The Filibuster War (Entry 468.RE0602)

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Whether you're listening from an advanced civilization, or have just reinvented the technology to decrypt our transmissions, this is our legacy to you. This is our time capsule. This is The Omnibus. You have accessed entry 468.re0602. Certificate number 28903. The filibuster war. You all might think that there will be a day when America will leave Nicaragua alone. But I'm here to tell you, flat out, that that day will never happen. Well, so what is your entry in The Omnibus? We talk about filibuster a lot now. It seems to be a, it's on the short list of things that people kind of wish or consider changing about the way our political system works. The filibuster is controversial and not necessarily baked in. And maybe the filibuster could be eliminated. Maybe the filibuster is the only thing saving us. Can you explain like what a filibuster is? And so this is interesting because obviously what we know, how we know the word filibuster is either through the Senate needing to get 60 votes to pass a piece of legislation or Hakeem Jeffery standing up and talking for 24 hours without, you know, sitting down. The filibuster war and the word filibuster in the 1850s meant something. I believe it meant that as well, but it also meant basically it was a group of white men in the 1850s who called themselves filibusters or had that moniker put on them, who believed in the idea of manifest destiny and the United States manifest destiny and in the Monroe Doctrine. So we are going way back to the beginning of the American experiment. And they were basically raising private armies and invading countries in Central America, Central America and the Caribbean. And so manifest destiny, give the casual listener or the listener in Switzerland or New Zealand who doesn't have it burned into their retinas like we do. Sure. So it was coined by a guy named John L. O. Sullivan, who was a newspaper man in the 1840s. And it basically said that the United States was a special unique, endowed entity or country, and that it was every American's right and really duty to spread Americanism as far and wide as they could. It's typically thought of as spreading across the continent, so going from the Atlantic to the Pacific, going west. But it certainly, believers in manifest destiny, certainly believe that that could include Canada, that could include Mexico, that could include Cuba, Central America. And what was it that gave us this special endowment? What was it about America that was so special that it had this otherworldly? American exceptionalism and white nationalism is what it comes down to. It was an especially popular belief or whatever you want to say about it in the South, in the Southern states, in the future Confederate states, who really believe that every other country had done it wrong and we were doing it right. I say we as Americans were doing it right. And so it was, again, it was endowed by God for us to conquer as many lands as we could, especially in the Western Hemisphere. So in the short term, it was used to justify expanding the United States to the Pacific Ocean and taking sort of everything that was in our lane. But then in a larger sort of sphere, it really meant the Western Hemisphere to the to the degree that we could assert or were interested in asserting our hegemony. Sure. I think you could even say it was an expansion of the Monroe Doctrine, again, going back to the Monroe Doctrine for those in Denmark or Australia, is named after our fourth president, right? James Madden, James Monroe. No, he's our fifth president. Sorry, Madison was our fourth. Madison was our fourth president. Monroe was our fifth president. I had to think about it in my head. Good. I'm glad you did. My daughter would be scowling at me that I even nodded a sense. Right. To the wrong four, five, not four. And Monroe, the Monroe Doctrine was that European power should have little to no power in the Western Hemisphere and that the American government, and that that was America's hemisphere. And we should be the imperialists to rule it, not the French or the English or whomever in in Europe thought that they had the right to do it. Right. Well, I concur. Well, of course. You don't want any French. Well, we we don't want the French or the Portuguese. Yeah. Who knows who could be asserting their power. So manifest destiny is sort of a growth out of that in addition to Westward expansion. And the annexation of Texas was a big part of manifest destiny, winning the Mexican American War and then Texas becoming its own country, then eventually becoming part of the United States. It was all sort of tied in the 1840s and 50s to this idea of manifest destiny. 54 40 year fight, as we say up here. 54 40 year fight. And really, many would believe beyond there. Keep going north. Yeah. Well, we ended up with Alaska. So in a sense, you know, we we boxed them in. We did. We went we went higher than than we than we said. So these filibusterers who what are they? Why are they called the filibusters? Why are who are they filibustering? I don't know where the how the term was applied. I couldn't find that like why they called them filibusters. Other than it just sounds like bad. Sounds like a bunch of tough guys like sort of trying to. I will say that none of them were really very successful. So, you know, they were they sound tougher probably than they were. Although, to be fair, they were pretty tough. So the first sort of manifestation of this was a guy named Narciso Lopez. Narciso Lopez. That's pretty tough. It was yeah, an A.R.C.I.S.O. He was Cuban American or he was Cuban living in the United States, living in New York. And he decided that he wanted to raise an army and invade Cuba and free Cuba. Of Spanish rule and eventually make it a state within the United States. In fact, the current Cuban flag is based on or is it is the flag that he designed when he invaded Cuba. Now it stands for a free Cuba. But at the time it was he was just this guy who raised an army tried to invade Cuba. The Spanish fought him off and he, you know, left with his tail between his legs. But he inspired a number of people. This combination of John L. O'Sullivan talking about manifest destiny. Narciso Lopez invading Cuba inspired a number of people notably a guy named William Walker. And William Walker is sort of the key to our story here. And William Walker is was a an incredible person. An incredible person. And I don't mean that in I'm not he lived an incredible life. I had his politics were questionable and his ideas were questionable. But he lived an incredible short life. He was only 32 or something when he when he died. So we did it all fairly quickly. Real Alexander the Great. A real Alexander the Great. Less successful than Alexander the Great. Not for a lack of trying. Well, if you measure success on a long life, neither of them particularly. That's true. That is true. He was born in 1824 to a pretty prominent family in Nashville. They were politically connected. They weren't, you know, they weren't the richest family in Nashville, but they were, you know, pretty pretty well off, very politically connected. One of his uncles was a U.S. Senator from Michigan. They were connected to the Polk Fint to James K. Polk and Andrew Jackson, you know, our two most famous presidents from Tennessee. And he wasn't particularly active, politically active, but he was very smart at 14. He graduated from high school and went to the University of Nashville to study medicine. Eventually ended up at the University of Pennsylvania, speaking of Ivy League schools, where he got a medical degree, finishing up his medical degree. He went to Europe for a year or so and traveled around Europe, studying medicine, learning the newest tricks of the trade in Austria and England. Oh, so he was a real aristocrat or, you know, a young romantic. Yes, yes. And, and, and clearly a very smart guy. Because when he comes back, he settles in Philadelphia briefly, practices medicine, but soon decides that medicine is not where he wants. He's 19 years old at this point. So this is all happening. He's like 19, 20 years old when this happens. This is really only something that could have happened in the 1840s. And he decides that he doesn't want to be a doctor. He'd rather be a lawyer. Sure. I mean, when you look at the options that you have, those are really the only two. Well, you know, some, some parents might believe that, especially if you study political science and college. Doctor or lawyer. And then I don't know what what the other jobs are. Other, they're working jobs. Yeah, they're working jobs. So I didn't even bother to go past that the first two. So he decides to move to New Orleans and practice law in New Orleans, which is an interesting place to choose to practice law. It does factor in later in our story, becomes a lawyer in, in New Orleans and practices for a time. He has, he does see the biography that I read about him. He does seem a bit like an oddball. Like he doesn't seem to have a lot of social skills. There are some conflicting reports as to a romance that he had in New Orleans with a young woman. But it's unclear from sort of his letters and from her letters, if there was any kind of a romance. She died of cholera, I believe, or yellow fever, one of, one of the malaria and one of those diseases that killed people in the 1840s. Dengue fever, maybe. Yeah, something in New Orleans. So really, it could have been anything. She was, she was deaf and he learned sign language to communicate with her. So obviously there was some kind of attraction there between the two of them. But you get a sense that you can sort of historically diagnose him as neurodivergent? Yeah, I think so. I think so. Certainly not an introvert in any way. You know, I think that's a good thing. So certainly not an introvert in any way. He was certainly somewhat outgoing and very passionate in his beliefs and not afraid to tell people exactly how he believed or what he believed in. And that led directly to him giving up the law, at least for a short time, and becoming a newspaper editor. Because again, he's a white guy in the 1840s. This is, these are the things you could do. Sure, start a newspaper. I mean, I'm surprised he didn't start a bank at some point, although we're early on in the story. I will give a spoiler away. He does not start a bank, but money is never important to him. He seems to have enough money to be comfortable. But he's also sort of always, you know, in New Orleans, he lived in a, like in a boarding house. He didn't live in an opulent mansion on Canal Street or, you know, in the Garden District. He's sort of lived, he operated in aristocratic society, but he, you know, lived in a boarding house and sort of lived fairly modestly from what I learned. He starts this newspaper and then he really gets into writing about these new ideas of manifest destiny and westward expansion. We're right on the verge of the California Gold Rush, but it hasn't quite happened yet. We're also not far away from the Civil War. And so those sort of discussions are happening, like the, you know, we're past the Missouri Compromise. So there's, as we expand west, what do we do with slavery? Do new states have slaves? Do they not have slaves? He very much believed in the rights of new states to vote themselves on whether or not slavery would be legal. Oh, he did. You know, when I look in the mirror now, there's no question that my hair is thinning and, you know, I cut my own hair and it's responding very differently to my, to my scissors. I don't have to use the thinning scissors quite as much. And I keep thinking like I think a lot of people who, whose hair thins that, oh, maybe it'll get better over time, but hair loss doesn't fix itself. And, you know, from what I understand, the earlier you act, the better. And that's why I'm recommending to those listeners who may be also experiencing a little hair loss. I'm recommending HIMS. HIMS makes it simple with an 100% online process of personalized treatment plans delivered straight to you. 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But I think he would definitely say he would have fallen on the side of the Confederacy. I mean, we're talking about the 1840s. Is that right? We're in the early 1840s? Yeah, we're in the mid-1840s at this point. So it's hard to place ourselves in that time. But the Louisiana purchase was only 40 years prior. Right? This whole, the whole center part of the United States where you're sitting right now would have been French until living memory. I mean, 40 years ago in my own life, well, this is my 40th high school reunion this year. So, right? Like I would have graduated from high school in France and that would be the New Orleans that we were sitting in. So, yeah, still a very much a feeling of being, New Orleans itself always sort of being a city state or like a strange outpost in the Degoboss system. And it was then that Degoboss system is an apt description of swampy New Orleans. I love New Orleans. Don't get me wrong. I adore New Orleans. No, it's marvelous. But yeah, trying to imagine like this context of this manifest destiny like mentality situated right there and then it's like my imagination is really spinning out. Yeah. And you know, and he is very much, New Orleans is an outpost, as you said. Like that's a, you know, it's sort of it's on its own. It's huge by comparison of other cities, especially in the South. New Orleans is, you know, a monster city of its time. It's an incredibly important city as a port city as it still is. But as we'll see later, you know, this is where the ships left to go across the Isthmus of Central America to get back up to California, you know, just a few years after this, during the California Gold Rush, and it becomes a very important city for transportation. And that all plays into that. So he's living in New Orleans. Walker, our man is living in New Orleans. And again, you know, he's got this romantic interest in this woman. Helen Martin is her name and she's a socialite for sure. And again, the record is kind of unclear if they were in love or if it was unrequited love on his part. But she, she dies of yellow fever. I found it in my notes. She died of yellow fever and Walker decides it's time to move on. And by now we're in the late 1840s. And San Francisco is a bustling boon town as the California Gold Rush is just getting going. So he ups and moves to San Francisco. When he gets to San Francisco, it's pretty lawless. It's a lot of, you know, it's rough and tumble miners and people trying to cash cash in on the Gold Rush, get rich quick. It's everything that we've seen in the movies. Also part of the Degobus system in a way. Yes, a different part of the Degobus. The much nicer part of the Degobus. Now. You've climbed, climate wise, climate wise. Well, yeah, but that was when, when what the Sacramento was under water like, like two months out of every year, because they hadn't yet solved any of the water problems. And he lived in, he also lived in Sacramento for a time while he was up there. He buys a newspaper while he's up there. He starts a newspaper while he's up there. And again, he's very outspoken about manifesting. You know, he really strikes me as a guy who is, you know, the sort of libertarian of today, the like, I just want to do my own thing, get out of my way. Yeah, I don't need the government. The government is just getting in my way of all of these brilliant ideas that I have. And he's not alone in San Francisco in that belief in the 1840s. It is very, it is mostly made up of men, mostly white, white men, for that matter, who are very much like, we're moving to the edge of the earth. We're going to make our fortune, get out of our way, stop messing with us. Don't, don't let your laws interrupt what we're, what we're going to do that's great here. And California isn't a state yet. There's no, so this, this, these ideas are very real to people. The idea that America is coming and that this is part of America, where it had only been Mexico not very long ago either. Right. And the Mexican American war is just over. And there is some government in San Francisco, but it's fairly corrupt. And he again, he picks a lot of fights with politicians and he picks a lot of fights with other newspaper editors. He was involved in at least two duels, probably three, lost them all. Whoa, had lost them and yet lived to tell the story. Yeah, he had, I don't know how many bullets he had in him when he died, but he had definitely been shot three or four times in his life. And this is that sort of indicative of what I learned about Walker. Oh, so he's, he's, he's a, he's a diminutive man. He's not very tall. He's like five, four. He's sort of slight in build. He's not, um, uh, what you would sort of think of as a big strapping minor. Um, but his, he is very set in his beliefs and he is not afraid to take on anybody who challenges him as these three duels, um, uh, show or at least, at least two duels. The third duel is sort of from what I could tell from the book that I read and from some other stuff that I read may have happened, may not have happened. He wasn't the kind of guy that was going to deny a story like that. That was going to, you know, that was going to tell you, no, he didn't get into a third duel. Uh, so he may have been involved in a third duel. And do you feel like the fact that he's nursing a broken heart has, has made him maybe a little bit more reckless, like, like nothing to lose? I do. And again, it's, it's tough to tell what his relationship with Helen was. Um, or really his relationship with anybody, his family, he's very much a sort of on his own kind of guy. He's got some friends, but often those friends are there because they share common cause with him, um, especially as we get further into the story. Uh, he's, he's a, he's an enigma for sure. Um, and he, he wrote a lot. You know, he was a newspaper man. So there's lots of his writings out there, but they're mostly about his political beliefs or his, really his beliefs and how great America is. So here we are. And what's his newspaper called in San Francisco? Uh, it's called the San Francisco Herald. Uh, I don't know how long it existed without him. Um, and I, I mean, he bought it. So he did not start it. He bought it. He purchased it. Um, you know, it was the 1840s. So there were dozens of newspapers. So while he's in San Francisco, we'll go back to Narciso Lopez. What Walker is inspired by his, uh, attempt to claim Cuba for the United States. Uh, and gets it in his head that he wants to claim Sonora, the state of Sonora in Mexico for the United States. Um, to be a buffer state is sort of how he described it between, uh, Mexico and the United States with the intent of following Texas's lead, becoming its own republic, becoming its own country and eventually joining the United States. I should note as a slave state. So again, for $40 or whatever, he raises an army. Uh, now I say an army, it's like 45 drunk miners that he recruited out of the various taverns around San Francisco. Uh, and they somehow come up with a boat. So for our, for our Danish listeners, Sonora is, uh, what part of Mexico? It is, uh, northwest Mexico, not as far west as Baja. Uh, it's the other side of the Baja, uh, sea, uh, from the Baja Peninsula. So, uh, it, it abuts the border of, of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, that northwest corner of Mexico. So, so Walker decides he wants Sonora and puts this ragtag group of mostly drunk miners who have struck out, you know, these aren't the best miners either. These, these aren't the ones that have found successful claims in the California gold rush. Uh, so they, they hop on this boat, uh, drinking the entire way. Uh, they were, they had too little, they didn't have enough food, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough of anything. They clearly had enough booze. So it was good enough to get them to Cabo, basically the bottom of the Baja Peninsula, Cabo San Lucas. And they're on boats. Yes, they, they, they, they sail from San Francisco, right, through, through the Golden Gate on their great adventure. And they get to Cabo, and they, and they, they come ashore in Cabo and Walker decides this is where they're going to make their base of operation for the eventual of the invasion of Sonora. And, you know, as maybe typical of guys like Walker, he assumes that he will be greeted as a liberator and all of the landowners and ranchers of the Baja Peninsula and of Sonora will rush to his side and fight alongside because who wouldn't want to be an American? Right. This is just a guy who figured out a way to raise an army, let's call it an army and, and, and invade a country. And not just one country, but we'll get to that. Okay, okay. So he, he never really makes it to Sonora. He lands in Cabo with his group of drunks, declares himself the president of the new Republic of Sonora, and sets up what he thinks is a government with him as the head of the government. None of the local landowners are on his side. The Mexican government is certainly not on his side. They do not think very highly of him. They mostly it's it's Walker and his men sort of cattle wrestling really. They're just kind of invading other ranches and stealing the cattle, not for money, but because literally all they have is booze and no food. So they're stealing cows so that they can have a couple of hamburgers to sustain themselves. And between the Mexican government and the, and the local landowners, Walker and his men don't really go anywhere. They sort of hang out for a few months and eventually in October. Oh no, I guess they landed in October and then a couple of months later, they limped their way, walked back to San Diego. So have you ever been to Baja, Mexico? I have never been to Baja. No, I've been to other parts of Mexico, but I've never been to Baja. Well, I can say just from my limited experience having visited there a couple of times that walking from Cabo back to San Diego is not, you're not really walking through lush, easy ground with lots of little, you know, welcoming towns, little hobbit villages. It's really, that would be a pretty brutal walk. Yeah. And they did, they did lose at least one man to the walk, to the elements and possibly more. It's, you know, it's hard to parse. A lot of these accounts are either Walkers who's sort of grandiose in his thinking, sort of hard to tell exactly what the numbers were, but they definitely lost some men and they definitely lost some men on the walk home. But they do make it, Walker does make it back to San Diego where he is promptly arrested for violating the Neutrality Act of 1794, which, you know, in and of itself is pretty impressive. That seems like an impressive crime to be charged with. Sure, that checks out. I mean, that if I had done that, if that was on my resume, I'd be pretty, I'd say I'd be a pretty successful guy in his fifties. Yeah, charged with essentially charged with waging an illegal war. Yeah, good. So it's, you know, it's not, you're not, you're not spray painting the walls of a church. He ends up back in San Francisco where he's put on trial for violating the Neutrality Act of 1794. He partly defends himself because again, he still is a lawyer and does understand California law or San Francisco law or the United States, I guess it's the federal government charging him. And the trial goes on for a couple of days and it goes to the jury and eight minutes later, they acquit him of all charges. Oh, oh, and so did he expect to be treated as a, as a conquering hero or like an American patriot? He did and he was. Wow. Because again, this is San Francisco in wherever we are 1840, 1850, something like that. Right. And so they were like, why are we prosecuting this good American when we should be out there doing something else? And a lot of these guys also believed in manifest destiny and, you know, the greatness of America. And yeah, we should be invading Mexico and why aren't why isn't the government invading Mexico? So California is a U.S. state at this point. So this is all 1854. So yeah, okay. So yeah, okay. He's he's acquitted in eight minutes. In eight minutes, the jury returns with an acquittal. This emboldens him as you can imagine. And did the money start pouring in? Did he start a go fund me and yes, he he the money does start to pour in. He starts to he finds it easier to recruit people for his ideas. He's still bad. They are still, you know, newspaper reporter or newspaper editors and owners who disagree with his philosophy and they're sending things back and forth. The U.S. government is not so keen on his ideas. And so the U.S. Navy is is has a close eye on him, a guy named US Army rather a guy named Ethan Allen Hitchcock, who was the general of the Pacific Division, which was based in the Bay Area was based a little bit east of Oakland. It wasn't at the Presidio yet, I guess, but he was sort of in charge of everything California. I found later found out by accident that he's actually a St. Louis guy and his family lasted well into the ninth 20th century. And his Ethan Allen Hitchcock's great grandson was friends with my great grandfather, which I learned totally randomly as I was as I was working on that. Wait a minute. So you're saying that you are two kisses away from the protagonists of this story? In some way. Yeah, in some way. My great grandfather knew his great grandson. So which again, I was a totally random. I was wasn't even researching this at this point. I was looking at something else and came across the exact same name, Ethan Allen Hitchcock. And I was like, well, that's got to be that can't be a coincidence. So your bacon Sabbath airdose number is pretty low in the case of the the filibuster war. Yes, exactly. We're right there. So Ethan Allen Hitchcock is the general who's sort of chasing Walker around San Francisco, trying to get him to stop. And he is just a basic thorn in the side of Walker, but does seem to be somewhat sympathetic to Walker and his manifest destiny beliefs. So there is that. Either way, by now, it's 1854. And a civil war has broken out in Nicaragua. It's called the Grenada, Granada Leon Civil War. It was the leftist, the legitimist government, which was the right wing government, the conservative government, which was based in Granada and the left leftists who were fighting them were based in Leon. Walker sees this as an opportunity. I see. And he sees it as an opportunity because if he can get one of the sides to invite him to be part of the Civil War, then he would not be violating the Neutrality Act. Of course not. He's an honored guest. Right. I mean, Nicaragua has only been independent from Spain for at this point a couple of dozen years too. So this is all. Yeah, it's not long. Yeah. This is these are exciting times. So he's like a mercenary for hire at this point. Essentially, yeah. Essentially, that's what it is. And he gets the leftist government or the leftist fighters, the leftist side of the Civil War, to invite 300 fellow colonists to occupy 52,000 acres of Nicaragua. And if they happen to bring their own guns to help with the Civil War, well, you know, that's just the way it goes. When we think about leftism in Nicaragua, we are always thinking about it as a kind of like Marxist versus imperialist dispute. But this is this is a few decades or no, no, no, I guess Marx is Marx is writing at this point. But these would not be leftists in the way that we think of left. These are not the Sanded East. Right. These are probably, well, they're also colonializing European leftists. Meaning that I'm trying to try to imagine what a left leaning government in Nicaragua in 1850 would look like. What makes them left? I think it's liberalism, classical liberalism. I see. I see. Rather than just authoritarian, probably the right wants to have a king of Nicaragua. Right. And the liberals are like, let's have a Congress. Right. I believe the term they even used was like the director of Nicaragua. You know, it was like a it was very much a I think that's what it was. It's illiberal versus liberal sort of in the classical sense. So Walker and his men, he doesn't quite get to 300. The numbers vary, but it's probably somewhere in the 150s ish. 150 men arrive again, set sail from San Francisco and arrive on the west coast of Nicaragua in 18 in June of 1855. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale ups online in person and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. If you work in university maintenance, Granger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off and Granger is your trusted partner offering the products you need all in one place from HVAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more and all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRANGER, visit Granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. A few months later by October, they've captured Granada, which is where the legitimists, the conservative government had their base of operations and essentially Walker is has conquered Nicaragua at this point in fairly short order. And so he brought some crates of guns along with his 150 drunk Californians. Yeah, because he also believes in the right to bear arms. It's very clear that, you know, in the Constitution, you have a right to bear arms and if manifest destiny is true, then you have a right to bear arms wherever you go. And so he installs the, so the Castillon was the name of the leader of the leftists, of the fighters of the Civil War, and he died of cholera sort of not long after Walker got there. And so Walker installs a guy named Patricio Rivas, who is a moderate. He's on the liberals side, but is not as far liberal or as far left as others. So Walker actually becomes a kingmaker in this situation? Yes. Yes. So he installs Rivas as the president of Nicaragua, but and Walker names himself the commander in chief of the Nicaraguan army. And within weeks, Franklin Pierce is president now, within weeks, the Pierce administration recognizes this Rivas as the president. And everyone sort of knows he's a puppet of Walker. So Walker has succeeded and he is essentially running Nicaragua. Does he speak Spanish even? I don't think so. I don't think he cared. I, you know, that mattered. You know, find a find an interpreter and tell them what you want to do. Wow. By, by July, by the summer of 1856. So he's been there about a year. He moves to Granada. He holds presidential elections, which are not very legitimate. But he is elected president, you know, a landslide victory for Walker for president. And in 1857 1856, he becomes president of Nicaragua. You're kidding me. I am not. Okay. Yeah. I mean, this guy, I'm telling you, he lived an incredible life. Okay, president of Nicaragua. Unfortunately, with all of these escapades, he has gained the attention of basically every other country in Central America. Right. Probably not thrilled with this as a precedent. No, they are not. And, and essentially what happens is Costa Rica puts together the government of Costa Rica puts together a coalition that includes El Salvador and Honduras and start making overtures that they're going to invade Nicaragua and house Walker. Right. Well, even in our own time, the army of Costa Rica is a major player. Formidable force. Walker, by this time, Walker has, there are two guys in Nicaragua, the story's getting a little longer. There's two guys in Nicaragua. One named Cornelius Garrison, one named Charles Morgan. And they work for a company called the accessory transit company. The accessory transit company is controlled by Cornelius Vanderbilt, who you may know. I heard the name. Shipping magnates, you know, richest man in the world. They, the accessory transit company is the company that controls the route over Nicaragua to get goods from the Atlantic Caribbean, from the Atlantic side to the Pacific side. Sure. Pre Panama Canal, you had to get it. You had to schlep it over the mountains. Right. And Nicaragua was the best place to do that. Vanderbilt controls all of this with his shipping. And Garrison and Morgan are his, you know, his agents in Nicaragua. They get greedy and Walker, who needs Vanderbilt's infrastructure, ships and travel routes and roads and horses and carts nationalizes all of the accessory transit company and takes it for himself in Nicaragua. Oh, my goodness. And puts Garrison and Morgan in charge. So now he's pissed off Cornelius Vanderbilt. Yeah. That seems like the wrong direction to go if you're trying to make friends in the international community. Right. For the rest of Central America, though, it's an opportunity because now they can get some money. Throughout all of this, more and more men are joining Walker in Nicaragua. He's got people recruiting for him. They all love what he's doing in Nicaragua. Oh, okay. So it's, so, so lunatics are rushing to Nicaragua now because it feels like this is the Wild West. Yeah. I mean, this is the next opportunity. We're going to be, you know, we're going to be dukes to this guy's king of Nicaragua. Right. I'm going to start a newspaper. No, I'm going to start a newspaper. Right. Exactly. So this, this army is building across the border in Costa Rica and Walker is got a pretty big head at this point, and he's got, you know, a decent amount of men. And so he decides he's going to take the initiative and invade Costa Rica. This goes badly for him, the Costa Rican government, Costa Rican Army in coalition with some of the other governments and armies of the region, fight him off. And after about six months of war, I could be a little bit off on that. Walker loses. He's turned over to the US Navy. And the US Navy escorts him back to New York City. His war with Nicaragua seemingly over forever. He returns to New York to a hero's reception. They just think he is the greatest thing that happened. They're, they're so proud of our fortune of our native son fighting the good fight for the American cause. Sure. Sure. What an adventurer. Yeah. Again, he decides, well, let's try this again. And within six months, he's raised another army found a new boat and is headed back to Nicaragua. But this time he is exiled to St. Helena. He eventually, no, he does not make it that far, unfortunately. He makes it somewhere down the Eastern seaboard and the home squadron, the Navy's home squadron, which is sort of the 1850s equivalent of the Coast Guard stops his boat and turns it around. And he goes back to New York. So it was, it was Vanderbilt and the United Fruit Company that were that didn't want to make essentially it was the early version of the United Fruit Company who wanted to keep him out. So he spent some time in New York a couple of years in New York, we're like in 1858, 1859 here. And he's written a book called his war and called war in Nicaragua. This recounting his his time in Nicaragua. In 1860, he is contacted by British colonists in the Bay Islands of Honduras, who are worried about the Honduran government and want to enlist Walker for his skills in fighting wars in Central America, and convince him to help them with their cause. So he yet again raises an army and finds a ship from New York City and travels to Honduras to the Bay Islands in Honduras, where he is once again going to fight a war to claim victory for, you know, America, the white man, the colonists, whatever, however you want to put it. It's marginally a shorter boat trip to Honduras. It is slightly shorter, although the Bay Islands are on the wrong side of Honduras from New York. So oh, so he had to he had to sail to the it's miss and then I'm actually not sure how it worked. I think he landed on the eastern seaboard of Honduras and was going to travel across. He doesn't make it. Right. So essentially what happens is he gets to Honduras. The Honduran government is waiting for him. They know who this guy is at this point, obviously, and they know he's on his way. And essentially the moment he sets foot on Honduras, he is arrested by an admiral named Noel Salmon of the Royal Navy. Oh, he's arrested by the Brits by the Brits. And now he's already been charged with and beaten the conviction, beaten the charge of vasion illegal war. Now he's arrested by the Royal Navy. So again, I'm not saying I want to be this guy, but I'm pretty impressed with his life. Well, the Brita the Royal Navy has its own its own set of rules, too. They're not they're not as easily impressed by Americans. No. And Noel Salmon actually is a pretty interesting guy. He actually ended up as he was a he was a Victoria Cross recipient and was the rank of the he was Admiral of the fleet later in his career. He had a pretty prominent career in the in the British Navy. But so he catches Walker, and they've had enough the Royal Navy's had enough of him, the Hondurans have had a Central America's had enough of him. And really, I think at this point, the United States government is kind of like this guy's never going to learn his lesson, you guys do with them what you will. So Noel turns it or salmon turns them over to the Honduran government. And his chief of staff is also arrested. He is sentenced to four years in prison. Walker is sentenced to death. And on September 12 1860, Walker was executed by firing squad in Torilo, Honduras. You're kidding. I thought that this was going to be some situation where he died of cholera, like everybody else in this story. But this man dies by firing squad by firing squad by the Honduran army, the former president of Nicaragua, the former president of Nicaragua is still buried today. And you can go to his grave in Torilo, Honduras, where they you know, they buried him in the old town cemetery. And his grave is marked. And you can go visit his grave to this day. What an astonishing story. Yeah, it's in its in its, you know, I had never heard this story when I first read about it. And I later found out there's a movie about the story called Walker starring and Harris as Walker. Now is that it is a very weird movie. I did watch it. It is a I can't remember the director's name, but it is a it's a very anachronistic. There's a Mercedes that drives by at one point, they're drinking Coca Colas. But it's, you know, set in the 1850s. It's not really based on any sort of true story of Walker. Interesting enough movie. The soundtrack was done by Joe Strummer, speaking of Sandinistas. Joe Strummer did the soundtrack for the movie. So it's this very odd movie that's as forgotten as Walker's story. Yeah, it does feel like a Daniel Day Lewis picture that nobody's made yet. Yeah. I mean, it totally could be a, you know, I don't know how nobody has made a serious movie out of this guy. Well, we're more confusingly in all the annals of weird stories of this kind. How is this not something more, more well known? How, well, why, how is this the first time I've ever heard of this? That's exactly how I felt when I first, again, I don't remember exactly how I first found out about it. It was probably like a, you know, Wikipedia rabbit hole or something. And do you get the sense that, that he was extremely charismatic? I mean, you were saying that he he was not an introvert. He was somebody that was really out there and putting himself out there. How did he continue to galvanize support and and and put himself there? He must have, he must have been somewhat charismatic. Whether, you know, personally or through his writing in his newspapers, he obviously got some follow, you know, guys that were believed in him enough and were drunk enough to hop on a boat and travel, you know, thousands of miles or a thousand miles to wage a war. Right. We were kidding. I mean, we were, we were joking around, calling them all a bunch of drunk dingalings, but it turns out they actually were nation builders. And now I feel like that whole, I mean, his, his merry band of people from Sacramento feel like I should, I should maybe refer to them with a little bit more respect. He could have been the George Washington of Nicaragua. You just, you know, if you never know. So yeah, do you feel like if he had not made the mistake, if he had not had the hubris to invade Costa Rica and had spent a couple more years consolidating his power in Nicaragua that he could have made a stand? No, I think his biggest mistake, honestly, was crossing Cornelius Vanderbilt. And I think that invading Costa Rica was just, just kicked off the inevitable anyway. Costa Rica was going to invade Nicaragua to get him out either way. Could he have held Nicaragua? I doubt it. You know, he had about, he had some support within Nicaragua, but mostly they had guns and a lot of Nicaragua didn't, you know, sort of that old story. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think he ever, looking back, I don't think he ever stood a chance of holding Nicaragua, you know, of being the George Washington of Nicaragua. No, I mean, now I see, I see that there was a version of this where Nicaragua was the domino that tipped over and that gradually all of the Central American countries would become American states. And yeah, I see, I see at least his logic. A very different kind of domino effect than we've known in the 20th century in Central America. No question. And that concludes the filibuster war. Entry 468.re0602. Certificate number 28903 in the omnibus. Futurelings, as we all well know, social media is a thing to avoid at all costs. It seems like Hugh and I are doing a good job today staying off of social media. Are you a social media player? Hugh? Not, not really. 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