Who was William Walker?
William Walker becomes something of a mystery on a closer look.
Considered an American patriot by many in his own time, his name comes down to us in History texts, if mentioned at all, as a filibuster seeking to expand slavery.
William Walker is a somewhat enigmatic and little understood character from the 1850s. He is a fascinating personfrom the past whose encyclopedia niche as a filibuster does not well reflect the reality of who he was for most of his life. He is far more complex. He was from Nashville, TN, and his family never owned any slaves. He was frequently accused of having free-soil sympathies both for his Newspaper writing in New Orleans, and his politics as a State Representative in California. He was a college graduate by the age of 14, a medical doctor by 18, and passed the bar as a lawyer by 21, he was a newspaper editor, a military leader, and a President of a country by the time he died in his mid thirties.
William Walker was born and raised in America’s age of expansionism and Manifest Destiny. He was from the South in a time when the most popular book was Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. He was still a young man at the time of his death, and his romanticized ideas of chivalry and honor are probably paramount in understanding him. He learned fencing at college in Nashville, and was said to be quite handy with a sword. Legend has it that he fought duels while studying in France, and he fought several more duels in the course of his travels. There is little doubt that being from Nashville at the time that he lived that he was well aware of the growing legend of Andrew Jackson, and perhaps tried to emulate this dueling hero of Southern honor and American expansionism.
Soon after Walker became a medical doctor, his mother died of a disease he was powerless to cure, and he gave up medicine to study the law. He quickly passed the bar, but restlessness drove him from Nashville to, the then biggest city of the south, New Orleans, Louisiana. Here he practiced Law briefly partnered with his friend Edmund Randolph. However, the profession does not seem to have suited his moralistic and idealistic temperament, and he soon took down his shingle to take up the pen of a newspaper editor. In this capacity he managed to find some success, although he was often criticized for being soft on slavery, and wrote a biting criticism of the old South Carolina pro-slavery man John C. Calhoun. He met a young woman, and they were engaged to be married, but a Cholera epidemic struck New Orleans, and his fiancée was stricken with the disease and died. Walker was heartbroken, and his writing suffered. His paper went bankrupt, and he left New Orleans almost penniless.
A few years later we find him as an editor of a paper in San Francisco, California. There was a vast outcry in the California press of the time over Indian attacks in the Sonora. This was technically Mexican Territory, but young Walker took it upon himself to form a small army and invade the Sonora ”to protect its people.” In a story that can be read as high comedy he “conquered” the Sonora in a single day with less than 50 men by taking its capital. He instantly declared it a new free republic with himself as the President, and annexed additional territory by decree. Unfortunately for his grand visions, the Mexicans already living there didn’t crave their freedom in quite the way he had expected, and he came under attack by Mexican irregulars. He marched and counter marched in the Sonora for months, but was eventually driven back into American Territory wearing one boot and one “captured” shoe. His exploits made him a minor national hero in the press, and those men who had followed him would follow him again.
A call came from a faction fighting in a civil war in Nicaragua for Walker to come and aid the democratic side. He gathered his men and some new recruits, and sailed for Nicaragua. In a series of quick victories his small band defeated all opposition within the small country, and he was elected President. He was getting reinforcements and supplies from Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Accessory Transit Company. Vanderbilt had an interest in rail and steamboat lines across Nicaragua to the Pacific. In a huge blunder Walker conspired with managers of the company to revoke Vanderbilt’s contract and grant it to them. Vanderbilt pulled out all his steam ships and reinforcements and supplies stopped coming. Nicaragua’s neighboring Central American countries then took exception to his presence, and Walker was driven out. In an effort to draw Southern support he declared slavery legal in Nicaragua, but reinforcements and supplies did not materialize. Thousands of his opponent’s forces died as he fought a bloody siege defense at Rivas with a few hundred men, but without reinforcements, ammunition, or supplies his little army was driven out of the country.
At this juncture, William Walker begins to resemble the William Walker we find in the encyclopedia. He toured the south seeking men and money to make an attempt to regain his “Presidency.” To his death he would claim to be the duly elected President of Nicaragua. His speeches, tuned to a Southern audience at the height of the secession crisis (after “Bleeding Kansas”) are militantly pro-slavery even to the extent of promising to enslave the entire non-white population of Nicaragua. The free-soiler who had never owned a slave and who had been called an abolitionist and thrown out of a window in California was now an outspoken champion of “the cause.” So, are we seeing a Walker corrupted by power at the end of his story? Or, are we seeing the turning of a tragic hero who’s fatal flaw is not being able to live up to or give up a romantic vision of himself? Doubtless the common perception of Walker stems from these last desperate years before he died by Honduran firing squad leading a small band back into Nicaragua. Are his last desperate years all that he was? Should the rest of the story be forgotten? Who was William Walker? His gravestone bears merely his name and the single Spanish word "fulisado." The military leadership, taking territory, and dueling which made Andrew Jackon a legend led young Walker to an early death.
