United States confident that Walker’s land policies w ­ ere irrevocably Americanizing the isthmus.47 What the Cazneaus overlooked was how Nicaraguans profited from the confiscations. Both elite victims of Walker’s land policies and El Nicaraguense noted that seized estates ended up in local hands, and especially in ­those of parvenu elites. Yet the zeal with which the confiscations ­were implemented by popu­lar caudillos suggests that they benefited peasants as well. We have no evidence that the regime redistributed land to the poor, but we do know that popu­lar caudillos hoped Walker would block elites from encroaching on peasant land. It is pos­si­ble that Herrera and Sandino allocated some confiscated land to the original peasant o­ wners. This might help explain why the regime planned to sell only half of the seized estates. The confiscation campaign indirectly provided land to the poor, as some exiled landlords sought to circumvent the decree by leaving their estates to their workers. And the campaign’s benefits for the poor went beyond land, as pro-­Walker caudillos distributed products from confiscated estates to their followers. Most of all, they used the campaign to disempower an elite that in recent years had undercut peasant autonomy.48 ­Because the confiscations polarized rural society they caused much vio­lence. The killing of Herrera stands out, but ­there ­were countless other violent acts. A filibuster noted how peasants pushed his men to confiscate land from the rich but also conceded that the seizures engendered “­great disgust and odium t­ oward us.” Hence, Walker’s officers often used force to carry them out. Vio­lence occurred especially when rogue filibusters despoiled estates “of every­thing that could be carried away.” 49 For León’s Boletín Oficial this bloodshed reflected Walker’s broader efforts to “extinguish the Central American race.” In real­ity, the vio­ lence resulted mainly from the way the confiscations destabilized rural

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patron-­client networks led by wealthy landlords. By driving rural elites into exile, the campaign enabled middling actors to vie for vacant leadership positions. One such actor was Sandino, who seems to have tried to take over the network led by his “godfather” (compadre) Justo Lugo. Such jockeying engendered vio­lence and helped to spread banditry—­especially ­cattle rustling. At the same time, loyal clients of expelled landlords used force to defend the interests of their patrons, as was true of the ambush that led to Herrera’s murder.50 This rural upheaval points to a peculiar aspect of Walker’s settler revolution. The vio­lence marking such revolutions often stems from the need of colonists to maintain race-­based land and ­labor policies to defend their privileges, and Walker clearly wanted his colonists to acquire seized estates. Yet his campaign differed from the violent dispossession of indigenous ­peoples in North Amer­i­ca and elsewhere, as it was not driven by the “logic of elimination” so central to settler colonialism. Instead it called for the regeneration of both land and the native masses. Walker’s regime never truly codified race into its land policies. Rather than the product of racism and the institutionalization of settler privilege, the campaign’s vio­ lence resulted from its assault on local power structures—­vio­lence more typical of social revolutions.51

IV Race also played an ambivalent role in another dimension of the filibuster revolution: the moralizing crusade waged by Walker’s reformers. Upon his inauguration as president, Walker proclaimed that moral reforms would drive the filibuster revolution. His faith in moral uplift reflected the strength of antebellum reform, but it was also shared in par­tic­u­lar ways by his non-­U.S. followers. This was true of his former Nicaraguan elite allies who hoped that moral reforms would rid the poor of their alleged idleness. Even a radical like Agüero believed in moral uplift, albeit as a way of empowering the masses. Upon becoming governor of Granada, he stressed the urgency of waging a crusade against public immorality in the name of “social regeneration.”52 Walker’s reformers typically linked their moral crusade with democracy promotion. As a U.S. colonist noted, “a few American churches and



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school-­houses now would . . . ​de­moc­ra­tize the State [and] give an impulse to all t­ hose progressive ideas that must more generally prevail in this country before it is completely revolutionized.” Yet a key difference separated the moral reformers: if the Latin Americans w ­ ere largely motivated by po­liti­cal ideas, their U.S. counter­parts w ­ ere driven by the religious and racial ideas of Manifest Destiny. A profound tension s­ haped Walker’s moral revolution. This time it polarized not just local society but his movement itself.53 Walker’s followers did not wait ­until he seized the presidency to launch their moral crusade. El Nicaraguense had long advocated for moral reforms, including the need for modern prisons and female education. It denounced the effects of “idleness” on poor Nicaraguans, blaming it for such ills as “gambling, drunkenness, debauchery, [and] the most unbridled licentiousness.” The paper’s moral campaign was seconded by elite Nicaraguans, as when a letter writer stressed the importance of moralizing the “masses” so they could develop better work habits and greater “national pride.” This concern did not lead Walker’s puppet, President Rivas, to enact moral reforms. The filibuster army proved a bit more active. Early on its leadership demanded “moral rectitude,” for a “quarter of a million” Central Americans w ­ ere “sitting in judgment” on Walker’s men and “if our conduct ensures their favorable report, we are to be received with open arms.” Above all, the army tried to rein in its heavy drinking culture. Rather than reform alcoholics, it simply court-­martialed them.54 The army did enact moral reforms in response to the cholera epidemic. ­These reforms ­were spearheaded by the director of its medical department, Israel Moses. The Jewish army doctor forced urban residents to disinfect their h­ ouses with lime in order to combat the sewage and garbage fumes allegedly causing cholera to spread. His department also curbed consumption of fruit and liquor, which ­were thought to predispose the body to the disease (though it is actually contracted by consuming food or ­water contaminated with feces containing the Vibrio cholerae bacteria). The medical department mainly urged natives to embrace the “sound rules of hygiene.” T ­ hese ­were mea­sures advocated by health reformers throughout the world who believed that cholera was spread less by contagion than unsanitary conditions, especially in poor neighborhoods. As a result, Moses’s mea­sures targeted the lifestyle of the urban

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masses, who he believed w ­ ere “sunken in . . . ​superstition.” In May he returned to New York a­ fter contracting cholera. His departure, coupled with the failed Costa Rican invasion and Walker’s conflict with León’s Liberal leaders, stalled the reform pro­cess.55 Once Walker seized the presidency in July 1856, the regime reignited its moral campaign. For El Nicaraguense uplift was now to occur mainly via public education—an issue dear to many Latin American and U.S. reformers, as both believed that public schools w ­ ere key sites for teaching morals and democracy to the masses. On the day of Walker’s inauguration, the paper publicized the government’s plan to establish a “national institute for the education of the Nicaraguan youth,” which was to be called the Walker Institute. Meant to turn teen­agers into “industrious men,” the institute promoted the “practice of social virtues and the faithful observance of moral duties” in order to rid Nicaragua of its “general demoralization.” In subsequent editions, El Nicaraguense reiterated the regime’s goal of promoting public education. As with much of Walker’s modernization agenda, the rhe­toric resulted in l­ ittle action.56 The regime’s public health campaign had more tangible effects. Following Moses’s departure, the campaign’s leadership fell to Granada’s governor, Francisco Agüero, who replicated the mea­sures of the Jewish doctor. The Cuban also expanded on them, as when he ordered the ­police to ensure that Granadans kept clean the public space directly outside their homes and that their yards not be filled with the remains of butchered animals, which emitted gases “detrimental to health.” He cracked down on public immorality, paying special attention to the youth. His ­orders to the police could be quite specific, for example, to prevent boys from frequenting gambling dens. They could also be broad, such as when he instructed the police to monitor parents accused of failing to inculcate good morals in their ­children.57 Agüero linked his campaign against immorality with Walker’s revolution precisely ­because he thought that “social regeneration” could be achieved only via moral uplift. As his journalistic work in New York shows, Agüero believed that the “proletarian” was held back not just by “misery” but also by “ignorance” and “superstition” rooted in popu­lar religiosity. To “emancipate” the poor he advocated for a socialist revolution, as socialism was the best way “to improve, moralize, and instruct



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the most ­humble classes.” How his crusade impacted Eu­ro­pean radicals remains unclear, though it is safe to say that it hardly enthralled ­those put off by the moralism of U.S. reformers. His vision was shared by leading Nicaraguan Liberals, who maintained that moral uplift was key to empowering the poor and to democracy. Yet their uplifting efforts reflected their condescension ­toward the poor and an unspoken desire to control them.58 Control was on the mind of the filibuster regime when it attacked the “immoral” lifestyle of Walker’s own men. The regime sought to promote sobriety within the army, and the initiative now came from the ranks. About ten days ­after Walker’s inauguration, some of his troops petitioned him to amend the army’s regulations so they could punish more harshly the drunkards in their midst. Walker gladly obliged and ordered his officers “to see properly punished socially as well as legally the intemperance which is calculated to bring the army into contempt and disgrace.”59 Much “disgrace” was brought on by the heavy drinkers among Walker’s civilian colonists. Granada was notorious for its rowdy saloons, which often doubled as gambling dens, as was true of the Walker House tavern and the Lone Star saloon, both located on the plaza. A temperance activist went so far as to claim that 90 ­percent of the countless colonists who died of cholera “­were ­either intoxicated or had been dissipating . . . ​previous to the attack.” Habitual drunkenness among civilian colonists damaged key businesses and led many to quarrel with Nicaraguans. Walker had ample reason to fret about how drunkenness hurt his movement.60 To sober up the colonists, Walker banned the sale of liquor and ordered the closing of all bars in Granada. This mea­sure was modeled a­ fter the controversial Maine Law of 1851, the first statewide prohibition act in the United States. El Nicaraguense claimed the mea­sure a success and stated that it was “anxious to hear what ‘the reformers’ [in the U.S.] ­will say when they hear of the fact.” Clearly the regime was attuned to the power­ful U.S. temperance movement and ­eager to be applauded for its action.61 Walker risked much with his antiliquor campaign. It angered not only hard-­drinking colonists but also the many Nicaraguans dependent on the liquor trade. Local memories of elite efforts to curb intemperance among the poor w ­ ere still fresh; it was thought that t­ hose campaigns had helped fuel the popu­lar rebellions of the late 1840s. The filibuster regime itself

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relied heavi­ly on revenues generated from taxes on imported spirits and locally produced liquor. ­After a month of dry rule, the beleaguered regime revoked its ban on the sale of alcohol and allowed the reopening of several saloons. El Nicaraguense conceded that this reversal “did more to reconcile discontented p ­ eople to stay ­here,” suggesting that the antiliquor ordinance had greatly alienated Walker’s followers.62 The regime’s reversal pushed temperance activists to intensify their strug­gle. They now sought to convince other colonists that total abstinence (“teetotalism”) alone would liberate them from “the evils originating from the use of ardent spirits.” They also emphasized that “the abuse of alcoholic liquors” was a public health hazard fueling the cholera epidemic. Their larger aim was to improve society, for they deemed intemperance the main source of “poverty, damnation, and tyranny.” While they drew much strength from Walker’s teetotalism, they also benefited from the arrival of prominent U.S. temperance lecturers. None was more impor­tant than the Methodist minister Israel Diehl, a national leader of the largest U.S. temperance society, the all-­male Sons of Temperance.63 Diehl immediately established a chapter of the Sons of Temperance in Granada—­its first branch outside the United States and the British Empire. The chapter had about fifty male members and included military and civilian colonists but no Nicaraguans. Evincing their close ties with Walker’s army, the Sons met at the office of Col­o­nel George Hall, head of the Ordnance Department. If the chapter was anything like its U.S. counter­parts, it sought to ensure teetotalism by applying peer pressure and maintaining alcohol-­free social centers that sponsored plays, debates, concerts, dances, and dinners. Insisting that drunkenness promoted vices, especially gambling and promiscuity, the Sons believed they w ­ ere 64 waging a “­great moral revolution.”  The crusade of Diehl’s group seemed to dovetail with Agüero’s strug­gle against immorality. In real­ity, both campaigns exposed a growing ideological split within Walker’s movement. If Agüero’s efforts reflected the ideals of liberalism and socialism shared by many of his Cuban, Eu­ro­ pean, and Nicaraguan comrades, Diehl’s group was driven by U.S. evangelicalism. The arrival of Diehl reflected the growing interest of U.S. Protestant missions in Walker’s cause. Two other Methodist missionaries had recently come to proselytize: William Ferguson of Louisi-

F igu r e 8. 3 ​Print valorizing “Love, Purity & Fidelity,” which was the motto of the Sons of Temperance. The image shows a young man standing between a ­woman dressed in white, holding a glass of ­water, and a ­woman holding a glass of red wine. The second w ­ oman is pulling the man ­toward a side ­table with alcohol, cards, and dice; a live snake is coiled around its base. Source: “­Grand, National, Temperance Banner: Dedicated to ­every Son & D ­ aughter of Temperance, throughout the Union” (New York: N. Currier, 1851). Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photo­graphs Division, Washington, D.C. (LC-­DIG-­ppmsca-32722).

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ana’s Methodist Episcopal Church and David Wheeler of New York’s American Bible Society. Both ­were ­later joined by U.S. missionaries from other churches. Although all embraced Manifest Destiny, they represented distinct forms of evangelicalism.65 Such differences meant ­little to Central American Catholics besieged by U.S. Protestantism. Reinforcing the view that Walker’s movement was a Protestant force out to destroy Catholicism was the growing religious bent of the filibuster army. Shortly a­ fter Walker launched his revolution, he ordered all officers and soldiers to attend “divine worship.” The ser­ vices w ­ ere performed by the army’s chaplain, George May, who hailed from a prominent Protestant ­family of New York City steeped in moral reform. Local residents w ­ ere enthralled with the hymns sung at May’s ser­ vices, which w ­ ere open to civilians. The army’s growing piety was noted beyond Granada, as in the town of Masaya, where soldiers regularly attended ser­v ices and “like the pilgrims of old . . . ​erected some good works.” Since this religiosity was highlighted by El Nicaraguense, which circulated throughout the isthmus, it enhanced Central American views that Walker’s army was a Protestant threat.66 Actually, Walker was anything but an anti-­Catholic crusader, and he insisted on maintaining good relations with the clergy. In September 1856 he appointed an Irish priest as the army’s Catholic chaplain. Yet, as U.S. evangelicals came to play a greater role in his revolution, Walker’s support among local priests waned; the cleric Juan Manuel Loredo soon abandoned his post as Walker’s minister of the trea­sury.67 As the evangelical turn intensified, El Nicaraguense increasingly highlighted the superiority of U.S. Anglo-­Saxons over Central Americans. For the first time the paper described natives in openly racist terms, as “the dark and haughty Spaniards,” “the copper-­colored, half-­clad half-­ breeds,” and “the inferiorly developed Indian.” Even pro-­Walker Eu­ro­ pean residents now feared that the filibuster president had become “a vulgar Know-­Nothing” who disparaged Central Americans and non-­ Anglo-­Saxon Eu­ro­pe­a ns alike. The regime’s new emphasis on racial differences had much to do with the growing influence of evangelical reformers in Walker’s ranks. True, their moral crusade sought mainly to regulate the be­hav­ior of his colonists. Yet this aim reflected the belief of



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U.S. reformers that the Anglo-­Saxon race was, as El Nicaraguense put it, “the ­great moral redeemer of the world.” 68 The exclusionary bent of Walker’s moral revolution is perhaps best encapsulated in the membership of Granada’s Sons of Temperance, which consisted solely of U.S. natives. This composition contrasted with the multinational leaderships of other socie­ties that had emerged at the start of Walker’s rule. Even the ultra-­expansionist Young American Pioneer Club included Eu­ro­pe­ans and Nicaraguans. The growing racial differentiation was the backdrop for Walker’s shocking decree that relegalized slavery.69

V When Nicaraguans opened El Nicaraguense on September 6, 1856, they prob­ably would not have been surprised to see that Walker ordered the arrest of vagrants in order “to promote industry and prevent the idleness which leads to vice, disorder and crime.” A ­ fter all, the mea­sure built on previous Nicaraguan laws. A week l­ater, the regime passed a related decree sentencing local laborers who ­violated their contracts “to forced ­labor on the public works.” This mea­sure, too, drew on prior legislation. Such decrees ­were integral to the developmental and moralizing proj­ects then pursued by liberal regimes in Latin Amer­i­ca. But if the older laws had usually targeted the poor, Walker’s touched all Nicaraguans. In so d ­ oing, his revolution ended up institutionalizing settler privilege. More impor­ tant, by codifying race into its ­labor policies, the filibuster regime paved the way for the relegalization of slavery. This act led many in Nicaragua and abroad to deem Walker’s cause not just evil but also retrograde. No other country had relegalized African slavery ­a fter it was abolished. Walker and his supporters in the U.S. South nonetheless insisted that slavery and revolution ­were compatible.70 Walker’s shift from antivagrancy to slavery was swift. At first, his vagrancy decree affected natives and colonists alike. A week ­later, El Nicaraguense suddenly stated that it applied to Nicaraguans only. The paper estimated that about “one-­third of the men in Nicaragua ­will fall ­under the effects of the vagrant act; and another large proportion w ­ ill find themselves

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subject to the second [concerning the violation of l­abor contracts].” Then, on September 22, the filibuster regime passed the decree relegalizing slavery—or so it seemed. The confusion stemmed from the decree’s wording: it nullified all decrees passed by the Central American Federation of 1824–1838. One such decree had been the abolition of slavery.71 Some of Walker’s supporters maintained that the decree did not revive slavery. Buttressing their belief was Walker’s long-­standing opposition to the expansion of slavery. Among ­t hose who most loudly defended his Free-­Soiler image was the former envoy Ephraim George Squier. Echoing ­others, Squier maintained that “slavery can only exist in virtue of positive laws” and that proslavery expansionists ­were brazenly misrepresenting the filibuster’s decree. ­Little did he know that the Walker regime had subsequently stated that “the right to hold slaves is acknowledged by the Government of Nicaragua.”72 Since Walker had been a staunch Free-­Soiler, it is hard to explain his slavery decree. In his 1860 book, Walker insists he had been a proslavery expansionist all along and that most of his men had left their homes “in defense of slavery.” Yet three years earlier, he noted that “it has been incorrectly asserted that I and my comrades emigrated to Nicaragua for the express purpose of establishing negro slavery.” Only a­ fter residing in the country for fifteen months did he seemingly come to believe that slavery was necessary for “redeeming from barbarism one of the fairest countries of the earth.”73 Walker’s slavery decree stunned his men. As one filibuster recalled, his comrades “often discussed the conditions in Nicaragua . . . ​yet in none of ­these conversations was it ever intimated by any one that African slavery was a preconceived purpose or an active motive in the coming of Walker to Nicaragua.” He rightly added that El Nicaraguense “never referred to the subject as a government policy.” On the contrary, the paper denounced Walker’s enemies for suggesting that he harbored a proslavery agenda. So firm did his Free-­Soil credentials appear in fall 1856 that he continued to attract prominent antislavery reformers such as Diehl.74 The only time the Walker regime justified its slavery decree was in an article published in El Nicaraguense on the eve of the mea­sure’s promulgation. The paper’s editors presented the decree not as a sudden departure from Walker’s previous agenda but as part and parcel of his ongoing



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revolution to Americanize the isthmus. Given the alleged idleness of ­Nicaraguans, the editors maintained, the only way to develop the region’s economy u­ nder the aegis of white U.S. colonists was by importing “negro” slaves. El Nicaraguense stressed that Africans w ­ ere “a race of ­people who are happiest when fulfilling their mission of ­labor” and destined by “nature” to carry out fieldwork in the tropics; the paper claimed that white colonists had too broad an intellect “to allow that [they] should drudge.” Stating that even with Walker’s recent antivagrancy decree “the ­people of Nicaragua ­w ill not work; and it is useless to calculate upon it,” El Nicaraguense concluded that the regime’s revolutionary effort to put Walker’s U.S. colonists at the helm of Nicaraguan society hinged on the reestablishment of African slavery.75 The connection the paper made between slavery and revolution might seem jarring, for the former is now identified with regression. Yet despite the widespread abolition of slavery in the Western Hemi­sphere, it was still considered a dynamic economic system in the 1850s. Not only w ­ ere the slaveholding economies of Brazil, Cuba, and the U.S. South booming and implementing the latest technologies, but their slave populations had never been larger. The perceived vitality of slavery contrasted sharply with the economic decline of postemancipation socie­ties—­especially Haiti and Jamaica. This contrast frustrated antislavery forces, for it suggested, as the London Times lamented, that “never was the prospect of emancipation more distant than now.”76 Yet it was not the prob­lem of l­ abor scarcity alone that drove Walker to embrace slavery. If so, his regime could have followed the Costa Rican government or the British in the Ca­rib­bean by importing “coolies” (indentured workers) from China and India. Such an approach would have saved Walker huge prob­lems, for t­ here was ­little international opposition to the coolie trade. Moreover, it would have been more ­v iable—­a nd cheaper—to obtain coolies than to circumvent the ban on the African slave trade.77 That more than just the l­ abor question motivated Walker’s slavery decree becomes clearer in his book. T ­ here he maintained that the decree was designed to curb U.S. desires to annex Nicaragua, as Congress would be unwilling to incorporate a slaveholding territory. Hence did some of his antislavery supporters in the United States believe that Walker

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proclaimed his decree solely to secure the in­de­pen­dence of his polity and that he had no intention of implementing it. This was true of the ­A frican American John Rapier, who had lived in the filibuster’s realm.78 ­Those who knew Walker in Nicaragua similarly believed that he never intended to reestablish slavery. In their eyes, the slavery decree was merely a ploy to obtain funds from U.S. slaveholders. Most blamed it on Soulé, who visited Nicaragua a month prior to its promulgation; the former Louisiana senator was well known for coauthoring the Ostend Manifesto of 1854, which called for the United States to forcibly annex Cuba as a slave state if Spain refused to sell it. A French resident of Granada noted that Walker had long said “he did not ­favor slavery” and relegalized it only “to please Mr. Soulé and his friends, the rich slaveholders.” Such views quickly made the rounds of antislavery U.S. newspapers, as when the New York Tribune denounced Walker for throwing himself “unblushingly into the arms of Pierre Soulé, who has induced him to throw all his influence . . . ​into the hands of Southern demagogues and slaveholders.” De­cades ­later a filibuster officer insisted that “Walker from the beginning was opposed to . . . ​reestablishing slavery but Soulé talked so much that Walker fi­nally gave in.”79 While many U.S. slaveholders mistook Walker for an annexationist, Soulé knew better. He nevertheless had ample reasons to believe that Walker’s slavery decree would buttress the slave regime of the U.S. South. It would enable slaveholders to acquire plantations in a region destined to become, as Soulé put it, “the seat of empire of the commerce of the world.” And since the decree legalized the import of slaves, it boosted Southern efforts to reopen the slave trade. Given the high demand of slaves in the United States and Nicaragua’s l­abor scarcity, slaveholders would have likely acquired their slaves in Cuba, where they could be bought at less than half the U.S. price. (The island continued to receive African slaves thanks largely to Portuguese and Spanish slavers operating clandestinely out of New Orleans and New York ­under the U.S. flag.) Walker’s decree would have helped Southern slaveholders solve a social conflict brewing in their midst, as the cheap acquisition of slaves and land in Nicaragua would have allowed the growing mass of unhappy whites who did not own slaves to realize a dream that seemed increasingly unattainable in the U.S. South: to join the master class.80



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Most impor­tant, Walker’s slave empire would have torpedoed transatlantic efforts to encircle the South with antislavery polities. Soulé was not, as some charged, a “disunionist” advocating for a “Slavery federation, embracing our own Southern States, Mexico, Central Amer­i­ca, and Cuba.” But like other Southerners, he feared that British and U.S. abolitionists ­were trying to create, as a Mas­sa­chu­setts congressman put it, “a cordon of f­ ree States” that would lead slavery to “die of inanition; or, like the scorpion, seeing no means of escape, sting itself to death.” 81 ­Because Soulé’s visit garnered so much attention, observers overlooked the pos­si­ble influence of William and Jane Cazneau, who visited Granada at about the same time as the Louisianan but spent three more weeks t­ here. Like Soulé, the ­couple promoted the expansion of U.S. slavery. But if Soulé sought to strengthen the South’s slave regime, the Cazneaus aimed to abolish it. Specifically, they hoped that Southern slaveholders would migrate with their slaves overseas, where the latter would eventually be emancipated. By draining slaves away from the South, the nation’s conflict over slavery would resolve itself peacefully, or so the Cazneaus hoped. This helps explain why they also championed the settlement of U.S. f­ ree blacks in the Ca­rib­be­an: their vision resonated with nascent Republican calls for the creation of African American colonies in Central Amer­i­ca. Of course, Republicans opposed colonization schemes involving slaveholders. Yet the main advocate of black colonization, Congressman Frank Blair of Missouri, came to trumpet a scheme similar to that of the ­Cazneaus. No m ­ atter how much the ­couple was identified with slavery expansion, they shared the same goal as leading Republicans: to end slavery and turn the United States into a white nation by removing African Americans to the tropics.82 Like Soulé, the Cazneaus left no rec­ords of their meetings with Walker. But the c­ ouple clearly discussed colonization with Walker, for they had signed a contract with his regime to bring one thousand white colonists from the United States; since the signing occurred prior to Walker’s abolition of slavery, it made sense that it failed to mention slaves. The Caz­ neaus could have only welcomed Walker’s opposition to annexation, as it made their scheme even more v­ iable by obviating the explosive question of ­whether Nicaragua should be incorporated into the United States as a f­ ree or slave state.83

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Given his Free-­Soil background, Walker was prob­ably inclined more t­oward the c­ ouple’s idea of U.S. expansion than to Soulé’s view on the issue. At the very least, he may have appreciated how the Cazneaus’ vision appealed to a larger sector of the U.S. public, as it spoke to slaveholders and their opponents. Moreover, the director of Walker’s Department of Colonization, the antislavery Joseph Fabens, was a longtime associate of the Cazneaus and deeply involved in their Nicaragua colonization proj­ect. And though the ­couple’s colonists ­were to be white, Fabens reportedly sought to recruit ­free African Americans on their behalf.84 In all likelihood Walker gambled on the hope that his slavery decree would appease two rival U.S. groups whose support he desperately needed: wealthy slaveholders and t­ hose bent on ridding their country of both slavery and the nation’s black population. The latter goal was understood by Northern opinion makers. A good example was New York’s main German newspaper, which endorsed Walker’s decree by stressing that the abolition of slavery in border states could only be realized “if we provide the black population of ­those states with a drainage channel to regions where their ­labor could be used to greater advantage and where they would not compete with white workers.” 85 As expected, Walker’s slavery decree was celebrated by the Southern press, and the flow of Southerners to Nicaragua increased markedly. Texans, in par­tic­u­lar, hoped to turn Walker’s realm into a “way station” for the slave trade, which they deemed necessary for the expansion of their cotton industry. Thanks to this support, Walker’s army withstood the Central American onslaught for many months. On the other hand, Soulé failed to cajole Southern elites into buying the all-­important bonds floated by Walker’s regime, perhaps ­because they doubted its ability to survive the war.86 In the North the outcome of Walker’s g­ amble was similarly mixed. At first, his decree triggered a fierce backlash in the antislavery press. A New York-­based journal noted that if Walker’s men gained much sympathy with the U.S. public by styling themselves as “soldiers of liberty,” the decree “strips them of that mask, and they w ­ ill henceforth, we hope, be held in the horror and detestation they deserve.” The decree was even condemned by the pro-­Walker paper with the largest circulation, the New



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York Herald, which had championed Walker as a Free-­Soil “regenerator” spreading democracy. Northern papers so fiercely denounced him b­ ecause they deemed slavery not only an evil institution but one that was “becoming obsolete among civilized nations.” Many Northerners felt ­betrayed by Walker; as “one of the deceived” wrote to the New York Tribune, Walker’s “most effective supporters and best soldiers, have been supplied from the North. . . . ​Artisans and agriculturalists have gone ­there with their families—­Germans, and Swiss, who fleeing from oppression abroad, ­will be bitterly disappointed to find the slave-­block in the land of their adoption.” 87 Yet the North’s anger at its former hero abated over the next months as Walker’s regime seemed to distance itself from the slavery decree. Some filibuster officials continued to promote it to Southern politicians and newspapers, but Walker and El Nicaraguense said ­l ittle in its defense. More impor­tant, the regime did nothing to advance slavery. Its administrative capacity may have been compromised by the escalating war. But if that was the case, why was the regime able to implement the antivagrancy law? 88 Given Walker’s inaction on implementing the slavery decree, the Northern press increasingly doubted the sincerity of his proslavery turn. A good example is the New York Herald, which now stressed that his decree was a foolish ploy to secure Southern aid. At the most, so the paper believed, the decree would lead to “the establishment of a system of Indian peonage, such as prevails in the South American republics.” Doubts about Walker’s proslavery stance perhaps explain the deafening silence of the abolitionist Sarah Pellet, who had long championed Walker as a prodemocracy crusader.89 Walker’s failure to implement the slavery decree helps explain why hardly any of his antislavery followers in Nicaragua abandoned him. They could see that few if any U.S. slaveholders migrated with slaves, even though some U.S. newspapers reported their imminent departure. It was with good reason that deserters harshly critical of Walker rarely mentioned his slavery decree. Among the notable antislavery adherents who remained at his side ­were the Cuban Francisco Agüero, the Swiss socialist Karl Bürkli, the German Forty-­Eighter Adolf Schwartz, and the New Yorker John Wilkinson Sleight, a longtime member of the American

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Anti-­Slavery Society. The decree turned few radical Nicaraguans of color against Walker, perhaps ­because they, too, saw that his regime did nothing to realize it. Of greater concern to poorer Nicaraguans was the regime’s enforcement of its antivagrancy decree.90 Walker’s proslavery ­gamble hurt him the most in the international realm. To his surprise, the slavery decree alienated France and G ­ reat Britain, whose support he had been courting. Walker knew that both powers w ­ ere key to enforcing the ban on the slave trade, but he thought they would accept his decree, as it would inhibit U.S. annexation of Central Amer­i­ca and help maintain their influence in a geopo­liti­cal hot spot. Moreover, both Eu­ro­pean powers promoted the trade of Asian coolies and African “apprentices” who, for many contemporaries, hardly differed from slaves. Walker claimed that he had urged the French to bring from their African colonies “apprentices to the ports of Nicaragua, thus furnishing ­labor to the latter republic, and increasing the trade of French ships.” Ultimately his decree only boosted British and French support for his Central American foes. Though both powers appeared no longer as adamant about persecuting transatlantic slavers, their opposition to the slave trade remained stronger than had been assumed by Walker.91 Walker gravely underestimated how the decree would give his Central American enemies a power­ful rallying cry. The region’s elites had long sought to mobilize the masses for the impending war against Walker by claiming that the filibusters ­were bent on enslaving them. ­Here, however, enslavement meant subjugation; with Walker’s decree, the term suddenly meant chattel slavery. As a Nicaraguan foe of Walker admitted, the decree was a blessing in disguise, for the filibuster failed to realize how strongly Central Americans opposed the return of “that monstrous, impious, and inhuman institution.” This fear was noted by Walker’s men; as when one said, “If ­there was anything wanting to stimulate our enemies and unite them in a common cause to fight to the death against us . . . ​[ Walker] has given them ample provocation in his decree re-­ establishing slavery.”92 Among the first to exploit Walker’s decree was León’s Boletín Oficial, which publicized an antislavery song designed to mobilize popu­lar support against the filibusters. Celebrating Nicaraguans for forging a patria where “no men are born servile” and “blacks and whites see themselves



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as b­ rothers,” the song stressed the need for a “war to death” against Walker’s efforts to turn them into “slaves.” It did not neglect to highlight his “horrible betrayal,” as Nicaraguans had “offered him our fertile lands and the lake” in exchange for U.S.-­style pro­gress in the form of “the telegraph, steamers [and] railroads.” The song’s likely author, Juan Iribarren, was among the Granadan oligarchs who had offered the presidency to Walker following his conquest of October 1855. Never did they imagine that filibuster rule might culminate in the return of slavery.93 Walker’s regime acted as if it had never relegalized slavery, and El Nicaraguense upheld an image of the filibuster revolution that erased any trace of the decree. Right ­after the Boletín Oficial issued Iribarren’s song, Walker’s paper publicized two songs identified with abolitionism. The first was “The P ­ eople’s Advent” by the British socialist Gerald Massey. ­A lthough the song does not deal with slavery, it was popu­lar among U.S. abolitionists, as it championed freedom, h­ uman brotherhood, and the power of the p ­ eople. The second was “La flor del café” (The coffee flower), a love song that implicitly celebrates the antislavery strug­gle. Its author was the Cuban poet Plácido, a ­free mulatto whose execution in 1844 made him a martyr for the strug­gle against colonialism and slavery throughout the Atlantic world.94 By publicizing both songs, El Nicaraguense tried to reassure Walker’s antislavery followers that he remained the same Free-­ Soiler bent on maintaining his regime’s revolutionary assault on elite power as well as its crusade to uplift the local masses. Such reassurances became critical once the Central American war resumed in late September 1856.

9 The Fall

Following the failed Costa Rican invasion of April 1856, the Central American war came to a halt. Guatemalan and Salvadoran troops, who had begun their march to Nicaragua a­ fter the Costa Rican retreat, did capture León in July. Yet the fierce rainy season forced them to stay put in León. This so-­called allied army had been forged by Guatemala’s president Rafael Carrera, who deemed the filibusters a grave threat to Central American sovereignty and had long been working to expel them from the isthmus. During their lengthy stay in León, the Guatemalan and Salvadoran leaders of the allied army reminded their mestizo, mulatto, and Indian soldiers not only of Walker’s desire to rule all of Central Amer­i­ca but also of the plight of nonwhites in the newly conquered U.S. West. They beseeched their soldiers to wage a war to the death to stave off what they feared would be their fate ­under filibuster rule: extermination. Once the rains tapered off in October, the allied army moved quickly into the Nicaraguan heartland, which was u­ nder filibuster control. The renewed war proved to be one of the most devastating in Central American history—­one that also took more U.S. lives than any other international war involving U.S. combatants between 1846 and 1898.1 252



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­T here was nothing unusual about the war’s brutality, for global vio­lence marked the mid-­nineteenth ­century in China’s Taiping Rebellion, the Crimean War, and the U.S. Civil War, as well as in numerous anti-­imperial conflicts such as the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the New Zealand Wars, and the Xhosa Wars in South Africa. The wars of the era resulted mainly from imperial crises, with Eurasian vio­lence expressing the “continuing crisis of land-­based empires” and that of the Amer­i­cas stemming from the “consequences of the protracted and gradual crisis of the ­great eighteenth-­century sea-­borne empires of the Atlantic.” Yet the Central American war against Walker’s “empire of liberty” reveals that the vio­lence also resulted from new imperial formations and ideologies.2 The vio­lence of war stems not only from structural f­ actors but also from choices made by its participants. If Walker first showed restraint in order to maintain local support, his authoritarian bent led him to make choices that intensified filibuster vio­lence. Just as often, the decision was a response to the action of o­ thers, ­either by his enemies or his men. Walker and his U.S. followers eventually reframed the war as a racial conflict of “Anglo-­Saxons” versus Central American “half-­breeds.” Over the course of the war his cause also became ever more identified with slavery. Ultimately the war led not only to Walker’s demise but to the erasure of his role as a liberal imperialist.

I As the rainy season neared its end in October  1856, about sixteen hundred filibusters faced an allied army of about twenty-­two hundred men. While the allies consisted mainly of Guatemalan and Salvadoran troops, they also included Leonese Liberal Party members who had turned against Walker. The allies had easily seized León from Walker, yet it was the filibusters who approached the conflict with greater confidence. The optimism of the largely Eu­ro­pean and U.S. troops reflected in part their sense of racial superiority. It did not hurt that they possessed modern r­ ifles (Minié, Mississippi, and Sharps) that had greater firepower, precision, and range than the muskets of the allies. Further buoying their spirits was the continuous influx of U.S. recruits via the transit—­a lifeline secure in their hands, as Costa Rica remained para­lyzed by the cholera

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epidemic and unrest resulting from its failed invasion of Nicaragua. But perhaps what most drove the filibusters’ optimism was their belief that the Nicaraguan masses w ­ ere on their side.3 The Central American allies had reasons to feel confident, too. Hailing from countries plagued by warfare, they tended to be more ­battle tested than most of Walker’s recruits. The June revolt of Leonese Liberals against Walker allowed the Guatemalans and Salvadorans to claim that they w ­ ere not invaders but allies seeking to expel the U.S. intruders. They w ­ ere helped by the recent rise of filibuster vio­lence, which alienated more and more Nicaraguans. Walker’s decision to execute his former ally Mariano Salazar was fatal; this leading Leonese Liberal had been captured while crossing the Gulf of Fonseca and his death sent shockwaves throughout the region. Walker’s Nicaraguan enemies hoped the violent bent of his rule would fi­nally open the eyes of their compatriots to the hypocritical nature of his cause. As one such Nicaraguan put it, the filibusters “speak with g­ reat emphasis about the enhancement of the country, morality, honor, philanthropy, civilization, [and] democracy. . . . ​In real­ity, they should say: we are assassins, thieves, drunkards, [and] immoral beings.” 4 Yet the issue of local support for Walker also made the allies leery about ­going to ­battle. A ­ fter all, many Nicaraguans had helped the filibusters repel the Costa Rican invasion. Moreover, the lengthy stay of Guatemalan and Salvadoran troops in León engendered much conflict with the local population. At the same time, Central American efforts to reconcile Nicaragua’s Conservative and Liberal elites stalled a­ fter Liberal peasants in Nueva Segovia murdered the former Conservative president José María Estrada, who had recently returned from Honduras. Since the assassins reportedly ­were followers of Walker’s ally José María Valle, the allied leadership fretted that disgruntled Nicaraguan Liberals might return to the filibuster’s fold.5 The Conservative governments of El Salvador and Guatemala worried about their own home fronts, too. In both countries, the liberal opposition had backed Walker’s rise to power. Such support persisted ­after the war’s outbreak, as when in December 1856 pro-­Walker slogans mysteriously appeared on the walls of several Guatemalan towns. Both governments feared that the filibuster’s secret agents could “seduce” the local population to rise up and undermine their war efforts. They could easily



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see the risks of waging war against Walker by means of Costa Rica’s ill-­ fated invasion, which nearly led to the downfall of President Juan Rafael Mora’s government. The perils appeared even greater in El Salvador and Guatemala, as both ­were wracked by greater social conflicts than was true of Costa Rica at the time of its invasion. ­Because of ­these risks, Honduras long refused to provide the allies with troops, even though its president was Walker’s archenemy Santos Guardiola.6 With El Salvador and Guatemala bent on winning the war “with the lowest pos­si­ble number of victims,” their governments looked abroad for military support. They first turned to France, G ­ reat Britain, and Spain. This was a logical move, for the three powers had a strong military presence in the Ca­rib­bean and w ­ ere waging a diplomatic campaign against Walker. Yet the Eu­ro­pe­ans steadfastly refused to send troops, as they did not want to provoke a war with the United States. The Central Americans then sought to contract Eu­ro­pean mercenaries, to l­ittle avail. Their final hopes rested with South Amer­i­ca, where an anti-­U.S. alliance emerged in response to President Franklin Pierce’s recognition of the Walker regime. Yet h­ ere, too, their mission failed. Chile eventually sent a warship loaded with troops but it did not arrive u­ ntil two weeks a­ fter the war’s end.7 The Central American allies ultimately stood alone as they geared up for the war. Since their governments fretted about provoking antiwar sentiments, they tried hard to sell the war as a defense of religion and race. Via the pulpit, newspapers, circulars, and public meetings, government and religious authorities stressed that the filibusters ­were bent on destroying Catholicism and exterminating Central Americans. According to local testimonies, such exhortations motivated many to support the strug­gle against Walker. The allied army included chaplains who carried altars so that they could celebrate mass and religious festivals during the campaign. Many soldiers even had small crosses attached to their sombreros.8 On the other hand, the anti-­Walker campaign sought to turn Nicaraguans against the filibuster regime. A similar propaganda war had been unsuccessfully waged by Costa Rica during its failed invasion. Fortunately for the allies, their campaign benefited from recent changes occurring in Walker’s realm. It was most obviously helped by his recent proslavery decree. Although never implemented, the decree lent new meaning to the long-­standing assertion of Walker’s enemies that he sought to enslave

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Central Americans. The allied campaign also drew force from the Americanization of the filibuster state and the moral revolution waged by Walker’s group of Protestant reformers. Both actions suggested that the region’s populace would pay a heavy price for his stated goal of conquering all of Central Amer­i­ca. But the Central American allies ­were mainly helped by the dramatic decrease of Nicaraguans fighting on Walker’s behalf, as this bolstered their claim that the filibusters ­were ­simple invaders. For Walker this was a new development. True, his army never sought to enlist Nicaraguans— in sharp contrast to other imperial forces of the era, such as the British Indian Army, where over 80 ­percent of the troops ­were Indian. Yet Walker’s army had long been reinforced by Nicaragua’s own forces. Just six months earlier, Liberal troops had saved his regime by stymieing the Costa Rican invasion and defeating Nicaraguan Conservative exiles who had entered from Honduras. By October many of ­these troops had joined León’s Liberal leaders in turning against the filibuster. Moreover, Walker’s main Nicaraguan ally, José María Valle, fell into the hands of Leonese authorities. His capture was a huge blow to Walker as the popu­lar caudillo could easily mobilize local troops on his behalf. Despite t­ hese setbacks, Walker continued to refrain from pressing the poor into military ser­vice, as he knew how strongly they resented this Central American tradition. But if his anticonscription policy enjoyed local support, it allowed the allies to depict the filibusters as outsiders posing a mortal threat to Central Americans.9 To ­counter this dangerous image, Walker strove to wage war in a manner that would enable him to maintain the support of the Nicaraguan masses. Above all, his men had to abstain from perpetrating the widely publicized atrocities that the U.S. military had carried out during its 1846–1848 war against Mexico. The predominantly Protestant invaders had not only robbed, killed, and raped Mexican civilians but also destroyed countless Catholic churches. Such vio­lence had reinforced Mexican re­sis­tance and Walker was aware of this peril. His newspaper contrasted the “nobler system of combat” marking the filibusters’ per­for­ mance during the failed Costa Rican invasion with the “cruelty” of U.S. troops in Mexico. “We have seen,” El Nicaraguense stressed, “no pyramids of dead w ­ omen and ­children in this Republic to represent the sights



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that defaced the capture of Chapultepec and the aqueducts of Mexico. No sweeping desolation has marked our army, like that which robbed the valley of Mexico.”10 In fact, filibusters had committed atrocities during the Costa Rican invasion, such as the hanging of Nicaraguans accused of supporting the ­enemy. Yet El Nicaraguense correctly asserted that, up to this moment, “­there has been no exhibition of cruelty in the history of General Walker in Nicaragua that at all approached the scenes enacted on the taking of Monterey of the fall of Mexico.” Even Costa Rican prisoners w ­ ere surprised that they had been well treated and allowed to return home, especially since their superiors had allegedly warned them that Walker’s men ­were “blood-­thirsty villains, giving no quarter, and roasting all they ­didn’t choose to hang.” ­W hether or not such warnings ­were made, the Costa Rican prisoners had to have known that the lenient treatment they received contrasted with the tendency of their own army to summarily execute captured filibusters.11 Walker emphasized military discipline while his army used the end of the rainy season to prepare for war. He court martialed filibusters charged with offenses ranging from theft and drunkenness to rape and murder; ­those accused merely of selling “clothing of any kind” ­were punished by being publicly whipped in Granada’s plaza with “not less than twenty lashes.” Walker was extremely strict with deserters, who w ­ ere nearly always shot. He also sought to curb the anti-­Catholicism of his men by appointing an Irish priest to serve as one of the army’s chaplains and by publicizing ever more strongly his ties with the local clergy.12 Walker promoted discipline by forcing his troops to wear uniforms. While such attire is often deemed key to a military’s esprit de corps, it also helps to maintain order. Moreover, by differentiating troops from civilians, uniforms help to prevent atrocities and desertions. For long, Walker’s army had failed to provide uniforms. “­Every man was dressed,” as one recruit noted, “to suit himself . . . ​[wearing] hats of e­ very style from a close fitting skull cap to a broad brimmed Mexican straw hat.” As Walker’s army geared up for war, it ordered from a New York firm five thousand blue uniforms consisting of blouses, pants, flannel shirts, and black felt hats. While it remains unclear how many of the uniforms arrived in Nicaragua, once war resumed the appearance of Walker’s troops had

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become more uniform, with their dark attire differing sharply from the white peasant clothing of their Central American ­enemy.13 Walker instilled discipline by submitting his troops to daily drills. In his eyes, “all military discipline is a mere effort to make virtue constant and reliable by making it habitual.” The army’s strict regimen surprised its new members. With much disbelief did a French recruit report that “­every day, from very early on, we did drills for two hours; thereafter . . . ​ we ­were given lunch. . . . ​We rested ­until three, when we went with our companies to the main plaza, where we ­were reviewed.” Partly ­because of this strict regime, the army experienced a rise in desertions. Overall, however, the daily exercises must have impressed Walker’s men, as ­those who ­later deserted to the allies replicated the drills to enhance discipline among the Central Americans.14

II The war began not in the two regions of military buildup—­Granada and León—­but in remote Chontales. Moreover, it was instigated not by the allies or the filibusters but by a small force of Nicaraguan Conservatives whose leaders had returned from Honduras and whose ranks included Matagalpa Indian archers. In late August, this force began attacking filibusters and their local allies who w ­ ere procuring c­ attle and other provisions from confiscated estates in Chontales. A ­ fter the Nicaraguans routed a small group of filibusters, Walker sent sixty-­five troops to “avenge the death of their countrymen.” On September 14 the mounted filibusters charged against a force of about 160 Conservatives who had taken up position on an estate called San Jacinto. Their assault ended in disaster. Among t­ hose killed was Byron Cole, the architect of the 1855 contract that had brought Walker to Nicaragua; he was hung from a tree—­a fate shared by several of his comrades. News of the filibusters’ defeat elated the allies, for it proved that “the white race is not as superior to the natives as claimed by their arrogant leader.” Spurred by the Nicaraguan triumph at the ­Battle of San Jacinto the allies in León began their long-­awaited advance t­ oward Walker’s capital of Granada.15 The allies easily captured Managua and Masaya, as Walker had ordered his troops to withdraw to Granada, located a bit farther south.



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The retreat from Masaya was puzzling, for this strategic town was easy to defend and the surrounding region a breadbasket that fed Granada. Walker justified the retreat by claiming that he had wanted the e­ nemy to amass its troops in Masaya, for “the allies ­were less formidable when united than when acting in detached bodies at several distant points.”16 Despite the allied advance into filibuster territory, Walker and his men brimmed with confidence, especially since they had just been reinforced by some two hundred heavi­ly armed U.S. recruits. Granted, their local support had declined significantly, as Nicaraguans resented the filibusters for spreading vio­lence and raiding their farms. Yet Walker still enjoyed the backing of popu­lar caudillos such as the Granadan Gervacio Sandino. Walker’s optimism was shared by his civilian colonists, as was true of David Wheeler from the American Bible Society. In a letter to his superior, the missionary acknowledged that the allies had amassed a larger force at Masaya and ­were bent on completing their “war of extermination against all Americans.” Yet he stressed that “the Americans feel very confident of success.” Like other colonists in Granada, he continued to do business as usual.17 On October 12, Walker sought to recapture Masaya and then march on to León. The ­battle of Masaya began well for his force of about eight hundred men. But just as the filibusters appeared to be on the verge of victory, Walker ordered his troops to return to Granada. Despite his belief that Central Americans liked to fight in a “united” fashion, about nine hundred allies had sneaked past his army and attacked Granada, which was defended by about 150 filibusters. When Walker’s force arrived in Granada the next morning, the allied attackers fled the city. Given how tenaciously the small filibuster force had defended Granada, Walker likely ordered the retreat from Masaya too precipitously.18 The brief allied occupation of Granada changed the way many filibusters understood the conflict they ­were waging: from a revolutionary strug­gle for “liberty” to a race war against Central American “half-­breeds” seeking to exterminate U.S. and Eu­ro­pean “whites.” This changed view was a response mainly to the allies’ murder of five unarmed U.S. civilians: the Methodist missionary David Wheeler; his colleague William Ferguson, who had come from Louisiana with his wife and ­daughter; a seven-­year old boy; the cart-­man Henry Carstens, who had migrated from

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New York City with his wife and two young c­ hildren; and the merchant John Lawless, who had been living in Granada since 1851. The boy was shot when drunken Guatemalan troops broke into the ­house of his parents while the f­ amily was gathered for supper. According to his f­ ather, a teacher from New York, the troops “plundered the h­ ouse of all his implements of husbandry, clothing, gold and silver watches, money and valuables, of amount more than 2000 dollars.”19 The execution of the four adults most enraged Walker’s followers, as this act was not only motivated by anti-­U.S. sentiments but also perpetrated by Granadans who belonged to the allied force. During the attack, Granada’s foreign residents sought shelter in the well-­fortified area around the plaza, yet Lawless stayed in his home in the suburb of Jalteva, believing that he was safe thanks to his close ties with local residents. And since the Carstens and Fergusons lived close by, they took refuge in his ­house. Wheeler was peddling his Bibles when he was detected by Nicaraguan allied troops, who sought to kill him. Wheeler ran straight to Lawless’s home hoping that the merchant would convince his pursuers to spare his life. Instead all four men ­were taken away. A U.S. resident claimed that the Nicaraguan officer in charge of the arrest (the Granadan Conservative Lorenzo Artiles) “­violated the wife and d ­ aughter of Mr Ferguson and the wife of Mr Carson which fiendish act was afterwards repeated by at least half a dozen common soldiers.” The four prisoners w ­ ere ordered shot by Col­o­nel José Dolores Estrada, who happened to be the hero of the B ­ attle of San Jacinto and hailed from Nandaime, a small town just south of Granada. According to U.S. residents of Granada, the execution was transformed into a spectacle, as Estrada’s men danced around the corpses to the cries of “Death to all Americans,” stripping them naked and repeatedly thrusting their bayonets into the dead bodies.20 So greatly did news of the murders rile Walker’s followers that when the filibusters returned from Masaya they butchered the staggering allies too drunk to flee the city; they did not even spare ­those “holding up their hands in token of surrender.” The killings occurred against the w ­ ill of Walker, who feared that the massacre would reinforce local opposition to his rule. Although El Nicaraguense failed to mention the atrocity in its pages, filibuster accounts clearly reveal that a slaughter had taken place and that “General Walker had ­great difficulty in restraining his men.” An



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unexpected outcome of the allied vio­lence in Granada was a breakdown in filibuster discipline that foreshadowed greater atrocities to come.21 Up to this moment Walker still sought to frame the war as a revolutionary strug­gle to liberate Central Americans “from barbarian rule and savage despotism.” Yet more and more of his men viewed the conflict in racialized terms. This was evident in testimonies made by Walker’s U.S. colonists a­ fter the allied attack on Granada. In their eyes, the invaders deliberately searched for “white ­people” to kill. Such views ­were shared by Eu­ro­pean residents, as when a German stressed that the murders occurred in a context “where the deepest hate was on foreign and white ­people in general.”22 This message was reinforced by El Nicaraguense when it claimed that the allies “killed e­ very person they saw who had a white face.” And though the paper had come to make openly racist statements, only now did it claim that the filibusters ­were fighting against “half-­breeds” in defense of “the white race.” Like the allies, the paper linked the conflict with U.S. frontier wars. But if the allies had made this connection in order to highlight the perils of U.S. “wars of extermination,” Walker’s paper went in the opposite direction: “If the war against the Indians of North Amer­i­ca was justifiable at that early day, how much more is this war justifiable, against a set of barbarians.” The antifilbuster war hardened the racist attitude of the paper’s U.S. editors t­ oward Central Americans.23 It remains unclear w ­ hether Walker also came to endorse a racialized view of the war. But he was clearly dismayed that Granadans had supported “in the most criminal manner” the allies during their brief occupation of Granada, even though local residents “owed [their] life and property to the Americans.” This sense of betrayal, he ­later claimed, led him to commit his most infamous act: to have his men torch Granada.24

III Walker’s decision to destroy his capital stemmed from a swift reversal of military fortune. ­After nearly defeating the allies at Masaya and easily recapturing Granada, the filibusters appeared to have the upper hand. Moreover, their army received so many recruits from the United States that by mid-­November it had grown to about two thousand men. One of

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the new arrivals was the British soldier of fortune Charles Henningsen, who had been an officer in the Rus­sian and Spanish Armies as well as in Lajos Kossuth’s army of Hungarian revolutionaries of 1848. To Walker’s delight, the forty-­one-­year-­old Henningsen brought arms donated by Cornelius Vanderbilt’s rival George Law (in exchange, the New York shipping magnate hoped to secure the transit charter). Walker handed over command of his army to Henningsen, who quickly ensured that the filibusters became a better or­ga­n ized force. Reflecting the confidence of Walker’s men, daily life in Granada continued as ever, with the colonists holding their usual eve­ning parties, the regime admonishing residents to clean their yards, new law and dental practices advertising for clients, and local notaries conducting business as usual. The regime even sent a prominent Granadan member of its Department of Colonization to New Orleans to sell cacao grown on confiscated estates.25 But if all seemed well in Walker’s capital of Granada, elsewhere the situation was rapidly turning against the filibusters. In Masaya the allies had become an even larger force than Walker had anticipated. Thanks to reinforcements from El Salvador and Guatemala, their ranks had swollen to more than thirty-­five hundred men. In addition, three hundred Costa Rican troops suddenly appeared south of the transit road who w ­ ere equipped with modern Minié r­ ifles; they ­were the vanguard of a larger invasion force. A southern front thus reemerged that challenged Walker’s control over his lifeline to the United States. To preempt a potential encirclement, Walker attacked Masaya on November 15. This time the filibusters w ­ ere too outnumbered to triumph. In the meantime, Costa Rican troops briefly occupied key points on the transit road. Making ­matters worse for Walker, the Costa Ricans gained the support of local caudillos who had long been some of his main Nicaraguan allies. Given this critical situation, on November 18 Walker withdrew his exhausted army to Granada.26 The next day Walker ordered his non-­Nicaraguan followers to abandon Granada. They ­were to take the transit com­pany’s steamers to La Virgen and then relocate to nearby Rivas, which would become his new headquarters. As Walker stressed, the survival of his regime hinged more on controlling the transit road than holding on to Granada. In abandoning his capital, he ordered Henningsen to burn it to the ground.27



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Walker’s reasons for razing Granada remain murky. In his book, he claimed that vengeance drove him to destroy the city. But evidence suggests that he might have believed the devious act would allow him to regain the support of León’s Liberal leaders. Already during the Costa Rican invasion of April 1856 Walker and Leonese Liberals had broached the idea of “burning or destroying” Granada. Yet they abandoned the idea once the Costa Rican offensive stalled. That the plan of annihilating Granada might have originated with Leonese Liberals is suggested by El Nicaraguense’s article on the execution of Walker’s former ally Mariano Salazar. Appearing in the paper’s issue of August 9, 1856, the article stated that Salazar “hoped . . . ​to see the day when the city of Granada would be razed to the ground, and a tree planted in the Plaza upon which would be  carved the inscription, ‘­Here stood Granada.’ ” This is exactly what Henningsen did, only he stuck the inscription to a lance that he planted at the pier before sailing for La Virgen. That Leonese Liberals such as Salazar might have given Walker the script for destroying Granada is not inconceivable. ­After all, they had displayed their hatred for the city’s Conservative oligarchy during the brutal siege of 1854–1855. But if Walker ordered the razing of Granada in the hope of regaining the support of ­Leonese Liberals, this goal misfired completely.28 What so hurt Walker’s cause was that the destruction of Granada failed to unfold as planned. When he sailed for La Virgen on November 20, together with over two hundred wounded troops and civilian colonists, he believed that Henningsen’s force of about four hundred men would take only two days to complete their mission in a disciplined way. Instead, they got so drunk that they not only took a week to destroy the city but went on a looting spree and committed many atrocities. The heavy rain of November 21, which forced Henningsen to postpone the razing by a day, might have provided them with the unexpected opportunity to break into stores and homes that w ­ ere known to store liquor. Not u­ ntil November 27 did his men finish torching the city. The fire lasted for about ten days and could be seen from sixty miles away. A U.S. observer l­ ater noted that out of about seventeen hundred ­houses, only fifteen ­were left intact. So thoroughly did Henningsen’s men go about their task that ten years ­later a British visitor noted that the city remained “a heap of ruins” and was “a dream of desolation—­a nightmare—­a horror unspeakable.”29

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­Because Henningsen’s men had been slow in completing their mission, they gave the allies time to march to Granada and encircle them. The allied siege turned into a nightmare for Henningsen’s outmanned men, who barricaded themselves in the Guadalupe Church close to the lake. Just as they started to run out of food and ­water, two hundred of Walker’s troops arrived from La Virgen on December 13. Thanks to t­hese reinforcements, Henningsen’s men ­were able to escape to a steamer. The siege had been brutal, claiming the lives of over two hundred filibusters, countless allies, and many Granadans.30 Walker’s infamy has much to do with the atrocities committed by Henningsen’s men in the four days between Walker’s departure from the city and the start of the allied siege. Yet the precise nature of their crimes remains unclear. We know that the filibusters plundered homes, stores, and churches, stealing clothes, goods, and jewelry. Apparently female colonists also participated in the pillage. The looting spree was made easier by the fact that, once the suburbs began to burn, many Granadans fled to the countryside. Although most of the loot was destroyed during the allied siege, some filibusters managed to take their booty all the way back to the United States. One officer reportedly stole so much silverware that it filled two large boxes “weighing prob­ably 300 lbs. each.” Another officer estimated the value of the booty taken from Granada’s eight churches to range from “$50,000 to . . . ​half a million dollars.”31 The plunderers realized one of Walker’s worst fears by desecrating Granada’s churches. If the accounts of Walker’s Nicaraguan enemies and of a filibuster officer are to be believed, the most notorious sacrilege involved a mock pro­cession in the plaza. In the Nicaraguan version “a motley crowd, some clothed in the sacerdotal robes of the holy f­ athers,” followed “four drunken disciples of the ­Great Apostle” who carried the image of Christ that they had ripped from the altar of the city’s main church. The pro­cession moved “to the tavern known as the ‘Walker House,’ and ­there, amid shouts and screams of derisive laughter, they celebrated what they ­were pleased to call . . . ​‘The Lord’s last Supper,’ ” with the sacred image “thrown to the ground and inhumanely pelted with empty brandy ­bottles.” The filibuster account describes the event as a mock funeral, with about fifty officers dressed in church vestments following their comrades who carried a coffin labeled “Granada” to “the burying ground



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where it was buried . . . ​w ith a mock ceremony.” Since the filibuster account was second­hand, it may be the less accurate one. More impor­tant, it was the Nicaraguan account that circulated through the Central American press and helped cement Walker’s infamy as a modern “Attila.”32 Henningsen’s marauding men also perpetrated atrocities against Granadans. Some charges seem too outlandish to be true, as when allied soldiers claimed that the filibusters had eaten a young Nicaraguan w ­ oman ­a fter ­r unning out of provisions. More credible charges ­were made by León’s newspaper. Drawing on local accounts, it accused Henningsen’s men of rape, maintaining that “the screams of some v­ iolated ­women coming from inside a home ­were answered by obscene laughter from ­those standing outside.” It further denounced the filibusters for “murdering” unarmed Granadans. A Scottish worker on a steamer that evacuated Walker’s followers l­ater testified that a U.S. coworker boasted “of frequently ­going ashore and killing natives . . . ​during the siege of Granada, which he called Greaser shooting.” What­ever atrocities the filibusters committed, they led a U.S. eyewitness to describe them as “a hell’s holiday . . . ​such as I hope for the honor of the American name I may never again witness committed by my countrymen.”33 ­T here is ­little won­der that the mayhem led so many Granadans to desert Walker’s ranks and that he never recuperated the support of Leonese Liberals. Even Henningsen noted that some of Walker’s most loyal followers—­Granadan Liberals—­“had passed over to the e­ nemy.” As a U.S. colonist observed, “the destruction of Granada worked deeply to the injury of Walker [and] the natives abandoned his cause almost to a man.” This wanton act occupies a central place in “Mama Ramona,” the most famous Nicaraguan song to emerge out of the Walker episode: “From faraway came the Yankees / In their fancy dress overjoyed, / Yelling ‘Hurrah! Hurrah! / It’s Granada ­we’ve destroyed!’ ”34 The events in Granada also led Walker to lose the support of nearly all of his Cuban followers; even his Cuban bodyguard deserted him. The few Central American liberals still at Walker’s side similarly turned against him, as was true of the Guatemalan Manuel Carrascosa, who had served in his cabinet. Like-­minded Eu­ro­pe­ans abandoned him, too, ­either during the destruction of Granada or, as with the German Forty-­Eighter Adolph Schwartz, shortly thereafter. The flight of t­hese radicals hurt Walker

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precisely ­because they had buttressed the liberal thrust of his imperial proj­ect.35 Reinforcing Walker’s antiliberal image was the way the widely reported destruction of Granada belied his claim to be an “apostle of pro­gress.” As an allied officer put it, the horrific event showed that Walker’s “democracy” was ­really a “demoncracy” (demoniocracia). León’s Liberal newspaper stressed that “the name of Alaric the Goth w ­ ill be considered the very impersonation of civilization and of pro­gress when compared with that of William Walker.” The new newspaper that anti-­Walker Nicaraguan Conservatives established in Granada, Telégrafo Setentrional, rooted the tragedy in Nicaraguans’ fascination with U.S.-­style modernity. The paper claimed that if “the railroad and the steamer . . . ​embellished [their] dreams like the soirees of one thousand and one nights, that ­colossal power of ­human mechanics . . . ​brought instead slavery, misfortune, death, and rape.”36 The view that Walker’s self-­proclaimed civilizers ­were nothing but barbarians found its way into newspapers throughout Latin Amer­i­ca. Among the first to report this was the Gaceta de Guatemala. Presaging how Walker’s men would be viewed in much of the continent, the paper asserted that the filibusters responsible for torching one of the oldest cities in the hemi­sphere embodied a “strange anachronism” as they practiced an “ancient barbarism” that clashed with the ideals of “modern civilization.” It stressed that Walker’s enterprise was backed by much of the U.S. public, government, and business elites. As a result, the destruction of Granada disproved, so the paper claimed, the “pretension” of the United States of having “the most liberal and perfect institutions of the world.” Such views ­were echoed by South American newspapers, as when ­Bolivia’s La Reforma asserted that Walker’s reduction of Granada into “a pile of ashes kneaded with blood” showed that “piracy” had become the main means by which the “Anglo-­Saxon-­A merican race seeks to establish its dominance over the entire continent of the New World.”37

IV The undoing of Walker as a liberal icon continued right up to his surrender at Rivas on May 1, 1857. For six long months the filibusters waged a war of attrition that reinforced their infamy as “barbarians.” And b­ ecause



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more and more of Walker’s U.S. recruits ­were proslavery advocates, his cause became ever more closely linked with the South’s “peculiar institution.” Yet his antiliberal image in the United States expanded in an unexpected way, as he became newly identified with “white slavery.” The term was then used mainly by ­labor activists and apologists of black slavery to condemn capitalism’s exploitation of white workers. In the case of Walker, however, it referred to an antimodern form of despotism identified with Rus­sian serfdom. Henningsen himself had published in 1845 the acclaimed novel The White Slave to denounce “the misery, the degradation, [and] cruelties” marking the slave-­like condition of Rus­sian serfs. And it was this condition, to which Walker allegedly submitted his men at Rivas, that turned him into an “overseer of white slaves.”38 The ­f uture already looked bleak for Walker and his men in late December 1856 as they tried to forge a new capital in Rivas. They had lost many troops during the allied siege of Granada and their razing of the city reinforced their isolation from local society. The few Granadan “ladies and gentlemen” who evacuated the city with the filibusters did not accompany Walker to Rivas but sought refuge in the Ca­rib­bean port of San Juan del Norte. The most impor­tant Granadan to remain at Walker’s side was Gervacio Sandino, but the popu­lar caudillo would soon die while raiding a plantation outside Rivas.39 Even worse for Walker, hardly any natives of Rivas stayed put and collaborated with him. Among ­those exiting the city was the power­f ul caudillo Máximo Espinosa, who had helped uphold filibuster rule ever since Walker seized power in October 1855. Walker also had to abandon his plan of establishing a base on the strategic island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua, a­ fter local Indians attacked the over two hundred civilian colonists and wounded filibusters who had taken refuge ­there during the evacuation of Granada. So greatly had the filibusters alienated the local populace that when they encountered a small boy near Rivas he shouted “Yo no quiero filibustero god-­damn” (I d ­ on’t want the filibuster god-­ damn). For Walker’s men, such expressions only underscored that “we are g­ oing to have all the ­people of Nicaragua to fight.” 40 ­These setbacks notwithstanding, Walker and his officers at Rivas believed in their ultimate success. They had about nine hundred well-­armed troops and w ­ ere expecting more reinforcements from the United States. Their guarded optimism was shared by civilian colonists, as when a U.S.

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merchant wrote to his m ­ other in upstate New York that Walker’s “usual good fortune (which is proverbial) w ­ ill yet extricate him from the apparent probability of annihilation.” Most impor­t ant, Walker’s group still controlled the transit, thus ensuring the unabated influx of reinforcements and supplies from the United States. One of the largest departures occurred on Christmas Eve, when about three hundred recruits sailed off from New York carry­ing arms and provisions for Walker’s army. L ­ ittle did they know that Costa Rican troops w ­ ere just about to seize the San Juan River and all of the transit com­pany’s lake and river steamers.41 This seizure proved decisive, as it made it nearly impossible for U.S. recruits to reach Walker from the Atlantic. He continued to receive reinforcements from California via the port of San Juan del Sur, but the loss of the seaborne route stretching from Lake Nicaragua to the Ca­rib­bean coast demoralized the filibusters, as they had been receiving far more recruits and arms from New Orleans and New York. Walker admitted that this loss “diminished greatly the spirits and confidence” of his men and the desertion rate in his army did rise. The Costa Rican capture of the steamers blocked Walker from using Lake Nicaragua for military purposes and for the procurement of provisions from Chontales. With one stroke his rule was reduced to Rivas and the twelve-­mile-­long transit road. A U.S. observer was not far off the mark when he mocked Walker as the “filibuster king of twelve miles by twelve” lording over “the mighty Empire of the Transit Road.” 42 The Costa Rican conquest of the transit was a masterstroke. Yet Walker and his U.S. followers claimed that the Costa Rican “greasers” ­were too racially inferior to accomplish such an operation on their own. They blamed their loss on the former owner of the transit com­pany, Cornelius Vanderbilt—­a claim often repeated by latter-­day U.S. scholars. As a filibuster stressed, “had it not been for the malice or revenge of Vanderbilt, [Walker] might have reigned in Nicaragua at this day.” Vanderbilt had been conspiring against the filibuster regime ever since it confiscated his transit com­pany in February 1856. ­A fter the war resumed, he sent two agents to help Costa Rica seize the transit. One agent—­Sylvanus Spencer—­ proved especially helpful in the capture of the steamers, as he had previously worked for the transit com­pany and knew how to trick his former colleagues into giving up their vessels. But it would be wrong to conclude



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that Vanderbilt masterminded the conquest. Costa Rica had made a similar attempt during its failed invasion of April 1856. And when its troops captured the transit in December, they relied far less on Spencer than was alleged by the filibusters.43 Following Walker’s loss of the transit, his army of nearly eight hundred men was quickly encircled by an allied force that would swell to over three thousand troops. If the besieged filibusters suffered high desertion and mortality rates, their defeat was hardly a foregone conclusion. In par­tic­ u­lar, they ­were helped by the allies’ inability to enlist Nicaraguans in their strug­gle. Apparently Walker still enjoyed a modicum of local support in allied-­occupied towns, as when in early April a small group of Liberals rode through the streets of Managua shouting “vivas” to Walker and “muerte” to the allies. In addition, some Nicaraguans undermined the allied war effort by providing the filibusters with much-­needed provisions. More typically, Nicaraguans stood out for their passivity. The editors of Granada’s Telégrafo Setentrional complained that many of their compatriots preferred to flee into the woods rather than join the allies. This flight reflected not just the long-­standing opposition of the local poor to forced recruitment but also their fraught relations with the allied troops. Some Nicaraguans even believed that the allies acted as rapaciously as the filibusters. Such resentments ­were expressed in a local song that depicts the allies as “bloodthirsty beasts” bent on “oppressing” Nicaraguans in order to “divide amongst themselves the land.” T ­ hese views ­were echoed by a British envoy who reported that Nicaraguans considered the Costa Ricans “rather as enemies than allies,” for they believed their neighbors ­were seeking to snatch the lucrative transit route from them.44 Yet allied leaders most feared a U.S. military intervention on behalf of the filibusters. They mistrusted the extended presence of the U.S. warship St. Mary’s, which was docked in San Juan del Sur and had a crew of about two hundred. The ship’s captain, Commander Charles Davis, reassured the allies that he had no “instructions or intent” of attacking them. Yet the head of the Costa Rican forces feared “the opposite” given reports of how Davis had been seen “walking arm in arm with Walker” during his visit to Rivas in mid-­February. And Davis did leave the filibuster camp convinced not only of Walker’s cause but of his ultimate triumph—­a confidence that reflected both the naval officer’s belief in U.S. superiority

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over the “effeminate ­people” of Central Amer­i­ca and his valorization of liberal imperial proj­ects akin to the one the British w ­ ere carry­ing out among the “enervated nations of India.” Moreover, the allied leadership feared that incoming U.S. president James Buchanan was such a committed expansionist that, upon taking office in March 1857, he would send “a strong expeditionary force” to help Walker.45 Ultimately no U.S. troops intervened in the war. The presence of the St. Mary’s at San Juan del Sur nonetheless helped the filibusters, as it ensured their continuous access to recruits, arms, and provisions from California. Allied leaders claimed to have “positive proof” that the St. Mary’s was directly supplying Walker with munitions of war and provisions, leading some to fear that the filibusters could not just hold out forever but become strong enough to conquer all of Central Amer­i­ca.46 In real­ity, the allies managed to tighten the siege at Rivas and Walker’s situation worsened dramatically. This was when his men became, in the eyes of Central Americans, more strongly associated with “barbarism.” In part this view resulted from the filibusters’ mistreatment of the few Nicaraguans remaining in Rivas. About forty poor men and w ­ omen reportedly lived ­under slave-­like conditions, forced to work as cooks and servants. Causing greater outrage was the filibusters’ harassment of elite ­women who had remained ­behind to oversee their ­family estates in the hope that their female condition would protect them. Instead they ­were subjected to “atrocious treatment” as the filibusters extorted from them food as well as jewelry and money. T ­ hose who resisted ­were thrown into a prison “alive with fleas and reeking with filth,” fasting solely on bread and w ­ ater. The filibusters did not even spare a young elite w ­ oman whose ­sister was married to one of Walker’s colonists. The vio­lence committed against such w ­ omen reinforced the belief of Nicaraguans that the filibusters ­were, as a native from Rivas put it, “the scum of humanity, who shamelessly call themselves the civilizers of the continent.” 47 The allies ­were even more shocked by the destitute state of their adversaries. With Walker’s men r­ unning out of provisions, famine spread among their ranks. To survive they slaughtered their “poverty-­stricken mules and ­horses” and then resorted to eating cats and dogs. Their deprivation was noted by the allies who taunted them by “barking like dogs—­ squalling like cats—or braying like distressed jackasses.” Walker’s men



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­ ere unable to replace their tattered rags with new clothes, leading many w to fight “nearly naked;” many lacked shoes so that their feet w ­ ere bloodied with blisters and cuts. Diseases of all sorts infected their ranks, exacerbated by the unsanitary conditions plaguing their hospital. One filibuster deemed the Rivas hospital “the most loathsome, putrid pest-­house that ever disgraced the face of the earth,” where patients w ­ ere “strangling with the stench of their own rottenness.” No won­der filibusters who deserted to the allies or ­were captured by them appeared, as a Costa Rican military chaplain put it, “not so much as soldiers of a civilized ­people than as savages.” As more of Walker’s deserters fled south to Costa Rica or north to León, Honduras, and El Salvador, the region’s population could see how the much-­vaunted “civilizers” appeared as anything but.48 News of the appalling conditions plaguing the filibusters at Rivas shocked the U.S. public too. But what seemed more disconcerting ­were the personal testimonies of Walker’s “tyranny” that began to proliferate in the U.S. press and eventually found their way into Eu­ro­pean papers. Such reports had existed from the start of Walker’s rule, but they had focused on his oppression of Nicaraguans; now they centered on how Walker and his officers brutalized their own.49 At first this reign of terror was noticeable in Walker’s abandonment of due pro­cess by summarily shooting would-be deserters. The desertion rate had skyrocketed once his starving men learned, via handbills, that the allies ­were promising fugitive filibusters “protection, food, clothing and a speedy passage to the United States.” Such handbills ­were supplemented by circulars in which deserters confirmed that the allies ­were keeping their promise and stressed that “­there is no dishonor in the soldiers’ deserting a dishonorable cause.” Perhaps the most ingenious way the allies disbursed such handbills was by stuffing them into a human-­ size doll made out of banana peels that was covered with small bombs and attached to a long fuse. A mule then carried it ­toward Walker’s camp; once the doll came close to the e­ nemy lines, it was detonated, causing the flyers to scatter. Then, as the allies closed ever more on Walker’s men, deserters mounted the barricades and called upon their former comrades to join them, “sometimes singling them out by name.”50 Walker countered the desertions with a cold-­bloodedness that stunned the most hardened “ruffians” in his ranks. This was true of the notorious

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sporting man Mike Brannigan, who told a U.S. newspaper that Walker was “harder on his own men than the ­enemy.” Executions of deserters shocked U.S. travelers stopping at San Juan del Sur. As an officer in charge of shooting them noted, “during the entire scene, the passengers of the California steamer, which was lying in the bay, w ­ ere crying out to us to spare the poor fellows.” U.S. papers opposed to Walker used the killings to press their case, as when the New York Times denounced “the intolerable cruelties and butcheries practiced upon deserters, who are shot down on the run, dragged into camp and finished by a brief and sullen order from the chief.”51 Testimonies from deserters circulated widely in the U.S. press and indicated that Walker and his officers killed soldiers who ­were too sick to fight or appeared not to follow o­ rders. A good example was the case of Col­o­nel John O’Neal, who upon seeing that a soldier had failed to charge “rode up to him, and pulling out his revolver, and swearing a terrible oath, shot him through the stomach.” A fellow deserter stressed that the poor fellow had paused for good reason—to reload his gun—­while O’Neil’s judgement was seriously impaired as he was “considerably intoxicated.” However exaggerated, U.S. reports of the brutality suffered by the rank and file enhanced Walker’s infamy as a petty tyrant who was “destitute of feeling for the sufferings of his men.”52 Walker tried to reassert his authority by assuming, as an officer put it, “a dictatorial and absolute control of even the lives of his followers.” He set up “a system of secret espionage” that made it “unsafe in camp to utter an opinion adverse to the cause or derogatory of his generalship.” Walker prohibited his followers from returning to the United States, leading many to accuse him of turning his camp into a prison. Already at the end of his reign in Granada some previously pro-­Walker  U.S. papers no longer viewed the filibuster chieftain as a prodemocracy crusader but rather as a budding dictator. This shift was in response to the publication of secret letters in which Walker mocked “Yankee” prodemocracy reformers as a “psalm-­singing set” and asserted that “the only way to cut the expanding and expansive democracy of the North is by a power­ful and compact Southern federation based on military princi­ples.” ­These statements dismayed many of Walker’s supporters. Yet ­others doubted their veracity, as they knew that Walker had power­ful enemies in the United



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States who could have fabricated t­ hese letters (and indeed, their publication was likely arranged by Vanderbilt).53 Once damning testimonies of deserters proliferated in the U.S. press, Walker’s dictatorship could no longer be dismissed. Among the most persuasive accounts ­were ­those contrasting the tyranny at Rivas with the apparent benevolence that had marked filibuster rule in Granada. This was true of an account by a deserter who admitted that “life in the Nicaraguan army was anything e­ lse than what I expected when enlisted [in January 1856]; but . . . ​I had no par­tic­u­lar complaint to make ­until about the time of the siege of Granada;” only thereafter did Walker and his officers treat the rank and file with g­ reat “barbarity.” An eighteen-­year-­old Canadian who had enlisted in April 1856 reported that at Rivas “the most common words used by the officers in addressing the privates was calling them sons of bitches; they would buck and gag them—­that is, put a musket ­behind the back between the arms, put their feet in stocks, a bayonet in their mouths, and then place them on their bellies for six or eight hours.” Among the other modes of punishment that this Canadian soldier highlighted was “to stretch a man out with his arms and feet extended, and fastened to bayonets in the ground, and keep him in this position, with his face to a burning sun, for four hours during the heat of the day.”54 This was the backdrop against which U.S. publications accused Walker of practicing “white slavery.” Such was the case of a San Francisco paper that lambasted the filibuster for subjecting “free-­born Americans in ­Nicaragua” to “White slavery,” which it deemed “worse than negro bondage.” It used the term “white slave trade” to attack Walker for tricking U.S. colonists with the promise of f­ ree land, only to press them into his army where they became “white slaves.”55 But the siege at Rivas also ensured that Walker became, once again, identified with the enslavement of African Americans. This was due to the well-­publicized efforts of proslavery U.S. expansionists to join Walker by sailing to San Juan del Norte, from where they tried to reach Rivas by fighting their way up the San Juan River. The most famous of such expeditions occurred in February 1857 and consisted of about 250 “border ruffians” from Kansas and Missouri who ­were led by Henry Titus. ­Because Titus’s armed band had gained much notoriety in “Bleeding Kansas,” U.S. newspapers closely tracked their voyage to Nicaragua. As the U.S.

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press rightly noted, Titus and his men sought to secure Nicaragua’s annexation to the United States as a slave state. Their expedition failed miserably, as the “ruffians” panicked at the sight of a much smaller Costa Rican force guarding the San Juan River. B ­ ecause the humiliating end to their expedition was widely covered by the U.S. press, it enhanced Walker’s identification with some of the era’s most infamous defenders of slavery, as when a Northern paper mocked the “cowardice” of Titus ­under the headline “A Southern ‘Hero’ in Nicaragua.”56 The Titus fiasco did not dissuade other proslavery Southerners from replicating his mission. The next major expedition consisted of about 150 Texans who sailed into San Juan del Norte in mid-­March. B ­ ecause they ­were backed by power­ful proslavery politicians, their trip also enjoyed much coverage in the U.S. press, gaining even the attention of a German-­ language newspaper in Wisconsin. In San Juan del Norte, the Texans joined forces with filibusters led by another proslavery Texan, Samuel Lockridge, who had served as Walker’s main recruiting agent in the U.S. South. Once Lockridge’s group encountered Costa Rican troops on the San Juan River, they quickly headed back to San Juan del Norte. As they sailed downstream, the boiler of their steamer exploded, killing more than fifty men and wounding countless ­others. Residents of San Juan del Norte said in response that it was as if “the Almighty god is punishing Walker and his soldiers for the g­ reat robberys [sic], murder, and arson they have committed against an innocent country.” In the United States, the well-­publicized incident instead reinforced Walker’s identification with the South’s peculiar institution.57 The failure of the Texans devastated Walker and his followers at Rivas. They had already heard about Titus’s defeat, one that the Central American allies loudly celebrated by bringing a musical band close to filibuster lines. All the more did Walker’s men place their hopes on the Texans, deeming Lockridge “the promised military Messiah who was to bring us joyful deliverance.” Their hopes ­were shared by the few colonists remaining at Rivas, as when a ­woman stated “we w ­ ere anxiously awaiting the arrival of Col. Lockridge, with forces . . . ​R eports ­every day was spread, about his coming, u­ ntil we had no hope.” She insisted, incorrectly, that Lockridge had betrayed them by selling out to the Costa Rican ­enemy.58



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V Walker’s fate was sealed on April 15, 1857, when the Costa Rican seizure of San Juan del Sur cut off his lifeline to California. This capture would not have occurred had it not been endorsed by Commander Davis of the U.S. warship St. Mary’s, which had long kept the port open to Walker. Once Davis heard of Lockridge’s failure, he realized that the situation of the filibusters was hopeless and began to negotiate with the allies the removal of Walker’s group from the isthmus. Davis ­later claimed that he had wanted “to prevent the unnecessary effusion of blood.” But the native Bostonian, who deemed slavery a “curse,” might have changed his position due to Walker’s growing identification with proslavery thugs like Titus, who reached Rivas in mid-­March a­ fter crossing the Panamanian isthmus and taking a steamer to San Juan del Sur. Indeed, a U.S. reporter in Nicaragua noted that Davis and his superior, Commodore William Mervine, ­were plotting against what they believed had become “a damned Southern pro-­ slavery movement.” On April 22 Davis secured the evacuation of the thirty U.S. ­women and ­children remaining at Rivas, “many of them without clothes.” Walker hoped their departure would “inspire new spirit and resolution into the troops thus relieved of an anxious burden.” In real­ity, it only reinforced their “feeling of melancholy hopelessness.”59 On May 1 Walker acknowledged the inevitable and surrendered. Yet the circumstances of his surrender alienated foes and friends alike, further tarnishing his reputation. Most allied leaders and their superiors resented that Walker surrendered not to the Central Americans but to the U.S. Navy in the person of Davis. The allies ­were not even mentioned in the surrender agreement, which allowed the filibusters to return to the United States unscathed even though the allies reportedly wanted “Walker’s head.” The terms had been secured on April 30, when Davis visited Rivas to meet with the allies’ main leader, General José Joaquín Mora, ­brother of the Costa Rican president. Although Mora stated he would not “enter into a treaty” with a “pirate,” he accepted Davis’s terms in order to end the war as quickly as pos­si­ble.60 Mora had good reasons not to prolong the war. The conflict had claimed the lives of at least forty-­five hundred allies, while Walker lost well over a thousand men. Mora’s troops w ­ ere just as anxious as the filibusters

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­ ere to go home, and this was evident in the desertions that plagued the w Costa Rican army. With the rainy season just around the corner, Mora and his staff also feared the outbreak of cholera within their ranks. As Mora knew all too well from the failed Costa Rican invasion of the previous year, such an outbreak could easily produce an epidemic back home. On the other hand, Mora had strategic reasons for ending the war immediately. Not only did he seek to block the advance of a Salvadoran force that had just arrived in León and whose presence in Rivas would have jeopardized Costa Rican control of the transit. If a U.S. correspondent is to be believed, Mora was warned by Davis that a rejection of the surrender agreement would trigger a full-­scale U.S. invasion of the isthmus.61 The lenient terms of Walker’s capitulation generated international outrage. In Central Amer­i­ca the exclusion of the allies from the surrender agreement was viewed as a “humiliation” for the region. When the president of El Salvador saw the agreement he doubted its “authenticity,” for he could not believe that Mora would accept “such a humiliating and shameful act.” Even Costa Ricans w ­ ere unhappy. As the country’s official newspaper admitted, many “deplore how Walker was able to save his life a­ fter committing so many crimes, slaying so many innocent victims . . . ​ [and] wreaking such havoc.” But the paper stressed that ­t here was no better way for Central Americans to combat filibusterism than by showing “an excess of clemency for t­ hose who with ­rifle and torch in hand purported to be our civilizers.” 62 In South Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope, the surrender agreement reinforced the image of the United States as a filibuster nation, for it suggested that the U.S. government went out of its way to protect a “piratical” band. A Swiss newspaper denounced President Buchanan for allowing Davis to rescue a “tyrant” who deserved “death on the gallows,” for “not since the days of the old buccaneers had . . . ​so many horrors and atrocities occurred in such a small area and in such a short span than ­under the Walker regime in Nicaragua.” Like o­ thers, it feared that the U.S. government would encourage Walker to return to the isthmus and resurrect his “empire.” It is no won­der that a U.S. paper noted that the surrender orchestrated by Davis “places our government in the light of an accomplice with Walker.” 63 The circumstances of Walker’s surrender even alienated his U.S followers at Rivas. Many ­were angry to learn about the surrender only a­ fter



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Walker had sneaked out of their camp ­under the protection of an allied general. They deemed Walker’s failure to personally deliver his farewell speech a cowardly act akin to desertion. But they mainly resented how their return to the United States was far more arduous than Walker’s. Thanks to Davis’s agreement, Walker and sixteen of his chosen officers ­were allowed to r­ ide on h­ orse­back to San Juan del Sur, where they took the St. Mary’s to Panama, crossed the isthmus by rail, and then boarded a steamer that arrived in New Orleans on May 27. Nearly all of Walker’s remaining military and civilian colonists at Rivas left Nicaragua as well. Yet t­ hose who could walk—­about 240 filibusters and 60 colonists—­did not reach the United States ­until August 4, when they sailed into New York via Panama.64 The return journey for ­these men was a trip from hell. To reach Panama they had to go to the Costa Rican port of Puntarenas, a two-­week trek that included a grueling march of about 120 miles in burning sun across unforgiving terrain. Many went barefoot with some only able to walk on crutches. When Walker’s men arrived in Panama they presented, to cite a U.S. naval officer, “a revolting spectacle of squalor and suffering.” Many ­were so filthy that they “­were literally swarming with vermin.” Adding to their woes, they encountered much hostility while traveling through Costa Rica. One claimed that “so g­ reat was the hatred of the natives that even the ­women and c­ hildren would scoff at and curse us as we passed along.” A filibuster felt that the Costa Rican government had purposely forced them to take the Panama-­bound ship at Puntarenas rather than at nearby San Juan del Sur so that they could be “converted into a sort of traveling menagerie to gratify the curiosity of wondering Greaserdom.” 65 The survivors of Rivas reserved their greatest wrath for Walker—an anger that spilled over in their interviews with reporters who greeted them in New York. As a sergeant in the filibuster army told the city’s largest paper, “General Walker is a rascal; his men ­were brave and faithful to him, but he always exposed them unnecessarily. He became tyrannical, and at last he deserted his followers without taking a single step which might help them in their distress or alleviate their sufferings.” A similar view was expressed by a twenty-­year-­old Ohioan who denounced Walker for “leaving us in the hands of a half-­civilized p ­ eople, who would murder us any time they could.” Another twenty-­year-­old whose arm had been shot

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off said that Walker was “a tyrant and deserves to be hanged.” Such damning accounts ­were spread by papers throughout the United States and did much to ruin the l­ ittle that remained of Walker’s reputation as a liberal imperialist.66 The press in the United States and beyond paid ­little attention to what was arguably the most impor­tant symbolic act of Walker’s surrender: ­Davis’s order that the defeated filibuster chieftain hand over his only warship, the Granada, to a Costa Rican officer who, as Walker noted, was “a Jamaica negro, known by the name of Captain Murray.” Walker ­later wrote that the ship’s surrender in San Juan del Sur “was a fit conclusion to the combined efforts of the British and United States naval forces to get the Americans out of Nicaragua.” What irked him most was that the commander of the Granada, the grand­son of an American Revolutionary War officer, had to soil “the purity and integrity of his character” by giving “way to a negro subject of Her Britannic Majesty.” In Walker’s telling, the ship’s handover symbolized how Anglo-­Saxon powers, not Central Americans, had destroyed his efforts to forge an empire that would have had no place for ­free blacks such as Murray.67 Yet the surrender of the Granada could be understood differently, and not so much b­ ecause Walker owed his defeat principally to the Central American armies. Rather, a dif­fer­ent reading of the capitulation has to do with the fact that David Murray was not just any “Jamaica negro” but an influential “business man” from San Juan del Norte who was closely connected with the transit economy. He may have even hailed from the United States, as African American residents of the port ­were often mistaken for Jamaicans. Indeed, in the early 1850s Murray had joined the Pittsburgher David Peck and other African American supporters of Martin Delany in seeking to forge a multiracial “empire of liberty” on Nicaragua’s Ca­r ib­bean coast. And it was their vision of Manifest Destiny that had compelled León’s mulatto Liberal leaders to invite Walker to Nicaragua in the first place.68 ­Until the Central American war turned against Walker, his movement appeared to promote a cosmopolitan form of liberal imperialism as embodied by p ­ eople such as Murray. Yet the war ensured that the filibuster’s cause would be remembered with a strong antiliberal hue, one



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identified with despotism and slavery. By war’s end Walker was no longer deemed an apostle of pro­gress and democracy but the exact opposite. The opportunistic rogue even alienated his most trusted Nicaraguan ally, the radical liberal José María Valle, who in a broadside titled Long Live ­Free Central Amer­i­ca—­Death to Filibusterism congratulated the allies for restoring “liberty” to Central Amer­i­ca. The handover of the Granada to Murray epitomized Walker’s brutal betrayal of the liberal ideals underpinning the “empire by invitation” that nonwhite Nicaraguans such as Valle had once sought to forge with the filibuster.69

Epilogue

On May 27, 1857, William Walker sailed into New Orleans anything

but beaten. As soon as he left Nicaragua on the St. Mary’s, Walker had begun to plan the restoration of his empire. Buoying his imperial dreams was the hero’s welcome he received in the filibustering capital of the South, where he spoke to some eight thousand followers. For the first time Walker publicly linked his imperial cause with slavery expansion. No longer pinning his defeat on the tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, he attacked Northern abolitionists, the British, and the “mongrels of Central Amer­i­ca” for being “determined that slavery should be excluded from a place over which Americans had no control.” To the crowd’s delight, Walker insisted that he remained Nicaragua’s lawful president and would soon return to complete “the Americanization of Central Amer­i­ca.”1 As much as Walker courted proslavery Southerners, he believed his fame would allow him to secure recruits throughout the United States. Even the anti-­Walker New York Times admitted that the defeated filibuster continued to be “as widely known as that of any other living man in the Old World or in the New.” To consolidate his Northern support, Walker left for the filibustering bastion of New York. Portraits taken on this trip 280

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reveal that his Nicaraguan ordeals had taken a toll on him. Walker nonetheless came across as highly energized as he journeyed ­toward the Mason-­ Dixon Line, reportedly being feted “in ­every city, town and hamlet through which he passed.” His three-­day stay in the nation’s capital, by contrast, was subdued, and it remains unclear ­whether he met with President James Buchanan as some reporters claimed.2 In New York Walker encountered a skeptical press that confronted him with the proslavery speeches he had just made in the South. To calm his dwindling Northern supporters, the rogue opportunist insisted that he was not an “agent of the slave oligarchy” and denied having “ever uttered a sentiment expressing any difference of feeling on his part as between the Northern and Southern sections of this confederacy.” Walker’s local sponsors similarly stressed that his Central American cause remained the same: not to plant slavery but to spread “the glorious American princi­ ples of civilization and social and po­liti­cal liberty.” During his stay in New York, Walker tried hard to bolster his battered Free-­Soiler image. When posing at Mathew Brady’s famous photo studio on Broadway, the filibuster pointed to the portrait of John Frémont and let the accompanying reporters know of his “utmost admiration” for the hero of antislavery reformers.3 Within a month, Walker lost most of his Northern support. As a Costa Rican envoy noted, this reversal had less to do with Walker’s ambiguous stance on the slavery question than with reports about the destitute state of his men who began returning from Nicaragua and denounced their leader for his “brutal cruelty.” Rather than face his accusers, Walker fled south, once again attracting large crowds before ending up in New Orleans. His support in the South had never been monolithic, and the region’s papers ­were now equally repelled by the stories of Walker’s callous treatment of his men. Still, many endorsed the resurrection of his Central American empire. Given the pending defeat of proslavery forces in “Bleeding Kansas,” white Southerners increasingly believed their peculiar institution could survive only by expanding to the tropics. For many, Walker was their best bet.4 With his support reduced to the South, Walker shamelessly trumpeted his conversion into a proslavery expansionist. His well-­publicized speeches erased any doubts among Northerners that the former Free-­Soiler was

F igu r e E pi logue . 1 ​Portrait of Walker taken in Louisville, Kentucky, on June 9, 1857, as he traveled from New Orleans to New York. Source: William Walker. Salted paper print, Webster ­Brothers, 1857. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (NPG.97.209).

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bent on forging a slave empire in Central Amer­i­ca. As a Maine paper noted, Walker “believes that slavery is the foundation stone of our Republic. Abolish slavery, or prohibit its extension, and in his view the Union, if not the world, o­ ught to come to an end.” Walker spoke for many Southerners when he claimed that his imperial quest “involves the question ­whether you w ­ ill permit yourselves to be hemmed in on the South as you already are on the North and on the West—­whether you ­will remain quiet and idle while impassable barriers are being built on the only side left open for your superabundant energy and enterprise.”5 ­Because Walker became so quickly identified with slavery expansion, his downfall did not fuel a public debate over the dismal failure of his largely Northern followers to establish an antislavery “empire of liberty” in Nicaragua. In sharp contrast, the concurrent outbreak of a massive anticolonial rebellion in India led the British to vigorously discuss the shortcomings of their own civilizing mission. This contrast is ever more striking b­ ecause U.S. papers had recently labeled the filibuster’s polity “our Indian empire.” Many observers certainly joined the formerly pro-­Walker New York Herald in concluding that “the Walker collapse in Central Amer­i­ca” meant that “private filibustering in behalf of ‘manifest destiny’ is used up.” Yet most viewed this collapse as a failing of filibusterism only—­not of Manifest Destiny more broadly. Moreover, they tended to believe that filibusterism had become intimately entwined with slavery. Few U.S. papers shared the view of the New York Tribune—­and of the international community—­that “the true and responsible culprits . . . ​­were the American ­people, for, without the support and encouragement given to [Walker’s] enterprise by the sentiment and feeling of a large part of the public, it never would have gone on.” 6 Walker’s defeat hardly dissuaded U.S. antislavery expansionists from creating settler colonies in Latin Amer­i­ca. Some followed proslavery expansionists in shifting their sights from Kansas to Nicaragua. The most prominent was the Republican congressman Eli Thayer of Mas­sa­chu­setts, who founded a Nicaraguan emigrant society modeled a­ fter his New ­England Emigrant Aid Com­pany, which had sent hundreds of antislavery settlers to Kansas. Nor did Walker’s downfall dampen Republican efforts to solve the slavery question by forging an African American colony in Central Amer­i­ca. Its main advocate, Missouri congressman Frank Blair,

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appropriated the pro-­Walker concept of “our Indian empire” to make the case for the Republican plan. Like Martin Delany and other black emigrationists of the early 1850s, Blair viewed ­free African Americans as auspicious agents for spreading the liberal ideals of Manifest Destiny to the “colored” ­peoples of the isthmus as they ­were “Christianized in our churches, civilized by our firesides, and educated in government by hearing our po­liti­cal discussions.”7 Since antislavery U.S. expansionists assumed that Central Americans would receive them with open arms, Walker’s presumption that poor Nicaraguans clamored for his return is not surprising. Indeed, he continued to receive encouraging letters from the few colonists who remained in the isthmus. As late as 1860 a U.S. resident of Granada told Walker that his “return has long been anxiously looked for by thousands . . . ​and [José María] Valle would be ready to meet you with a force of five hundred men.” Walker’s prospects ­were buoyed by local conflicts that broke out shortly ­after his group was expelled from the isthmus in May 1857. Above all, the war’s end rekindled the Nicaraguan–­Costa Rican conflict over the lucrative transit route, thus leading Walker’s men to believe that “Nicaraguans [­were] only awaiting our arrival, to join us to expel the [Costa Ricans].” Walker’s hopes w ­ ere also lifted by the antigovernment sentiments that spread in El Salvador and Guatemala due to the utter inability of local officials to halt the cholera epidemic triggered by the return of allied troops from Nicaragua. Even the leader of the successful war against Walker—­ Costa Rica’s President Juan Rafael Mora—­faced renewed opposition that would lead to his overthrow in 1859.8 Yet Walker was sorely mistaken in believing he could revive his “empire by invitation.” Neither Valle nor other former allies in Nicaragua w ­ ere anxiously awaiting him. Nicaraguans who had remained at his side u­ ntil the ­bitter end ­were fiercely persecuted, while ­those who fled abroad ­were blocked from returning home. Walker’s downfall produced an oligarchic restoration that crushed “the radical promises of demo­cratic liberalism,” which had fueled his rise to power. Profoundly shocked by the filibuster revolution, leaders of Nicaragua’s Conservative and Liberal parties made ­every effort to s­ ettle their differences and circumscribe the power of nonelite groups that had been Walker’s main native supporters. Moreover, as a former Nicaraguan supporter of the filibuster noted, “the excesses and barbarities committed by Walker and his followers” had produced

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much “antipathy against the Americans.” Such anti-­U.S. sentiments ­were actually weaker than scholars have often assumed. Even Walker’s fiercest Nicaraguan enemies—­Conservative oligarchs—­continued to valorize the United States. But this admiration no longer implied that they—or other Central American ruling elites—­wanted the “Americans” to determine their fate. On the contrary, Americanization now meant the adoption of U.S. institutions so that Central Americans could better resist agents of Manifest Destiny.9 Faced with Walker’s ongoing threat, Central Americans urged their southern neighbors to strengthen the continent’s nascent alliance against the “northern colossus.” Their appeals ­were well received, for the Walker episode had deepened South American fears of U.S. expansion. While the Central American defeat of Walker hardly enjoyed the global impact of Japan’s 1905 victory over Rus­sia, many South Americans joined a Costa Rican paper in celebrating it as “the first fatal blow against the evil hubris of Manifest Destiny.” They soon realized that the blow was not decisive. Hence, the threat of Walker’s return boosted South American support for the continental alliance. And ­because the alliance was made in the name of a “Latin race” besieged by “Anglo-­Saxon Amer­i­ca,” the Walker threat helped consolidate the very idea of Latin Amer­i­ca.10 Walker’s first effort to resurrect his empire was foiled not by Latin Americans but by the U.S. Navy. In November 1857 Walker sailed from Mobile, Alabama, with about two hundred men. Shortly ­after landing in San Juan del Norte, the invaders ­were captured and sent home by the head of U.S. naval forces in the Ca­rib­bean, Commodore Hiram Paulding. If Paulding had once valorized Walker for spreading his country’s “beautiful system of government” to Central Amer­i­ca, he now deemed the filibusters “outlaws who had . . . ​left our shores for the purpose of rapine and murder.” Upon returning to the United States, Walker and his Southern supporters unleashed a public campaign against Paulding, claiming that the native New Yorker had no right to arrest U.S. citizens on foreign soil. Waged in the press and the halls of Congress, their crusade allowed Walker to emerge as the South’s main symbol of slavery expansion.11 By the time Walker made his final invasion into Central Amer­i­ca in 1860, his star in the South had dimmed. The region—­like the entire nation—­was consumed with the looming Civil War. Walker’s difficulties

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also stemmed from his failed invasion attempt of December 1858, which ended when the vessel carry­ing his men grounded on a reef in the Ca­rib­ bean. This fiasco reinforced Southern doubts about the viability of his mission and impeded his efforts to raise men and funds. To reenergize his supporters, Walker published The War in Nicaragua in March 1860. The book blatantly exaggerates the role of slavery in his regime. It also reveals Walker’s mistaken belief that he still enjoyed the support of the Central American masses. This delusion proved fatal to Walker. In the summer of 1860 he and some one hundred men set up base in the small British colony of Roatán, located off the Honduran coast. Walker had been invited by its white settlers to help block the British Crown from handing the island back to Honduras. From Roatán Walker sought to invade Honduras and topple its Conservative government with the aid of native Liberal Party members beholden to his former ally Trinidad Cabañas, then in exile in El Salvador. With Cabañas back in power, Walker planned to go to Nicaragua, where the masses would presumably help him recoup his presidency. This quixotic plan quickly fell apart when Walker and his men attacked the Honduran port of Trujillo. Although they yelled “hurrahs” to ­Cabañas, no local Liberals rallied to their cause. For one U.S. resident, this miserable failure proved just how “universally hated and abhorred” Walker was in Central Amer­i­ca. Hounded by native troops, the filibusters surrendered to a British naval force in the hope that they could return home unscathed. Instead they w ­ ere handed over to local authorities. The Hondurans spared their prisoners, except for Walker. ­After a speedy trial, he fell to a firing squad on September 12 in Trujillo’s main square.12 Upon his death Walker returned to the international limelight. By now the divergence marking U.S. and non-­U.S. views of the “king of filibusters” had hardened. No ­matter how vehemently Walker had come to champion the South’s peculiar institution, much of the international community still viewed him as embodying the expansionist spirit of the entire U.S. nation. Not coincidentally, this view prevailed south of the Rio Grande. El Salvador’s president spoke for many Latin Americans when he warned that Walker’s execution hardly put an end to Manifest Destiny, for “filibusterism resides not only in Walker but is rather a general trait of North Amer­i­ca.” In the United States, by contrast, the fallen fili-

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buster was now deemed mainly a Southern symbol of slavery expansion. And since his death occurred just two months before the fateful election of November 1860, some Southern papers feared that it made the nation’s slide into a civil war inevitable. Had Walker prevailed, so the Fayetteville Arkansian lamented in mid-­October, “slavery would . . . ​now pres­ent a totally dif­fer­ent feature to what it shows, and the storm now lowering over us, been averted.”13 Walker’s efforts to restore his Central American empire did, in fact, contribute to the coming of the U.S. Civil War. His repeated invasion attempts fueled the regional (“sectional”) tensions that erupted into war following the presidential inauguration of the Republican Abraham Lincoln in March 1861. Had Walker’s forays been successful, white Southerners, as the historian Robert May has argued, “might have been more willing to preserve the Union.” It remains unclear how greatly Walker’s demise hurt the presidential candidate most identified with his original Nicaraguan enterprise, Northern Demo­crat Stephen Douglas, whose strident championing of Manifest Destiny had made him the candidate with the greatest pos­si­ble transsectional appeal. But t­ here is no doubt that Walker’s imperial quest helped to torpedo endeavors to avert the war by exacerbating Republican fears of slavery expansion abroad. A good example is Wisconsin Senator James Doolittle, who warned that Walker and like-­m inded filibusters w ­ ere capable of “planting slavery” in Central Amer­i­ca and beyond so that “it shakes hands with the [slave] empire of Brazil.”14 Such Republican fears helped to thwart the main attempt to avoid war: the Crittenden Compromise of December 1860. Republicans supported the compromise’s call to restore the 1820 prohibition of slavery north of the thirty-­sixth parallel. They also tended to accept its guarantee that Southern slavery would not be abolished. Most, however, joined President-­ Elect Lincoln in adamantly opposing the vague but unamendable clause that sanctioned slavery’s spread into territory “hereafter acquired” situated south of the parallel. Such a compromise would have bolstered the South’s slave regime and made newly acquired territories in the continental United States undesirable for ­free (white) l­abor. With Walker fresh in their minds, Republicans also feared that it would animate the South to acquire slave states in Latin Amer­i­ca via filibusterism.15

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Ironically, Walker’s shadow loomed over President Lincoln’s initial efforts to address the race and slavery questions fueling the war by creating f­ ree black colonies in the Ca­rib­bean basin. With the voluntary removal of African Americans to the tropics, his administration aimed to make gradual, compensated emancipation in the border states—­and eventually the nation—­acceptable to the many whites terrified of “negro equality” and “amalgamation.” Leading Republicans also hoped that black emigration to the tropics would expand U.S. power in a geopo­liti­cal hot spot. In devising this plan, Lincoln fused the nascent Central America-­ based colonization proj­ect of moderate Republicans such as Blair with the older Liberia-­based enterprise of the American Colonization Society, which had long been headed by his po­liti­cal hero, Henry Clay.16 Unbeknownst to the president, Lincoln’s own resettlement efforts ­were promoted by former associates of Walker. They included the director of Walker’s Department of Colonization, Joseph Fabens; the influential lobbyist Anna Carroll; the colonization agents William and Jane Cazneau; the Cuban nationalist Domingo Goicouría; and the radical Irish émigré and newspaper editor Thomas Meagher. If Carroll advocated for the creation of a black colony in British Honduras, Goicouría marketed Mexico’s Ca­rib­bean island of Cozumel, while Fabens and the Cazneaus championed the Dominican Republic as an antislavery haven for African Americans or, as Fabens put it, for the “millions of a degraded race—­ scourged, crushed, treated as the very Pariahs of civilization, driveling away their lives in the noisome Ghettos of our Christian country, ­f ree as well as bond.” Meagher, in turn, had worked at least u­ ntil January 1861 for the Chiriquí (Panama) proj­ect of Ambrose Thompson, which Lincoln ended up favoring (the president ­later turned his attention to Haiti and British Honduras). The little-­known role of ­these colonizationists in Lincoln’s scheme underscores the affinity of the president and like-­minded Republicans with the kind of liberal imperialism that had marked Walker’s original Nicaraguan enterprise.17 Lincoln’s colonization scheme quickly fell victim to the legacy of Walker. The plan was lambasted by f­ ree blacks in the United States. As an African American from New Jersey wrote to the president, “pray tell us, is our right to a home in this country less than your own, Mr. Lincoln?”

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Yet just as damaging was Central American hostility, as the president acknowledged to Congress on the eve of his Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. Contrary to Republican hopes, Central Americans refused to embrace African American colonists as a buffer against proslavery U.S. expansionists. They preferred the creation of “military colonies” composed of “colonists from the Latin race.” While racial prejudice s­ haped Central American opposition, it was not as strong as often thought. The region continued to welcome African American immigrants as long as they came in small numbers and without the armed might of the United States.18 What Central Americans most opposed ­were schemes involving U.S. colonists—­“whatever may be their color”—­that would undermine their sovereignty and lead them to relive their fatal encounter with Walker. A typical warning was issued by El Salvador’s official newspaper when it stressed the “dangers of establishing the [black] colonies beneath the protection of a foreign and very power­ful nation, whose sons had already revealed their tendencies in the aggressions of Walker.” Republicans thus dug their own grave in proclaiming that African American emigrants to Central Amer­i­ca would advance the ideals of Manifest Destiny while enjoying U.S. military protection. Central Americans shuddered especially when Republican colonizationists insisted that they would send to the isthmus over four million African Americans who, thanks to their Americanization, would “carry freedom and improvement” and turn it not just into a “de­pen­dency of the United States” but into “our India.”19 It remains unclear how Central American opposition to black colonization helped radicalize Lincoln’s crusade for emancipation—­a nd thus helped transform the Civil War into, as the president put it, a “remorseless revolutionary strug­gle.” Once the war commenced, of course, Lincoln considered emancipation as a military necessity or a justifiable action to suppress a rebellion. But the president and his fellow Republican colonizationists clearly paid the price for refusing to reckon with Central Amer­i­ca’s disastrous encounter with Walker’s imperial enterprise. Above all, they failed to grasp that the filibuster’s dismal attempt to forge an empire of liberty had pushed Central Americans to more fully heed Simón Bolívar’s famous warning of 1829: The United States

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was destined to “plague [Latin] Amer­i­ca with torments in the name of freedom.”20 Central Americans never could forget Bolívar’s warning. Ever since their fatal encounter with Walker, Central Americans have experienced more U.S. incursions than any other ­people in the world. The invasions include the 1912–1933 intervention in Nicaragua—­the lengthiest U.S. occupation of a Latin American nation—as well as President Ronald Reagan’s anticommunist crusade of the 1980s, which brought great turmoil to the entire region. In consequence, Central America suffered unusually high levels of social in­equality, po­liti­cal vio­lence, and authoritarian rule during much of the twentieth ­century. Not surprisingly, this long history of U.S. intervention has constantly refreshed Central Americans’ ­bitter memories of Walker. The memories remain strongest in Nicaragua, which continues to celebrate the victory of September 14, 1856, at the ­Battle of San Jacinto as its main national holiday. But they are intense elsewhere in the isthmus, as when thousands of Costa Ricans took to the streets in 2007 to denounce President Oscar Arias (winner of the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize) as a filibustero for seeking a f­ ree trade agreement with the United States. A key legacy of the Walker episode are memories that undermine U.S. efforts to control a region widely deemed its “backyard.”21 Yet the power of such memories in Central Amer­i­ca hinge on the complete erasure of Walker’s local support. While the vast majority of his native allies ­were Nicaraguans, ­t here ­were ­others scattered across the region, from Costa Rica to Guatemala. What united ­these Central Americans was their assumption that Walker and his men w ­ ere spreading U.S.-­style democracy and pro­gress. In hindsight, that idea seems utterly unfathomable, for Walker’s enterprise ended in an authoritarian nightmare that brought unpre­ce­dented destruction to the isthmus. His “empire by invitation” becomes explicable only if we recognize that the California Gold Rush led Central Americans to become infatuated with U.S. ideals and practices. The globalizing forces underpinning the Gold Rush also ensured that the Walker episode tarnished the international image of the United States. Ever more striking, then, is how swiftly memories of this episode faded across the world. The memories are still alive in South Amer­i­ca, yet ­here,

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F igu r e E pi logue . 2 ​Graffiti denouncing Costa Rican President Oscar Arias as a filibuster for his promotion of a Central American f­ ree trade agreement with the United States (CAFTA). San José, Costa Rica, May 2007. Credit: Photograph by Michel Gobat.

too, the filibuster is remembered mainly, to quote Eduardo Galeano’s classic Open Veins of Latin Amer­i­ca (1973), as nothing but “the head of a band of assassins” who restored slavery. In real­ity, it was not the rise of a U.S.-­led slave empire in Central Amer­i­ca that so alarmed South Americans and led them to invent the idea of Latin Amer­i­ca. When Francisco Bilbao exclaimed that “Walker is the United States,” he was referring to the threat of a “rapacious Yankee democracy” that enjoyed strong support among Nicaraguans. Eu­ro­pe­ans, in turn, completely lost interest in an episode that had engendered much fear of a transatlantic war with the United States. This Eu­ro­pean amnesia originated with the U.S. Civil War, which curbed the nation’s overseas expansionism that so threatened the Old World powers. When U.S. overseas expansion surged again in the 1890s, Walker was long gone. Moreover, Eu­rope’s imperial powers saw by then far more commonalities with the United States than was true during the era of Manifest Destiny. Not only had transatlantic exchanges

292 Epilogue

intensified over the past de­cades but, in the eyes of Eu­ro­pe­ans, the United States had shed its reputation as a rogue nation that smugly flaunted international law.22 Nowhere is the amnesia of the Walker episode more con­spic­u­ous than in the United States. This obliviousness reflects the tendency of the U.S. public to deny its country’s history of overseas expansion. It also stems from the filibuster’s evolution into an icon of slavery expansion. With the defeat of the South in the Civil War, Walker’s imperial enterprise appeared to have lost any con­temporary relevance and could be easily relegated to the dustbin of history. Memories of Walker resurfaced in the United States from time to time, especially when the public became aware of the spectacular wrongs of U.S. intervention. This was true of the immediate post-1898 era, when one of the nation’s most popu­lar writers (Richard Harding Davis) used the Walker episode to first celebrate the resurgence of U.S. imperialism and then to attack its descent into naked brutality and corporate greed. The filibuster reared his ugly head again during the Vietnam War, when he became “the perfect emblem” for the most disastrous overseas intervention in U.S. history. Soon thereafter he was invoked by U.S. critics of President Reagan’s undeclared war against the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979–1990. Yet the episodic resurfacings of Walker—­and his brief mention in history textbooks—­have done l­ ittle to reacquaint the U.S. public with a figure whose Central American exploits electrified their forefathers and made him the world’s best-­k nown agent of Manifest Destiny. Why would a nation want to remember its complicity in an imperial enterprise run amok?23 ­Because Walker is now so firmly identified with slavery, it is easy to forget that his ephemeral empire of liberty presaged modern U.S. campaigns to redeem the world—­from Woodrow Wilson’s crusade to make the world “safe for democracy” to George W. Bush’s War on Terror. Of course, Walker’s enterprise differed greatly from the latter-­day campaigns. It not only scorned the international order but also promoted settler colonialism, championed revolutionary change, unabashedly embraced empire, and was driven by private citizens, not the U.S. state. Still, the demo­cratic discourse, paternalistic notions of uplift, and racist views at the heart of Walker’s proj­ect did mark U.S. liberal imperialism of the post1898 era. Most modern U.S. efforts to promote democracy at gunpoint

Epilogue

293

have failed miserably, with the much-­touted occupations of Germany and Japan being exceptions to the rule. This long history may suggest that ­little has changed since the Walker debacle. Large sectors of the U.S. public still seem to believe, as Herman Melville put it in 1850, that “Americans are the peculiar, chosen ­people [who] bear the ark of the liberties of the world.”24 A fundamental change has nonetheless occurred, for the world has become far more aware of the perils marking U.S. efforts to impose “its g­ reat experiment of liberty” on other ­peoples. Over 150 years after Central America’s disastrous encounter with Walker’s self-proclaimed “advance guard of American civilization,” empire by invitation as a repertoire for U.S. hegemony may have finally run its course.

Abbreviations

ACWP, NYHS

Albert Chipman Wells Papers, New York Historical Society

AGCA

Archivo General de Centro América (Guatemala)

AGMAEE

Archivo General del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de España

AIHNCA

Archivo del Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica

AMPG

Archivo de la Municipalidad y Prefectura de Granada (Nicaragua)

ANCR

Archivo Nacional de Costa Rica

AOP, DU

Appleton Oaksmith Papers, Duke University

ATC

Accessory Transit Com­pany

BO

Boletín Oficial (León, Nicaragua)

BNA

British National Archives

CFCWWP, TU

Callander Fayssoux Collection of William Walker Papers, Tulane University

CI

Correo del Istmo (León, Nicaragua)

EGSP

E.G. Squier Papers

EN

El Nicaraguense (Granada, Nicaragua)

FO

Foreign Office 295

296 Abbreviations GStAPK

Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin)

ITWP, NYPL

Isaiah Thornton Williams Papers, New York Public Library

LOC

U.S. Library of Congress

PCFW, BL

Papers concerning the Filibuster War, Bancroft Library

PWHS, UR

Papers of William Henry Seward, University of Rochester

RFP, MSRC, HU Rapier ­Family Papers, Moorland-­Spingarn Research Center, Howard University RG

Rec­ord Group

RPPG

Registro Público de la Propiedad, Granada (Nicaragua)

RREE

Relaciones Exteriores

SSWP, YUL

Samuel Smith Wood Papers, Yale University Library

USNA

U.S. National Archives

Notes

introduction 1. “Report of a Nicaraguan Soldier at San Francisco,” New York Herald, October 14, 1856. 2. “Inauguration of William Walker as President,” EN, July 16, 1856. 3. John Brenizer to his brother-­in-­law in Smithville, [Ohio,] Managua, July 24, 1856, John S. Brenizer Letters, Tennessee State Library and Archives. Thanks to archivist Heather Adkins for confirming Smithville’s location; email communication June 30, 2015. 4. Richard Harding Davis, quoted in Brady Harrison, Agent of Empire: William Walker and the Imperial Self in American Lit­er­a­ture (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004), 193; Rubén Darío, El viaje a Nicaragua e Intermezzo tropical (Madrid: Bilioteca “Ateneo,” 1909), 54. On how U.S. memories of the Walker episode differ from Central American memories, see Víctor Hugo Acuña Ortega, Memorias comparadas: las versiones de la guerra contra los filibusteros en Nicaragua, Estados Unidos y Costa Rica (Siglos XIX–­X XI) (Alajuela, Costa Rica: Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría, 2009). 5. A key exception is Albert Carr, who deems Walker’s proj­ect a precursor of the 1960s Alliance for Pro­g ress, which the U.S. government undertook in Latin Amer­i­ca u­ nder the banner of democracy. By ignoring Walker’s followers, Carr’s biography underestimates the prodemocracy thrust of his movement and reduces it to a brief discussion of Walker’s “faith in democracy.” See Albert Z. Carr, The World and William Walker (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 174–175. Robert May and Amy Greenberg have shown how Walker and many of his followers initially opposed the

297

298

6.

7.

8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14.

NOTES TO PAGES 4–9

expansion of slavery, yet their impor­tant studies focus not on Walker’s rule but on filibusterism’s place in antebellum Amer­i­ca; see Robert May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum Amer­i­ca (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); and Amy Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). On Walker as an “international criminal,” see T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New York: Knopf, 2009). The episode’s framing as a strug­gle among U.S. tycoons owes much to William Scruggs, Filibusters and Financiers: The Story of William Walker and his Associates (New York: Macmillan, 1916). On the movie Walker, see Harrison, Agent of Empire, 171–177. William Walker, The War in Nicaragua (Mobile, AL: Goetzel, 1860); “Nicaragua and Slavery,” New York Sun, October 24, 1856, reel 1, John H. Wheeler Papers, LOC. For major studies linking the Walker episode with proslavery expansion, see John Hope Franklin, The Militant South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956); Robert May, The Southern Dream of a Ca­rib­bean Empire, 1854–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973); Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1986); and Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 2013. Drew Gilpin Faust, “Mingling Promiscuously: A History of ­Women and Men at Harvard,” in In Yards and Gates: Gender in Harvard and Radcliffe History, ed. Laurel Ulrich (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 318. Peter Onuf, “Imperialism and Nationalism in the Early American Republic,” in Empire’s Twin: U.S. Anti-­Imperialism from the Founding Era to the Age of Terrorism, ed. Ian Tyrrell and Jay Sexton (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 21–40. On U.S. filibusterism, see May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld. Geir Lundestad, “ ‘Empire by Invitation’ in the American ­Century,” Diplomatic History 23, no. 2 (1999): 189–217. “The Gray-­Eyed Man,” EN, December 8, 1856; “The Emigration to Nicaragua,” New York Herald, January 29, 1857; Effingham Wilson, Proposed Colony in the District of Black River, Northern Coast of Central Amer­i­ca (London: Barnes, 1838), 12. Peter Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (Charlottesville: University of V ­ irginia Press, 2000). Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2010), 2–13. On Walker’s Nicaragua as the extension of the U.S. frontier, see Slotkin, The Fatal Environment, 242–261. The term Manifest Destiny is commonly seen to have been conceived by John O’­Sullivan, who was the editor of the United States Magazine and Demo­cratic Review, where it first appeared in print. Yet Linda Hudson has argued that the influential term was coined by S ­ ullivan’s associate Jane Mc­Manus Storm (aka Cora Montgomery), as she was the author of the unsigned article; see Linda Hudson, Mistress of Manifest Destiny: A Biography of Jane Mc­Manus Storm Cazneau, 1807–1878 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2001), 46–48, 205–210.



NOTES TO PAGES 11–19

299

15. Lord Palmerston to British Foreign Secretary Lord Clarendon, Broadlands, December 31, 1857, Journal of Modern History 3, no. 3 (1961): 290. On how slavery ­shaped the U.S. image of the world beyond Eu­rope, see Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 21–22. Central American historians have provided a non-­U.S. view, yet none focus on local participation in Walker’s movement; for a historiographical overview, see Iván Molina Jiménez, La cicatriz gloriosa: Estudios y debates sobre la Campaña Nacional: Costa Rica (1856–1857) (San José: Editorial Costa Rica, 2014).

1 “the apple in our eden” 1. “Speech of Gen. Walker,” EN, June 7, 1856. 2. Michel Gobat, Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua ­under U.S. Imperial Rule (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 66–67; Bradford Burns, Patriarch and Folk: The Emergence of Nicaragua, 1798–1858 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 162. According to the ProQuest Historical Newspapers database, the New York Times published 450 articles on Nicaragua in 1854 (the year before Walker’s arrival) and 279 in 2010. 3. “California,” Boston Daily Atlas, April 23, 1849. 4. Henry Simpson, The Emigrant’s Guide to the Gold Mines: Three Weeks in the Gold Mines, or Adventures with the Gold Diggers of California in August, 1848 (New York: Joyce, 1848); Brian Roberts, American Alchemy: The California Gold Rush and Middle-­Class Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 61; “Camino de los Estados Unidos al puerto de S. Francisco de la Alta California, via de Nicaragua,” Gaceta Oficial (León, Nicaragua), March 3, 1849. 5. Albert Shumate, The California of George Gordon and the 1849 Sea Voyages of His California Association (Glendale, CA: Clark, 1976). 6. “The Nicaragua Route,” North American and United States Gazette, April 23, 1849. 7. Burns, Patriarch and Folk, 42. 8. Burns, Patriarch and Folk, 145–159; Frances Kinloch Tijerino, Nicaragua: Identidad y cultura política (1821–1858) (Managua: Banco Central de Nicaragua, 1999), 101–141. 9. “Impor­t ant from Nicaragua,” North American and United States Gazette, August 16, 1849; “From Central Amer­i­ca,” Daily National Intelligencer, October 13, 1849; “­T hings in General,” Boston Courier, July 16, 1849. 10. “Administración de Justicia,” CI, June 16, 1849. 11. Roger Baldwin, “Tarrying in Nicaragua: Pleasures and Perils of the California Trip in 1849,” ­Century 49, no. 118 (1891): 917; E. G. Squier, Nicaragua: Its ­People, Scenery, Monuments, and the Proposed Canal (New York: Appleton, 1852), 1:32. 12. Burns, Patriarch and Folk, 60–65, 87–94.

300

NOTES TO PAGES 19–26

13. Baldwin, “Tarrying in Nicaragua,” 917; Burns, Patriarch and Folk, 60, 91. 14. William Denniston as cited in Amy Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 86. 15. Karl Offen, “Race and Place in Colonial Mosquitia, 1600–1787,” in Blacks and Blackness in Central Amer­i­ca: Between Race and Place, ed. Lowell Gudmundson and Justin Wolfe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 92–129; Peter Browning, ed., To the Golden Shore: Amer­i­ca Goes to California, 1849 (Lafayette, CA: G ­ reat West, 1995), 302. 16. Roger Baldwin to his ­sister Hettie, Granada, May 14 and 20, 1849, Charles Thompson Blake Papers, California Historical Society; Squier, Nicaragua, 1:152, 237; “Movimiento interior,” CI, June 1, 1849; “The Nicaragua Route to the Pacific,” North American and United States Gazette, August 16, 1849. 17. “Concurrencia de buques,” CI, September 5, 1850; “Exportación del maiz,” CI, November 14, 1850. 18. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, quoted in Burns, Patriarch and Folk, 161. 19. “Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Documents in Answer to a Resolution of the House Respecting Tigre Island, ­etc.,” 31st Cong., 1st Sess., Exec. Doc. No. 75, 1850, 141–144; “La Esperanza,” CI, June 1, 1849; no title, CI, May 1, 1849. 20. T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New York: Knopf, 2009), 177. 21. Gregorio Juárez, letter to the editor, CI, June 1, 1849. 22. “Decreto gubernativo,” CI, August 1, 1849; William Manning, ed., Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, Inter-­American Affairs, 1831–1860 (Washington, DC: Car­ne­g ie Endowment for International Peace, 1933), 3:266, 324–326, 360–374. 23. “Felicitación del pueblo de Subtiaba al excom. Sr. Ministro Plenipotenciario E. Geo. Squier,” CI, September 1, 1849. 24. “Una ojeada sobre el Mundo,” La Epoca (La Paz, Bolivia), December 1, 1847; BO, July 5, 1849; “Democracia,” CI, February 1, 1850; Kinloch, Nicaragua, 202–203. 25. Jordana Dym, From Sovereign Villages to National States: City, State, and Federation in Central Amer­i­ca, 1759–1839 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006). 26. “Continúa la misma material,” Integridad de Centro-­América (Granada), January 22, 1850; Charles Stansifer, “The Central American C ­ areer of E. George Squier” (PhD diss., Tulane University, 1959), 19. 27. Squier, Nicaragua, 1:247; Bishop Jorge Viteri to Agustín Vijil, León, November 8, 1852, FVI D20G3 62, AINHCA. 28. “Discurso que pronunció el Excom. Sr. E. Geo Squier en el día de su presentación,” CI, July 17, 1849; Nicaraguan Foreign Minister to Guatemalan Foreign Minister, León, August 28, 1849, B 99-7-2-40, legajo 9385, Relaciones Exteriores, AGCA; Eldon Kenworthy, Amer­i­ca / Américas: Myth in the Making of U.S. Policy ­toward Latin Amer­i­ca (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 15; Jay Sexton, Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-­Century Amer­i­ca (New York: Hill and Wang, 2011), 102. 29. Editorial, La Gaceta del Salvador, August 3, 1849; William Manning, ed., Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, Inter-­American Affairs, 1831–1860 (Washington, DC: Car­ne­g ie Endowment for International Peace, 1934), 4:531.



NOTES TO PAGES 26–33

301

30. Terry Barnhart, Ephraim George Squier and the Development of American Anthropology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 222–227. 31. “Nicaragua II,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, January 15, 1852. 32. Squier, Nicaragua, 1:268. 33. Burns, Patriarch and Folk, 6. 34. Justin Wolfe, The Everyday Nation-­State: Community and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-­ Century Nicaragua (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 94–96, 149–193. 35. Justin Wolfe, “ ‘The Cruel Whip’: Race and Place in Nineteenth-­Century Nicaragua,” in Gudmundson and Wolfe, eds., Blacks and Blackness, 184. 36. “Denuncia,” CI, November 1, 1849; Kinloch, Nicaragua, 211–212. 37. Sexton, Monroe Doctrine, 119. 38. “Variedades,” CI, January 2, 1851; “El Señor Squier,” CI, January 23, 1851. 39. “Via interoceánica,” CI, July 11, 1850. 40. “Interesante,” CI, March 1, 1850; “From Nicaragua,” North American and United States Gazette, February 11, 1851; John Foster to Frederick Chatfield, Realejo, December 31, 1850, T-152 [San Juan del Sur], roll 1, Despatches from United States Consuls in San Juan del Sur, 1847–1861, USNA. 41. “Movimiento interior,” CI, October 10, 1850; “Mejoras del tránsito por Nicaragua,” CI, December 26, 1850; “Variedades,” CI, March 20, 1851; Charles Ross Parke, Dreams to Dust: A Diary of the California Gold Rush, 1849–1850 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 137; Burns, Patriarch and Folk, 58, 63; Albert Chipman Wells to his ­brother, Granada, June 4, 1850 [1851], ACWP, NYHS; John Foster to Frederick Chatfield, Realejo, December 31, 1850, T-152 [San Juan del Sur], roll 1, Despatches from United States Consuls in San Juan del Sur, 1847–1861, USNA. 42. “Circular a los prefectos,” CI, October 24, 1850; Joseph Livingston to Ephraim George Squier, León, January 4, 1851, EGSP, LOC. 43. Hiram Pierce, A Forty-­Niner Speaks (Oakland: Keyston-­Inglett, 1930), entry of November 24, 1850; Greenberg, Manifest Manhood, 89–91, 125–128. 44. Wilhelm Marr, Reise nach Central-­America (Hamburg: Meissner, 1863), 1:264–265; “Reiseskizzen aus dem ehemaligen Königreich Guatemala,” Hansa (Hamburg), August 26, 1854; Jeffrey Gould, To Die in This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 1880–1965 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 164–167. 45. Susan Johnson, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush (New York: Norton, 2000), 278. 46. John Forster to Frederick Chatfield, Realejo, December 31, 1850, T-152 [San Juan del Sur], roll 1, Despatches from United States Consuls in San Juan del Sur, 1847–1861, USNA; Frederick Chatfield to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, Guatemala City, March 4, 1851, caja 21, exp. Inglaterra, RREE, ANCR; Poder especial otorgado por el Sr. Marselo Lacayo como curador de su hija Niñfa en ­favor del Sr Juan Ahabah [of New York], Granada, March 3, 1852, Protocolos de José Anzoátegui, Años 1851–1854, RPPG; “History,” Deshon ­Family Website, http://­w ww​.­deshon​.­net​/ ­history​.­html. 47. “Report of Mr. McNiel on His Expedition to Central Amer­i­ca,” in First Annual Report of the Trustees of the Peabody Acad­emy of Science (Salem, MA: Peabody Acad­emy of Science, 1869), 84; Etiénne Brasseur de Bourbourg, Notes d’un voyage dans l’Amérique Centrale; lettres a M. Alfred Maury (Paris: Thunot, 1855), 16; John Hill Wheeler to

302

48.

49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

54. 55. 56.

NOTES TO PAGES 33–36

Secretary of State, August 1856, M 219 [Central Amer­i­ca], roll 10, Despatches from United States Ministers to Central Amer­i­ca, 1824–1906, USNA; Joseph Livingston to Ephraim George Squier, León, January 16, 1851, EGSP, LOC; John Eisterhold, “Mobile: Lumber Center of the Gulf Coast,” Alabama Review 24, no. 2 (1973): 89–90; “U.S., Southeast Coastwise Inward and Outward Slave Manifests, 1790–1860,” Ancestry​.­com, http://­search​.­ancestry​.­com​/­search​/­db​.­aspx​?­dbid​=­1714; “History,” Deshon F ­ amily Website, http://­w ww​.­deshon​.­net​/­history​.­html. “Oficial,” CI, January 9, 1851; Albert Chipman Wells to his ­brother, Granada, June 4, 1850 [1851], ACWP, NYHS; C. F. Reichardt, Nicaragua: Nach eigener Anschauung im Jahre 1852 und mit besonderer Beziehung auf die Auswanderung nach den heissen Zonen Amerika’s (Braunschweig, Germany: Vieweg, 1854), 110–111, 113; Carl Scherzer, Travels in the F ­ ree States of Central Amer­i­ca: Nicaragua, Honduras, and San Salvador (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1857), 1:62; C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 12–15. “Von Californien nach New-­York,” Hansa (Hamburg), January 4, 1854; Scherzer, Travels, 1:65; E. G. Squier, “Nicaragua,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 11, no. 66 (1855): 757; Reichardt, Nicaragua, 245; William Wells, Explorations and Adventures in Honduras (New York: Harper and ­Brothers, 1857), 28; “Execution of Wm. B. Sheppard for the Murder of Henry C. Day,” San Francisco Alta California, August 1, 1854; “Realejo Correspondence,” San Francisco Alta California, October 31, 1850. Jacob B. D. Stillman, An 1850 Voyage: San Francisco to Baltimore by Sea and by Land (Palo Alto, CA: Osborne, 1967), 59; “Avisos,” CI, March 20, 1851; Reichardt, Nicaragua, 222–223; J. Rowell to unknown, July 4, 1852, and January 4, 1851, RG 27, Rowell—­Panama, 1850s, American Bible Society Archives; Diego de la Quadra to Primer Secretario de Estado, Granada, January 14, 1852, legajo 1429, Correspondencia con embajadas y legaciones, Costa Rica, Archivo General del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de España. Julius Froebel, Siete años de viaje (Managua: Fondo de Promoción Cultural, Banco de América, 1978), 36, 51; Stillman, An 1850 Voyage, 40; “Oficial,” CI, January 30, 1851; Walter Lowey to John Kerr, Virgin Bay, December 11, 1852, roll 9, Central Amer­i­ca, USNA; “Exportación del Maiz,” CI, November 14, 1850; “Al Público,” CI, December 5, 1850. Aims McGuinness, Path of Empire: Panama and the California Gold Rush (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008); Pierce, A Forty-­Niner Speaks, entry of November 22, 1850; Wells, Explorations and Adventures in Honduras, 83. Bishop Jorge Viteri to Agustín Vijil, León, September 10 and 18, 1850, FVI D20G3 59, AIHNCA; Frederick Chatfield to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, Guatemala City, March 4, 1851, caja 21, exp. Inglaterra, RREE, ANCR. “Comunicación inter-­oceánico,” CI, September 12, 1850. “Otro remitido de S. Juan: La energía de los Norte-­A mericanos,” CI, June 20, 1850; “The Badger Schooner ‘Enterprise,’ ” Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, July 10, 1850. “El Trabajo,” CI, August 19, 1850; Kinloch, Nicaragua, 214–217; “Noticias,” CI, October 31, 1850.



NOTES TO PAGES 36–40

303

57. “Nevería,” CI, March 21, 1850; Julius Froebel, “The Nicaragua Question,” New York Times, March 7, 1856. 58. “Interesante,” CI, January 9, 1851; E. G. Squier, “San Juan de Nicaragua,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 10, no. 55 (1854): 50; Jeimy Trejos Salazar, La iglesia católica en la Campaña Nacional (1856–1857) (San José, Costa Rica: EUNED, 2011), 48; David Folkman, The Nicaragua Route (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1972), 24, 58; “By Last Night’s Mails,” Boston Daily Atlas, February 11, 1851; Reichardt, Nicaragua, 224, 241. 59. Michael Adas, Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and Amer­i­ca’s Civilizing Mission (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 80; Roger Cushing Aikin, “Paintings of Manifest Destiny: Mapping the Nation,” American Art 14, no. 3 (2000): 78–89; Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 6, 124; “A Run to Nicaragua,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 81, no. 499 (1857): 542. 60. Poder especial otorgado por Cornelius Vandervilt a f­ avor de Alberto Horn, January 27, 1851, Protocolos de E. Castillo, 1851, RPPG; “Del Presidente de la Companía del Canal inter-­oceánico,” CI, February 6, 1851. 61. Karl Marx, On Amer­i­ca and the Civil War, ed. Saul Padover, Karl Marx Library, vol. 2 (New York: McGraw-­Hill, 1972), 14; Jorge Eduardo Arellano, Giuseppe Garibaldi: Héroe de dos mundos en Nicaragua (Managua: Ediciones del Siglo, 1999); Laureano Pineda, quoted in Andrés Vega Bolaños, Los acontecimientos de 1851: Notas y documentos (Managua: n.p., 1945), 32–33. 62. Alejandro Bolaños Geyer, William Walker: The Gray-­Eyed Man of Destiny (Lake Saint Louis, MO: privately printed, 1990), 3:50; monthly figure based on Folkman, The Nicaragua Route, 159–160, 163; Stiles, The First Tycoon, 207. 63. Julius Fröbel, “The Nicaragua Question,” New York Times, March 7, 1856; market ­woman, quoted in David Whisnant, Rascally Signs in Sacred Places: The Politics of Culture in Nicaragua (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 71. 64. Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 4:230–231, 264–265, 295–300; Stiles, The First Tycoon, 190–193, 204; Froebel, Siete años de viaje, 86; Vega Bolaños, Los acontecimientos de 1851, 108–109. On how the uprising drew on popu­lar discontent with the recent ban on corn exports, see Miguel Angel Herrera C., Bongos, bogas, vapores y marinos: historia de los “marineros” del río San Juan, 1849–1855 (Managua: Centro Nicaragüense de Escritores, 1999), 62, 109. 65. Rec­ords of Boundary and Claims Commissions and Arbitrations, Entry 436, Claim 24 (Charles Mahoney), RG 76, USNA; Folkman, The Nicaragua Route, 57. 66. Alexander Forrest’s testimony, March 31, 1859, box 43, ITWP, NYPL; Henry Gottel’s testimony, box 42, first folder, ITWP, NYPL; Cortlandt Cushing to Isaac Lea, February 5, 1855, Guerra 9925, ANCR; testimony of Bruno von Natzmer, box 42, third folder, ITWP, NYPL. On how the Panama Railroad Com­pany relied on workers from British India, China, Ireland, and Jamaica, see McGuinness, Path of Empire, 70. 67. Cortlandt Cushing to Joseph Scott, March 2, 1854, Guerra 9906, ANCR; Reichardt, Nicaragua, 42–43; Froebel, Siete años de viaje, 12.

304

NOTES TO PAGES 41–45

68. “From New York,” Columbus Daily Ohio Statesman, August 20, 1851; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Notes d’un voyage, 11; Blackwood Magazine, March 1856, 321; Peter Stout, Nicaragua: Past, Pres­ent and ­Future (Philadelphia: Potter, 1859), 158–160; “The Experience of Samuel Absalom, Filibuster,” Atlantic Monthly 4 (1859): 654. 69. Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 4:268; Scherzer, Travels, 1:4, 13; Evaristo Carazo to Cortlandt Cushing, August 27, 1855, Guerra 9905, ANCR; Cortlandt Cushing to Joseph White, January 19, 1855, Guerra 9949, ANCR; U.S. citizens of San Juan del Sur to Mirabeau Lamar, January 19, 1859, roll 11, Central Amer­i­ca, USNA. 70. Franklin Langworthy, Scenery of the Plains, Mountains and Mines (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1932), 230–231; Gottel’s testimony, box 42, ITWP, NYPL; Cortlandt Cushing to J. Henry Segur, January 1, 1855, Guerra 9944, ANCR; Herrera, Bongos, 132; Entry 436, Claim 18 (Isaac Harrington), “Account Book of Steamer La Virgin (1854–1855),” RG 76, USNA; [Cortlandt Cushing] to Cornelius Garrison, Virgin Bay, October 7, 1855, Guerra 9940, ANCR; Cortlandt Cushing to Isaac Lea, Virgin Bay, May 13, 1854, Guerra 9949, ANCR; ATC expenditures for August–­ October 1852, Fomento 3725, ANCR. 71. Burns, Patriarch and Folk, 230–231; Thomas O’Brien, Revolutionary Mission: American Enterprise in Latin Amer­i­ca, 1900–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 2; Thomas Lord to Cortlandt Cushing, New York, July 19, 1854, Guerra 9954, ANCR. 72. Squier, “San Juan de Nicaragua,” 58; Alejandro Bolaños Geyer, ed., El testimonio de Joseph N. Scott (Managua: Fondo de Promoción Cultural del Banco de América, 1975), 259; E. P. Thompson, “Time, Work-­Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Pres­ent 38 (1967): 56–97. On the communal culture of bongo men, see Herrera, Bongos, 127–172. 73. The American Atlantic and Pacific Ship Canal Com­pany to Charles Meier for woodcutting on the island of Ometepe, December 18, 1851, Fomento 3725, ANCR; Cortlandt Cushing to Joseph Scott, Virgin Bay, June 28, 1854, Fomento 9906, ANCR; Herrera, Bongos, 186–187, 190; Lt. Jolly to Admiral Fenshawe, Greytown, July 3, 1854, Admiralty 128 / 39, BNA; McGuinness, Path of Empire, chapter 2. 74. Felipe Saenz to Cortlandt Cushing, May 10, 1854, Guerra 9946, ANCR; Cortlandt Cushing to Charles Morgan, Virgin Bay, May 27, 1854, Guerra 9934, ANCR; Herrera, Bongos, 59–70. 75. Stiles, The First Tycoon, 226; Bolaños Geyer, William Walker, 3:95; Cortlandt Cushing to Joseph White, May 20, 1855, Guerra 9949, ANCR; “Mensaje de S. E. el jeneral director supremo D. Fruto Chamorro,” Gaceta Oficial (Managua, Nicaragua), February 11, 1854. 76. Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 4:235–238, 295–300, 370, 395–404; “Ferro-­ carril interocéanico de Honduras,” Nueva Era (León, Nicaragua), October 10, 1854. 77. Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 4:297; “Central-­A merika,” Hansa (Hamburg), March 1, 1854.



NOTES TO PAGES 46–50

305

2 inviting the filibusters 1. That the term filibuster became prominent only ­after 1846 is based on my analy­sis of the Readex database of Latin American newspapers. 2. Janice Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-­Building and Extraterritorial Vio­lence in Early Modern Eu­rope (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1994). 3. Jerónimo Pérez, Obras históricas completas (Managua: Fondo de Promoción Cultural / BANIC, 1993), 226. 4. William Manning, ed., Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, Inter-­American Affairs, 1831–1860 (Washington, DC: Car­ne­g ie Endowment for International Peace, 1934), 4:264–268. 5. “Nicaragua,” New York Tribune, October 7, 1851; Felipe Molina to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, New York, October 7, 1851, caja 21, exp. Correspondencia de Felipe Molina, RREE, ANCR; “A ­Little New York Filibustering,” Savannah Daily Morning News, October 16, 1851. 6. Joseph Livingston to Ephraim George Squier, León, December 26, 1850, roll 3, EGSP, LOC; Andrés Vega Bolaños, Los acontecimientos de 1851: Notas y documentos (Managua: n.p., 1945), 169–170; “Late and Impor­t ant from San Juan del Sur,” Panama Star, October 3, 1851; “Noticias de Nicaragua,” La Gaceta (San José, Costa Rica), October 18, 1851; John Kerr to Secretary of State, León, October 21, 1851, M 219 [Central Amer­i­ca], roll 9, Despatches from United States Ministers to Central Amer­i­ca, 1824–1906, USNA; “From Nicaragua,” North American and United States Gazette, December 1, 1851; Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 4:245–247; Wilhelm Heine, Wanderbilder aus Central-­Amerika: Skizzen eines deutschen Malers (Leipzig: Costenoble, 1853), 153. 7. Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 4:241–244. 8. “Porvernir de Centro-­A mérica,” Eco de Irazú, October 10, 1854; “Nuestros Intereses,” Eco de Irazú, November 10, 1854. 9. Lorenzo Veracini, “Introduction: Settler colonialism as a distinct mode of domination,” in The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, ed. Edward Cavanagh and Lorenzo Veracini (London: Routledge, 2016), 3. 10. Gabriel Lafond to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, Paris, September 22, 1855, caja 25, exp. Correspondencia de Lafond, RREE, ANCR; Peter Palmquist and Thomas Kailbourn, Pioneer Photog­raphers from the Mississippi to the Continental Divide: A Biographical Dictionary, 1839–1865 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 192–193; “Wiener Stadtpost,” Der Humorist, March 31, 1857. 11. Friedrich Streber to unknown, Granada, August 10, 1850, MA-­Ko 1-­Kolonisation Berliner Verein zur Zentralisation deutscher Auswanderung und Kolonisation bzw. Deutsche Kolonisationsgesellschaft für Zentralamerika 1849–1893, Bremen Handelskammer Archiv; Norberto Ramírez to Ephraim George Squier, León, December 16, 1850, EGSP, LOC. Colonization proj­ects realized in Costa Rica ­were carried out by the Berliner Colonisations Gesellschaft für Central-­A merica and the Compagnie Concessionnaire de Colonisation du Golfo Dulce; that in Belize by 114

306

NOTES TO PAGES 51–55

German immigrants (Director of colony of Santo Tomas, Santo Tomas, July 29, 1850, Senat Cl VI Nr 16d Vol. 2a fasc. 6, Hamburg Staatsarchiv). 12. Matthew Fitzpatrick, Liberal Imperialism in Germany: Expansionism and Nationalism, 1848–1884 (New York: Berghahn, 2008), 61–63; Herbert Schottelius, Mittleamerika als Schauplatz deutscher Kolonisationsversuche, 1840–1865 (Hamburg: Christians Druckerei, 1939), 66. 13. Moritz Wagner and Karl Scherzer, Die Republik Costa Rica in Central-­Amerika (Leipzig: Arnoldische Buchhandlung, 1856), 181–182, 346–358; Bruno von Natzmer to Comandante General, San José, February 5, 1855, Guerra 8639, ANCR; Bruno von Natzmer to Comandante General, San José, February 7, 1855, Guerra 8878, ANCR. 14. William Walker, The War in Nicaragua (Mobile, AL: Goetzel, 1860), 68–69; Wagner and Scherzer, Die Republik Costa Rica, 178. 15. Marian Talmadge and Iris Gilmore, Barney Ford, Black Baron (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1973). 16. Floyd Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787–1863 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975); “In­ter­est­ing Letter from P. Clark,” Voice of the Fugitive, February 12, 1852; Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York: Norton, 1998), 89; Martin Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored ­People of the United States (Philadelphia: n.p., 1852); Granville Ganter, “ ‘He Made Us Laugh Some’: Frederick Douglass’s Humor,” African American Review 37, no. 3 (2003): 541. 17. Frank A. Rollin, Life and Public Ser­vices of Martin R. Delany (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1883 [1868]), 78–79; “In­ter­est­ing Letter from P. Clark,” Voice of the Fugitive, February 12, 1852; Martin R. Delany, Martin R. Delany: A Documentary Reader, ed. Robert S. Levine (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 208; [James McCune Smith], “Nicaragua,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, January 8 and 15, 1852. 18. Delany, A Documentary Reader, 241, 207, 268. 19. “The Late Dr. J. H. Wilson,” Christian Recorder, July 15, 1865; “The Boys of Pittsburgh Against the World,” Colored American, November 23, 1839; “Colorphobia in Pennsylvania,” North Star (Rochester, NY), February 4, 1848; Rollin, Martin R. Delany, 79. 20. Foreign Office, British and Foreign State Papers, 1851–1852, London: William Ridgway, 1864, 41:846–847; “Highly Impor­t ant from Nicaragua,” New York Times, March 24, 1852; William Boone to Secretary of State, Philadelphia, December 19, 1852, T-348 [San Juan del Norte], roll 1, Despatches from United States Consuls in San Juan del Norte, 1851–1906, USNA; “Arrival from Nicaragua,” New York Herald, May 1, 1852; “Letter to Editor,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, May 6, 1852. 21. “Letter to Editor,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, May 6, 1852; Rollin, Martin R. Delany, 80, emphasis in the original; Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 4:279. 22. “The Hulbert-­Walker Letters: To California via Nicaragua in 1852,” California Historical Society Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1957): 142; “Message from the President of the United States, Communicating, in Compliance with a Resolution of the Senate, Information in Relation to the Transactions between Captain Hollins, of the United



23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28. 29.

30. 31.

NOTES TO PAGES 55–60

307

States Ship Cyane, and the Authorities at San Juan de Nicaragua,” 33rd Cong., 1st Sess. [Senate], Exec. Doc. No. 8, 17; medical certificate signed by David Peck, Masaya, April 8, 1854, and James Donaghe’s statement concerning debts to I. O’Horan, July 14, 1853, Protocolos de José Anzoátegui, 1851–1854, RPPG; “Maltreatment of Americans Abroad,” New York Times, August 17, 1853. Francisco Ortega Arancibia, Cuarenta años de historia de Nicaragua, 1838–1878 (Managua: Fondo de Promoción Cultural / BANIC, 1993 [1911]), 127; Arturo Cruz, Nicaragua’s Conservative Republic, 1858–93 (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 37; Bradford Burns, Patriarch and Folk: The Emergence of Nicaragua, 1798–1858 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 190; Charles Doubleday, Reminiscences of the ‘Filibuster’ War in Nicaragua (New York: Putnam’s, 1886), iii, 48; John Hill Wheeler to Secretary of State, Granada, October 10, 1855, roll 10, Central Amer­i­ca, USNA. Justin Wolfe, “Soldiers and Statesmen: Race, Liberalism, and the Paradoxes of Afro-­Nicaraguan Military Ser­vice, 1844–1863,” in Military Strug­gle and Identity Formation in Latin Amer­i­ca: Race, Nation, and Community during the Liberal Period, ed. Nicola Foote and René Harder Horst (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010), 42–58; Harry Davis, A History of Freemasonry among Negroes in Amer­i­ca (New York: United Supreme Council, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Northern Jurisdiction, Prince Hall Affiliated, 1946), 277–279; “First of August Cele­bration at Buffalo,” North Star (Rochester, NY), August 10, 1849; “Caminos,” CI, May 29, 1851; Jeffrey Kerr-­R itchie, Rites of August First: Emancipation Day in the Black Atlantic World (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press), 2007. “Origin of the Nicaraguan Expedition,” New York Herald, June 26, 1857; “Revolutions in Central Amer­i­ca,” United States Demo­cratic Review, October 1857, 327; “Aviso,” Nueva Era, September 20, 1854. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 24; William Wells, Walker’s Expedition to Nicaragua (New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1856), 42–43; José Dolores Gámez, Historia de Nicaragua (Managua: Tipografía de “El País,” 1889), 789–790. “Our San Juan del Norte Correspondence,” New York Herald, June 14, 1858; T. Robinson Warren, quoted in Charles Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny: The Lives and Times of the Filibusters (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 292, 183; “Nicaragua and the Fillibusters,” New York Times, March 3, 1856. Bobby Lovett, The African-­American History of Nashville, Tennessee, 1780–1930: Elites and Dilemmas (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999), 6. William Walker, quoted in Alejandro Bolaños Geyer, William Walker: The Gray-­Eyed Man of Destiny (Lake Saint Louis, MO: privately printed, 1988), 1:133–134, 227–229. William Walker, quoted in Bolaños Geyer, William Walker, 1:221, 193–195, 198–200, 230–231. “Polynesian Politics,” San Francisco Herald, December 23, 1850; “Rus­sia and the United States,” San Francisco Herald, December 27, 1850; “The City—­Its Pro­g ress,” San Francisco Herald, January 13, 1851; “­Free Negroes,” San Francisco Herald, January 7, 1851; “Gold and Government,” San Francisco Herald, December 21, 1850; “The Celestials,” San Francisco Herald, May 17, 1851; “The Governor’s Message,” Sacramento Demo­cratic State Journal, January 6, 1855; “The Native Californians—­T he

308

32.

33.

34.

35.

36. 37. 38.

39.

40. 41. 42.

43. 44.

NOTES TO PAGES 60–65

Next Election,” San Francisco Herald, May 2, 1851; Alejandro Bolaños Geyer, William Walker: The Gray-­Eyed Man of Destiny (Lake Saint Louis, MO: privately printed, 1988), 2:144–145, 316, 318. “Ill Treatment of a ­Woman,” San Francisco Herald, May 26, 1851; “Prison Ships,” San Francisco Herald, May 1, 1851; “Old Stuart Slung-­Shot Mr. Janson?,” San Francisco Herald, February 24, 1851. Delia González de Reufels, Siedler und Filibuster in Sonora: Eine mexikanische Region im Interesse ausländischer Abenteurer und Mächte (1821–1860) (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2003), 140–141; “Address of President Walker, to the P ­ eople of the United States, November 30th, 1853,” in The Republic of Lower California, 1853–1854, ed. Arthur Woodward (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1966), 32; Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny, 195; Bolaños Geyer, William Walker, 2:221; “Col. William Walker,” Sacramento Demo­cratic State Journal, August 12, 1854. Bolaños Geyer, William Walker, 2:349, 354; “Pro­g ress of Gen. Walker’s Expedition in Nicaragua,” EN, October 20, 1855; “A ­Great Day,” EN, June 21, 1856; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 36–41; Doubleday, Reminiscences, 108–112. Francisco Castellón to President of El Salvador, July 13, 1855, and Francisco Castellón to San Martin, León, August 25, 1855, Siglo XIX, No. 67, AIHNCA; Nicaraguan Minister of War to Military Governor of Granada, August 17, 1855, caja 25, no. 13, exp. Nicaragua, 1855, RREE, ANCR; “Col. Mendez,” EN, May 10, 1856. Gámez, Historia de Nicaragua, 524. Doubleday, Reminiscences, 151–152; Wolfe, “Soldiers and Statesmen,” 42–58. “El Coronel Valle de la fuersa expedicionaría del Medio Día,” EN, October 27, 1855; Lorenzo Montúfar, Reseña histórica de Centro América (Guatemala City: El Progreso, 1881), 5:167–168; “El Coronel José María Valle a los nicaragüeneses,” Nicaragua Miscellany, no. 29, Bancroft Library; Ortega Arancibia, Cuarenta Años, 75. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 65; Doubleday, Reminiscences, 130; Pedro de Aycinena and Manuel Cerezo to President Carrera, Guatemala City, July 27, 1855, exp. 55317, legajo 2499, B 118, AGCA. Ortega Arancibia, Cuarenta años, 196. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 80. “Circular del Gobierno a los Padres Curas,” BO, July 14, 1855; “Notas de varíos Sres. Curas,” BO, July 11 and September 1, 1855; “Expedición Kinney,” BO, June 2, 1855; Dionisio Chamorro to José María Cañas, Granada, August 16, 1855, no. 869, Archivo Nacional, ANCR; Costa Rican Foreign Minister to Adolfo Marie, San José, October 10, 1855, copiadores, no. 3, RREE, ANCR; William Hipp to General José Joaquín Mora, Hipp’s Point, July 16, 1855, Guerra 4658, ANCR. Montúfar, Reseña histórica de Centro América, 5:167–168; Doubleday, Reminiscences, 165–166. Ortega Arancibia, Cuarenta años, 196, 199–220; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 104–107; “Jüngste Geschichte von Nicaragua,” Der Kolonist (Lichtensteig, Switzerland), January 26, 1856; Logbook of La Virgen, Claim 18 (Isaac Harrington), Entry 436: International Claims, Miscellaneous Claims, RG 76, Rec­ords of Boundary and Claims Commissions and Arbitrations, USNA.



NOTES TO PAGES 66–70

309

45. Sam and Alex Wood to President Pierce and Secretary of State Marcy, Washington, DC, February 28, 1856, folder 11, SSWP, YUL; Florencio Xatruch to Governor of Moracia, Rivas, October 25, 1855, caja 25, no. 13, exp. Nicaragua, 1855, RREE, ANCR; Stanislaus Haly to William Thayer, Nueva River Mosquito, May 2, 1856, folder 5, William Thayer Papers, LOC; William Scroggs, Filibusters and Financiers: The Story of William Walker and His Associates (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 92; President Carrera to President Guardiola, Guatemala City, October 28, 1856, exp. 55421, legajo 2499, B 118, AGCA; Aims McGuinness, Path of Empire: Panama and the California Gold Rush (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 77; Thomas Lord to Cortlandt Cushing, New York, October 3, 1855, Guerra 9913, ANCR; Ortega Arancibia, Cuarenta años, 202; Joseph L. White to Cortlandt Cushing, New York, October 2, 1855, caja 25a, exp. Funcionarios y Particulares, 1855, RREE, ANCR; “Otro articulo de Herald,” BO, September 1, 1855; Costa Rican Foreign Minister to Luis Molina, September 25, 1855, copiadores, no. 142, RREE, ANCR; Walker’s correspondence with Courtland Cushing, Guerra 9955, ANCR. 46. “Three Weeks in Nicaragua,” San Francisco Herald, December 14, 1855; letter from H. G., Virgin Bay, San Francisco Herald, December 19, 1855; Pérez, Obras históricas, 140; “The Last Fortnight,” EN, November 10, 1855; “Patrick Jordan,” EN, November 10, 1855; Doubleday, Reminiscences, 142; Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 4:486. 47. EN, November 10, 1855; Pérez, Obras históricas, 37–38, 137, 153; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 105, 131. 48. Statement by Fernando Sequeira, February 28, 1860, Protocolos de José Antonio Mejia, 1852–1860, RPPG; Rafael Obregón, Costa Rica y la guerra contra los filibusteros (Alajuela, Costa Rica: Museo Histórico Cultural Santamaría, 1991), 295–297; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 139. 49. “Affairs in Nicaragua,” New York Herald, December 7, 1855. 50. “José María Estrada, Presidente de la República de Nicaragua, a los Gobiernos y pueblos de Centro-­A mérica,” legajo 9385, B 99-7-2-40, AGCA; “Estados Centro-­ Americanos,” BO, November 24, 1855; Governor of Moracia to Minister of Gobernación, Liberia, November 14, 1855, no. 870, Archivo Nacional, ANCR. 51. Francisco Vijil, El Padre Vijil (Granada: Centro-­A mericano, 1930), 151–155. 52. John Wheeler, Diario de John Hill Wheeler, ed. Alejandro Bolaños Geyer (Managua: Colección Cultural Banco de América, 1974), 83. 53. Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 4:494–499; “Affairs in Nicaragua,” San Francisco Herald, December 19, 1855; Thomas Manning to Pedro de Aycinena, León, January 24, 1856, exp. 55330, legajo 2499, B 118, AGCA; Carl Bernhard to Franz Hesse, Granada, October 30, 1855, III MdAI, Nr. 7943, GStAPK. 54. [Thomas Manning] to Nicacio Cubero, Chinandega, October 27, 1855, exp. 55319, legajo 2499, B 118, AGCA; Carl Bernhard to Franz Hesse, Granada, October 30, 1855, III MdAI, Nr. 7943, GStAPK; Ortega Arancibia, Cuarenta años, 211–212. 55. “El Presidente de la República de Costa-­R ica a todos sus habitantes,” BO, November 21, 1855; Marquis Hine to Secretary of State, November 20, 1855, T-35 [San José], roll 1, Despatches from United States Consuls in San José, 1852–1906, USNA; José Antonio Fernández Molina, “Los ejércitos expedicionarios costarricenses en la

310

56.

57.

58.

59.

60. 61. 62.

NOTES TO PAGES 70–73

Campaña Nacional,” Mesoamérica 32, no. 3 (2011): 84–94; Iván Molina Jiménez, La cicatriz gloriosa (San José: Editorial Costa Rica, 2014), 90–91; Costa Rican Foreign Minister to Luis Molina, January 25, 1856, copiadores, no. 142, RREE, ANCR; President Mora to Edward Wallerstein, San José, February 10, 1856, Legaciones y Consulados, 000560, caja RREE 001–005, exp. 5, RREE, ANCR. “Nicaragua and Costa Rica,” EN, March 1, 1856; “Guerra con Costa Rica,” EN, March 15, 1856; Domingo de Goicouria to George Hall, Granada, March 18, 1856, Papers 1855–1856, AOP, DU; “Central Amer­i­ca,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, April 12, 1856; Manuel Cañas to Minister of War, Puntarenas, March 27, 1856, Guerra 4633, ANCR. “Report of the Returned Passengers by the Orizaba,” New York Times, April 30, 1856, quoted in Alejandro Bolaños Geyer, William Walker: The Gray-­Eyed Man of Destiny (Lake Saint Louis, MO: privately printed, 1990), 3:364; John Hill Wheeler to Secretary of State, Granada, April 7, 1856, attachment A (“Juan R. Mora,” Boletín del Ejercito, March 27, 1856), roll 10, Central Amer­i­ca, USNA; Marquis Hine to Secretary of State, April 16, 1856, roll 1, San José, USNA; testimony of Henry Dickson, in MacDonald, Chas J. vs Garrison, Cornelius K. (1858–59), case files, box 43, first folder, ITWP, NYPL; unknown to B. Courtade, Granada, April 21, 1856, legajo 9386, B 99-7-2-40, AGCA; Comisión de Investigación Histórica de la Campaña Nacional 1856–1857, Crónicas y Comentarios (San José: Editorial Costa Rica, 2006), 258; Wheeler, Diario de John Hill Wheeler, 159, 162, 164; Squire Cotrell to Secretary of State, San Juan del Norte, April 18, 1856, roll 2, San Juan del Norte, USNA. Luis Molina to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, Washington, DC, November 18, 1855, caja 25, no. 19, exp. Correspondencia de Luis Molina, RREE, ANCR; Costa Rican Foreign Minister to Luis Molina, January 10 and 25, 1856, copiadores, no. 142, RREE, ANCR; Manuel Cañas to Minister of War, Puntarenas, April 10, 1856, Guerra 9226, ANCR; Rafael Campo to Nazario Toledo, Cojutepeque, March 14, 1856, exp. 55339, legajo 2499, B 118, AGCA. Emilio Seguro to Joaquín Calvo, Rivas, April 23, 1856, Guerra 10013, ANCR; Juzgado Militar, La Virgen, May 7, 1856, PCFW, BL; Costa Rican Foreign Minister to Guatemalan Foreign Minister, San José, May 23, 1856, legajo 9358, B 99-7-2-11, RREE, AGCA; unknown to B. Courtade, Granada, April 21, 1856, legajo 9386, B 99-7-2-40, AGCA; José María Valle to Minister of War, Somoto Grande, BO, May 8, 1856; Máximo Jérez to Bruno von Natzmer, April 22, 1856, PCFW, BL; Costa Rican Foreign Minister to Lafond, September 11, 1856, copiadores, no. 142, RREE, ANCR. Costa Rican Foreign Minister to Luis Molina, January 25, 1856, copiadores, no. 142, RREE, ANCR; Bolaños Geyer, William Walker, 3:276–287. Gerardo Barrios to Carlos Meany, San Miguel, El Salvador, May 26, 1856, exp. 55357, legajo 2499, B 118, AGCA. Allan Wallis to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Puntarenas, April 30, 1856, 21 / 8, FO, BNA; Bolaños Geyer, William Walker, 3:373; Ana María Botey Sobrado, “La Campaña Nacional 1856–1857 y la salud pública,” in Filibusterismo y Destino Manifesto en las Américas, ed. Víctor Hugo Acuña Ortega (Alajuela, Costa Rica: Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría, 2010), 159–182.



NOTES TO PAGES 73–79

311

63. Allan Wallis to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, San José, June 24 and July 4, 1856, 21 / 8, FO, BNA; Minister of War to Subsecretary of War, San José, April 9, 1856, Guerra 12365, ANCR; President of El Salvador to Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Cojutepeque, June 2, 1856, B 118, legajo 2499, exp. 55360, AGCA; U.S. resident of San José, Costa Rica, quoted in a newspaper clipping, no title, no date, roll 3, folder 160A, CFCWWP, TU. 64. “Centro-­A mérica,” El Comercio (Lima, Peru), September 10, 1856.

3 “walker is the united states” 1. Robert May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum Amer­i­ca (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 241; Caleb Cushing, quoted in John M. Belolavek, Broken Glass: Caleb Cushing and the Shattering of the Union (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2005), 267. 2. Francisco Bilbao, “Iniciativa de la América,” in Colección de ensayos i documentos relativos a la ­u nion i confederación de los pueblos hispano-­americanos publicada a espensas de la “Sociedad de la Unión Americana de Santiago de Chile,” ed. José Antonio Lastarria, Alvaro Covarrubias, Domingo Santa María, and Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna (Santiago de Chile: Imprenta Chilena, 1862), 290. 3. William Manning, ed., Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, Inter-­ American Affairs, 1831–1860 (Washington, DC: Car­ne­g ie Endowment for International Peace, 1934), 4:443. 4. Luis Molina to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, Washington, DC, April 19, 1856, caja 27, no. 7, exp. Correspondencia Luis Molina, RREE, ANCR; José de Marcoleta to Emperor Napoleon III, Paris, September 1, 1856, caja 26, no. 4, exp. Francia, RREE, ANCR. 5. Costa Rican Foreign Minister to Luis Molina, November 9, 1855, copiadores, no. 142, RREE, ANCR; Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 4:488–489, 491–492; “A Proclamation by the President of the United States,” Daily National Intelligencer, December 15, 1855. 6. “Nicaragua and the U. States,” EN, February 2, 1856. 7. “Correspondencia enviada por Don Luis Molina al Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, de Costa Rica, con motivo de la campaña 1856–57,” Revista de los Archivos Nacionales 20, nos. 1–6 (1956): 43–45. 8. Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 4:491–492; Michael Holt, Franklin Pierce (New York: Times Books, 2010), 83–102. 9. Instituto de Estudios del Sandinismo, Pensamiento Antiimperialista en Nicaragua (Managua: Editorial Nueva Nicaragua, 1982), 29. 10. James Stirling, Letters from the Slave States (London: Parker, 1857), 128; Alfonso de Escalante to Primer Secretario de Estado, Washington, DC, February 9, 1856, legajo 1468, Correspondencia con embajadas y legaciones, Estados Unidos, AGMAEE.

312

NOTES TO PAGES 79–85

11. “Correspondencia enviada por Don Luis Molina al Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, de Costa Rica, con motivo de la campaña 1856–57,” Revista de los Archivos Nacionales 20, nos. 1–6 (1956): 56–58; Luis Molina to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, February 19, 1857, caja 29, Correspondencia de Luis Molina, RREE, ANCR. 12. Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 4:492, 497–499; Luis Molina to Ministers of ­Great Britain, Spain, and France in the United States, Washington, DC, caja 25b, Correspondencia de Luis Molina, November 10, 1855, RREE, ANCR. 13. William Walker, The War in Nicaragua (Mobile, AL: Goetzel, 1860), 205; “Letter from Washington,” San Francisco Daily Eve­ning Bulletin, June 2, 1856. 14. Sharon Hartman Strom, “ ‘If Success Depends upon Enterprise’: Central Amer­i­ca, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Race in the Travel Narratives of E. G. Squier,” Diplomatic History 35, no. 3 (2011): 403; Samuel Bard, Waikina, or Adventures on the Mosquito Shore (New York: Harper, 1855). 15. “Vijil Cura de Granada,” EN, February 16, 1856. 16. “From Washington,” Boston Daily Advertiser, May 9, 1856; “The Latest News,” New York Herald, May 11, 1856; “The Walker Movement,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 17, 1856. 17. “Spirit of the Morning Press,” Washington, DC, Eve­ning Star, May 2, 1856; Congressional Globe, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., 1069; Robert May, Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics: Lincoln, Douglas, and the F ­ uture of Latin Amer­i­ca (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 121; “Multiple Editorial Items,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 10, 1856; “Lord Clarendon’s Muskets,” Savannah Daily Morning News, May 16, 1856; “Our Countrymen in Nicaragua,” Washington, DC, Daily Union, May 14, 1856. 18. “Slaughter of Americans in Central Amer­i­ca,” New York Herald, May 2, 1856. 19. Daniel Gros to Senator Seward, Buffalo, May 2, 1856, roll 5, PWHS, UR; Theodore Poesche and Charles Goepp, The New Rome; or, The United States of the World (New York: Putnam, 1853); “Affairs in Nicaragua,” Bangor (ME) Daily Whig and Courier, May 12, 1856; “Panama Riot,” Washington, DC, Eve­ning Star, May 3, 1856. 20. “The Brilliant Victory Gained by General Walker at Rivas,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 10, 1856. 21. “In­ter­est­ing from Washington,” New York Herald, May 7, 1856; “Latest News,” New York Herald, May 5, 1856; North American and United States Gazette, May 2, 1856; “The Nicaraguan War,” New York Freeman’s Journal and Catholic Register, May 10, 1856. 22. Alfonso de Escalante to Primer Secretario de Estado, Washington, DC, May 5, 1856, legajo 1468, Estados Unidos, AGMAEE; “Sympathy for General Walker,” New York Herald, May 10, 1856. 23. “Sympathy for General Walker,” New York Herald, May 10, 1856. 24. Amy Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 71. 25. “From Our New York Correspondent,” Daily National Intelligencer, May 12, 1856; “The Nicaraguan Meeting in New York,” Daily National Intelligencer, May 16, 1856; “Sympathy for Walker,” North American and United States Gazette, May 16,



NOTES TO PAGES 87–92

313

1856; Tyler Anbinder, “Isaiah Rynders and the Ironies of Popu­lar Democracy in Antebellum New York,” in Contested Democracy: Freedom, Race, and Power in American History, ed. Manisha Sinha and Penny Von Eschen (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 31–53. 26. José de Marcoleta to A. Marie, London, July 15, 1856, caja 26, exp. Inglaterra, RREE, ANCR; “The Latest News,” New York Herald, May 9, 1856; “The Padre Vijil,” Weekly Raleigh Register, May 21, 1856; Bangor (ME) Daily Whig and Courier, May 19, 1856; Boston Daily Advertiser, May 5, 1856; “Very In­ter­est­ing from Washington,” New York Herald, May 6, 1856; “Backing and Filling,” Daily National Intelligencer, May 7, 1856; Washington, DC, Eve­ning Star, May 10, 1856, emphasis in the original. 27. “The Latest News,” New York Herald, May 15, 1856; “From Washington,” North American and United States Gazette, May 17, 1856. 28. “The President’s Special Message,” Washington, DC, Eve­ning Star, May 16, 1856, emphasis in the original; “The President’s Nicaraguan Message,” Vermont Patriot and State Gazetteer, May 23, 1856. 29. “Relacion de mi viage a los Estados Unidos del Norte-­A mérica,” EN, June 26, 1856; Alfonso de Escalante to Primer Secretario de Estado, Washington, DC, April 10, 1856, legajo 1468, Estados Unidos, AGMAEE. 30. Marcy to U.S. Minister in ­Great Britain, June 16, 1856, Papers of William Marcy, LOC; “Nicaragua Correspondence,” New Orleans Daily True Delta, June 27, 1856; “Letter from Cyrus,” EN, June 14, 1856; “Our Gathering Call,” EN, June 7, 1856. 31. May, Manifest Destiny, 74; “Walker’s ­Grand March,” John P. Heiss ­Family Papers, Tennessee State Library and Archives; New York Herald, July 6, 1856. 32. “From our New York Correspondent,” Daily National Intelligencer, May 26, 1856; “The Nicaraguan Flag Unfurled,” New York Herald, May 24, 1856; “The Nicaragua Mass Meeting,” New York Herald, May 25, 1856; Guatemalan Foreign Minister to El Salvador’s Vice President Dueñas, Guatemala City, June 19, 1856, legajo 2499, Exp. 55376, AGCA. 33. “Padre Vijil Recognised,” The Washington (TX) American, May 28, 1856; ­William V. Wells, Walker’s Expedition to Nicaragua (New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1856); William V. Wells, Walker’s Expedition nach Nicaragua (Braunschweig: Verlag der Schulbuchhandlung, 1857); The National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: White, 1922), 18:292. 34. “Letter from Miss Pellet,” EN, April 26, 1856; “Americanism in Nicaragua,” Charleston Mercury, May 26, 1856; “Lecture on Nicaragua,” Savannah Daily Morning News, May 22, 1856. 35. “The Power of Romanism in Washington,” Weekly Raleigh Register, May 28, 1856; May, Slavery, Race, and Conquest, 130; “Our Foreign Relations,” National Era, May 22, 1856; “Nicaragua-­War,” Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1856. 36. “From our New York Correspondent,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, May 24, 1856; Lowell (MA) Daily Citizen and News, May 15, 1856; “The Central American Difficulty,” Charleston Mercury, May 19, 1856; Jay Slagle, Ironclad Captain: Seth ­Ledyard Phelps and the U.S. Navy, 1841–1864 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996), 86; May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld, 130–132.

314

NOTES TO PAGES 93–97

37. “Nicaragua,” Charleston Mercury, May 24, 1856; “Letter from Gen. Walker,” Jackson Semi-­Weekly Mississippian, May 20, 1856. 38. Jan Martin Lemnitzer, “ ‘That Moral League of Nations against the United States’: The Origins of the 1856 Declaration of Paris,” International History Review 5, no. 35 (2013): 1083. 39. Lord Clarendon, quoted in Jan Martin Lemnitzer, Power, Law and the End of Privateering (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 61. 40. “General Walker und die Filibusters in Central-­A merika,” Die Gartenlaube, 1856, 414; Facundo Goñí to Spain’s Foreign Minister, Guatemala City, June 30, 1856, legajo 2566, Política Exterior, Nicaragua, AGMAEE; Eduardo Asquerino to Spain’s Ministro de Estado, New York, May 24, 1856, legajo 2566, Política Exterior, Nicaragua, AGMAEE; Spain’s Minister to ­Great Britain to Spanish Foreign Minister, London, May 30, 1856, legajo 2566, Política Exterior, Nicaragua, ­AGMAEE; Lorenzo Montúfar, Walker en Centro América (Alajuela, Costa Rica: Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría, 2000 [1888]), 438. 41. Spain’s Minister to ­Great Britain to Spanish Foreign Minister, London, June 29, 1856, legajo 2566, Política Exterior, Nicaragua, AGMAEE; Gabriel Lafond to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, Paris, July 15, 1856, caja 27, no. 6, exp. Correspondencia de Gabriel Lafond, RREE, ANCR; Lord Palmerston, quoted in Kenneth Bourne, “The Clayton-­ Bulwer Treaty and the Decline of British Opposition to the Territorial Expansion of the United States, 1857–60,” Journal of Modern History 33, no. 3 (1961): 290. 42. Facundo Goñi to Spanish Foreign Minister, Guatemala City, June 30, 1856, legajo 2566, Política Exterior, Nicaragua, AGMAEE; Antonio Varas to Bolivian Foreign Minister, Santiago de Chile, January 30, 1855, caja 13, Correspondencia Bolivia-­ Chile, Ministro de RR.EE. de Chile, 1839–1869, RREE, Archivo Nacional de Bolivia; “Correspondencia enviada por Don Luis Molina al Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, de Costa Rica, con motivo de la campaña 1856–57,” Revista de los Archivos Nacionales 20, nos. 1–6 (1956): 54–56. 43. “La prensa europea, defendiendo la América-­Central,” El Comercio (Lima), January 12, 1856; Peruvian Foreign Minister to Peruvian Minister to the United States, Lima, July 11, 1856, caja 99, carpeta 5-3, Correspondencia B.7.4.1, Archivo del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores del Perú, emphasis in the original. 44. Juan Nepomuceno de Pereda, quoted in Antonio de la Peña y Reyes, ed., El Congreso de Panamá y algunos otros proyectos de Union Hispano-­Americana (Mexico City: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 1926), 172–173. 45. Michel Gobat, “The Invention of Latin Amer­i­ca: A Transnational History of Anti-­imperialism, Democracy, and Race,” American Historical Review 118, no. 5 (2013): 1345–1357; “Centro América,” Boletín, February 9, 1856. 46. Juan Ignacio de Osma to Peruvian Foreign Minister, August 15, 1856, CC 40, Archivo del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores del Perú; Alfonso de Escalante to Primer Secretario de Estado, Washington, DC, June 30, 1856, legajo 1468, Estados Unidos, AGMAEE; agreement signed by Francisco Alejandro Lainé and Benjamin Perkins (Worcester, MA), New York, June 23, 1856, AOP, DU. 47. “Acta mediante la cual el Arzobispado de Baltimore accede a la solicitud hecha por el Sr Agustín Vijil,” Baltimore, June 17, 1856, FVI D20G3 53, Fondo Vijil, AIHNCA.



NOTES TO PAGES 97–101

315

The first person to print the words allegedly uttered by Kenrick was most likely Jerónimo Pérez, who included them in his 1865 “Memorias”; see Jerónimo Pérez, Obras históricas completas (Managua: Fondo de Promoción Cultural / BANIC, 1993), 224. 48. John J. TePaske, “Appleton Oaksmith, Filibuster Agent,” North Carolina Historical Review 35, no. 4 (1958): 426–447; Sarah Pellet to William Seward, Poughkeepsie, NY, June 21, 1856, roll 52, PWHS, UR; Mary Wyman, Two American Pioneers: Seba Smith and Elizabeth Oakes Smith (New York: Columbia University Press, 1926), 215–216. 49. May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld, 262–263; “History of the Week,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, July 5, 1856; Allan Nevin, Frémont: Pathmaker of the West (New York: Longmans, Green, 1955), 439–458. 50. Eric Foner, ­Free Soil, F ­ ree ­Labor, ­Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 228; May, Slavery, Race, and Conquest, 148; Ernest Paolino, The Foundations of the American Empire: William Henry Seward and U.S. Foreign Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973); Charles Johnson, comp., Proceedings of the First Three Republican National Conventions (Minneapolis: Harrison and Smith, 1893), 26 (Henry Lane), 68 (John ­Wills), 70 (John Van Dyke). 51. Foner, ­Free Soil, 267–280; Eric Foner, Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: Norton, 2010), 123–131; Nicholas Guyatt, “Tocqueville’s Prophecy: The United States and the Ca­r ib­bean, 1850–1871,” in The Transnational Significance of the American Civil War, ed. Jörg Nagler, Don Doyle, Marcus Gräser (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 205–229; May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld, 263; “Letter from Francis P. Blair,” New York Times, September 22, 1856; Sharon Hartman Strom, “­Labor, Race, and Colonization: Imagining a Post-­Slavery World in the Amer­i­cas,” in The Prob­lem of Fear: Slavery, Freedom, and the Ambiguities of American Reform, ed. Steven Mintz, John Staufer (Amherst: University of Mas­sa­chu­setts Press, 2007), 265–266. 52. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 29; “Get Out of the Way, Old Buchanan,” Bangor (ME) Daily Whig and Courier, June 27, 1856; Congressional Globe, 35th Cong., 2nd Sess. (February 11, 1858), 967. 53. May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld, 262–263; “History of the Week,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, July 5, 1856; Dee Alexander Brown, The Gentle Tamers: ­Women of the Old Wild West (Omaha: Bison, 1981 [1958]), 140; Sarah Pellet to William Seward, Poughkeepsie, NY, June 21, 1856, roll 52, PWHS, UR. 54. Agustín Vijil to José Miguel, Granada, July 21, 1856, FVI D20G3 24, Fondo Vijil, AIHNCA. 55. Robert May, “United States as Rogue State: Gunboat Persuasion, Citizen Marauders, and the Limits of Antebellum American Imperialism,” in Amer­i­ca, War and Power: Defining the State, 1775–2005, ed. Lawrence Sondhaus and A. James Fuller (London: Routledge, 2007), 55; “Synopsis of the Verbal Protest of the Governments of Central Amer­i­ca against the Recognition of Walker as President of Nicaragua,” New York Herald, December 5, 1856; Luis Molina to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, February 19, 1857, caja 29, correspondencia de Luis Molina, RREE, ANCR.

316

NOTES TO PAGES 102–106

4 the colonists 1. “The Central American Question Settled,” New York Herald, May 17, 1856; Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 9; “Local Items,” EN, January 12, 1856; “An Appeal to the ­People of the United States,” EN, March 1, 1856. 2. Elleanore Ratterman, “With Walker in Nicaragua,” Tennessee Historical Magazine 1 (1915): 316–317. 3. “Rich Letter from Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Alta California, November 28, 1855; “Ein Originalbrief von Nicaragua,” Deutsche Auswanderer-­Zeitung (Bremen, Germany), February 21, 1856; José Moya, Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 52. 4. Robert May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum Amer­i­ca (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 81–116. 5. “Nicaragua,” Der Lecha Patriot, December 5, 1855; Ratterman, “With Walker.” 6. “Walker’s Dispatches Intercepted by the Costa Ricans,” New York Times, October 29, 1856; “Detention of the Nicaragua Recruits,” New York Tribune, September 11, 1856. 7. “Nicaragua,” Deutsche Auswanderer-­Zeitung (Bremen, Germany), January 7, 1856; Franz Hesse to Otto von Manteuffel, Cartagena, April 2, 1856, III MdAI, Nr. 7943, GStAPK; Sylva Brunner-­Hauser, Pionier für eine menschlichere Zukunft: Dr. med. Wilhelm Joos, Nationalrat 1821–1900 (Schaffhausen, Switzerland: Meili, 1983); “Ein neuer Kolonisator von Zentralamerika,” Der Kolonist (Lichtensteig, Switzerland), July 12, 1856; “Zur Erläuterung des Spizeartikels des letzten Nummer,” Der Kolonist (Lichtensteig, Switzerland), July 19, 1856. 8. William K. Rogers to Appleton Oaksmith, Granada, October 1, 1856, Papers 1856–1857, AOP, DU; “Nicaragua Emigration from the Filibuster Head-­quarters,” New York Times, January 23, 1857; Appleton Oaksmith to James Heal, and Alexander Lawrence to Mr. Sanooks, New York, June 14, November 20, 1856, Papers 1856–1857, AOP, DU. 9. “Reasons for Immigration,” EN, June 28, 1856; “The Government of Nicaragua to Alexander C. Lawrence,” Papers 1856–1857, AOP, DU. 10. John Green to Appleton Oaksmith, Cincinnati, September 11, 1856, Papers 1856–1857, AOP, DU; contract between Alexander Lawrence and Joseph Fabens, August 30, 1856, Papers 1856–1857, AOP, DU. 11. Testimony of Joseph N. Scott, April–­May 1861, p. 102, claim 1, box 1, entry 436, Costa Rican Claims Convention of July 2, 1860, RG76, USNA. 12. Register of the Army of the Republic of Nicaragua (muster roll, January 1857–­ April 1857), folder 120, CFCWWP, TU; Bruce Levine, The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, ­Labor Conflict, and the Coming of the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 57, ­table 12. 13. May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld, 94; “Pages for Walker’s Nicaraguan Army,” San Francisco Daily Eve­ning Bulletin, November 8, 1856; Robert May, “The



NOTES TO PAGES 107–111

317

Domestic Consequences of American Imperialism: Filibustering and Howard Pyle’s Pirates,” American Studies 46, no. 2 (2005): 51; Herbert Klein, A Population History of the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 102; “Another Advocate,” EN, April 26, 1856. 14. “Departure of Nicaraguan Emigrants,” New York Times, September 13, 1856; Richard Steckel, “House­hold Migration and Rural Settlement in the United States, 1850–1860,” Explorations in Economic History 26, no. 2 (1989): 199; Philip Whelpley, “The Barrack and the Hospital in Nicaragua,” Harper’s Weekly, March 14, 1857, 163–164, emphasis in the original. 15. “Kissane Alias Rogers,” Montreal Herald and Daily Commercial Gazette, April 7, 1887; “Chemical Nat. Bank v. Kissane,” Federal Reporter (Saint Paul, MN: West, 1888), 32:429; “William Kissane,” Los Angeles Herald, April 8, 1887; “Who Is He?,” Los Angeles Times, April 2, 1887; “Merited Retribution,” EN, September 13, 1856; “Extracto,” BO, September 4, 1856; “Rasgo de amor filial,” BO, October 10, 1856. 16. “Experiences of an Escaped Drummer Boy from Walker’s Army,” New York Times, December 16, 1856; Frederic Rosengarten, Freebooters Must Die (Wayne, PA: Haverford House, 1976), 128–129. 17. May, “Domestic Consequences,” 46; “A Visit to the Prisoners in Eldridge Street Jail,” New York Herald, January 29, 1857; Charles Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny: The Lives and Times of the Filibusters (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 386. 18. Amy Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 13; May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld, 100; Clayne Pope, “In­equality in the Nineteenth ­Century,” in The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, vol. 2, The Long Nineteenth ­Century, ed. Stanley Engerman and Robert Gallman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 115. 19. Steckel, “House­hold Migration,” 207; Jeremy Atack, Fred Bateman, and William Parker, “Northern Agriculture and the Westward Movement,” in Cambridge Economic History of the United States, vol. 2, The Long Nineteenth ­Century, ed. Stanley Engerman and Robert Gallman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 323; Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 375–380. 20. Bruce Dorsey, Reforming Men and ­Women: Gender in the Antebellum City (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 146; Greenberg, Manifest Manhood, 149; May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld, 100; “California Scene in Granada,” EN, August 30, 1856. 21. Greenberg, Manifest Manhood, 149; May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld, 200, 83. 22. Laurence Oliphant, Patriots and Filibusters (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1860), 175; “The Nicaraguan Leaders,” Harper’s Weekly, May 23, 1857, 332–333; Appleton Oaksmith to William Walker, New York, September 11, 1856, Papers 1856–1857, AOP, DU; “Lyster, William Saurin,” in Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://­w ww​.­adb​.­online​.­a nu​.­edu​.­au​/ ­biogs​/­A050136b​.­htm. 23. Greenberg, Manifest Manhood, 170–196; “Pirate Song on Pitcairn’s Island,” EN, August 16, 1856.

318

NOTES TO PAGES 113–116

24. William Frank Stewart, Last of the Filibusters, or, Recollections of the Siege of Rivas (Sacramento: Shipley, 1857), 16, 63; Aragorn Storm Miller and Jasinski, “Swearingen, Richard Johnson,” in Handbook of Texas Online; “Description of Central Amer­i­ca by a Texan,” Austin State Gazette, May 17, 1856; “The Lecture on Nicaragua,” Washington (TX) American, April 30, 1856; Ernest Obadele-­Starks, Freebooters and Smugglers: The Foreign Slave Trade in the United States ­after 1808 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2007), 150. 25. James Carson Jamison, With Walker in Nicaragua; or, Reminiscences of an Officer of the American Phalanx (Columbia, MO: Stephens, 1909), 100–101; Alberto Lagerstedt, “The Po­liti­cal ­Career of William Walker” (MA thesis, University of California–­ Berkeley, 1913), section 7, appendix A; May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld, 112; “The Young Amer­i­ca Pioneer Club of Nicaragua,” EN, February 16, 1856. 26. Alejandro Bolaños Geyer, William Walker: The Gray-­Eyed Man of Destiny (Lake Saint Louis, MO: privately printed, 1990), 3:350, 259. 27. “Reported Death of a Well-­K nown Citizen,” Brooklyn Daily Ea­gle, June 16, 1856; John Brockmann, Commodore Robert F. Stockton, 1795–1866 (Amherst, NY: Cambria, 2009), 288; “The Working Men,” Brooklyn Daily Ea­gle, October 13, 1854; Mark Lause, Young Amer­i­ca: Land, ­Labor, and the Republican Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 119; Watson Haynes to William Henry Seward, Brooklyn, December 23, 1855, roll 49, PWHS, UR. 28. “Register of Emigrants Leaving New Orleans for Nicaragua on December 28, 1856,” folder 93, CFCWWP, TU. 29. “Condition of the Filibusters at Rivas,” New York Times, March 30, 1857; Iván Molina Jiménez, “Tipógrafo y ¿agente del Destino Manifiesto? Un francés en la Centroamérica de 1856,” Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad de Costa Rica 45, nos. 115–116 (2007): 161. 30. Register of the Army of the Republic of Nicaragua, Granada, 1856; folders 120–121, CFCWWP, TU; “Captain Alf De Shields’s Account of His Adventures in Nicaragua with the Walker Filibuster Expedition, 1856,” MS 3561, Bancroft Library; “Married,” EN, November 22, 1856. 31. “U.S., Atlantic Ports Passenger Lists, 1820–1873 and 1893–1959,” Ancestry​.c­ om, http://­search​.­a ncestry​.­com​/­search​/­d b​.­aspx​?­d bid​= 8­ 758; Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Briefadelingen Häuser (Gotha, Germany: Perthes, 1909), 299–302; Ernst Kneschke, Neues allgemeines Deutsches Adels-­Lexikon (Leipzig: Friedrich Voigt, 1863), 4:264; “Texas Boys in Nicaragua,” Houston Weekly Telegraph, January 28, 1857; “For Nicaragua,” Washington American, November 12, 1856; Carl Bernhard to Franz Hesse, San Miguel, El Salvador, February 29, 1858, I HA Rep 81 Ztr-­A merika, Nr. 4, GStAPK; Thomas Schoonover, The United States in Central Amer­i­ca, 1860–1911 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 55, 64–68. 32. “Register Book—­New Orleans Agency of Nicaragua Emigration Com­pany,” folder 93, CFCWWP, TU; emigrant waybill for steamship Texas, New York, October 25, 1856, Papers 1856–1857, AOP, DU. 33. “Emigrants for Nicaragua,” New York Herald, May 16, 1856; “Departure of the Nicaragua Emigrants,” New Orleans Daily Crescent, May 8, 1856; “From Nicaragua,” Houston Weekly Telegraph, November 12, 1856; Ratterman, “With Walker,”



34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43. 44.

NOTES TO PAGES 117–121

319

316–317; claim by Eleanor Callahan, September 20, 1858, roll 11, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Ministers to Central Amer­i­ca, 1824–1906, USNA; “Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 Census, Travis County Texas,” Austin Genealogical Society, http://­austintxgensoc​.­org​/­w p​ -­content​/­uploads​/­2012​/­04​/­1850TXcen​.­t xt; Howard J. Erlichman, Camino del Norte (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006), 97. “From Nicaragua,” Weekly Telegraph, November 12, 1856. “Colonización,” EN, December 1, 1855. “Worthington, Henry Gaither,” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress: 1774–­Pres­ent, http:// ­bioguide​.­congress​.­gov​/­scripts​/ ­biodisplay​.­pl​?­index​=W ­ 000747. “From Nicaragua,” Weekly Telegraph, November 12, 1856. Walter Kamphoefner, Wolfgang Helbich, and Ulrike Sommer, eds., News from the Land of Freedom: German Immigrants Write Home (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 351; Karl Bürkli, “Die sozialistische Expedition nach Texas,” Eidgenössische Zeitung (Zu­r ich), September 5, 1858; “Mexiko als Colonisationsland für Deutsche,” Wisconsin Banner und Volksfreund, December 12, 1855; “Amerikaner sollen Amerika regieren,” Wisconsin Banner und Volksfreund, January 23, 1856; Julius Fröbel, Aus Amerika (Leipzig: Deutsche Buchhandlung, 1857), 1:530. “Nicaragua Correspondence,” New Orleans Daily True Delta, June, 27, 1856; John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, In Search of the Promised Land: A Slave ­Family in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 18, 89, 141; James P. Thomas, From Tennessee Slave to St. Louis Entrepreneur (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984), 203; John Rapier Jr., “Reminiscences of a Fillibuster,” St. Paul Pioneer and Demo­crat, January 20, 1859, and handwritten essay with no title, no date, box 84-3, folder 111, RFP, MSRC, HU. Franklin and Schweninger, In Search of the Promised Land, 118, 68, 99; John H. Rapier Jr., diary, box 84-3, folder 111, p. 31, RFP, MSRC, HU; John H. Rapier Jr., “Reminiscences of a Fillibuster” no. 5, St. Paul Pioneer and Demo­crat, February 24, 1859, box 84-3, folder 111, RFP, MSRC, HU; John H. Rapier Jr., “Reminiscences of a Fillibuster” no. 8, St. Paul Pioneer and Demo­crat, n.d., box 84-3, folder 111, RFP, MSRC, HU; Sarah Thomas to John Rapier, Buxton, Canada West, March 10 (1857?), box 84-3, folder 111, RFP, MSRC, HU. John Rapier, “Gen. Walker,” November 2, 1858, box 84-3, folder 111, RFP, MSRC, HU; John H. Rapier Jr., “Reminiscences of a Fillibuster” no. 2, St. Paul Pioneer and Demo­crat, January 26, 1859, box 84-3, folder 111, RFP, MSRC, HU; John H. Rapier Jr., “Reminiscences of a Fillibuster” no. 3, St. Paul Pioneer and Demo­crat, February 17, 1859, box 84-3, folder 111, RFP, MSRC, HU; James Thomas, notes on Walker’s Nicaragua, box 84-2, folder 105, RFP, MSRC, HU; Thomas, Tennessee Slave, 133, 137. John Rapier Jr., “Reminiscences of a Fillibuster,” St. Paul Pioneer and Demo­crat, January 20, 1859; John Rapier, “Gen. Walker,” November 2, 1858, box 84-3, folder 111, RFP, MSRC, HU. Dorsey, Reforming Men and ­Women, 102; Greenberg, Manifest Manhood; “General Order 129,” EN, July 26, 1856. Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-­Century Amer­i­ca (London: Verso, 1990), 205–222; Lause,

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Young Amer­i­ca, 3; “Freedom of the Gold Lands,” National Police Gazette, ­November 2, 1850; Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1986), 248; “Our Granada Correspondence,” New York Weekly Herald, April 5, 1856; Joseph Tucker, To the Golden Goal and Other Sketches (San Francisco: Doxey, 1895), 222; “Another Account of the Santa Rosa Affair,” New York Herald, May 1, 1856; “Appeal of the Walker Relief Committee to the American Public,” New York Herald, May 24, 1856. 45. “Death of Charles Callahan,” New Orleans Picayune, October 23, 1856; “New Orleans Correspondence,” Mississippi ­Free Trader, and Natchez Gazette, May 11, 1855; “Reinforcements for Walker,” Daily National Intelligencer, April 21, 1856; “Fourth of July,” EN, July 5, 1856. 46. Scott Martin, Devil of the Domestic Sphere: Temperance, Gender, and Middle-­Class Ideology, 1800–1860 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008), 130; “Sons of Temperance,” Savannah Daily Morning News, June 19, 1856; “Military Mortality,” New York Herald, November 17, 1856; “Division of the Sons of Temperance,” EN, October 4, 1856; “S. of T.,” EN, November 1, 1856; Journal of the Proceedings of the National Division of the Sons of Temperance of North Amer­i­ca (Boston: Wright and Potter, 1868), 1809. 47. Missionary Report and Minutes of the Eleventh Session of the Louisiana Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (New Orleans: True Delta, 1857), 6. 48. “The Late Insult to the U.S. Flag,” EN, October 25, 1856; Annual of the Louisiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South: Ninth Session, January 17–23, 1855, https://­archive​.­org ​/­details​/­m inutesoflouisia1855meth, 17. 49. Rebecca Bromley, “Distribution Abroad,” Historical Essay no. 15, American Bible Society Archives; David Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of Amer­i­ca, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 447; Dorsey, Reforming Men and ­Women, 200–212; “New Grenada: Aspinwall,” Sailor’s Magazine 27, no. 10 (1855): 293; “Valparaiso Chaplaincy,” Sailor’s Magazine 26, nos. 2–3 (1853): 60–62, 80–82, “Valparaiso,” Sailor’s Magazine 26, no. 10 (1854): 293–294; “Aspinwall Chaplaincy,” Sailor’s Magazine 28, no. 1 (1855): 26–27; David Wheeler to Brigham, Aspinwall, June 24, 1854, January 30, 1855, March 18, 1856, and January 30, 1856, RG 27, Central Amer­i­ca, 1838–1915, American Bible Society Archives. 50. David Wheeler to John Brigham, Aspinwall, January 30, 1856, RG 27, Central Amer­i­ca, 1838–1915, American Bible Society Archives; “Religious Intelligence,” Congregationalist, September 12, 1856, 146; “From Our Agent in Nicaragua,” Bible Society Rec­ord 1, no. 10 (1856): 186–187. 51. John Haller, Kindly Medicine: Physio-­Medicalism in Amer­i­ca, 1836–1911 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1997), 20; Israel Moses, “Medical Notes on Fort Merrill and Ringgold Barracks, Texas,” American Journal of the Medical Sciences 60 (1855): 380–390; “Miscellanea,” New York Journal of Medicine and Collateral Sciences 15, no. 1 (1855): 158; General Order Book, folder 111a, o­ rders 48 and 101, CFCWWP, TU; Tucker, To the Golden Goal, 220; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 158. 52. Israel Moses, “Military Surgery and Operations following the ­Battle of Rivas, Nicaragua, April, 1856,” American Journal of Medical Sciences 33, no. 65 (1857): 26;



53.

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Howard Bock, Haven of Liberty: New York Jews in the New World, 1654–1865 (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 165; Annie Polland and Daniel Soyer, Emerging Metropolis: New York Jews in the Age of Immigration, 1840–1920 (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 47–48. “List of Killed, Wounded, and Missing,” EN, April 19, 1856; James Connor, “The Antislavery Movement in Iowa,” Annals of Iowa 40 (1970): 352–356; Robert Dykstra, Bright Radical Star: Black Freedom and White Supremacy on the Hawkeye Frontier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 77, 79. “To the Editor of the Herald,” New York Tribune, July 22, 1856; Paul Hallerberg, “Deshler and the Know Nothing Party,” Journal of the Rutgers University Library 4, no. 1 (1940): 11; Rebecca Edwards, Torrie Williams, and Kristina Poznan, ­Mid-­Hudson Antislavery History Proj­ect June 2007 Research Report, Hudson River Valley Institute, http://­w ww​.­hudsonrivervalley​.­org​/­t hemes​/­pdfs​/­fi nalUGRRreport​ .­pdf; “American Anti-­Slavery Society Meeting for Business,” Emancipator, May 23, 1839; Elizur Wright, Myron Holley: And What He Did for Liberty and True Religion (Boston: n.p., 1882), 263. Drew Gilpin Faust, “Mingling Promiscuously,” in Yards and Gates: Gender in Harvard and Radcliffe History, ed. Laurel Ulrich (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 318; Dee Brown, The Gentle Tamers: W ­ omen of the Old Wild West (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981), 140, 271–272; “Anniversary Meeting,” Boston Daily Atlas, June 1, 1854; “­Women’s State Temperance Convention of New York,” The Lily, June 15, 1854; “Editorial,” The Lily, February 15, 1855; Martin, Devil of the Domestic Sphere, 130–149; “The Lecture by Miss Sarah Pellet,” Sacramento Daily Placer Times and Transcript, September 30, 1854; “Temperance Meeting,” Kansas Herald of Freedom, December 27, 1856. Gordon Barker, The Imperfect Revolution: Anthony Burns and the Landscape of Race in Antebellum Amer­i­ca (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2010), 50–51; “­Women’s Rights Convention,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, December 16, 1853; “A Politician in Petticoats,” New York Freeman’s Journal and Catholic Register, July 19, 1856. EN, February 9, 1856; “Letter from Miss Pellett [sic],” EN, April 26, 1856; “Lecture on Nicaragua,” Savannah Daily Morning News, May 22, 1856; “Miss Sarah Pellet’s Lecture on Nicaragua,” New Orleans Daily Picayune, April 10, 1856. Robert May, “Reconsidering Antebellum U.S. ­Women’s History: Gender, Filibustering, and Amer­i­ca’s Quest for Empire,” American Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2005): 1180; Sarah Pellet to William Seward, Poughkeepsie, NY, June 21, 1856, PWHS, UR; Allison Sneider, Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the W ­ oman Question, 1870–1929 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); The ­G reat ­Battle between Slavery and Freedom, Considered in Two Speeches Delivered before the American Antislavery Society, at New York, May 7, 1856, by Theodore Parker (Boston: Greene, 1856), 88–89. W. Caleb McDaniel, The Prob­lem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery: Garrisonian Abolitionists and Transatlantic Reform (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013); Gale Kinney, Contentious Liberties: American Abolitionists in Post-­ emancipation Jamaica, 1834–1866 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010), 17; J. Brent Morris, Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism: College, Community, and the Fight

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for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum Amer­i­ca (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 61; Carol Lasser and Marlene Deahl Merrill, eds., Friends and ­Sisters: Letters between Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, 1846–93 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 56. “Manifest Destiny,” Der Pionier, May 4, 1856; “The Nicaragua Filibusters,” New York Herald, February 23, 1857; Mischa Honeck, We Are the Revolutionists: German-­Speaking Immigrants and American Abolitionists ­after 1848 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011); Levine, The Spirit of 1848. “Republican Festival,” New York Times, February 25, 1854; “The Ingraham Committee,” New York Times, October 18, 1853; Theodore Poesche and Charles Goepp, The New Rome; or, The United States of the World (New York: Putnam, 1853); “Cuba und seine Bedeutung für die Ver. Staaten,” Turn-­Zeitung (Philadelphia), November 1, 1853; “From Our New York Correspondent,” Daily National Intelligencer, September 4, 1855. “Two Hundred Filibusters Started for Nicaragua Unmolested,” Richmond Daily Dispatch, February 27, 1856; “Rough Sketches from My Hammock and Knapsack of Camp Life in Nicaragua,” EN, March 15, 1856; “Our Nicaragua Correspondence,” New York Herald, April 12, 1856; Wisconsin Banner und Volksfreund, April 15, 1857. “More Nicaraguan Recruits,” Sacramento Daily Union, January 7, 1856; Geza Tassi and Gyorgy Balazs, “Swedes and Hungarians in the Whirlwind of Time,” Concrete Structures: Journal of the Hungarian Group of fib 23 (2012): 5; Thomas Kabdebo, Diplomat in Exile (Boulder, CO: East Eu­ro­pean Quarterly, 1979), 35–36; “Dinner at Manovil’s [sic] ­Hotel,” EN, February 23, 1856; “Business Like Again,” EN, June 21, 1856. “Col­on­ el Schlesinger’s Defense,” New York Times, October 26, 1857; “Rough Sketches from My Hammock and Knapsack of Camp Life in Nicaragua,” EN, March 15, 1856; “Young Ireland for Nicaragua,” Irish News, September 20, 1856; “Letter from Granada,” Irish News, November 29, 1856. Klaus Häfner, ed., Grossherzog Leopold von Baden: 1790–1852 (Karlsruhe, Germany: Badische Landesbibliothek, 1990), 90; A. Schwartz, “Ten Months in Nicaragua,” San Francisco Pictorial Magazine 1, no. 1 (1857): 2; “New York, State Census, 1855,” Ancestry​.c­ om, http://­search​.­a ncestry​.­com​/­search​/­d b​.­aspx​?­d bid​= ­7 181; General Order Book, folder 111, order 12, CFCWWP, TU. Christian Jansen, Einheit, Macht und Freiheit: Die Paulskirchenlinke und die deutsche Politik in der nachrevolutionären Epoche, 1849–1867 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 2000), 194; Julius Fröbel, Aus Amerika (Leipzig: Deutsche Buchhandlung, 1858), 2:591, 614; Julius Fröbel to Ephraim George Squier, New York, April 22, 1856, roll 3, EGSP, LOC. “Public Meetings,” New York Tribune, August 22, 1856; Fröbel, Aus Amerika, 2:610, 611; “General Walker in Nicaragua,” New-­Yorker Staats-­Zeitung, October 25, 1856. “Richard J. Lalor,” Irish News, November 8, 1856; “Patrick of Canada West,” Irish News, January 24, 1857; Fröbel, Aus Amerika, 2:613; José María Magallon to Spanish Foreign Minister, Washington, DC, September 3, 1855, legajo 1467, Correspondencia embajadas EEUU, Política Exterior, AGMAEE; Naomi Andrews, “ ‘The



NOTES TO PAGES 131–136

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Universal Alliance of All P ­ eoples’: Romantic Socialists, the ­Human F ­ amily, and the Defense of Empire during the July Monarchy, 1830–1848,” French Historical Studies 34, no. 3 (2011): 473–502. 69. Jens-­Uwe Guettel, German Expansionism, Imperial Liberalism, and the United States, 1776–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 88, 77; Matthew Fitzpatrick, Liberal Imperialism in Germany: Expansion and Nationalism, 1848–1884 (New York: Berghahn, 2008), 27–67. 70. “The Nicaragua Question,” New York Times, February 16, February 20, and March 7–8, 1856; Fröbel, Aus Amerika, 2:555–556, 591–613. 71. “Nicaragua,” Turn-­Zeitung (Cincinnati), November 20, 1855; “The Nicaragua Question,” New York Times, March 7, 1856. 72. Fröbel, Aus Amerika, 1:506–509, 521–522, 536–537; Julius Fröbel, Kleine Politische Schriften (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1866), 1:22; Fröbel, Aus Amerika, 2:609–610. 73. Daniel Nagel, Von republikanischen Deutschen zu deutsch-­amerikanischen Republikanern: Ein Beitrag zum Identitätswandel der deutschen Achtundvierziger in the Vereinigten Staaten 1850–1861 (St. Ingbert, Germany: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2012), 309–312, 323; Fröbel, Kleine Politische Schriften, 1:87–92; “The Nicaragua Question,” New York Times, March 12, 1856; Fröbel, Aus Amerika, 1:607, 611; Jansen, Einheit, 280–281. 74. Hans-­U lrich Schiedt, Die Welt neu erfinden: Karl Bürkli (1823–1901) und seine Schriften (Zu­r ich: Chronos Verlag, 2002), 120, 133; Jonathan Beecher, Victor Considerant and the Rise and Fall of French Romantic Socialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 295–388. 75. Karl Bürkli, “Die sozialistische Expedition nach Texas,” Eidgenössische Zeitung (Zu­r ich), September 5, 1858; Beecher, Victor Considerant, 122. 76. Francisco Stoughton to Captain General of Cuba, New York, December 10, 1855, legajo 1467, Correspondencia embajadas EEUU, AGMAEE; Spanish Minister to Primer Secretario de Estado, Washington, DC, June 2, 1856, legajo 1468, Correspondencia embajadas EEUU, AGMAEE; “Noticias a la mano,” El Mulato (New York), May 21, 1854. 77. “Prospectus,” El Cubano, March 5, 1853. 78. Gerald Poyo, “Evolution of Cuban Separatist Thought in the Emigré Communities of the United States, 1848–1895,” Hispanic American Historical Review 66, no. 3 (1986): 489–490; La Verdad (New York), March 25, 1857. 79. Herminio Portell Vila, Narciso López y su época (Havana: Cultural, 1930), 1:206, 184–185; Herminio Portell Vila, Narciso López y su época (Havana: Cultural, 1958), 3:235–377; Capital General of Cuba to Secretario de Estado, Havana, February 3, 1849, exp. 51, legajo 4634, Cuba, Ultramar, Archivo Histórico Nacional; Francisco de la Escosura to Captain General, Havana, February 5, 1850, exp. 51, legajo 4634, Cuba, Ultramar, Archivo Histórico Nacional. 80. “Enseñanza de los idiomas,” El Pueblo (New York), June 29, 1855; “La cuestion del dinero,” El Pueblo (New York), July 20, 1855; “Errores de la revolución Cubana,” El Pueblo (New York), June 19, 1855; “A los patriotas Cubanos de los Estados Unidos,” El Pueblo, June 19, 1855; “Estudios filosóficos,” El Mulato (New

324

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82.

83.

84.

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York), March 11, 23, April, 1, 8, and 17, 1854; “Pobre Cubanos!,” El Mulato (New York), March 18, 1854; “Lo que somos lo que hay y lo que debemos hacer,” El Eco de Cuba (New York), August 10, 1855; “Al Sr. Agüero,” El Eco de Cuba, September 10, 1855. Francisco Agüero y Estrada, Biografía de Joaquín de Agüero (Havana: Molina, 1935 [1853]), 21; “Pobres Cubanos,” El Mulato (New York), March 18, 1854; Francisco Agüero y Estrada, letter to the editor, El Mulato (New York), April 17, 1854; “Libertad,” El Mulato (New York), May 21, 1854; “República Dominicana,” El Mulato (New York), May 29, 1854; David Luis-­Brown, “Slave Rebellion and the Conundrum of Cosmopolitanism: Plácido and La Escalera in a Neglected Cuban Antislavery Novel by Orihuela,” Atlantic Studies 9, no. 2 (2012): 217; “Cubanos,” El Pueblo (New York), July 20, 1855. Luis-­Brown, “Slave Rebellion,” 210; Michele Reid-­Vazquez, The Year of the Lash: ­Free P ­ eople of Color in Cuba and the Nineteenth-­Century Atlantic World (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 113. Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York City, 1825–1863 (New York: King’s Crown, 1949), 41; La Verdad (New York), March 30, 1852; El Pueblo (New York), June 29, 1855; El Eco de Cuba (New York), September 20, 1855. Luis Martínez Fernández, Torn between Empires: Economy, Society and Po­ liti­cal Thought in the Ca­rib­bean, 1840–1878 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 50; “Errores de la revolución Cubana,” El Pueblo (New York), June 19, 1855; Editorial, El Pueblo, July 20, 1855; “Bill de Nebraska,” El Mulato (New York), June 3, 1854; David Luis-­Brown, “An 1848 for the Amer­i­cas: The Black Atlantic, ‘El Negro mártir,’ and Cuban Exile Anticolonialism,” American Literary History 21, no. 3 (2009): 449; “Correspondencia,” El Eco de Cuba (New York), July 10, 1855.

5 ­imagined empire 1. Domingo Sarmiento, quoted in Jordana Dym, From Sovereign Villages to National States: City, State, and Federation in Central Amer­i­ca, 1759–1839 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006), xvii. 2. Charles Doubleday, Reminiscences of the “Filibuster” War in Nicaragua (New York: Putnam’s, 1886), 164–165. 3. James Sanders, The Vanguard of the Atlantic World: Creating Modernity, Nation, and Democracy in Nineteenth-­Century Latin Amer­i­ca (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014); “Crisis política en la Amér­i­ca Central,” EN, January 25, 1856; Foreign Minister of El Salvador to Foreign Minister of Guatemala, Cojutepeque, December 28, 1855, legajo 9366, B 99-7-2-19, RREE, AGCA; “A la Gaceta de Guatemala,” EN, January 5, 1856, emphasis in the original. 4. “The Power of the Press,” EN, May 17, 1856; “The Pen and the Sword,” EN, October 18, 1856. 5. “Aviso a nuestros amigos hijos del país,” EN, October 20, 1855; “Chismografía,” EN, January 25, 1856; “La unión liberal,” EN, January 12, 1856.



NOTES TO PAGES 142–150

325

6. “El Nicaraguense,” EN, May 3, 1856; “Walker’s Dispatches Intercepted by the Costa Ricans,” New York Times, October 29, 1856; Guatemalan Foreign Minister to Thomas Manning, Guatemala City, May 23, 1856, legajo 2499, B 118, AGCA. 7. “The Press in Nicaragua,” EN, October 27, 1855; “The Past,” EN, October 27, 1855; “Nicaraguan Interests,” EN, November 10, 1855. 8. “Life of the Common Adventurer in Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Eve­ning Bulletin, November 27, 1856; “Otro,” EN, February 9, 1856; “Total Route of the E ­ nemy,” EN, April 12, 1856. 9. “Nicaragua and the Filibusters,” Blackwood Magazine, March 1856, 314. 10. “The Issue,” EN, May 10, 1856; “Eastern News,” EN, May 31, 1856. 11. “Pansclavism and Americanism,” EN, January 5, 1856; George Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 228. 12. “Comunicado,” EN, January 25, 1856. 13. “The Central American Question,” EN, May 24, 1856. 14. “More Nicaragua Revelations,” New York Herald, November 24, 1856. 15. Julian Go, Patterns of Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to the Pres­ent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 47. 16. “Remitido,” EN, November 17, 1855; “Vijil Cura de Granada,” EN, February 16, 1856. 17. Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2010), 11–13. 18. “Comunicado,” EN, February 9, 1856; “El Jeneral Cabañas en Granada,” EN, December 8, 1855; Editorial, EN, January 12, 1856; William Walker, The War in Nicaragua (Mobile, AL: Goetzel, 1860), 161; Máximo Jérez to José Trinidad Cabañas, Granada, January 9, 1856, PCFW, BL. 19. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 163; Editorial, EN, January 12, 1856; “Nicaragua and the Adjoining States,” EN, February 9, 1856. 20. Alejandro Bolaños Geyer, ed., Diario de John Hill Wheeler (Managua: Colección Cultural Banco de América, 1974), 125; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 158; muster roll for 1855–1856, folder 114, CFCWWP, TU; Foreign Minister of El Salvador to Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Cojutepeque, December 28, 1855, legajo 9366, B 99-7-2-19, RREE, AGCA; Franz Hesse to Prus­sian Foreign Minister, Cartagena, January 4, 1856, III MdAI, Nr. 7943, GStAPK; “Nicaragua and the Filibusters,” 320. 21. Editorial, San Francisco Daily Herald, December 1, 1855; “The Central American Question,” New York Times, January 1, 1856; “What Is to Become of Nicaragua?,” Harper’s Weekly, June 6, 1857, 354; “Banking at the South,” North American and United States Gazette, January 8, 1856; “The Fun and the Muss of the Nicaraguan Squabble,” New York Herald, November 27, 1856. 22. “A Ruined City in Chontales,” EN, December 22, 1855; “Speculations on Nicaragua,” EN, January 25, 1856; “Eu­ro­pean Policy,” EN, March 15, 1856. 23. “Nicaragua Independiente,” EN, June 7, 1856; “Central Amer­i­ca,” EN, June 28, 1856. 24. “Flag of the Republic,” EN, September 13, 1856; “The Flag that Braved the ­Battle,” EN, November 1, 1856; “New Flag,” EN, August 2, 1856.

326

NOTES TO PAGES 150–156

25. “Central Amer­i­ca,” EN, June 28, 1856. 26. “Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca,” EN, July 19, 1856; “What We Are Striving For,” EN, August 2, 1856; “Exceptional Filibusterism,” EN, October 11, 1856; “The Nicaragua Expose—­T he American Indian Empire,” New York Herald, November 26, 1856; “The Nicaragua Meeting To-­Night—­Our Indian Empire and Directory,” New York Herald, December 20, 1856; Julius Fröbel, Aus Amerika: Erfahrungen, Reisen, und Studien (Leipzig: Verlagsbuchhandlung von J. J. Weber, 1858), 2:613. 27. “Nacionalidad,” CI, December 26, 1850. 28. “Central Amer­i­ca,” EN, June 28, 1856; “Events of One Year,” EN, August 2, 1856. 29. Editorial, EN, November 17, 1855; “Central Amer­i­ca,” EN, June 28, 1856; “The Panama Outrage,” EN, October 11, 1856; “Mexico,” EN, November 15, 1856. 30. “No Such Word as Fail,” EN, September 6, 1856; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 430. 31. Duff Green, quoted in “Aid for Walker and the Filibusters,” New York Herald, December 21, 1856; “Races,” EN, August 2, 1856; Burbank and Cooper, Empires, 8. 32. Manuel Murillo Tora, quoted in “Southern Confederation against the Americans,” EN, October 25, 1856. 33. “Races,” EN, August 2, 1856; Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-­Saxonism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); “Highly In­ter­est­ing from Nicaragua,” New York Herald, January 19, 1856; “Pictures of Life in Nicaragua,” Life Illustrated, April 19, 1856; “Servility vs. Statesmanship,” EN, June 14, 1856. 34. Albert Weinberg, Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansionism in American History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1935); Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Vio­lence: The My­thol­ogy of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973); Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Houndmills, ­England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 3. 35. “The Experience of Samuel Absalom, Filibuster,” Atlantic Monthly, December 1859, 653–665, and January 1860, 38–60; “Nicaragua and General Walker,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, February 7, 1857; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 430. 36. A. Dirk Moses, ed., Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Re­sis­tance in World History (New York: Berghahn, 2008); “The Nicaraguan Navy!,” EN, August 9, 1856; “Horrible Assassination,” EN, October 18, 1856; Nicholas Guyatt, “ ‘An Impossible Idea?’: The Curious ­Career of Internal Colonization,” Journal of the Civil War Era 4, no. 2 (2014): 234–263; “Address of Mr. Callahan,” EN, July 5, 1856. 37. “From Leon,” EN, February 2, 1856; “Walker’s Victims,” [no title], [December 16, 1856?], roll 3, John P. Heiss ­Family Papers, Tennessee State Library and Archives. 38. “Universal Democracy,” EN, May 3, 1856. 39. “More Nicaragua Revelations,” New York Herald, November 24, 1856; Editorial, London Morning Post, September 4, 1856. 40. “Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca,” EN, July 19, 1856. 41. “Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca,” EN, July 19, 1856; Ann Laura Stoler, “Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies,” Journal of American History 88, no. 3 (2001): 845.



42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

NOTES TO PAGES 157–167

327

“Filibusteros,” EN, January 5, 1856. “The Issue,” EN, May 10, 1856. Slotkin, Fatal Environment, 249. Robert May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum Amer­i­ca (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 271; Julius Froebel, “The Nicaragua Question: Relative Values of Slave and ­Free L ­ abor—­Slavery Unsuited to Nicaragua,” New York Times, March 7, 1856. “Dangers of Idleness,” EN, November 17, 1855; “The Army of Nicaragua,” EN, March 8, 1856; “Coolies for Costa Rica,” EN, May 10, 1856. “Progreso del filibusterismo,” Boletín Oficial, February 13, 1856. “Presidential Prospects,” EN, April 26, 1856. “Arms for Kansas and Nicaragua,” EN, May 10, 1856; “Po­l iti­cal Prospects,” EN, June 21, 1856. Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: Norton, 2005), 650–651. “The Young South,” EN, June 14, 1856; “Po­l iti­cal Prospects,” EN, June 21, 1856. “Po­l iti­cal Prospects,” EN, June 21, 1856; “Young South,” EN, June 14, 1856; Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 377. “The Young South,” EN, June 14, 1856. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 256; Johnson, River of Dark Dreams, 372. “Reasons for Immigration,” EN, June 28, 1856; “Then and Now,” EN, May 17, 1856; “Presidential Prospects,” EN, April 26, 1856. “General Walker and His Objects,” New York Herald, November 22, 1856. Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2005); Matthew Fitzpatrick, Liberal Imperialism in Germany: Expansionism and Nationalism, 1848–1884 (New York: Berghahn, 2008).

6 creating a filibuster state 1. “Exceptional Filibusterism,” EN, August 2, 1856. 2. “What We Are Striving For,” EN, October 11, 1856; Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2010); Ronald Robinson, “Non-­European Foundations of Eu­ro­pean Imperialism,” in Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, ed. Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe (London: Longman, 1972), 117–140. 3. Jerónimo Pérez, Obras históricas completas (Managua: Fondo de Promoción Cultural / BANIC, 1993), 178. 4. “Affairs in Nicaragua,” San Francisco Herald, December 19, 1855; “Washington News and Gossip,” Washington, DC, Eve­ning Star, May 15, 1856. 5. On how Walker claimed that he destroyed “all my papers, both public documents and o­ thers, to prevent the possibility of their falling into the hands of the ­enemy,” see

328

NOTES TO PAGES 168–171

Walker’s response to interrogatories, December 31, 1858, in MacDonald, Chas J. vs Garrison, Cornelius K. (1858–59), case files, box 43, first folder, ITWP, NYPL; Thomas Fisher to Appleton Oaksmith, Granada, August 14, 1856, Papers 1856–1857, AOP, DU. 6. EN, March 15, 1856. 7. José Bermúdez to Ayudante General del Ejército de la República, Rivas, January 30, 1856, folder 106, CFCWWP, TU. 8. Bruno von Natzmer correspondence, PCFW, BL; Máximo Jérez to Bruno von Natzmer, León, April 22, 1856, PCFW, BL. 9. José María Cheves to William Walker, Granada, December 29, 1855, folder 97, CFCWWP, TU; William Walker to Commander of La Virgen, Granada, December 31, 1855, folder 97, CFCWWP, TU; Comandancia y Gobernación de Policía de Virgen to William Walker, La Virgen, January 12, 1856, folder 97, CFCWWP, TU. 10. “Decree No. 111,” EN, January 12, 1856; Justin Wolfe, The Everyday Nation-­State: Community and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-­Century Nicaragua (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 46–52; decree by President Patricio Rivas, EN, June 14, 1856; decree by President William Walker, EN, August 16, 1856. 11. Alexander Wood to U.S. commercial agent Squire Cotrell, San Juan del Norte, March 30, 1857, SSWP, YUL; “Lista de pagares de varios arrendarios de diezmos que a continuación se designan,” Managua, November 24, 1857, caja 2, legajo 139, AMPG; “Cuentas municipales de Jinotepe correspondientes al año de 1856,” caja 1, legajo 1, AMPG; “Cuentas de Masatepe y Diriamba,” caja 1, legajo 2, AMPG; statement by Isidro López, Granada, November 17, 1864, caja 2, legajo 3 bis, AMPG; Receptoría de alcabalas to Subdelegado de hacienda, Masaya, January 31, 1857, caja 2, legajo 4, AMPG; Justo Jímenez to Contador Mayor, Masaya, December 18, 1857, caja 2, legajo 4, AMPG; J. Zelaya to Prefect, Granada, April 21, 1865, caja 1, legajo 1, AMPG; J. Miguel Rocha, C. Asevedo, José María Torrentes, and Pedro Jímenez to Prefect, Jinotepe, December 14, 1864, caja 1, legajo 1, AMPG. 12. William Walker, The War in Nicaragua (Mobile, AL: Goetzel, 1860), 40; BO, May 22, 1856; “Address of Mr. Callahan,” EN, July 5, 1856. 13. “Remitido—­A lusión,” EN, December 1, 1855; Elizabeth Dore, Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 50; “Rasgo Patriótico,” EN, November 24, 1855; “Documentos oficiales,” EN, December 15, 1855; “Documentos curiosos para la historia,” EN, December 15, 29, 1855; Alejandro Bolaños Geyer, William Walker: The Gray-­Eyed Man of Destiny (Lake Saint Louis, MO: privately printed, 1990), 3:219. 14. Ram. Navarro to Subprefecto del Departamento de Masaya, Masatepe, March 24, 1880, caja 156, legajo 435, AMPG; petition from Terencio Mercado, Anastacio Hernández, Matilde Mercado, and María Calderón to William Walker, December 24, 1855, folder 118, CFCWWP, TU. 15. D. Alemán to Subdelegado de Hacienda, Masaya, January 31, 1857, caja 2, legajo 4, AMPG; “Our Granada Correspondence,” New York Herald, October 19, 1856; Francisco Ortega Arancibia, Cuarenta años de historia de Nicaragua, 1838–1878 (Managua: Fondo de Promoción Cultural / BANIC, 1993 [1911]), 105; Mateo



NOTES TO PAGES 172–178

329

Mercado, Pedro Mercado, Pío Guebara, Manuel García, Pedro Pérez, Domingo Joaquín, Bernabé Pérez, Mauricio Aguirre, and Juan Alemán to Nicaraguan President Joaquín Zavala, Masatepe, March 8, 1880, caja 156, legajo 435, AMPG. 16. “Impor­tant from Central Amer­i­ca,” New York Weekly Herald, February 2, 1856. 17. Dore, Myths of Modernity; Wolfe, Everyday Nation- ­State; “Pronunciamiento de Nueva Segovia,” Boletín del Ejército democrático del Estado de Nicaragua, June 10, 1854. 18. William Walker to Col. Sanders, Granada, July 15, 1856, folder 109, CFCWWP, TU; “Informe contra Juan María Casco por juego prohibido,” Masatepe, caja 2, legajo 4, AMPG. 19. Sarah Chambers, “Citizens before the Law: The Role of Courts in Postin­de­pen­ dence State Building in Spanish Amer­i­ca,” in State and Nation Making in Latin Amer­i­ca and Spain, ed. Miguel Centeno and Agustin Ferraro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 356–374; “A última hora,” BO, October 10, 1856; court cases, legajos 1853 and 1856, Archivo Histórico de Diriomo; Dore, Myths of Modernity, 42–52, 58–59. 20. Dore, Myths of Modernity, 67. 21. “Cuentas muncipales de Jinotepe corespondientes al año de 1856,” caja 1, legajo 1, AMPG; Mayors of Nandaime, Masaya, and Jinotepe to Prefect, January 18, 1857, caja 2, legajo 3, AMPG; Mayor of Masaya to Prefect, January 19, 1857, caja 2, legajo 3, AMPG; Mayor of Jinotepe to Prefect, January 22, 1857, caja 2, legajo 3, AMPG; Cesario Talavera et al. to Prefect, Nandaime, February 23, 1857, caja 2, legajo 3, AMPG; Receptoría de alcabalas to Subdelegado de hacienda, Masaya, January 31, 1857, caja 2, legajo 4, AMPG; “Cargos Consejiles [in Granada], 1856–7,” caja 1, legajo 2 bis, AMPG. 22. “Informe contra Juan María Casco por juego prohibido,” testimony of Juan María Casco (Masatepe), in Masaya, October 8, 1857, caja 2, legajo 4, AMPG. 23. “Mexican Affairs,” EN, November 17, 1855; “From Leon,” EN, February 2, 1856; “Nicaraguan Interests,” EN, October 27, 1855. 24. Alejandro Bolaños Geyer, ed., Diario de John Hill Wheeler: Ministro de los Estados Unidos en Nicaragua, 1854–1857 (Managua: Colección Cultural Banco de América, 1974), 126; for Granada’s council members, see EN, December 8, 1855, and June 28, 1856; General Order Book, order 127, folder 111, reel 2c, CFCWWP, TU; “El Baptismo,” EN, February 2, 1856. 25. Pérez, Obras históricas, 182. 26. Pérez, Obras históricas, 192; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 163. 27. Testimonies of Juan Gámez, Placido Arana, and Franciso Ruiz, Castillo, December 22–26, 1855, folder 98, CFCWWP, TU; Alejandro Bolaños Geyer, William Walker: The Gray-­Eyed Man of Destiny (Lake Saint Louis, MO: privately printed, 1990), 4:93. 28. “Elecciones municipales,” EN, November 24, 1855; “Elección municipal,” EN, December 8, 1855; “Nicaraguan Interests,” EN, November 10, 1855. 29. Pérez, Obras históricas, 179; William Manning, ed., Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, Inter-­American Affairs, 1831–1860 (Washington, DC: Car­ne­g ie Endowment for International Peace, 1934), 4:518–521. 30. Charles Doubleday, Reminiscences of the “Filibuster” War in Nicaragua (New York: Putnam’s, 1886), iii, 167.

330

NOTES TO PAGES 178–184

31. Anna Ella Carroll, Star of the West: National Men and National Mea­sures (New York: Miller, Orton, 1857), 345–391; “Funeral of Capt. Walker,” EN, May 17, 1856; “Padre Solazano,” EN, May 17, 1856; “Holy Week in Granada,” EN, May 22, 1856. 32. Pérez, Obras históricas, 180, 226; Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, 4:560. 33. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 143; Pérez, Obras históricas, 369–370. 34. Bishop Jorge Viteri to Agustín Vijil, Santa Barbara, Nicaragua, January 13, 1852, FVI D20G3 61, Fondo Vijil, AIHNCA. 35. “Department of Matagalpa,” EN, March 8, 1856; “Triunfo de la razón,” EN, March 8, 1856; Edmund Bowley to Joseph Fabens, EN, December 15, 1855; Pérez, Obras históricas, 182–183, 215–216. 36. “Department of Matagalpa,” EN, March 8, 1856; “Triunfo de la razón,” EN, March 8, 1856; Salvadoran Foreign Minister to Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Cojutepeque, February 18, 1856, legajo 9366, B 99-7-2-19, RREE, AGCA; Pérez, Obras históricas, 215. 37. Pérez, Obras históricas, 183, 216; E. J. C. Kewen, “Three Weeks in Nicaragua,” San Francisco Herald, December 6–7, 1855, December 14, 1855, and January 14, 1856; “Department of Matagalpa,” EN, March 8, 1856. 38. “Clero de Nicaragua,” Las Avispas (Granada), December 20, 1854; Boletín de Noticias (León), April 22, 1855; Bishop Jorge Viteri to Agustín Vijil, León, September 10 and November 6, 1850, FVI D20G3 59, Fondo Vijil, AIHNCA. 39. “Editorial Correspondence,” State Tribune (Sacramento, CA), September 19, 1855, exp. Correspondencia de Luis Molina, 1855, RREE, ANCR; Bradford Burns, Patriarch and Folk: The Emergence of Nicaragua, 1798–1858 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 68. 40. “Rough Sketches from My Hammock and Knapsack of Camp Life in Nicaragua,” EN, February 2, 9, and 16, 1856; “Letter from Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Alta California, November 1, 1856. 41. Ortega, Cuarenta años, 211–212; Justin Wolfe, “ ‘The Cruel Whip’: Race and Place in Nineteenth-­Century Nicaragua,” in Blacks and Blackness in Central Amer­i­ca: Between Race and Place, ed. Lowell Gudmundson and Justin Wolfe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 191–193; BO, October 10, 1856. 42. Pérez, Obras históricas, 226. 43. “Nombramientos,” EN, November 17, 1855; “Letter from Masaya,” EN, August 2, 1856; “Masaya Jockey Club,” EN, September 13, 1856; Pérez, Obras históricas, 110. 44. Frances Kinloch Tijerino, Nicaragua: Identidad y cultura política (Managua: Banco Central de Nicaragua, 1999), 131–136, 148; “Nombramientos,” EN, December 8, 1855. 45. Kinloch, Nicaragua, 126, 128; Pérez, Obras históricas, 137; Ortega, Cuarenta años,112, 114; Cortlandt Cushing to Joseph White, July 31, 1854, Guerra 9946, ANCR; entry of May 31, 1856, folder 85, CFCWWP, TU. 46. “El Gobernador Militar del Dept. del Mediodía a sus Habitantes,” EN, February 16, 1856. On the structural base of the Porfirian dictatorship, see Allen Wells and Gilbert Joseph, Summer of Discontent, Seasons of Upheaval: Elite Politics and Rural Insurgency in Yucatán, 1876–1915 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996).



NOTES TO PAGES 185–188

331

47. “Vermischtes,” Deutsche Auswanderer-­Zeitung (Bremen, Germany), August 24, 1857. 48. Entry of August 24, 1852, Protocolos de José Anzoátegui, 1851–1854, RPPG; T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New York: Knopf, 2009), 197; Fermin Ferrer to William Cazneau, New York, November 29, 1856, New York Herald, December 1, 1856; Fermin Ferrer to El Salvador’s Foreign Minister, Granada, March 13, 1856, legajo 9366, B 99-7-2-19, RREE, AGCA. 49. “Banquete,” EN, December 22, 1855; William Walker to Patricio Rivas, Granada, May 20, 1856, no. 70, S XIX, IHN, AIHNCA; Pérez, Obras históricas, 179. 50. “Noticias sobre la jeografía y estadística del departamento oriental,” EN, December 15, 1855. Ferrer wrote this report in 1850, while serving as the department’s prefect. 51. Statement by Eleonor Rosignol [sic] Thomas, Granada, December 23, 1851, Protocolos de José Anzoátegui, 1851–1854, RPPG; statement by Carlos Thomas, Granada, May 27, 1856, Protocolos de José Anzoátegui, 1855–1857, RPPG; entry for Gousse, Hilaire (April 21, 1816), in “Roman Catholic Baptisms 1813–1817: D–­L ,” Jamaican ­Family Search Genealogy Research Library, http://­www​.­jamaicanfamily​ search​.­com​/­Members​/­Cb1813d​-­l​.­htm; Stewart King, Blue Coat or Powdered Wig: ­Free P ­ eople of Color in Pre-­revolutionary Saint Domingue (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 188–189, 276; “Departure of the Tennessee,” New York Times, February 25, 1857. 52. Entry of May 9, 1860, Protocolos de Nicasio del Castillo, 1859–1860, RPPG; Wilhelm Marr, Reise nach Central-­Amerika (Hamburg: Meissner, 1863), 1:239; C. Thomas to J. Ruggles, Granada, November 5, 1852, Fomento 3725, ANCR; C. Thomas to Cortlandt Cushing, Granada, May 11, 1854, Guerra 9947, ANCR; statement by Carlos Thomas, Granada, July 26, 1853, Protocolos de José Anzoátegui, 1851–1854, RPPG; statement by Emilio Thomas, Granada, September 12, 1855, Protocolos de José Anzoátegui, 1851–1854, RPPG; statement by Carlos Thomas, Granada, November 7, 1856, Protocolos de José Anzoátegui, 1855–1857, RPPG; Parker French to editor of State Tribune, August 13, 1855, Granada, exp. Correspondencia de don Luis Molina, 1855, RREE, ANCR; Francisco Mena Guerrero, Granada de mis recuerdos (Managua: Arellano, 1995), 45; Ortega, Cuarenta años, 213. 53. Horacio Bell, La espedición de Walker a Nicaragua (Guatemala City: Imprenta Valenzuela, 1956), 23; “Melancholy Occurrence,” EN, May 24, 1856; “­Grand Festival,” EN, November 17, 1855; “The Young Amer­i­ca Pioneer Club of Nicaragua,” EN, February 16, 1856. 54. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 116; Wilhelm Marr, Reise nach Central-­Amerika (Hamburg: Meissner, 1863), 2:3; Emilio Thomas to Sabina Estrada, New York, March 23, 1857, caja 28, no. 13, exp. Estados Unidos, 1857, RREE, ANCR. 55. “Gen. Walker’s Position in Nicaragua,” London Post, September 4, 1856; Janice Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-­Building and Extraterritorial Vio­lence in Early Modern Eu­rope (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1994); “Change of Opinion,” EN, May 24, 1856; “Indicaciones,” folder 127, reel 3, CFCWWP, TU.

332

NOTES TO PAGES 190–200

7 the promise of development 1. Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2010), 287. 2. Editorial, EN, December 8, 1855. 3. “Nicaragua—­sus recursos,” EN, October 27, 1855. 4. “Nicaragua—­Her Probabilities,” EN, July 26, 1856; “Educación,” EN, July 12, 1856. 5. Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: Norton, 2010), 34, 39; Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of Amer­i­ca, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 270–271, 583–584; Jay Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth- ­Century Amer­i­ca (New York: Hill and Wang, 2011), 39; “The Two Po­l iti­cal Parties,” San Francisco Herald, April 8, 1851. 6. “Plan of Colonization of the Department of Leon,” EN, August 16, 1856; decree of April 9, 1856, EN, April 26, 1856. 7. “Our Nicaragua Correspondence,” New York Herald, June 2, 1856; “The Coffee Culture,” EN, January 19, 1856. 8. “Agricultural,” EN, December 8, 1855; “Importations,” EN, March 22, 1856; “The Banana Tree,” EN, March 22, 1856; “Paper Making,” EN, August 9, 1856; Editorial, EN, December 8, 1855. 9. “Plan of Colonization of the Department of Leon,” EN, August 16, 1856. 10. “Plan of Colonization of the Department of Leon,” EN, August 16, 1856; “New Town on the Pacific,” EN, February 2, 1856. 11. “Nicaragua—­Her Probabilities,” EN, July 26, 1856; “Plan of Colonization of the Department of Leon,” EN, August 16, 1856; “Otro,” EN, February 9, 1856. 12. “Otro,” EN, February 9, 1856; Wilhelm Heine, Wanderbilder aus Central-­Amerika (Leipzig: Costenoble, 1853), 130 (the source of the spring w ­ ater was Quismapa; the aqueduct was not completed u­ ntil 1879); “Artesian Wells,” EN, January 25, 1856. 13. “A New Granada,” EN, February 2, 1856. 14. “A ­Future Venice in Nicaragua,” EN, September 20, 1856. 15. Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 853. 16. Rudolf Knecht to Appleton Oaksmith [New York, August 1856], Papers 1856–1857, AOP, DU; “List of Patents,” New York Times, November 18, 1856; Giovanni Federico, An Economic History of the Silk Industry, 1830–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 76–78. 17. David Folkman, The Nicaragua Route (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1972), 52–53; David Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Trade and Investment: American Economic Expansion in the Hemi­sphere, 1865–1900 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 119; agreement between Hitchcock and Com­pany and Appleton Oaksmith, New York, October 29, 1856, Papers 1856–1857, AOP, DU. 18. William Walker, The War in Nicaragua (Mobile, AL: Goetzel, 1860), 100–101. 19. Michel Gobat, Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua ­under U.S. Imperial Rule (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 125–128.



NOTES TO PAGES 200–204

333

20. “Additional from Nicaragua. Our Granada Correspondence,” New York Times, March 15, 1856; William Wilson to Appleton Oaksmith, New York, October 2, 1856, Papers 1856–1857, AOP, DU. 21. Decree by President Rivas, EN, November 10, 1855; “Aviso al comercio,” EN, February 9, 1856; decree by President William Walker, EN, August 9, 1856; decree by President Rivas, EN, November 24, 1856; “Decreto de traslación de la Aduana marítima del Realejo a la Isla de Punta Icaco,” EN, November 17, 1855; Decree No. 174, EN, February 23, 1856. 22. Decree No. 111, EN, January 12, 1856; Justin Wolfe, The Everyday Nation-­State: Community and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-­Century Nicaragua (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 46–52; decree by President Walker, EN, July 26, 1856; “Prefectura del Departamento Oriental,” EN, August 30, 1856; Parker French to Edward Kewen, November 12, 1855, Guerra 10233, ANCR; decree by President Rivas, EN, April 12; decree by President Rivas, EN, May 3, 1856; decree by President Rivas, EN, May 24, 1856; Samuel and Alex Wood to President Pierce, Washington, DC, February 28, 1856, SSWP, YUL; testimony of R. A. Nixon, San Juan del Norte, April 23, 1857, SSWP, YUL; “Our Granada Correspondence,” New York Herald, October 19, 1856. 23. Figure based on Wolfe, Everyday Nation- ­State, 47, t­ able 1. 24. Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 271; Robert May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum Amer­i­ca (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 179; “Nicaragua Bond,” EN, February 9, 1856. 25. “Two Lines of Policy,” EN, March 22, 1856; Ian Tyrrell, Transnational Nation: United States History in Global Perspective since 1789 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 27. 26. “Decrees of the Government,” EN, July 26, 1856. 27. The map of Matagalpa’s indigenous community can be found in Jeffrey Gould, To Die in This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 1880–1965 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 30; “Venta de terrenos de Matagalpa por Guillermo Walker,” BO, August 21, 1856. 28. Appleton Oaksmith to William Walker, September 23, November 22, and September 11, 1856, Papers 1856–1857, AOP, DU; Appleton Oaksmith to Duncan Sherman Co. Bankers, New York, September 3 and September 18, 1856, Papers 1856–1857, AOP, DU; William Scroggs, Filibusters and Financiers: The Story of William Walker and His Associates (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 210, 217–224; “Die ‘Border Ruffians’ nach Nicaragua,” New Yorker Staatszeitung Wochenblatt, December 13, 1856. 29. “The Experience of Samuel Absalom, Filibuster,” Atlantic Monthly, December 1859, 663. 30. Albert Carr, The World and William Walker (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 168; T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New York: Knopf, 2009), 275–276; Lindley Keasbey, The Nicaragua Canal and the Monroe Doctrine (New York: Putnam, 1896), 242; Folkman, The Nicaragua Route, 73–74; Wheaten Lane, Commodore Vanderbilt: An Epic of the Steam Age (New York: Knopf, 1942), 127; Scroggs, Filibusters and Financiers.

334

NOTES TO PAGES 204–209

31. “Accessory Transit Com­pany,” EN, July 26, 1856; “Our Virgin Correspondence,” New York Herald, April 3, 1856; Texas State Library, Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 4, part 2 (Austin, TX: Baldwin, 1922), 83. 32. Appleton Oaksmith to William Walker, August 9, 1856, Papers 1856–1857, AOP, DU. 33. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 157. 34. William Walker, quoted in John Edwin Windrow, John Berrien Lindsley: Educator, Physician, Social Phi­los­o­pher (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1938), 6. 35. “James Davenport Whelpley,” Proceedings of the American Acad­emy of Sciences 8 (1873): 482–484; San Francisco Daily Alta California, September 16, 1852, and July 19, 1853; Sacramento Daily Union, March 29, 1853, December 4, 1854, and January 18, 1856; [Whelpley], “A Ranger’s Life in Nicaragua,” Harper’s Weekly, April 18, 1857, 249–250. 36. Orient Bolívar Juárez, Maximiliano von Sonnenstern y el primer mapa official de la República de Nicaragua (Managua: INETER, 1995), 35, 28; Maximilian von Sonnenstern, Report of the Nicaragua Route for an Interoceanic Ship-­Canal, with a Review of other Proposed Routes (Washington, DC: GPO, 1874). 37. A. Schwartz, “Ten Months in Nicaragua,” San Francisco Pictorial Magazine 1, no. 1 (1857): 10; Götz von Houwald, “¿Quién fue Maximiliano von Sonnenstern realmente?,” in Orient Bolívar Juárez, Maximiliano von Sonnenstern y el primer mapa oficial de la República de Nicaragua (Managua: INETER, 1995), 1–5; Henry Barrett Learned, “William Learned Marcy,” in The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, ed. Samuel Flagg Bemis (New York: Cooper Square, 1963), 6:245; “Letter from the Secretary of the Trea­sury Communicating the Report of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, Showing the Pro­g ress of That Work during the Year Ending November, 1849,” Index to Executive Documents Printed by Order of the Senate of the United States during the First Session of the Thirty-­First Congress (Washington, DC: ­Belt, 1850), 60; “The Mexican Boundary Commission,” Daily National Intelligencer, August 7, 1850. 38. William Manning, ed., Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, Inter-­ American Affairs, 1831–1860 (Washington, DC: Car­ne­g ie Endowment for International Peace, 1934), 4:570. 39. “Aviso,” EN, February 23, 1856; “Clearing Away,” EN, March 8, 1856; “Jalteba Church,” EN, September 20, 1856; “Street Opened,” EN, September 13, 1856; “Rough Sketches from My Hammock and Knapsack of Camp Life in Nicaragua,” EN, March 1, 1856. 40. “American Enterprise,” EN, May 17, 1856; “Our ‘Jobber,’ ” EN, February 23, 1856; the machine was a Ruggles’ Job Printing Press. 41. EN, December 29, 1855; “A New Granada,” EN, February 2, 1856; “Otro,” EN, February 9, 1856; Claim 24 (Charles Mahoney), entry 436, International Claims, Miscellaneous Claims, Rec­ords of Boundary and Claims Commissions and Arbitrations, RG 76, USNA; “Transit Route,” EN, September 27, 1856; “New Town on the Pacific,” EN, February 2, 1856. 42. Matthew Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geo­g raph­i­cal Construction of British India, 1765–1843 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Raymond Craig,



43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50.

51. 52. 53.

54. 55.

NOTES TO PAGES 209–216

335

Cartographic Mexico: A History of State Fixations and Fugitive Landscapes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); Nancy Appelbaum, Mapping the Country of Regions: The Chorographic Commission of Nineteenth-­Century Colombia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016). “Affairs in and about the City,” Boston Daily Atlas, February 15, 1856; “Report,” EN, December 29, 1855; “Died,” EN, January 19, 1856; “A New Granada,” EN, February 2, 1856. “Survey of the Town of San Carlos,” EN, February 16, 1856; “Survey of San Carlos,” EN, March 1, 1856. “Colonization,” EN, April 26, 1856. Ibid. “Survey of Confiscated Property,” EN, August 30, 1856. Schwartz, “Ten Months in Nicaragua,” 10; “Survey of the City,” EN, August 16, 1856. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 372; army register from February 26, 1857, folder 101, CFCWWP, TU; Order 212, folder 111b, CFCWWP, TU; Order 36 and Special Order 28, folder 111c, CFCWWP, TU; “Instrucción sumaría seguida de orden del Exmo Gobierno al filibuster Max Strobel,” Guerra 7956, ANCR. “Topographical and Geological Notices of the Department of Chontales,” EN, May 3, 1856; “Topographical and Geo­g raph­i­cal Notices of the Department of Leon by M. Sonnenstern,” EN, August 9, 1856; “Plan of Colonization of the Department of Leon,” EN, August 16, 1856. “Topographical and Geo­g raph­i­cal Notices of the Department of Leon by M. Sonnenstern,” EN, August 9, 1856. “Plan of Colonization of the Department of Leon,” EN, August 16, 1856; “Topographical and Geological Notices of the Department of Chontales,” EN, May 3, 1856. Mapa de la República de Nicaragua levantado por orden del gobierno por Maximilian v. Sonnenstern 1858 (New York: Kraetzer, 1858); “Topographical and Geological Notices of the Department of Chontales,” EN, May 3, 1856. “Report,” EN, December 29, 1855; William Wells, Exploration and Adventures in Honduras (New York: Harper, 1857), 276. Cayetano Batres and José Cervantes to Minister of Gobernación, Soloa, February 5, 1856, exp. 33, legajo 28569, Gobernación, AGCA; Municipality of Malacatán to President Carrera, February 11, 1856, exp. 54, legajo 28569, Gobernación, AGCA; “Efemérides,” BO, August 8, 1856; “El Presidente provisiorio de la República de Nicaragua, a sus habitantes,” Gaceta de Guatemala, July 19, 1856.

8 filibuster revolution 1. “Nicaraguan Interests,” EN, October 27, 1855. 2. “Our Granada Correspondence,” New York Herald, October 25, 1856; “Jüngste Geschichte von Nicaragua,” Der Kolonist (Lichtensteig, Switzerland), January 26, 1856; “Granada,” EN, August 16, 1856.

336

NOTES TO PAGES 216–221

3. Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, “Introduction,” in Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire, ed. Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 2; statements by Fernando Lacayo, José Alvarado, Gregorio Flores, José Antonio Lacayo, and Sebastían Marenco to Santiago Vega, Granada, September 13, 1857, caja 3, legajo 7, folios 62–63, AMPG; “Cargos Consejiles, 1856–7,” caja 1, legajo 2 bis, folios 64–69, 72–82, AMPG; “Our Granada Correspondence,” New York Herald, October 19, 1856; ad for John Mennicke’s barber and hair-­dressing saloon, EN, February 2, 1856. 4. “Camp Life,” New York Times, February 27, 1857; “Social Reunions,” EN, August 2, 1856; “Soiree,” EN, August 23, 1856; “Rough Sketches from My Hammock and Knapsack of Camp Life in Nicaragua,” EN, March 15, 1856; James Jamison, With Walker in Nicaragua; or, Reminiscences of an Officer of the American Phalanx (Columbia, MO: Stephens, 1909), 118; “The New Year’s Ball,” EN, January 5, 1856. 5. “The Young Amer­i­ca Pioneer Club of Nicaragua,” EN, February 16, 1856; “Masaya Jockey Club,” EN, September 13, 1856. 6. Ann Stoler, “Intimidations of Empire,” in Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, ed. Ann Stoler (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 3; Jamison, With Walker, 116; Joseph Tucker, To the Golden Goal and Other Sketches (San Francisco: Doxey, 1895), 232–237; Victoria González, “ ‘El Diablo se la llevó’: Política, sexualidad femenina y trabajo en Nicaragua (1855–1979),” in Un siglo de luchas femeninas en América Latina, ed. Eugenia Rodríguez Sáenz (San José: Universidad de Costa Rica, 2005), 54; General Order Book, folder 111a, order 152, CFCWP, TU. 7. “Obituary,” EN, July 19, 1856; “Letter from Masaya,” EN, August 2, 1856; “Central Amer­ic­ a,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, September 13, 1856; “Vijil Cura de Granada,” EN, February 16, 1856; “Inauguración del Presidente William Walker,” EN, July 19, 1856; “Affairs in Central Amer­i­ca,” New York Herald, October 16, 1856; “Duty of the Native Citizens of Granada,” EN, March 22, 1856. 8. Jacob Stillman, An 1850 Voyage: San Francisco to Baltimore by Sea and by Land (Palo Alto, CA: Osborne, 1967), 50; “State Election,” EN, June 14, 1856; Texas State Library, The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 4, part 2 (Austin, TX: Baldwin, 1922), 83; testament of Justo Lugo, Granada, November 15, 1856, Protocolos de José Anzoátegui, 1855–1857, RPPG; statement of Santiago (James) Thomas, Granada, September 12, 1857, Protocolos de José Anzoátegui, 1855–1857, RPPG; testimony of James Thomas, New York City, April 26, 1862, claim 2 (George Bowley), entry 80, Costa Rican Claims, 1860 Convention, Rec­ords of Boundary and Claims Commissions and Arbitrations, RG 76, USNA. 9. Texas State Library, The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 6 (Austin, TX: Von Boeckmann-­Jones, 1927), 369; “Returning P ­ eople,” EN, February 2, 1856; Charles Blake letter, Granada, May 20, 1849, Charles Thompson Blake Papers, California Historical Society; “Glimpse of Granada,” EN, July 5, 1856. 10. “Marketing,” EN, February 23, 1856; “All the Good ­T hings,” EN, May 10, 1856; “New Coin,” EN, June 28, 1856. 11. John Rapier, “Reminiscences of a Fillibuster,” no. 3, St. Paul Pioneer and Demo­crat, February 17, 1859, RFP, MSRC, HU.



NOTES TO PAGES 221–227

337

12. Peter Palmquist and Thomas Kailbourn, Pioneer Photog­raphers from the Mississippi to the Continental Divide: A Biographical Dictionary, 1839–1865 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 375. “Pictures,” EN, September 13, 1856; “More Luxuries,” EN, June 21, 1856; Wilhelm Marr, Reise nach Central-­Amerika (Hamburg: Meissner, 1863), 2:237. 13. “Rough Sketches from My Hammock and Knapsack of Camp Life in Nicaragua,” EN, February 16, 1856; “The Nicaraguan Metropolitan Minstrels,” EN, February 2, 1856; “Nicaragua Correspondence,” San Francisco Daily Alta California, November 22, 1856; Erick Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Brian Rouleau, With Sails Whitening ­Every Sea: Mari­ners and the Making of an American Maritime Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 56, and chapter 2. 14. “Letter from Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Alta California, November 1, 1856; “St. John’s Day,” EN, June 28, 1856; Pablo Antonio Cuadra and Francisco Pérez Estrada, Muestrario del folklore nicaragüense (Managua: Banco de América, 1978), 391–405. 15. “Our Virgin Correspondence,” New York Herald, April 3, 1856. 16. “Las mujeres,” EN, December 8, 1855. 17. “A nuestros lectores,” January 1, 1850; “La Integridad,” Integridad de Centro-­ America, February 5, 1850; “Elección directa,” CI, May 29, 1851; letter from “Los despertadores,” EN, February 9, 1856. 18. “Then and Now,” EN, May 17, 1856. 19. Letter from “Los despertadores,” EN, February 9, 1856; “Programa del partido progresista en Méjico,” EN, June 21, 1856; “Time Executes Justice,” EN, May 10, 1856. 20. “Chismografía,” EN, May 24, 1856; F. Dueñas to Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Cojutepeque (El Salvador), June 13, 1856, exp. 55370, legajo 2499, B 118, AGCA; “Costa Rican Affairs,” EN, May 17, 1856. 21. F. Dueñas to Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Cojutepeque, March 28, 1856, legajo 9366, B 99-7-2-19, RREE, AGCA; Rafael Campo to Nazario Toledo, Cojutepeque, March 14, 1856, exp. 55339, legajo 2499, B 118, RREE, AGCA; Salvadoran Foreign Minister to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, Cojutepeque, July 24, 1856, copiadores, no. 236, RREE, ANCR; F. Dueñas to Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Cojutepeque, June 13, 1856, exp. 55370, legajo 2499, B 118, AGCA; F. Dueñas to Ianuario Blanco, Cojutepeque, June 21, 1856, exp. 55379, legajo 2499, B 118, AGCA. 22. Jerónimo Pérez, Obras históricas completas (Managua: Fondo de Promoción Cultural / BANIC, 1993), 222; William Walker, The War in Nicaragua (Mobile, AL: Goetzel, 1860), 218–223; “Efemérides,” BO, August 8, 1856; P. Rivas to Gregorio Juárez, Chinandega, June 14, 1856, legajo 9366, B99-7-2-19 RREE, AGCA. 23. Pérez, Obras históricas, 167; José María Estrada to José María Cañas, Somotillo, July 9, 1856, caja 27, no. 1, exp. Nicaragua, RREE, ANCR; Alejandro Bolaños Geyer, William Walker: The Gray-­Eyed Man of Destiny (Lake Saint Louis, MO: privately printed, 1990), 4:44–45. 24. “Efemérides,” BO, August 8, 1856; F. Baca to José María Rojas, Somotillo, June 13, 1856, exp. 55392, legajo 2499, B 118, AGCA; José María Valle, “A los pueblos de este Departamento,” León, June 12, 1856, Nicaraguan Miscellany, Bancroft Library;

338

25.

26.

27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38.

NOTES TO PAGES 227–232

Pérez, Obras históricas, 226; Thomas Manning to Pedro de Aycinena, León, June 19, 1856, exp. 55375, legajo 2499, B 118, AGCA; William Walker to Bruno von Natzmer, Nagarote, June 16, 1856, PCFW, BL. Thomas Manning to Pedro de Aycinena, León, June 19, 1856, exp. 55375, legajo 2499, B 118, AGCA; “Condition of Affairs,” EN, August 30, 1856; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 226; M. Jérez to Central American Ministers of War, León, July 13, 1856, Nicaraguan Miscellany, Bancroft Library; F. Dueñas to Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Cojutepeque, June 27, 1856, exp. 55385, legajo 2499, B 118, AGCA. “Nicaraguenses,” EN, June 21, 1856; “Atención,” Granada, June 25, 1856, Nicaraguan Miscellany, Bancroft Library; “El Jeneral Walker en Nicaragua,” EN, June 21, 1856. “Voting for President,” EN, June 28, 1856. “Presidential Election,” EN, July 12, 1856; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 228; Pérez, Obras históricas, 230; “Report of a Nicaraguan Soldier at San Francisco,” New York Herald, October 14, 1856. Elleanore Ratterman, “With Walker in Nicaragua,” Tennessee Historical Magazine 1 (1915): 317; “Costa Rica,” New York Tribune, September 2, 1856; Texas State Library, The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 4, part 2, 85. “Nicaragua,” New York Tribune, September 2, 1856; “Presidential Supper,” EN, October 25, 1856. “Inauguration of William Walker as President,” EN, July 19, 1856. “From Our Special Correspondent,” New York Tribune, August 6, 1856; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 288; “Additional from Nicaragua,” New York Herald, August 10, 1856; Guatemalan Foreign Minister to Salvadoran Foreign Minister, Guatemala City, July 25, 1856, legajo 9366, B99-7-2-19, RREE, AGCA; “Circular. Ministerio de la Guerra del Gobierno provisorio de la República de Nicaragua,” León, July 13, 1856, Nicaraguan Miscellany, Bancroft Library. “Demetrio” to Chico A., EN, August 30, 1856; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 288. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 249; “El señor Prefecto del Departamento,” EN, August 9, 1856. “Decrees of the Government,” EN, July 19, 1856; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 252; “Documentos oficiales,” EN, July 26, 1856; “­Legal Proceedings,” EN, August 30, 1856; “Office of Rec­ords,” EN, September 6, 1856; “Decrees of the Gov.,” EN, September 13, 1856; “Additional from Nicaragua,” New York Herald, August 10, 1856; “Central Amer­i­ca,” EN, June 28, 1856; “Venta de terrenos en Matagalpa por Guillermo Walker,” BO, August 21, 1856. “Office of Rec­ords,” EN, September 6, 1856; Elizabeth Dore, Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 73–75, 89; “Survey of Confiscated Property,” EN, August 30, 1856. “Confiscated Property,” EN, September 6, 1856. Francisco Ortega Arancibia, Cuarenta años de historia de Nicaragua, 1838–1878 (Managua: Fondo de Promoción Cultural / BANIC, 1993 [1911]), 245–246; Solicitud de reclamo al Supremo Gobierno por pérdidas sufridas por Francisco Cornelio en 1856, Granada, November 1869, legajo 229, caja 66, 1869, AMPG; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 283; Joivacio Sandini [Sandino] to Col. W. K. Rogers, EN,



39.

40.

41. 42.

43.

44.

45.

46. 47.

48.

49.

50.

NOTES TO PAGES 232–236

339

­ ovember 15, 1856; Pérez, Obras históricas, 305; statements by Fernando Lacayo, N José Alvarado, Gregorio Flores, José Antonio Lacayo, and Sebastían Marenco to Santiago Vega, Granada, September 13, 1857, caja 3, legajo 7, folios 62–63, AMPG. On the participation of Liberal landlords Telésforo Rojas and José Abarca in the 1840s rebellions, see Frances Kinloch Tijerino, Nicaragua: Identidad y cultura política (Managua: Banco Central de Nicaragua, 1999), 127–135. Calculation based on “Commissioner’s Sale,” EN, September 27, 1856; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Part 1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1975), 457. “Nicaragua,” Charleston Mercury, September 8, 1856. “Letter from Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Alta California, November 1, 1856; “Walker’s Dispatches Intercepted by the Costa Ricans,” New York Times, October 29, 1856; “Kewen, Sanders & Handlin,” EN, November 1, 1856. “Commissioners’ Sale of Confiscated Property in Nicaragua, January 1, 1857,” New York Herald, October 19, 1856; “Robbery and Extension of Slavery in Central Amer­ic­ a,” Ripley (OH) Bee, November 8, 1856; “Affairs in Nicaragua,” North American and United States Gazette, October 21, 1856; “Our Granada Correspondence,” New York Herald, October 25, 1856. “Meridional Department,” EN, June 28, 1856; “Haciendas for Sale,” EN, August 23, 1856; Comandancia occidental of Moracia to Minister of War, Liberia, January 15, 1857, Guerra 13432, ANCR; “Lt. Col. Byron Cole’s Expedition to Chontales,” EN, August 23, 1856; “Hemos recibido de Granada de Nicaragua la carta siguiente,” Telégrafo Setentrional (Granada), March 28, 1857. “Como No!,” EN, August 30 1856; “Charlotte A. Colton Hamblin St. John Ford,” Jones County Iowa Obituaries, http://­iowajones​.­org ​/­obit​/­Colton ​_­Charlotte​.­htm; testimony of Manuel Rovelo, Claim 2 (George Bowley), entry 436, Rec­ords of Boundary and Claims Commissions and Arbitrations, RG 76, USNA. “Distinguished Arrival,” EN, August 23, 1856; “Purchase,” EN, August 30, 1856; “Noticias locales,” EN, September 12, 1856. Linda Hudson, Mistress of Manifest Destiny: A Biography of Jane Mc­Manus Storm Cazneau, 1807–1878 (Austin: Texas State historical Association, 2001), 46–48, 205–210; Cora Montgomery Cazneau to Ephraim George Squier, New York, January 10, 1853, roll 2, EGSP, LOC; “General William Cazneau and lady,” EN, August 15, 1856; “Departure of the Tennessee” and “The Rights of Emigrants to Nicaragua,” New York Herald, December 27, 1856; “A Ranger’s Life in Nicaragua,” Harper’s Weekly, March 28, 1857. Testimony of F. Lacayo, Granada, September 13, 1857, legajo 7, caja 3, folios 62–63, AMPG; “Contestación,” EN, September 6, 1855; “Remitido,” EN, December 1, 1855; José Antonio Fernández Molina, personal communication, with the author. “The Experience of Samuel Absalom, Filibuster,” Atlantic Monthly, December 1859, 658, 664; “Lt. Col. Byron Cole’s Expedition to Chontales,” EN, August 23, 1856; “A Ranger’s Life in Nicaragua,” Harper’s Weekly, March 21, 1857, 189. “No oficial,” BO, August 16, 1856; testament of J. Lugo, Granada, November 15, 1856, Protocolos de José Anzoátegui, 1855–1857, RPPG; Ortega, Cuarenta años, 245–246.

340

NOTES TO PAGES 236–243

51. James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld, 1783–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Caroline Elkins and Susan Pedersen, “Introduction,” in Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth ­Century: Proj­ects, Practices, Legacies, ed. Caroline Elkins and Susan Pedersen (New York: Routledge, 2005), 1–20. 52. “El señor Prefecto del Departamento,” EN, August 9, 1856. 53. “Letter from Cyrus,” EN, May 24, 1856. 54. “Penitenciaría,” EN, December 15, 1855; “Grandeza de las Naciones,” EN, May 24, 1856; “Educación,” EN, May 17, 1856; “Remitido,” EN, February 16, 1856; “Del código penal de Nicaragua copiamos los siguiente DE LOS VAGOS,” EN, February 9, 1856; “A Word with the Army,” EN, January 25, 1856. 55. “Sanitary,” EN, March 22, 1856; “Surgeon General’s Office,” EN, June 12, 1856; Israel Moses, “Military Surgery and Operations following the ­Battle of Rivas, Nicaragua, April, 1856,” American Journal of Medical Sciences 33, no. 65 (1857): 26. 56. “Educacíon,” EN, July 12, 1856; “Libertad de enseñanza,” EN, August 23, 1856. 57. “Prefectura de este departamento,” EN, August 16, 1856; “Clean Your Yards,” EN, November 1, 1856. 58. “Estudios filosóficos,” El Mulato (New York), March 23, 1854. 59. General Order Book, folder 111a, order 129, CFCWP, TU. 60. “Address to the Soldiers on Temperance,” EN, September 27, 1856; statement by Alexander S. Forrest, March 31, 1859, in MacDonald, Chas J. vs Garrison, Cornelius K. (1858–59), case files, box 43, first folder, ITWP, NYPL. 61. “Temperance Regulation,” EN, August 2, 1856. 62. Bradford Burns, Patriarch and Folk: The Emergence of Nicaragua, 1798–1858 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 77, 147–148; “California Scene in Granada,” EN, August 30, 1856. 63. “Address to the Soldiers on Temperance,” EN, September 27, 1856; letter from Surgeon General’s Office to the editor, EN, June 14, 1856. 64. Donald Beattie, “Sons of Temperance: Pioneers in Total Abstinence and ‘Constitutional’ Prohibition” (PhD diss., Boston University, 1966), 88, 91–122; “Division of the Sons of Temperance,” EN, October 4, 1856; “News of the Day,” EN, October 4, 1856; “S. of T.,” EN, November 1, 1856; Ann-­Marie Szymanski, Pathways to Prohibition: Radicals, Moderates and Social Movement Outcomes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 33; Samuel Ellis, The History of the Order of the Sons of Temperance (Boston: Stacy, Richardson, 1848), 211. 65. “A Preacher for Nicaragua,” Galveston Weekly News, November 25, 1856. 66. “Rules and Articles of War,” EN, June 28, 1856; “May, Caroline,” in Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, ed. James Wilson and John Fiske (New York: Appleton, 1888), 4:272; “Rev. Mr. May,” EN, July 5, 1856; “From Masaya,” EN, September 27, 1856. 67. “Army Register,” EN, October 4, 1856. 68. “Granada in the Eve­n ing,” EN, August 2, 1856; “No Such Word as Fail,” EN, September 6, 1856; P. Rouhaud to Ephraim George Squier, Greytown, March 28–31, 1857, roll 3, EGSP, LOC; “Races,” EN, August 2, 1856. 69. “Division of the Sons of Temperance,” EN, October 4, 1856.



NOTES TO PAGES 243–246

341

70. “Decrees of the Government,” EN, September 6, 1856; “Two Impor­t ant Decrees,” EN, September 13, 1856. 71. “Decree of the Government,” EN, September 27, 1856. 72. “Slavery in Nicaragua,” New York Herald, November 27, 1856; “General Walker and His Objects,” New York Herald, November 22, 1856; attachment to letter from John Hill Wheeler to Secretary of State, Granada, September 30, 1856, M 219, roll 10, Despatches from United States Ministers to Central Amer­i­ca, 1824–1906, USNA. 73. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 279–280; “Letter from Gen. William Walker,” New York Herald, September 17, 1856; “Slavery in Central and South Amer­i­ca and Mexico,” DeBow’s Review 23, no. 4 (1857): 411–443. 74. Jamison, With Walker, 100–101; “Crisis política en la Amér­i­ca Central,” EN, January 25, 1856. 75. “What Is Needed,” EN, September 13, 1856. 76. Laird Bergad, The Comparative Histories of Slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 144–147, 157–164; David Brion Davis, The Prob­lem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation (New York: Knopf, 2014), 285–290, 325; Eric Foner, review of David Brion Davis, The Prob­lem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation, Nation, February 17, 2014, 27–30; Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: ­Free ­Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 179–187; London Times, quoted in Drescher, The Mighty Experiment, 200. 77. Felipe Molina to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, Washington, DC, February 17, 1852, caja 22, no. 22, exp. Correspondencia de Felipe Molina, RREE, ANCR; Charles de Cortanse to Manuel Carazo, New York, April 29, 1853, caja 23, no. 17, exp. Funcionarios y particulares, RREE, ANCR; Moritz Wagner and Karl Scherzer, Die Republik Costa Rica in Central-­Amerika (Leipzig: Arnoldische Buchhandlung, 1856), 335–337; Drescher, The Mighty Experiment, 195; Duvon Clough Corbitt, A Study of the Chinese in Cuba, 1847–1947 (Wilmore, KY: Asbury College, 1971), 25. 78. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 266–268; “Gen. Walker,” [no newspaper title,] November 2, 1858, RFP, MSRC, HU. 79. P. Rouhaud to Ephraim George Squier, Greytown, 28–31 March 1857, roll 3, EGSP, LOC; “Nicaragua and Slavery,” New York Sun, October 24, 1856; “One Hope Less for Freedom,” New York Tribune, October 26, 1856; William Rogers, quoted in Alberto Lagerstedt, “The Po­liti­cal ­Career of William Walker” (MA thesis, University of California–­Berkeley, 1913), appendix 7A. 80. Pierre Soulé, quoted in Charles Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny: The Lives and Times of the Filibusters (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 343; Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 372–376, 395–420; Matt Childs, “Cuba, the Atlantic Crisis of the 1860s, and the Road to Abolition,” in American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin Amer­i­ca, Eu­rope, and the Crisis of the 1860s, ed. Don Doyle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 210–211; Drescher, The Mighty Experiment, 193; Laird Bergad, Fe Iglesias García, and María del Carmen Barcia, The Cuban Slave Market 1790–1880 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 148; Leonardo Marques, The United States and the

342

81.

82.

83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88.

89. 90. 91.

92. 93. 94.

NOTES TO PAGES 247–251

Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Amer­i­cas, 1776–1867 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 205–206. No title, New York Courier and Enquirer, November 1856, John P. Heiss ­Family Papers, Tennessee State Library and Archives; Anson Burlingame, quoted in James Oakes, The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Norton, 2014), 26. See also Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 173–198; and Richard Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830–1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983). Hudson, Mistress of Manifest Destiny, 110–111, 152–153, 164–165, 169; Robert May, “Lobbyists for Commercial Empire: Jane Cazneau, William Cazneau, and U.S. Ca­r ib­bean Policy, 1846–1878,” Pacific Historical Review 48, no. 3 (1979): 389; Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: Norton, 2010), 125. “Departure of the Tennessee,” New York Herald, December 27, 1856. Magallon to Primer Secretario de Estado, Washington, DC, February 9, 1857, legajo 1468, Correspondencia con embajadas y legaciones, Estados Unidos, AGMAEE. “Die Zukunft Nicaragua’s,” New-­Yorker Staatszeitung Wochenblatt, November 29, 1856. Earl Fornell, “Texans and Filibusters in the 1850’s,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 59, no. 4 (1956): 411. “Slavery and the Incoming Administration,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review, January 1, 1857, 114; “Impor­t ant from Nicaragua,” New York Herald, October 23, 1856; “Nicaragua and Slavery,” New York Sun, October 24, 1856; “One Hope Less for Freedom,” New York Tribune, October 26, 1856. Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny, 353; “Letter from Nicaragua,” Sunday Delta, October 25, 1856, John P. Heiss ­Family Papers, Tennessee State Library and Archives. “General Walker and His Objects,” New York Herald, November 22, 1856. “Southern Emigration to Nicaragua,” Daily National Intelligencer, December 10, 1856; Jamison, With Walker, 100. “More Nicaragua Revelations,” New York Herald, November 24, 1856; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 269; “The Proposed Reopening of the Slave Trade,” New York Herald, December 8, 1856; Luis Molina to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, Washington, November 19, 1856, caja 27, no. 7, exp. Correspondencia de Luis Molina, RREE, ANCR; Marques, The United States and Transatlantic Slave Trade, 186. Pérez, Obras históricas, 231; “Walker’s True Position in Nicaragua,” New York Herald, November 22, 1856. “Canción,” BO, October 17, 1856; Bolaños Geyer, William Walker, 4:xi. “La flor del café,” EN, November 15, 1856; Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo, Black Cosmopolitanism: Racial Consciousness and Transnational Identity in the Nineteenth- ­Century Amer­i­cas (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 102; Mark Knight, “Introduction: Lit­er­a­ture, Religion, and the Art of Conversation,” in The Routledge Companion to Lit­er­a­ture and Religion, ed. Mark Knight (Abingdon, ­England: Routledge, 2016), 18.



NOTES TO PAGES 252–255

343

9 the fall 1. “Inter-­State War Data,” in Meredith Reid Sarkees and Frank Waymann, Resort to War: 1816–2007 (Washington, DC: CQ, 2010), http://­http://­w ww​.­correlatesofwar​ .­org​/­data​-­sets​/­COW​-­war. 2. Michael Geyer and Charles Bright, “Global Vio­lence and Nationalizing Wars in Eurasia and Amer­i­ca: The Geopolitics of War in the Mid-­Nineteenth C ­ entury,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 38, no. 4 (1996): 630. 3. “No Such Word as Fail,” EN, September 6, 1856; Carlos Pérez Pineda, Aliados en el Campo del Honor: Las fuerzas expedicionarias de Guatemala, El Salvador y Honduras en la Guerra contra los Filibusteros, 1856–1857 (Alajuela, Costa Rica: Museo Juan Santamaría, 2009), 45–51; Appleton Oaksmith to William Walker, New York, September 11, 1856, AOP, DU. 4. F. Dueñas to Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Cojutepeque, June 27, 1856, exp. 55385, legajo 2499, AGCA; letter by unknown author, San Juan del Norte, August 19, 1856, Comercio (Lima, Peru), September 10, 1856. 5. Lorenzo Montúfar, Walker en Centro América (Alajuela, Costa Rica: Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría, 2000), 354–355; Jerónimo Pérez, Obras históricas completas (Managua: Fondo de Promoción Cultural / BANIC, 1993), 244, 250–251; Justo Calderón and Marcelino Gutierres to Nicaraguan Foreign Minister, Somoto Grande, August 10, 1856, B 99-7-2-40, RREE, AGCA. 6. Narciso Pacheco to President Carrera, Quezaltenango, January 9, 1857, exp. 55444, legajo 2499, AGCA; Juan Ignacio Irigoyen, broadside, September 27, 1856, folder 1856–1859, Arturo Taracena Flores Collection, University of Texas–­Austin; Francisco Dueñas to José M. Selva, Cojutepeque, May 27, 1856, and Vicente Herrera to Nazario Toledo, San José, May 9, 1856, exp. 55358, legajo 2499, AGCA; Porfirio Pérez Chávez, Santos Guardiola, Política y Guerra Filibustera (Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Editorial Universitaría, 2006), 62–63. 7. Francisco Dueñas to Ianuario Blanco, Cojutepeque, June 21, 1856, exp. 55379, legajo 2499, AGCA; Guatemalan Foreign Minister to J. de F. Martin, Guatemala City, April 1, 1856, exp. 55342, legajo 2499, AGCA; Salvadoran Foreign Minister to Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Cojutepeque, September 8, 1856, B 99-7-2-19, legajo 9366, RREE, AGCA; Gabriel Lafond to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, Paris, August 14, 1857, caja 28, no. 15, exp. Francia, RREE, ANCR. 8. “Pastoral del Ilmo. Señor Arzobispo” and “El obispo de San Salvador a su clero,” Gaceta de Guatemala, October 19, 1856; Guatemalan Foreign Minister to Sebastián Salinas, Guatemala City, June 6, 1856, exp. 55366, legajo 2499, AGCA; “Affairs in Central Amer­i­ca,” New York Herald, October 16, 1856; Montúfar, Walker, 284; Carlos Gregorio López Bernal, “Implicaciones político-­sociales de la campaña contra los filibusteros en El Salvador: las acciones de Gerardo Barrios,” in Destino Manifiesto en las Américas, ed. Víctor Hugo Acuña Ortega (Alajuela, Costa Rica: Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría, 2010), 190; Ralph Lee Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 1821–1871 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993), 291–292; “Hija de un héroe narra la historia de su padre,” in Crónicas de

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NOTES TO PAGES 256–259

la Guerra Nacional 1856–1857, ed. Elías Zeledón Cartín (San José: Editorial Costa Rica, 2006), 293; Pedro Cambronero Rodríguez to Minister of War, San Ramón, February 27, 1895, Guerra 2594, ANCR; Juan Rafael Quesada Camacho, Clarín Patriótico: La guerra contra los filibusteros y la nacionalidad costarricense (Alajuela, Costa Rica: Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría, 2006), 40. 9. Jill Bender, The 1857 Indian Uprising and the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 84. 10. Paul Foos, A Short, Offhand Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict during the Mexican-­American War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); “Spots on the Sun,” EN, July 12, 1856. 11. Manuel Benito to Minister of War, Liberia, May 20, 1856, Guerra 13475, ANCR; “Pres­ent Conditions of Nicaragua,” ­Brother Jonathan (New York), June 28, 1856; “Letter from Cyrus,” EN, May 17, 1856; Allan Wallis to British Foreign Minister, San José, July 4, 1856, FO 21 / 8, BNA; “Experience of James Ryan, a Deserter,” New York Times, March 21, 1857. 12. General Order Book, folder 111a, ­orders 80 and 152, CFCWWP, TU. 13. Toni Pfanner, “Military Uniforms and the Law of War,” International Review of the Red Cross 86, no. 853 (2004): 93–123; Theodore Edgar Potter, The Autobiography of Theodore Edgar Potter (Concord, NH: Rumford, 1913), 140; October 11, 1856 purchase order for Walker’s army, Papers 1856–57, AOP, DU; William Scroggs, Filibusters and Financiers: The Story of William Walker and His Associates (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 241; Víctor Hugo Acuña, Centroamérica: Filibusteros, estados, imperios y memorias (San José: Editorial Costa Rica, 2014), 38. 14. William Walker, The War in Nicaragua (Mobile, AL: Goetzel, 1860), 188; General Order Book, folder 111a, order 4, CFCWWP, TU; Iván Molina Jiménez, “Tipógrafo y ¿agente del Destino Manifiesto? Un francés en la Centroamérica de 1856,” Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad de Costa Rica 45, nos. 115–116 (2007): 115; General Order Book, folder 111a, order 88, CFCWWP, TU; “Statement of Dr. Derickson,” New York Herald, December 16, 1856. 15. José Dolores Estrada to Tomás Martínez, San Jacinto, September 14, 1856, BO, September 26, 1856; “The Fight at San Jacinto,” EN, September 20, 1856; Alejandro Bolaños Geyer, William Walker: The Gray-­Eyed Man of Destiny (Lake Saint Louis, MO: privately printed, 1990), 4:109–110; Alejandro Barberena Pérez, El heroe nacional: Biografía de José Dolores Estrada (Managua: Librería Cultural Nicaragüense, 1974), 29–30, 35–36, 43; Francisco Ortega Arancibia, Cuarenta años de historia de Nicaragua, 1838–1878 (Managua: Fondo de Promoción Cultural / BANIC, 1993 [1911]), 247; Pérez, Obras históricas, 257, 262. 16. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 290. 17. William Rogers to James Jamison, Berkeley, February 3, 1910, Reminiscences of William Walker’s Expedition into Nicaragua, Bancroft Library; “Our Special Despatches from the Seat of War,” New York Herald, November 17, 1856; David Wheeler to John Brigham, Granada, October 3, 1856, EN, October 18, 1856. 18. “Statement of an Assistant Commissary Sargent in General Walker’s Army,” New York Times, March 21, 1857; Pérez, Obras históricas, 267; “Orleanians Who Fought with Walker,” New Orleans Daily Picayune, January 11, 1897.



NOTES TO PAGES 260–264

345

19. Testimonies of Squier Cotrell and Juan Lawless, December 2, 1852, and April 7, 1853, Protocolos de José Anzoátegui, 1851–1854, RPPG; “The Late Insult to the U.S. Flag!,” EN, November 1, 1856. 20. Pérez, Obras históricas, 267; Texas State Library, The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 4, part 2 (Austin, TX: Baldwin, 1922), 87; “The Late Insult to the U.S. Flag!,” EN, October 25, 1856; “Our Special Despatches from the Seat of War,” New York Herald, November 17, 1856. 21. Jamison, With Walker, 129; Pérez, Obras históricas, 268. 22. “General Order—­No. 202,” EN, November 1, 1856; testimony of George Beschor, San Juan del Norte, September 1860, no. 19, SSWP, YUL. 23. “The Late Insult to the U.S. Flag!,” EN, November 1, 1856; “Opening of the Campaign,” EN, October 18, 1856; “Combination of All the Spanish American States against the White Race,” EN, October 18, 1856; “Horrible Assassination,” EN, October 18, 1856. 24. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 340. 25. Bolaños Geyer, William Walker, 4:154; Charles Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny: The Lives and Times of the Filibusters (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 366–367; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 301; “Artillery,” EN, October 25, 1856; “Presidential Supper,” EN, October 25, 1856; “Clean Your Yards,” EN, November 1, 1856; “Dr. J. Lehue,” EN, November 1, 1856; entries for 1856, Protocolos de José Anzoátegui, 1855–1857, RPPG; “Hemos recibido de Granada de Nicaragua la carta siguiente,” Telégrafo Setentrional (Granada), March 28, 1857. 26. Pérez, Obras históricas, 269; Guadalupe Saenz to José María Cañas, Niquinohomo, November 2, 1856, caja 26, no. 5, exp. Funcionarios y particulares, RREE, ANCR; Montúfar, Walker, 445; “The Pres­ent Condition and Prospects of Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Eve­ning Bulletin, January 6, 1857; Rafael Obregón, Costa Rica y la guerra contra los filibusteros (Alajuela, Costa Rica: Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría, 1991), 201. 27. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 314; Burgess Watson to John Erskine, off Greytown, December 5, 1856, Admiralty 128 / 53, BNA; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 305, 314. 28. Patricio Rivas and Máximo Jérez to William Walker, León, April 22, 1856, Siglo XIX, no. 69, AIHNCA; “Execution of Mariano Salizar,” EN, August 9, 1856. 29. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 314; “The Destruction of Granada: Gen. Henningsen’s Report of Operations to His Excellency Gen. Wm. Walker,” New York Herald, January 25, 1857; “Additional from Nicaragua,” New York Herald, ­December 19, 1856; “Aquí fue Granada,” Telégrafo Setentrional (Granada), February 28, 1857; “Scenes of Fillibuster Strife in Nicaragua,” Porter’s Spirit of the Times, October 10, 1857; Pio Bolaños, Obras de Don Pio Bolaños (Managua: Banco de América, 1976), 136–137; Frederick Boyle, A Ride across a Continent (London: Bentley, 1868), 1:99. 30. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 328–329, 339; Montúfar, Walker, 502; “The Destruction of Granada,” New York Herald, January 25, 1857. 31. Ortega, Cuarenta años, 259; Bolaños, Obras, 136; Pérez, Obras históricas, 275; Texas State Library, The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 4, part 2, 89;

346

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37. 38.

39. 40.

41.

NOTES TO PAGES 265–268

Mancosos v. Republic of Nicaragua, testimony of Scott Seammon, New Orleans, February 28, 1857, Historical Archives of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, Earl Long Library, University of New Orleans, http://­hdl​.­handle​.­net​/­1 23456789​/­6747; “William Kissane,” Los Angeles Herald, April 8, 1887. “The Burning and Plundering of Granada,” Telégrafo Setentrional (Granada), March 7 and 28, 1857; “Incendio y saqueo de Granada,” BO, April 22, 1857; “William Kissane,” Los Angeles Herald, April 8, 1887; Alejandro Bolaños Geyer, William Walker: The Gray-­Eyed Man of Destiny (Lake Saint Louis, MO: privately printed, 1990), 3:182; “Incendio y Saqueo de Granada,” Gaceta del Salvador, May 3–4 and 6–9, 1857; “The Burning and Plundering of Granada,” Panama Star Herald, May 19 and 21, 1857. On Walker as a modern-­day Attila, see “Sucesos de Nicaragua,” Gaceta de Guatemala, January 8, 1857; and “Rendición de Walker,” Gaceta del Salvador, May 13, 1857. “Guerra de Nicaragua,” Crónica de Costa Rica, April 25, 1857; “Los Cristianizadores,” Crónica de Costa Rica, April 29, 1857; “Incendio y Saqueo de Granada,” BO, April 22, 1857; Testimony of Charles Stewart, San Juan del Norte, August 9, 1858, Claim 18 (Isaac Harrington), entry 436, International Claims, Miscellaneous Claims, Rec­ords of Boundary and Claims Commissions and Arbitrations, RG 76, USNA. “The Destruction of Granada,” New York Herald, January 25, 1857; Texas State Library, The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 4, part 2, 89–90; Bradford Burns, Patriarch and Folk: The Emergence of Nicaragua, 1798–1858 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 215. “Statement of Dr. Derickson,” New York Herald, December 16, 1856; Comandante of Los Puntos to Comandante of Moracia, Sapoa, January 1, 1857, Guerra 8830, ANCR; “The Destruction of Granada,” New York Herald, January 25, 1857. José Víctor Zavala to Pedro de Aycinena, Masaya, January 15, 1857, exp. 55448, legajo 2499, AGCA; “Incendio y Saqueo de Granada,” BO, April 15, 1857; “Los filibusteros en Nicaragua desde el siglo 17,” Telégrafo Setentrional (Granada), April 4, 1857. “Destrucción de Granada,” Gaceta de Guatemala, December 14, 1856; “Filibusterismo i Congreso Americano,” La Reforma (Cochabamba, Bolivia), July 18, 1857. David Roediger, Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 2007), 65–92; “The White Slave; or, the Rus­sian Peasant Girl,” Sunday Times (London), June 29, 1845; “Gen. Frederick Henningsen,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, April 18, 1857; “The Pres­ent Condition and Prospects of Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Eve­ning Bulletin, January 9, 1857. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 339; Sam Wood Jr. to his wife, Castillo Rapids, December 21, 1856, SSWP, YUL; Pérez, Obras históricas, 305. Gobernación política occidental of Moracia to Minister of War, Liberia, January 11, 1857, Guerra 4628, ANCR; Bolaños Geyer, William Walker, 4:187; “Terrible Sufferings and Probable Massacre of the Sick and Wounded at Ometepe,” New York Herald, December 16, 1856; “The Experience of Samuel Absalom, Filibuster,” Atlantic Monthly 5, no. 27 (1860): 38. Manuel del Bosque to President Mora, Liberia, January 12, 1857, Guerra 13444, ANCR; Samuel Wood Jr. to his wife, Castillo Rapids, December 21, 1856, and Alex



42. 43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

NOTES TO PAGES 268–271

347

Wood to his ­mother, San Juan del Norte, January 6, 1857, SSWP, YUL; “Departure of the Tennessee,” New York Herald, December 27, 1856. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 373; “The Pres­ent Condition and Prospects of Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Eve­ning Bulletin, January 7, 1857. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 342–349; “Letter from Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Alta California, April 4, 1857; Sam Wood Jr. to his wife, Castillo Rapids, December 21, 1856, SSWP, YUL; Scroggs, Filibusters, 270–277; Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny, 378–384; T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New York: Knopf, 2009), 290–299; “The Experience of Samuel Absalom,” 663; Alfonso de Escalante to Primer Secretario de Estado, Washington, DC, March 24, 1856, Correspondencia con embajadas y legaciones, Estados Unidos, legajo 1468, AGMAEE; Cornelius Vanderbilt to Luis Molina, New York, April 5, 1856, caja 27, no. 7, exp. Correspondencia de Luis Molina, RREE, ANCR; William Webster to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, San José, November 23, 1856, caja 28, no. 7, exp. Costa Rica, RREE, ANCR; deposition of Sylvanus Spenser, New York, July 25, 1860, claim 18, entry 436, RG 76, USNA; Raúl Aguilar Piedra and Werner Korte Núñez, “La Campaña del Tránsito, los diarios de campaña y la memoria histórica costarricense,” in Destino Manifiesto en las Américas, ed. Víctor Hugo Acuña Ortega (Alajuela, Costa Rica: Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría, 2010), 241–256. José Víctor Zavala to Pedro de Aycinena, San Jorge, February 15, 1857, exp. 55469, legajo 2499, AGCA; “El Telégrafo,” Telégrafo Setentrional (Granada), April 4, 1857; “Un escándalo,” Telégrafo Setentrional (Granada), March 28, 1857; José María Cañas to Juan Rafael Mora, Puntarenas, May 2, 1857, ANCR, Guerra 13434; “Affairs in Nicaragua,” New York Herald, April 15, 1857; Allan Wallis to British Foreign Minister, San José, March 5, 1857, FO 21 / 10, BNA. José María Cañas to Lorenzo Montúfar, San Jorge, March 5, 1857, caja 28, no. 10, exp. El Salvador, RREE, ANCR; Charles Davis to Florencio Xatruch, San Juan del Sur, March 3, 1857, RG 45, Pacific Squadron, Letters Received by the Secretary of the Navy from Commanding Officers of Squadrons, 1841–1886, USNA; José Zambrano to Primer Secretario de Estado, Puntarenas, March 4, 1857, legajo 1429, Correspondencia con embajadas y legaciones, Costa Rica, AGMAEE. Charles Davis to William Mervine, San Juan del Sur, March 4, 1857, RG 45, Pacific Squadron, USNA; British Consul to British Foreign Minister, San José, April 4, 1857, FO 21 / 10, BNA; Costa Rica’s Foreign Minister to Governments of Central Amer­i­ca, San José, February 18, 1857, Archivo Nacional 873, ANCR. Nicaraguan Foreign Minister to Guatemalan Foreign Minister, León, January 21, 1857, legajo 9386, B 99-7-2-40, AGCA; “Impor­tant News from Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Eve­ning Bulletin, June 16, 1857; José Miguel Cárdenas to his son Adán, Rivas, May 24, 1857, Colecciones manfut​.­org, http://­w ww​.­manfut​.­org​/­r ivas​ /­r ivas​.­html. “Walker’s Men at Bellevue,” New York Herald, July 2, 1857; Jamison, With Walker, 154; “Nicaragua,” Gaceta del Salvador, May 9, 1857; “Situación de la guerra,” Telégrafo Setentrional (Granada), April 4, 1857; William Frank Stewart, Last of the Filibusters, or, Recollections of the Siege of Rivas (Sacramento: Shipley, 1857), 24–25,

348

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51.

52.

53. 54. 55. 56.

57.

58.

59.

NOTES TO PAGES 271–275

30–31, 70; “More of the Dreadful State of ­T hings in Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Eve­ning Bulletin, April 7, 1857; Jeimy Trejos Salazar, La iglesia católica en la Campaña Nacional (1856–1857) (San José, Costa Rica: EUNED, 2011), 48. “Das Leben eines Abenteurers in Nicaragua,” Deutsche Auswanderer-­Zeitung (Bremen, Germany), February 9, 1857. “Nicaragua,” Gaceta del Salvador, May 9, 1857; President Juan Rafael Mora’s handbill of December 10, 1856, caja 26, no. 3, exp. EEUU, 1856, RREE, ANCR; Stewart, Last of the Filibusters, 31; A. B. Watson to President Mora, Punta Arenas, February 20, 1857, Guerra 12275, ANCR; “An Address to ­T hose Who Still Continue to Cling to the Filibuster Walker,” RG 45, Pacific Squadron, no. 83, USNA; Allan Wallis to British Foreign Minister, San José, April 4, 1857, F021/10, BNA; Pérez, Obras históricas, 304; Scroggs, Filibusters, 296. “Adventures of Mike Brannigan,” San Francisco Daily Eve­ning Bulletin, June 17, 1857; “Captain Alf De Shields’s Account of His Adventures in Nicaragua with the Walker Filibuster Expedition,” MS 3561, Bancroft Library; “The Recent News from Nicaragua,” New York Times, March 3, 1857. “The Deserters from Walker’s Camp in New York,” New York Times, March 30, 1857; “Adventures of a Private Soldier in Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Eve­ning Bulletin, March 11, 1857. Stewart, Last of the Filibusters, 37, 65, 84; “More Nicaragua Revelations,” New York Herald, November 24, 1856. “Adventures of a Private Soldier in Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Eve­ning Bulletin, March 11, 1857; “Walker’s Men at Bellevue,” New York Herald, July 2, 1857. “The Pres­ent Condition and Prospects of Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Eve­ning Bulletin, January 8, 1857. Antonio Rafael de la Cova, Col­o­nel Henry Theodore Titus: Antebellum Soldier of Fortune and Florida Pioneer (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2016), 102; “From Kansas,” New York Times, December 5, 1856; Obregón, Costa Rica, 235, 237; “A Southern ‘Hero’ in Nicaragua,” Lowell (MA) Daily Citizen and News, March 24, 1857. “Texaner auf dem Wege nach Nicaragua,” Wisconsin-­Banner und Volksfreund, March 25, 1857; Sam Wood to his wife, San Juan del Norte, April 5, 1857, SSWP, YUL. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 361, 384; “Guerra de Nicaragua,” Crónica de Costa Rica, April 18, 1857; Stewart, Last of the Filibusters, 30; “With Walker in Nicaragua: The Reminiscences of Elleanore (Callaghan) Ratterman,” Tennessee Historical Magazine 1 (1915): 321–322. Charles Davis to José Joaquín Mora, San Juan del Sur, April 7, 1857, and Charles Davis to William Mervine, San Juan del Sur, May 13 and April 28, 1857, RG 45, Pacific Squadron, USNA; Charles H. Davis, Life of Charles Henry Davis, Rear Admiral, 1807–1877 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1899), 301; letter of certification by Charles Davis and U.S. Consul John Priest, San Juan del Sur, May 5, 1857, T-152, roll 1, Despatches from United States Consuls in San Juan del Sur, 1847–1861, USNA; “Our San Juan del Norte Correspondence,” New York Herald, July 2, 1857; Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 411; Stewart, Last of the Filibusters, 37.



NOTES TO PAGES 275–281

349

60. “Another Account of the Capitulation,” New York Herald, May 30, 1857; “Rendición de Walker,” Gaceta del Salvador, May 13, 1857; Allan Wallis to British Foreign Minister, May 9, 1857, FO 21 / 10, BNA; José Joaquín Mora to Charles Davis, Rivas, April 26, 1857, USNA, RG 45, Pacific Squadron, USNA. 61. Obregón, Costa Rica, 261; “The Statistics of Walker’s Campaign,” New York Herald, May 29, 1857; Manuel del Bosque to Minister of Gobernación, Liberia, March 15, 1857, Guerra 8936, ANCR; Minister of War to military commanders of Cartago, Heredia, Alajuela, Puntarenas, and Moracia, January 22, 1857, and Minister of War to commanders of Heredia and Alajuela, February 26, 1857, Guerra 12531, ANCR; Allan Wallis to British Foreign Minister, San José, March 5 and April 4, 1857, FO 21 / 10, BNA; “Boletín de Noticias,” Gaceta de Guatemala, May 28, 1857; “Impor­t ant News from Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Eve­ning Bulletin, June 16, 1857. 62. Obregón, Costa Rica, 262, 264; José Zambrano to Spanish Foreign Minister, San José, May 7, 1857, legajo 2566, Política Exterior, Nicaragua, AGAEE; “Guerra de Nicaragua,” Crónica de Costa Rica, May 9, 1857. 63. “El Filibusterismo,” La Estrella de Panamá, March 15, 1859; “Zentralamerika,” Der Kolonist (Lichtensteig, Switzerland), June 27, 1857; “Impor­tant News from Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Eve­ning Bulletin, June 16, 1857. 64. “­Doings of Col. Titus at Rivas,” New York Herald, May 29, 1857; “Arrival of the Steam Frigate Roanoke,” New York Herald, August 5, 1857. 65. Steward, Last of the Filibusters, 45–56; D. Porter McCorkle to William Mervine, June 18, 1857, RG 45, Pacific Squadron, USNA. 66. “Arrival of the Steam Frigate Roanoke,” New York Herald, August 5, 1857; “Walker’s Men at Bellevue,” New York Herald, July 2, 1857. 67. Walker, The War in Nicaragua, 428; “Our San Juan Correspondence,” New York Herald, May 29, 1857; “Arrival of the Wabash,” New York Herald, June 29, 1857; Libro de Guerra, folio 861, Guerra 13460, ANCR. 68. “Arrival of the Wabash,” New York Herald, June 29, 1857; César Costigliolo to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, León, November 27, 1857, caja 28, no. 13, exp. Estados Unidos, 1857, RREE, ANCR; “Letter to Editor,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, May 6 and July 16, 1852. 69. “Viva Centro-­A mérica Libre—­Muera el filibusterismo,” Gaceta del Salvador, May 20, 1857.

epilogue 1. “Impor­t ant News from Nicaragua,” San Francisco Daily Eve­ning Bulletin, June 16, 1857; “Speech of Gen. Walker,” Augusta Daily Chronicle and Sentinel, June 5, 1857. 2. “The Fillibustering ­Career of William Walker,” New York Times, May 30, 1857; “Movement of General Walker,” San Francisco Alta California, June 16, 1857, as cited in Alejandro Bolaños Geyer, William Walker: The Gray-­Eyed Man of Destiny (Lake Saint Louis, MO: privately printed, 1991), 5:18; “In­ter­est­ing from Washington,” New York Herald, June 14, 1857.

350

NOTES TO PAGES 281–285

3. “Walker, the Filibuster,” Liberator, July 3, 1857; “How a Spanish Girl Served Walker,” New York Herald, June 18, 1857; “Movements of General Walker,” New York Herald, June 18, 1857; “Foreign Intelligence,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, June 6, 1857. 4. Luis Molina to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, Washington, DC, July 4, 1857, caja 29, no. 12, exp. Correspondencia de Luis Molina, RREE, ANCR. 5. Bangor (ME) Daily Whig and Courier, July 20, 1857; “Letter from Gen. William Walker,” New York Herald, September 17, 1857. 6. Jill Bender, The 1857 Indian Uprising and the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); “The Walker Collapse in Central Amer­i­ca,” New York Herald, May 29, 1857; Editorial, New York Tribune, April 20, 1857. 7. “Emigration nach Mittelamerika,” St. Charles Demokrat, January 14, 1858; Robert May, Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics: Lincoln, Douglas, and the ­Future of Latin Amer­i­ca (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 182; Eric Foner, F ­ ree Soil, F ­ ree L ­ abor, F ­ ree Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 274. 8. James Thomas to William Walker, Granada, January 27, 1860, folder 60, CFCWWP, TU; Flavel Belcher to his ­father Joseph, Leafs Island, November 27, 1857, Flavel Belcher letters, Bancroft Library; Ralph Lee Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 1821–1871 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993), 295–298; Cólera, 1850–1857, legajo 7454, B 82-4, RREE, AGCA; Carlos Gregorio López, “Implicaciones político-­sociales de la campaña contra los filibusteros en El Salvador: las acciones de Gerardo Barrios,” in Filibusterismo y Destino Manifiesto en las Américas, ed. Víctor Hugo Acuña Ortega (Alajuela, Costa Rica: Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría, 2010), 194–202. 9. Justin Wolfe, “Soldiers and Statesmen: Race, Liberalism, and the Paradoxes of Afro-­Nicaraguan Military Ser­v ice, 1844–1863,” in Military Strug­gle and Identity Formation in Latin Amer­i­ca: Race, Nation, and Community during the Liberal Period, ed. Nicola Foote and René Harder Horst (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010), 55; Michel Gobat, Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua ­under U.S. Imperial Rule (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 42–50; José María Zelaya to Ephraim George Squier, Nueva San Salvador, July 26, 1858, roll 3, EGSP, LOC. 10. Nicaraguan Foreign Minister to Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Managua, January 28, 1858, legajo 9386, B 99-7-2-40, RREE, AGCA; Michel Gobat, “The Invention of Latin Amer­i­ca: A Transnational History of Anti-­imperialism, Democracy, and Race,” American Historical Review 118, no. 5 (2013): 1364–1374; “Tomamos del ­Album Semana de Costa Rica de 7 de Mayo,” Telégrafo Setentrional (Granada), May 30, 1857. 11. Hiram Paulding, quoted in Robert May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum Amer­i­ca (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 128; Louis Feipel, “The Navy and Filibustering in the Fifties,” United States Naval Institute Proceedings 33, no. 9 (1918): 2071; C. J. Macdonald to Commodore Paulding, San Juan del Norte, December 10, 1857, in MacDonald, Chas J. vs Garrison, Cornelius K. (1858–59), case files, box 42, first folder, ITWP, NYPL; Robert May, Southern Dream of a Ca­rib­bean Empire, 1854–1861 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), 135.



NOTES TO PAGES 286–290

351

12. William Hall to British Foreign Minister, Guatemala, July 21, 1860, FO 15 / 109, BNA; British Legation to Mr. Irvine, Washington, DC, September 18, 1860, Admiralty 128 / 55, BNA; Honduran President Guardiola to Guatemalan President Carrera, Comayagua, August 18, 1860, exp. 55219, legajo 2494, AGCA; Porfirio Pérez Chávez, Santos Guardiola, Política y Guerra Filibustera (Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Editorial Universitaria, 2006), 236; “The Walker Filibuster Expedition,” New York Herald, August 25, 1860. 13. Gerardo Barrios to Rafael Carrera, San Salvador, September 21, 1860, exp. 55231, legajo 2494, AGCA; May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld, 276. 14. May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld, 276; Charles Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny: The Lives and Times of the Filibusters (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 461–462; May, Slavery, Race, and Conquest, 194–204, 175 (Doolittle’s quote). 15. May, Slavery, Race, and Conquest, 175, 211–217. Thanks to Martha Hodes and Bruce Dorsey for clarifying Republican opposition to the Crittenden Compromise. 16. May, Slavery, Race, and Conquest, 263; Eric Foner, “Lincoln and Colonization,” in Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World, ed. Eric Foner (New York: Norton, 2008), 151–152. 17. Janet Coryell, “The Lincoln Colony: Aaron Columbus Burr’s Proposed Colonization of British Honduras,” Civil War History 43, no. 1 (1997): 5–16; Nicholas Guyatt, “ ‘The ­Future Empire of Our Freedmen’: Republican Colonization Schemes in Texas and Mexico, 1861–1865,” in Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States, ed. Adam Arenson and Andrew Graybill (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 100; Linda Hudson, Mistress of Manifest Destiny: A Biography of Jane Mc­Manus Storm Cazneau, 1807–1878 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2001), 171–180; Joseph Fabens, Facts about Santo Domingo, Applicable to the Pres­ent Crisis (New York: Putnam, 1862), 32; Gary Forney, Thomas Francis Meagher: Irish Rebel, American Yankee, Montana Pioneer (Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2003), 83–84. 18. Foner, “Lincoln and Colonization,” 156; Philip Magness and Sebastian Page, Colonization ­after Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011), 24; May, Slavery, Race, and Conquest, 184; Luis Molina to Costa Rican Foreign Minister, January 18, 1857, caja 29, exp. Correspondencia de Luis Molina, RREE, ANCR; Thomas Schoonover, “Misconstrued Mission: Expansionism and Black Colonization in Mexico and Central Amer­i­c a during the Civil War,” Pacific Historical Review 49, no. 4 (1980): 620. 19. Luis Molina, quoted in U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs (Washington, DC: GPO, 1862), 899; Gaceta Oficial (El Salvador), quoted in Schoonover, “Misconstrued Mission,” 618; Speech of Hon. F. P. Blair, Jr., of Missouri, at the Cooper Institute, New York City (Washington, DC: Buell & Blanchard, 1860), 7–8; May, Slavery, Race, and Conquest, 184. 20. Abraham Lincoln, quoted in Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: Norton, 2010), 245; Simón Bolívar, “Letter to Col­o­nel Patrick Campbell,” in Latin Amer­i­ca and the United States: A Documentary History, ed. Robert Holden and Eric Zolov (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 20.

352

NOTES TO PAGES 290–293

21. Barbara Salazar Torreon, Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798–2017 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2017); John Coatsworth, Central Amer­i­ca and the United States: The Clients and the Colossus (New York: Twayne, 1994); Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central Amer­i­ca (New York: Norton, 1984); Víctor Hugo Acuña, Centroamérica: Filibusteros, estados, imperios y memorias (San José: Editorial Costa Rica, 2014), 93. 22. Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin Amer­i­ca: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997 [1973]), 107. 23. Brady Harrison, Agent of Empire: William Walker and the Imperial Self in American Lit­er­at­ ure (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004), 15–16, 195. 24. Herman Melville, quoted in Ted Widmer, Ark of the Liberties: Amer­i­ca and the World (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008), xi.

Acknowl­edgments

I first i­magined this book as a social history of William Walker’s Nicaraguan followers and the Central Americans who fought to expel the U.S. expansionist and his group of filibusters from the isthmus. But the historical sources and actors I encountered in my research compelled me to look beyond Central Amer­i­ca. In the end, the work for this book took me to archives on three continents, and I could never have completed it without the help of generous colleagues. It is a ­great plea­sure to express my thanks for the many debts I incurred while carry­ing out the research and writing that went into this book. I’d like to thank the many friends, scholars, and archivists in Nicaragua, where this journey began. Few helped me better understand ­Nicaragua’s complex encounter with Walker than my friends and fellow historians Miguel Angel Herrera and Frances Kinloch. Another long-­standing Nicaraguan friend whose unwavering support and generosity I trea­sure is Margarita Vannini, who made the Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica one of Central Amer­i­ca’s academic jewels. For making my stays in Granada such wonderful experiences, special thanks go to Fernando López, Mariano Marín, Angel Márquez, Ana Rosa Morales, Lidia Quezada, Alvaro Rivas, and Dieter Stadler.

353

354 Acknowledgments

For their generous help I would also like to thank Juana Mendoza and Eliázar Morales of the Archivo de la Municipalidad y Prefectura de Nicaragua; Coralia del Socorro Gutiérrez of the Registro Público de la Propiedad de Granada; and the staff of the Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica. The research for this book allowed me to spend extended time in San José, Costa Rica, and I am grateful for the support I received ­there and for the stimulating exchange of ideas. I am especially thankful for the many conversations I had with Víctor Hugo Acuña and José Antonio Fernández, both of whom so generously shared materials and ideas from their own work on the Walker episode. I also cherished and learned much from the conversations I had with Patricia Alvarenga. Special thanks also go to Raúl Aguilar and Patricia Fumero for their helpful ­suggestions; and to the staff of the Archivo Nacional de Costa Rica for making my work ­there such a pleasant experience. I did not fully understand the continental dimensions of the Walker episode ­until I had the opportunity to do research on the topic in ­Bolivia. Many scholars and long-­standing friends made that time a special one, and none more so than Rossana Barragán and Ramiro Molina. In Sucre, I greatly appreciated the help I received from the staff of the Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia. In Lima, Peru, it was a ­great plea­sure to reconnect with fellow historians and friends Cristóbal Aljovín and Iván Hinojosa, who provided generous support. This was also true of the staff of the Archivo del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores del Perú, and especially Giannina Miranda. Similar thanks go to the staffs of the Archivo General de Centro América in Guatemala City; the Archivo General del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de España in Madrid; and the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin. In the United States, a number of ­people have provided me with extremely helpful feedback for which I am greatly appreciative. My deepest gratitude goes to Laura Gotkowitz, whose challenging questions and unlimited support have accompanied me and this book e­ very step of the way. Her extensive comments and critical feedback on many drafts have been indispensable to me, as have our wide-­ranging conversations. I also owe a huge debt to my dear friends Bruce Dorsey and Martha Hodes, who expressed g­ reat interest in this book proj­ect from the very start and helped me understand the complexities of antebellum U.S. history; both also read vari­ous book chapters and provided me with generous and extremely helpful feedback. I also owe a debt to Gregor Thum for his close and critical reading of vari­ous chapters.

Acknowledgments

355

Many other friends in the United States provided me with critical support for which I am grateful. Aldo Lauria-­Santiago has been an unflagging compadre, always willing to share Walker-­related sources, comment on my work, and support me in countless other ways. Similar support has come from my longtime friends Kate Bjork, Agnes Lugo-­Ortiz, and Diane Miliotes. I am also very grateful for the generous support and encouragement given to me by Jeremy Adelman, John Coatsworth, and Jeffrey Gould. I owe a profound intellectual debt to the late Friedrich Katz, who served as a model in so many ways. For valuable comments and criticism, I would also like to thank Laura Briggs, José Antonio Cheibub, James Dunkerley, Paul Eiss, Augusto Espiritu, Nils Jacobsen, Glenn Penny, Jennifer Sessions, Allen Steinberg, Sinclair Thomson, and Justin Wolfe. Deep thanks go to Joyce Seltzer, my editor at Harvard University Press. Her incisive comments and questions helped me sharpen the book’s focus at a critical moment, and her generous editorial advice has been extraordinarily helpful. I benefited enormously from the insightful and engaging comments provided by Brian DeLay and by a second, anonymous reviewer. Deep thanks! Special thanks go to Kathi Drummy for her smooth shepherding of the book through the production phase; Isabelle Lewis for producing such wonderful maps; JodieAnne Sclafani for her help and patience with the copyediting phase; and Derek Gottlieb for preparing the index. My colleagues in the History Department at the University of Iowa provided crucial support while I worked on this book. I would especially like to thank Jim Giblin, Colin Gordon, Lisa Heineman, Linda Kerber, Glenn Penny, and Stephen Vlastos. I would also like to thank Executive Associate Dean Raúl Curto for his steadfast and generous support over many years. At the University of Iowa, I received much ­appreciated research assistance from Elliot Anderson, Jo Butterfield, Ethan Grundberg, Katrina Rose, Susan Stanfield, Megan Threlkeld, and Natasha Wilson. At the University of Pittsburgh, Lara Putnam, Reid Andrews, Diego Holstein, and Gregor Thum have been generous in their support for my work, and I am truly grateful to them. Special thanks also go to David Frank of Hillman Library for helping me obtain some of the images that appear in this book; and to Elizabeth Withers for her careful proofreading. For their friendship and support at a critical moment, I would like to thank my Pittsburgh friends Bill Chase, Paul Eiss, Michal Friedman, Diego Holstein, Irit Lerner, Scott Morgenstern, and Lara Putnam.

356 Acknowledgments

Funding for this proj­ect was generously provided by the University of Iowa Faculty Scholar Program, which allowed me to explore the international dimensions of the Walker episode. Equally critical ­were fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (FA-54152-0) and the American Council of Learned Socie­ties. My ­family in Switzerland, Madison, and Portland have provided support, fun, and love over many years. Merci vilmal! My deepest and most loving thanks go to ma chère Laura. To her I owe the im­ mense happiness of our life together and the endless possibilities of regeneration and love.

Index

A abolitionists, 8, 106, 160, 247–251, 280; in Walker’s movement, 90, 92, 97, 124–127, 249 Accessory Transit Com­pany (ATC), 40–45, 48, 65–66, 71, 148–149, 203–204, 208 Acker, Robert, 108 African Americans, 8, 27, 51–56, 118–120, 278, 288. See also race; racism; slavery; specific individuals Age of Revolution, 10 aguardiente, 17, 170–171, 201 Agüero Agüero, Joaquín, 135–136 Agüero Estrada, Francisco, 135–138, 225, 230, 236, 238, 249 Allen, Joseph, 185 allied army. See Central American Army Altman, Ida, 115 American Anti-­Slavery Society, 124, 250 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 205 American Atlantic and Pacific Ship Canal Com­pany, 23–24. See also Vanderbilt, Cornelius “Commodore” American Bible Society, 122. See also Wheeler, David American Colonization Society, 8, 288

American ­Hotel, 40, 41 American Journal of Science, 206 American Phalanx, 62, 65, 133, 146. See also filibuster army American Pro­g ress, 37 American System, 163, 192, 194, 201, 205 American Whig Review, 113, 206 annexation (by the U.S.): Nicaraguan desire for, 1, 7, 24–25, 44–45; of Central Amer­i­ca, 26, 85, 92, 126, 250; of Cuba, 92, 134, 137–138, 246; of Nicaragua, 49–50, 83–87, 143–145, 245, 274. See also imperialism Anzoateguí, José, 175 Arias, Oscar, 290, 291 aristocracy: Nicaragua and the, 62, 67, 155–157, 170, 175–176, 218; U.S. media and the, 82; Walker and the, 59, 121, 127, 229, 231–232 ATC. See Accessory Transit Com­pany (ATC) Ayutla Revolution, 174

B Baldwin, Roger, 21 banana-­based paper, 194 ­Battle of Masaya: first, 259; second, 262

357

358 INDEX ­ attle of Rivas (1856), 71–73, 110, 124 B ­Battle of San Jacinto, 3, 6, 258, 290 Belize, 50 Berlin Colonization Society for Central Amer­ic­ a, 50, 305n11 Bermúdez, Josefana, 219–220 Bermúdez, Juan Jesús, 175 Beschor, George, 200 Bilbao, Francisco, 76, 96, 291 Blair, Francis, 99 Blair, Frank, 247, 283–284, 288 Bleeding Kansas, 99, 124, 145, 160, 281 Bluefields, Nicaragua, 20 Board of Commissioners, 231 Boletín Oficial, 10, 159, 235, 250–251 Bolívar, Simón, 26, 140, 289–290 Bolivia, 24, 266 Boston Daily Advertiser, 81 Bowley, George, 234 Brady, Mathew, 58, 281 Brannigan, Mike, 272 Bravo, Francisco, 172, 183, 218, 230 Brazil, 49, 95, 245, 287 British East India Com­pany, 111, 149, 204. See also ­Great Britain British imperialism, 54, 57, 84, 156–157; India and, 9, 150, 156, 165, 270, 283. See also British East India Com­pany; ­Great Britain Broderick, David, 121 Brown, David, 23–24 Brown, John, 124 Buchanan, James, 88, 101, 270, 276, 280 Bülow, Alexander von, 50–51 Bürkli, Karl, 133–134, 249 Burns, Anthony, 125

C Cabañas, José Trinidad, 147–148, 174–175, 286 California, 12, 22, 34–35, 60 California Gold Rush: Americanization and, 30, 33; economic effects of, 22–23, 109, 191, 197; Eu­rope and, 50; Nicaraguan transit and, 12–13, 85; pro-­U.S. sentiments and, 47, 290; Walker and, 59–60 Callahan, Charles, 121 Calonje, Francisco, 175

Campbell, George, 209 Cantón ­brothers, 55, 184 Carazo, Evaristo, 42 Cardenal, Pedro, 193 The Ca­r ib­bean, 19, 92, 94, 247. See also specific countries Carr, Albert, 297n5 Carrascosa, Manuel, 228, 265 Carrera, Rafael, 252 Carroll, Anna, 288 Carstens, Henry, 259–260 Castellón, Francisco, 62, 65 Catholic Church, 25, 97, 177–181 Catholicism, 132, 242 caudillos: aristocracy and, 218; opposition to Walker by, 262; po­l iti­cal power of, 226; seizure of property and, 232, 235; support for Walker by, 63, 183–185, 189, 259, 267; Walkers reliance on, 230 Cazneau, Jane, 234–235, 247–248, 288 Cazneau, William, 234–235, 247–248, 288 Central Amer­i­ca: anti-­fi libusterism and, 76–79, 101; Clayton-­Bulwer Treaty and, 29; colonization of, 99, 289; Eu­ro­pean support for, 94; government cooperation and, 68; massacres in, 82–83; unification of, 151. See also annexation; Central American Army; Central American Federation; war against the filibusters; specific countries Central American Army, 2, 253–256, 269, 275; desertion and, 276. See also Guatemalan-­Salvadoran Army Central American Federation, 139, 146–148, 183, 244 Central American war. See war against the filibusters Chamorro, Fruto, 28, 44, 233 Chamorro, Jacinto, 175 Charleston Mercury, 93 Cheves, José María, 168–169 Chile, 107, 122, 255 Chinandega, Nicaragua, 17, 25, 62 cholera epidemic, 72–73, 237, 240, 253–254, 284 Chontales, Nicaragua, 16, 108, 117, 173, 209, 258; colonization and, 104, 198, 210 Chris­t ian­ity, 53 Clarendon, Lord, 93

INDEX 359

Clay, Cassius, 99 Clay, Henry, 192, 194, 201, 288 Clayton-­Bulwer Treaty, 29 Club de La Habana, 135 cockfighting, 220–221 coffee industry, 193 Cole, Byron, 51, 56, 61, 90, 258 Cole, James, 223–224 colonists, 102; African Americans as, 118–120; Cubans as, 134–138; departure from Nicaragua of, 277; economic opportunities and, 117; émigrés as, 127–134; Eu­ro­pean immigrants as, 118; families as, 115–116; recruitment of, 103–106; social integration of, 216–224; ­women as, 114–115. See also Department of Colonization; settler colonialism colonization proj­ects, 181, 187; Eu­ro­pe­a ns and, 25, 50, 104–105; Republicans and, 99, 283–284, 288–289; Walker and, 234, 247–248 Commissary of War, 167 Conservative Party of Nicaragua, 16, 28, 55, 72, 254; civil war of 1851 and, 47–48; Nicaraguan po­l iti­cal order and, 4, 188, 284; overthrow of, 1, 5, 224–225; Walker and, 170–182; war against the filibusters and, 64–65 coolies, 159, 245, 250 Córdova, Rosario, 219 Corral, Ponciano, 65, 67–68 Correo del Istmo, 35 Cortés, Juan Donoso, 181 Costa Rica, 50–51, 73, 81, 139, 172, 253–254, 305n11 Costa Rican Army, 262. See also Central American Army Costa Rican invasion, 70–73, 92, 188, 215; Conservatives and, 224–225; diplomatic recognition and, 80–82, 87, 89; El Nicaraguense and, 142, 177; Nicaraguan support for Walker and, 191 Courts of First Instance, 167 Crimean War, 94, 253 Crittenden Compromise, 287 Cuba, 9, 92, 94, 134–138, 246 Cuban Demo­cratic Athenaeum, 128, 136 Cyane, 54 Cyclorama of North Amer­i­ca, 50

D Darío, Rubén, 3 Davis, Charles, 269, 275, 277 Davis, Richard Harding, 292 debt peonage, 159, 173 Delany, Martin, 27, 52–54, 119, 137, 187, 278, 284 de la Rocha, Jesús, 175 democracy, 63, 75, 126–134, 236–237, 284; anti-­U.S. alliance and, 95–96; El Nicaraguense and, 152–161; liberals and, 182–183; Walker and, 2–3, 59, 140, 224–229, 272, 290–293. See also direct elections; filibuster revolution Demo­cratic Party (U.S.), 8–9, 54, 83, 88, 113, 161 Department of Colonization, 50, 104–106, 167, 180, 193–195, 209, 262 Der Lecha Patriot, 104 Deseret, State of, 8 Deshon, Francis, 32 Deshon, John, 32–33 Díaz, Porfirio, 184 Diehl, Israel, 121, 240 direct elections, 225, 229 Director, 37–38 Diriomo, Nicaragua, 172–173 dollar diplomacy, 199–200 Doolittle, James, 99–100, 287 Doubleday, Charles, 177 Douglas, Stephen, 88, 287 Douglass, Frederick, 92, 125–126

E Ec­ua­dor, 46, 49, 95, 107 Edwards, Amory, 80 El Castillo, Nicaragua, 40 El Chelón. See Valle, José María El Comercio, 73 El Dorado, 13, 52, 103 elites in Nicaragua, 18–19, 22–24, 63, 69, 216–224, 230–236; racial views of, 28, 36–37 El Mulato, 136 El Nicaraguense, 5, 10, 177, 202, 225–226, 228; annexation and, 143–145; diplomatic recognition and, 77; distribution of, 104; editor of, 135; empire building

360 INDEX El Nicaraguense (continued) and, 149–154, 156–157; modernization and, 190–191, 207–208; moral reforms and, 237; Nicaraguan sovereignty and, 145–148; racism and, 242, 261; regeneration and, 154–156; role of, 141–143; slavery and, 158–162, 244–245, 251; U.S. presidential campaign and, 159–160 El Norte, 13, 22, 25, 29, 38. See also United States El Pueblo, 136 El Salvador, 139, 151, 195, 226, 254–255, 284 Emancipation Proclamation, 289 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 197 Emigrant’s Guide to the Gold Mines (Simpson), 14 Emigrationism, 52. See also colonists émigrés. See colonists Empire Club, 85 empire of liberty, 3, 7, 10, 140 Engels, Friedrich, 38 Enterprise (ship), 35–36 Espinosa, Máximo, 183–184, 267 Estrada, José Dolores, 260 Estrada, José María, 65, 68, 177, 233, 254 Eve­ning Star, 166 expansionism: anti-­expansionism and, 79; Central Amer­i­ca and, 95; filibusterism and, 49; race and, 56; Republicans and, 99; slavery and, 3–4, 11, 54, 75, 90–93, 113, 145; United States policies and, 29; Walker and, 8–9, 59, 76–79, 84, 87

F Fabens, Joseph, 104, 193–195, 209, 248, 288 fandangos, 32 Fayetteville Arkansian, 287 Fayssoux, Calender, 10 Ferguson, William, 122, 240, 259–260 Ferrer, Fermin, 185–186, 228, 232 Fiesta de San Juan Bautista, 223 filibuster army, 166, 237, 239, 257–258, 261–262, 267–279. See also Walker, William; war against the filibusters filibusterism, 11, 26, 46–49, 56–66, 73–76, 108; definition of, 7; U.S. public and, 46, 79, 92–93. See also annexation; colonists; imperialism; Walker, William

filibuster revolution, 10, 215; elites and, 216–224, 229–236; moral reforms and, 236–243; presidential election and, 224–230; seizure of property, 230–236; slavery and, 243–251 filibusters, 106–114 filibuster state, the, 188–189; bonds and, 202; Catholic Church and, 177–181; conservatives in, 174–177; departments of, 168; financial trou­bles and, 201; liberals and, 181–188; ministries and agencies of, 167; national bank and, 200; natives role in the, 164–165; property registries and, 210; rural communities and, 172–173; tasks and initiatives of, 169, 238; tax policies, 169–171, 199–201. See also Nicaragua Fisher, Thomas, 113 Fitzgerald Guard, 129 Flores, Juan, 46 Ford, Barney, 52–53, 55 Forty-­E ighters, 127–134, 206–207, 215, 226, 229 Fourierism, 133–134 France, 71, 93–94, 144, 156–157, 165, 225; colonization and, 50–51, 131; opposition to Walker and, 250, 255; support for Walker and, 9, 110, 250, 255; Walker and, 201, 203 Frankfurt National Assembly of 1848– 1849, 130–131 Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 41, 78, 83, 110–111, 153, 166, 208, 221 freebooters, 7. See also filibusterism Freemasonry, 56 Free-­Soilers, 60, 93, 116, 244, 249, 281 Frémont, John, 97, 100, 126, 159–160, 281 French, Parker, 77–78, 81, 86, 87 Friendship ­Hotel, 36 Fröbel, Julius, 39, 130–133, 151 Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, 52, 118, 125, 160

G Gaceta de Guatemala, 266 Gadsden Purchase, 76 Galeano, Eduardo, 291 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 38 Garrison, Cornelius, 203–205

INDEX 361

Garrison, William Lloyd, 125 Gast, John, 37 Germans, 50–51, 200, 265; colonists, 115, 118, 128–133, 206–207; filibuster army and, 107; land surveys and, 211, 226 (See also specific individuals) German Socialist Turners, 128 Goicouría, Domingo, 97, 135, 288 Gold Rush. See California Gold Rush gold rushers, 14, 18, 30–31, 34, 55. See also California Gold Rush González, Estanislao, 48–49 Gordon, George, 14 Gordon’s California Association, 14, 16–19, 21–22, 30, 34 Granada (ship), 278–279 Granada, Nicaragua, 6, 10, 117, 167, 176, 195, 207; allied attack on, 259–260; Americanization and, 19; colonists and, 216–223; Conservatives and, 16; Costa Rican invasion and, 71; governor of, 135; Liberal siege of, 62; map of, 217; new Granada and, 196–197; razing of, 3, 261–266; siege of, 216, 264; Walker’s capture of, 65; Walkers inauguration at, 1 Granada ­Hotel, 221 Gray-­Eyed Man of Destiny, 7, 57, 89, 171. See also Walker, William ­Great Britain: Clayton-­Bulwer Treaty and, 29; coolies and, 159; Costa Rica and, 81, 89; filibusterism and, 82, 93–94; informal imperialism, 19–20; Nicaragua as a protectorate of, 52–53; Nicaraguan sovereignty and, 35; Walker and, 250, 286; war against the filibusters and, 255 Greenberg, Amy, 297n5 Grey, Charles Edward, 20 Greytown, 20. See also San Juan del Norte Guanacaste, 72 Guardiola, Santos, 255 Guatemala, 139, 226, 254–255, 284 Guatemalan-­Salvadoran Army, 227–228, 230. See also Central American Army Gulf of Fonseca, 23, 195, 200

H Hall, George, 122, 240 Hamblin, Levi, 234

Harper’s New Monthly, 119 Harris, Benjamin, 27 Harvard University, 5, 125 Haynes, Watson, 114 Hedemann, August von, 115 Heiss, John, 80, 87–88 Henningsen, Charles Frederick, 110, 262–265, 267 Herdocia, José Hilario, 178–179 Herrera, Ubaldo, 65, 179, 185, 230, 232, 235–236 Hesse, Eugene, 207 Honduran Interoceanic Railway, 80 Honduras, 20, 151, 195, 286; Central American Federation and, 139, 147; Costa Rican invasion and, 72; gold fields of, 51, 56; Nicaraguan Civil War of 1851 and, 47–48 Howe, Samuel, 124 Hudson, Linda, 298n14 Hungarian Revolution, 110, 129, 262 Hurtado, José María, 175

I imperialism, 6, 9, 157, 190. See also expansionism; liberal imperialism; settler colonialism Indian Rebellion of 1857, 9, 253 indigenous communities (communidades indígenas), 16–17, 28, 69. See also Diriomo, Nicaragua; Masatepe, Nicaragua; Matagalpa, Nicaragua interoceanic canal, 194–195; in Nicaragua, 13–14, 20–23, 35, 69, 72, 94; in Panama, 1, 22; Vanderbilt and, 29, 38–40, 48; Walker and, 1, 199 interoceanic transit, 3, 22, 35, 38, 84, 284; California Gold Rush and, 12–14, 16, 30; filibuster state and, 194–195; military action and, 64, 71, 262, 268–269, 276; Nicaragua and, 39–40, 43–45, 50, 52, 57, 63, 87, 103, 186; Panama and, 39, 42–44; Pierce and, 80; U.S. Press and, 82. See also transit economy Iowa Freedman, 124 Ireland, 9, 107, 128–131, 161 Irish News, 105, 131

362 INDEX Irissari, Antonio José de, 77 Iturbide, Agustín, 139

J Jalteva (Granada), Nicaragua, 19, 185, 260 Jamaicans, 52, 54, 186–187, 232, 278. See also specific p­ eople Jefferson, Thomas, 3 Jérez, Máximo, 67, 147, 226–227 Joos, Wilhelm, 104–105 Juárez, Gregorio, 193

K Kansas-­Nebraska Act of 1854, 75, 138, 160. See also Bleeding Kansas; popu­lar sovereignty Kenrick, Francis, 96–97 Kerr, John, 48 Kerrigan, James, 109 Kingwell, John, 221, 222 Kinney, Henry, 64, 66, 86 Kissane, William, 107. See also Rod­gers, William K. Knecht, Rudolf, 197–198 Know-­Nothing Party, 25, 79, 145; catholicism and, 60, 81; filibuster army and, 113; immigration and, 97, 104, 118, 133

L Lacayo, José Antonio, 218 Lake Managua, 23, 194 Lake Nicaragua, 13, 22, 37–38, 82, 194, 208, 267 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 181 La Merced, 69, 178 La Montagne, 128, 131 land surveys, 208–214 La Reforma, 266 Latin Amer­i­ca (origins of idea of), 2, 95–96. See also specific countries La Virgen (Virgin Bay), 38–39, 41, 55, 65, 82, 208 Law, George, 262 Lawless, John, 260 Lawrence, Alexander, 105

León, Nicaragua, 11, 17–18, 20–21, 55, 176, 226–227, 252–253 liberal imperialism, 6–7, 9, 11, 51–52, 60, 278, 292 Liberal Party of Nicaragua, 17, 28, 56, 155, 239, 284; Central American Federation and, 146; Costa Rican invasion and, 72; invitation of Walker, 5, 49, 153, 157, 191, 278; leaders of, 65; Natzmer and, 168; opposition to Walker and, 69, 214, 226–229, 253–254, 256, 265; Peck and, 53, 55–56; presidential elections and, 224–227; radicals and, 62; razing of Granada and, 263; siege of Granada (1854–1855), 216; United States and, 24; Walker and, 1–2, 67, 131, 175–178, 181–188, 269 liberal reformers, 97, 99 Liberia, 8, 288 Liberty Party, 124 Life Illustrated, 153 Lilly, Christopher, 109 Lincoln, Abraham, 287–289 Lindsley, John Berrien, 205 Lockridge, Samuel, 274–275 Lone Star saloon, 239 Long Live ­Free Central Amer­i­ca (Valle), 279 López, Narciso, 136, 150 Loredo, Juan Manuel, 179–181, 228, 242 Los Altos, 139 Lugo, Justo, 219, 236 Lundestad, Geir, 7 Lyons, James, 54 Lyons, Julia, 52

M Maine Law of 1851, 125, 239 Managua, Nicaragua, 16 Manifest Destiny, 291; El Nicaraguense and, 144, 153; Eu­ro­pean liberal imperialism and, 130–131; filibusterism and, 79; Monroe Doctrine and, 26; moral reform and, 237; origination of, 234; overseas expansion and, 84; Pellet and, 127; race and, 53, 123, 137, 284; reformers and, 8; support for Walker and, 2, 7; symbols of, 37; Walker and,

INDEX 363

56, 59; Whig Party and, 9. See also colonists; expansionism; filibusterism; imperialism; United States of Amer­i­ca; Walker, William Manning, Thomas, 200 Manovill, Joseph, 129 Mapa de la república de Nicaragua, 213, 217 maps. see land surveys “Maps of Nicaragua, North and Central Amer­ic­ a,” 86 Marcoleta, José de, 76–79 Marcy, William, 77, 87–89 marriage, 32, 219–220 Martínez, Tomás, 175 Marx, Karl, 38 Masatepe, Nicaragua, 171–172 Masaya, Nicaragua, 258–259, 262 Massey, Gerald, 251 Matagalpa, Nicaragua, 17, 69, 71, 104, 179–181, 202, 258 May, George, 242 May, Robert, 287, 297n5 Mayorga, Cleto, 182, 227 Mayorga, Mateo, 65–67, 178 McLane, John, 48–49, 63 Meagher, Thomas, 131, 288 medical professionals, 205–208 Melville, Herman, 293 Méndez, Mariano, 62, 229 Mennicke, John, 216 Mervine, William, 275 Methodist Episcopal Church, 122, 242 Mexican-­A merican War, 6, 46, 48, 59, 110, 123, 256 Mexican Boundary Commission of 1850, 207 Mexico, 6, 12, 61, 151–152, 174 Meyer’s Universum (Meyer), 20 military conscription, 170, 256 Miller, William, 108 Miskitu Indians, 20 modernization (of Nicaragua), 190–191, 198–199; agro-­export economy and, 193–194; funding for the, 199–205; Granada and, 195–197, 207; land surveys and, 208–214; moralizing aspects of, 192; scientific men and, 205–208; transportation system and, 192, 194–195, 208; U.S. settlers and, 192

Molina, Luis, 77–79, 101 Monroe, James, 26, 76 Monroe Doctrine, 25–26, 49 Montalembert, Charles de, 181 Mora, José Joaquín, 275–276 Mora, Juan Rafael, 70–73, 255, 284 moral reformers, 60, 236–243 Morazán, Francisco, 147 Morgan, Charles, 203–205 Mormons, 8 Moses, Israel, 123–124, 206, 237 Mosquito Kingdom, 20 Muñoz, José Trinidad, 47–48, 62, 64–65 Murray, David, 278–279 Myers, Henry, 33

N Nagle, Michael Flood, 129 Napoleon Bonaparte, Louis (Napoleon III), 5, 23 National Police Gazette, 120 National Reform Association, 120 National Reform Movement, 121 Native Americans, 8, 107, 140 Natzmer, Bruno von, 50–51, 64, 168, 227 New ­England Emigrant Aid Com­pany, 283 New Granada, 196–197 New Orleans, LA, 59, 105–106, 280–281 New Orleans Crescent, 59 New Orleans Delta, 93 New York, NY, 84, 90, 105–106, 280–281 New-­Yorker Staats-­Zeitung, 105 New York Herald, 249, 283 New York Times, 79, 272, 280 New York Tribune, 154, 246, 249, 283 New Zealand Wars, 253 Nicaragua: Americanization and the ATC, 40–44; Americanization and the California Gold Rush, 13, 29–34; Americanization and Walker, 5, 113, 116, 146, 148; Americanization of, 55–56, 69, 132–135; annexation of, 49–50, 83–87, 143–145, 245, 274; citizenship and, 56, 146; civil wars of, 1, 16, 47–48, 56, 69, 207; colonization in, 52–53, 102–106; Cubans and, 137–138; demographics of, 27; economy of, 17, 22, 30, 31, 36, 191, 193–194; elite rule of, 2, 17–19, 22, 28,

364 INDEX Nicaragua (continued) 36–37, 63, 69, 216–224, 230–236; flag of, 6, 150; geopo­l iti­cal importance of, 1, 12, 23; ­Great Britain and, 20–21; immigrants and, 2, 28, 35; indigenous p ­ eoples and, 27–28, 43, 179–180; map of, 15; polity of, 4; presidential election, 224–230; race and, 27; radicals in, 2, 4, 63–69, 231; rebellions in, 17, 37; sovereignty and, 145–148; support for U.S. annexation in, 1, 7, 24–25, 44–45; transit of, 16; unrest in, 4, 40, 55, 170–171, 179–180, 290, 292; U.S.-­Nicaraguan Friendship Treaty, 25; U.S. sentiments and, 17, 19, 28, 47, 285. See also California Gold Rush; cholera epidemic; Conservative Party of Nicaragua; Costa Rican invasion; filibuster revolution; interoceanic canal; Liberal Party of Nicaragua; transit economy; specific cities Nicaragua, or Gen. Walker’s Victories (musical), 5, 63, 89, 91 Nicaragua line (transit route), 38. See also interoceanic transit Nicaraguan Civil War of 1854–1855, 55, 61–65, 207 Nicaraguan Emigration Com­pany, 105–106, 115 Nicaraguan Metropolitan Minstrels, 223 Nicaragua Transit Com­pany, 41 Nicaragua Transportation Line, 205, 268. See also Accessory Transit Com­pany (ATC) nonstate vio­lence, 47. See also filibusterism northern colossus. See United States of Amer ­i­ca Northern reformers, 97 Nueva Segovia, Nicaragua, 17

P Pacific, 38 Panama, 22–23, 30, 34–35, 66, 82 Panama City, Panama, 82 Paris, France, 96 Paris Declaration, 93 Paris Universal Exposition, 50 Parker, Theodore, 126 Paulding, Hiram, 285 Peck, David, 53–56, 278 peculiar institution. See slavery Pellet, Sarah, 5, 92, 97, 100, 125–127, 131, 249 Perry, Matthew, 37 Peru, 73, 95 Pierce, Franklin, 75–78, 83–85, 87–90, 92–93, 95–96, 101 Pineda, Mateo, 228, 230 Plácido, 251 Poland, Lawrence, 222 Polish Demo­cratic Society, 128 polities, 139–158 Polk, James, 14, 26 popu ­lar sovereignty, 160, 162. See also Kansas-­Nebraska Act of 1854 Post, Augustus, 221 prohibition, 125 Prometheus, 38–39 Protestantism, 81, 132, 242 Protestant missionaries, 8, 13, 122–123, 127, 240–242, 259–260 Protestants, 25, 35 Puerto Principe, Cuba, 135 Purdy’s National Theatre, 89, 91

O Oakes Smith, Elizabeth, 97, 100 Oaksmith, Appleton, 97, 202, 205 Oberlin College, 53, 125 Office of the Recorder of Deeds and Mortgages, 167 O’Horan Espinosa, Irene, 55, 219, 232 Ometepe, 34, 43, 267

R race: Agüero and, 136–137; Anglo-­Saxon superiority and, 7, 26, 32, 70, 79, 152–153, 187, 253; colonists and, 236; El Nicaraguense and, 153, 218, 242; filibuster state and, 9, 132, 243; Fröbel and, 132; Latin Amer­i­ca and, 96; moral reform and, 236; Nicaragua and, 27–28,

O’Neal, John, 272 Open Veins of Latin Amer­i­ca (Galeano), 291 Ostend Manifesto, 100, 246 O’­Sullivan, John, 298n14

INDEX 365

36, 119–120, 187; regeneration and, 121, 132; war against the filibusters and, 258–261. See also African Americans; Manifest Destiny; slavery racism, 25, 27, 52–54, 87, 89, 119, 123; antiracism, 136–137; filibusters and, 157; Nicaraguan, 223. See also African Americans; imperialism; Manifest Destiny radicals (in Nicaragua), 2, 4, 63, 65, 69, 231 Randolph, Edmund, 205 Rapier Jr., John, 118–120, 246 Reagan, Ronald, 3, 290, 292 Realejo, Nicaragua, 17, 64, 167; interoceanic transit and, 13–14, 22, 30, 38, 195; modernization of, 208; Walkers arrival in, 61 Republican Party, 79, 84, 96–97, 99–100, 114, 126, 160–161 Republic of Lower California, 61. See also Walker, William Republic of Texas, 8 revolts. See Nicaragua, unrest in Rivas, Nicaragua, 16, 25, 42, 117, 170, 172, 182–184, 232, 262; colonists and, 117, 210–211, 223–224; elites and, 16; filibuster army and, 234; interoceanic canal and, 22, 37–38; military action and, 64–65; Walkers surrender at, 266–274 Rivas, Patricio, 67, 168, 175–177, 225–226, 228 Rivas, Ramón, 176 Roatán, 286 Rod­gers, William K., 107–108 Rorer, Claiborne, 124–125 Rossignol, Leonore, 186 Rush Medical College, 53 Rynders, Isaiah, 85

S Salazar, Mariano, 225, 227–228, 254, 263 Salinas, Basilio, 182 Salinas, José, 179 Salinas, Sebastian, 182 San Carlos, Nicaragua, 209–210 Sandford v. Scott, 99 Sandinista Revolution, 232

Sandino, Gervacio, 230, 232, 235–236, 259, 267 Sandoval, Mercedes, 216 San Felipe (León), Nicaragua, 19, 63, 69, 182, 227 San Francisco, CA, 14, 22, 30, 106, 197 San Francisco Daily Herald, 148 San José, Costa Rica, 51 San Juan del Norte, Nicaragua, 82, 167, 200; African Americans and, 52, 56; British control of, 24, 29, 35; interoceanic transit and, 13–14, 38, 195; razing of, 54–55 San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, 39, 42, 63–64, 167, 208, 275 San Juan River, 16, 20, 24; interoceanic canal and, 22, 194; interoceanic transit and, 13, 38, 43, 268 Santa Rosa, Costa Rica, 70 Sarmiento, Domingo, 139 Schlesinger, Louis, 129 Schwartz, Adolph, 129–130, 207, 211, 249, 265 Segovia, Nicaragua, 50, 69 seizure of property, 230–236 Selva, Buenaventura, 176 Selva, Domingo, 231 Selva, Hilario, 175 Selva ­brothers, 185 Semi-­Weekly Mississippian, 93 settler colonialism: filibusterism and, 47, 49–51, 57; Nicaragua and, 1, 8, 25, 154, 231; surveying and, 209; U.S. Liberal Imperialism and, 5; vio­lence and, 236. See also expansionism; imperialism Seward, William, 79, 82, 99, 126 sexuality, 31–32, 218–219 Simpson, Henry, 14 slavery, 54, 59–60; abolition of, 27; El Nicaraguense and, 158–162; emancipated slaves and, 52, 56, 99, 159; expansionism and, 3–4, 11, 54, 75, 90, 92–93, 113, 145; filibusterism and, 79; Nicaragua and, 83; opposition to, 2, 56, 90, 92–93, 113, 247; support for, 2; U.S. capitalism and, 4; Walker and, 4, 8, 57–61, 215, 243–251, 280–283. See also expansionism; Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; race

366 INDEX Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, 159 Sleight, John, 124–125, 249 Society of Universal Demo­cratic Republicanism, 128, 136 Sole, Juan, 232 Sonnenstern, Maximilian von, 206–207, 211–214, 226 Sons of Temperance, 121, 240, 241, 243 Soulé, Pierre, 234–235, 246–248 South Amer­i­ca. See specific countries Spain, 94, 134, 255 Spanish Civil War, 110 Spanish colonial rule, 20, 46, 190–191; end of, 1, 4, 16, 19, 50; Cuba and, 9, 134 Spencer, Sylvanus, 268–269 Squier, Ephraim George, 24, 26–28, 35, 42–44, 53, 80, 244 St. Mary’s, 269–270, 275, 277, 280 Storm, Jane Mc­Manus (Cora Montgomery), 234–235, 298n14 Ströbel, Max, 207, 211 suffrage, 8, 54, 59–60, 63, 126, 225 Sutiava (León), Nicaragua, 63 Swearingen, Richard, 113 Swingle, Elizabeth, 115 Switzerland, 133, 225, 249, 276; colonization agents from, 50, 104–105, 197–199

T Taiping Rebellion, 253 Tarbox, Lyman, 116–117 Taylor, Zachary, 24–25, 29 teetotalism, 121 Telégrafo Setentrional, 266, 269 Teller, William, 221 temperance activists, 8, 121–122, 239 Texas Rangers, 108, 115 Thayer, Eli, 283 The White Slave (Henningsen), 267 Thomas, Carlos, 132, 185–187, 218, 232 Thomas, Emilio, 187, 232 Thomas, James, 220 Thomas, James P., 118–120 Thompson, Ambrose, 288 Thompson, E. P., 43 Times of London, 245 Tipitapa River, 194 Titus, Henry, 273–275

tobacco, 171 transit economy, 31, 39–42, 52 Turn-­Zeitung, 132

U Umaña, Ramón, 184 United States ­Hotel, 52 United States Magazine, 97–98 United States of Amer­i­ca, 20, 89; anti-­Chinese sentiments and, 60; civil war of, 2–3, 7, 11, 253, 285, 287, 289, 291–292; defense of Nicaraguan sovereignty and, 35; expansionism and, 29; filibusterism and, 76, 89–90, 92–96, 276; imperialism and, 2–5; in­de­pen­dent republics and, 8; as a model republic, 2–4, 7, 9, 19, 24, 37, 69, 101; nativism, 9; Neutrality Acts of, 47, 74, 76–77; Panama canal and, 1; reform movements of, 8–9; slavery and, 3–4; technological superiority of, 37; territorial system of, 145; western frontier, 8. See also El Norte; Manifest Destiny; Monroe Doctrine; U.S.-­Nicaraguan friendship treaty; specific presidents uplift, 2–3, 5, 11, 52, 114, 238–239. See also moral reformers U.S. entrepreneurialism, 33, 35–36, 55, 191 U.S. Navy, 176, 275, 285 U.S.-­Nicaraguan friendship treaty, 24, 28–29 U.S. Protestantism, 53 U.S. transcontinental railroad, 12

V Valle, José María, 89, 254, 279, 284; capture of, 256; Costa Rican invasion and, 224–230; support for Walker of, 10, 62–67, 174, 183, 215; Walkers reliance on, 4, 69 Vanderbilt, Cornelius “Commodore,” 23–24, 148–149, 203–204, 273, 280; and interoceanic transit, 29–30, 37–48, 268–269. See also American Atlantic and Pacific Ship Canal Com­pany Vietnam War, 292 Vijil, Agustín, 68, 146, 181, 185; diplomatic mission of, 76, 80–92, 96–97, 100–101

INDEX 367

W Walbridge, Hiram, 84 Walker (movie), 3 Walker, Robert, 99 Walker, William, 58, 86, 98, 282; Accessory Transit Com­pany and, 148–149; alleged affair of, 219; allies of, 2–5, 55, 57, 96–100, 248, 265, 273–274; annexation and, 143–145; authoritarianism, 155; California Gold Rush and, 13; Catholic Church and, 177–181; colonists and, 29; conservatives and, 174–177; Costa Rican invasion by, 70; death of, 286; diplomatic recognition of, 75–77, 80–96, 101, 143; election of, 1–2, 10, 224–230; empire building and, 148–158; filibusterism and, 61–62; Free-­Soil movement and, 59–60, 126, 130–131, 158, 244, 248–249, 281; as Gray-­Eyed Man of Destiny, 7, 57, 89, 171; liberals and, 174, 176, 181–188, 214; local support of, 7, 62–63, 66, 68, 71–73, 140, 269; Mexican invasion by, 61; Nicaraguans’ invitation to, 5, 47, 49–50; po­l iti­cal views of, 59–60; polity of, 7–8, 10, 67, 139–158, 189; presidential decrees of, 230–231, 243–244; Protestantism and, 178; relegalization of slavery and, 4, 158, 162, 215, 243–251; return of, to Nicaragua, 285–286; rise to power of, 57, 62–63, 65–68; slavery and, 8, 57, 59–61, 90, 100, 116, 280–283; surrender of, 275–279; teetotalism and, 121, 240; U.S. media and, 78, 80–85, 87–88, 163, 166; U.S. public support for, 78, 81, 84–85, 89–90, 92; white slavery and, 273. See also American Phalanx; Costa Rican invasion; Department of Colonization; Nicaragua Walker House Tavern, 239 Walker Institute, 238

Walsh, Mike, 121 war against the filibusters, 9, 252–253; atrocities in, 259–260, 263–265, 270–271; combatants of, 253–258; Granada and, 261–266; race and, 258–261; siege of Granada, 264; siege of Rivas, 266–274; transit road and, 262, 268–269; U.S. military intervention in, 269–270, 276; Walker’s surrender and, 275–279. See also specific b­ attles The War in Nicaragua (Walker), 154, 162, 186, 244–245, 263, 286 War of the Commodores, 3, 204 Webber, Charles, 113 Weller, John, 81 Wells, William, 90 Wheeler, David, 122–123, 127, 242, 259–260 Wheeler, John, 77 Whelpley, James, 113, 205–206 Whig Party, 9, 79, 113, 192 White, David, 23–24 White, Joseph, 39 white slavery, 267, 273 Whitman, Walt, 59 Wiedemann, Henri, 200 Wilkes, George, 120–121 ­women’s rights, 89 ­Women’s Rights Convention (1853), 126 Worthington, Henry, 117

X Xhosa Wars, 253

Y Yale Law School, 21 Young American Pioneer Club, 113, 187, 218, 243 Young South movement, 161