Walker immediately formed his camp and awaited the reinforcements which he was daily expecting from the United States. Colonel Anderson, having ascended the Colorado and San Juan, suddenly appeared before Castillo Viejo and captured it without difficulty, a feat which the incompetent Titus and Lockridge had been unable to achieve with eight times his force. He also captured three or four of the river steamers, and was in a fair way to obtain supreme control of the Transit route, when the arrival at San Juan, on December 6th, of Commodore Hiram Paulding and the U.S. frigate Wabash gave a new turn to affairs.
Captain Chatard, not content with exercising a kind of police superintendence over the port of San Juan, began a series of petty annoyances, which, had they been intended to provoke Walker into a collision with the United States forces, could not have been better contrived. While the American captain professed to maintain a strict neutrality, he nevertheless issued orders to the expeditionists, and sent his boats out to practise firing where the filibusters on duty were exposed to injury unless they abandoned their posts. His officers insisted upon landing and entering Walker's camp without a pass; and when Walker, with more dignity than discretion, threatened to shoot anybody found trespassing within his lines, Captain Chatard retorted in a note (which Walker sent to Commodore Paulding,) assuring him that he would retaliate. "The childish follies," as Walker characterized them, of Captain Chatard failing to provoke a collision, Commodore Paulding, on the 7th of December, sent an imperative summons to surrender. Resistance to such a demand, backed as it was by two frigates and a complaisant British captain, who volunteered to aid Paulding in annihilating the American filibusters, would have been madness. On the next day Commodore Paulding landed a force of three hundred and fifty men in howitzer barges and formed them in order of battle, while the broadsides of the Saratoga were sprung to bear on the camp. Captain Engle proceeded to the tent of General Walker and presented the demand for surrender, adding, "General, I am sorry to see you here. A man like you is worthy to command better men." Walker replied briefly that the virtue of his men would be apparent if their number and equipments were one half those of his captors.
The flag of the filibusters was then hauled down, and the prisoners were sent on board the Saratoga for transportation to the United States. Walker, being offered the choice of returning by way of Aspinwall, availed himself of the favour and went home at his own expense. Colonel Anderson, on learning of the capture, surrendered his command on the river and returned to New Orleans. Arriving at New York, Walker gave himself up to a United States marshal, in fulfilment of his parole to Commodore Paulding, and was sent a prisoner of war to Washington. But President Buchanan was by no means ready to support the act of his naval subordinate, and absolutely refused to accept the surrender or to recognize Walker as in the custody of the Government. In a message to Congress he reviewed at length the action of Commodore Paulding, which he pronounced unlawful, but cited the approbation of the de facto government of Nicaragua as justifying the proceedings. In short, Paulding had infringed the rights of that country by an act of hostility towards its president and upon its soil; but, reasoned Mr. Buchanan, inasmuch as the enemies of Walker now in possession of the government of Nicaragua do not complain, therefore Commodore Paulding's action was not reprehensible. Nevertheless, it was a grave error and a dangerous precedent, should it be allowed to go unrebuked. Acting upon the logical sequence of that opinion, Walker demanded that the Government of the United States should indemnify him for his losses and, by granting free transportation to a new expedition, restore the status quo ante. Needless to say, the petition was not granted. He then instituted civil suits against Paulding, claiming damages for illegal arrest and detention, suits which lingered in the courts and never arrived at a decision.
The Fashion was condemned for having sailed from Mobile under a false clearance, and sold by the United States marshal for two hundred dollars. Her cargo, which was brought back by the frigates Saratoga and Wabash, showed that the filibusters had made ample preparations for the equipment of a force sufficient to have easily reconquered the country had they been able to secure a foothold. That their failure should be caused by the action of their fellow countrymen they had never dreamed. Walker, before his departure, had satisfied himself that he should suffer no harm if only he could get away in quiet. Least of all did he dream of being molested on foreign soil. Proof came readily, when it was too late to be of any service, that Paulding had transgressed his powers in breaking up the expedition. The cause of his enmity was not difficult to fathom. Paulding was an old shipmate and intimate friend of Walker's enemy, Commander Davis. Fate seems to rejoice in a certain kind of ironical cruelty, whereby she sends to a Napoleon the gad-fly, Hudson Lowe, and thwarts the ambition of a Walker by the pipe-clay petulance of a naval martinet. It is as though Cæsar had caught a cold, and died of it, in crossing the Rubicon. Paulding and other petty potentates chose to take offence at the disrespectful manner in which Walker, a mere uncommissioned adventurer, had dared speak of Commander Davis. They resented it as an insult to "the service," and when the subsequent correspondence with Commander Chatard was laid before the Commodore, his indignation knew no bounds. The man who would threaten to shoot a naval officer for penetrating his military lines without a pass could be only a pirate and outlaw. As such, Paulding had the filibuster arrested, although permitting him, with charming inconsistency, to go to New York on parole.
But the irreparable mischief was done, and Walker found slight consolation in having his persecutor suspended from active service, or in the prosecution of endless civil suits for damages, a species of vengeance which carries its own punishment.
CHAPTER XVII
Walker's "History of the War " — Lands at Ruatan and takes Trujillo — Retreats before the English forces — Surrender — Trial and execution of the last of the Filibusters.
During the following two years Walker continued his efforts to regain power in Nicaragua, his friends maintaining their unshaken confidence in his ability to succeed and in the "destiny" which had lately played him such sorry tricks. On the 30th of October, 1858, President Buchanan found it necessary to issue a proclamation calling attention to certain plans of emigration companies intending to colonise Nicaragua, the leading promoter of which was William Walker. "This person," it said, "who has severed the ties of loyalty which bind him to the United States, and who aspires to the presidency of Nicaragua, has notified the Collector of the port of Mobile that two or three hundred of those emigrants will be ready to embark and sail for that port towards the middle of November;" and the President warned the intending emigrants that they would not be allowed to carry out their project.
In spite, however, of this proclamation a party of one hundred and fifty filibusters, commanded by Colonel Anderson, embarked about the 1st of December on the schooner Susan at the port of Mobile. The voyage terminated abruptly by shipwreck off the coast of Honduras, whence the expeditionists were rescued by a British vessel of war and carried back to their home. Doubleday thus describes the ruse by which the adventurers deceived the Federal authorities in escaping from Mobile:—
"No customs official had molested us while fast to the dock, but when we had reached the open bay a shadowy vessel ran athwart our bow in the semi-obscurity of the night, hailing us as she passed by announcing herself a United States revenue cutter, commanded by Captain Morris. He had orders if we should persist in sailing with our present cargo, to sink us as soon as we were a marine league from the shore, that distance constituting in their parlance the open sea. This we agreed among ourselves was unpleasant. She carried heavy guns while we carried none, and besides not even Walker was quite prepared as yet to make war with the United States.