THE KING OF THE FILIBUSTERS
In one of the public squares of San Jose, which is the capital of Costa Rica, there is a marble statue of a stern-faced young woman, with her foot planted firmly on a gentleman"s neck. The young woman is symbolic of the Republic of Costa Rica, and the gentleman ground beneath her heel is supposed to represent the American filibuster and soldier of fortune, William Walker. Now, before going any farther, justice requires me to explain that Walker"s downfall was not due to Costa Rica, as the citizens of that little republic would like the world to believe, and as the bombastic statue in the plaza of its capital would lead one to suppose, but to a far greater and richer power, whose victories were won with dollars instead of bayonets, whose capital was New York City, and whose name was Cornelius Vanderbilt.
To the younger generation the name of William Walker carries no significance, but to the gray-heads whose recollections antedate the Civil War the mention of it brings back a flood of thrilling memories, while throughout the length and breadth of that wild region lying between the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the Isthmus of Panama it is still a synonym for unfaltering courage. His weakness was ambition; his fault was failure. Had he succeeded in realizing his ambitions--and he failed only by the narrowest of margins--he would have been lauded as another Cortez, and would have received stars and crosses instead of bullets.
Had his life not been cut short by a Honduran firing-party, it is possible, indeed probable, that, instead of there being six states in Central America there would be but one, and in that one the inst.i.tution of slavery might still exist. Though I have scant sympathy with the motives which animated Walker, and though I believe that his death was for the best good of the Central American peoples, he was the very ant.i.thesis of the cutthroat and blackguard and outlaw which he has been painted, being, on the contrary, a very brave and honest gentleman, of whom his countrymen have no reason to feel ashamed, and that is why I am going to tell his story.
The eldest son of a Scotch banker, Walker was born in 1824 in Nashville, Tennessee. His father, a stiff-necked Presbyterian who held morning and evening prayers, asked an interminable grace before every meal, and took his family to church three times on Sunday, had set his heart on his son entering the ministry, and it was with a pulpit and parish in view that young Walker was educated. By the time that he was ready to enter the theological school, however, he decided that he preferred M.D.
instead of D.D. after his name, whereupon, much to his father"s disappointment, he insisted on taking the medical course at the University of Tennessee, following it up by two years at the University of Edinburgh. Thoroughly equipped to practise his chosen profession, he opened an office in Philadelphia, but in a few months the routine of a doctor"s life palled upon him, so, taking down his bra.s.s door-plate, he went to New Orleans, where, after two years of study, he was admitted to the bar. But he soon found that briefs and summonses were scarcely more to his liking than prescriptions and pills, so, with the prompt decision which was one of his most marked characteristics, he closed his law-office and obtained a position as editorial writer on a New Orleans newspaper. Within a year the restlessness which had led him to abandon the church, medicine, and the bar caused him to give up journalism in its turn. At this time, 1852, the Californian gold fever was at its mad height, and to the Pacific coast were pouring streams of fortune-seekers and adventure-lovers from every quarter of the globe.
One of the latter was Walker, and it was while editor of the San Francisco _Herald_, when only twenty-eight years old, that his amazing career really began.
Walker was not of the sort who could content himself for any length of time within the stuffy walls of an editorial sanctum. His fingers were made to grasp something more virile than the pen. Nor did he make any attempt to win a fortune with pick and shovel in the gold fields. His ambitions were neither intellectual nor mercenary, but political, for from his boyhood days in Nashville he had dreamed, as all boys worth their salt do dream, of some day founding a state, with himself as its ruler, in that wild and savage region below the Rio Grande. Enlisting half a hundred kindred souls from the hordes of the reckless, the adventurous, and the needy which were pouring into California by boat and wagon-train, Walker chartered a small vessel and set sail from San Francisco for the coast of Mexico. His avowed object was a purely humanitarian one: to protect the women and children living along the Mexican frontier from ma.s.sacre by the Indians, the state of Sonora being at that time more under the dominion of the Apaches than it was under that of Mexico. But it was not the protection of the women and children--though they needed protection badly enough, goodness knows--which led Walker to embark on this hare-brained expedition. He was lured southward by a dream of empire, an empire of which he should be the ruler, and which should be founded on slavery. By this time, remember, the slavery question in the United States had become exceedingly acute, the future of the inst.i.tution on this continent largely depending upon whether the next States admitted to the Union should be slave or free. Walker was a sincere, even fanatical, believer in slavery. Born and reared in an atmosphere of slavery, to Walker it was as sacred, as G.o.d-given an inst.i.tution as the Fast of Ramadan is to the Moslem or the Feast of the Pa.s.sover to the Jew. Convinced that friction over this question would sooner or later force the slave-holding States to secede from the Union, he determined to extend the area of slavery by conquering that portion of northern Mexico immediately adjacent to the United States, to establish an independent government there, and eventually to annex his country to the South, thus counteracting the growing movement for abolition, which, with the admission of new Northern territories, already hinted at the overthrow of slavery.
Financed by Southern friends whose motives were probably considerably less altruistic than his own, Walker landed at Cape San Lucas, the extreme southern point of the Mexican territory of Southern California, in October, 1852, with an "army of invasion" of forty-five men. Instead of hastening to protect the women and children of whom he had talked so feelingly, he sailed up the coast to the territorial capital of La Paz, which he seized, where he issued a proclamation announcing the annexation of the neighboring state of Sonora, in which he had not yet set foot, giving to the two states the name of the "Republic of Sonora,"
and proclaiming himself its first president. As soon as the news of this initial success reached San Francisco, Walker"s sympathizers there busied themselves in recruiting reinforcements, three hundred desperadoes who boasted that they were afraid of nothing "on two feet or four" being shipped to him at La Paz a few weeks later. These men were looked upon as hard cases even in the San Francisco of the early fifties, and, if they had not consented to leave the country to a.s.sist Walker, many of them would probably have left it sooner or later at the end of a rope in the hands of the local vigilance committee. When this force of scoundrels arrived at La Paz and found themselves under the command of a quiet, mild-mannered, beardless youth of twenty-eight, instead of the brawny, foul-mouthed, swashbuckling leader whom they had expected, they promptly hatched a scheme to blow up the magazine, seize the ship and the stores of the expedition in the ensuing confusion, and make their way back to the United States, leaving Walker to shift for himself. Warning of the conspiracy reaching him, however, Walker displayed for the first time those traits which were later to make his name a word of terror in the ears of men who bragged that they feared neither G.o.d nor man. Arresting the ringleaders, he had two of them tried by court-martial and shot within an hour; two of the others he ordered flogged and drummed out of camp, to take their chances among the hostile Mexicans and Indians. But, though this act gained Walker the fear and respect of his followers, the newcomers among them had no stomach for a leader who could punish, so when he called for volunteers to accompany him in the conquest of Sonora less than a hundred men offered to follow him.
From the very first the shadow of failure hung over the enterprise. To begin with, there is no more savage and desolate region on the American continent than the peninsula of Lower California, it being so barren and dest.i.tute that even the lizards have to scramble for an existence.
Mexicans and Indians hung upon the flanks of the little column night and day, as buzzards follow a dying steer. There was neither medicine nor medical instruments with the expedition, and the wounded died from lack of the most elementary care. Their shoes gave out and the men marched bare-foot over sun-scorched rocks and needle cactus, leaving a trail of crimson behind them in the sand. Their provisions were soon exhausted, and their only food was beef which they killed on the march. For years afterward the route of that ill-fated expedition could be traced from La Paz to the Colorado River by the bleaching skeletons of the men who fell by the way. By the time the head of the Gulf of California was reached the expedition had dwindled to barely twoscore men. It was no longer a question of conquering Sonora; it was a question of getting back to the States alive.
With sinking heart, but imperturbable face, Walker led his little band of starving, fever-racked, exhausted men toward the Californian line.
Three miles of road led through a mountain pa.s.s into the United States and safety. But the pa.s.s was held by a force of Mexican soldiery under Colonel Melendrez, and his Indian allies were scattered over the plain below. And, as though to give a final touch of irony to the situation in which Walker and his men found themselves, from their position on the Mexican hillside they could look across into American territory, could see the American flag, their flag, fluttering over the military post south of San Diego, could even see the sun glinting upon the bits and sabres of the troop of American cavalry drawn up along the border. Four Indians bearing a flag of truce approached. They bore a message from the Mexican commander to the filibusters. If they would surrender their leader and give up their arms, Melendrez sent word, they would be permitted to leave the country unmolested. But after you have fought and bled and marched and starved with a man for a year, you are not likely to abandon him, particularly when the end is in sight, so they sent back word to Melendrez that if he wanted their arms he would have to come and take them. Meanwhile the American commander, Major McKinstry, had drawn up his troopers along the boundary-line and awaited the result of the unequal struggle like an umpire at a foot-ball game. Walker, who knew perfectly well that he deserved no aid from the United States, and that he would get none, appreciated that if he was to get out of this predicament alive it must be by his own wits. Concealing a dozen of his men among the rocks and sage-brush which lined the road on either side, with the remainder of his force he pretended to beat a panic-stricken retreat. Melendrez, confident that it was now all over but the shouting, swept down the road in pursuit. But as the Mexicans rode into the ambush which Walker had prepared for them the hidden filibusters emptied a dozen saddles at a single volley, and the soldiers, terrified and demoralized, wheeled and fled for their lives. Thirty minutes later the President, the Cabinet, and all that remained of the standing army of the late Republic of Sonora stumbled across the American boundary and surrendered to Major McKinstry. It was May 8, 1854, and in such fashion Walker celebrated his thirtieth birthday.
Sent to San Francisco as a political prisoner, Walker was tried for violating the neutrality laws of the United States, was acquitted--for the members of a Californian jury could not but sympathize with such a man--and once again found himself writing editorials for the San Francisco _Herald_. His narrow escape from death in Mexico had only served to whet his appet.i.te for adventure, however, so when he was not doing his newspaper work he was poring over an atlas in search of some other land where a determined man might carve out a career for himself with his sword. Staring at the map of Middle America, his finger again and again paused, as though by instinct, on Nicaragua. Here was indeed a fertile field for the filibuster. Not only was the country enormously rich in every form of natural resources, but it had a kindly and moderately healthy climate, and, what was the most important of all, owing to its peculiar geographical position, it commanded what was at that time one of the great trade-routes of the world. At this time there were three routes to the Californian gold-fields: one, the long and weary voyage around the Horn; another, by the dangerous and costly Overland Trail; and the third, which was the shortest, cheapest, and most popular, across Nicaragua. If you will glance at the map, you will see that, barring the Isthmus of Panama, which is several hundred miles farther south, Nicaragua is the narrowest neck of land between the two great oceans, and that in the middle of this neck is the great Lake Nicaragua, which is upward of fifty miles in width. An American corporation known as the Accessory Transit Company, of which the first Cornelius Vanderbilt was president, had obtained a concession from the Nicaraguan Government to transport pa.s.sengers across Central America by this route. Pa.s.sengers _en route_ from New York or New Orleans to the gold-fields were landed by the company"s steamers at Greytown, on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, and transported thence by light-draught steamers up the San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua. Here they were transferred to larger steamers and taken across the lake to Virgin Bay, the twelve-mile journey from there to the port of San Juan del Sur, on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, being performed in carriages or on the backs of mules. During a single year twenty-five thousand pa.s.sengers crossed Nicaragua by this route. It did not take Walker long to appreciate, therefore, that the man who succeeded in making himself master of this, the shortest route to California, would be in a position of considerable strength. Not only this, but Nicaragua was torn by internal dissensions; the army was divided into a dozen factions; the peasantry were down-trodden and poverty-stricken; the government was inconceivably corrupt; and the usual revolution was, of course, in progress, in which the sister republics of Honduras and Costa Rica were preparing to take a hand. Everything considered, Nicaragua"s only hope of salvation from anarchy lay in finding for a ruler a man with an inflexible sense of justice and an iron hand. Walker determined to be that man.
In view of what I have already told of his exploits, you have doubtless pictured Walker as a tall, broad-shouldered man of commanding presence.
As a matter of fact, he was nothing of the sort. In height he was but five feet five inches, and correspondingly slender. A remarkably square jaw and a long chin lent strength and determination to features which were plain almost to the point of coa.r.s.eness. His eyes, which were of a singularly light gray, are universally spoken of as having been his most noticeable feature, for they were so large and fixed that the eyelids scarcely showed, and so penetrating that they seemed to bore holes into the person at whom they were looking. He was extremely taciturn, and when he did speak it was briefly and to the point. He had an unusual command of English, however, and his words were always carefully chosen.
A stranger to fear, men who followed him on his campaigns a.s.sert that even under the most trying and perilous circ.u.mstances they had never seen him change countenance or betray emotion by so much as the contraction of a muscle. He was wholly lacking in personal vanity, and when in the field wore his trousers tucked into his boots, a flannel shirt open at the neck, and a faded black campaign hat. In a land where all three habits were universal, he neither drank, smoked, nor swore; he never looked at women; his word, once given, was never broken; the justice he meted out to disobedient followers, though stern to the point of brutality, was absolutely impartial. Highly ambitious, it is paying but the barest justice to his memory to say that his aspirations, however little we may sympathize with them, were wholly political and never mercenary, his whole career showing him to be utterly careless of wealth. Taking everything into consideration, we have good reason to be proud that William Walker was an American.
In 1854, as I have already remarked, Nicaragua was split asunder by civil war. The opposing parties were the Legitimists and the Democrats.
What they were fighting about is of no consequence; perhaps they did not know themselves. In any event, in August of that year an American named Byron Cole, acting as an agent for Walker, arrived at the headquarters of the Democratic forces with a novel offer. Briefly, he agreed to contract to supply the Democratic party with three hundred American "colonists liable to military duty," these settlers to receive a grant of fifty-two thousand acres of land, and to have the privilege of becoming citizens of Nicaragua. This contract was approved and signed by General Castillon, the Democratic leader, and with it in his pocket Cole hastened to San Francisco and Walker. After taking the precaution of submitting the contract to the civil and military authorities in San Francisco, and receiving their a.s.surances that it did not violate the neutrality laws of the United States, Walker immediately set about recruiting his "colonists," and in May, 1855, just a year after his escape from Mexico, he was ready to sail. Although, as I have said, the Federal authorities had pa.s.sed upon the legality of the contract, it was a noticeable fact that the peaceable settlers took with them Winchester rifles instead of spades, and Colt"s revolvers instead of hoes, and that the hold of the brig _Vesta_, on which they sailed from San Francisco, was filled with ammunition and machine guns instead of agricultural implements and machinery.
After a long and stormy voyage down the Pacific coast Walker and his men landed, on June 16, at the port of Realejo, in Nicaragua, where he was met by Castillon. Walker was at once commissioned a colonel; Achilles Kewen, who had just come from Cuba, where he had been fighting under the patriot Lopez, a lieutenant-colonel; and Timothy Crocker, a fighting Irishman, who was a veteran of Walker"s Sonora expedition, a major; the corps being organized as an independent command under the name of _La Falange Americana_--the American Phalanx. At this time the Transit route from the Atlantic to the Pacific was held by the Legitimist forces, and these Walker was ordered to dislodge, it being essential to the success of the Democrats that they gain possession of this interoceanic highway. Accordingly, a week after setting foot in Nicaragua, Walker, at the head of fifty-seven of his Americans and one hundred and fifty native soldiers, set out for Rivas, a town on the western sh.o.r.e of Lake Nicaragua held by twelve hundred of the enemy. The first battle of his Nicaraguan campaign ended in the most complete disaster. At the first volley his native allies bolted, leaving the Americans surrounded by ten times their number of Legitimists. The enemy instantly perceived this defection, and pressed the Phalanx so hard that its members were driven to take shelter behind a row of adobe huts.
No one knew better than Walker that if the enemy charged he and his men were done for, so he decided to do the charging himself. Out from behind the huts dashed the red-shirted filibusters, firing as they came, and so ferocious was their onslaught that they succeeded in cutting their way through the encircling army and escaping into the jungle. Though six of the Americans were killed, including Walker"s two lieutenants, Kewen and Crocker, and twice as many wounded, the battle of Rivas established the reputation of Americans in Central America for years to come, for a hundred and fifty of the enemy fell before their deadly fire.
[Ill.u.s.tration: General William Walker and his men, after a long and stormy voyage, landing at Virgin Bay, en route to Costa Rica.
From a print in the New York Public Library.]
Bleeding and exhausted from battle and travel, Walker and his men, after an all-night march through the jungle, limped into the port of San Juan del Sur, and, finding a Costa Rican vessel in the harbor, they seized it for their own use. Still bearing in mind the necessity of getting control of the Transit route, Walker gave his men only a few days in which to recover from their wounds and weariness, and then was off again, this time for Virgin Bay, the halting-place for pa.s.sengers going east or west. Though in the fight which ensued Walker was outnumbered five to one, his losses were only three natives killed and a few Americans wounded, while one hundred and fifty of the enemy fell before the rifles of the filibusters. This disparity of losses emphasizes, as does nothing else, the deadliness of the American fire.
After the fight at Virgin Bay Walker received from California fifty recruits, thus bringing the force under his command up to some four hundred men, about a third of whom were Americans. The Legitimists, learning that he was planning to again attack Rivas, hastened to reinforce the garrison of that town by hurrying troops there from their headquarters at Granada, which was farther up the lake, planning to give Walker a warm and unexpected reception. But it was Walker who did the surprising, for, having his own channels of secret information, he no sooner learned of the weakened condition of Granada than he determined to direct his efforts against that place, instead of Rivas, and by capturing it to give the Legitimist cause a solar-plexus blow. Embarking his men on a small steamer with the announced intention of attacking Rivas, as soon as night fell he turned in the opposite direction and, with lights out and fires banked, steamed silently up the lake. Dawn found him off Granada, the garrison and inhabitants of which were sleeping off a drunken debauch with which they had celebrated a recent victory. Even the sentries drowsed at their posts. Un.o.bserved, the Americans landed in the semi-darkness of the early dawn, and it was not until they had reached the very outskirts of the town that a sentry suddenly awakened to their presence and gave the alarm by letting off his rifle, the shot being instantly answered by a crackle of musketry as the Americans opened fire. "Charge!" shouted Walker, "Get at "em! Get at "em!" and dashed forward at a run, a revolver in each hand, with his followers, cheering like madmen, close at his heels. "Los Filibusteros!
Los Filibusteros!" screamed the terror-stricken inhabitants, catching sight of the red shirts and scarlet hat-bands of the Americans. "Run for your lives!" The demoralized garrison made a brief and ineffective stand in the Plaza, and then threw down their arms. Walker was master of Granada. He at once inst.i.tuted a military government, released over a hundred political prisoners confined in the local jail, policed the town as effectually as though it were a New England village, and when he caught one of his native soldiers in the act of looting, ran him through with his sword.
Walker was now in a position to dictate his own terms of peace, and, four months after he and his fifty-seven followers landed in Nicaragua, an armistice was arranged and the side to which the Americans had lent their aid was in power. A native named Rivas was made provisional president, and Walker was appointed commander-in-chief of the army, which at that time numbered about twelve hundred men. Though insignificant in numbers when judged by European standards, this was really a remarkable force, and perhaps the most effective for its size known to military history. The officers had all seen service under many flags and in many lands--in Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Algeria, Italy, Egypt, Russia, India, China--and the men, nearly all of whom had been recruited in San Francisco, boasted that "California was the pick of the world, and they were the pick of California." There was scarcely a man among them who could not flick the ashes from a cigar with his revolver at a hundred feet, or with his rifle hit a dollar held between a man"s thumb and forefinger at a hundred yards. All the strange, wild natures for whom even the mining-camps of California had grown too tame were drawn to Walker"s flag as iron filings are drawn to a magnet.
Frederick Townsend Ward, the New England youth who raised, trained, and led the Ever-Victorious Army, who rose to be an admiral-general of China, and who performed the astounding exploits for which General Charles Gordon received the credit, gained much of his military training under Walker; Joaquin Miller, "the poet of the Sierras," was another of his devoted followers, while scores of the other men who fought under the blue-and-white banner with the scarlet star in later years achieved name and fame in many different lands.
[Ill.u.s.tration: General Walker reviewing troops on the Grand Plaza, Granada.
From a print in the New York Public Library.]
Says General Charles Frederic Henningsen, the famous English soldier of fortune who was Walker"s second in command: "I have heard two greasy privates disputing over the correct reading and comparative merits of aeschylus and Euripides. I have seen a soldier on guard incessantly scribbling strips of paper, which turned out to be a finely versified translation of his dog"s-eared copy of the _Divina Commedia_." The same officer, who had fought with distinction under Don Carlos in Spain, under Schamyl in the Caucasus, and under Kossuth in Hungary, who had introduced the Minie rifle into the American service, and was a recognized authority on the use of artillery, and therefore knew whereof he spoke, also testifies to the heroism and astounding fort.i.tude of Walker"s men. "I have often seen them marching with a broken or a compound-fractured arm in splints, and using the other to fire the rifle or revolver. Those with a fractured thigh, or with wounds which rendered them incapable of removal, often (or rather, in early times, always) shot themselves, sooner than fall into the hands of the enemy.
Such men do not turn up in the average of every-day life, nor do I ever expect to see their like again. I was on the Confederate side in many of the bloodiest battles of the late war, but I aver that if, at the end of that war I had been allowed to pick five thousand of the bravest Confederate or Federal soldiers I ever saw, and could resurrect and pit against them one thousand of such men as lie beneath the orange-trees of Nicaragua, I feel certain that the thousand would have scattered and utterly routed the five thousand within an hour. All military science failed, on a suddenly given field, before a.s.sailants who came on at a run, to close with their revolvers, and who thought little of charging a battery, pistol in hand." As a matter of fact, at the first battle of Rivas, ten Americans, all officers of the Phalanx, armed only with bowie-knives and revolvers, actually did charge and capture a battery manned by more than a hundred Costa Ricans, half of the little band being killed in that astounding exploit. Some estimate of the deeds of these unsung heroes, so many of whom lie in unmarked graves beneath an alien sky, may be gathered from the surgical reports, which showed that the proportion of wounds treated was _one hundred and thirty-seven to every hundred men_.
For several months after the taking of Granada and the establishment of a provisional government, the dove of peace hovered over Nicaragua as though desirous of alighting, but in February, 1856, it was driven away, at least for a time, by a fresh splutter of musketry along the southern frontier, where Costa Rica, alarmed by Walker"s reputed ambition to make himself master of all Middle America, had begun an invasion with the expressed purpose of driving the _gringos_ from Central American soil.
After a few months of desperate fighting, in which the Americans fully maintained their reputation for reckless bravery, the Costa Ricans were driven across the border, and for a brief time the hara.s.sed Nicaraguans were able to exchange their rifles for their hoes. The country now being for the moment at peace, Rivas called a presidential election, announcing himself as the candidate of the Democrats. The Legitimists, recognizing in Walker the one strong man of the country, had the political shrewdness to choose him, their former enemy, to head their ticket. Two other candidates, Ferrer and Salazar, were also in the field. The election was regular in every respect, the voting being entirely free from the usual disturbances. According to the Nicaraguan const.i.tution, every male inhabitant over eighteen years of age, criminals excepted, is ent.i.tled to the suffrage. When the votes were counted it was found that Rivas had received 867 votes; Salazar, 2,087; Ferrer, 4,447; and Walker, 15,835. By such an overwhelming majority, and in an absolutely fair election, was William Walker made President of Nicaragua--the first and only time an American has ever been chosen ruler of a foreign and independent state.
In all its troubled history Nicaragua has never been governed so justly and so wisely as it was by the American soldier of fortune. Had he been free from foreign interference there is little doubt that he would have made Nicaragua a progressive, prosperous, and contented country, and that he would in time have brought under one government and one flag all the states lying between Yucatan and Panama. But that was precisely what the peoples of those states were fearful of, so that, a few weeks after Walker was inaugurated, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, and San Salvador declared war. This time Walker took the field with three thousand trained and seasoned veterans, while opposed to him were twenty-one thousand of the allies. To describe the campaign that ensued would be as profitless as it would be tedious. The programme was always the same: the march by night through the silent, steaming jungle, and the stealthy surrounding of the threatened town in the early dawn; the warning crack of a startled sentry"s rifle; the sudden rush of the filibusters with their high, shrill yell; the taking of the barracks and the cathedral in the Plaza, nearly always at the pistol"s point; and the panic-stricken retreat of the little brown men in their uniforms of soiled white linen. Everywhere the arms of Walker were triumphant, and had he not at this time deliberately crossed the path of a soldier of fortune of quite another kind, in a few months more he would have realized his life-dream and have made himself the ruler of a Central American empire.
Upon investigating national affairs after his election, Walker found that the Accessory Transit Company had not lived up to the terms of its concession from the government of Nicaragua. By the terms of its charter it had agreed to pay to the Nicaraguan Government ten thousand dollars annually, and ten per cent of its net profits. The company claimed, and the government as stoutly denied, that the ten thousand dollars had been regularly paid, though the concessionaires admitted that the ten per cent on the profits had not been paid, giving as their excuse that there had been no profits. Upon an examination of the books it was quickly discovered that the company had so juggled with the accounts as to make it appear that there were no profits, when, as a matter of fact, the enterprise was an enormously profitable one. Upon discovering the fraud which had been perpetrated upon the government and people of Nicaragua, Walker demanded back payments to the amount of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and upon the company insolently refusing to pay them, he promptly revoked its charter, and seized its steamboats, wharves, and warehouses as security for the debt. Though this action was perfectly justifiable under the circ.u.mstances, it was, in view of the instability of Walker"s position, an unwise move, for it made an implacable enemy of one of the most powerful and perhaps the most unscrupulous of the financiers of the time.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The programme was always the same: the sudden rush of the filibusters with their high, shrill yell; the taking of the barracks and the cathedral in the Plaza.
From a print in the New York Public Library.]
Cornelius Vanderbilt was not a person who could be bluffed or frightened. Infuriated at the action of the filibuster President, he immediately withdrew from service the ships of the Transit Company in both oceans, thus cutting off communication between Nicaragua and the United States, and thereby Walker"s source of supplies. But the grim old financier was not content with that. Recruiting a force of foreign adventurers on his own account, he despatched them to Central America with orders to a.s.sist the Costa Ricans, whom he liberally supplied with money, arms, and ammunition, in their war against Walker. Turning then to Washington, he had little difficulty in inducing Secretary of State Marcy, who was known to be one of his creatures, to use the government forces in driving Walker out of Nicaragua. To Commodore Mervin, who was his personal friend, Secretary Marcy communicated his wishes, or rather Vanderbilt"s wishes, and these Mervin in turn transmitted to Captain Davis, commanding the man-of-war _St. Mary"s_, who was ordered to proceed at full speed to San Juan del Sur, on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, and to force Walker out of that country. Never has the government of the United States lent itself to the designs of predatory wealth so disgracefully and so flagrantly as it did when, at the dictation of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and without a shadow of right or excuse, it used the American navy to oust William Walker from the presidency to which he had been legally elected by a sovereign people.
Its unjustified persecution of Walker to serve the spite of a money-lord forms one of the darkest stains on our national history.
When Davis arrived in Nicaragua he found Walker, his forces terribly reduced by death, fever, and desertion (for his means of supply had, as I have said, been stopped), besieged by the allies in the town of Rivas.
Food was running short, the hospital was filled with wounded, and many of his men were helpless from fever. Captain Davis demanded that Walker surrender to him upon the ground of humanity, but the indomitable filibuster replied that when he did not have enough men left to man the guns he intended to take refuge on board his little schooner, the _Granada_, which lay in the harbor, and seek his fortune elsewhere. "You will not do that," answered Davis, "for I am going to seize your vessel." With his only hope of escape thus cut off, there was nothing for Walker to do but capitulate. Therefore, on May 1, 1857, William Walker, President of Nicaragua, whose t.i.tle was as legally sound as that of any ruler in the world, surrendered to the forces his own country had sent against him, and one more argument was given to those who claimed that it was not liberty which we upheld and worshipped, but the almighty dollar. When Walker arrived in New York a few weeks later he found the city bedecked with flags and bunting in his honor. On but two other occasions has the American metropolis given such a reception to a visitor: once when Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, rode up Broadway, and years later, when Dewey returned, fresh from his victory at Manila.
Walker"s drive from the Battery to Madison Square was like a triumphal progress, for his gallantry in action and his successes against overwhelming odds had aroused the admiration of his countrymen, just as his outrageous treatment by the government had excited their indignation. Though legally he had serious grounds for complaint, he received scant consideration when he placed his demands for reparation before the Department of State at Washington. But the cold shoulder turned toward him by official Washington was more than made up for by the welcome he received in the South, where he was acclaimed as a hero and a martyr. He was banqueted in every town and city from Baltimore to New Orleans, and when he entered a box in the opera-house of the latter place, the audience, forgetting the play, rose as one man to cheer him.
Within a month Walker had raised enough money and recruits in the South to enable him to try his fortunes once more in Nicaragua. Sailing from New Orleans with one hundred and fifty men, he landed at San Juan del Norte, on the Caribbean side, marched upon and captured the town of Castillo Viejo together with four of the Transit Company"s steamers, and was, indeed, in a fair way to again make himself master of Nicaragua when the United States once more interfered, the frigate _Wabash_, under command of Commodore Hiram Pawlding, dropping anchor in a position where her guns commanded the filibusters" camp, her commander demanding Walker"s immediate surrender. The flag-officer who presented Walker with Pawlding"s demand tactlessly remarked: "General, I"m sorry to see you here. A man like you deserves to command better men." "If I had even a third of the force you have brought against me," Walker responded grimly, "I"d soon show you who commands the better men." For the third time in his career Walker was forced to surrender to his own countrymen, and was sent north under parole as a prisoner of war. But, although Pawlding had acted precisely as Davis had done, President Buchanan, instead of thanking him, not only publicly reprimanded him, but retired him from active service, and when Walker presented himself at the White House as a prisoner, refused to receive his surrender, or to recognize him as being in the custody of the United States. All of which, however, was scant consolation for Walker.
To regain the presidency of which he had been unjustly deprived had now become an obsession with Walker. In spite of a proclamation issued by President Buchanan forbidding him to take further part in Central American affairs, he sailed from Mobile, on December 1, 1858, with a hundred and fifty of his veterans. His voyage was brought to a sudden and wholly unlooked-for termination, however, for he was wrecked in a gale off the coast of Honduras, whence he was rescued by a British war-ship which happened to be in the vicinity and brought back to the United States. By this time Walker had become almost as much of a nightmare to the governments of the United States and Great Britain (for the latter, both because of the proximity of her colony of British Honduras and of her large financial interests in the other Central American countries, had no desire to see that region again plunged into war) as Napoleon was to the Holy Alliance, and as a result both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Nicaragua were patrolled by the war-ships of the two nations to prevent Walker"s return. Appreciating that, under the circ.u.mstances, it was about as easy for him to land on Nicaraguan soil as it was to land on the moon, Walker, with a hundred of his devoted followers, slipped silently out of Mobile harbor on an August night in 1860, and landed, a few days later, on a little island off the coast of Honduras known as Ruatan.
And so we come to the last chapter in this extraordinary man"s extraordinary career. Within a day after his landing at Ruatan, Walker had crossed to the mainland and captured the important seaport of Trujillo. But the ill-fortune which from the beginning had dogged him like a shadow was not to desert him now, for scarcely had the flag of Honduras which fluttered above the barracks been replaced by the blue-and-white banner of the filibusters when a British frigate dropped anchor off the town. Twenty minutes later a boat"s crew of British bluejackets tossed their oars as they ran alongside Trujillo wharf, and a naval officer immaculate in white and gold, stepping ash.o.r.e, inquired for General Walker, and presented him with a message. It was from Captain Salmon, commanding the British man-of-war _Icarus_, which lay outside, and demanded the immediate evacuation of the city by the filibusters, as the British Government held a mortgage on the revenues of the port and intended to protect them, by force if necessary. Walker answered that as he had made Trujillo a free port, the British claims were no longer valid. "Captain Salmon instructs me to inform you, sir,"
replied the British officer, as he prepared to re-enter his gig, "that he will give you until to-morrow morning to make your decision. If you do not then surrender he will be compelled to bombard the town." As a strong force of Hondurans had in the mean time appeared on the land side of the city and were preparing to attack, Walker realized that his position had become untenable, so that night he and his men slipped silently out of the sleeping city and started down the coast with the intention of making their way overland to Nicaragua. When the British landed the next morning they were only just in time to prevent the sick and wounded whom Walker had been forced to leave behind him in his retreat from falling into the hands of the ferocious Hondurans. Learning of Walker"s flight, Salmon immediately started down the coast on the _Icarus_ in pursuit.
They overtook Walker at a little fishing village near the mouth of the Rio Negro, several boat-loads of sailors and marines being sent up the river to take him. But the coast of Honduras is a good second to the Gold Coast in the deadliness of its climate, so that when the landing party reached the little cl.u.s.ter of wretched hovels where Walker and his men had taken refuge, they found the filibusters too far gone with fever to oppose them. To Captain Salmon"s demand for an unconditional surrender, Walker, who was so weak that he could scarcely stand, inquired if he was surrendering to the English or to the Hondurans.
Captain Salmon twice a.s.sured him distinctly that it was to the English, whereupon the filibusters, at Walker"s orders, laid down their arms and were taken aboard the _Icarus_. No sooner had he arrived back at Trujillo, however, than Captain Salmon, breaking the word he had given as an officer and a gentleman, and in defiance of every law of humanity, turned his prisoners over to the Honduran authorities. Salmon, who was young and pompous and had a life-size opinion of himself and his position, interceded for all of the prisoners except Walker, and obtained their release, but he informed the filibuster chieftain that he would plead for him only on condition that he would ask his intercession as an American citizen. But Walker, imbittered by the treatment he had received at the hands of his own government and disdaining to turn to it for a.s.sistance in his adversity, answered proudly: "The President of Nicaragua is a citizen of Nicaragua," and turned his back upon the Englishman who had betrayed him.
He was tried by court martial on September 11, 1860, and after the barest formalities was sentenced to be shot at daybreak the next morning. The place selected for his execution was a strip of sandy beach, and to it the condemned man walked as coolly as though taking a morning stroll. Before him tramped a detachment of slovenly Honduran infantry, who, with their brown, wizened faces, their ill-fitting uniforms, and their jaunty caps, looked more like monkeys than men; behind him marched the firing-party, with weapons at the charge; beside him was a priest bearing a crucifix and murmuring the prayers for the dying. As the little procession came to a halt within the hollow square of soldiery, Walker waved away the handkerchief with which they would have blindfolded him, and, cool and straight and soldierly as though in command of his Phalanx, took his stand before the firing-party.
"I die a Roman Catholic," he said in Spanish in a voice clear and unafraid. "The war which I made upon you was wrong and I take this opportunity of asking your pardon. I die with resignation, though it would be a consolation for me to feel that my death is for the good of society." As he ceased speaking, the officer in command of the troops dropped the point of his sword, the levelled rifles of the firing-party spoke as one, and Walker fell. But, though every bullet entered his body, he still lived. So a sergeant stepped forward with a c.o.c.ked revolver and blew out his brains. With that shot there pa.s.sed the soul of a very brave and gallant gentleman who deserved from his country better treatment than he received.
CITIES CAPTURED BY CONTRACT
I have known men who, from need of money or from love of adventure, have contracted to do all sorts of seemingly impossible things. Some conquered apparently unconquerable chasms by means of daring bridges; others built railways across waterless, yellow deserts, where experts had a.s.serted that no railway could go; one contracted to find and raise a treasure galleon sunk three hundred years ago; another agreed to compose an opera in a week; while still another engaged to find a man who for two years had been lost in equatorial Africa. It took a New Englander, however, to sign a contract to capture walled and hostile cities, at a stipulated price per city, just as a Chicago meat-packer would contract to supply a government with beef at so much a pound.
The man who entered into this amazing agreement was baptized Frederick Townsend Ward, but bore at his death the adopted name of Hwa. Though born within biscuit-throw of Salem wharves he was by residence a citizen of the world, and by profession a soldier of fortune. Now the trouble with most soldiers of fortune is that they don"t make good in the end.
They are generally entertaining fellows, with vast stores of information on an amazing variety of subjects, wide acquaintanceships with personages whose names you see in the daily papers, and an intimate knowledge of the little-known places, but they rarely save any money, they seldom rise to high positions, and they usually end their checkered careers by being ingloriously arrested for breaking the neutrality laws, or by dying, picturesquely but quite uselessly, between a stone wall and a firing-party.
That Frederick Ward was a striking exception merely proves the soundness of my remarks. Though he was a soldier of fortune (he fought under at least six flags) he did make money, for he capitalized his remarkable military genius by signing a contract to capture rebellious cities, at seventy-five thousand dollars a city, and took a dozen of them, one after another; he rose to be an admiral-general of China, and a Mandarin of the Red b.u.t.ton, which was equivalent to being a Dewey, a Kitchener, and a Cromer rolled into one; and though he died when scarcely thirty, it was on the walls of a captured city, directing a victorious charge.