Note XVI-6 — Chapter XVI · WALKER'S CAMPAIGN IN NICARAGUA. 1855-1856.

William Walker was born in Nashville, Tenn., in 1824, being of Scotch descent. After receiving a classical education, he studied law, and later followed the medical profession for a time in Philadelphia. He then travelled in Europe one year, and on his return was connected with some of the important newspapers of the country, north, south, and west. Tiring of that, he successfully practised law in Marysville, Cal. In 1852 he visited Guaymas, and from the operations of Count Raousset, conceived the plan of creating with adventurers from California independent republics in some of the sparsely populated territories of Mexico. Hence his expeditions to Sonora and Lower Cal., of which I give full accounts in my vol. on the north-western states of Mex. Few persons, unacquainted with Walker, would suspect the presence of so much ability and energy beneath his plain exterior. He was but little more than 5 ft. 4 in. in height, with a rather dull and slow appearance; a man of few words, though an attentive listener, his aspect was that of a serious, thoughtful person. A remarkable feature of his face was a deep, intensely brilliant blue-gray eye, large and intelligent. Sincere and devoted to his friends, says a devoted adherent, his enmity, though not violent, was not easily appeased. He was indifferent to personal ease and comfort, and to the acquisition of wealth. Wells' Walker's Exped., 21-3, 199-201. He was not incapable of lofty conceptions, and possessed courage and abnegation; but there was little of what might be called genius about him, though his mind was sufficiently unbalanced in certain directions to give him a title to that distinction. He wished to be a great man like Cæsar or Napoleon, but the elements of that quality of greatness were absent. He might have carved for himself a career of honor and usefulness, but for the restless ambition that possessed him to attain a place among the notabilities of the world, even by a disregard of law and justice. The idea of manifest destiny, so prevalent among his countrymen, which implied the conquest of the Latin race in America by the Anglo-Saxon, afforded him, as he imagined, the opportunity for attaining the coveted renown, and at the same time securing, through his instrumentality, the future happiness of Spanish America. But unfortunately for him, he committed, at the inception of his career in Nic., acts which alienated him the men who had invited him to coöperate in the consolidation of democratic principles; and some of his later measures, whatever may be thought of his earlier ones, savored of recklessness, and of disregard for the good opinion of mankind.