The man who would be President
He was a man born into a middle-class
American home, who would rise to become a prominent journalist
and adventurer. It would be a journey that would take him to
the highest levels of power in Central America and leave behind
a legend still debated to this day.
William Walker was born on May 8, 1824 to James and Mary Norvell
Walker. He was the first-born son of the Nashville couple.
William Walker’s father had immigrated to the city from
Scotland following the death of his uncle. James’ uncle
had left some property in Nashville and a dry goods store. The
young Scotsman proved he had a head for business and reinvested
his profits into founding an insurance company with himself
as president and saw his fortunes grow.
He soon met and married Mary Norvell, who was of one of the
leading families in the Nashville. Her father had served as
an officer under Gen. George Washington in the American Revolution
and the family had been among the early founding families of
Nashville. The couple built a massive brick house in the city’s
most upscale neighborhood and there young William, two brothers,
and a sister were raised.
The family belonged to the Disciples of Christ Church and the
fundamentalist faith followed strict interpretations of the
Bible. James Walker’s religious convictions prevented him
from owning slaves. He did, however, hire numerous free blacks
to work for him. William’s mother suffered throughout her
life with a mysterious ailment that kept her in a weakened state.
Physicians of the day could never determine what was wrong with
Mary Walker, but she did manage to buffer between her eldest
son and his father and assist in seeing to her eldest son’s
education.
William’s upbringing included heavy indoctrination in the
family religion and he was well educated in the classical sense.
In addition to the books you would expect in the family’s
library, there were also some of the most popular of the day.
It was from the books of Sir Walter Scott and the Morte d’Arthur
that young William Walker would read to his ailing mother and
literature that would help shape and influence his life to come.
William turned out to be a child prodigy in school. At the age
of 12, James pressed his son to study for the ministry, but
William refused to do so. He instead entered the University
of Nashville. In order to first gain admittance to the University,
Walker had to prove he was fluent in Latin through Caesar’s
Commentaries and Cicero’s Orations, and in Greek through
the New Testament. Although the University followed a strict
regime, William was allowed to study Fencing with a private
master. He graduated from the University two years later and
decided upon the study of medicine. The 14-year-old Walker began
reading medicine with the family physician and some months later
left his Nashville home to enter the Medical College at the
University of Pennsylvania. William Walker graduated at age
19 and, rather than return home to what would have been a lucrative
practice, he decided to continue his studies in Europe. Rather
than go to the popular Edinburgh, Scotland University where
his father’s family could have helped him, William Walker
chose to continue his studies in Paris, France at the Sorbonne.
The small wiry Tennessean soon lost his taste for medicine when
he saw the deplorable conditions of Paris’ hospitals and
the way the common population was often treated by physicians.
After a year in Paris, Walker traveled to Heidelberg, Germany
to attend medical lectures and he also participated in the legendary
close-quarter fencing duels of the school emerging unscathed.
In addition, he leaned Spanish and after a while traveled to
Edinburgh with a stop in London. While in the city, he picked
up a prejudice for the British due in part to the popularity
of Charles Dicken’s Martin Chuzzlewit , which reflected
the way most Englishmen of the day regarded Americans. Following
his ventures in Europe, William Walker returned to Nashville
a celebrated physician only to find his mother on her deathbed
and him at a loss as to what to do.
Following her death, he left the practice of medicine and decided
to move to New Orleans where he studied law and was admitted
to the bar. The 120-pound, five foot five, piercing gray-eyed,
man with the soft-spoken Tennessee accent was not regarded as
the fiery, outspoken, man his new profession required, but he
proved to be an able administrator and found the worldly atmosphere
of New Orleans to be to his liking. The corruption which ran
rampant throughout he city, however, assailed his sense of fair
play and professionalism.
It wasn’t long before he was approached by newspapermen
A.H. Haynes and J.C. McClure who were preparing to publish a
new newspaper called the Crescent. With Walker’s command
of several languages, his education, and knowledge of European
affairs, they thought he would be the perfect candidate to serve
as Editor.
In 1848, William Walker finally found a profession where his
personal and professional needs could be met. The newspaper’s
liberal slant proved both a shock and a success in the city
and Walker’s writing was a driving force behind its success.
During this time, he also met and fell in love with a lady named
Ellen Galt Martin. At 23-years-old, she was a year younger than
William and he regarded her as one of the most beautiful ladies
in New Orleans. Ellen Martin had been stricken by Scarlet Fever
at age five and was left a deaf-mute by the disease. Her parents,
however, had sent her to a special school in Pennsylvania, where
she received an excellent education. She shared William Walker’s
views and encouraged him in his journalistic pursuits.
Although the New Orleans Crescent was said to be liberal, the
political description of Walker’s personal beliefs were
generally along the lines of the traditional Southern Conservatism.
His stance on slavery was one of non-expansion and an eventual
state-by-state abolishing of the practice. While it wasn’t
one held by the slave-holding aristocracy, it was one shared
by many Southerners. In fact, of the 125 abolition groups in
the United States in 1840s, a good three-fourths of them were
headquartered in the South. Along with his non-partisan law
and order attitude that aimed itself at cleaning up the New
Orleans government, he became a crusading editor who earned
numerous enemies, but the paper became an institution of the
city. Among those who contributed to the Crescent was the newspaper’s
young pressman named Walt Whitman, who would later rise to fame
as an American poet.
William Walker’s world came crashing down on him in April
1849 when his beloved Ellen Martin was struck with Cholera and
died. The plague had ran its course through the City and her
death was a shock for Walker. A crusading Southern Journalist
in those days was a dangerous profession, but Walker had escaped
the notorious duels that often happened in New Orleans. Following
Ellen Martin’s death, Walker intensified his campaign against
city corruption and attacked competing newspapers he felt guarded
the corruption’s status quo and supported the interests
of the rich who bought advertisements in their papers. It resulted
in him engaging in two duels and, following one unpopular stance,
led to the paper’s demise, which prompted Walker to leave
the city and travel across America to the gold-rich fields of
California.
In June 1850, the Tennessean arrived in San Francisco in tattered
clothes and a broad-brimmed black hat. His features bore the
weathering of his travel west and he was virtually penniless.
Upon his arrival, he looked up his old friend Edmund Randolph
who put him in touch with San Francisco Herald Publisher John
Nugent. Walker began writing for the paper and, as in New Orleans,
started attacking the rampant corruption that operated there.
Crime, not the gold strikes, occupied the front page headlines.
Throughout his young life, Walker had considered himself an
evangelist for American Manifest Destiny and was a crusading
believer in American Democracy. His beliefs were evident in
the Herald and he created enemies almost immediately. Criminal
gangs, which were protected by the police, court, and city officials,
were notorious for burning entire sections of the city while
they looted and robbed during the confusion. He eventually tangled
with a corrupt Judge who threw the young writer in jail for
contempt, when he refused to pay a fine on Constitutional grounds.
Following a city-wide protest, Walker was released and the story
led to impeachment proceedings on the floor of the California
legislature. Following a staged duel where he was injured, a
criminal gang set fire to the Herald’s office, but the
publishing house remained standing. Walker’s continued
writing led to the establishment of a vigilante group that began
cleaning up San Francisco.
It wasn’t only law and order that drove Walker, he had
also written some masterful articles about American expansion
in Nicaragua and always followed closely the talk of building
a canal across the isthmus that would revolutionize shipping.
Being Southern, he had also supported American annexation of
Cuba, which was a big story in the ante-bellum South because
of the rich opportunities available in the Caribbean that European
powers were methodically claiming for themselves. Walker, however,
eventually grew restless with San Francisco journalism and accepted
an offer to reenter the practice of law in nearby Marysville,
CA.
Walker’s American-bred philosophies were soon assaulted
when a San Francisco Frenchman began an expedition to colonize
Sonora and gain access to the promising mineral resources in
Arizona. The long trouble encountered with the Apache Indians
had led the Mexican government to consider the French offering.
Walker became angry that Washington politicians apparently didn’t
see the significance of it and, in 1852, put together a group
of men to discuss establishing American sovereignty in lower
California and Sonora. It was decided that he would head up
the expedition into the region and try to establish an American
colony.
With no military experience, the Tennessean led the expedition
and on Nov. 4, 1853 captured the Governor of La Paz and waited
for reinforcements to arrive to help him secure the region.
Walker raised the flag of Lower California. Although his men
were considered a rough lot by the standards of the day, Walker
was a man who maintained strict discipline of his troops –
mandating death to any soldier who raped or looted. For the
mercenary soldiers, it was a shock that they could not revel
in their conquests, but Walker proved he was perfectly willing
to do what he promised. Walker’s success made him a hero
in the San Francisco newspapers. At the same time, James Gadsen
was in Mexico City handling American negotiations to buy the
region for $10 million. Walker’s sudden invasion shook
the Mexican government, who feared Walker was backed by America,
and they hastily signed the Gadsen Purchase Treaty on Dec. 31,
1853. Upon doing so, American authorities declared Walker to
be in violation of the Neutrality Laws, which forbid independent
American-backed military ventures into nations which had peaceful
relations with the United States. Walker was forced to surrender
himself and his men to an American garrison over the California
line. After a grueling march, Walker surrendered himself to
the garrison and was arrested for violating the Neutrality Laws.
The trial that followed pitted Walker against many of his former
enemies. Walker pled Not Guilty and delivered a patriotic performance
in the courtroom that illustrated his reasons for taking the
action. The jury was swayed by his arguments and presentations
and found him Not Guilty in the verdict they delivered to the
judge. During this time, Walker’s popularity was such that
he was selected as a delegate to the California Democratic Convention
as a possible candidate for office. Because of his anti-expansionist
philosophy on slavery, Walker was called a "traitor"
to his Southern roots by the landed California delegates, who
were seeking cheap labor, and the issue was used in conjunction
with his past affairs to ensure Walker wasn’t selected.
Although he had lost in his one and only pursuit of public office,
the courtroom victory, and his vigilant stand against his political
enemies saw the Tennessean’s reputation suddenly sky-rocket
in California.
Walker again returned to the newspaper business and was hired
as Editor of the San Francisco Commercial-Advisor. The publisher
Byron Cole had, like many papers in his day, got caught up in
the quest to build the Central American Canal.
As the New Englander passed through Nicaragua on his way to
California, which was a popular route that took months off of
the trip west, he saw a nation wrapped in continuous civil war
and felt it needed American intervention if the United States
was going to develop the region and pursue the canal. Commodore
Cornelius Vanderbilt and other American capitalists were already
developing commercial interests in the region. Cole told Walker
about it and tried to convince him to look at raising a group
who could invade the small nation and bring it under American
control. Walker refused stating that he would have to be invited
by one of the parties at war in contractual form, which would
provide him a legal ground from where he could operate. The
publisher sensed what the Tennessean was capable of and soon
delivered a contract from the Liberal Party in Nicaragua asking
for his help in fighting the Conservatives.
With the same strict rules he used on his troops in Sonora,
Walker and a group of 58 men slipped onto a boat and immediately
ran into problems that caused the San Francisco Sheriff to cease
the sails on the ship and order Walker to pay a fine for his
services in collecting a debt owed by the expedition. Walker
reassured the Sheriff he would pay him the next day and, when
the Sheriff left the boat to return to shore, Walker took his
deputy captive and ordered the sails replaced whereby he and
his force sailed for Nicaragua. the men landed six weeks later
near Realejo and marched inland to the revolutionary capitol
of Leon.
Walker’s reputation had preceded him and the Tennessean
was well received. He quickly acclimated himself to the situation
and with his men called the "American Phalanx" drove
through the cities and captured Granada. Their fighting abilities
and Walker’s leadership proved more successful that anyone
could believe. Their marksmanship and discipline defeated numbers
that were as much as ten to one.
In the new revolutionary government that formed, he was made
Commander-in-Chief of the Nicaraguan Army. In that post, he
set about numerous reforms and uncovered traitors in the newly
established government. In 1858, minor breakdowns and uprisings,
fueled by European intrigue led to the collapse of the government
and, in an election that followed Walker’s re-establishment
of it, the Nashville native was elected President of Nicaragua.
Walker’s government was recognized by the United States
government under then-President Franklin Pierce and friendly
relations established. Walker’s political life in Central
America was shaky at best, but he established policies that
quickly earned the respect of the poor and Native American inhabitants,
who thought the "gray-eyed man" was the mythological
figure prophesied by their elders that would deliver them from
war and pestilence. Walker’s refusal to force them into
military service further ensured his rise to fame in their tribes.
Walker’s story of his rise to power in Nicaragua with his
58 "Immortals" captured America and newspapers throughout
the world carried daily stories about him. He had brought an
element of peace to the war-ravaged country and was hoping the
changes he enacted would help him bring the entire Central American
region under American control.
Unknown to the Tennessean, however, was the fact that he had
got caught between the Wall Street powers of Vanderbilt and
his associates, who were both trying to use Walker’s success
to further establish their wealth and control over Central American
resources. He fought to maintain Nicaraguan sovereignty in spite
of American pressures. In one of his movements, his men seized
the Accessory Transit Company owned by Vanderbilt and started
making economic deals that would be beneficial to the Nicaraguan
government. The action angered Vanderbilt, who began financing
rebel forces in Costa Rica to overthrow Walker. With American
support not coming forward, President Walker turned to the Southern
capitalists and, against his own wishes, was forced to issue
a political proclamation allowing for the import of African
slaves to the region, which was one of the positions demanded
by the Southern planters.
In America, then-Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, helped support
the election of President James Buchanan, who promised in his
platform to aid the Central American causes, but the President,
who soon became regarded as a tool of the big money capitalists
of the day, never followed up on his promise and sided with
Vanderbilt’s existing interest. Following a valiant fight,
Walker was forced to surrender his forces and return to America.
In May 1857, Walker was greeted by thousands of cheering people
on the docks and was informed no charges would be placed against
him for violation of the Neutrality Laws. The Tennessean then
embarked on a speaking tour where he visited Memphis and other
cities throughout America preaching his cause in Nicaragua.
He met with President Buchanan and received vocal approval to
raise a force of men and return.
Almost immediately, he and his loyal followers began raising
an expedition to return and claim his Presidency. In the process,
he was arrested and charged with Conspiracy to Violate the Neutrality
Laws. There was no evidence against him, however, so he made
bond and was released.
After raising the necessary men and equipment, Walker and his
men landed in Nicaragua to find that the President’s staff
recanted Buchanan’s comments and ordered the Tennessean
arrested. With no other option, he surrendered his men and was
returned to stand trial for violating the neutrality laws.
The jury, however, was enamored with the story of Nicaraguan
President William Walker and he was again acquitted through
a hung jury. He demanded a retrial, but the prosecutor knew
he couldn’t win against what was becoming a volatile political
issue. Walker again began the process to raise troops and money
to retake the Central American country. During this time, he
also wrote the book The War in Nicaragua, which became regarded
as one of the best intellectual non-partisan views on Central
American politics. Even his enemies tough highly of the book
and its third person style, which showed the journalistic expertise
possessed by Walker.
In 1859, Britain was beginning to reduce its Central American
holdings by treating away lands to established governments.
The British colonists on the Honduran Island of Ruatan approached
Walker to help them establish a government on the island to
preserve Democratic rule after the British pulled out its forces.
In June 1860, William Walker and his force arrived and quickly
overthrew the Honduran City of Truxillo. The British government
responded to the action by sending in British marines and ships.
In a last desperate move, Walker was again forced to surrender
to the British Captain of the Icarus and both he and Col. Rudder
gave up their swords and pistols as was the custom.
Walker’s men were returned to America, but the British
handed Walker and his Colonel over to Honduran authorities.
Walker took complete responsibility for the action and pleaded
for the safety of his men and second-in-command. He also protested
the fraudulent manner in which the British accepted his surrender.
The Tennessean was soon pleased to learn that Col. Rudder would
be given a short prison term, but he knew the fate that awaited
him.
On Sept. 12, 1860, the Tennessean, who was a celebrated physician,
attorney, journalist, military general, and past-President of
Nicaragua, was accompanied by two priests to a wall outside
the Honduran City of Truxillo. He ignored the festive environment
that surrounded him. With his head held high, the Honduran guard
raised the rifle and executed him. They fired a second volley
into his body and the Honduran commander walked over, drew his
pistol, and delivered a shot to the back of his head completely
disfiguring his face. While the crowd cheered, the priests removed
his body with the help of some Americans, who arrived in Truxillo
that morning. Without ceremony or honors befitting a man of
accomplishment, the priests conducted a brief service and laid
the Tennessean to rest in an isolated region of the island.
The outcry from America following news of Walker’s death
was deafening – especially in the South. President Buchanan,
however, gloated over the fact and in other actions aided the
divide that was occurring in America. The majority of newspapers
throughout the country were contemptible towards the powers
that tried to destroy William Walker and many saw their power
to influence shrink because of it. Many thought that, if the
"gray-eyed" angel of deliverance, as the Nicaraguan
Natives called him, had been backed by the God-like American
powers he represented in Central America, there would probably
have never been a War Between the States. Historians, then and
now, point to past successful civilizations, who, when they
found themselves headed towards internal conflict, redirected
the energies into some expansionist project, which consumed
the appetite for war. They claimed if United States policy would
have backed Walker’s government in Nicaragua and the establishment
of a unified Central America, the ensuing colonialization and
capitalist opportunities the region provided would have occupied
the American mentality and redirected the energies focused on
the impending war.
The sword of William Walker was returned to Nicaragua. Tennessee
Historical Society, who counted Walker among its members, formally
asked Honduras for the body of William Walker in order to reinter
him in his home state, but the Honduran Government refused.
William Walker became a legend among the people of Nicaragua
and Central America. He followed a strict Code of Chivalry that
always maintained the respect of the men under him. Once his
brother, who served as a captain in his army, showed up for
a roll call drunk and Walker demoted him several ranks to show
that no favoritism would be given anyone under his command.
In addition, he tended to his men’s medical needs and enforced
hygienic protocol that kept his men alive during the cholera
epidemics that often swept the region. Throughout his tenure
as President, Walker only had 2,500 American recruits. He never
had more than a few hundred at a time who often found themselves
battling thousands of Central Americans, but the American’s
skill as riflemen proved itself over and over in the conflicts.
William Walker maintained close contact with his family and
especially his sister, who lived in Louisville, Ky. Although
he and his father’s relationship remained strained, his
father did follow his son’s progress. William converted
from his fundamentalist faith to Roman Catholicism and, following
the death of Ellen Martin, never remarried or had a child to
carry on his name. Although the traditional accomplishments
of an eldest son were not forthcoming, William’s father
tried any way he could to find out how he was doing. Around
the same time his son’s book "The War in Nicaragua"
was published, James Walker wrote a note to one of his son’s
loyal supporters Captain Fayssoux that read:
"When you hear from my son, any information in regard to
his health and movements will be acceptable to me – with
kindest regards to yourself, I remain very truly yours, James
Walker."
That War Between the States would bring forth new national heroes
on both sides of the conflict, who would eclipse William Walker
and occupy the front pages of the nation’s newspapers.
His story was captured through his own writings and those of
his officers. There were other books written on the Tennessean.
The Tennessee State Library and Archives also maintains a small
collection of papers and artifacts pertaining to William Walker
and were responsible for much of the information provided here.
The latest book about his life was entitled "The World
and William Walker" written by Albert Z. Carr was published
in 1975. A movie of his life was made last year, but failed
to capture the essence that made Walker who he was and what
he meant to America. Harper’s Weekly gave him the epitaph
when they wrote: "Had William Walker been an Englishman
or a Frenchman, he would never have become a ‘filibuster’,
but would have found ample scope for his extraordinary talents
in the legitimate service of his country."
