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Of ScottishScotland or in Scottish Gaelic, Alba is a country and former independent kingdom of northwest Europe, and one of the four nations comprising the United Kingdom. Scotland occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. Scotland took part in a p descent, Walker was born in Nashville, TennesseeFor other cities named Nashville, see Nashville (disambiguation). Nashville is the capital city of Tennessee, a state of the United States of America. Nashville is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County. Nicknamed "Music City, U. it is the hom in 1824 and graduated summa cum laude from the local university at the early age of fourteen. He then traveled throughout EuropeFor the band of the same name, see Europe (band . Europe is a continent forming the westermost part of the Eurasian supercontinent. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Se, studying medicineSee drugs, medication, and pharmacology for substances that treat patients. This article is about medical practice. Medicine is a branch of health science concerned with restoring and maintaining health and wellness. Broadly, it is the practical science o at the universities of EdinburghThe University of Edinburgh was founded in 1583 in a period of rapid development in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is one of the ancient universities of Scotland, has more students than any other university in Scotland and is amongst the largest in the United Ki and Heidelberg. At the age of 19 he received a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and practiced briefly in Philadelphia before moving to New Orleans to study law.
After a short stint as a lawyer, Walker became editor of the New Orleans Crescent, a local newspaper. In 1849 he moved to San Francisco, California where he worked as a journalist and fought three duels, in two of which he was wounded. Around that time Walker conceived the project of privately conquering vast regions of Latin America, where he would create states ruled by white English speakers. Such campaigns were then known as filibustering.
On October 15, 1853 with just 45 men, Walker set out on his first filibustering expedition: the conquest of the Mexican provinces of Baja California and Sonora. He succeeded in capturing La Paz, the capital of the sparsely populated Baja California, which he declared the capital of a new Republic of Lower California, with himself as president. Although he never gained control of Sonora, less than three months later he pronounced Baja California part of the larger Republic of Sonora. Lack of supplies and an unexpectedly strong resistance by the Mexican government quickly forced Walker to retreat. Back in California, he was put on trial for conducting an illegal war. In the era of Manifest Destiny, his filibustering project was popular in the southern and western United States and the jury took eight minutes to acquit him.
A civil war was then raging in the Central American republic of Nicaragua, and the rebel faction hired Walker as a mercenary. Evading the federal U.S. authorities charged with preventing his departure, Walker sailed from San Francisco on May 4, 1855 with only 57 men and promptly took control of Nicaragua. As commander of the army, Walker controlled Nicaragua through puppet president Patricio Rivas . Despite the obvious illegality of his expedition, U.S. President Franklin Pierce recognized Walker's regime as the legitimate government of Nicaragua on May 20, 1856. Walker's agents recruited American and European men to sail to the region and fight for the conquest of the other four Central American nations: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica.
At the time, the major trade route between New York City and San Francisco ran through southern Nicaragua (see Nicaragua Canal). Ships from New York would enter the San Juan River from the Atlantic and sail across Lake Nicaragua. People and goods would then be transported by train or stagecoach over a narrow strip of land near the city of Rivas, before reaching the Pacific and being shipped to San Francisco. The commercial exploitation of this route had been granted by a previous Nicaraguan administration to the Accessory Transit Company, which was controlled by Wall Street tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt had initially supported Walker in the hopes that he would stabilize Nicaragua. But as ruler of that country, Walker alleged violations of the Transit Company's charter and voided the agreement. He then granted use of the route to Vanderbilt's rivals in the Accessory Transit Company, Cornelius K. Garrison and Charles Morgan, who had offered Walker a large sum of money and support for his military campaign in exchange for control of the inter-oceanic corridor.
Outraged, Vanderbilt successfully pressured the U.S. government to withdraw its recognition of Walker's regime. He also helped to finance and train a military coalition of the Central American states, led by Costa Rica, and worked to prevent men or supplies from reaching Walker.
In July of 1856, Walker set himself up as president of Nicaragua, after conducting an uncontested election. Realizing that his position was becoming precarious, he sought support from the southerners in the U.S. by recasting his campaign as a fight to spread the institution of black slavery, which many American Southerners saw as the basis of their traditional agrarian way of life and as an institution that was unlikely to endure for long within the U.S. With this in mind, Walker revoked Nicaragua's emancipation edict of 1824, which had made slavery illegal. This move did increase Walker's popularity in the U.S. South, but Walker's army, thinned by an epidemic of cholera and massive defections, was no match for the Central American coalition and Vanderbilt's agents. On May 1, 1857 Walker surrendered to Commander Charles H. Davis of the United States Navy and was repatriated. Upon disembarking in New Orleans he was greeted as a hero. Within six months he had set off on another expedition, but he was arrested by the U.S. Navy Home Squadron under the command of Commodore Paulding and once again returned to the U.S. amid considerable public controversy over the legality of the Navy's actions.
After writing an account of his Central American campaign (published in 1860 as War in Nicaragua), Walker returned to the region yet again. He disembarked in the port city of Trujillo, in the Republic of Honduras, and soon fell into the custody of Captain Salmon of the British Navy. The British government controlled the neighboring regions of British Honduras (now Belize) and the Mosquito Coast (now part of Nicaragua) and had considerable strategic and economic interest in the construction of a inter-oceanic canal through Central America. It therefore regarded Walker as a menace to its own affairs in the region.
Rather than return him to the U.S., Capt. Salmon delivered Walker to the Honduran authorities, who executed him by firing squad on September 12, 1860. Walker was 36 years old. He is buried in Trujillo.