William Walker's Wars: How One Man's Private American Army Tried to Conquer Mexico, Nicaragua, and Honduras by Scott Martelle
William Walker's Wars: How One Man's Private American Army Tried to Conquer Mexico, Nicaragua, and Honduras [Scott Martelle] on Amazon.com.
In terms of Americans being presidents, they are almost all United States presidents (including the Confederacy one) expect for William Walker who was both dictator of Honduras and Nicaragua.
Before the American Civil War, slavery was expanding westward but also north and south and attempts were made into Central America with Cuba being a prime target. The most famous international incident regarding American slavery was the Texas incident which lead to the Mexican-American War. People who try to expand slavery into foreign territory were called filibusters. William Walker was the most famous of the era.
Author Scott Martelle tells the story of how Walker, coming from a southern slave owning family, went west to pursuit the newspaper game before finally rising a mini army several times before finally invading and conquering Nicaragua during their civil war. Martelle tells the rest of the story of how Walker ended up leaving Nicaragua and re-rising his army before invading and ultimately being captured and executed by the Hondurans.
Martelle tells how the whole story went in a very good narrative. He solely follows Walker and gets in detail with his battles that he fought in. Really this book is just about his life and times. It is an excellent look at how things were back then. I wish that that was a final chapter detailing the aftermath of Walker's adventures, especially today. I heard in some random internet place that Walker's death is celebrated in Honduras so I'm not sure if it is true. What impact did Walker have with Central American-U.S. relations post American Civil War. Really this feels like this is missing but otherwise a perfect book to explain who Walker was.