William Walker’s Wars: How One Man’s Private American Army Tried to Conquer Mexico, Nicaragua, and Honduras

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In the decade before the onset of the Civil War, groups of Americans engaged in a series of longshot—and illegal—forays into Mexico, Central The usa, Cuba, and other countries, in hopes of taking them over. Referred to as military filibusters, the goal was once to take hold of territory to create new independent fiefdoms, which would in the end be annexed by the still-growing United States. Most failed miserably.
William Walker was once the outlier. Short, slender, and soft-spoken without a military background—he trained as a health care provider before becoming a lawyer after which a newspaper editor—Walker was once an unlikely leader of rough-hewn men and adventurers. But in 1856 he managed to install himself as president of Nicaragua. Neighboring governments saw Walker as a risk to the region and worked together to drive him out—efforts aided, incongruously, by the US’ original tycoon, Cornelius Vanderbilt.
William Walker’s Wars is a story of greedy dreams and ambitions, the fate of nations and personal fortunes, and the dark side of Manifest Destiny—for among Walker’s many ambitions was once to run his own empire in accordance with slavery. This little-remembered story from US history is a cautionary tale of all who dream of empire.

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