Central America: One Kind of Patriot

One of America’s favorite swashbuckling 19th century adventurers last week became the subject of dispute between two U.S. Presidents who fancy their status as amateur historians.

In Costa Rica last month, President Kennedy declared: “We can never be secure in our hemisphere until the Soviet Union goes the way of George III, the Spanish conquerors, Maximilian and William Walker.”

William Walker? Fightin’ words, sputtered ex-President Harry Truman. Walker, said Truman, “was a kind of revolutionary intellectual during the 1850’s, when there was a great deal of ferment throughout the hemisphere.” His purpose was to unite the Central American nations in a pattern similar to the U.S. And that, in Truman’s view, hardly qualified him as an evil figure.

Which President had it right?

On to Mexico. William Walker, born in Nashville in 1824, looked like Charles Atlas’ original 97-lb. weakling, short and extremely shy. But his inner drives were formidable. He earned degrees in both medicine and law, drifted west to San Francisco, where he heard about the empty lands to the south in Mexico. In 1853 he decided that he was the man to “colonize” Mexico’s Baja California and Sonora with U.S. homesteaders. He organized an “army” of 45 like-minded adventurers and sailed down the Pacific coast to La Paz. Without firing a shot, he took the town, declaring Baja California an independent republic.

It took the Mexicans six months to run him out of the country and back to the U.S., where he was tried for violating U.S. neutrality laws and acquitted by a sympathetic jury. Next, with 58 men, he invaded strife-torn Nicaragua, captured Granada, a key city, and in effect took over the government, naming himself Secretary of War and boss of the army. In 1856 he had himself inaugurated President of Nicaragua, and wangled recognition from U.S. President Franklin Pierce.

War with Vanderbilt. He had heroic dreams of welding Central America’s five tiny republics into a powerful economic and military sphere. But Walker by now had run afoul of powerful U.S. interests in Central America. He confiscated some of the boats and property belonging to the Accessory Transit Co., controlled by Shipping and Railroad Tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt. Reacting in kind, Vanderbilt sent agents to stir up Nicaragua’s neighbors against Walker, and soon a war was on: Nicaragua against Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. After a series of desperate battles, the U.S. Navy took a hand to prevent further bloodshed, and hauled Walker home. Six months later, he slipped back to Nicaragua—and this time the Navy had to arrest him to get him home. But again he got a reprieve. President James Buchanan regarded his arrest as illegal.

In 1860 Walker led his last expedition. This time Honduras was his target. Eluding a blockade of U.S. and British naval vessels, he landed with some 100 men, captured a small town and then fled into the jungle when a British man-of-war arrived. Twelve days later, a bone-tired Walker was captured by a British naval officer, handed over to Honduran authorities, court-martialed and shot. “Had he succeeded,” says Truman, somewhat unconvincingly, “he might have made a successful contribution to the organization of the Central American situation, into which he wanted to include Cuba—all of which might have influenced the shape of affairs we have with us today.”