Filibusters & Fools
“From what I have read in The Sun,” he said. “Mr. Smith has turned his editorializing powers against the Mexican government in Baja. He greatly encourages the filibusters.”
John Sigerson, The Deadly stingaree, Chapter 23 The nursery
When we hear the word filibuster today, most of us think of it as a strategy senators use to prolong debate on proposed legislation, delaying its passage. In the United States of the 19th century the term often meant something else, referring to private citizens who raised an army of mercenaries to invade foreign countries for personal gain. Some hoped to rule their own fiefdom or, using Texas history as a model, establish a territory that would eventually be annexed as an American state. Most of these attempts took place during the 1850s, before the American Civil War.
Photo By Mathew Benjamin Brady – Public Domain
The most successful of these filibusters, at least for a while, was William Walker. His early attempt to invade Baja California and Sonora was driven back by Mexican forces but he remained undeterred. Walker and his mercenaries, supported by the Nicaragua Democratic Party, invaded and took control of Nicaragua in July 1856. Walker set himself up as the country’s president. Two years later, a military coalition led by Costa Rica defeated Walker’s army and forced him to resign. He received a hero’s welcome upon his return to the United States, particularly in the Southern and Western states.
Photo By Scott Raine
Walker’s third expedition fared poorly. Encouraged by British settlers in Honduras, Walker arrived in Trujillo to meet with them and carry out his plan for overthrowing the government. Instead he was arrested by the Royal Navy and turned over to the Honduran government. He was tried for piracy and filibusterism and executed by firing squad at the age of 36.
Filibusters were often strong supporters of slavery, intending to set up new slave states with their conquests. The defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War cooled their fervor. But in the 1890’s a San Diego man named Walter Gifford Smith, owner of the Sun newspaper, and British Major Buchanon Scott, an Afghan war veteran and manager of the Mexican Land and Colonization Company, plotted a takeover of Baja California.
Under the guise of building a railroad from Ensenada to San Quintin, Smith, Scott and their co-conspirators planned to bring 300 recruits disguised as railroad workers into Mexico. On the night Smith and Scott were to throw a party for local Mexican officials their men would attack, and presumably defeat, the garrison of Mexican soldiers in Ensenada.
Smith had grand visions for himself if the filibuster succeeded. He would become President and Governor-General of Lower California. He even went as far as writing a Declaration of Independence and an inaugural address. He designed a new flag.
Fortunately for probably everyone, the plot was leaked to a rival newspaper. Under duress, Smith and his co-conspirators abandoned their plan and denied all the charges. The era of filibusters & fools had come to its ignominious end.
The Deadly Stingaree
April 23, 1891. San Diego, CA. A presidential visit. A secret plot against the United States. This recently discovered manuscript tells the remarkable story of a 14-year-old Chinese orphan and his notable friends—a notorious gunslinger, a former Buffalo soldier, a crusading female attorney, and the world’s greatest detective—who saved the president and the union that day.