American History Tellers - Encore: The Walker Affair | The Gray-Eyed Man of Destiny | 1

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

In the mid-1800s, the United States was full of adventurers and entrepreneurs looking to take advantage of the country’s ever-expanding boundaries. One of them was a young lawyer and newspaper editor from Tennessee named William Walker. Hoping to establish his own republic, like Texas, Walker became a “filibuster” – a mercenary who attempts to colonize foreign lands without government authorization. He set his sights on a remote corner of Mexico, on the Baja Peninsula. But Walker’s ragtag band of soldiers-for-hire quickly ran afoul of the Mexican authorities.  This series was originally released as a Wondery+ exclusive.Listen ad free with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for exclusives, binges, early access, and ad free listening. Available in the Wondery App. https://wondery.app.link/historytellersSupport us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's October 1855. You're a doctor and teacher in Granada, the cobblestone colonial capital of Nicaragua. Civil war has ravaged your beautiful country ever since it declared independence from Spain over 30 years ago. The conservative landowning elites fight bitterly with the populist liberals, while the British and Americans interfere, causing even more bloodshed. You've lost count of how many

wounded fighters you've had to operate on. From your second floor study, you hear a voice outside crying your name. You go to the window and see one of your students in the street below. Doctor, get down here right away. What? What's happening? The war's over. The American General Walker, he's won and united Nicaragua. He's marching into Granada as we speak. What? All right, stay there. I'll be right down. Like everyone in Nicaragua by now, you've heard the name William Walker. You always assumed he was just another mercenary for hire, like all the other American adventurers and profiteers who come to your country. So it's hard for you to believe it's possible that he could have united your whole nation in just a few months. But your wide-eyed student seems convinced. You reach

the bottom of the stairs and enter out onto the street to meet your excited student. They say he's bringing democracy, modernizing our economy, bringing equality to all, glory to Nicaragua. Who is, who's they? And who is this Yankee Walker? He claims to fight for our country. Does he even speak Spanish? I don't know Yankee Walker? He claims to fight for our country. Does he even speak Spanish? I don't know, but we have to go to the plaza. I want to see him with my own eyes. All along your street, the news has spread. Women and children hang out with their balconies, waving colored handkerchiefs and shouting. As you round a corner, you see Walker's army marching towards the plaza. With their pale faces and ragtag uniforms,

they look more like a mongrel horde than a friendly force. But most of the crowd is cheering, excited at the prospect of peace. Your student is, raising his fist in the air. To William Walker! To united Nicaragua! To democracy! As you crane your neck to see past the crowd, hoping for a glimpse of Walker himself, you can't help but hope that this man really will bring peace and prosperity to Nicaragua. You're a Christian man, and every night for years you've prayed for such a moment.

But you also worry that this is just what an American imperialist would want the Nicaraguans to hope for, that he would pray on that hope to seize power for himself. a new podcast about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with. Listen to the best idea yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. From the team behind American History Tellers comes a new book, The Hidden History of the White House. Each chapter will bring you inside the fierce power struggles, intimate moments, and shocking scandals that shaped our nation. From the War of 1812 to Watergate. Available now wherever you get your books. From Wondery, I'm Lindsey times, and the people that shape America and Americans, our values, our struggles, and our dreams. We'll put you in the shoes of everyday

citizens as history was being made, and we'll show you how the events of the times affected them, their families, and affects you now. In the mid-1800s, the United States was a young nation awash with mercenaries, adventurers, and entrepreneurs looking to take advantage of the country's ever-expanding boundaries. Victory in the war with Mexico in 1848 opened up the American West even further. Within a period of two decades, over 25 territories were added to the United States, increasing its size by 2 million square miles. From Texas to Wisconsin to California and even

into the islands of the Pacific, America was growing rapidly. While the federal government drove much of this expansion, enterprising private Americans sought to add their own territorial claims. These men, known as filibusters or freebooters, wrapped their personal ambitions in the rhetoric of American expansionism, driven by their own desire for glory, land, riches, and power. Of all the filibusters, none was more ambitious or reckless than William Walker. Walker's failed flirtations with empire in Mexico and Central America brought him acclaim in some circles and infamy in others. Today, in the United States, he has been virtually forgotten.

But in the nations he invaded, his name remains synonymous with American imperialism and hubris. This is Episode 1, The Gray-Eyed Man of Destiny. Prior to the Civil War, the United States was already emerging as a global power. The concept of Manifest Destiny, first coined in 1845, was based not just on American exceptionalism, but that the belief that God had birthed the U.S. for an express purpose to overspread and possess the whole North American continent in the pursuit of the great experiment of liberty. In the 1850s, no one advocated for manifest destiny more fervently than a Southern lawyer, doctor, and newspaper editor named William Walker. Walker was born in 1824 to an upper-crust Nashville clan of military men, senators, and media moguls. He was the grandson of a Revolutionary War veteran.

One of his uncles was the founder of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and later one of the first U.S. senators for the newly admitted state of Michigan. Other uncles also worked in politics or journalism, and several fought in the War of 1812. With such a distinguished array of role models, Walker's ambition was shaped early in his life. Presidents, war veterans, newspaper men, fighters, and frontiersmen made up his heritage. American exceptionalism was in his blood. As a young boy, however, William did not stand out as a future general or politician. Billy, as he was called in his youth, was precociously bright, according to one of his

teachers, but also quiet and aloof, studious, painfully modest, and almost insignificant in appearance. People who knew him as a boy would later wonder what motivated such an unimposing person to undertake the audacious acts he later did. As he grew, Walker remained, in the words of one biographer, a short slip of a man with light blonde hair and eerily expressionless gray eyes. But he was a high achiever. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Nashville at 14

and was president of his Collegiate Literary Society. He was also a zealous Christian and talked for a while of a career in the ministry. But he turned sharply from religion towards science, deciding to become a doctor. Walker spent two years apprenticing with a notable Nashville physician and even won admission to the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. But he then turned another about-face and spent two years in Europe, where he attended lectures at the Sorbonne, visited the canals of Venice, and received private tutoring in anatomy and physiology.

In a letter, Walker wrote that his travels in Europe made him more of an American than ever, more fond of my country's institutions, and prouder of her history and resources. And when Walker returned to the United States in 1845, he found his nation in the midst of a vast territorial expansion, rewriting its history and securing more resources. Feeling more inspired by politics than medicine, he changed paths yet again and began studying law, first in Nashville, then in New Orleans, at the time the biggest city in the South.

Walker was nothing if not restless. Soon his attention drifted again, and he dabbled in journalism. In March 1849, with a $1,040 promissory note, he purchased a friend's ownership stake in the New Orleans Crescent and appointed himself editor. Under his pen, the Crescent quickly gained notoriety for quarreling with other local papers on political issues. Among the causes Walker took up was a campaign by filibusters to annex Cuba into the United States. Walker's support for the annexation of Cuba earned him several vocal detractors, one of whom was Eusebio Gomez. Gomez was editor of the New Orleans-based La Patria, which was the leading Spanish-language newspaper in the U.S. at the time. When Gomez publicly challenged him over the Cuba issue,

Walker was incensed. One day in August 1849, he strode into the La Patria offices and demanded to see Gomez, then struck him viciously in the head with a cane. The two were physically separated at gunpoint. This violent episode was the punctuation mark at the end of Walker's stint in New Orleans. In 1850, he sold the Crescent and headed west, to America's newest boomtown, San Francisco, gateway to the California Gold Rush. Walker's journey took him south via steamboat from New Orleans through the Caribbean to the Isthmus of Panama. At the height of the Gold Rush, this circuitous ocean route was common for Americans heading for the West Coast, an alternative to the slow drudgery of transcontinental travel by horse and wagon. From the Caribbean coast, Walker took a series of riverboats and hikes across the lush jungles

of Panama to the Pacific Ocean, where he boarded another steamer bound for the San Francisco Bay. This was his first visit to Central America, but it wouldn't be his last. Finally, he arrived at his destination. In 1850, San Francisco was a chaotic city of gamblers and adventurers, rife with poverty, crime, and opportunity. Walker contacted an old friend from Nashville who had bought a stake in the recently founded Herald newspaper. Walker was back working as an editor. Drawing on his experiences in New Orleans, Walker used the paper as a platform to take on local judges and lawyers on claims of corruption and politicking. And after a particularly scathing attack on a local judge, the Herald received a letter calling Walker a liar, a poltroon, and a coward.

This enraged Walker again, and he responded by challenging the letter's author to a duel. But it was a man named William Hicks Graham that accepted Walker's challenge in the author's place. He also set the terms. Revolvers would be fired at 10 paces in Hayes Valley at 10 o'clock in the morning on Sunday, January 12, 1851. With a small crowd of witnesses looking on, just as the clock struck 10, the two men took their ten paces. Turning, they fired. Walker missed his first shot.

Grams ripped through Walker's pant leg but left him unharmed. As was the custom with misfired duels, the adversary stepped forward for another round. Walker missed again, but Graham did not. Walker was struck in the thigh, fell to the ground, and yielded. A less ambitious man would have taken this defeat as an embarrassment, but not William Walker. Instead, he basked in the notoriety it brought him. His growing circle of supporters focused more on his bravery and outspokenness than his shoddy marksmanship. And in the end, the duel left Walker more emboldened than ever to establish his legacy. But he needed a cause, one to make his own, and soon he would

find one. Three years before Walker's duel, in 1848, the U.S. war with Mexico had ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty brought more than half a million square miles of northwest Mexico into the United States. And for years after the treaty, vast swaths of land on both sides of the new border remained lawless no-man's lands. French mercenaries and adventurers poured into this chaotic region, seeking to create a French-controlled buffer zone between the U.S. and Mexico. All of them ultimately failed after succumbing to a mix of disease, internal strife, and raids by native Apache clans and Mexican ranchers.

But tales of these French colonialist dreamers captured Walker's imagination. Despite their failures, they made for flashy headlines. And in 1852, one brigade of just 200 men briefly captured the military fort at Hermosillo, the capital of the Mexican state of Sonora. Reading about their exploits, Walker was riveted. At the time, Walker had switched careers yet again and was now in the midst of an unremarkable stint as a lawyer in Marysville, just north of Sacramento. He handled at least 40 cases by 1852, winning 24 and losing 16. His reputation was middling. Future Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field described him as possessing a sharp but not very profound intellect, saying that he seldom convinced either judge or

jury. But now, inspired by tales of French adventurers in Mexico, Walker hatched an audacious plan. He and two co-conspirators would seek Mexico's permission to establish a settlement in northern Sonora, at Guaymas, nestled on the Placid Sea of Cortez in western Mexico. In return, they would safeguard the local villagers and ranchers from Apache and Comanche raiders and bands of Mexican and American outlaws alike. They intended to guide the region to American statehood, much like Texas had done several years prior. On June 30, 1853, Walker and his accomplices boarded a ship called the Arrow and set sail for Sonora on a reconnaissance

mission. They landed at Guaymas a few days later as the sun set over the Sea of Cortez. The governor of Sonora, tipped off as to Walker's intentions, immediately ordered the intruders detained. Mexico refused to grant Walker permission to leave the confines of house arrest, let alone attempt to establish his proposed colony. While under the watch of Mexican authorities, Walker cut a curious figure to the locals. He wore an oversized white fur hat and ill-fitting, poorly tailored clothes. He looked, as one observer said, as unprepossessing a person as one could meet, half the dread which the Mexicans had of filibusters banished when they saw such an

insignificant-looking specimen. After a month under house arrest, Walker gave up and agreed to abandon his plans for a settlement. The Mexican authorities released him and put him on a ship back to San Francisco. But Walker was undeterred. Throughout his filibusting career, Walker responded to defeats and setbacks with even greater ambition. He believed that his plan in Sonora failed not because it was too audacious, but because it was not audacious enough. Upon his return to American soil, Walker wrote, A comparatively small body of Americans might gain a position on the Sonoran frontier and protect the families on the border from Indians. Such an act would be one of justice,

whether or not sanctioned by the Mexican government. So he began to make plans in earnest for an even greater invasion of Mexico, in the name of Manifest Destiny. Of course, for an invasion, he would need an army. Imagine it's September 1853 in San Francisco. You're a young dock worker, but you're not working. You're on strike, left to ramble around the rapidly growing, chaotic city for days on end. You never struck it lucky in the gold rush. Now it seems your luck has run out here, too. If this strike doesn't end soon, you'll be

broke. You round a corner and see a crowd of men gathered outside a small brick building. Curious, you head towards them, and as you get closer, you see a man in a kind of patchwork military uniform, standing on a soapbox and delivering a recruitment pitch. William Walker, favorite son of San Francisco, is undertaking an expedition to the Baja Peninsula to bring glory to the United States. We're looking for men fit for work, miners and frontiersmen, with the will to hold fast against whatever savages and Mexicans may stand in our way. We need to civilize that land, bring them God and democracy. Now, you don't care much about God or democracy, but you could use a paycheck. So you shout back. All right, but what's in it for me? Ah, sir, I see you cut straight to the chase.

Land, bountiful harvests, mines brimming with gold, and the glory for our United States. Do you have a craft, young man? I'm handy with a pickaxe. Even handier with a bottle of moonshine. A man who likes his pleasure. But say, can you ride, sail, hunt? Can you fight? Well, one out of four ain't bad.

Son, you may be joking, but I'm not. And I think you have just the spirit we need. I could see General Walker making you lieutenant by Christmas. What's your name? Rogers? Well, maybe one day you'll be mayor of Rancho Del Rogers in the great Republic of Sonora. How do you like the sound of that? Before you know it, the recruiter places a quill in your hand. You figure you've got nothing to lose, so you sign X for your name. Recruiter shakes your hand. Welcome to Walker's Army, son. Meet back here

in two weeks' time. We'll give you your orders for shipping out. Now, who's next? The contract you just signed means about as much to you as God and democracy, and you're not sure if you'll actually follow William Walker to Baja. But then again, if Texas and California can become a U.S. state, then why not Sonora? And if it really is full of gold and bountiful land, you'd be a fool not to go. As Walker stepped up his plans to invade Baja, California, his recruiters hit the city, drawing in men seeking riches and adventure. Word of his recruitment efforts even made the local newspapers, where some editors came out in support of the filibuster. Walker and his inner circle funded the project by selling $500 bonds in what they called

the Independence Loan Fund of the Republic of Sonora. Investors would receive seven square miles of land in the new territory for every bond they purchased. As a lawyer, Walker was well aware that his plan was legally risky. In 1794, Congress had passed the Neutrality Act, which made it illegal for any private American citizen to attack or invade any country not at war with the United States. To circumvent the law, Walker and his supporters billed their filibuster as a mining expedition. But as dozens of recruits signed on, and their departure date drew nearer, everyone knew that the real purpose of Walker's expedition mission to Mexico became the talk of San Francisco.

His roughshod army was made up of mostly gruff prospectors, miners, and frontiersmen piqued by promises of land and glory. Few had any naval, military, or civic experience. They also weren't especially adept at keeping the mission quiet. The endeavor became so notorious that it got the attention of Army General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, who was under orders from President Franklin Pierce to snuff out any budding filibusters. When he heard that the Arrow, the same ship on which Walker had previously sailed to Mexico, was being stocked with supplies and weapons, General Hitchcock dispatched troops to the San Francisco Wharf to block its departure. But Walker had a trick up his sleeve. With all eyes on the Arrow,

Walker waited until the dead of night to sneak weapons and supplies onto another ship, the Caroline. He then rushed 45 hastily assembled and mostly drunk followers aboard and sailed out of the bay unnoticed. Walker's mission, short on weapons and manpower but high on ambition, was underway. Some of Walker's men, however, were under the wrong impression. The trip had been billed as an exploratory mining expedition, and many of the men had no idea of the mission's true intent. One miner later said, the men were drilled once aboard almost daily on small arms, before Riley adding, I did not see any mining implements on board. Walker's original plan had been to stage his invasion at

Guaymas, the town where he had been detained just a few months earlier. But as the Caroline rounded the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula and entered the Sea of Cortez, Walker changed his plans. Because his army was smaller than he had hoped, he would instead land at the smaller town of La Paz, the provincial capital of Baja. Being on the peninsula, the town was isolated from the rest of Mexico, making it a far easier target. The Caroline anchored at the port of La Paz on November 3, 1853. With a small landing party, Walker paid what was ostensibly a courtesy call to the regional governor, Rafael Espinoza, who received them graciously. Realizing that nobody in the city

suspected an invasion, Walker returned to the ship to plan his attack. Walker dubbed his ragtag band of mercenaries the First Independent Battalion and gave himself the rank of colonel. Then he made his move. With a dozen men, he disembarked again and walked straight into the office of the friendly Governor Espinoza. At gunpoint, Walker took the governor captive and ordered his men to take down the Mexican flag. In its place, they raised a flag Walker had designed himself for his new territory. Two horizontal red bars at the top and bottom, with two red stars and a white field between them.

As his men aboard the Caroline saw the new flag rise above the governor's office, they responded with celebratory cannon fire, then came ashore and began securing government buildings. But even as Walker strode into the governor's office for the first time, his ambitions had grown. No longer satisfied with establishing a humble territory, Walker now claimed the entire Baja Peninsula in the name of the Republic of Lower California

and declared himself president. Walker's first act as self-proclaimed head of state was a declaration of independence. The Republic of Lower California is hereby declared free, sovereign, and independent, and all allegiance to the Republic of Mexico is forever renounced. In doing this, he seemed to be modeling his strategy after Texas, where American-born settlers had declared themselves republic in order to secede from Mexico and pave the way for annexation by the United States. And when it came to imposing a system of government,

President Walker made a curious choice. Instead of adapting the laws of the adjacent state of California for his Republic of Lower California, Walker imposed the civil code of the state of Louisiana. The key distinction was that, unlike California, in Louisiana, slavery was legal. Walker's own opinions on slavery remain unclear. While he was a Southern man and his family had owned slaves, he rarely addressed the issue directly, either as a lawyer or newspaper editor. But Walker often used slavery as a convenient political tool to curry favor with followers and potential allies. By adopting the laws of Louisiana and opening his new republic to slavery, Walker probably hoped to draw support from powerful slave-holding politicians and wealthy plantation owners. Though his positions on slavery weren't exactly known, Walker's views on race were

much more clear-cut. To him, without the intervention of his white American army, the Mexican territory of Baja would, in his words, forever remain wild, half-savage, and uncultivated, covered with an indolent and half-civilized people. When the people of a territory fail almost entirely to develop, the interests of civilization require others to go in and possess the land. And so he did. While many La Paz residents retreated to remote ranches,

the remainder were forced to relinquish their ammunition and horses to Walker's mercenaries. Walker garrisoned himself in the governor's palace, an unassuming adobe compound on a plateau with a view of the harbor. At first, these locals mounted little resistance. But after a few days, a skirmish broke out. Pistol fire could be heard throughout La Paz, and when the smoke cleared, Walker's troops killed six local militiamen, while not so much as receiving a wound, according to Walker's own account. Though little more than just a shootout,

Walker cast it as a monumental victory. Thus ended the Battle of La Paz, he would later proclaim, crowning our efforts with victory, releasing lower California from the tyrannous yoke of declining Mexico and establishing a new republic. But in truth, the gunfight had rattled Walker's nerves. Within hours of the skirmish, he and his men abandoned La Paz entirely and set sail for Cabo San Lucas on the southern tip of Baja. After a brief stay there, they moved yet again, this time to the town of Ensenada, farther up the Pacific coast of Baja. Walker reasoned that it was the closest point from which to receive reinforcements, weapons, and supplies from San Francisco. It was also close

to the border, providing an easy escape route if things turned sour. Ensenada was barely a town in 1853, just a small number of huts clustered around a cove. There was only one adobe house, owned by a wealthy rancher, which Walker immediately seized and made his headquarters. In the rancher's house, Walker kept busy writing dispatches back to California, hoping to enlist more recruits with exaggerated tales of his army's exploits. His men, meanwhile, were growing restless. In the dead of night, they routinely pillaged horses and weapons from local ranchers. Still convinced they were soldiers of a new republic, they sometimes left receipts for the stolen goods so that Walker's government could pay back the ranchers at a later date.

It was around this time that Walker's battalion had been occupying portions of Baja for over a month, and the regional governor finally mounted a coordinated response. He assembled a force of 60 men, marshaled and led by a local militiaman named Antonio Melendrez. They laid siege to Walker's forces at his adobe headquarters, which lay exposed at the base of some foothills and was easily surrounded. During the siege, reinforcements from San Francisco did arrive. Frederick Emery, a trusted Walker lieutenant, had returned to San Francisco to drum up support, spread propaganda, and sign up new recruits. In San Francisco, the flag of the Republic of Sonora was raised at the corner of

Kearney and California streets. Extravagant reports of the lavish lifestyles and brave exploits of Walker's men fueled Baja fever among what one newspaper called the city's idlers, disappointed politicians, and gamblers. In the end, about 200 of these recruits sailed south to Ensenada to join Walker's filibuster army. On December 20, 1853, the fresh recruits landed, and with the help of bad weather, they were able to drive back Melendrez's forces and end the siege. But their arrival also exposed Walker's inexperience as a military and political leader. Faced with a much larger fighting force, Walker struggled to establish infrastructure or order in his new colony.

The only task at which his men excelled was pillaging cattle, thousands of them, plundering further into the interior with every raid. Walker's army subsisted almost entirely on stolen beef. Fried beef for breakfast, stewed beef for supper, boiled beef for dinner. Though Walker assured locals that he had come to establish law and order, his own men thieved and pillaged at every opportunity. And when Walker tried to rein in the lawlessness, the men responded by deserting. By January, more than a quarter of his battalion had abandoned him. With his numbers dwindling, Walker began to get desperate. There was no food,

no plan, and vengeful forces closing in on all sides. Even worse, the U.S. Army had sent ships to lurk nearby in the waters of the Pacific, ready to block the arrival of any more recruits. As his Republic of Lower California unraveled around him, Walker began to behave more like a dictator than a president. He forced local ranchers, townsfolks, and tribespeople from around Ensenada to a series of summits. There, Walker ordered them to bend the knee under the threat of imprisonment and death. One deserter wrote that his vanity makes him tyrannical, his weakness renders him cruel, his unbounded and senseless ambition has led him to believe

himself born to command. Then, in February of 1854, Walker moved his capital yet again, from Ensenada to the inland town of San Vicente. But his most persistent adversary, Antonio Melendrez, was back with a new militia, dogging his every move. A month later, in March, Walker made a fatal tactical error. Leaving a small force behind in San Vicente, he led the bulk of his

remaining army on an overland march into Sonora, a journey of about 200 miles across mountains and desert. They were ill-equipped and didn't know the land. The longer they marched, the more men deserted. Melendrez pounced, seizing San Vicente and then sending a patchwork coalition of ranch hands, farmers, and Kokopai Indians after their common enemy. After tracking Walker for days and picking off his men a few at the time, Melendrez made his decisive move. His soldiers surrounded Walker's remaining men and, in a hail of gunfire, corralled them

northwards, back towards the United States. Imagine it's May, 1854. You're a soldier in the makeshift militia of Commander Antonio Melendrez. You've been chasing William Walker's invading force throughout the Baja Peninsula, picking off his men, one by one. And after months of skirmishes, it appears you're near victory. From your vantage point on a bluff overlooking a ravine, you can see Walker and his pathetic band of mercenaries as they retreat, yet again,

hungry, bedraggled and broken, back towards the border with the United States. You almost chuckle as you squeeze off two more shots for good measure. But then you hear your commander shouting, Hold your fire! You respect Melendrez, but this order makes no sense. Frustrated, you turn to him as you're reloading your pistol. Commander, if we don't end this now, Walker and his men may come back stronger. Why don't we just finish them off while we have the chance? I would like nothing more than to see that Yankee devil lying dead on the ground, believe me,

picked apart by vultures. But there cannot be another war between Mexico and the United States. We need peace more than we need revenge. Anyways, this Walker is no longer a threat. He's nothing but a pirate without a ship. I don't understand, sir. We've chased him hundreds of miles and now we just let him go? Do you remember the siege at Ensenada? I was close enough to see the whites of Walker's eyes. He's no warrior. He's no leader. He's a scared little man who has learned his lessons. You will not return to Mexico. At the far end of the ravine, you see men in blue uniforms, U.S. soldiers gathering just across the border. As Walker and the last of his men stumble towards them, some of the soldiers step forward holding chains. All around you, your militia members celebrate to see Walker and his men

arrested. They shout, Viva Mexico, and fire their guns into the air. You just turn away and spit on the ground in contempt. You won't waste another bullet on that coward William Walker. You hope that Melendrez is right, and that Walker and his filibuster friends never show their faces in Baja again. But if a man like Walker was crazy enough to try it once, you can't help but feel like letting him go to try again is a mistake. As Commander Antonio Melendrez's militia pursued William Walker's self-proclaimed 1st Independent Battalion across the Sonoran Desert, Walker's men began peeling off, one by one or in groups.

Several of the deserters were lost in the desert and never heard from again. Others trekked north to surrender themselves at Fort Yuma, just across the border with California. They arrived half-naked, sunburned, starving, and shoeless, and described an expedition in full collapse. Walker himself was in dire straits too. His army was reduced to a few dozen ill-fed, bedraggled, and increasingly desperate followers. When he finally surrendered to the U.S. Army at the border, Walker himself was down to one boot and his uniform of a blue peacoat and blue trousers was in shreds. After months of siege and guerrilla warfare, William Walker's Republic of Lower California had crumbled.

In the eyes of Mexicans, he was a hapless invader. To the U.S. government, he was a criminal and a liability. To the increasing number of his followers who deserted him, he was a charlatan. But in his own mind, William Walker was still a triumphant hero of manifest destiny. Though this invasion had failed, as far as he was concerned, it was just the beginning. And at the very next opportunity, he would try again to establish his own republic. But first, he knew he would have to face both a military and legal reckoning at home. If he failed to convince a jury of the righteousness of his cause,

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Join Wondery+, in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. States, word of their approach reached nearby San Diego. Spectators on the U.S. side came out to watch as a detachment of American soldiers waited for them to cross. Soon, Walker and his men were prisoners of the U.S. Army. Their weapons were confiscated and they were loaded into wagons for the journey back to San Diego. Seven months after William Walker and his fellow filibusters first landed on the Baja Peninsula, his dream of a new Republic of Sonora was over. While Walker and his men were detained on a ship off the shore of San Diego, false accounts of his death reached the papers in San Francisco. The daily Alta proclaimed, So ends the great Republic of Sonora, with all its sins of slavery extension,

robbery, and murder. It was unfortunate for Walker that he lived long enough to degrade his enterprise with crimes befitting only an abandoned pirate. In the political climate of California at the time, filibustering was a divisive issue. Many progressive newspapers and politicians denounced Walker's expedition as illegal and murderous. But among more conservative members of the public in the press, Walker found many supporters. And for two months, his impending trial for violating the Neutrality Act dominated the news, making it hard to find an impartial jury. When the trial did finally begin in October 1854, the courtroom was packed. It was the trial of the decade. The judge, Isaac S.K.

Ogier, had crossed paths with Walker before, as they had worked at the same time in the New Orleans courts. Walker defended himself, along with two old lawyer friends. He opened his defense on October 18th by trying to claim that his actions had not violated the Neutrality Act. That law made it a crime for private citizens to conspire to overtake foreign lands while on American soil. Walker argued that the plan to conquer La Paz did not arise until his ship was in international waters and thus was not beholden to American laws. Later in the trial, Walker's lawyers insisted to the jury that his intention was only to drive back the savage Indian tribes.

For the government of the United States to prosecute this would, in their words, put it in league with a blood-red Apache. They even argued that, as Walker's invasion was a crime against Mexico and not the U.S., the federal government had no jurisdiction, making the Neutrality Act unconstitutional. All of these arguments, though legally flimsy, delighted most of the spectators in the crowded courtroom. At the trial's end, Judge Ogier laid out his instructions to the jury. If chartering a vessel, loaning it with weapons, and launching a surprise attack on foreign lands

was enough to conclude that William Walker had premeditated his invasion, then he should be found guilty of violating the Neutrality Act. The jury shuffled out of the courtroom to begin their deliberations, and the spectators and dozensuffled out of the courtroom to begin their deliberations, and the spectators and dozens of members of the press waited with bated breath for the verdict. Imagine it's October 1854. You've been assigned by your editor at the San Francisco Herald

to report on the trial of William Walker, a plum assignment for a young reporter like you. It's the trial of the decade, maybe even the trial of William Walker. A plum assignment for a young reporter like you. It's the trial of the decade. Maybe even the trial of the century. You're squeezed into the back of the courtroom with the rest of the press. The jury has just left to start their deliberations, so you know you'll likely be stuck here for hours. To pass the time, you discuss the case with a rival reporter.

Look, the whole nation knows this ridiculous neutrality act stands opposed to the very meaning of Manifest Destiny. General William Walker is a bona fide American hero. God, Walker's not a hero. He's not even the president of a herd of stolen cattle, and you know it. Look, at best, he's a murderer. At worst, he's a traitor. I'll bet you a nickel he's found guilty. I'll bet you a whole dollar he's not. I'm already writing the headline. The gray-eyed man of destiny rides again. Oh, no, the only place he's riding is straight to jail. Outside the courtroom, you can hear the crowds of Walker supporters growing louder.

You actually have to raise your voice to hear yourself over them and the growing commotion among the spectators inside the courtroom. Nah, nah, nah, listen. You hear all those people chanting his name? There's no law that supersedes the will of the courtroom. Nah, nah, nah, listen. You hear all those people chanting his name? There's no law that supersedes the will of the people. Before the other reporter can answer, doors in the courtroom open and the jury returns after just eight minutes by your watch. You smirk, knowing you can mean only one thing. All right, pal, where's my nickel? The other reporter grimaces, then fishes a coin from his pockets and slaps it into your hand.

You both know that no jury convicts a man that fast. Before the foreman even stands to read the verdict, you scribble in your notebook, Walker, not guilty. As the verdict of not guilty was read out, there were cheers inside and outside the courtroom. Throngs of people lined up to shake William Walker's hand and congratulate him. By leaving the courthouse a free man, Walker turned what should have been a humiliating defeat into a resounding victory. Newspapers across the country reported the verdict, calling him by a nickname coined by a San Francisco newspaper man, the Gray-Eyed Man of Destiny. In a nation divided by free and slave states in the

years before the Civil War, William Walker found supporters on both sides. To many free staters, he embodied the ideal of manifest destiny. He was an inspiring example of American exceptionalism with an ambitious vision of what the United States could become by spreading its brand of democracy throughout the world. To pro-slavery Southerners, Walker was expanding their peculiar institution, the bedrock of their society and economy. If he could introduce slavery into new American territories, he could also tip the balance of power in Congress, creating a political bulwark against growing abolitionist sentiment in the North. But Walker had left a trail of death and chaos. The scores of dead men, the relentless pillaging and theft, the reckless

destabilization of an entire region had made Walker an enemy of the Mexican and United States governments alike. Still, Walker strode out of court that day a free man, with public opinion emphatically on his side. Walker saw his acquittal not just as an exoneration, but as a mandate. He would set his sights on a grander prize than Baja, Nicaragua, where plans for a canal across the isthmus of Central America might hold the key for his next attempt at building an empire. From Wondery, this is the first episode of The Walker Affair from American History Tellers. On the next episode, learning from his mistakes in Mexico, William Walker

allies himself with one side of a growing civil war in Nicaragua. But his latest adventure in Latin America earns him a new enemy, a wealthy American industrialist who's determined to stop Walker's schemes of conquest at any cost. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

If you'd like to learn more about William Walker, Tell us about yourself by filling out a short Our managing producer is Tanja Digpen. Our coordinating producer is Matt Gant. And our senior producer is Andy Herman. Executive producers are Jenny Lauer-Beckman and Marsha Louis for Wondery. In November 1991, media tycoon Robert Maxwell mysteriously vanished from his luxury yacht in the Canary Islands. But it wasn't just his body that would come to the surface in the days that followed. It soon emerged that Robert's business was on the brink of collapse, and behind his facade of wealth and success was a litany of bad investments, mounting debt, and multi-million dollar fraud. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show Business Movers. We tell the true stories of

business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that define their journey, and the ideas that transform the way we live our lives. In our latest series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis arrives in Britain determined to make something of his life. Taking the name Robert Maxwell, he builds a publishing and newspaper empire that spans the globe. But ambition eventually curdles into desperation, and Robert's determination to succeed turns into a willingness to do anything to get ahead. Follow Business Movers wherever you get your podcasts.

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