POPULAR IMPRESSIONS OF ANTEBELLUM FILIBUSTERS:
SUPPORT AND OPPOSITION IN THE MEDIA
______A Thesis
Presented to the Faculty of California State University Dominguez Hills ______In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in The Humanities ______by Robert H. Zorn Summer 2016
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
TITLE PAGE ……………………………………………………………………………...i
TABLE OF CONTENTS ………………………………………………………………...ii
LIST OF FIGURES ……………………………………………………………………...iii
ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………………..iv
CHAPTER
1. THE FILIBUSTER IDEOLOGY ……………………………...... 1
2. WILLIAM WALKER AND HENRY CRABB, EXCEPTIONAL AMERICANS …...12
3. THE IMPACT OF THE PRESS ON PUBLIC PERCEPTION ………………………26
4. NON-FICTION’S ROLE IN SUPPORTING THE FILIBUSTER IDENTITY ……...39
5. DEPICTIONS OF FILIBUSTERS IN FICTION AND ART ………...….………….. 47
6. AN AMBIGUOUS LEGACY ……………………………………….……...……….. 56
WORKS CITED ………………………………………………………………………... 64
ii
LIST OF FIGURES
PAGE
1. National Monument in San Jose Costa Rica Depicting the Defeat of William Walker...... 53
2. Playbill of 1857 Featuring an Original Musical Theatre Production Based on William Walker ...... 55
iii
ABSTRACT
The term “filibuster” in the 1800s was nearly synonymous with, and a variation of, the word “freebooter;” pirate to some, liberator to others. Prompted by the belief in
Manifest Destiny, increased tensions regarding slavery, the fear of a disappearing
Southern identity, and a growing population of young, disaffected men in an increasingly industrialized society, the antebellum filibustering phenomenon left significant impressions on the perception of the American public, fueling the debate between southern and northern ideologies.
An examination of antebellum news, literature, art, public opinion, and politics brings into focus the personalities of high-profile filibusters. This contemporaneous media coverage of antebellum filibustery also left an ideological imprint on Americans. While some Americans were sympathetic to filibustering, others were opposed to the practice and its themes of imperialism, racism, and sexism. The ideology was closely tied to the idea of American Exceptionalism, a mindset still seen in American thinking today.
1
CHAPTER 1
THE FILIBUSTER IDEOLOGY
The American antebellum filibuster, largely forgotten in American history, seemed destined for historical greatness during the 1850s. The phenomenon acted as a flash point for the debate around American expansionism and slavery, and a building block in an evolving American identity. Foes of expansion used filibustery as an example of expansion’s evils, and filibuster supporters used it as an example of the American spirit.
Neither was interested in compromise, but both recognized qualities of distinctly
American thought in the filibusters’ antics. That they were celebrated in public, in song, literature and performance, is testament to the public’s perception of men like General
William Walker, “The Gray-Eyed Man of Destiny, “ “Renaissance Man,” and self-
appointed “President of Lower California, Sonora, and Nicaragua,“ whose methods were
questionable, but whose character and qualities (both factual and imaginative) were
admired and promoted.
The filibuster ideology, an extension of Manifest Destiny, spoke to the perceived
personal destinies of American individuals who believed they, by virtue of Christianity,
American citizenship and ethnicity were superior to others. No wonder Walker and others
so brazenly flouted international law and invaded where they pleased. At the time, most
white Americans agreed they had a democratic and religious right to occupy more
territory and the filibuster translated this idea into actions that captured the American
attitude and imagination.
2
History books in the United States give short shrift to the phenomenon and since the disappearance of filibustering at the end of the nineteenth century the term itself has broken out of its etymology to take on an entirely different meaning. In antebellum
America, particular in the 1850s, a filibuster was nearly synonymous with “freebooter,” with the additional criteria of being white, American, Christian, and having the ultimate goal of American expansion. The antebellum filibusters were American citizens who illegally invaded neighboring and sovereign countries with the intent of overthrowing the existing government, creating a new republic and/or setting the region up for annexation to the United States, and, in some cases, the expansion of Southern slavery. In January
1853, when the term was regularly in the news, the editorial section of Harper’s
Magazine, “Editor’s Table,” offered this definition:
Filibustering is a term lately imported from the Spanish, yet destined, it
would seem, to occupy an important place in our vocabulary. In its
etymological import it is nearly synonymous with piracy. It is commonly
employed, however, to denote an idea peculiar to the modern progress, and
which may be defined as the right and practice of private war, or the claim
of individuals to engage in foreign hostilities aside from, and even in
opposition to the government with which they are in political membership.
(266)
While the writer’s prediction that the word “filibuster” was destined to be an important part of the American vocabulary materialized, it only came true as a word with a wholly different meaning than recognized by an antebellum audience. Today, this
3 popular term is used to indicate a parliamentary procedure in congress that attempts to stall legislation.
In nineteenth-century America, the term was championed by Americans bent on expansion, conquest, and the practice of slavery for the purpose of imposing a white
American version of civilization. The term “filibuster” can be variously used in referring to the general ideology of white Christian superiority and political forms physically forced on other peoples, the practice of these illegal conquests, a specific campaign, or the men who were involved in efforts to extend white power in the hemisphere. For the purposes of this discussion, references to the acts of the filibuster will be referred to as
“filibustery” or “filibustering,” and the term antebellum filibuster refers specifically to filibuster operations occurring between 1850 and 1860. While many filibusters of the time held various governmental positions at different stages of their lives, their actions were independent of any official U.S. policy or official encouragement.
The term, then, carried an equal or greater level of negativity, signaling a maverick, if not contrary, disposition on the part of these self-proclaimed autonomous invaders. The ostensible goal of these renegades was to declare independent republics, often with the intent of bringing about eventual U.S. annexation of the claimed territory, and at times with the intent of establishing themselves as heads of a new and independent country and enabling the men who followed them a place of power in the new regime. These acts were direct violations of U.S. neutrality laws and were often prosecuted by the U.S.
Government, though with little consequence, as quick and easy acquittal for the offenders generally resulted as sympathetic jurists, judges, former U.S. officials, and military
4 officers presided over these trials. Manifest Destiny was the overriding ideology behind nineteenth-century filibustery that justified the adventurers’ actions, both in their own eyes and those Americans who supported it.
From an American perspective, the antebellum filibuster is obscure, but certain
Central American countries have kept the memory alive by including stories of William
Walker (the “King” of the filibusters and arguably the last antebellum filibuster) in their official histories. In mid-late eighteenth-century America, Walker’s exploits were material for romanticists, apologists, supporters and opponents alike, but with the coming of the Civil War and Walker’s humiliating defeat in 1860, it was relegated to a small footnote in the history of the United States. In Nicaragua and Costa Rica, however,
Walker’s exploits were of grave national concern and his defeat, now celebrated as a national holiday, was a significant chapter in the formation of those countries, their governments, and their Central American geographical alliances. In Costa Rica, the annual holiday known as Juan Santamaria Day celebrates Walker’s defeat and the common soldier, Juan Santamaria, who died bravely by exposing himself to enemy fire in a successful bid to set fire to crucial Walker resources. Santamaria is Costa Rica’s most celebrated combatant. In 1948 Costa Rica abolished the military and has no standing army, and Santamaria has become a symbol of that policy of non-aggression, who gave his life so that future Costa Ricans would not have to fight for theirs. This is the main, and unintended, legacy of those who are known in Central America as Filibusteros.
At first glance, when written histories are available, antebellum filibustering does seem a fairly insignificant phenomenon in history. Its insignificance, though, is cosmetic,
5 as the exploits of these adventurers helped to fuel Manifest Destiny, spark American imaginations, provide material for a growing American press moving towards a closer-to- real-time model of reporting, and shape personal attitudes and ideologies for many individual Americans. The filibuster was the public amalgamation of the Christian claim of America as A City upon a Hill, Individualism and Democracy, Exceptionalism, and
Anglo-Saxon supremacy.
Additionally, the actions of American filibusters provided Central American governments with a common foe, a legacy seen as an instrumental factor in Central
American and U.S. relations from the Civil War to the present (Stout x). Filibusters, who were popular in the nineteenth-century, have been almost completely forgotten as individuals (which says something about a public backlash against imperialism after the
Civil War), but their ideas are perpetuated today in the form of a literary romantic archetype, some political ideologies, and as material for modern and historical fiction in literature and film. The term “filibuster” itself (in the antebellum meaning), and the men who lived their adventures, are rarely remembered in the United States, but a recognizable iconic character based on rugged individualism and white supremacy is.
The filibuster ideology was nothing new to the world. Surprise and brute force were tactics justified by a genuine belief that might makes right, that the aggressor embodied a superior self, and that God looked down smilingly upon them. The term “filibuster” derives from “freebooter” and was originally used to describe a buccaneer, a pirate; and, just as a pirate can be synonymous with freebooter, so too is the antebellum filibuster.
6
The filibusters were no less brazen nor cruel than the lawless pirate, and were often referred to as such by Central and North American news writers and public officials.
Filibusters and those who supported their actions made little effort to disguise their intentions. They discussed publicly the exploitation of women and subjugation of a whole culture of people. In support of expansionism, Manifest Destiny, and filibustery,
California passed what were called “Greaser Laws,” legally taking rights away from
Latinos, and American newspapers ran articles describing Latinos as “greasers,” synonymous in their minds as sub-human both morally and physically and insisted that
Anglo-Saxon Americans owed it to the human race to dominate them (Hayes-Bautista
258).
They not only thought it their duty to do so, but their destiny as well. In an 1845 article in the United States Democratic Review, John L. O’Sullivan (credited with coining the term “Manifest Destiny”) wrote that those opposed to Texas’ annexation were
“limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions” (O’Sullivan 6). Proponents of expansionism like O’Sullivan overlooked the fact that Texas was annexed in a less than scrupulous way and that the “historic techniques of American frontiersmen” (Merk 20) such as the Texans became a model for filibustering and the American mission. Simply by virtue of numbers and ambition,
O’Sullivan concluded that God personally insisted that the United States annex all of
North and Central America, and that anything less would be a grievance against
Americans’ “honest” work towards the goal.
7
In evoking Providence O’Sullivan advanced the concept of A City upon a Hill. The phrase was taken from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and was popularized in American culture after Puritan John Winthrop's 1630 sermon A Model of Christian Charity. The idea helped to define ideology in nineteenth century America as exceptionalist thought and the Christian concept of “A City upon the Hill” blended to promote Manifest
Destiny, and in some cases a distorted belief that not only were American Christians bound to be an example to the world, they had the right to do so at the expense of others.
They were not just an example of charity, but were God’s chosen in God’s country.
R.W.B Lewis, in The American Adam, explores the American myth and the unique opportunity people had in the new world.
The new habits to be engendered on the new American scene were
suggested by the image of a radically new personality, the hero of the new
adventure: an individual emancipated from history, happily bereft of
ancestry, untouched and undefiled by the usual inheritances of family and
race; an individual standing alone, self-reliant and self-propelling, ready to
confront whatever awaited him with the aid of his own unique and inherent
resources. (Lewis 5)
This vision of the American identity was the basis of the filibuster ideology, but other issues and beliefs compromised the altruism of the original concept.
That antebellum filibustering occurred at the beginning of a revolution in early electronic communication should not be lost in the telling. Technological advancements,
8 especially the telegraph, enabled wide spread circulation of newspaper material, a primary source of information on the antebellum filibusters.
Newsman O’Sullivan’s exhortations, fueled by a new media that delivered timely correspondence, kindled an expansionist attitude throughout the country that would only be quelled or interrupted by outright Civil War, and voices such as O’Sullivan’s helped extend an attitude of racial superiority beyond black and white to include any skin color darker than the typical White European. From 1846-1848, following close on the heels of
O’Sullivan’s pronouncement of America’s destiny, The Mexican-American War provided expansionists vindication for their beliefs.
Thomas Hietala relates in his Preface to the Revised Edition of Manifest Design:
American Exceptionalism and Empire that in 1846 President James Polk’s “editorial voice,” Thomas Ritchie, wrote that “The Mexican population can offer but a slight resistance to the North American race” (Hietala ix). It is telling that such a high-ranking government official would look at the Mexican-American War as a battle between
“races” more than a clash of countries. Ritchie insisted that the Mexican people’s “motley character and physical structure” would ensure their defeat. Just two and a half years after the term Manifest Destiny was coined, the outcome of the war inspired Americans to further expansion and gave rise to the antebellum filibuster.
Famous slavery apologist and politician John C. Calhoun, who was pro-slavery but anti-expansionist, publicly discussed the base nature of the American conquest of
Western territory. In a speech to the senate in 1848, Calhoun called Americans “a warlike people . . . [having] a destroying power, directed against humanity, making him the most
9 irresistible of pirates and the most unscrupulous of oppressors” (Greenberg, Manhood
170). For Calhoun and others who expounded the ideal of the antebellum American as a ruthless adventurer, the baseness of the expansionist was tempered in their minds by laws and religion, a combination that defined and glorified the martial American identity and promoted exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny.
For some, the ideal of the American in antebellum America, especially in the South, was personified in the antebellum filibuster and, through the efforts of newspapers, fictional publications, and correspondence, this ideal was constructed, promoted, and became further rooted in the American psyche. Without the compliance and defiance of the literature of the time, the antebellum filibuster might have been an even more obscure historical note than it became. The fact that the Civil War effectively ended the practice of filibustering (with a few post-civil war exceptions) and the phenomenon melted into obscurity should not lessen the impact on the American psyche and its identification with the ideal.
Despite the popularity of Manifest Destiny the American Government was publicly against filibustering, but privately the phenomenon had supporters all the way up to The
White House. While the U.S. government did not publicly support filibustering, it is clear that they took advantage of its impact on public perception. In 1853 Mexican officials interviewed ship captains and passengers regularly to gain intelligence about filibuster activity and in December had estimated that nearly two thousand filibusters were en route to Mexico. Mexican officials and the general public saw these filibuster campaigns as a real threat that could be an American Government backed prelude to invasion by real
10
U.S. military forces. On December 30th the Gadsden Treaty was signed, as Mexican
officials conceded territory rather than lose it in an impending invasion (Rippy 179-80).
Seeing as the majority of filibustering targets took place in Northern Mexico and Central
America, Americans of Spanish descent held a polar opposite view of the practice as
perpetrated by a mostly white majority. Latin Americans believed this was a concentrated
effort by American interests to take their land and enslave their people for their own gain,
while whites, who made up the lion’s share of the influential American public at this
time, largely saw filibustering as a way to continue the expansion of the United States
and bring civilization to the indigenous peoples who they perceived as incapable of
managing a civilized society.
Through a combination of a newly expanded and timely press, and wider distribution
of literature, such as novellas and travel brochures, art, correspondence, and performance,
the chronicling of the antebellum filibuster phenomenon led to a certain American “self”
that can still be seen in American attitudes today that is based on a lingering idea of
Manifest Destiny.
In the press, the filibuster was both praised and vilified, but the vilification was
muted. Throughout the United States, the English-language press vastly outnumbered its
Spanish-language counterparts, so the rosy version of the filibuster is what most of the
American public read. In literature, the filibuster was nearly always presented in a
positive light and his fictional virtues extolled and, from the minds of filibuster fiction
authors such as Richard Harding Davis and Brett Harte, a sub-genre of the antebellum
mercenary romance developed in fiction (Harrison 53). Art, too, had a hand in the
11 development of the American filibuster archetype. In paintings and travel brochure art, the filibuster and those who would benefit from the acquisition of more land, were depicted as heroic, peaceful, destined, and living in, or striving for, idyllic conditions.
Ideologically, the archetype that entertained readers was iterated in federal and state policy, and made exemplar in powerful political individuals, some of whom were experienced filibusters prior to their political careers. However, the timing of these efforts could not have been worse as most of the country was caught up in the inexorable march towards civil war to settle their differences and, while men like Walker and Sonora filibuster Henry Crabb were celebrated publicly, there were more pressing matters for both the government and the citizenry. As a result, the support these men had hoped to garner in the form of funds, troops, and supplies did not materialize. The filibusters appear to have been of the opinion that if they proceeded with their plans, supporters would rally to their sides. Indeed, Mexican officials believed the same. Instead, however, they embarked on their adventures with expectations of support that never developed, leaving them to fend for themselves in hostile territory with a relatively small number of followers. And yet, the damage they achieved with such small numbers is a remarkable testament to the tenacity of men like Walker and Crabb.
12
CHAPTER 2
WILLIAM WALKER AND HENRY CRABB, EXCEPTIONAL AMERICANS
In reviewing the filibuster’s reception by the public based on news, literature and art, two individuals stand out as representative of the antebellum filibuster for their notoriety, character, background, aspiration, and folly. William Walker, often coined the “King of
The Filibusters,” and Henry Crabb, perhaps the next most famous filibuster (if for no other reason than the gruesome details of his death) were models of what antebellum
America saw as a filibuster, and for many the ideal American. These men were models of a martial American identity with a destiny. These would-be feudal lords championed expansionism, Manifest Destiny, race-based slavery, and apparently limitless individual liberties, provided you were American, white, male, and Christian (particularly
Protestant, but not excluding native Catholics as Walker himself was Catholic).
The filibusters and their supporters proscribed to a distinct ideology that regarded white, Christian American men as “exceptional,” or superior, to any other demographic.
There is some irony in this, as the term “exceptional” as it regarded nineteenth-century
Americans was taken from Alexis de Tocqueville’s writings and is a misnomer, as de
Tocqueville’s comment did not express the idea that Americans were superior, but rather were experiencing an exceptionally unique situation with the United States dominating an enormous region of North America with a fledgling democratic government.
Nonetheless, Americans fastened onto the misinterpretation. Closely aligned with
13
Southern slave-owner sensibilities and the Southern aristocracy, these exceptionalists felt they were duty-bound to save the so-called lesser races from themselves.
The first rule of filibustering, at least in the public perception, was to support a native faction that wished to rebel against an oppressive government. Whether or not said faction involved a legitimate struggle for liberty was an entirely different question, and filibusters relied on the illusion that they were freedom fighters for support, recruitment, and their own legitimacy. Some newsmen wrote that Walker’s first excursion to
Nicaragua was legitimate because he was invited by one of these “independence movements,” but he returned solely for personal reasons (Martin 849). The truth of the matter, which is supported in various direct sources, is closer to the idea that Walker was in it for himself all along, from his first Presidential self-declaration in Baja in 1854 to his last, as he ultimately faced a Honduran firing squad in 1860. Prior to Walker’s misadventures, filibustering attempts had been made in primarily Cuba and Mexico.
There were also early attempts in Canada and even rumored plans for Hawaii, but neither suffered from the inner turmoil the filibuster needed to foment chaos and secure alliances. During the height of antebellum filibuster activities from 1850-1860, both
Mexico and Central America exhibited the requisite turbulence and Crabb and Walker were eager to take advantage. In 1850s Mexico, liberal factions openly opposed conservatives and power shifted back and forth, and from state to state. This schism between pro-republican forces (liberals) who, among other things, aimed to reduce the power of the Catholic Church and pro-monarchical and Catholic Church forces
(conservatives) resulted in The Reform War of 1857-1860, a conflict that continued for
14 many years. In 1850s Central America, most of the nascent countries were still trying to reorganize after the break of The Federal Republic of Central America in 1823 and countries such as Nicaragua were in constant flux between factions.
Crabb, due to his connections and a burgeoning battle between factions, set his eyes on Sonora. Sympathizers painted Crabb as a man on a peaceful colonization mission with former citizens of Sonora who only wanted to rid themselves of the current corrupt regime. The full details of his heavily armed and militarized “colonization party” emerged only later, and the fact that Crabb’s Sonoran allies (in-laws actually) were
“aristocratic” exiles interested in reclaiming their land-holdings never really factored into any discussions of Crabb’s adventure and the massacre of his troops. Public perception and the celebrity status of these men at the height of antebellum filibustering’s popularity fostered the idea that the means justified the end, and that individual liberties were limitless, but only applied to strong, i.e., white, males.
California was the staging area for these men’s ambitions, and the racial injustice that developed there after annexation made their actions representative of the attitudes of the white majority of the time. Crabb’s story follows Walker’s in several ways in terms of personal background and ambition. Both men were highly regarded by their peers and the general public. Further, both were well educated in the South, and both were clearly influenced and supportive of the Southern agenda based on slave labor and a belief in the right of white European men to hold rights and privileges above other cultures or peoples, rights they believed should be guaranteed by the federal government.
15
Crabb, unlike Walker, first worked within the system to gain the power and notoriety he craved. Prior to his filibustering campaign in Sonora he was a lawyer and Whig State
Senator in California and member of The Know-Nothing Party, which, along with some
Southern Democrats, systematically tried to codify a racial hierarchy that was developing in California in the 1850s (Benavides 57). Crabb was an unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate for the Know-Nothings in 1856, and, once that approach was exhausted, turned to filibustery. In California, through marriage, Crabb forged familial ties with a once- prominent Sonoran expatriot family, the Ainsas, who were originally from Sonora and had fallen out of privilege, lost their holdings, and moved to California.
In 1857, through what Crabb thought was a legitimate alliance between himself, the
Ainsas, and General Ignacio Pesquiera (a factional commander in Sonora’s then-disputed government), Crabb, with the help of some Ainsa brothers and Sonoran contacts working with Pesqueira, devised a filibuster plan to invade Sonora, join up with Pesquiera against his rival Governor Manuel María Gándara, establish a “colony” of filibustering
Americans to allegedly act as a defense against the Apache, and re-instate the Ainsa’s to their privileged status. All of this failed. Shortly after Crabb’s party entered Sonora, unbeknownst to him, Pesquiera had already defeated Gandara and taken control of the
Province and promptly declared Crabb an enemy illegally on Mexican soil.
It could be conjectured that as long as Gandara was in control, Pesquiera held Crabb’s expedition as a possible ally if needed and a scapegoat if not. It went the way of the scapegoat. With Pesquiera gaining control of the area before Crabb could do any real damage, he no longer needed any outside help and he began to rally the people against
16
the invaders, most likely to help solidify his power and bolster his reputation. It is said
that Crabb and his men fought bravely and managed to hold out for a few days against
local defenses at Caborca. Crabb and his men were holed up inside buildings across from
the town’s church where the village staged their defense and which Crabb attacked
repeatedly. In the end, Crabb and his surviving men were executed, Crabb himself was
decapitated and his head stored in a large jar of liquor.1 A small band of men separated
from the main group before the battle managed to escape back across the border to tell
the tale of Crabb’s demise (Forbes 49-56).
The news was picked up first by the San Diego Herald, which told the story from the
point of view of the filibuster sympathizer, decrying the savage Mexican assault on Crabb
and his men, and condemning them for their brutality. The article fails to detail the
circumstances of Crabb’s illegal presence in Sonora and suggests by omission that he and
his party were legitimate and peaceful colonizers (Later from Sonora 2). This is the story
that found its way East to the non-western American press and obviously fueled the anti-
Hispanic, pro-slavery, pro-expansion population. In California, though, the incident was
not so cut and dry. The Los Angeles based Spanish-language newspaper, El Clamor
Publico, ran a reprint of the Herald’s article, along with Editor Francisco Ramirez’
opinions of the event, and his version of the story expressed no sympathy for the
filibusters.
1 Accounts vary in the exact detail, sources such as The San Diego Herald reported that Crabb’s head was stored in a bottle of mescal , others use the word “liquor” and Robert E. May, in Manifest Destiny’s Underworld relates that it was an earthern jar of vinegar.
17
Ramirez was one of California’s most outspoken critics of filibustering.
Unfortunately for him, and the victims of filibustering’s violence, his voice was not loud enough to be heard anywhere beyond his immediate Spanish-speaking readership. He was, in essence, preaching to the choir, while the proponents of filibustering were being reprinted all over the country. However, Spanish-language sources had some impact on filibustering. It is entirely possible that information printed in El Clamor Publico, often reprinted from other sources both domestic and abroad, led to additional support for
Mexican and Central American forces under attack from filibusters. If not El Clamor
Publico specifically, there is no doubt that news stories had a real impact on the results of these expeditions, as both Walker and Crabb (along with other filibusters) made no pretense of their intentions, and sometimes directly provided information to news sources
(Stout x).
Walker’s story differs from Crabb’s in containing several filibuster campaigns, including the most successful when he gained control of Nicaragua in 1857 and declared himself president, sought international recognition, and reinstated slavery. This occurred around the same time as Crabb’s ill-fated expedition and it is conjectured that the two worked in unison. While Crabb was typical in many ways to the “ideal” filibuster, it was
Walker who was called the “King of The Filibusters,” and whose personality, background, and ideology was most idolized by the general public, reproduced in literature and art, and made the exemplary antebellum model American, until he was ultimately defeated and executed and, by virtue of the embarrassment his activities
18 caused the American Government, virtually and quickly forgotten. Such are the vagaries of celebrity.
Walker’s exploits were wider in scope than most filibusters, as was his media coverage. One of Walker’s field officers, James Carson Jamison, who published With
Walker in Nicaragua in 1909, made it very clear that he believed Walker had every intention of eventually controlling all of Central America. Walker invaded or attempted to invade a sovereign country with bands of filibustering followers no less than five times, first in Baja and Sonora, then four times in Nicaragua. In 1853 in the Baja
Peninsula, with a small force, Walker easily ousted the provisional government, declared
Baja a new Republic, and appointed himself president. Apparently unsatisfied with this coup he quickly moved on to Sonora with an ever-dwindling force. He declared Sonora part of his new republic, but was soon thereafter expelled from Mexico. It was ludicrous to think that roughly eighty men could take and control all of Baja and Sonora, however, the two states were relatively sparsely populated and Mexico was rife with the kind of inner turmoil Walker wished to exploit. Nonetheless, his paltry band was no match for any kind of organized resistance.
With his sights set on Central America, Walker returned with a vengeance in 1856.
Walker saw the turmoil in Central America, as he did in Mexico a few years earlier, and took advantage of the situation to control a potentially lucrative region because of its transportation possibilities and the gulf coast’s proximity to the Southern U.S. He managed an alliance of sorts with one of the opposing sides in Nicaragua, and proceeded
19 to defeat the opposition and declare himself the President of a Republic for the second time, and on this occasion held power for nearly a year (Greenberg, Manifest 33.)
Walker, it was claimed, did not go into Nicaragua to expand Southern slavery, but the fact that he formally re-introduced slavery into Nicaragua during his time as president belies that claim. Walker, in his book titled The War in Nicaragua, railed against what he called the “free labor democracy of the North” for their lack of support in his efforts to expand slavery. He said it “is a proof of the hollowness of its professions of friendship for Southern interests” (Walker 265). It did not take long for Walker to introduce slavery, nor for him to completely lose control of the region and retreat to the U.S. with his tail between his legs. His final outing, in 1860, saw him back in Central America to reclaim power. Due to opposition by not only a coalition of Central American countries including
Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala, and British forces, this attempt ended in utter failure with Walker facing a firing squad. Minor filibustering adventures lingered after Walker, lasting arguably into the early 1900s, but the maverick scope of Walker’s antics would never be matched.
Both Walker and Crabb would undoubtedly have procured ranking commissions in the Confederate Army had they lived to see the Civil War. Both men were admired and supported for their character, politics, and ambition. Both were in their mid-thirties when they died, and shared a background of relative privilege, education, and means. Crabb also managed to set a record with his defeat. The execution of he and his men marked the most California State Legislators to die at the same time in the history of the state. Seven men in all within Crabb’s force were state legislators at one time, and all faced execution
20 on the morning of April 7, 1848. That so many elected officials were involved in Crabb’s raid emphasizes the popularity and identification many Americans held for the filibusters.
These pirates were their elected representatives.
As suggested by San Francisco newspaper The Daily Alta in 1857, Walker’s hijinks were counterproductive and, without his interference, cooperation and diplomacy would have secured trade routes more effectively (Highly 1). While peaceful cooperation would obviously make more sense, Walker’s biggest mistake in this regard was not necessarily his militancy towards the Central Americans or violating U.S. neutrality laws, but also in opposing international financial interests. In 1856 he ran afoul of Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose company was in the area to secure trade routes. Walker tried to seize Vanderbilt’s operation and, after the U.S. government refused to help him get rid of Walker directly,
Vanderbilt supported local resistance and with his sponsorship, along with a contingent of British regulars, cut off Walker’s supplies, precipitating his expulsion (Greenberg,
Manhood 32).
The second time, Walker again ran afoul of international economic interests. After
Walker’s ouster as President, the Nicaraguan government refused to allow Vanderbilt to continue his operation there so he vacated the region and refocused his efforts in Panama.
With Vanderbilt out of the picture, the British held control of British Honduras (later
Belize) and the Mosquito Coast with interests in inter-oceanic transit through the region.
Walker, looking for a way into Nicaragua, tried to cross through Costa Rica, posing an immediate threat to both Central American and British interests and, with a combined effort against the filibusters, Walker was soon captured. This time, surprisingly,
21 especially considering Walker’s many escapes from his foes and his own country’s court system, was the British decision to turn him over to Honduran authorities in Trujillo, who promptly executed him.
Public supporters of filibustering appeared to not have been overly concerned with physical appearance, assuming the person they were supporting was an active expansionist, male, and white. Crabb was a large man known for his physical attributes and was known to have killed a man in an election duel in 1848 (Wyllys 184). He was tall and handsome and looked every bit the southern gentleman, and it would have been no stretch at all to imagine him decked out in a Confederate officer’s uniform if he had survived to fight for the Confederacy.
Walker on the other hand, was a mouse of a man, said to be effeminate in physical appearance, bearing, and voice. Besides “King of The Filibusters,” he was also known as
“The Gray-Eyed Man of Destiny,” and it was this part of his persona, or mystique, that elevated him above his physical appearance. If James Carson Jamison’s book about
Walker in Nicaragua is any indication, Walker had a profound impact on people. Carson, in the opening sentence, invoked Walker’s status by calling him the “Gray-Eyed Man of
Destiny” and he explained what kind of person volunteered to filibuster, bemoaning what he considered a lost sense of romance. “In the 50’s,” he stated, “men looked upon life from a more romantic point of view.” He continues to essentially describe the Southern
Gentleman’s identity and beliefs complete with a regret over losing “the cavalier, with his plumes and ribbons,” and he insists that through no fault of their own or their character certain men had not outgrown the customs of their forefathers, such as the honor of
22
dueling. These, Jamison says, were the kind of men who were attracted to Walker’s
schemes (Jamison 12).
In an extreme example of the celebrity of William Walker, the Eastern press at the
time of his Presidency in Nicaragua heaped praise on the man for the ideals he
represented. In Pennsylvania, several newspapers with political attachments to the Know-
Nothings and Southern Democrats used Walker’s story to drum up support during the
election of 1856. Clearwater Pennsylvania’s Raftsman’s Journal, a known “arm” of the
American Party (Know-Nothings), reprinted a story from the Harrisburg Telegraph
(December 3 1856), after the presidential election of Democrat James Buchanan.
The Story from the Harrisburg Telegraph, printed by Raftsman’s Journal after the
election and at the height of Walker’s power, referred to the “rich resources” at Walker’s
disposal and emphasized the offer of “free farms” and “prosperity” to would-be settlers
answering Walker’s call. The article goes on to predict “Walker will be a conspicuous
person in the history of the events of the next four years.” The unknown writer makes
predictions while matter-of-factly stating that “The Southern Slaveholding Aristocracy”
and Northern Democrats will form an alliance, along with the “obscure rabblement,
whom they influence.” Nicaragua then, he says, would be the next state in the Union and
Walker would be its first Senator. As we see time and again, the filibusters and their
supporters make no secret of their beliefs and intentions. The article reprinted in
Raftsman’s Journal stated “Civil war had broken out in Nicaragua. Walker collected as
many followers as he could, sailed for that country, and joined one of the parties.” It just
so happened that he chose the winning side, but the blind support of Walker’s actions in
23 the article shows how much less people were concerned with the means than with the ends. For the Harrisburg Telegraph, Walker was a hero acting on the ideals of expansionists, slaveholders, nativists, i.e., all Americans who considered themselves exceptional and predestined to govern the hemisphere. The Harrisburg Telegraph story went on about Walker:
Although his exterior is not promising, yet it is said that Walker possessed
stern determination and undaunted courage. . . In temperament and mental
disposition Walker was prone to be fanatical. If born and educated in the
West of Scotland, he might have been a bigoted Presbyterian or
Covenanter, willing to persecute any one who doubted the doctrine of
predestination, or denied the orthodoxy of the Solemn League and
Covenant. Born and educated in the South, he is a manifest-destiny man,
willing to denounce, tar, feather, shoot or burn any one who disputes the
doctrine that Slavery is a blessing, and most anxious to extend its blessings,
and the dominion of Southern Slaveholders, over the West Indies and
Central America.
The story concludes with the biblical quotation 1 Corinthians 10:26: “Verily, the earth is the Saints, and the fullness thereof.” Here, the writer is comparing White Protestant
American Males to Saints (special people in the eyes of God) and virtually everyone else to the “fullness therof,” which references God bequeathing man the free use of all creatures, the beasts of the field, fowls of the air, fishes of the sea, and the trees, fruits, and plants of the earth, the “Fullness thereof.” In other words, everything and everybody
24 is the White man’s to do with as he pleases because he is superior and chosen by God
(General 1).
While the greater debate of slavery versus abolition raged in the East, and U.S. political maneuvering moved closer to disunion, Walker’s feverish attempts to reinvade
Nicaragua went on unabated. Northern Republicans had control of congress and their outrage over the Ostend Manifesto’s attempt to extend slavery was still fresh in their minds. Consequently, Buchanan and other pro-slavery (or at least status-quo) advocates could not advance their respective agendas, which included expansion into Central
America and Cuba (Klein 312).
Had the question of Southern slavery been answered in favor of expansion before
Walker’s exploits, he might have found the aid he so desperately needed but, as it was, the “Gray-Eyed Man of Destiny” turned out to be both ahead and behind the times, a throwback to a dying ideology and a visionary for a new world view.
In 1850, Latin America represented the last uncharted territory in the western hemisphere, the last accessible and workable land, and expansionists sensed this last chance to claim their own. A last chance, after centuries of Viking raids, feudal lords, and hereditary aristocracy, to carve out their own kingdom, to make themselves part of an aristocratic elite, to take advantage of the republican spirit sweeping the western hemisphere, and ironically use that to their own, personal, selfish advantage.
Filibusters took advantage of the idea of defending liberties abroad in order to take advantage of the conditions in Mexico and Central America during the nineteenth century. Fifty different governments proclaimed control over Mexico from 1821-1857,
25 including dictatorships, monarchies, and republics. During the same period, Central
America experienced its own share of unrest. In 1823, The Federal Republic of Central
America was established after Mexico gained independence, but it was a precarious agreement and it began to unravel in 1838 with the separation of the Republics of
Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica. From 1840 to 1857 a number of military operations attempted to reunify the Federal Republic, but none succeeded and internal conflict was rife in the individual republics. In 1857, the members of the old Federal Republic temporarily reunited against Walker’s threat to the region, and the strife that had attracted
Walker to Central America eventually settled into a peaceful collection of Central
American republics. The turmoil during the period, however, was key to the timing of antebellum filibustering. Mexico and Central America were relatively close geographically, but the ultimate impetus for Walker and Crabb to act on their ideas was their estimation of these regions’ ability to defend themselves while dealing with domestic infighting. In both cases, the invading Americans only served as the impetus to unite Mexicans and Central Americans.
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CHAPTER 3
THE IMPACT OF THE PRESS ON PUBLIC PERCEPTION
During the heyday of antebellum filibustery in the 1850s, Americans headed to the
West in droves. Several issues with the migration came into play that the filibusters were directly and indirectly involved with, including the California Gold Rush, transportation from east to west, an emerging press, a lack of governmental infrastructure, both physically and politically, the lingering question of black slavery and an unofficial codification of racial status.
The well-known term “Forty-Niner” refers to the massive influx during the California gold rush of citizens from all over the world, but primarily from the Eastern United
States. Not as well known is the incursion of people who preceded the Easterners in 1848 when the United States procured California. In 1848, before what David E. Hayes-
Bautista calls “Atlantic-Americans” migrated to California, the area experienced an in- flux of gambusinos (prospectors) from Latin America. These “fourty-eighters,” possibly as many as 10,000, and the holdover Hispanic residents of California known as
Californios (who were often landholders prior to the U.S. acquisition of California), were at the center of the Hispanic disenfranchisement and racial hierarchy forming in
California at the time (Benevides 54).
Prior to the United States gaining California, the Californios enjoyed considerable status in the region. Also, the early miners who migrated to California in 1848, mostly
27
Latino, enjoyed a brief period of gold rush success. However, upon the annexation of
California, the subsequent gold rush and inevitable invasion of California by Atlantic-
Americans and Europeans, the concepts of white supremacy and American exceptionalism overtook the West (Benavides 54).
Landed Hispanic men of status were bereft of their possessions and often their livelihoods and were no longer given the freedom that whites enjoyed under the law. In a court of law, against a “white” man, Californios and other Hispanics, blacks, Native
Americans, and Chinese immigrants were given unfair treatment. The situation was largely ignored and defended by the white majority in the news and other publications, such as Horace Bell’s Reminiscences of a Ranger. However, the Spanish-language press, such as El Clamor Publico out of Los Angeles, championed Latinos and decried the injustice in California and the antics of filibusters.
California, particularly in Los Angeles and San Francisco, was a major staging point for many filibuster campaigns and, aside from the few dissenting voices such as El
Clamor’s editor Francisco Ramirez, the region was a prime example of the perceptions, preconceptions, and bias of white Americans. Due to the frustration of the gold rush that came about by an over-saturation of miners and promises of adventure, San Francisco was a prime recruiting area for filibustering. Failed 49ers and other desperate men looked for an easier road to riches by joining filibuster forces. Filibustering was not so easy, however, and many of the men involved in these campaigns suffered serious deprivation and sometimes death. Nonetheless, the lure of taking what you want by any means,
28 especially justified by Manifest Destiny, was enough to make these men take risks in ventures that seemed so easy.
There were at least twenty newspapers published by and for California’s Spanish- language population between 1848 and 1869, and one of the more significant was El
Clamor Publico, created by Francisco Ramirez, a Californio and vehement opponent of filibustering. In 1855, the seventeen-year old Ramirez started his own paper, El Clamor
Publico, or The Public Outcry, which grew out of outrage in the Spanish-speaking communities of California over violations of individual rights and a growing, largely
California-based, series of filibuster expeditions. During the 1850s, the newly minted state of California underwent something of a revision of racial hierarchy (Benavides 54).
No longer, in many circumstances, were landed Californios considered landowners and, they could be required to spend inordinate amounts of money to defend their claims, leaving them destitute and at the mercy of squatters and land grabbers.
Anti-Hispanic laws went into effect, and further legislation such as that sought by The
Know-Nothing Party, looked to strip Californios of American citizenship, and “Greaser
Laws” in effect criminalized Latino specific indigence. The Vagrancy Act of 1855, also known as “The Greaser Act,” or “Greaser law,” described a vagrant as "all persons who are commonly known as 'Greasers,' or the issue of Spanish and Indian blood... and who go armed and are not peaceable and quiet persons." Efforts were also continuously made to do away with bilingual provisions in the State constitution and to end the property rights of women (Hayes-Bautista, Empowerment 8).
29
Ramirez was a unifying voice for diverse Latino communities, which at the time were
the majority in places like Los Angeles but were increasingly faced with the
consequences of an influx of Anglo Saxon immigration and Anglo-centric legislation, as
well as the challenge of giving voice to people with little influence (Hayes-Bautista, Gold
Rush 287). In A Gold Rush Salvadoran in California’s Latino World, 1857, authors
David E. Hayes-Bautista, Cynthia L. Chamberlin, and Nancy Zuniga delve into the
motivations and societal implications of a letter to the editor, or “minor epistolary” as
Bautista terms it, by one Angel Mora that was printed in El Clamor Publico. Mora’s
letter was a farewell to Los Angeles as he intended to flee the injustice of the area and
urged his fellow Californios to fight back, even to the extent of joining forces with
Mexican and Central American defenses to deflect efforts made by filibusters to take
them by force. This kind of letter writing was not uncommon in the Latino community,
where the writer publicly announced his dissatisfaction with life in California and his
intent to relocate (263).
This was the atmosphere that led to newsmen such as Ramirez to provide a Spanish-
speaking voice to oppose Latino injustice in general, and filibustering specifically.
However, Ramirez was not the only defender of Latinos in California. An English-
language newspaper based in San Francisco, The Daily Alta California, was usually
known as a critic of filibustering, and printed rumors about Henry A. Crabb’s expedition
that was subsequently revised and “verified” in a May 14, 1857 issue. The Alta copied the
May 9th article from The San Diego Herald and pronounced the story as fact based on the unknown author’s claim that their unnamed source (referred to in the article as
30
“informant”) “is intelligent and an eye-witness” (Highly 1). While the San Diego Herald and Alta California seemed to take their respective sources at their word, without corroboration or confirmation, El Clamor Publico was not so easily convinced. The account states that the Americans were the first to open fire at Caborca, but other than that single mention, the story is decidedly told in a highly agitating way to paint the filibusters as innocents and the Sonorans as savage killers. Among the more gruesome details were that nearly all of Crabb’s force was executed, that four of Crabb’s men fled to a house just across the American border and were slaughtered by Mexicans on U.S. soil, and that Crabb himself was decapitated.
According to the San Diego Herald story, Crabb met his death in a way that befitted a hero in a romantic novel. A fine line existed between news and literature, and The
Herald’s story is an example of fiction seeping into the news, with clear pandering to the filibustering support of the general public that was interested in expansionism and believed in Manifest Destiny. Crabb, who was reportedly tied to a post with his back to his executioners, met his execution “as calmly and quietly as if he were going to a pleasant home,” and the article makes a plea for action on the part of the U.S.
Government for the “revenge of a beastly crime” (Later from Sonora 2).
Ramirez saw it differently and reprinted the San Diego Herald story in El Clamor
Publico with his own commentary, calling into question some of the details. He flatly claimed that the specifics regarding the four men executed on American soil, and the whole business of the decapitated head of Crabb being preserved in a jar of mescal, were fabrications intentionally concocted by the San Diego Herald to foment outrage among
31
Americans, thus fueling support for filibustering (Mas de Sonora 1). As it turns out, the story as originally told was mostly true, and while there was little proof about the decapitated head in a jar of mescal, there was nothing to disprove it, and the part about the four escapees being killed on American soil is verified in diplomatic correspondence between the U.S. and Mexico and direct reports by Mexican military authorities to their superiors (Execution). But the truth of the matter in retrospect does not lessen the impact on perceptions at the time. For the vast majority of Americans, the story was an atrocity and Francisco Ramirez’ point of view did not circulate very far.
Like Walker, Crabb’s legacy is defined more from a non-American point of view.
Despite the tremendous public support for Crabb and the outrage following his death, his failure was nothing for the U.S. government to crow about and, for diplomatic reasons, the secondary incident on U.S. soil was glossed over and soon forgotten (Wyllys 193-
194). But in Sonora, Crabb represents the invader, the pirate, whose actions both served as a warning and as a unifying force for Mexico. While Walker’s antics provided
Nicaragua and Costa Rica with national holidays, Crabb’s actions provided Sonorans a rallying point and left them with place names, including the municipal seat of Caborca officially changing its name to Her ica Caborca in April 1948, to commemorate the
Mexican victory against Crabb, and the marked area in Sonora now called Filibuster
Camp, where Crabb and his men stayed (Bell 221).
Officially, there was one survivor from the Battle of Caborca, a 16-year old named
Charles Evans, who was placed in custody and taken south just before the executions.
Some say that Acting Commander of the Sonoran forces, Hilario Gabilondo, was against
32 the order to execute all of Crabb’s men and grabbed the young Evans and left the area before the executions took place. Evans’ deposition, that later found its way to the U.S.
Federal government files, places the San Diego Herald story in a more accurate light.
Although some details between Evans’ account, the Herald’s story, and Mexican military reports did not exactly match up, the gist of the story was close enough. Mexican military reports, however, paint a bit of a different picture by explaining that the military lost control of the situation to an undisciplined Mexican force bent on revenge (Execution).
But, this is a subtlety that would have likely been glossed over, even if accurately reported. The damage was done, and despite Crabb’s illegal activities and utter failure, like Walker, he was a hero of Manifest Destiny and rallying point for expansionists. To make matters worse for filibustering opponents, the deaths of six former California state legislators alongside Crabb intensified the furor over the incident. These public figures were examples of the kind of people that organized, led, and fought in antebellum filibusters.
Interestingly, Walker and Crabb knew each other since their boyhood days in
Nashville (Wyllys 183). Additionally, there were familial ties between Walker and the
Ainza family, ex-patriot Sonorans whose family Crabb married into after his failed U.S.
Senatorial bid on the Know-Nothing Party ticket. Crabb colluded with the Ainzas and
Sonoran officials in his Sonoran campaign, so there may have been some sort of secretive collaboration between Walker and Crabb. In Mas de Sonora, a May 16 1857 article in El
Clamor Publico, the author (presumably Ramirez but that is not noted), says that the
Ainzas were “old friends and protectors of Walker” (2).
33
In Walker’s trial of 1854 for filibustering, where he was quickly acquitted, Crabb, at the time a California State Senator, gave testimony to exonerate his old schoolmate. At the time, Crabb also offered to turn over to Walker a contract with Nicaraguan rebels for troops to support a proposed revolution there (Wyllys 184). Despite having no proof, theories circulated that Walker and Crabb worked together to control the whole of
Mexico and Central America and their mutual familiarity and the timeline of their events makes this theory at least plausible and, had this materialized in any form, journalist and fiction writer Richard Harding Davis’ assertion that Walker would have changed the course of history could have held some truth. In the filibustering decade of the 1850’s,
Walker was one of the most popular and recognizable figures in the country and coverage of Crabb’s disaster only served to bolster him and his questionable cause.
The press covered both Walker and Crabb extensively, and Harper’s Magazine, a popular publication with great range at the time, had some especially pertinent editorial comments on Walker’s death by Edward Sandford Martin from the Editor’s Easy Chair of November 1860. The opening sentence is a testament to the popular idea that if one had the opportunity to show people a better life, they had the right to do so, whether or not the people they intended to help wanted it. Martin begins with the statement that one could say William Walker had a right to go into Nicaragua the first time because he was asked to intervene by an indigenous faction, and later states that the second time was less legitimate because he appeared uninvited.
This was the basis of filibuster self-justification and the means used to justify themselves to the general public. While Martin goes on to criticize and condemn Walker
34
for his actions, he does so in the light of the idea that if only he hadn’t made such poor
decisions, his tyranny might have been accepted as a necessary means of extending the
slavery-based interests of the South. In the face of Walker’s failure, though, Martin can
freely denounce the man without actually refuting the ideology that drove him. He states
in the editorial piece that the idea that Walker was merely paving the way for the
Manifest Destiny of White Anglo-Saxons is no excuse for his incompetency and
concedes that “It may be in the divine order that we shall spread; but is equally in the
divine order that, at present, pirates will be hung.” Mr. Martin’s sentiment gives the
distinct idea that he is sorely disappointed in Walker’s failure, not because he chose to
illegally invade a sovereign country with the intent of subjugating its people, but because
he did a sloppy, bloody job of it and failed to secure the area for further Anglo-Saxon
expansion (Martin 849).
The Spanish-language press, as well as English-speaking anti-filibustering
publications, pushed back against the ideology of expansion and the rights of Americans
to take what they wanted in the name of liberation and destiny. In 1855, the Los Angeles
Star’s Spanish-language page mocked Walker, calling him “His Excellency Colonel
Walker, ex-president of the Republic of Baja California and Sonora” (qtd. In Gold Rush
281). In 1858, an article from San Francisco based El Éco del Pacifico was reprinted in
El Clamor Publico. Californios, it said, are “in a miserable state, as a consequence of the
injustices and outrages of which they have been victims, all of which are due to that race
that calls itself the regenerator of our nations” (Venta de Sonora 3).
35
Just six days before Walker’s execution in 1860, The Daily Alta ran an opinion article about the events transpiring for Walker in Nicaragua. At the time, Walker had likely been captured by the British Navy and sent unknowingly to Truxillo, Honduras (which Walker had recently sacked and abandoned) where he was shot. The unknown author of the article related the dangers that he surmised Walker brought to the United States through his actions, and applauds the actions of the U.S. government and the president to interfere with any further landings in Central America aimed at helping or supplying Walker. This article provides concrete evidence of the U.S. Government’s opposition to filibustering in general, and Walker in particular, indicative of the Republican power base growing at the time that constantly hindered President Buchanan’s agenda of expanding Southern interests.
The author also calls Walker an insane pirate, and complains that his actions hurt the
United States’ shipping opportunities by closing routes that could have otherwise been open for travel from the eastern U.S. to California. He suggests that better access to the steamship routes of Central America could be found through cooperation and friendship with Central American countries. Such level-headed thinking was in direct opposition to men such as Walker and to the general Manifest Destiny public who approved of his behavior. For Walker and the filibusters, routes across Central America to California were not something to be negotiated, but rather taken by force, in line with the filibuster belief that they were exceptionally qualified to assume the role of overseer.
These news sources were a thorn in the filibuster’s sides and helped to counterbalance the American exceptionalist racism that drove expansionism, even likely creating
36 physical opposition to them by California Latinos who traveled to Mexico and Central
America to oppose the invaders, as well as making public their movements and logistical information about these excursions. However, the vast majority of the news that
Americans saw was filtered through a white Anglo-Saxon news pipeline. To be sure, there was opposition across the country to filibustering, even at the height of their popularity, especially in the North, and after their dismal failures, the negative press began to take its toll until the whole phenomenon was written off and forgotten in the face of events leading to the Civil War.
The 1850s and the Civil War era saw the advent of the press as not only a public forum in a democracy, but as a cross region and national tool capable of affecting both public perception and state policy. Antebellum newspapers provided the first instance of embedded and relatively timely journalism by using eyewitnesses to tell stories, such as the San Diego Herald piece on Crabb. Antebellum filibustery was a phenomenon that increased this type of biased journalism.
The successes and failures of filibusters can be directly and indirectly tied to press coverage of the individuals and events surrounding filibustery. Without this coverage, the practice, as a viable means of potential upward mobility, would have been impossible at the most, and at the least decidedly less ingrained into the antebellum mind.
Because of newspaper coverage of filibustering individuals and filibuster events, as well as public and private correspondence, and popular antebellum literature and art, such as travel brochures, novellas, and poetry, a sort of American-feudalism vied with a maturing society to define what it meant to be an American. On the one side is the
37 maturing society, i.e., the general public and their growth in a democratic government regarding their role in fashioning laws, and an ideal rooted in feudal Europe where might makes right and that right includes the right of oppression to reach set goals. The definition of an American for the filibuster was decidedly biased on a variety of levels, whereas the opposing voice was increasingly on the side of moderation, temperance, and a reduction of the destructive power of personal bias.
Unquestioningly, American society has continued on that path of fairness and bias- reduction, but so too has the idea of destiny. Today, a fair-sized measure of the population evoke the spirit of the filibuster, who would like to see the United States go back to a system wherein personal rights were defined by ethnicity and where one could oppress a body of people based solely on economic or physical power. Publications across the country debated the definition and value of the filibuster as it related to the broader picture of the ideal American identity, as well as how it related to current definitions of manhood. The debate spread through journalism and literature into the venue of public speaking as state and federal politicians weighed in on the issues. This martial identity as personified by filibustery (if not the filibusters themselves) was self- aware and unapologetic. Famous slavery apologist John C. Calhoun criticized filibustery, but in his critique left plenty of room for interpretation and self-justification by those he purported to criticize. Filibusters and their supporters would unapologetically take pride in the comments made by Calhoun and saw little problem with what he called “the
American pirate.” As Greenberg said in Manifest Manhood, “The American man might be a pirate, but at least he was good at it” (171).
38
The press was not the only popular and contemporary medium used to enhance public perception of filibustering and the ideology of American Manifest Destiny and exceptionalism. Historical accounts, published as memoirs or histories, were in circulation contemporaneous with Walker’s and Crabb’s adventures, in some cases written by the filibusters themselves. Walker’s book, The War in Nicaragua, about his experience as conqueror and president of Nicaragua, was published in 1860, the year of his execution in Honduras while he and his ragtag band sought a way back into
Nicaragua. They provide insight into the thinking of the filibusters, and how easily
Americans were duped into raising them to the level of iconic visionaries. Additionally, various official government documents detailing diplomatic correspondence between the
United States, Mexico, and Central America provide a glimpse into the perception of filibusters and American exceptionalism from the points of view of the governments in question.
Through a combination of a newly expanded press, and wider distribution of literature, such as novellas, novels, history books, and travel brochures, the chronicling of the antebellum filibuster phenomenon led to a certain American “self” still seen in
American attitudes today.
39
CHAPTER 4
NON-FICTION’S ROLE IN SUPPORTING THE FILIBUSTER IDENTITY
Aside from news sources, non-fiction historical treatises, autobiographies, memoirs, and government documents provide the most material on antebellum filibustering.
Walker himself published an autobiographical work, The War in Nicaragua (1860) and several of his subordinates wrote memoirs and histories detailing many adventures, of which filibustering was only one. Along with a variety of sources from diplomatic letters and academic articles concerning Walker and Crabb’s adventures, there are Horace Bell’s
Reminiscences of a Ranger (1881), and James Carson Jamison’s With Walker in
Nicaragua (1909), each making a conscious effort to laud filibusters and justify their actions. Both provide some arguably objective information, including criticism of Walker specifically and filibustering in general.
Like other media covering Walker and filibustering, these published works characterized men like Walker and Crabb as visionaries and used the popular sentiments and attitudes of the time as justification for their actions. For example, Horace Bell, very much a typical filibuster personality in background, temperament, and politics, pointedly excuses filibuster support of black slavery because most supported it and according to
Bell, nobody dared speak against it for fear of going against the majority and even for fear of physical harm. “At that time in California it was as unpopular to be opposed to filibustering as it was to be opposed to African slavery, then our most cherished
40 institution, and few had the courage to say aught against it” (Bell 214). This was something of a throw-away comment, but nonetheless emphasizes the popular perceptions of the time and the extreme preponderance of white supremacy. Bell’s comment almost came across as a “what can you do? It’s just how it is,” comment meant primarily to justify the actions of men of otherwise “good character.”
Later, Bell appears to have risen above petty racism, as he became a known legal champion of the unfairly treated Latino population in California, but at the time of his book’s publishing in 1881, he was not so far removed from his filibustering days when he joined Walker’s expedition to Baja, and clearly held fond memories of the experience and the men who accompanied him. While his writing can be seen as self-justification, it also provides a clear picture of the motivations and mindset of the time. Bell’s book paints a gritty, violent, and largely lawless picture of the antebellum American West and, as he says, it is no wonder young, ambitious men took to filibustering as legal consequences were minimal in relation to the potential rewards, and they were led to believe that the expansion of United States’ interests, particularly the growth of the Southern economy, would excuse these nearly unenforced illegalities (Bell 214). This, of course, was only made to seem more legitimate and excusable in the face of Walker’s several acquittals after blatantly breaking U.S. neutrality laws. Instead of doing time somewhere, Walker was let go in each instance with less than a slap on the wrist, which no doubt encouraged more would-be adventurers to join his future escapades.
Elsewhere in Reminiscences of a Ranger Bell calls Walker’s occupation of Sonora and Baja “a brilliant existence of some four months” and in another he opines that it was
41 a “piratical expedition.” In referring to the residents of Mexican Sonora, he says they should be grateful to the filibusters who could have “won their liberties and relieved them of their property” (Bell 213-214).
We may also get a glimpse into the filibuster temperament and bravado by reading
Crabb’s proclamation letter channeled through the Sonoran government to the Prefect of
Altar after he learned that his alleged ally, Sonoran General Pesqueira, had turned on him. Just the fact that he took the time to pen such a letter shows that his intentions were probably not as innocent as he and his supporters claimed, both before and after the event. Crabb clearly knew that his little band was in serious trouble and, with this proclamation, his true intentions were made known.
Crabb’s proclamation letter to the Prefect (the Sonoran regional governor) begins with a conciliatory and peaceful tone in protesting what he has learned about Pesquiera turning against him, insisting that his intentions are honorable and peaceful, and claiming a “right” to be there. We are not told how anyone could claim the right to illegally cross an International border with a militarized group of alleged colonists, but he claimed it nonetheless, and this attitude can be seen in every kind of writing during the period.
Crabb quickly flips his tone 180 degrees as soon as he mentions his guns, how it is perfectly normal, and by some extension somehow unthreatening, for Americans to travel with weapons.
In fact, he suggests, it would be most unusual to see any Americans, “or any civilized people” for that matter, to ever be seen traveling unarmed. The idea of guns equaling civilization may seem incongruent to some Twenty First Century ears, but men like
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Crabb and Bell would have thought it ludicrous to avoid putting the 2nd amendment into action as often as one could. This is a common attitude seen among Americans today and the antebellum filibuster phenomenon, at the least, due to its popularity in the media of the time, did not hinder its development.
After his discussion of his right to bear arms and to physically cross over into Sonora, he moves quickly into the threat that he will use those weapons, and will stay in Mexico to take what he again stubbornly claims as his right. This basic concept, that might makes right, puts the filibuster and his supporters firmly on the side of the predator, but it was a predatory identity that many identified with and continued to promote. Horace Bell was one of those individuals. In Reminiscences of a Ranger, Bell describes Crabb’s defeat as him being “murdered in the most barbarous manner” (Bell 224).
Accounts of the incident often mention that Crabb’s excursion was peaceful in nature.
The lone survivor, Charles Evans, described their approach to Caborca as an undisciplined and inexperienced advance they were unprepared for because he insisted
“[we had] peaceable intentions, [so] no military organization had been recommended or thought of” (Forbes 25). Crabb repeatedly claimed his peaceful intent, albeit often followed by threats, but Bell’s account belies their claims of innocence as he relates how
Crabb allowed men to back out of the campaign at the beginning, but assured those who stayed that the rest of the way would be conducted under strict military order (Bell 221).
Bell also relates the side story of one of Crabb’s officers, a one-time member of The Los
Angeles Rangers with Bell, who was separated from Crabb when he was defeated and heroically fought his way back to the American border. The officer, Grant Oury, later
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became a Congressman from Arizona, a trend that seemed to be fairly common among
the filibuster ranks.
Bell himself served as an elected official, as did Crabb, and aspired to a Federal
position, and had Walker survived he very well could have ascended as high. Many
filibusters also later became commissioned officers during the Civil War, and some even
reached high rank. Again, had Walker lived, he perhaps would have naturally become a
high-ranking Confederate officer. Indeed, supporters such as Richard Harding Davis
maintained that had Walker survived “and accomplished what he adventured, he would
on this continent have solved the problem of slavery, have established an empire in
Mexico and in Central America, and, incidentally, have brought us into war with all of
Europe. That is all he would have accomplished” (Davis 147).
Bell’s book reveals the more likely opinion that Walker and Crabb’s filibustering
campaigns were far more than the missions of liberty they claimed. Of Henry Crabb,
Bell wrote that his colonizing claim “was only the entering wedge to the towering
ambition of Crabb” as the bottom line was expansion of slavery and power (Bell 221).
Like Vikings of old, armed and violent, the filibuster took what he wanted. In a rapidly
shrinking world, these men, the few who dared to put ideology into action, perhaps
sensed that such a thing might never again be possible. In their eyes, here was some of
the last unsettled lands for the taking and they were bound and determined to risk
everything to get it.
While Harper’s Magazine wrote that Walker had no right to return to Nicaragua after being earlier deposed, Walker and his followers had no such misgivings. James Carson
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Jamison, in With Walker in Nicaragua (1909), assures his readers that Walker’s second, third, and fourth excursions (he was taken into custody one of those times and released after another quick acquittal to make two additional attempts between 1856 and 1860, as outlined in Jamison’s book) to Central America were to “resume the rights and powers of
[sic] which he so resolutely maintained he had been wrongfully deprived” (Jamison 163).
Jamison’s story reads like a memoir in places, and he was clearly fond of the men he fought beside and adamant about their good intentions. In the first paragraph of his brief preface, Jamison goes on the defensive, insisting that his comrades “gave up their lives in battle in a strange land, for a strange people . . . to save [them] from misrule and oppression” and he insists that Walker was not a villain (Jamison 7). While admitting that the little general had vaulting ambitions and every intent to govern where he conquered, he argues that this ambition did not outweigh his good intentions, and he had only acted out of necessity. Be that as it may, Jamison’s bias fills the book in the face of direct evidence to the contrary, as Walker did in fact reinstate slavery in Nicaragua during his brief tenure as President, something Jamison discusses in his assertion that slavery was never a goal of the expedition. Jamison uses Walker’s book to back up his claim, but closer inspection of The War in Nicaragua clearly does not support his contention. This kind of justification and coloring of perception radiated throughout the country at the height of Walker’s success. Songs, poems, stage-plays, and novels burst forth in praise of Walker and the filibuster, the martial American.
Jamison primarily discusses Walker and his machinations, but also includes descriptions of ordinary filibusters, i.e., lower level officers and below. This discussion is
45 insightful in providing a character sketch, or profile, of the antebellum filibuster. Most of the sources for filibustering histories focus on campaign leaders, so a perspective from the lower ranks is especially helpful in determining the character of the filibuster. The filibuster ranks were filled out by a variety of men, most originally from cities and were disenchanted and disenfranchised by the growing urban industrial complexes (May 100).
Traditional work was rapidly changing, and many of the men of the time looked for wide- open spaces and individual liberties, neither of which were likely to occur in cities undergoing mass industrialization and increased urban poverty. It is no wonder these types of men were also the biggest part of the Gold Rush invasion into California in
1849.
Once these fortune seekers failed it is no surprise that rather than return to a city and take up menial work, they turned to mercenary service, including filibustering. One thinks of a mercenary as a trained soldier for hire, but in the case of filibusters, many of the men enlisted with no military training. While a ragtag lot, they aspired to something more and emulated their leaders in ideological self-justification.
The mid-low level officers were often voted in by the “enlisted” members of the campaign, and came from these ranks, whereas the main players: former politicians, military, and enthusiasts with money, were given higher ranks. Most individuals in
Walker’s and Crabb’s forces who were the equivalent of a commissioned officer and outranked any of the “elected” officers were established individuals with reputations, but few appeared to have evolved out of the barbaric practices of old and often succumbed to deadly in-fighting and private duels. The practice of dueling was especially conducive to
46 defining their beliefs and priorities. These were free men, who in their freedom did everything in their power to become the very thing they professed to fight against, landed gentry and aristocracy. If they could not live the life of a hereditary aristocrat, they could at least emulate their behaviors, and dueling was viewed as a gentlemanly way to resolve arguments. However, formal duels were not the only way Walker’s filibusters settled differences; more often than not these men resorted to outright brawls and shootouts.
Jamison relates one incident wherein a major in Walker’s army castigates a lieutenant for leaving his post. The lieutenant, in the absence of the major in question, received permission from Jamison (another lieutenant) to relinquish his post to take care of other business, but Jamison forgot to inform the major. While the major began to discipline the lieutenant, the lieutenant pulled his sword and directly attacked the major, who pulled his gun and fired, killing the lieutenant on the spot. Another incident he relates pits a general and a major against each other in a drunken bar shootout, and Jamison said that at one point it was unusual to not have incidents such as this every day (Jamison 112-113).
While these men sought to emulate an aristocratic lifestyle, it would appear that they were not exactly made for gentlemanly conduct. Regardless, very closely tied to Southern sensibility, filibusters were interested in recreating a new social hierarchy with themselves, by virtue of U.S. citizenship and skin color, in charge. Theirs is a legacy full of irony, considering they worked within the framework of the United States, created in a backlash against European style aristocratic government. The exceptionalist American identity, championed by the filibuster and fueled by Manifest Destiny, contributed to this new hierarchy, in the process leaving a long trail of innocent blood.
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CHAPTER 5
DEPICTIONS OF FILIBUSTERS IN FICTION AND ART
Filibustering was easily one of the hottest news topics in Antebellum America.
Stories, usually originating in the West, found their way to newspapers throughout the country. Published histories and autobiographies also detailed the adventures of the filibusters, as well as documents both personal and diplomatic. These, though, were not the only media focused on the phenomenon in contributing to its popularity. In particular,
Walker became the subject of visual art, music, performance art, poetry, and popular fiction. In their fictional novels and novellas, antebellum and post-Civil War writers such as Brett Harte and Richard Harding Davis created a sub-genre of mercenary heroics based on filibuster personalities and events. Brady Harrison, in Agent of Empire: William
Walker and the Imperial Self in American Literature, discusses at length Walker’s and other filibusters’ impact on literature from the antebellum period to today; from travel brochures, novels, Hollywood films, he shows how the filibuster identity was used as a model for American identity based on exceptionalism that romanticized the mercenary in a mission ordained by a Manifest Destiny. Fiction and art about filibustering reinforced the exceptionalist belief that enabled filibuster leaders to stay in the limelight and attract new recruits.
In music, while President in Nicaragua, Walker commissioned a new national anthem for the country featuring himself. In America, there were also popular tunes rewritten to feature and glorify Walker and several stage-plays about filibustering. Some of these,
48 with Walker as the title character, included original music and were performed at the height of his popularity. The fact that these outlets existed, and that people went to great lengths to write, produce, and perform Walker’s exploits on-stage shows how much a part of popular culture the filibuster had become.
After his death, many a poem lamented his passing and what might have been had he lived. Like music and theatre, poetry puts the phenomenon beyond a historical footnote and registers a degree of cultural impact. One of the most popular poems written about
Walker was by Jaoquin Miller, a soldier in Walker’s first excursion to Baja and Sonora.
Titled At The Grave of Walker, Miller laments in the first stanza that “not one/ Will speak him fair in that far land,” alluding to Walker’s destroyed reputation and failed legacy in
Central America. Miller’s observation is accurate and fair, which makes the next four lines of stanza one perplexing. Miller continues:
Perhaps ‘twas this that made me seek,
Disguised, his grave one winter-tide;
A weakness for the weaker side,
A siding with the helpless weak.
He appears to be saying that Walker and his men in Nicaragua were the weak who needed to be championed. Clearly then, Miller believed that Walker was in Nicaragua as a hero of liberty, and his loss of reputation saddened him. His insistence, though, that
Walker represented the weak again illustrates how art was employed to support filibustering and shape public perception in favor of the practice.
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The well known writer Richard Harding Davis, whose very popular fictional mercenary heroes were openly based on Walker, was a respected journalist and novelist, and one of Manifest Destiny’s and filibustering’s biggest proponents. Davis insisted that if Walker had lived he would have become a major political and social leader. Walker, the Gray-Eyed Man, was one of the most popular news topics in American newspapers during the antebellum period (Harrison 194). Today, we equate that kind of public attention to the typical Hollywood celebrity.
Walker certainly thought of himself as something of a hero and consciously and publicly opined about his own persona as an appropriate literary model for the ideal
American (Harrison 192). He suggested that his excursions would provide useful material for contemporary novelists writing about Manifest Destiny and the exceptionalist, martial
American identity. In Agent of Empire, Harrison refers to his persona as an example of the American “Imperial Self,” destined (according to Walker and his literary supporters, such as Harte and Davis) to expand the influence and control of the United States and thus leave a lasting impact on American history. That he is largely forgotten in the U.S. and remembered as a violent and bigoted despot in Central America is testament to the enormous amount of misplaced hubris Walker and proponents of filibustering held for their cause. Davis insisted that had Walker lived, he would have been a man as famous and influential as Ulysses S Grant, again a clear case of delusion of grandeur on the part of the filibusters and their most ardent supporters like Davis (Harrison 3).
While Walker is mentioned marginally in various American histories, his image of being driven from Central America constitutes his most lasting legacy, one that his
50 supporters bemoan. Davis once described a statue in Costa Rica of Walker being defeated by female Central American figures. While traveling in the area in 1896, he related in his travelogue Three Gringos in Venezuela and Central America, how much he wished he could have destroyed the sculpture, but like so many pro-expansion and pro-slavery imperialists, he had neither the fortitude nor the wherewithal to actually follow through on his wish (Harrison 1). This underscores that while there were many supporters of the filibustering ideal, only a very few were willing to translate words into action, and to a man, these adventurers met an early and not surprising demise. This is also a reason why
Walker and others like him simply faded from American memory.
Supporters were happy to publish stories, novels, poems, songs, and even stage plays in support of the filibuster, but when it came down to actually acting on those ideals they were mostly absent, and, once their heroes met their respective ends, they simply let their memories die out rather than put themselves out there to risk a similar fate. Most sources that explore the reason for Walker and the antebellum filibusters’ historical obscurity simply write it off as a case of writing the loser out of the history, but it is not that simple.
In an interview in 1987 Rudy Wurlitzer, producer of the film Walker, said “It’s interesting that in Latin America Walker is one of the most famous people in their entire history,” But in America, Wurlitzer concluded, “he was a loser and so his name was stricken from the record” (Harrison 195).
Surely, had Walker maintained control of Nicaragua and expanded that control to neighboring countries, he would today be viewed differently in the United States.
However, Walker and his contemporaries more likely are forgotten not so much because
51 of their military failures, but because of what they represented. The reason he is so well known in Central America is the reason he is not well known in America. The filibusters were for all intent and purposes pirates, champions of an increasingly unacceptable system of black slavery and discrimination against non-whites; not exactly proud values for Americans, and certainly not something to be celebrated or highlighted in American history books. Walker should indeed be considered a “loser,” in that he championed an immoral belief system, not simply because he failed.
A different story emerged in Sonora, Mexico and Central America. There, as
Wurlitzer said, Walker is one of the most famous people in Latin American history. Costa
Rica and Nicaragua have national holidays commemorating their respective victories over Walker, and the Sonoran village of Caborca is ever reminded of the massacre that took place there in 1854. In present-day Costa Rica, a statue commemorates Walker’s defeat, most likely the statue described by Richard Harding Davis, which features Walker being vanquished by women. The piece features five women, each representing one of the five Central American Alliance countries of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala,
Honduras, and El Salvador, unified by the common threat of Walker and his fellow filibusters. Walker is depicted as ducking and fleeing with an unidentified dead soldier on the ground. That the piece features the five women in victory, brandishing weapons as the exceptionalist American Walker runs away, is testament to the backlash against this martial American identity that tended to view the Latino male as effeminate and their women easily taken. The implication of this definition of manhood is studied in detail in
Amy Greenberg’s Manifest Manhood and The Antebellum American Empire.
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The statue, a national monument in Costa Rica (fig. 1), features a number of representations of other battles around its base, and is a fitting tribute to the memory of
Walker, not as an American imperialist hero or defender of liberty, but as the pro-slavery, gender-biased megalomaniac that he was.
Fig. 1. Monumento Nacional in San Jose Costa Rica. Completed in Paris (1891); “Costa Rica’s Military History: Who Protects Costa Rica?”; Qcostarica.com. Web. Jan. 2016.
Walker’s successful invasion of Nicaragua in January 1856 was met in New York
City in the same month with lyrics set to the tune of a popular drinking song, chastising
the Pierce administration for not supporting Walker, and celebrating Walker and his
victory. The ditty assures us that while the U.S. is “pretty large, it ain’t big enough for all
these jolly mates of ours” and that President Pierce is trying to clip the expansionist’s
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(compared to mighty eagles) wings (Greenberg, Documents 39). The song also comments on a number of other popular expansionist and filibuster themes. In the second stanza it urges the U.S. to “Go and lick the Nicaraguans, who haven’t got no friends at all” (qtd. by Greenberg, Documents 134). The author here obviously felt that Nicaragua, as it was without Walker, was so inconsequential and weak that it deserved to be taken over, in typical might makes right fashion. The third stanza celebrates the idea of conquering
Central America and emphasizes that in doing so the filibusters will “get lots of cash and glory.” The final line says that in Nicaragua they will “take possession of our Farms and our two hundred acres.”
Here, the overriding ideology that white Americans have the right to take what they want comes through plain and clear. The land in Central America belongs to the industrious Americans, not Latinos actually born there. Based on the crude language and overly simple insults and glorification, it can be concluded that the song as published targeted disaffected urban white men and encouraged further filibustering efforts. Popular ditties such as this one and other entertainments involving the martial American identity represented by filibusters, always more than entertainment, were crafted to raise support for Walker, filibusters, expansionism and white supremacy.
One stage play, titled Nicaragua: or, General Walker’s Victories, unfortunately has no existing script, but a playbill advertisement survived as a telling document. In July
1856, the play opened in New York City at Purdy’s National Theatre. The playbill for the show made no pretense of the purpose of the little performance. In large block letters above the play title it declares “Now For Fun & Instruction.” (fig. 2)
54
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In “Cast of Characters,” it lists the character of General Walker alternatively as “The Hope of Freedom,” and attempts a clever name with a character named Ivory Black, listed as a “Superior Nigger.” Clearly, the play on words suggesting that only in light of the word “Ivory,” or “White,” could a person of color even jokingly be referred to as superior. Even without the script of the play we certainly get the gist of the play’s intent and it is fair to say that Ivory Black is a black man who is cooperating with Walker and his men. What we see, through the proliferation of media such as art, music, theatre, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, correspondence, public speaking, personal histories and more is a 55 recurring theme of the antebellum filibuster representing an extreme exceptionalist ideology. 56 CHAPTER 6 AN AMBIGUOUS LEGACY Through a combination of academic writings, newspapers, magazines and journals, non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and music on the subject of antebellum filibustery, the focus is on finding commonalities and contradictions in how the antebellum filibusters were perceived, emulated, and rejected by their contemporary public, and to study the impact of the filibusters’ actions on an increasingly fluid definition of “American” as the United States inexorably approached disunion. Also explored is the question of the filibusters’ historical legacy, particularly with regard to King of the Filibusters William Walker, and whether the antebellum filibusters are more consequential than their historical obscurity suggests. The thesis grew out of a history paper specifically on Walker and the early focus was on the press’s influence on filibustering and public opinion. Articles from the San Francisco based newspaper El Clamor Publico contradicted the popular English- language newspapers and that prompted the focus on how the press was used by, and worked against, antebellum filibusters. In 1847 the New York Herald stated “The universal Yankee nation can regenerate and disenthrall the people of Mexico in a few years; and we believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country.” One can only assume that the Yankee nation to which the writer refers is white Christian men, and that the systematic tactic of “disenthralling,” setting them free, is not just a feasible thing, but a moral obligation because it would bring “civilization” to places the writer and his readers obviously feel are less advanced. 57 This corresponds closely to the sentiments of many news publishers of the time, demanding that Americans, i.e., white Christian males, fulfill their destiny, be the City upon The Hill, to dominate all other cultures in the hemisphere and for some, to subjugate others, made plain in Walker’s own words: The introduction of negro-slavery into Nicaragua would furnish a supply of constant and reliable labor requisite for the cultivation of tropical products. With the negro-slave as his companion, the white man would become fixed to the soil; and they together would destroy the power of the mixed race which is the bane of the country. The pure indian [sic] would readily fall into the new social organization; for he does not aim at political power, and only asks to be protected in the fruits of his industry. (qtd. in Harrison 47) If, as Jamison contends, Walker had no intention of bringing slavery back to Central America when he embarked on his plan against Nicaragua, the above statement belies that assertion. The calculating way in which Walker speaks of the “negro-slave” as if he were a family pet, Latinos as “mixed race,” as if they are some kind of genetic evil, and Native Americans as “pure Indian,” as if they are so inconsequential as to not be noticed, shows that the man did indeed put much thought into the idea and certainly would not have embarked on his adventure without this intent clearly in the forefront of his mind. This today seems a wholly outrageous and immoral thing to say, but in the context of the period, as noted in Horace Bell’s book, a disturbing number of white Americans agreed 58 with Walker’s assessment in easily accepting the idea of non-white inferiority and the white man’s place as the shining example of Christian charity and democracy. Perhaps even more telling than the fact that Walker has been largely written out of American histories is that he was not an aberration by any stretch of the imagination, then and now, in terms of ideology in what the filibuster apologists like to call “character.” But, unlike most he walked the talk and in this was a historically significant individual as an icon for a belief system that fortunately ran into relentless opposition, putting the idea of a racially based class system that included slavery on the road to expulsion, and men like William Walker with it. Rather than the sobriquet King of the Filibusters, he would be better remembered as The Last of The Filibusteros, as he is represented in Central American and Mexican history and culture. The sheer audacity of men like Walker and Crabb is something to marvel at. They were not just mercenaries, nor only freedom fighters, nor pirates and patriots, but rather an amalgam of all of those things, with sometimes more insidious consequences than any carried by those labels. The lines between mercenary, freedom fighter, pirate, rugged individualist and patriot were traditionally blurred from the outset of the United States. From Robert Rogers, who only fought against the revolution because the Americans turned down his mercenary services, to Aaron Burr, to William Walker, the distinction was blurry, but perhaps none could match the overarching ambition of Walker, the small, studious, monotone voiced general, who acted as a field medic in the battles he commanded, never wore a uniform, never ran for office and nearly changed history. 59 William Walker may not be well known in American history as an individual, but he should be recognized and studied for what he was, a representative of what it means to be American in almost every way, except perhaps the most important: as an advocate of equality. Brady Harrison, in Agent of Empire, assures us that “Through his story and his many resurfacings circulate a number of the most important currents, energies, and desires in American history and culture” (191). Most of what he stood for remains as deeply set values and beliefs in American society and the idea of what it means to be American, not surprisingly especially in the South. The vision of a superior American identity is also a powerful political tool. John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, Barack Obama, have all invoked the “city upon the hill” in one way or another. Our politicians and general public espouse similar values of those held by Henry Crabb and John L. O’Sullivan. Just as the antebellum filibusters championed the idea that Americans were uniquely qualified, destined, justified, and duty-bound to bring their brand of civilization to other cultures, so too are some Americans today. The idea of American exceptionalism can be traced to the Puritan concept of “A City upon a Hill” promoted by John Winthrop and later the American Revolution, but a concrete adoption of the idea was driven home during the 1850s by the approach of the Civil War and phenomena like filibustering that extended the concept to include race-based slavery and the idea that the end was justified by virtually any means. In nineteenth century literature, descriptions of freebooter and filibuster adventures always described a variety of resources to be gained, giving readers the impression that filibustering offered riches for the taking for those willing to take risks, endure hardships, 60 and perform the necessary violence against indigenous peoples in order to secure their reward.2 Because of the dehumanization of non-whites, the delusions of manifest destiny, and the purported rewards available for the taking, the individuals who participated in these futile invasions felt justified in the idea of “might makes right” as they were encouraged by public support and military success. American exceptionalism and the belief that the American people possess a God- given destiny is alive and well in America, perpetrated from the beginning of North American colonization, perpetuated in the nineteenth century, wildly celebrated in antebellum America, and continuing today in various forms. No elected official or candidate, regardless of party, would be caught saying America is unexceptional. As it was in William Walker’s America, it is today. Men in power, well financed and who aspire to elected office, will espouse whatever it is the general public will emotionally embrace, whether or not the candidate really believes it. Just as Walker, before his filibustering days, was known to support anti-slavery views, then vehemently changed his mind when he thought it would benefit his situation, “exceptional” Americans are ever ready to take up the mantle of populism and exceptionalism as long as it gets them what they want. The antebellum filibuster was both a condition and cause of the idea of American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny and understanding the impact of ideology on public perception and the role it had in forming a dangerous belief system is a historical learning opportunity. 2 See “An Old Filibuster” from Harper’s Magazine 1858 for a prime example of how much it was claimed could be gained by Anglo-Saxon invaders into the West Indies, and by extension Central America. 61 While outright slavery is no longer on the table, any number of ways to inhibit and exploit a much larger demographic of individuals remains, and one of the progenitors of that mindset, the antebellum filibuster, is a worthy historical lesson. To exclude the antics of Walker and his ilk from our educational histories is to sweep the proverbial dirt under the rug. Histories are not to be cosmetically selective, but inclusively explored. They should also be to some degree didactic in objective, providing unbiased and complete records of past follies. The historical legacy of the antebellum filibusters remains a cautionary tale in both America and Central America but their legacy goes beyond a lesson in military folly or ruthless ambition. Regardless of the morality of the practice, its popularity and media coverage in the nineteenth century was a prime building block in the formation of American identity. “The American myth,” wrote R.W.B. Lewis, “has remained a collective affair; it must be pieced together out of an assortment of essays, orations, poems, stories, histories, and sermons” (Lewis 4). The media and the stories of filibustery, then, give us the means to examine motivation and measure progress in the light of understanding what was done, why, and who we are as a result. Their legacy is a cautionary tale that will continue to be a part of the American myth, and that vision of the rugged individualist that embodies “American” remains a powerful image. The filibuster tradition, whether it is known by that name or not, remains a part of that image and the power it evokes. 62 WORKS CITED 63 WORKS CITED “An Old Filibuster.” Harper’s Magazine Dec. 1858: 50. Harpers.org. Web. 5 Jan. 2016. Bell, Horace. Reminiscences of a Ranger: Early Times in Southern California. 1881. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. Print. Benavides, Jose Luis. “Californios! Whom Do You Support? El Clamor Publico’s Contradictory Role in Racial Formation.” California History 84.2 (2006/2007): 54-66. JSTOR. Web. 5 Jan. 2016. Davis, Richard Harding. Real Soldiers of Fortune. 1906. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2012. Print. “Editor’s Table.” Editorial. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. Jan. 1853: 266-269. Harpers.org. 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