Filibustering

Filibustering was a term that referred to unofficial and irregular American efforts in the mid-nineteenth century to expand the empire of slavery into Central and Latin America. Figures such as William Walker, the "grey-eyed man of destiny," became celebrated in the South as heroes and vilified in the North as pirates for their various military exploits and adventures during the 1850s. (By Matthew Pinsker)

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Note Cards

Filibustering Expeditions (McPherson, 2001)

Textbook

In 1854, a major filibustering enterprise overlapped the official efforts to buy Cuba. The leader of this venture was former Governor John A. Quitman of Mississippi…During the 1850s, American filibusters, mostly from Texas and California, launched dozens of raids into Mexico. Some of them had simple plunder as their goal; others were part of a sporadic border warfare that continued for years after the Mexican war.

James M. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001), 82-83.

Filibustering (Freehling, 2007)

Scholarship

The qualms about the Caribbean (and about New Orleans) fed qualms about the illegality of filibustering. Before U.S. filibusterers could replace foreign regimes, they had to defy their own national’s Neutrality Laws. Back when the new American government had striven to be neutral in Europe’s Napoleonic Wars, Congress had passed these laws. These edicts required private individuals to be as neutral as their government. American citizens could not join foreign wars, civil conflicts, or revolutions when the United States remained at peace with the combatants. . Federal officials could seize suspected filibusters before they sailed from America. If convicted, suspects could be fined up to $3000 and jailed for up to three years.

In the presecession years, the northern presidents who presided over national laws enforced these edicts enthusiastically. Both Pierce and Buchanan sought legal purchases in the Caribbean as zealously as they repressed illegal freebooting from the United States. That even-handed attitude toward expansionism, they believed, best ensured sectional peace. Intolerance for lawbreakers also best preserved a nation worth saving.

William W. Freehling, Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861, vol. 2 of The Road to Disunion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 159.

Filibustering (Nash, 1998)

Textbook

The failure to acquire new territory from Mexico legally did not discourage expansionist Americans from pursuing illegal means. During the 1850s, Texans and Californians staged dozens of raids (called “filibusters”) into Mexico. The most daring adventurer of the era was William Walker, a 100-pound Tennessean with a zest for danger and power. After migrating to southern California, Walker made plans to add slave lands to the country. In 1853, he invaded Lower California (the Baja Peninsula) with fewer than 300 men and declared himself president of the independent republic of Sonora. Although eventually arrested and tried in the United States, he was acquitted after eight minutes of deliberation.

Back Walker went, invading Nicaragua two years later. He overthrew the government, proclaimed himself to have been elected dictator, and issued a decree legalizing slavery. When the Nicaraguans, with British help, acted to regain control of their country, the U.S. Navy rescued Walker. After a triumphant tour in the South, he tried twice more to conquer Nicaragua. Walker came to a fitting end in 1960 when he was captured and shot by a Honduran firing squad after invading that country.

Gary B. Nash et al., eds., The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society, 4th ed. (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1998), 484

Events

Date	Event
08/24/1851	Cuban adventurer Narciso López departs the United States on an expedition to liberate Cuba
09/01/1851	Spanish authorities execute Narciso López in Havana
06/01/1852	French filibuster Gaston Raoul Raousset arrives in the northern Mexican state of Sonora
09/21/1852	French adventurer Gaston Raousset declares Sonora (Mexico) to be an independent republic
10/26/1852	Mexican troops expel Gaston Raousset and his filibuster followers from the city of Hermosillo in northern Mexico
10/29/1852	Gaston Raousset departs Mexico for San Francisco
10/15/1853	William Walker and 45 followers invade Baja California, in northwestern Mexico
11/03/1853	American filibuster William Walker proclaims himself president of an independent "Republic of Lower California"
04/04/1854	William Walker and his fellow filibusters leave Baja California for Sonora
05/08/1854	William Walker is driven from Mexico and taken into custody by the U.S. military
06/28/1854	Gaston Raousset begins a second filibustering incursion into northern Mexico
07/31/1854	Mexican General José María Yáñez captures French filibuster Gaston Raousset
08/12/1854	A Mexican firing squad executes French adventurer Gaston Raousset in Guaymas, Sonora
05/04/1855	American filibuster William Walker departs San Francisco for Central America
10/13/1855	William Walker captures the Nicaraguan capital of Granada
05/15/1856	U.S. recognizes new Nicaraguan government under the influence of William Walker
06/28/1856	William Walker is elected president of Nicaragua
09/22/1856	William Walker's filibuster government in Nicaragua repeals the abolition of slavery in that country
03/24/1857	American adventurer Henry A. Crabb leads an expeditionary force across the Mexican border into Sonora
04/04/1857	Mexican troops defeat the forces of American filibuster Henry A. Crabb
04/07/1857	Henry A. Crabb and 57 of his followers are executed by a Mexican firing squad
05/01/1857	William Walker and his followers surrender to an American naval squadron and are returned to the United States
12/08/1857	American soldier of fortune William Walker is recaptured by the U.S. Navy
02/03/1858	William Walker and his companions are indicted in New Orleans under the Neutrality Laws
05/01/1858	Nicaragua and Costa Rica appeal to the European powers for protection against filibusters
07/17/1858	John Anthony Quitman, Mexican War general and Mississippi advocate of secession, dies on his plantation in Natchez
10/03/1859	William Walker launches another fillibustering attempt against Nicaragua from New Orleans
10/07/1859	William Walker's latest filibustering attempt ends before it begins with arrest by U.S. Marshals
06/21/1860	William Walker sails from New Orleans for Honduras on his last filibustering expedition
08/06/1860	William Walker and his men capture Trujillo on the Honduran coast
08/07/1860	In Trujillo, William Walker proclaims his support for the Honduran people against their government
08/21/1860	In Honduras, the British Royal Navy orders American filibuster William Walker to leave Trujillo
09/03/1860	In Honduras, American filibuster William Walker surrenders to the British Royal Navy
09/12/1860	American filibuster William Walker is executed in Honduras
08/10/1867	George W.L. Bickley, notorious Copperhead and founder of the the Knights of the Golden Circle, dies in Baltimore.

People

United States Capitol, Washington DC

Documents

Date	Title
11/11/1852	Fayetteville (NC) Observer, “The Cuban Movement,” November 11, 1852
07/25/1855	Boston (MA) Herald, "Workings of the Underground Railroad," July 25, 1855
01/07/1856	Fayetteville (NC) Observer, “More Fillibusters [Filibusters],” January 7, 1856
03/14/1857	New York Times, “The Chances for Walker,” March 14, 1857
04/03/1857	New York Times, “Fillibustering Expedition Against Costa Rica,” April 3, 1857
09/23/1857	New York Times, “Gen. Walker’s Letter,” September 23, 1857
11/26/1857	Washington (DC) National Era, "Gen. Walker and the Administration," November 26, 1857
01/05/1858	New York Herald, "The Slavery Question in Congress," January 5, 1858
01/07/1858	New York Herald, "Kansas as a Slave State," January 7, 1858
06/06/1858	Chicago (IL) Tribune, “Revolution in New Orleans,” June 6, 1858
06/27/1858	New York Herald, “The Hon. Joshua R. Giddings vs. the Administration and the Slave Power,” June 27, 1858
07/02/1858	New York Times, "The American Gold Fields," July 2, 1858
07/06/1858	New York Times, “Letter from General William Walker,” July 6, 1858
11/16/1858	New York Times, “General Walker’s New Project,” November 16, 1858
11/19/1858	New York Herald, “Gen. Walker Submitting to a ‘Legal Experiment,’” November 19, 1858
11/23/1858	New York Times, “The President and the Filibusters,” November 23, 1858
12/09/1858	New York Times, “The Fillibusters [Filibusters] Again,” December 9, 1858
12/22/1858	New York Times, “Who is President of Mexico?,” December 22, 1858
01/29/1859	New York Herald, “The Presidential Question,” January 29, 1859
02/09/1859	New York Times, “General Walker’s Conversion to Romanism,” February 9, 1859
02/24/1859	Charleston (SC) Mercury, “The Gold Regions of the West,” February 24, 1859
04/01/1859	San Francisco (CA) Evening Bulletin, “Filibusterism and Disunion,” April 1, 1859
05/05/1859	San Francisco (CA) Evening Bulletin, “General Walker Off Again,” May 5, 1859
06/27/1859	Fayetteville (NC) Observer, “Caught,” June 27, 1859
10/04/1859	Chicago (IL) Press and Tribune, “Another Filibuster Crusade,” October 4, 1859
10/08/1859	New York Times, “Suspicious,” October 8, 1859
10/10/1859	Chicago (IL) Press and Tribune, “The Pirates,” October 10, 1859
10/11/1859	New York Times, “A Shabby Trick,” October 11, 1859
12/03/1859	Atchison (KS) Freedom’s Champion, “Walker vs. Brown,” December 3, 1859
02/22/1860	Raleigh (NC) Register, “How Firmly United the Democracy Are,” February 22, 1860
06/02/1860	Atchison (KS) Freedom's Champion, “Kansas and Cuba,” June 2, 1860
08/19/1860	New York Herald, “The Whereabouts of Walker,” August 19, 1860
08/22/1860	New York Times, “Walker Again,” August 22, 1860
08/29/1860	Milwaukee (WI) Sentinel, "What Walker's Success Means," August 29, 1860
09/12/1860	New York Times, “Used Up,” September 12, 1860
09/22/1860	Wiped Out
10/01/1860	Chicago (IL) Press and Tribune, “'Gen. Walker',” October 1, 1860
10/09/1860	Chicago (IL) Press and Tribune, “The Execution of Walker,” October 9, 1860

Images

Execution of Crittenden, Havana, 1851

Bibliography

Chicago Style Entry	Link
May, Robert E. Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.	View Record
May, Robert E. John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.	View Record
May, Robert E. The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854-1861. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973.	View Record
Swan, Jon. "William Walker's Manifest Destiny." MHQ: Quarterly Journal of Military History 13, no. 4 (2001): 38-47.	View Record
Bringhurst, Newell G. "Sam Brannan's 1851 Hawaiian Filibustering Expedition: A 'Paradise Postponed.'" Californians 5, no. 5 (1987): 20-23.	View Record
Bruns, Roger, and Bryan Kennedy. "El Presidente Gringo: William Walker and the Conquest of Nicaragua." American History Illustrated 23, no. 10 (1989): 14-20, 46-48.	View Record
Benz, Stephen. "William Walker and the Discovery of Central America." Secolas Annals 24 (1993): 96-105.	View Record
Steward, Dick. "John Smith T and the Way West: Filibustering and Expansion on the Missouri Frontier." Missouri Historical Review 89, no. 1 (1994): 48-74.	View Record
Chaffin, Tom. "'Sons Of Washington': Narciso Lopez, Filibustering, and U.S. Nationalism, 1848-1851." Journal of the Early Republic 15, no. 1 (1995): 79-108.	View Record
DeLaCova, Antonio Rafael. "Filibusters and Freemasons: The Sworn Obligation." Journal of the Early Republic 17, no. 1 (1997): 95-120.	View Record
Ball, Durwood. "Filibusters and Regular Troops in San Francisco, 1851-1855." Military History of the West 28, no. 2 (1998): 161-183.	View Record
Scroggs, William Oscar. Filibusters and Financiers: The Story of William Walker and His Associates. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1916.	View Record
Walker, William. The War in Nicaragua. Mobile: S. H. Goetzel & Co., 1860.	View Record
Brown, Charles Harvey. Agents of Manifest Destiny: The Lives and Times of the Filibusters. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.	View Record
May, Robert E. "Reconsidering Antebellum U.S. Women's History: Gender, Filibustering, and America's Quest for Empire." American Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2005): 1155-1188.	View Record
May, Robert E. "The Domestic Consequences of American Imperialism: Filibustering and Howard Pyle's Pirates." American Studies 46, no. 3 (2005): 37-61.	View Record
May, Robert E. "Young American Males and Filibustering in the Age of Manifest Destiny: The United States Army as a Cultural Mirror." Journal of American History 78, no. 3 (1991): 857-886.	View Record
May, Robert E. "Antebellum Americans 'Meet' their Southern Neighbors." Reviews in American History 8, no. 3 (1980): 360-365.	View Record
Freehling, William W. The Road to Disunion. Vol. 2, Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.	View Record

Tabs

Buchanan, James

Carr, Richard Wilson

Fry, Birkett Davenport

O'Sullivan, John Louis

Pierce, Franklin

Quitman, John Anthony

Walker, William

Wheat, Chatham Roberdeau

Worthington, Henry Gaither

Execution of Crittenden, Havana, 1851

Filibustering

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