Corral died at the appointed hour, and the lesson was not wholly lost upon his accomplices. Walker has been bitterly censured for this piece of stern justice, especially at home in the United States, where the act was misrepresented as that of a suspicious tyrant who thus rid himself of a dangerous rival. But there is not the slightest reason for regarding Corral's death as aught but the well-merited punishment of an utterly unscrupulous villain. His whole conduct in connection with the late war was consistent with his last and fatal treachery. Even the morality of Nicaragua, loose as it was in matters of public faith, while lamenting the fate of Handsome Ponciano, confessed that he was well-named "Corral," the beautiful but deadly serpent of the country.
That impartial justice governed the action of Walker is evident from an incident which occurred on the very day on which Corral was inditing his treason to Xatruch and Guardiola. Patrick Jordan, a soldier of the Falange, while intoxicated, shot and mortally wounded a native boy. Jordan was tried by court-martial and sentenced to death. Padre Vijil and many others, including the mother of the murdered boy, begged in vain for leniency to the culprit. On the 3rd of November, two days after the commission of his crime, Jordan was shot at sunrise. Walker's detractors commented characteristically upon this execution, picturing the impartial judge as another Mokanna, delighting in the suffering of friend as of foe. The historian, groping in the darkness of contemporaneous journalism for facts of current history, wherever those facts bear upon the so-called political issues of the time, finds himself floundering at every step in sloughs of falsehoods or quicksands of misrepresentation. The evil, unhappily, is confined to no party or epoch. Walker being a champion, and a bigoted one, of a certain party, paid the inevitable penalty, that of being equally over-praised and underrated, according to the political prejudices of his critics.
To Don Buenaventura Selva was given the vacant portfolio of war. The representative of the United States recognized the new administration. The neighbouring states of Liberal tendencies sent assurances of hearty friendship; those in which the Servile party was supreme maintained a diplomatic silence. Peace reigned throughout the length and breadth of Nicaragua, the peace of her own slumbering volcanoes.
CHAPTER X
Filibusterism abroad — Kinney's Expedition — The Filibusters and their allies — An aristocracy of leather — Pierce and Marcy — A rupture with the United States — Costa Rica declares war — Schlessinger's fiasco — Cosmopolitan adventurers — Steamers withdrawn — History of the Transit Company — Vanderbilt plans vengeance — The printing-press on the field.
In the United States, particularly in California, Walker's amazing success gave an impulse to filibustering of a different, because more sanguine, nature from that produced by the first expeditions of Lopez to Cuba. France and England also awoke to behold with dismay this solution of the Central American problem. Not less alarmed was the Conservative element in Spanish America, the more reactionary part of which talked wildly of calling in a European protectorate and of breaking off commercial intercourse with the North Americans. Mexico, Cuba, Ecuador, and Central America were threatened by invading expeditions, while Nicaragua was made the objective point of an actual invasion from the Atlantic coast. It will be remembered that the Mosquito king's grant to the Shepards had been transferred to a colonization company in the United States; upon the strength of which Henry L. Kinney, of Philadelphia, proceeded to occupy his property. But there were many difficulties in the way. The grant had been revoked by his Majesty in a lucid interval. Great Britain, as guardian of the kingdom, repudiated the contract. Nicaragua steadily declined to recognize the rights of either party to her territory; and, to complete the adventurer's misfortune, the Federal authorities arrested him when about to lead his first detachment of colonists to his tropical possessions. Not to rehearse the tedious litigation which followed, it suffices to say that the Kinney Expedition, having succeeded in embarking, was shortly afterwards wrecked on Turk's Island, finally reaching San Juan del Norte in a most forlorn plight. There new misfortunes overtook them. Most of the military colonists sailed up the river to share the more promising fortunes of Walker, to whom Kinney himself, despairing of success unaided, at last made overtures for an alliance offensive and defensive. But the messenger found Walker firmly entrenched in power and, as a member of the government, bound to consider all foreign claims on the Mosquito coast as mere usurpations. Had it been otherwise, he might perhaps have returned a less peremptory answer than the brief threat: "Tell Mr. Kinney, or Colonel Kinney, or whatever he calls himself, that if I find him on Nicaraguan soil, I will most assuredly hang him." The new element in Nicaragua did not fail to uphold the sovereign independence of the country with zeal, even if it may have sometimes lacked discretion. Walker was a stickler for dignity, and never failed to exact the respect due to himself, his office, and his flag. An English merchant, of Realejo, who had resisted a Government levy, and, with the sublime assurance of his race, had hoisted the Union Jack over his house, was caustically invited by Walker to lower the emblem or produce his Government's license to display the flag of a representative. "If he refuses," said Walker, "tear it down, trample it under foot, and put the fellow in irons." The Englishman knew enough of law to see that he had no authority for the display of bunting, which he accordingly furled, paid the requisition, and cursed the Yankee lawyer who had taught him a lesson. Walker was versed in the law of nations, but he unfortunately overlooked the fact that those wise statutes are framed for the control of strong nations dealing with their peers. It is not enough to be right, or to know one's rights, unless the power to maintain them accompany the knowledge. A touch of the lawyer's weakness for technical rights always marked this curious outlaw.
In the dazzling success of the Falange, the disasters of Kinney were forgotten, and many a band of hardy adventurers was tempted to rival their deeds. For a time it seemed as though the spirit of the Vikings had been revived in the land discovered by Eric the Red. On the Pacific coast those incursions sometimes assumed, as we have seen, formidable proportions. Sonora, Arizona, Lower California, and even the Sandwich Islands, were the various goals of ambitious adventurers, some of whom never carried their schemes into effect; others, like Colonel Crabbe, made a really imposing campaign for a brief space, only to die fruitless deaths.
The filibusters were by no means impelled to risk life and liberty through an abstract love of freedom or disinterested affection for their oppressed allies. They were, on the contrary, rather prone to turn to their own advantage the fruits of hard-won victory. Their extenuation lies in the worthless character of their allies, who invariably deserted them in extremity, and left the foreigner to save himself. It was so in Cuba, in Sonora, in Nicaragua, though there were honourable exceptions everywhere. A contempt and mistrust of the native character, often but ill-concealed, did not serve to make the alliance any more sincere. In Nicaragua, for the present at least, gratitude was stronger than prejudice, and the party favouring the Americans was powerful and enthusiastic. The common people remained faithful throughout; it was the calzados, the middle and upper classes composing the Conservative party, who hated the foreigner because they felt his superiority, and his still more galling consciousness thereof. The calzados were those who wore shoes, as distinguished from the barefoot rabble. Aristocracy, based on such transcendent merit, is naturally jealous of its prerogatives.
Almost every steamer from California brought down a squad, greater or less, of recruits. Amongst the earliest was a brother of the Achilles Kewen killed at the first battle of Rivas. E. J. C. Kewen was one of the most valuable of Walker's staff, on which he served throughout the war. Quite characteristic of the time and place is the matter-of-fact way in which the San Francisco papers state that Colonel Kewen participated as second in a duel at that place on the day preceding his departure for Nicaragua. Business before pleasure.
During the four months which followed the formation of the new government, Walker gathered about him a force of Americans and other foreigners numbering twelve hundred. They came from all parts of the Union, but chiefly from the Southern and Pacific states. Recruiting offices were opened in San Francisco, whose agents penetrated the mining camps and interior towns, unnoticed or unhindered by the Government authorities. Whenever any opposition was offered, the volunteers frequently bought through tickets to New York, and stopped at Nicaragua to enjoy a little filibustering. In the east more stringent precautions were taken by the authorities, though without much effect, as the colonists were responding to the invitation of the Nicaraguan Government, and could not be legally hindered.