Tale of the American conquerors has similarities to today

Published 12:00 am Saturday, December 22, 2001

Until this year, when people in the United States thought about warfare, they likely thought of battles between two clearly-defined opponents – governments with borders and armies duking it out.

Saturday, December 22, 2001

Until this year, when people in the United States thought about warfare, they likely thought of battles between two clearly-defined opponents – governments with borders and armies duking it out.

Email newsletter signup

As has been pointed out since Sept. 11, our new war is different. In essence, America is facing a group of private citizens from around the world who have nothing in common except a religious extremism that causes them to hate the West.

As odd as this is by 20th century standards, this strange conflict brings to mind another series of conflicts in America’s history where a group of self-fashioned soldiers took it upon themselves to attack a sovereign nation. Except that time, the Americans were the aggressors.

You may notice the word &uot;filibuster&uot; in the name of this column. In that reference, it’s meaning is the common one – a long-winded speech used in legislative debates to stall a vote. Well, the word has a different meaning. In the late 1840s and 1850s in America, a &uot;filibuster&uot; was a soldier of fortune who attacked another country without the support or backing of the U.S. government.

These private armies invaded nations like Cuba, Mexico and Nicaragua – some merely looking for the spoils of war, but many hoping to conquer temperate, fertile territory for the slave-holding American south. It was just before the civil war, and the south was looking for any way to gain advantage by creating more slave states.

The similarities to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden have limits, but the thing that ties them together most, other than their strange actions, is their motivation. Just as the pre-Civil War south was pitted against the north in what was framed as a battle for the very survival of their culture, the extremist groups of today have staked their lives in a fight to ward off the western infidels who they say threaten their way of life.

The saga of the filibusters includes mostly a series of laughable failures; early expeditions to conquer parts of Mexico, Cuba and even Hawaii brought nothing but defeat and embarrassment, but the south remained determined.

The governments of southern states gave &uot;wink-wink&uot; support to these missions, in some cases even helping leaders recruit men, raise money and get weapons. Whenever a filibuster was put on trial for violating neutrality laws, they would be acquitted by a jury of their southern peers.

The most famous and successful filibuster was William Walker, a restless Tennesseean who tried careers in medicine, law and journalism before deciding on his true calling: gaining more land for the south by force.

He first took an army of 45 men into the Mexican states of Baja and Sonora in 1949. His group captured La Paz, the capital of Baja, and self-appointed &uot;president&uot; Walker annexed Sonora. More support flowed in from the states, but when the makeshift army invaded Sonora, many fighters deserted and others were killed when confronted by the Mexican army. The group retreated to San Diego, where Walker was tried and acquitted.

His next try is what put him in the history books. In 1855, with 57 soldiers, he sailed to Nicaragua and, with the aid of local rebels, overthrew the government and appointed himself commander in chief. American entrepreneurs flocked to Nicaragua to set up plantations and Walker was celebrated in the southern press. When the president of Nicaragua defected and joined an alliance of other Central American nations against Walker, the cocky American made himself president. He promptly repealed Nicaragua’s anti-slavery law, paving the way for more southern settlers.

But an attack by the Central American alliance, coupled with a cholera epidemic, spelled doom for Walker’s government. About 1,000 Americans died, and Walker and the remnants of his army fled to America. A New Orleans jury took eight minutes to acquit Walker.

Hailed as a hero, he recruited more men for more expeditions. In 1857 he sailed from Mobile, Ala., to regain Nicaragua, but was caught by a navy ship and returned to shore. In 1858, on his next try, his ship hit a reef and sank. He was rescued by a British ship and returned to America. Finally, on his last mission, he landed in Honduras, where his army was defeated and he was captured by a British naval captain. When asked if he was an American citizen, Walker would only identify himself as President of the Republic of Nicaragua. So the captain, instead of taking him back to America, turned him over to the Honduran authorities, who executed him.

This strange story is a reminder of what extremism can do; even here in America, it caused desperate people to try desperate measures to gain advantage in their ideological fights, and as it has today, it only deepened the divide between two warring cultures.

Dylan Belden is the Tribune’s managing editor. His column appears Sundays. E-mail him at dylan.belden@albertleatribune.com.