"A dash of sadness in his airBorn maybe, of his over-care,And, maybe, born of a despairIn early love."
"A dash of sadness in his airBorn maybe, of his over-care,And, maybe, born of a despairIn early love."
"A dash of sadness in his airBorn maybe, of his over-care,And, maybe, born of a despairIn early love."
"A dash of sadness in his air
Born maybe, of his over-care,
And, maybe, born of a despair
In early love."
Henningsen, who knew him intimately, was unaware of any romance in the career of his chieftain; yet there was one, the only one of his life and it has been given to the world, within a few years, by a near relative of Walker. The object of his love was Helen Martin, a beautiful New Orleans girl, whom he met in Nashville after his return from Europe. She is described by Mr. Daniel Francis Barr, who had the story from Walker's cousin, as "a most attractive woman—the loveliness of face and form being enhanced by that endearing charm which helplessness to beauty lends. For nature, so lavish in her other endowments, deprived this beautiful creature of two most essential faculties—she was a mute. Strange as it may seem, these two young people, in appearance and character the apparent antithesis of each other, allowed friendship to ripen into an ardent and lasting affection. When Miss Martin returned to New Orleans, Walker soon followed, and as lawyer and journalist, gained distinction in the Crescent City. Just before the date fixed for their marriage the breath of pestilence poisoned the Gulf breezes, and the dreaded yellow fever became epidemic in the coast cities. Among the first to fall victim to the scourge was Miss Helen Martin, and her death changed the entire life-current, if not the heart of William Walker. From the ashes of a buried love ambition rose supreme."
The Ishmaelite nature urging him to travel again, his "destiny," as he called it, carried him to Sonora, at the moment when De Boulbon's first expedition was nearing its vain catastrophe. No longer a lawyer, a doctor, or an editor, he returned to California with dreams of martial glory, crude as yet, but, to a man of his unyielding courage, full of unlimited promise. People now spoke of "Colonel" Walker. The conferring or the assumption of military titles, solely by the grace of popular courtesy, was a curious foible of the Southern gentleman of the old school. Whether this unwritten commission preceded his assumption of a serious military career, or was coeval with it, is uncertain and of little consequence. There was no examination of titles or antecedents among the pioneers of California. The claimant of a military title could best defend it by deeds of daring, and by such William Walker was to prove himself. De Boulbon's short-lived success prompted Walker and a few friends to turn their eyes towards the same field. An agent, named Frederic Emory, was sent to Sonora in 1852 to treat for a contract such as had been granted the French company. Upon the failure of the latter, Walker and a partner, Henry P. Watkins, renewed the negotiations in person. It does not appear that they succeeded or received any encouragement from the jealous natives. Nevertheless, Walker and a few of his friends set themselves to the task of conquering the Western States of Mexico, in the face of difficulties which might have daunted even more daring spirits. The American Government was actively hostile to all filibustering movements. Sonora certainly did not offer a welcome to her unsought liberators. The singular unwillingness (already noticed by De Boulbon) of American capitalists to furnish the sinews of illegal warfare, no doubt continued to mark that unromantic class.
On the other hand, Walker had many warm personal friends, chiefly among the natives of the Southern states. He was actually a sincere, even fanatical, believer in slavery. To conquer new territory, and thus to extend the area of slavery, was a scheme certain to meet with sympathy throughout the South. The admission of new Northern territories already threatened to overcome the supremacy of the South in the national government. Sectional and party bias, personal interest, and political prejudice moved the citizens of the slave states to withstand this new and growing menace. Like feelings, intensified through years of political minority, stirred the North. So far as the South was concerned in the maintenance of slavery, her interests called for its extension; otherwise, the growing movement for its abolition, aided by the approaching change of political power, would soon compass its overthrow. So, at least, and not without foresight, reasoned the upholders of slavery in that dark and bitter era.
The impending conflict was well styled "irrepressible." Years of angry debate had made compromise impossible, but the wiser and better heads in either party shunned the wager of battle. Disunion was scarcely considered as a theory, among the mass of the people, ere it sprung into being, a fact. Doughty-tongued zealots alone talked of war, and they were those who kept on talking after men of cooler courage had begun to fight.
Walker, then, could confidently invoke the sympathy of the rich and influential slave-holders in a crusade for the extension of their favorite system. He could appeal to the daring and adventurous of every class by the dangerous fascination of his scheme, and to the Californian, especially, through his native hostility and contempt towards his Mexican neighbor. For the rest, he offered as inducements to immigrants in Sonora five hundred acres of land to each man, and four dollars daily pay for military services. Arms and ammunition were procured. Emigrants of strangely unpastoral bearing offered themselves at the rendezvous. A brig was chartered and the day of departure set. At this point the United States marshal seized the vessel. This was in July, 1853. Three months afterwards, the emigrants, learning caution from experience, took their steps so secretly that forty-five of them, including Walker and Emory, sailed in the barkCaroline, and arrived at Cape San Lucas, in Lower California, on October 28th.
Here they made a brief stay before continuing their voyage to La Paz. They captured that town, together with the governor, Espanosa, on November 3rd. Three days later a vessel arrived with the Mexican colonel, Robollero, appointed to supersede Espanosa; him also they took prisoner. Walker, being now in possession of the government and the archives, called an election, which resulted in his being chosen president. His report does not state whether or not he had any rival for the honour. Ten others of the adventurers were chosen to fill the several offices, civil, military and naval. Thirty-four remained mere citizens, as there were not "offices enough to go around." "Our government," wrote the President, "has been formed upon a firm and sure basis." However absurd the proceedings seem to us, in the light of the sequel, to him they appeared the solemn inception of free institutions and a glorious future. A high-sounding proclamation was issued, including a declaration of independence. Two months afterwards Walker annexed, on paper, the neighboring province of Sonora, and changed the name of the Republic to "Sonora," comprising the State of that name and Lower California. As yet he had not set foot upon the new half of his domain.
His friends in California were active in the meanwhile. Recruiting offices were opened in San Francisco, to which flocked the desperate, the adventurous, the reckless from every land. The Federal Government could not, at least, it did not, take active steps to check them. Between two and three hundred men were enlisted, and their passage engaged on the barkAnita. The name of the vessel and the date of her departure were kept secret from all but the leaders of the party.
On the appointed evening, December 7, 1853, they gathered at head-quarters. Horses and waggons were in readiness, and in a brief time the ammunition and supplies were on the deck of theAnita. Before midnight the embarkation was made, and the ship swung into the stream. A tow-boat carried her out of the harbour in safety. Before casting loose the lines several of theAnita'ssailors secretly stole on board the tow-boat, their desertion not being perceived until the bark was beyond hail and ploughing the waves of the Pacific. The adventurers have been described by a friendly writer as "a hard set." They observed their departure by a merry carouse, the while the good bark tossed on the ocean swell and her captain cursed his recreant crew and his boisterous freight. Then the wind arose. A sea swept the decks, carrying overboard a dozen barrels of pork and making a clean breach through her starboard bulwarks. The adventurers awoke next morning, sobered and sick. A few of them who had been sailors volunteered to aid in working the vessel. The relief came none too soon, as it was found that the ship had been dragging her anchor and several fathom of cable all night, the deserters having failed to make it fast. The filibusters grimly consoled themselves with the reflection that they had not been born to be drowned.
Arrived at San Vincente, the reinforcements went into camp, amusing themselves, while they awaited orders to march, by foraging on the scattered ranches. Horses were procured by forced levies, and paid for in the promissory notes of the "Republic." Here for the first time Walker displayed the traits of stern command which afterwards made his name a word of terror in the ears of men who feared nothing else, human or divine. Half a score of the boldest desperadoes in camp formed a plot to blow up the magazine at night and desert with what plunder they might be able to seize in the confusion of the moment. To carry out their plan involved the risk of killing many of their comrades, as the ammunition was kept in the middle of the camp. Notice of the plot reached Walker, who had two of the ringleaders tried by court-martial and summarily shot. Two others were publicly whipped and drummed out of camp. Walker then ordered a muster of the troops, and after making a stirring appeal to them, called upon all who were willing to abide by his fortunes to hold up their hands. All of the original forty-five, and a few of theAnita'spassengers, responded; the others shouldered their rifles and prepared to march. Walker confronted the recreants, and quietly ordered them to stack their arms, a command which, after some hesitation, they obeyed. They were then suffered to leave the camp. Less than a hundred men now formed the army of the republic. He gave orders to march to Sonora by the mountain paths, around the head of the Gulf of California. They buried the arms and ammunition of the deserters incachés. Two men deserted on the march and joined the Indians, who harried the little band at every step.
The river Colorado was crossed on rafts. Disease and desertion thinned the ranks. The wounded died for lack of proper treatment, as there was not a case of surgical instruments in the army. They extracted arrow-heads from their wounds with probes improvised from ramrods. Every morning's roll-call showed a dwindling force. Beef was the only food left. Two men quarrelled over a handful of parched corn, and one shot the other dead. They were in rags. The President of Sonora, wearing a boot on one foot, a shoe on the other, fared no better than his followers. Those followers soon numbered less than fifty. A council of war was held, and it was decided to return to San Vincente. The Mexicans hung upon their flanks and rear, cutting off every straggler. Recrossing the mountains, they narrowly escaped annihilation in a gorge which widened out at the middle to a plateau of half a mile across, with a narrow opening at either end. Half way across the plains the Indians appeared on flank and front and opened a galling fire. Walker here showed coolness and generalship. Leaving twelve men hidden in a clump of bushes under command of Lieutenant P. S. Veeder, a cool young soldier, afterwards distinguished in Nicaragua, he retreated with the rest of the command towards the entrance of the valley. The passage had already been closed by the enemy's forces, who met the retiring party with an ill-aimed volley of arrows and bullets. At the same time those guarding the other pass joined their friends on the flanks in charging the Americans. As they passed the thicket where Veeder and his men lay in ambush, they received a deadly volley at short range. Every bullet struck down its man. Walker at the same time turned and delivered an equally well-aimed fire, which put the enemy to full flight. The two detachments then passed unmolested through the further defile before the astonished natives could be rallied to the charge. No bribes ofaguardiente, with which the Mexicans were wont to ply their Indian allies could thenceforth induce the natives to face the deadly American rifles. They hung upon the line of march like coyotes, prowling about the late scene of each encampment, and robbing each new-made grave of its tenant's blanket, the only shroud of the poor filibuster who fell in the waste places of Sonora.
At San Vincente, where Walker had left in March a party of eighteen men to guard the barracks, he found not one remaining. A dozen had deserted, and the rest, unsuspicious of danger, had been swooped upon by a band of mounted Mexicans, who lassoed and tortured them to death. So many successive reverses sealed the fate of the expedition. To wait for reinforcements, even could they have come, from California was hopeless. Walker had but thirty-five men remaining. They were destitute of everything but ammunition and weapons; of these they had more than enough. At various places they had buried boxes of carbines and pistols. Eight guns were spiked at San Vincente. A hundred kegs of powder were cached on the banks of the Rio Colorado. Years afterwards the peon herdsmen or prowling Cucupa Indian stumbled, in the mountain by-paths, over the bleaching skeleton of some nameless one whose resting-place was marked by no cross or cairn, but the Colt's revolver rusting beside his bones bespoke his country and his occupation—the only relic of the would-be Conquistadores of the nineteenth century.
The stolid native who had sworn fealty to the mushroom republic, under pain of imprisonment for refusal, easily forgot his oath when the accursed "Gringo" had turned his back. Therancherio, whose sole mementos of vanished horses and cattle were the bonds of the Republic of Sonora, vainly proffered those securities at the cock-pit and the monté-table. The American of the North had come and gone like a pestilence, or like his ante-type of buccaneering days; nought remained save disappointed ambition with the one, and a bitter memory with the other.
The invasion was every way inexcusable. That his interference was unwelcome to the natives Walker soon found out; nor was he slow to learn that nothing less formidable than an army of occupation, backed by a strong power, could push his cherished dream of a new conquest of Mexico beyond the unsubstantial realms of fantasy.
With sinking heart, but bearing the calm front which never failed him, he led his starving, travel-worn band toward the California frontier. The natives made a feeble show of opposing their retreat. A host of ill-trained soldiery, formidable only in numbers, held the mountain heights; their Indian allies were drawn up on the plain to contest the passage. Colonel Melendrez, commanding the Mexican forces, sent four Indians with a flag of truce into the filibuster camp, bearing an offer of protection and free passage across the American border to all except the leader; Walker, with all the arms of the company, must be first given up. Such an offer would have been rejected, in the face of certain death, by men familiar as these were with the Punic faith of the Spaniard. Made as it was to men who had followed their chieftain through hunger and want, battle and defeat, up to this moment, when they could see their country's flag waving over the United States military camp across the border, it was treated with scornful laughter. Melendrez then begged the United States commander to interfere and compel the surrender, a request which, as it could not have been granted without a violation of Mexican territory, was properly refused. Three miles of road lay between the filibusters and the boundary line. Walker, resorting to strategy, left half a dozen men concealed behind some rocks to cover his retreat. The natives, with a wholesome dread of the American rifle, followed him at what seemed a safe distance and rode straight into the ambush. Half a dozen rifles emptied as many saddles, whereupon Melendrez and his Mexicans galloped off at full speed, leaving their Indian allies to follow as best they might. The filibusters lost one man, a victim to his own indiscretion in having borrowed a leaf from the enemy's tactics and fortified his courage with too muchaguardiente.
So ended the last battle of the Republic of Sonora—if it be not a travesty to call by the name of battle a fruitless fight between a score of men on one side and a hundred ignorant savages on the other. Four and thirty tattered, hungry, gaunt pedestrians, whimsically representing in their persons the president, cabinet, army and navy of Sonora, marched across the line and surrendered as prisoners of war to Major Mckinstry, U.S.A., at San Diego, California. It was the 8th of May, 1854; and so Walker kept his thirtieth birthday.
A parole, pledging the prisoners to present themselves for trial to General Wool, at San Francisco, was signed by all, after which they were allowed to depart.
Of those starving, wounded, battle-scarred survivors of several months' accumulated miseries the names signed to the parole contain at least six of men who had love for their leader, or enough of unconquerable daring, to send them, twelve months later, in search of fresh dangers and glories under the same commander.
Walker came back from Sonora, defeated but not disheartened. He had proved himself a leader of men, even in so small an arena. Thenceforth, until his star of "destiny" was eclipsed in death, his name was worth a thousand men wherever hard fighting and desperate hopes might call him. It must be said in his favour that he sought popularity by none of the tricks of the demagogue. In camp or field he was ever the same cold, self-contained, fearless commander, inflexible in discipline, sparing of speech, prodigal of action. He won the devoted obedience of the wildest spirits by governing himself. His word of command was not "Go," but "Come"—the Napoleonic talisman. Only to the youngest of his followers would he ever unbend his solitary dignity. One of them, whose name, William Pfaff, appears on the San Diego parole, was a youth of fifteen. He was with difficulty restrained from following his leader to Nicaragua. He lived through four years of service in our Civil War, but no dangers or hardships could erase the memory of his experience in Sonora. "The rebellion was a picnic to it," said he, in the fine hyperbole of California.
The trial of the filibuster leader for breaking the neutrality laws of the United States ended in a prompt acquittal. Walker resumed the editorial chair, supporting Broderick in theSan Francisco Commercial, the personal organ of that ill-fated politician. Let us leave the filibuster in his Elba, and visit the country which was destined to become the scene of his dazzling but brief career of glory, defeat, and death.
Nicaragua — "Mahomet's Paradise" — Buccaneering visitors — Philip II. and an Isthmian Canal — Nelson defeated by a girl — The apocryphal heroine of San Carlos.
Naturein lavishing her favours on Nicaragua, left little for man to add. It is a tropical country with a temperate climate, one half of its territory having a mean elevation of 5,000 feet above the level of the sea. In that favoured land the primeval curse is stayed; where nature forestalls every necessity, no need for man to toil or want. Fruits grow in the reckless profusion of the tropics, and clothing is a superfluity wisely counted as such. Two-hundred and fifty thousand children, young and old, occupy a domain as large as New England. They are poor in accumulated wealth as the poorest peasantry of Europe; they are rich, knowing no want unsatisfied, as a nation of millionaires. But Nicaragua is a country in which to study with doubt the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. The early discoverers called it "Mahomet's Paradise," an apt name for a land of sensuous happiness.
There man reaps without sowing, and the harvest never fails. He has but to stretch forth his hand and feast on dainties such as seldom grace the tables of kings; the citron, the lemon, the orange (with often 10,000 on a single tree), the banana, the mango, the papaya, the cocoa, the tamarind, the milk-tree, the butter tree, and a spontaneous perennial growth of coffee, cacao, sugar, tobacco, and everything that grows or can be grown in any tropical or temperate clime. Half the year he may sling his hammock beneath the shady trees. In the rainy season a few stakes and a thatch of palm leaves afford him ample shelter. Medicinal trees and herbs abound everywhere, for the relief of the few ills to which his flesh is heir. Birds of gayest plumage, flowers of loveliest hue, greet his eyes on every side. In the noble forests, where the pine and the palm grow beside the ceiba, the mimosa, and the stately cactus, the splendours of the rainbow are rivalled in the plumage of parrots, macaws, humming-birds, toucans, and the beautiful winged creature that bears the imperial name of Montezuma. It is the latest and the fairest land of earth, and the heavenly radiance of youth is on its face. So young, that the fires of nature's workshop have not yet died out. The volcano, towering thousands of feet towards heaven, still smoulders or flames, and the earth is shaken ever and anon by the engines of the Titans. Ometepe the glorious lifts his cloud-capped head five thousand feet out of the placid bosom of Lake Nicaragua; Madera, his neighbour, is but eight hundred feet less lofty. Momotombo and Mombacho and El Viejo, and the twin peaks which watch the mouth of Fonseca Bay, are flaming swords guarding the Eden to which the serpent has come, as of old, with a human tongue.
Little note takes the Nicaraguan of the lavish favours of nature, whose grandest mystery but awakens a languidQuien Sabe?and whose most winning plea extorts only a more languidPoco tiempo—the eternal by and by of indolence. One per cent. of the whole population makes a show of studying the elements of education. Why should they vex their souls in search of knowledge, when all that life needs can be had for the asking? Not, surely, to heap up wealth. Nature takes care even of that, for money grows upon trees of Nicaragua—that is to say, the fractional currency of the people is nuts, one cacao-nut being equal to a fortieth of amedioin value, and passing current as such in all the smaller affairs of trade. Nor is it worth the trouble of mastering letters where illiteracy is no bar to civil or military advancement, and where, especially if the "Serviles" be in power, an unlettered bandit ranks almost as high as a rascally advocate. In the days of President Chamorro the most notorious ruffians held high office, the revenues of the state were farmed out on the system which prevails to-day only in the more barbarous parts of Asia, so that it was a saying in the neighboring states, where, too, glass-houses are not scarce, that "the calf was not safe in the cow, from the thieves of Nicaragua."
It was not always so in Nicaragua. Years before the mail-clad Spaniard brought the curse of civilization across the western ocean, the simple Aztec built his altars to the sun on every hill-top from sea to sea. Centuries ere the Aztec, there flourished a semi-civilized race whose history is written in hieroglyphics of a language utterly dead and forgotten, and who have left no lineal descendants. Even such fragments of Aztec lore as survived the fanaticism of the Conquistadores in Mexico are wanting to the annals of the earlier Central American civilization. It was a culture of rich growth in its day and place, destined like that of the contemporary Roman Empire, to tempt the cupidity of a hardier race, and after an unavailing struggle, to fall before the might of numbers and superior physique. Howbeit, the Aztec Goths and Vandals overran the isthmus, and when the Spanish invasion came, it met only the late subjects of Montezuma's widespread, ill-governed kingdom.
The religion of Nicaragua before the conquest was a gloomy idolatry. The predecessors of the Aztec are conjectured to have been a gentle race, but no match in prowess for their conquerors. The Spaniards found a people of sun-worshippers degraded by human sacrifice and attendant cannibalism. Between them and distant Anahuac, to which they owed allegiance, lay the dense forests and trackless swamps of Yucatan. The journey by land at this day is long and toilsome. Cortez, nevertheless, projected and carried out an exploration as far as Honduras, until his appalled veterans refused to go further southward.
Don Pedrarias d'Avila, Governor of Panama, undertook its exploration from the south in 1514. Nine years later he was encouraged to send a force for its subjugation, under command of Francisco de Cordova, who secured the submission of its cacique, Nicarao or Nicaya. The conquerors gave that chieftain's name to his country. They founded Leon and Granada, which have remained its leading cities. Nicaragua gave a few recruits to Pizarro. Philip II., with narrow-minded foresight, sent a commission to survey the isthmus and judge of the feasibility of cutting a ship canal. The report was favourable, the route by way of Panama being chosen. It was too favourable, as it pointed out the advantages of such a passage to international commerce. Spain did not want such broad liberality, and Philip decreed the punishment of death to any one who might thereafter propose to wed the two oceans together. But, as high tariffs encourage smuggling, so prohibited commerce takes refuge in privateering. The Buccaneers arose to dispute with Spain the monopoly of her American trade. The isthmus suffered most from their ravages. Panama, then as now, the most important city on the coast, was the depôt for the royal treasure gathered at the adjacent mines of Cana. Drake paid it a predatory visit in 1586. It was afterwards taken and sacked at different times by Morgan, Sharpe, Ringrose, and Dampier. It was burned three times between 1670 and 1680. Finally it was abandoned for the new town, three miles inland.
Nicaragua, though liable to predatory forays, had not wealth enough to tempt the buccaneers from richer prey. Cape Gracias a Dios, on its north-eastern boundary, was a rendezvous of the freebooters; but the Atlantic coast was even less inviting to the plunder-seekers than the Pacific. The narratives of the buccaneers touch lightly on it. Its name of the Mosquito Coast appears to have been well deserved. De Lussan speaks with lively horror of the pestiferous little insect which "is sooner felt than seen."
The buccaneers passed away, but left a legacy. Great Britain in 1742 laid claim to the Bay Islands, which had been captured by English buccaneers just a century before. A war with Spain ensued, without material gain to either party. By the treaty of 1763, England renounced her claim on Central America, and evacuated all the disputed territory, except the Island of Ruatan, on the Atlantic coast of Honduras, a shirking of her obligations which awakened a renewal of hostilities. In 1780 Colonel Polson was sent to invade Nicaragua. Landing a force of two hundred sailors and marines at San Juan del Norte, he ascended the river in boats, carrying with little trouble the half-dozen fortified positions on its banks. At the head of the river, where it receives the waters of Lake Nicaragua, the expedition was confronted by the frowning batteries of Fort San Carlos, then, as now, guarding the mouth of the lake.
At this point in the narrative, history and tradition part company, the former averring, upon historical and biographical English authority, that Horatio Nelson, then a simple unknown captain commanding the naval forces, reduced the fort, inflicted a severe chastisement upon the enemy and returned victorious to his ships. Tradition tells a prettier story.
As the flotilla neared the shore in line of battle, the stillness was unbroken, save by the plash of their oars and the music of the surf. Not a soldier was visible on the ramparts, for the cowardly varlets of the garrison, taking advantage of the Commandante's sickness, had fled to the woods at the first sight of the enemy. The gallant hidalgo in command was left without a single attendant, save his lovely daughter. But she was a true soldier's child, with the spirit of a heroine. The boats drew rapidly near the shore, their oars flashing in the morning sun, the gunners awaiting with lighted matches the order to fire. Nelson stood up to bid his men give way, and at the instant a flash was seen in one of the embrasures of the fort; the next moment the roar of a cannon broke the stillness of lake and forest. Immediately gun after gun echoed the sound, but the first had done the work of an army, by striking down Horatio Nelson. The boats pulled rapidly out of range and down the river, beaten and discouraged. Nor did they escape heavier losses; for the Spaniards so harassed and plagued them on the retreat that, of the two hundred men who had started from San Juan, but ten returned in safety. Nelson's wound cost him the loss of an eye; and he who had never turned his back on a foe-man fled from the guns of San Carlos, served by a girl of sixteen. It was the Commandante's daughter, Donna Rafaela Mora, who had fired the battery and saved Nicaragua. The heroine of Fort San Carlos was decorated by the King of Spain, commissioned a colonel in the royal service, and pensioned for life.
Such is the tradition, accepted as authentic by the natives and supported by the testimony of several trustworthy travellers. None of Nelson's biographers make mention of the heroic maiden. According to those historians, Nelson ascended the river as far as Fort San Juan—probably Castillo Viejo—which he reduced after a somewhat protracted siege and a heavy loss to his forces. They place the scene of the accident by which he lost his eye at the siege of Calvi, in the Island of Corsica. Yet Captain Bedford Pim, of the Royal Navy, in his book of Nicaraguan travel, gives unquestioning credence to the legend of the country; which has also been accepted by other English writers who may be supposed to have a familiar acquaintance with the life of Nelson. So firmly is it believed in Nicaragua that, upon the strength of his inherited glory, General Martinez, a grandson of the heroine, was chosen President of the state in 1857, although there was at the time a regularly-elected President claiming and lawfully entitled to the office—a fact which should suffice to silence the most captious critic. In an iconoclastic age it were needless cruelty to rob the poor Nicaraguan of the only bit of heroic history he possesses. Possibly Nelson's biographers suppressed an incident which did not redound to the glory of their hero; perchance, his Catholic Majesty was imposed upon, or the tradition of the Maid of San Carlos may be but another transplanted solar myth.Quien sabe?
British intrigues on the Isthmus — Morazan and the Confederacy — The Mosquito Dynasty — Bombardment of San Juan — Castellon calls in the foreigner — Doubleday and his free lances — Cole's contract approved by Walker.
Solong as Central America remained a province of Spain, England's policy was one of peaceful words and hostile deeds. Binding herself, by treaty after treaty, to the renunciation of all claims upon the country, she steadily maintained and extended her hold upon various objective points—Ruatan, Belize, and the Bay Islands which command the Gulf of Mexico, being her favourite spoils. Some equivocal clause in a treaty, a frivolous pretence of avenging some imaginary dishonour, a buccaneer's legacy, a negro king's grant, if no better offered, was put forward as the excuse for armed occupation. Spain's ill-gotten possessions were beginning to bear the usual fruit. At length, in 1821, the colonies of the isthmus heard the cry of liberty from the North echoed by a responsive one from the South. Spanish America shook the chain fretted and worn in the friction of centuries, snapped the frail links asunder, and stood up among the nations, free. But the iron had done its work. The cramped limbs refused their offices; the eyes, wont to peer half closed in dungeon light, blinked and were dazed in the sudden noon of liberty. The body was that of a freeman, but the soul was the soul of a slave. When liberty comes to a nation prematurely, she must be born again in pain and travail ere the boon be valued by its receiver.
A disunited union of a few years' duration, a travesty of power under Iturbide's pasteboard crown, secession, reunion, discord, revolution—the annals of Central America are the Newgate Calendar of history. Yet, among the ignoble or infamous names of Central American rulers, there is one worthy of a brighter page, as its owner was of a better fate. Don Francisco Morazan, first president of the five united states, hardly deserved the title given him of the "Washington of Central America." He was an able, brave, and patriotic man, but cruel and vindictive towards his opponents. He was chosen to the presidency in 1831, and filled the office nine years; at the end of which time the natives had grown heartily tired of the civilized innovations, which were as unfitted to their inferior nature as the stiff garments of fashion to their supple limbs. Morazan had neither the grace nor the wisdom to accept philosophically the people's choice of a reactionary demagogue who catered to their tastes, and so he began to intrigue against the government of his successor, failing in which he was forced to fly to South America. Two years afterwards he landed with only three hundred followers in Costa Rica, and made himself master of the capital. But the President of that state soon rallied a force of five thousand and besieged the invader, who, after a gallant resistance of two days, was compelled to surrender. He was tried and found guilty of conspiring against the confederated states, and was put to death, together with his chief adherents, on the 15th of September, 1842. Guatemala ended the troublesome question of representative government in 1851 by electing Carrera, a half-breed, to the office of president for life.
The states of Central America, torn by internal strife, wasting their scant resources in fruitless wars and sad faction fights, were fast lapsing into a barbarism below that of Nicarao when he bowed to the Spanish yoke. Untainted by foreign blood, the independent native tribes proved themselves superior to the mongrel descendants of Cordova and D'Avila. The Indians of Darien and the Rio Frio region and the mountains of northern Costa Rica to this day preserve their freedom, whilst Nicaragua and Costa Rica have been wrangling, year after year, for the empty honour of being called their sovereign.
To this man-cursed land nature had given a noble heritage, coveted by many a powerful nation, though none dared clutch it single-handed. It is the lake, or inland sea, which covers five thousand square miles of the state, elevated one hundred and seven feet above the mean tide-level of the ocean, a natural reservoir, with an outlet ninety miles long—the San Juan river. By making this outlet navigable for large vessels, a comparatively easy work, and by cutting a canal sixteen and one-third miles in length, across the neck of land lying between the Lake and the Pacific Ocean, a highway could be opened to the commerce of the world, whose benefits it would be hard to over-estimate. It was a noble scheme, appealing to the enterprise of the civilized world and to the enlightened statesmanship of men like Bolivar and Morazan. Humboldt advocated it. Louis Napoleon beguiled his prison hours at Ham by writing a pamphlet showing its feasibility and need. As a commercial undertaking, its value was beyond question: the eye of national aggrandizement saw in it even more alluring features. The nation that should control that canal might be the dictator of America. Such nation was not, and could not be, that which, like the nerveless Ottoman, holds a point of vantage by the right of geographical position and by that alone. The power which held the key to the Mediterranean, and stood ready to seize the Isthmus of Suez, looked wistfully towards Nicaragua. Many and plausible were the dormant claims of England upon the territory of her weak enemy. For years she had exercised a nominal protectorate over the eastern coast known as the Mosquito kingdom.
The monarchs of Mosquito were ignorant negroes, ruling a scattered tribe, the savage descendants of a slave cargo wrecked upon the coast in the seventeenth century. They were appointed at various times by British man-of-war captains, being installed or dethroned at the will of their masters. Nicaragua, while never acknowledging this authority, lacked power to assert her own over the comparatively worthless tracts of her eastern coast, holding possession only of the river and town of San Juan. In 1839, the reigning king of Mosquito, His Majesty Robert Charles Frederick the First, cancelled a debt contracted for sundry liquors and other royal supplies, by making a grant of territory amounting to twenty-two and a half million acres or more. The grantees, Peter and Samuel Shepard, transferred the grant to the Central American Colonization Company, an American Association. This was the foundation of what became afterwards known as the Kinney Expedition.
The royal line of Mosquito may be classed among the unfortunate dynasties of the world. The first monarch, whose name is lost to history, was killed in a drunken brawl; his half-brother and successor was dethroned by a British captain, who placed a distant scion, George Frederick by name, on the vacant throne. The reign of the latter was short. His son, Robert Charles Frederick the First, was a merry monarch, "scandalous and poor," who sold his birthright to the Shepards for a mess of Jamaica rum and sundry pairs of cotton breeches. His son, George William Clarence, was reigning in 1850.
The superior swiftness of American ships had enabled the United States to forestall their English rivals in seizing California; whereupon the latter took the bold step, in 1848, of occupying at the same time Tigre Island, on the Pacific coast of the isthmus, and San Juan del Norte, on the Atlantic, which latter place they christened Greytown, in honour of a governor of Jamaica. England thus had the keys of the isthmus in her hands; the canal, worthless without a safe entrance and exit, might fall to the lot of him who chose the barren glory of building it. But, strange to say, the United States possessed at that time a useful diplomatic servant in their minister to Central America, the Honourable E. G. Squier, one, moreover, whose claim to honour rests upon a broader basis than the thankless triumphs of public service. He promptly seconded the protest of Honduras against the utterly indefensible robbery of her territory, Tigre Island. His government took up the question, and the island was reluctantly given up.
At the same time, the United States formally protested against the seizure of San Juan. Long and wordy negotiations ensued, ending in the so-called Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. It was a practical victory for Great Britain, as it entrapped the American Government into an obligation to refrain from "ever holding any exclusive control over the said ship canal, erecting or maintaining any fortifications commanding the same, or in the vicinity thereof, occupying, fortifying, colonizing or assuming or exercising any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast, or any part of Central America." Great Britain, with apparent fairness, bound herself to equal neutrality. The difference was that the United States promised to abstain from ever taking any steps to control the only avenue then available between the Eastern and the Western States of the Union, thus being placed upon the same footing with distant European nations which could have no such vital interests in the isthmus. Great Britain agreed to refrain from acts which were not only dangerous and inexcusable, but of very doubtful feasibility. Another difference: the United States kept the pledge; Great Britain broke it within fourteen months. The treaty was signed by both parties, and proclaimed on the 5th of July, 1850. In August of the following year, Captain Jolly, of the Royal Navy, solemnly annexed the island of Ruatan to the colony of Belize, which, notwithstanding the treaty, had remained a nominal dependency of England. In July, 1852, Augustus Frederick Gore, Colonial Secretary of Belize, proclaimed that "Her Gracious Majesty, our Queen, has been pleased to constitute and make the islands of Ruatan, Bonacca, Utilla, Barbarat, Helene, and Morat to be a colony to be known and designated as the Colony of the Bay Islands." It was the buccaneer's legacyredivivus.
Now, if ever, was a favourable time for the application of a theory set forth by a President of the United States nearly thirty years before: "That the American Continents, by the free and independent position which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European power." So reads the extract from President Monroe's seventh annual message, dated the 2nd December, 1823, and known as the "Monroe Doctrine." This bold assumption of a protectorate over two continents was nothing more than the expression of its author's private opinion, unsupported by official action, either at home or abroad. But it fell like a bombshell into the diplomatic circles of the world. It was criticized, derided, repudiated by every nation of Europe; but it was secretly feared and not openly disobeyed by any, even in the much-vexed discussion of the Central American question. England carefully based her claim to the coveted territory upon the alleged facts of long possession and colonization. It is needless to say that the "Monroe Doctrine," even had it been incorporated in the American constitution, could not have been entertained for a moment in the high court of nations, save after the manner that such doubtful claims are always conceded to the right of might.
The British no longer claimed for themselves or their royal puppets of Mosquito, authority over the port of San Juan. Nevertheless, the traditional British man-of-war within a day's sail of anywhere continued to haunt the Caribbean Sea. The Transit Company's steamers sailed regularly between New York and San Juan. In May, 1854, a captain of one of them shot a negro in the streets of San Juan, and fled from arrest to the United States Consulate. The American minister, Borland, refused to surrender the fugitive to the officers of justice. A mob surrounded the consulate, and during the fray which ensued the minister was hit on the cheek by a bottle thrown by some rioter. Consul Fabens, then on board the steamerNorthern Light, sent a boat ashore to take off the minister and his criminal guest, Captain Smith. Before the steamer sailed with the minister on board, a guard of fifty Americans was armed and left behind to protect the Transit Company's property at Puntas Arenas, a point of land opposite the town of San Juan. The boat which carried Minister Borland to the steamer was fired upon by the natives, but, as it appears, not with fatal results. Still the indignity offered to the representative of a great nation must be atoned for. The United States sloop-of-warCyanewas sent out as soon as the matter was reported at Washington. Her commander, Captain Hollins, on arriving off the town, found the inevitable British man-of-war lying between him and the shore. He promptly notified the Nicaraguan authorities of his intention to bombard the town, which was thereupon hastily evacuated. The captain of H.B.M. shipExpressrefused to move out of range, until the guns of theCyanehad been trained to rake his decks, when he reluctantly dropped astern, after protesting that the American superiority of armament alone saved the dispute from being settled by the last argument of kings and captains. The disparity is to be regretted, in view of the wearisome and vain diplomacy afterwards spent upon a question which force alone, or the show of it, could finally settle.
While the guns of theCyanewere squandering powder on the frail huts of San Juan in lieu of a worthier target, Nicaragua was too deeply engrossed in her usual internecine strife to resent the outrage from abroad. Don Fruto Chamorro, who succeeded Pineda as president in 1851, found himself towards the close of his term, ambitious of another lease of power. Chamorro was the leader of the Legitimist, or Servile party, as it was called; Don Francisco Castellon was the choice of the Liberal or Democratic party. At the biennial election in 1853, both parties claimed the victory, and, as is usual in such disputes, possession was the strongest point of law. Chamorro proclaimed himself duly elected, and was installed in office at Granada, the chief city of the Servile faction. Leon, the larger and more prosperous city, favoured the cause of Castellon, whereupon Chamorro promptly arrested his rival with several of his adherents, and banished them from the country. They took refuge in Honduras, whose president, Cabañas, received them hospitably. Chamorro, to make his position more secure, had himself, on April 30, 1854, proclaimed president for two terms or four years. A usurpation so bold was calculated to defeat its own object.
Castellon landed at Realejo within a week after its declaration, with only thirty-six followers. The Leonese rallied to his support, and drove Chamorro out of the department and into the Servile stronghold, the city of Granada. Soon after they obtained control of the lake and river and laid siege to Granada. The siege lasted nine months without material advantage on either side. Castellon was proclaimed Provisional Director by his party. Chamorro dying on the 12th of March, 1855, was succeeded by Senator Don Jose Maria Estrada, a weak substitute for his brave, popular, and ambitious predecessor. Each party had now ade factopresident. General Jose Trinidad Munoz, a veteran of Santa Ana's, and like that luckless hero, fully impressed with the delusion that he was a physical and mental counterpart of the great Napoleon, commanded the army of Castellon. The Serviles were headed by Don Ponciano Corral, a clever, unscrupulous man, who relied upon the military assistance of adjacent states to strengthen the arms of his party.
Such was the state of affairs in Nicaragua in August, 1854, when an American, named Byron Cole, presented himself before Castellon with a novel offer. Cole, who had been formerly a Boston editor, was proprietor of the newspaper which we left under the editorial management of the late President of Sonora. His faith in the military genius of his editor was in nowise abated by the disastrous end of the Sonora expedition. Arriving in the camp of the Democrats when their earlier conquests were gradually slipping from their hands, and the long siege of Granada had been raised in despair, Cole's offer of aid was eagerly embraced by Castellon and his party.
They had already known and rated the value of the American rifleman as an auxiliary. At an early period of the civil war, an adventurous California pioneer, named C. W. Doubleday, found himself at the port of San Juan del Sur, the Pacific terminus of the Transit. He was homeward-bound after years of absence, but being thrown into the society of some Democratic leaders, he did not require much persuasion before deciding to abandon his cabin passage, already paid to New York, and become an apostle of Democratic principles among his fellow passengers. He worked with such good effect that thirty of them volunteered under his lead and marched to the aid of the army investing Granada. They were reckless fighters, who looked upon Central American warfare as holiday pastime. Nevertheless, although reinforced from time to time by occasional American recruits, who had drifted into the country on their way to or from California, ere the siege was raised they had been reduced by war and disease to the number of four. Doubleday then organized from the flower of the native army a corps of sharpshooters with whom he covered the retreat to Leon, losing nearly all his company, but impressing the native soldiery with a favourable opinion of the Americans as bold and reckless fighters.
Cole's plan to bring in a formidable American contingent to aid the Democratic cause, came at a time when foreign help was doubly welcome. Castellon's Honduran allies had been abruptly recalled to meet an invasion of their own country by Guatemala. The Serviles, now in possession of lake and river, were slowly but surely advancing on Leon. The strength which the Leonese might have received from the Democratic states adjoining was needed by these at home to protect themselves against their aristocratic enemies, and against the alert, wily intrigues of European agents.
Therefore, in October, 1854, Byron Cole made a contract with the government of Castellon to supply to the Democratic army three hundred American "colonists liable to military duty." The settlers should be entitled to a grant of 52,000 acres of land, and should have the privilege of becoming citizens upon a formal declaration of that intention. Cole took his contract and sailed for California to receive his chief's ratification.