William Walker (8 May 1824-12 September 1860) was an American filibuster who served as President of Nicaragua from 12 July 1856 to 1 May 1857, succeeding Patricio Rivas and preceding Maximo Jerez and Tomas Martinez. He previously served as President of Lower California from 1853 to 1854 and of the Republic of Sonora in 1854, but he successfully took over Nicaragua as it struggled with a civil war; he was ultimately overthrown by the other Central American nations following the "Filibuster War" and was executed by the Hondurans in 1860 after launching a failed attempt to create an English-speaking separatist country in Honduras.
Biography[]
Early career[]
Walker in Sonora, 1853
William Walker was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1824, the nephew of US Senator John Norvell and the older brother of Norvell and James Walker, whom he would later make lieutenants in the Nicaraguan army. He obtained a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania at the age of 19 after studies in Edinburgh and Heidelberg, and he practiced in Philadelphia before moving to New Orleans to study law. In 1849, he moved to San Francisco and became a journalist; he conceived the idea of conquering large portions of Latin America and turning them into US slave states. However, Walker and his fiancee Ellen Martin were in favor of the state-by-state, gradual abolition of slavery as a means to avoid civil war. In 1853, he travelled to Guaymas, but Mexico refused to accept his offer to create a colony, so he began to recruit proslavery inhabitants of Kentucky and Tennessee to form a buffer colony, the Republic of Sonora. On 15 October 1853, Walker and 45 men captured La Paz, the capital of the sparsely populated Baja California, creating the new republic of "Lower California" using the same legal system as Louisiana. Less than three months later, he created the Republic of Sonora from portions annexed to Lower California, but a lack of supplies and strong resistance from the Mexican government forced him to retreat. Walker was put on trial back in the USA, but he was acquitted by the sympathetic jury after 8 minutes.
Nicaragua[]
Walker's triumphant banquet
On 3 May 1855, however, Walker launched another expedition, this time to Nicaragua. There, the Liberal Party of Nicaragua and the Conservative Party of Nicaragua were in the midst of a civil war, and there was interest in creating the "Nicaragua Canal" to link the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean. The Liberals hired Walker and several other American filibusters as mercenaries, and President Francisco Castellon gave a contract for Walker to bring 300 "colonists" to Nicaragua, circumventing the Neutrality Act. Walker inflicted heavy casualties on the Conservatives at the First Battle of Rivas, and he conquered their capital of Granada on 13 October and took effective control of the country. As commander of the army, he used President Ponciano Corral Acosta as a puppet, and he took his mistress Dona Yrena as his own. Potential American and European investors in the canal feared that Walker would take over all of Central America for use as US slave states, so Cornelius Vanderbilt sent agents to the Costa Rican government to help them overthrow Walker. On 20 March 1856, Walker launched a preemptive invasion of Costa Rica, but the advance force was defeated at Santa Rosa. During the Campaign of 1856-57, the Costa Ricans invaded Nicaragua, defeating Walker at Rivas on 11 April 1856. However, a cholera epidemic plagued the troops and civilians there, and, within a few months, 10,000 civilians (10% of the population) had died. President Jose Santos Guardiola sent Honduran troops to assist the Costa Ricans, and Salvadoran troops were also dispatched to join the intervention.
However, Walker retreated to the Nicaraguan capital of Granada after the fall of Comayagua, and he reinstated slavery, made English the official language, and attempted to attract immigrants from the USA. He also revoked Nicaragua's emancipation of slavery in 1821, making him popular among American Southerners, including the politician Pierre Soule, and this move was done in an attempt to attract US support for his slave state. However, on 14 December 1856, 4,000 Costa Rican, Honduran, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan troops laid siege to Granada, so Walker's general Charles Frederick Henningsen had Granada smashed, burned, and flattened over the course of two weeks. On 1 May 1857, Walker was pressured by Costa Rica and the Central American armies to surrender to the US Navy, and he was repatriated, being greeted as a hero in New York City. Within six months, he attempted another expedition to Central America, but he was arrested by the US Navy Home Squadron. Walker wrote an account of his campaign back in the US, but he would soon return.
In 1860, Walker returned to Central America, and British colonists in Roatan approached Walker and tried to convince him to help them establish an English-speaking government over the Bay Islands Department. He disembarked in the port city of Trujillo, but he was captured by the Royal Navy and delivered to the Honduran government. The Hondurans had Walker sentenced to death and executed by firing squad at Trujillo, Honduras on 12 September 1860 at the age of 36.