Filibuster (military)
A filibuster, also known as a freebooter, is someone who engages in an unauthorized military expedition into a foreign country or territory to foster or support a political revolution or secession. The term is usually applied to United States citizens who incited rebellions/insurrections across Latin America with its recently independent but unstable nations freed from royal control of the Kingdom of Spain and its Spanish Empire in the 1810s and 1820s. These occurred particularly in the mid-19th century, usually with the goal of establishing an American-loyal regime that could later be annexed into the North American Union as territories or free states, serving the interests of the United States. Probably the most notable example is the Filibuster War initiated by William Walker in the 1850s in Nicaragua and Central America.
Filibusters are irregular soldiers who act without official authorization from their own government, and they are generally motivated by financial gain, political ideology, or the thrill of adventure. Unlike mercenaries, filibusters are independently motivated and work for themselves, while a mercenary leader operates on behalf of others. The freewheeling actions of the filibusters of the 1850s led to the name being applied figuratively later in the North American English language political idiom of the political and legislative delaying act of filibustering in the United States Congress, especially in the upper chamber of the U.S. Senate.
History
The English term "filibuster" derives from the Spanish filibustero, itself deriving originally from the Dutch vrijbuiter, 'privateer, pirate, robber'. The Spanish form entered the English language in the 1850s, as applied to military adventurers from the United States then operating in Central America and the Spanish West Indies.The Spanish language term was first applied to persons raiding Spanish colonies and merchant ships of the Kingdom of Spain and its Spanish Empire in the Americas, in the West Indies islands of the Caribbean Sea, the most famous of whom was the Englishman naval hero and captain, Sir Francis Drake of the beginning Royal Navy of the Kingdom of England, with his June 1572 sea campaign and infamous raid and sacking of the town on Nombre de Dios of. With the end of the era of Caribbean / West Indies piracy in the early 18th century, the term of reference "filibuster" fell out of general currency for a while.
The term was revived in the following mid-19th century to describe the actions of adventurers who tried to take control of various Caribbean / West Indies islands, Mexican, and Central American territories by force of arms. In 1806, the general Francisco de Miranda launched an unsuccessful expedition to liberate Venezuela from Royal Spanish rule with volunteers from the United States recruited in New York City. The three most prominent filibusters of that era were Narciso López and John Quitman, both in Cuba, along with William Walker, with the Walker affair in Baja California, Sonora of northern Mexico; along with further south to Costa Rica and lastly Nicaragua in Central America. The term returned to North American English language parlance to refer to López's 1851 Cuban expedition.
Other filibusters include the Americans Aaron Burr, Chatham Roberdeau Wheat, William Blount, James Long, Augustus W. Magee, George Mathews, George Rogers Clark, William S. Smith, Ira Allen, William A. Chanler, Samuel Brannan, Joseph C. Morehead, Henry Alexander Crabb, and Jordan Goudreau.
Non-American filibusters include the Frenchs Adel Aubert du Petit-Thouars, Marquis Charles de Pindray and Count Gaston de Raousset-Boulbon, the Dutch Luis Brion, the British Gregor MacGregor, and Thomas Cochcrane, the Italian Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Peruvian Leoncio Prado, the Cubans Ambrosio José Gonzales, Manuel de Quesada y Loynaz, and Fidel Castro, the Venezuelans Narciso López, Francisco de Miranda, Santiago Mariño, Jose Antonio Paez, Ezequiel Zamora, Juan Crisostomo Falcon, Antonio Guzmán Blanco, Joaquin Crespo, Rafael de Nogales Mendez, Nicolas Rolando, Miguel Antonio Matos, Gustavo Machado, Simon Antonio Urbina, Roman Delgado Chalbaud, and Jose Maria Ortega Martinez.
Although the American public often enjoyed reading about the thrilling adventures of mercenary filibusters, those Americans involved in filibustering expeditions were usually in violation of the first Neutrality Act of 1794 that made it illegal for a citizen to wage war against another country at peace with the United States. For example, the journalist John L. O'Sullivan, who coined the related phrase "manifest destiny" for the movement of American westward expansion, was put on trial for raising money in America for López's failed southern filibustering expedition in Cuba.
The second Neutrality Act of 1818 became of great frustration for American filibusters. Article 6 stated anyone engaged in filibustering could receive a maximum three years imprisonment and three thousand dollars in fines. However, it was not uncommon for in the early Republic of late 18th and early 19th century politicians to "overlook" and sometimes "assist" some filibuster missions in the hopes to add to U.S. territory. This conflict meant the U.S. Army was reluctant to arrest filibusters who broke the terms of this legislation. Officers were worried that without permission from the American federal courts, such as the United States District Court to make these arrests, they could face arrest themselves.
Filibusters and the press
There was widespread support in the press for filibusters' missions. A number of journalists were sympathetic towards filibusters, such as John O'Sullivan and Moses S. Beach at the famous New York Sun and L. J. Sigur of the New Orleans Daily Delta. All supported Narciso López's missions to Cuba. John S. Thrasher contributed articles for the annexation of Cuba in the New Orleans Picayune. Some enterprising enthused journalists also enlisted themselves to fight for filibustering missions, such as Richardson Hardy and John McCann of the Cincinnati Nonpareil. The poet Theodore O'Hara was a member of William Walker's expedition to Nicaragua. He worked on the Kentucky Yeoman and the Democratic Rally newspapers. After this, he served in the Confederate States Army in the American Civil War.However, filibustering was not universally praised in the press. Papers backing the Republican party's position of being anti-filibuster would use the term to denounce not just actors such as William Walker but also the abolitionist filibuster John Brown, who led a failed mission into Virginia with the aim of causing a slave revolt. Knowing it would harm their campaign, Republicans identified the actions of Brown as originating in the same lawless ideology as the Democrat endorsed Walker or the pro slavery factions operating in the Bleeding Kansas period, and hence inherently denounced his raid. Samuel Brannan's filibustering mission to Hawaii was identified by contemporary newspapers as being little more than a colonising scheme, although they refrained from passing moral judgement and the Daily Evening Picayune revised their opinion to the tamer 'emigrating company'.
Catholic newspapers had varying opinions on filibustering, but broadly denounced these missions for cultural hubris and violence. Despite criticisms of a 'mad spirit of aggression abroad', Catholic commentators often had more issue with the perceived moral decay domestically that filibusters represented, and could see potential in a Spanish Catholic revival abroad, even if it came as a consequence of violence.
Antebellum United States
Connection to slavery
The mid-nineteenth century saw Southern planters raise private armies for expeditions to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America to acquire territories that could be annexed to the Union as slave states. Despite not being authorized by their government, Southern elites often held considerable sway over U.S. foreign policy and national politics. Despite widespread opposition from Northerners, filibustering thrust slavery into American foreign policy.Historians have noted that filibustering was not a common practice and was carried out by "the most radical proslavery expansionists". Hardline defenders of slavery saw its preservation as their "top priority", leading to support for filibusters and their campaigns abroad. At the height of filibustering, pro-slavery politicians wanted to expand the United States further into Latin America, as far as Paraguay and Peru. However, these attempts were quickly withdrawn when military and diplomatic retaliation was pursued.
The author and filibuster Horace Bell observed that it could be unpopular to be opposed to filibusterism, as being so "was to be opposed to African slavery".
On the abolitionist side, John Brown was accused by both Catholic and pro Republican newspapers of being a filibuster after leaving New York and heading to Virginia to lead the raid on Harpers Ferry. Comparisons were drawn between his actions and those of Walker, notably how both aimed to use violence to change the status of slavery.
Many future Confederate officers and soldiers, such as Chatham Roberdeau Wheat, of the Louisiana Tigers, obtained valuable military experience from filibuster expeditions.
William Walker
In the 1850s, American adventurer William Walker launched several filibustering campaigns leading a private mercenary army. In 1853, he declared a short-lived republic in the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California. Later, when a path through Lake Nicaragua was being considered as the possible site of a canal through Central America, he was hired as a mercenary by one of the factions in a civil war in Nicaragua. He declared himself commander of the country's army in 1856; and soon afterward President of the Republic. Walker received no form of direct military or financial aid from the US government but in 1856 his government did receive official recognition from Democratic President Franklin Pierce. In June of the same year Walker was endorsed as an agent of Central America's regeneration by the Democratic National Convention's party platform. This support for Walker was later publicly retracted due to allegations of corruption but Walker's movement to many Democrats represented a natural outgrowth of the U.S. annexation of Texas, the Mexican-American War. After attempting to take control of the rest of Central America he was defeated by the four other Central American nations he tried to invade and eventually executed in 1860 by the local Honduran authorities he had tried to overthrow.The author Horace Bell served as a major with Walker in Nicaragua in 1856. Colonel Parker H. French served as Minister of Hacienda and was appointed as Minister Plenipotentiary to Washington in 1855, but Pierce refused to recognise his credentials and did not meet with him. Rather than return to Nicaragua, French spent several months spending his spoils, enjoying a lavish lifestyle that included staying in luxury hotel suites and entertaining the press and politicians with cigars and champagne. Eventually French ran into legal troubles connected to recruiting volunteers for the Walker regime and he hastily returned to Nicaragua in March 1856.
In the traditional historiography in both the United States and Latin America, Walker's filibustering represented the high tide of antebellum American imperialism. His brief seizure of Nicaragua in 1855 is typically called a representative expression of manifest destiny with the added factor of trying to expand slavery into Central America. Historian Michel Gobat, however, presents a strongly revisionist interpretation. He argues that Walker was invited in by Nicaraguan liberals who were trying to force economic modernization and political liberalism, and that thus it was not an attempted projection of American power.