Frémont now prepared to take the offensive against Castro, who was retreating on Los Angeles, but just as he was about to start on his march southward a messenger brought the great news that Admiral Sloat, having received word that hostilities had commenced along the Rio Grande, had landed his marines at Monterey, and on July 7, to the thunder of saluting war-ships, had raised the American flag over the presidio, and had proclaimed the annexation of California to the Union. When the Bear Flag men learned the great news they went into a frenzy of enthusiasm; whooping, shouting, singing snatches of patriotic songs, and firing their pistols in the air. Quickly the standard of the fighting grizzly was lowered and the flag of stripes and stars hoisted in its place, while the rough-clad, bearded settlers, who had waited so long and risked so much that this very thing might come to pass, sang the Doxology with tears running down their faces. As the folds of the familiar banner caught the breeze and floated out over the flat-roofed houses of the little town, Ide, the late chief of the three-weeks republic, jumping on a powder barrel, swung his sombrero in the air and shouted: "Now, boys, all together, three cheers for the Union!" The moist eyes and the lumps in the throats brought by the sight of the old flag did not prevent the little band of frontiersmen from responding with a roar which made the windows of Sonoma rattle.
Now, as a matter of fact, Admiral Sloat had placed himself in a very embarrassing position, for he had based his somewhat precipitate action in seizing California on what he had every reason to believe was authentic news that war between the United States and Mexico had actually begun, but which proved next day to be merely an unconfirmed rumor. If a state of war really did exist, then both Sloat and Frémont were justified in their aggressions; but if it did not, then they might have considerable difficulty in explaining their action in commencing hostilities against a nation with which we were at peace. So Sloat began "to get cold feet," asserting that he was forced to act as he had because he had received reliable information that the British, whose fleet was lying off Monterey, were on the point of seizing California themselves. Frémont, on his part, claimed to have acted in defence of the American settlers in the interior, who without his assistance would have been massacred by the Mexicans. At this juncture Commodore Stockton arrived at Monterey in the frigate Congress, and as Sloat was now thoroughly frightened and only too glad to transfer the responsibility he had assumed to other shoulders, Stockton, who was the junior officer, asked for and readily obtained permission to assume command of the operations. Frémont, who had reached Monterey with several hundred riflemen, was appointed commander-in-chief of the land forces by Stockton, and was ordered to embark his men on one of the war-ships and proceed at once to capture San Diego, at that time by far the most important place in California. Stockton himself, after raising the American flag over San Francisco and Santa Barbara, sailed down the coast to San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles, where he disembarked a force of bluejackets and marines for the taking of the latter city, within which the Mexican commander, General Castro, had shut himself up with a considerable number of troops, and where he promised to make a desperate resistance.
As Stockton came marching up from San Pedro at the head of his column he was met by a Mexican carrying a flag of truce and bearing a message from Castro warning the American commander in the most solemn terms that if his forces dared to set foot within Los Angeles they would be going to their own funerals. "Present my compliments to General Castro," Stockton told the messenger, "and ask him to have the kindness to have the church bells tolled for our funerals at eight o'clock to-morrow morning, for at that hour I shall enter the city." Upon receipt of this disconcerting message Castro slipped out of Los Angeles that night, without firing a shot in its defence, and at eight o'clock on the following morning, Stockton, just as he had promised, came riding in at the head of his men.
After garrisoning the surrounding towns and ridding the countryside of prowling bands of Mexican guerillas, Stockton officially proclaimed California a Territory of the United States, instituted a civil government along American lines, and appointed Frémont as the first Territorial governor. Before the year 1846 had drawn to a close these two Americans, the one a rough-and-ready sailor, the other a youthful and impetuous soldier, assisted by a few hundred marines and frontiersmen, had completed the conquest and pacification of a territory having a greater area and greater natural resources than those of all the countries conquered by Napoleon put together. Thus ended the happy, lazy, luxury-loving society of Spanish California. Another society, less luxurious, less light-hearted, less contented, but more energetic, more progressive, and better fitted for the upbuilding of a nation, took its place. There are still to be found in California a few men, white-haired and stoop-shouldered now, who were themselves actors in this drama I have described, and who delight to tell of those stirring days when Frémont and his frontiersmen came riding down from the passes, and the embattled settlers of Sonoma founded their short-lived Republic of the Bear.
THE KING OF THE FILIBUSTERS
In one of the public squares of San José, which is the capital of Costa Rica, there is a marble statue of a stern-faced young woman, with her foot planted firmly on a gentleman's neck. The young woman is symbolic of the Republic of Costa Rica, and the gentleman ground beneath her heel is supposed to represent the American filibuster and soldier of fortune, William Walker. Now, before going any farther, justice requires me to explain that Walker's downfall was not due to Costa Rica, as the citizens of that little republic would like the world to believe, and as the bombastic statue in the plaza of its capital would lead one to suppose, but to a far greater and richer power, whose victories were won with dollars instead of bayonets, whose capital was New York City, and whose name was Cornelius Vanderbilt.
To the younger generation the name of William Walker carries no significance, but to the gray-heads whose recollections antedate the Civil War the mention of it brings back a flood of thrilling memories, while throughout the length and breadth of that wild region lying between the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the Isthmus of Panama it is still a synonym for unfaltering courage. His weakness was ambition; his fault was failure. Had he succeeded in realizing his ambitions—and he failed only by the narrowest of margins—he would have been lauded as another Cortez, and would have received stars and crosses instead of bullets. Had his life not been cut short by a Honduran firing-party, it is possible, indeed probable, that, instead of there being six states in Central America there would be but one, and in that one the institution of slavery might still exist. Though I have scant sympathy with the motives which animated Walker, and though I believe that his death was for the best good of the Central American peoples, he was the very antithesis of the cutthroat and blackguard and outlaw which he has been painted, being, on the contrary, a very brave and honest gentleman, of whom his countrymen have no reason to feel ashamed, and that is why I am going to tell his story.
The eldest son of a Scotch banker, Walker was born in 1824 in Nashville, Tennessee. His father, a stiff-necked Presbyterian who held morning and evening prayers, asked an interminable grace before every meal, and took his family to church three times on Sunday, had set his heart on his son entering the ministry, and it was with a pulpit and parish in view that young Walker was educated. By the time that he was ready to enter the theological school, however, he decided that he preferred M.D. instead of D.D. after his name, whereupon, much to his father's disappointment, he insisted on taking the medical course at the University of Tennessee, following it up by two years at the University of Edinburgh. Thoroughly equipped to practise his chosen profession, he opened an office in Philadelphia, but in a few months the routine of a doctor's life palled upon him, so, taking down his brass door-plate, he went to New Orleans, where, after two years of study, he was admitted to the bar. But he soon found that briefs and summonses were scarcely more to his liking than prescriptions and pills, so, with the prompt decision which was one of his most marked characteristics, he closed his law-office and obtained a position as editorial writer on a New Orleans newspaper. Within a year the restlessness which had led him to abandon the church, medicine, and the bar caused him to give up journalism in its turn. At this time, 1852, the Californian gold fever was at its mad height, and to the Pacific coast were pouring streams of fortune-seekers and adventure-lovers from every quarter of the globe. One of the latter was Walker, and it was while editor of the San Francisco Herald, when only twenty-eight years old, that his amazing career really began.