The term "filibuster" is generally understood as a parliamentary maneuver allowing an aggrieved minority to prevent voting on a bill. However, it also refers to military adventurers who launch an invasion of another country. They are typically funded all, or mostly, through private capital. Filibusters are usually viewed as picaresque, romantic characters, perhaps midway between quixotic and frightening. This essay will address three case histories of famous filibusters, and examine their role in imperialism.

CASE 1: WILLIAM WALKER

William Walker is probably the most famous filibuster of US history. Born in Tennessee (1824), he was a rabid enthusiast of slavocratic expansionism. After a stint as newspaper editor and medical doctor, he moved to San Francisco in 1850 and became obsessed with projects for grabbing more land from Mexico. Quite naturally, the government of Mexico, having just lost over 50% of its land area to the USA, was quite mistrustful of earnest gringos. It was, however, desperate to establish armed colonies of Europeans to protect against Native tribes; hence, it offered land grants to non-US citizens to establish military colonies in the interior. Two French adventurers, Charles de Pindray and Gaston de Raousset-Boulbon attempted to take over Sonora State using this program; their defeats by Santa Ana, while fatal to themselves, probably inspired Walker. In 1853 he launched his own attempt to take over Baja California and Sonora. Then, as his logistical situation deteriorated [*], he turned himself in to US authorities for violating US neutrality laws. He was then just 29. A jury in California took 8 minutes to acquit him [*].

The Mexican government, exasperated by the European and Usonian efforts to capture Sonora, sold much of it to the USA (the Gadsen Purchase).

Walker then undertook his next big project, the conquest of Nicaragua. He was hired by a rebel faction in the Nicaraguan Civil War:

The possibility of economic riches in Nicaragua attracted international business development. Afraid of Britain's colonial intentions, Nicaragua held discussions with the United States in 1849, leading to a treaty that gave the United States exclusive rights to a transit route across Nicaragua. In return, the United States promised protection of Nicaragua from other foreign intervention. On June 22, 1849, the first official United States representative, Ephraim George Squier, arrived in Nicaragua. Both liberals and conservatives welcomed the United States diplomat. A contract between Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, a United States businessman, and the Nicaraguan government was signed on August 26, 1849, granting Vanderbilt's company--the Accessory Transit Company--exclusive rights to build a transisthmian canal within twelve years. The contract also gave Vanderbilt exclusive rights, while the canal was being completed, to use a land-and-water transit route across Nicaragua, part of a larger scheme to move passengers from the eastern United States to California. The westbound journey across Nicaragua began by small boat from San Juan del Norte on the Caribbean coast, traveled up the Río San Juan to San Carlos on Lago de Nicaragua, crossed Lago de Nicaragua to La Virgen on the west shore, and then continued by railroad or stagecoach to San Juan del Sur on the Pacific coast. In September 1849, the United States-Nicaragua treaty, along with Vanderbilt's contract, was approved by the Nicaraguan Congress.

British economic interests were threatened by the United States enterprise led by Vanderbilt, and violence erupted in 1850 when the British tried to block the operations of the Accessory Transit Company. As a result, United States and British government officials held diplomatic talks and on April 19, 1850, without consulting the Nicaraguan government, signed the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, in which both countries agreed that neither would claim exclusive power over a future canal in Central America nor gain exclusive control over any part of the region. Although the Nicaraguan government originally accepted the idea of a transit route because of the economic benefit it would bring Nicaragua, the operation remained under United States and British control. Britain retained control of the Caribbean port of San Juan del Norte, and the United States owned the vessels, hotels, restaurants, and land transportation along the entire transit route.

In 1853 conservative General Fruto Chamorro had taken over the government and exiled his leading liberal opponents. Aided by the liberal government in neighboring Honduras, an exile army entered Nicaragua on May 5, 1854.

The liberals enjoyed initial success in the fighting, but the tide turned in 1854 when Guatemala's conservative government invaded Honduras, forcing that nation to end its support of the liberals in Nicaragua. Chamorro's death from natural causes in March 1855 brought little respite to the beleaguered liberals, who began to look abroad for support. Through an agent, they offered Walker funds and generous land grants if he would bring a force of United States adventurers to their aid. Walker leaped at the chance--he quickly recruited a force of fifty-six followers and landed with them in Nicaragua on May 4, 1855.

Walker's initial band was soon reinforced by other recruits from the United States. Strengthened by this augmented force, Walker seized Granada, center of conservative power. The stunned conservative government surrendered, and the United States quickly recognized a new puppet liberal government with Patricio Rivas as president. Real power, however, remained with Walker, who had assumed command of the Nicaraguan army.

Walker proceeded to hold a farcical election and install himself as president. Making English the country's official language and legalizing slavery, Walker also allied himself with Vanderbilt's rivals in the contest for control of the transit route, hoping that this alliance would provide both funds and transportation for future recruits. His call for Nicaragua's annexation by the United States as a slave state garnered some support from United States proslavery forces.

In the meantime, forces opposing Walker were rapidly gaining the upper hand, leading him to attack his liberal allies, accusing them of half-hearted support. Most Nicaraguans were offended by Walker's proslavery, pro-United States stance; Vanderbilt was determined to destroy him, and the rest of Central America actively sought his demise. The British also encouraged opposition to Walker as a means of curbing United States influence in the region. Even the United States government, fearful that plans to annex Nicaragua as a new slave state would fan the fires of sectional conflict growing within the United States, became opposed to his ambitions.

The struggle to expel Walker and his army from Nicaragua proved to be long and costly. In the process, the colonial city of Granada was burned, and thousands of Central Americans lost their lives. The combined opposition of Vanderbilt, the British Navy, and the forces of all of Central America, however, eventually defeated the filibusters.

As a tactician and an expeditionary leader, Walker was remarkable. Clearly he could take his place among the Hawkwoods and the Dostums for temerity and persistence. However, unlike them, he had no concept of when he had overstepped. He imagined his home country would joyfully embrace his latest acquisition, Nicaragua, just as it had n. Sonora. In the interim, however, Usonians had fought an extremely savage war in Kansas over slavery; the Buchanan Administration, unlike Pierce's, was in no haste to annex another ill-gotten war-starter like Kansas.

A deeper lesson, though, was that instead of national governments and their booster squads in frontier San Francisco, Walker was dealing with rival commercial interests in the Isthmus. Vanderbilt's interests were now "British," and Yankee jingoism was no match for the new London-Vanderbilt Axis:

The final battle of what Nicaraguans called the "National War" (1856-57) took place in the spring of 1857 in the town of Rivas, near the Costa Rican border. Walker beat off the attacks of the Central Americans, but the strength and morale of his forces were declining, and it would be only a matter of time until he would be overwhelmed. At this point, Commander Charles H. Davis of the United States Navy, whose ship had been sent to Nicaragua's Pacific coast to protect United States economic interests, arranged a truce. On May 1, 1857, Walker and his remaining followers, escorted by a force of United States marines, evacuated Rivas, marched down to the coast, and took the ships back to the United States.

Walker ended his days on 12 September 1860. Eleven weeks later, Abraham Lincoln was elected president, and Walker's slavocrats overreached en bloc.

(Private Sector Imperialism-13)