Speaker 1: M podcast. Shit, I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 1: the most poorly introduced podcast in the podcast game. We
Speaker 1: also talk about bad people from time to time when
Speaker 1: I'm not introducing the show badly. My guest today is
Speaker 1: Mr Miles Great. You so much. How you doing Miles Great? Since? Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know when this comes out, but
Speaker 1: we saw each other recently. That was a pleasant experience
Speaker 1: we had. That was nice. You came up to Portland's
Speaker 1: Uh they wouldn't let us play with knives on the
Speaker 1: stage because they were cowards, but otherwise nice people. They
Speaker 1: don't respect respect the laws of the state. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: blated weapons are not their their tools over there. They're
Speaker 1: they're wildly unregulated and it's beautiful. M h. Now, Miles, yes,
Speaker 1: when I when we when Sophie asked you two guests
Speaker 1: on this week's episode, and you had a simple request,
Speaker 1: which was, don't make it horribly bleak and depressing so
Speaker 1: that I want to die more or less. Not your
Speaker 1: exact words, but your sentiment, yeah, is that this was
Speaker 1: how bleak is this one going to be? Because you
Speaker 1: know these shows, these episodes, I've done a few now
Speaker 1: they kind of fall into a couple of different buckets.
Speaker 1: Some are like so out of this world, what the
Speaker 1: fuck is reality kind of thing where you're just your
Speaker 1: gob smacked because of that. Other times you're gob smacked
Speaker 1: or laughing because sometimes it's fun. Other times you so
Speaker 1: brilliantly bring the focus of the show in to talk
Speaker 1: about evil people that I found myself in a place
Speaker 1: where jokes do not exist, and the only only response
Speaker 1: I could have is, oh my god, that's so fucked up.
Speaker 1: I think you're gonna like this one. Um. This is
Speaker 1: obviously it's a story about a terrible person, thousands of
Speaker 1: people die, um, but it's um, it's a story of
Speaker 1: a of a monster that gets his come uppance in
Speaker 1: the end. This is um. Yeah, yeah, this this one
Speaker 1: should be fun and it's not um, you know, it's
Speaker 1: not mass child rape like we sometimes get into on
Speaker 1: this show. So that's nice too. Yeah. I felt like
Speaker 1: even the like prevailing sentiment from listeners was like, damn,
Speaker 1: I think that was one of the darkest episodes ever. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: as it should be. It was very dark. So today, Miles,
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of a fella named William Walker?
Speaker 1: I mean that sounds like a very common name where
Speaker 1: I'm trying to rack my brain being like, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure I do know a William Walker. It's to to
Speaker 1: put it shortly. Um. Walker is an example of one
Speaker 1: of my favorite kind of history stories because because he's
Speaker 1: a guy who is incredibly well known by millions and
Speaker 1: millions of people around the world, very close to the
Speaker 1: United States. In fact, Um, if you go to Nicaragua,
Speaker 1: if you go to Costa Rica, if you go to
Speaker 1: Mexico's Baja Coast or Sonora. Uh. Walker is a very
Speaker 1: prominent historical figure. And even though he's an American, he's
Speaker 1: almost completely unknown in the United States today. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess most Americans have not known his name. Um.
Speaker 1: And the reason he's well known in Baja and Nicaragua
Speaker 1: in Costa Rica is that he almost single handedly tried
Speaker 1: to conquer all of those places. What ye when recently? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the eighteen fifties, like not all that long ago.
Speaker 1: Do you really think about it? Yeah, okay, look at him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was like a one man colonialism. Um. That's like,
Speaker 1: it's weird the the term makes me shudder, But also
Speaker 1: I dig the dedication. If you're like I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: this whole colonialism thing just with me. Colonialism is usually
Speaker 1: the very bleakest stories, and there's a lot of I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously Walker was a horrible person who who did horrible
Speaker 1: things that impacted huge numbers of people's lives. Um. But
Speaker 1: there's also one of the things that's kind of I
Speaker 1: guess makes this a little more of an upbeat story
Speaker 1: is that this is one of those cases of colonialism
Speaker 1: that was completely unsupported by the government that of this
Speaker 1: guy's country, and so he gets his come uppance in
Speaker 1: the end, Like it's not one of those tales where
Speaker 1: he exploited these people and got away with it forever
Speaker 1: and his great great grandkids are still rich today and
Speaker 1: now that's good. They have a whole line of hotels
Speaker 1: that we constantly patronized. Is um, Is he one of ours,
Speaker 1: good old American? Oh yeah, yeah. There is no other
Speaker 1: country in the world this guy could have come from.
Speaker 1: But I thought maybe yeah, because I guess even an
Speaker 1: English guy would be like, I think we've had our time.
Speaker 1: I don't need to I don't need to be a
Speaker 1: one man wrecking crew. Yeah, you know, the English weren't
Speaker 1: really good at being one man wrecking cruise. There were
Speaker 1: more you know, that slow Nazi ship. Um, this is
Speaker 1: a very American story of a guy who just like
Speaker 1: looked at a forward several foreign countries in a row
Speaker 1: and was like, I bet I could take that. That's
Speaker 1: the truly an American attitude looking at him at Huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah about this one, Nichols rob we who cost you
Speaker 1: were the right call for guests? All right, let's get
Speaker 1: into it. William Walker was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on
Speaker 1: May eighteen, four uh. He was the first of six
Speaker 1: children of James S. Walker and Mary Norville Walker. His
Speaker 1: family was not like super rich, but they were probably
Speaker 1: like the wealthiest family or among the wealthiest family in
Speaker 1: their frontier community. Um. His father was a Scottish immigrant
Speaker 1: from Glasgow who had moved to the United States at
Speaker 1: age twenty two and started a general merchandise store with
Speaker 1: his uncle in eighteen twenty. Soon the business was successful
Speaker 1: enough that James and his uncle partnered with three other
Speaker 1: men to build a river front warehouse and by a
Speaker 1: fleet of steamboats. Now Nashville was a big old shipping
Speaker 1: hub at the time, uh, and as the nation expanded westward,
Speaker 1: the Walkers made a small fortune facilitating the movement of tobacco, corn,
Speaker 1: and cotton across the country. Since this was the early
Speaker 1: eight hundreds, all these products came from the Deep South.
Speaker 1: Uh and the Walker's business relied heavily on slavery. So
Speaker 1: the family fortunes, such as it is, is absolutely built
Speaker 1: off the blacks, the well backs. You know what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say here. Yeah, I'll let you slide with
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah. After a few years, um, James sold
Speaker 1: out and got into the business of selling commercial insurance
Speaker 1: um which oddly enough sounds like maybe even more exploited
Speaker 1: what he was doing before. Um. I'm sure it's not.
Speaker 1: That's just my opinion of the insurance industry. Um So.
Speaker 1: James's wife, Mary was the sister of his two former
Speaker 1: business partners. Now, since his records from eighteen thirty, when
Speaker 1: William Walker was six, indicate that his family owned no slaves,
Speaker 1: which was odd for a family at their level of
Speaker 1: wealth and Nashville at that time. By the time William
Speaker 1: was fourteen, this had changed and the Walker family owned
Speaker 1: four enslaved black human beings, two men and two women.
Speaker 1: Um So, he absolutely comes from a slave holding background,
Speaker 1: grows up with us Um. Religion was also a big
Speaker 1: part of the Walker family life. His mother's family were
Speaker 1: prominent within the Baptist community, and his father was a
Speaker 1: member of the Disciples of Christ. Uh. The Walkers were
Speaker 1: described as being strong and stern, and they were also
Speaker 1: extremely political. William's mother was a good friend of Sarah Polk,
Speaker 1: the wife of future President James K. Polk. While William
Speaker 1: was a child, James was named Speaker of the House
Speaker 1: and then the governor of Tennessee. Since Polpe was a
Speaker 1: Democrat and Democrats were at the time the party of
Speaker 1: even more white supremacy than the Republicans. You can assume
Speaker 1: for yourself what kind of politics William imbibed as a child,
Speaker 1: really really wholesome stuff. Yeah, oh my gosh. A lot
Speaker 1: of people would like to move back to those days.
Speaker 1: And that's all we'll leave it. You're talking about John Kelly, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, yes, Stephen Miller. A whole lot of well.
Speaker 1: John Kelly was at least gracious enough showed his grasp
Speaker 1: of history to actually refer to like basically the antibell
Speaker 1: him South without like fully saying that we're like, I
Speaker 1: think we know what you mean. Yeah, we used to
Speaker 1: respect each other. Okay, yeah, you mean white people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I guess we had what we would call back then, uh,
Speaker 1: indentured independent contractors. Yeah exactly. It's like, um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's no good joke to me. Yeah, the one and
Speaker 1: it wasn't even good. We're just gonna breeze right on
Speaker 1: past that. Um. So. William um was recalled by a
Speaker 1: family friend at the period as very intelligent and as
Speaker 1: refined in his feelings as a girl. I used to
Speaker 1: go often to see his mother and always found him
Speaker 1: entertaining her in some way. William was devoted to his mother.
Speaker 1: His father was kind of a giant asshole, very very
Speaker 1: strict and stern. His mother was kind of more uh,
Speaker 1: someone he could like deal with and get comfort from.
Speaker 1: But she was also very ill throughout his childhood, and
Speaker 1: he often spent his mornings in her room, reading to
Speaker 1: her while she struggled to start the day. William grew
Speaker 1: into a child a contemporaries described later as cold, quiet, studious,
Speaker 1: painfully modest, slight, effeminate, almost insignificant in appearance. Uh yeah, yeah, effeminate.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, you could yeah, the the you can tell
Speaker 1: what they're trying to say there. Yeah, and I can
Speaker 1: also just see like the if we we're looking at
Speaker 1: a biopic of this guy, we're starting to see the
Speaker 1: foundations of when he goes, oh, yeah, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do, then I'll show you fucking Okay, watch
Speaker 1: me fucking a wrecking crew. Yeah, yeah, that is really
Speaker 1: the story here. Um. Yeah. He was small, thin, and
Speaker 1: not very masculine at a time when that was something
Speaker 1: a boy would pay dearly for. Um. The only physical
Speaker 1: feature that stood out about him were his eyes, which
Speaker 1: were a unique shade of gray that people without his
Speaker 1: throughout his life would notice. Everybody would commented on this
Speaker 1: guy's eyes. He's just sort of one of those people
Speaker 1: who everyone's like that dude's eyes are fucking something's up there, right.
Speaker 1: It's never the ones you're like, oh my god, you
Speaker 1: have such beautiful eyes. It's always like, yo, did you
Speaker 1: see the fucking guy's eyes. You see that dude's eyes? What?
Speaker 1: Then I think he's kind of conquered Nicaragua. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: looks like he's transitioning into some kind of zombie or wraith. Yeah. Yes, um, Now,
Speaker 1: possibly due to his mother's sickness. Williams classmates found him
Speaker 1: to be grave and seemingly always afflicted by sorrow, which
Speaker 1: if you're a kid growing up in like the eighteen thirties,
Speaker 1: I guess sorrow is really the only reasonable way to
Speaker 1: approach life. But I don't think he was horrified by
Speaker 1: the injustices of his time. Um. I think that was
Speaker 1: just like we we started. That word was just used
Speaker 1: to describe what we call emo kids. Now. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: absolutely would have been. Yeah, and with his I'm sure
Speaker 1: if he wasn't like super masculine, he would have got
Speaker 1: the little fringe haircut, had like one black fingernail, and
Speaker 1: been crying to like dashboard confessional lyrics too. Yeah. Absolutely
Speaker 1: just may have been in the wrong time. This kid
Speaker 1: would have been a huge dash head. Oh my gosh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his hopes are so high that your kiss might kill him.
Speaker 1: You just revealed something about yourself there. That's the one
Speaker 1: dashboard song I know. And I just think that lyrics
Speaker 1: are so great. I know right home cut to my
Speaker 1: full sleeve tattoo of dashboard album coverage. Uh So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: William was like quiet and kind of sad, but he
Speaker 1: was not unfriendly, and one class mate later noted, quote
Speaker 1: none in school was more ready to oblige his fellow
Speaker 1: student with a little or extra help with a difficult lesson. Um,
Speaker 1: so he's a really smart kid and he helps out
Speaker 1: his fellow classmates. A lot of kind of is known
Speaker 1: for that. I heard that very cynically, like, yeah, he
Speaker 1: was always down to teach someone a fucking lesson rather
Speaker 1: than like, hi, if you need some help with your studies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get the I get the legitimately helpful thing more
Speaker 1: from like reading stuff that his his fellows reported about him. Um,
Speaker 1: he was a good student, um, and developed something of
Speaker 1: a complex around his grades. Uh. When he got an
Speaker 1: answer wrong in class, he would cry, which did not
Speaker 1: help with his perceived level of manliness. Um. Yeah yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: One friend noted quote, I never saw him lively in
Speaker 1: my life. That is, I never heard him laugh out
Speaker 1: loud as boys do it play. Oh shit, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: getting some that great right kids should laugh? That's right
Speaker 1: there a red flag. Yeah, Spanish two skills haven't failed me.
Speaker 1: The non laughing thing as a team. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a little boy. Yeah, it's dark there. That's like some
Speaker 1: real dark ship because it's usually not to like young adulthood.
Speaker 1: You meet people who have like completely just gone into
Speaker 1: themselves and don't have any joy, And I don't want
Speaker 1: to be like, you know, there's a fine line between
Speaker 1: being like it's kind of weird that this guy never
Speaker 1: laughs and like being one of those dudes who's like,
Speaker 1: why don't you smile, ma'am? But like it is like
Speaker 1: you hear, like everyone talks about this guy when he's
Speaker 1: a little kid. He's like, yeah, he never really like
Speaker 1: after played around and that is like, uh yeah, like
Speaker 1: I'm I'm in the moment if I'm just taking him
Speaker 1: and like looking at it in a vacuum, my heart
Speaker 1: kind of goes out to this young as Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: not an aspirate, Like at this point, he's blameless even
Speaker 1: of the slavery. Like he's a little kid, I can't
Speaker 1: have any choice in that. Yeah, Um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe he could have grown into maybe he like he's
Speaker 1: clearly like a sensitive boy. Um, and we just really
Speaker 1: don't know enough about his actual thoughts at the time
Speaker 1: because it's eighteen thirties. And yeah, anyway, at least when
Speaker 1: they start doing that this show, like a hundred years
Speaker 1: from now, when your consciousness has been uploaded to some
Speaker 1: kind of like bio algorithm. At least we'll be able
Speaker 1: to look at like the Twitter and Facebook posts of
Speaker 1: our future fascists and be like, wow, this is what
Speaker 1: they were going through at the time. Oh no, they'll
Speaker 1: come through my Twitter and be like, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously he was going to do what he did to Nicaragua.
Speaker 1: Spoiler spoiler alert for the twenty years from now when
Speaker 1: I conk Nicaragua bold not a not a colonialism thing,
Speaker 1: just like just love conquering. Yep, just just leave it
Speaker 1: at that. Yeah. Uh. In eighteen seven, when Billy was three,
Speaker 1: his grandfather, Lipscomb Norville, moved to Nashville to be with
Speaker 1: the family. Uh. Lipscomb wound up having a profound impact
Speaker 1: on growing William. Um. See, he was a veteran of
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War, and he had fought at like most
Speaker 1: of it. Um. He'd been at the Battle of Brandywine Creek,
Speaker 1: the Battle of Trenton, the Battle of Monmouth, Um. He
Speaker 1: was one of the battle hardened survivors of the hellish
Speaker 1: winter at Valley Forge. Um. Yeah, so this like like
Speaker 1: his grandpa was like there for the fucking war. Oh
Speaker 1: my Trenton and Valley for it's like some ship. I
Speaker 1: get it. I'm a pussy. You've eaten human flesh. We
Speaker 1: know now it's starting to make sense. Your grandpa is
Speaker 1: probably has in no way can look at a sensitive
Speaker 1: child and be likes gonna work. No, he's probably chewing
Speaker 1: bullets for gum. Um, he's done with that pewter dish.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna melt down to some ket gonna make my
Speaker 1: morning bullets. You're not using that t service, are you. Uh.
Speaker 1: Norville was present at the Surrender of Charleston, which ended
Speaker 1: in defeat for the Revolutionaries, and he was imprisoned for
Speaker 1: a year as a pow. Um. So like this dude
Speaker 1: goes through it. Um. This is a big influence on
Speaker 1: William when he's young. His war hero grandfather his uncles
Speaker 1: were also major influences on his future life, because you know,
Speaker 1: William's dad was kind of very like a very boring
Speaker 1: business and stern businessman who doesn't really he doesn't really
Speaker 1: identify much with his uncles and his grandpa. He does
Speaker 1: more so uh. Four of his uncle's either founded or
Speaker 1: worked as editors at newspapers. UH. Three more got involved
Speaker 1: with local or national politics, and five served in the military.
Speaker 1: So how many how many numbers did you see? How
Speaker 1: many fucking uncles fuck load uncles? I did ten different
Speaker 1: people basically, Yeah, yeah, he's got like four seven, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like twelve uncles. I keep forgetting that we're talking about
Speaker 1: you don't survive, you don't survive Trenton and Valley Forge
Speaker 1: and then just not funk out a couple of basketball
Speaker 1: teams worth the kids. Seriously, Like, I gotta I got
Speaker 1: two starting five plus a six man for each one. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just goes right from war to pounding. Oh that's
Speaker 1: a real talking about real the real baby boom coming
Speaker 1: after yucking for surviving Valley Forge. It is impressive. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean some of those are probably his mom's uncles.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um either way, dude as a funkload
Speaker 1: to uncles. Most of them are. They're all in journalism, politics,
Speaker 1: or the military. Um So he grows up surrounded by influential,
Speaker 1: powerful men who either exercise political power directly or through
Speaker 1: the press, or who are in the military fighting colonizing
Speaker 1: the United States, killing Native and mayor Americans Mexicans. Um
Speaker 1: So these are like the people who raise him, right,
Speaker 1: They're not. They're not just like kick back and relax
Speaker 1: if someone does some ship. You know, family, it's a
Speaker 1: high achieving family. Um, Like they're well off, but these
Speaker 1: aren't like they're not like inherited money, sort of like
Speaker 1: lazy aristocrats. They're like everybody's like up and out of
Speaker 1: bed and fucking up the continent from like eight to nine,
Speaker 1: you know, and fun the country, right, and it's just
Speaker 1: just just colonized the piss out of this this month's day.
Speaker 1: Colonize the day. That's the that's the motto in that house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is absolutely how this kid is raised. Um. And
Speaker 1: it's not surprising that he grew up to be a
Speaker 1: very ambitious boy. Um. In eighteen thirty seven, at age thirteen,
Speaker 1: he finished his primary school education and enrolled in the
Speaker 1: University of Nashville. Um. And Yeah, a lot of sort
Speaker 1: of like contemporary articles that you'll find talking about this
Speaker 1: guy will make it like he was a child genius writing.
Speaker 1: I found like deeply written biographies of this guy by
Speaker 1: historians say that this was actually not that unusual at
Speaker 1: the time. He was a little young, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: super weird, you know. Um, it's not many year of
Speaker 1: college is at thirteen, not for everybody. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: It wasn't weird. Oh, it's not like in the arrow
Speaker 1: we live in now, it's like this baby genius is
Speaker 1: going to college when yeah, they should be an academia
Speaker 1: for nineteen years. Yeah, he had a friend who went
Speaker 1: to college at fourteen. Like, it wasn't like super bizarre. Um,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like the norm, but it wasn't super weird.
Speaker 1: High school exists yet back then, or your primary school,
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, you're gonna learn everything you know by
Speaker 1: fourteen and then look you can be an apprentice or whatever.
Speaker 1: Then yeah, that's kind of the thing. By like thirteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: you're starting to be an adult, like in Germany and
Speaker 1: like the eighteen seventies, at fourteen you are legally an adult,
Speaker 1: Like it's time to go. Um, So it's not that
Speaker 1: weird that he's he's you know, he's in college at
Speaker 1: Thirteens were shorter back then, right, and education was rarer.
Speaker 1: You know, Um, you want to get a head start
Speaker 1: on things before you die of cholera at age or
Speaker 1: a broken leg or a broken lake or just like
Speaker 1: a splinter from the wrong piece of world. I didn't
Speaker 1: have any I didn't have the right salve to do
Speaker 1: with the infection. Oh I got a splinter. I've loved
Speaker 1: you all. It's been a good life, serial glad. I
Speaker 1: went to college at age nine. Uh so Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: college was rigorous. Uh for a thirteen year old boy. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to imagine any modern team dealing with
Speaker 1: this level of discipline not coming out fucked up that set. Again,
Speaker 1: this was not abnormal for the time. Um. And here's
Speaker 1: how the biography William Walker's Wars, which is a very
Speaker 1: good biography, describes his his college education. Quote. Entering students
Speaker 1: were expected to be accurately acquainted with the grammar, including
Speaker 1: prosody of the Greek and Latin tongues, as well as
Speaker 1: with English grammar, math, and geography. Once admitted, students pursued trigonometry,
Speaker 1: principles of constitutional and international law, philosophy, natural history, and
Speaker 1: religious studies. Disciplined with strict students attended chapel twice a
Speaker 1: day and stood for a communal prayer before each meal.
Speaker 1: Quiet hours were enforced, and activities like horse racing, dancing,
Speaker 1: or going to the theater were strictly prohibited. Yeah no,
Speaker 1: no horse racing or dancing No, absolutely no dancing of
Speaker 1: the horse racing dancing and the miles. Every step you
Speaker 1: take is a dancer, is a step you take with
Speaker 1: the devil. Oh wow, I'm pretty sure that poster was
Speaker 1: that one of am I like kindergarten classroom? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: dancing is Satan's golfing. And sadly the image was like
Speaker 1: a people break dancing. They're like, just not that kind um.
Speaker 1: I would actually argue that break dancing is the only
Speaker 1: acceptable kind of dancing. But I mean anything like the
Speaker 1: Seventh Day Adventist if you can fuck somebody up with
Speaker 1: your dance moves, like, hell yeah, just keep keeping keeping on.
Speaker 1: So William grew into an extremely devout adolescent and there
Speaker 1: was talk of him becoming a minister, but then his
Speaker 1: interest took a turn towards politics. He joined a debating
Speaker 1: society and eventually became its president. He proposed several debate
Speaker 1: topics during his time, including was it politic for the
Speaker 1: French to assist the US and the American Revolution, was
Speaker 1: it preferable a monarchical or republican form of government? And
Speaker 1: has the career of Napoleon Bonaparte been of benefit or
Speaker 1: injury to the world Wow. Yeah, hot take Steven. Pose
Speaker 1: those questions, sir, some hot takes. Notice one of them
Speaker 1: is wondering like whether it was worthwhile for the for
Speaker 1: France to intervene in a foreign nations like political development militarily,
Speaker 1: and the others wondering is this imperialist warlord was he
Speaker 1: good for history? Yeah, I'm just asking what he's thinking.
Speaker 1: I'm just asking. I'm just I don't really have an
Speaker 1: opinion on it. I'm just seeing what you mean. It's
Speaker 1: a question, you know, I don't know. Maybe I have
Speaker 1: one and I'm not gonna share it with you, but
Speaker 1: i just want to see where that how that sort
Speaker 1: of stacks up with the rest of the world. But anyway,
Speaker 1: just asking. I mean, I'm a big Napoleon fan, not
Speaker 1: of his conquering but of his fucking um huge Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, that dude. Yeah. Oh he was landing. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, like a fucking Mario man. No oh yeah,
Speaker 1: here we go. Oh yeah. So um. William graduated summa
Speaker 1: cum lauda on October third, eighteen thirty eight, half a
Speaker 1: year after his fourteenth birthday, So college wasn't long back
Speaker 1: then either. By this time, his interest had changed yet again.
Speaker 1: And he decided to seek a medical degree. First, he
Speaker 1: spent two years as an apprentice under local physicians. Then
Speaker 1: he was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty three and headed to Paris to further
Speaker 1: his medical education in Europe. He arrived at age nineteen
Speaker 1: a doctor, but one wildly unready for the cosmopolitan realities
Speaker 1: of a progressive city like Paris. In a letter home
Speaker 1: to his parents, he noted this of his new Parisian acquaintances, quote,
Speaker 1: most of them have mistresses, and nobody thinks them, and
Speaker 1: he was the worse for it. Indeed, the relations of
Speaker 1: the two sexist among all classes of the idea are horrible.
Speaker 1: You find many married couples between whom there exists a
Speaker 1: tacit agreement that the husband may have as many mistresses
Speaker 1: and the wife as many lovers as they choose. The
Speaker 1: poison of infidelity is found in every vein the effects
Speaker 1: of it may be seen in the whole body. What
Speaker 1: a striking lesson may the moralists learn here? So he's like,
Speaker 1: everybody's fucking and they're fine with it. How horrible I
Speaker 1: can't ya? And the woman lovers as well? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to make it clear, he's not like, he's not
Speaker 1: like seeing that all of his friends are cheating on
Speaker 1: their wives and being like that's fucked up. He's seeing
Speaker 1: like all these people are fucking other people that they're
Speaker 1: not married to and everyone knows and is okay with it.
Speaker 1: This is awful. Yeah. How is this? How is this
Speaker 1: city not gone asunder? Yeah? How has God not turned
Speaker 1: it into salt? Yeah? So William was fascinated by the
Speaker 1: power and culture that radiated from old Europe, even though
Speaker 1: he didn't really jell with its libertine values. Um. He
Speaker 1: also wasn't a fan on what he saw as its
Speaker 1: limitations on individual rights. Um. He left Europe after two
Speaker 1: years feeling more American than ever. He also felt less likely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: getting around different opinions to get you to double down
Speaker 1: on your bad opinions. Yeah, I mean there's an extent
Speaker 1: to which I understand. Every time I go to Europe,
Speaker 1: I realize how fundamentally an American I am. But it's
Speaker 1: not in a positive way. It's like, actually that I
Speaker 1: can't blow shut up in the middle of nowhere, and
Speaker 1: it's like I don't know that that's a healthy thing
Speaker 1: to do. But it's just the way it is, Like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean you don't sell Tanner in this
Speaker 1: hardware store? What is this communist Russian um? Yeah. William
Speaker 1: also felt less like a doctor than he had upon
Speaker 1: moving there, and a let her home to his parents.
Speaker 1: He admitted that his interest in his chosen vocation had
Speaker 1: begun to fade. Quote. It is said that no idea
Speaker 1: which enters our mind is ever entirely removed. Often we
Speaker 1: see the specter, as it were, of our departed notions
Speaker 1: or opinions. By experience, I know how firm is the
Speaker 1: hold of these early and long cherished ideas with me,
Speaker 1: Whilst a child and a boy I determined on a
Speaker 1: police iCal career. There have been times when I thought
Speaker 1: that the last vestige of such an idea had disappeared,
Speaker 1: But often it reappears to me and my waking dreams,
Speaker 1: leaving me uncertain whether it be an angel of light
Speaker 1: or an angel of darkness. Darkness, buddy, darkness, black on
Speaker 1: that one. If you're in eighteen forty four, near the
Speaker 1: end of William's European tour, his family friend James K.
Speaker 1: Polk won the presidential election. James was an expansionist and
Speaker 1: supported the annexation of the Republic of Texas, which most
Speaker 1: people considered to be America's greatest mistake. He also supported
Speaker 1: the United States taking over Oregon, which Great Britain also
Speaker 1: claimed at the time. Polk's victory over the Whig showed
Speaker 1: that a majority of the American people supported these expansionist,
Speaker 1: colonialist values. It was in the air. In eighteen forty five,
Speaker 1: writer John O'Sullivan coined the term manifest destiny, the idea
Speaker 1: that God himself had decreed the United States should expand
Speaker 1: to control all of North America. Mm HMM's one of
Speaker 1: those I'm assuming we all remember this from history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the worst fucking idea put in anyone's head. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: this was ours. What if God said like, yeah, just
Speaker 1: take all this ship, dude. I'm on your side, dude,
Speaker 1: I'm God. Listen to me. You can remember, though, all
Speaker 1: those times in the Bible where Jesus stole people's houses.
Speaker 1: That was that was Jesus. Yeah, destiny Chips to bro Yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: manifest destiny coming through. Get then out Manifest destiny mm hmm. Yeah. Now.
Speaker 1: William returned to the United States shortly after Polk's victory,
Speaker 1: and very soon made the decision to move to New Orleans.
Speaker 1: This was a risky proposition at the time. The city's
Speaker 1: swampy conditions and horrible water quality meant that it had
Speaker 1: a death rate twice that of other American cities. So
Speaker 1: like moving to New Orleans is a little bit like
Speaker 1: playing Russian roulette in this period. And now to be honest,
Speaker 1: um yea yeah, I have some friends there who just
Speaker 1: had both of their neighbors murdered. Um, oh my, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like it's just like a thing, like I'll
Speaker 1: check in on them on Facebook and it'll be like
Speaker 1: found some bullets in my lawn today, like some shells
Speaker 1: and casings, like more gunshots last night. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I haven't been. I also here. It's a wonderful place, uh,
Speaker 1: And I have a lot of friends who love it,
Speaker 1: like they live there. But it's always been a little
Speaker 1: bit of a roll of the die. I can always
Speaker 1: count on you to be like be like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I know someone those there and then they knew somebody
Speaker 1: who was murdered, Like how what happened? What happened? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, if I'm not mistaken in that case, it
Speaker 1: was like a murder suicide because like the guy's mom
Speaker 1: had told him home that like she couldn't afford her healthcare,
Speaker 1: and it was like, yeah, it's like a really dark,
Speaker 1: fucking tail man, it's fucked up. Yeah, that's really not
Speaker 1: on New Orleans as much as America. Yeah. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this this episode is pretty light, and then you bring
Speaker 1: it to like the real real Oh we're getting off topic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that is that's not on New Orleans, that's on
Speaker 1: our entire country. Um yeah so um. Yeah. It was
Speaker 1: dangerous moving to New Orleans in this period. Luckily, William
Speaker 1: was ethnically wealthy and he was able to shack up
Speaker 1: with a classmate from his college who had a nice
Speaker 1: townhouse in an affluent part of town. So we didn't
Speaker 1: have to deal with like as much of the disease
Speaker 1: as like, you know, the tenements and stuff I have. Uh.
Speaker 1: In New Orleans, William officially made the shift from medicine
Speaker 1: to politics, and he began to study to become a lawyer. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now in New Orleans, as in Paris, Walker was horrified
Speaker 1: by the fact that everyone wasn't an insufferable goody two shoes.
Speaker 1: He wrote to his parents that they had no idea
Speaker 1: of the profaneness of the people of New Orleans. I
Speaker 1: just love the pro clutching of this guy. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: just cut to whatever dark shit is inevitable here. But
Speaker 1: somebody is saying poop yeah profane yeah, Like it is
Speaker 1: like he's literally talking about curse words. Um. And he
Speaker 1: was particularly horrified by the nity used by one of
Speaker 1: his law teachers, a man named Mott. Quote. Looking at him,
Speaker 1: I would suppose him almost incapable of using an oath.
Speaker 1: But yet I hadn't been in the office long before
Speaker 1: my ears were saluted with such words that I had
Speaker 1: deemed long before consigned to Draymond importers. This common use
Speaker 1: of oaths appears to be procuted, But I think he
Speaker 1: meant to say precluded by an absurd affection of energy.
Speaker 1: Not content with activity and simple power, They must have
Speaker 1: bustle and swelling words. A man wants to have the
Speaker 1: appearance of strength, although he is conscious of weakness. Oh wow, okay,
Speaker 1: big yeah. Yeah. You know it's kind of like you
Speaker 1: know some people like when folks are like pose with
Speaker 1: guns and stuff, they'll be like that person must have
Speaker 1: a tiny dick. He's kind of doing the same thing,
Speaker 1: but with curse words. It's like, you're yeah, the reason
Speaker 1: to use curse words is because you have a little
Speaker 1: weener And that's it, you know. And that's why I
Speaker 1: always talk nice words. Because my PEP also big. Now, Miles,
Speaker 1: you know whose pp is also big? One of our sponsors.
Speaker 1: This egg's absolutely I know this show. Listen to these
Speaker 1: big swinging dick ads. We're back, Miles. In eighteen forty six,
Speaker 1: the United States went to war with Mexico. William was
Speaker 1: skeptical of this venture and called it a type of fever.
Speaker 1: In a letter to a friend, he noted that quote
Speaker 1: for a little time, the patient was far gone, and
Speaker 1: a delirium of joy and destruction. War was preached as
Speaker 1: being the noblest and sublimest of all states and conditions
Speaker 1: of men, a spectacle of delight for gods and demi gods.
Speaker 1: He evinced a particular disgust that the people of Mexico
Speaker 1: were being treated as pagans by many of his fellow Americans,
Speaker 1: and not the good Christians that they were. The war
Speaker 1: sparked a deep interest in current events and William and
Speaker 1: a growing obsession with the news that increasingly pulled him
Speaker 1: away from his nascent law career. He passed the bar
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty seven, but his young practice saw a
Speaker 1: little success. He got a gig working briefly at the
Speaker 1: Commercial with You, a local paper. The work didn't last long,
Speaker 1: but William found journalism appealing. In early eighteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: he put together a thousand dollars of probably mostly his
Speaker 1: parents money, and bought an interest in the Daily Crescent newspaper. Now,
Speaker 1: The Crescent was at the time a moderately liberal publication,
Speaker 1: which meant then that they accepted ads for slave markets
Speaker 1: but didn't attack abolitionists. Literal demons deserving a violent murder.
Speaker 1: Oh so like MSNBC. Yeah, yeah, they're the MSNBC of
Speaker 1: the time. Absolutely, yeah. Uh in eighteen forty nine, New Orleans,
Speaker 1: this was a pretty progressive attitude for a rich white
Speaker 1: guy to take. Now, eighteen forty nine proved to be
Speaker 1: a pretty bad year for Walker. He'd fallen in love
Speaker 1: with a young woman, Ellen Martin, a socialite and a
Speaker 1: deaf mute whose parents had, unusually for the time, insisted
Speaker 1: on letting their daughter live in normal life. Uh. That summer,
Speaker 1: a horrific bout of yellow fever hit New Orleans, afflicting
Speaker 1: William and forcing him to temporarily flee the city. It
Speaker 1: reaped a more vicious toll on the Martin family, killing
Speaker 1: first Ellen's cousin and then taking hold of her. She
Speaker 1: spent several miserable weeks battling the illness until on April eighteenth,
Speaker 1: it finally claimed her. Walker was devastated by this, and
Speaker 1: his friends would later claim that it marked a turning
Speaker 1: point in his life. He became cold, calculating, and increasingly violent.
Speaker 1: His coverage in The Daily Crescent turned over and over
Speaker 1: to confrontational, attacking his fellow journalists for, among other things,
Speaker 1: reporting on corruption within a local bank. Walker's angle seemed
Speaker 1: to be that by reporting on this, journalists were damaging
Speaker 1: public confidence in the bank and revealing personal details about
Speaker 1: the lives of several bankers. This new Walker was also
Speaker 1: more inclined to support colonialist ventures. In the late eighteen forties, Nearrisco, Lopez,
Speaker 1: a Spanish general and a former governor of Trinidad, Cuba,
Speaker 1: began agitating for the island to rebel against Spanish control
Speaker 1: and join the United States. Lopez did not do this
Speaker 1: for reasons of Cuban self determination. He was worried that
Speaker 1: the island would be taken by a slave uprising like
Speaker 1: the one that had liberated Haiti, and he wanted the
Speaker 1: military backing of the United States to protect he and
Speaker 1: his fellow property owners. Spanned into slavery and most of
Speaker 1: its domains in eighteen a and so Lopez and his
Speaker 1: fellow people owners were worried that they would lose their
Speaker 1: ability to own people. Lopez initially sought the help of
Speaker 1: the U. S Government in this, but President Polk's administration
Speaker 1: was unable to start a war with Spain. He became
Speaker 1: convinced via delusion that the United States would step in
Speaker 1: if he could spark an uprising on the island, and
Speaker 1: so he hatched a plan to recruit hundreds of random
Speaker 1: Americans with guns and use them as an army to
Speaker 1: invade Cuba. By eighteen forty nine, he was recruiting men
Speaker 1: directly from the streets of New York City. Uh now
Speaker 1: Zachary Taylor, the president who followed Polk, issued Proclamation fifty
Speaker 1: one to warn Americans against participating in Lopez scheme. He
Speaker 1: promised that they would face charges at home and would
Speaker 1: receive no aid in their endeavors. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: a mark of where we are right now that I
Speaker 1: think if the same thing happened today, the President of
Speaker 1: the United States would be completely on board. I uh,
Speaker 1: it's so many things. Even what you're saying like just
Speaker 1: mirror the positions of so many people. It's also really
Speaker 1: interesting to know that the I was like, when's the
Speaker 1: fork in the road moment come for this guy? And
Speaker 1: it's when he lost it was his girlfriend or his wife,
Speaker 1: his girlfriend, his girlfriend to yellow fever. And that is
Speaker 1: like when he this sounds like the beginnings of the
Speaker 1: end for him. What was yellow fever exactly? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Some horrible fever kills you as guessing it's a fever.
Speaker 1: I think it's one of those poop yourself to death fevers.
Speaker 1: Oh god, you hate one? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, no, good,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. I'm not a yellow fever expert though, um
Speaker 1: and you never claimed to be. I think, just um
Speaker 1: oddly enough, I am. I don't know. I don't have
Speaker 1: a joke for that. Um anyway, Yeah, let's move along here,
Speaker 1: so uh yeah. Lopez succeeded in gathering up several hundred
Speaker 1: armed men, boats and eighty thou dollars in funding, which
Speaker 1: was enough money to run a war at that point
Speaker 1: in history. Uh to avoid arrest, he and his men
Speaker 1: disguised their endeavor as a trip to California to mind Gold.
Speaker 1: This did not fool anyone, and Lopez's army was broken up.
Speaker 1: He fled from New York down to New Orleans, reasoning
Speaker 1: that the lawless swamps of Louisiana would be friendlier to
Speaker 1: someone trying to raise an army to invade a sovereign
Speaker 1: state in order to further the cause of human bondage,
Speaker 1: and he was not wrong in this um William Walker,
Speaker 1: for his part, loved General Lopez and supported his efforts.
Speaker 1: He justified this by pointing out that a slave uprising
Speaker 1: in Cuba so close to Florida might spread the contagious
Speaker 1: disease of wanting to be free to enslaved black Americans.
Speaker 1: Quote from one of his editorials, If, for example, the
Speaker 1: great number of Negroes now being carried into Cuba should
Speaker 1: end in a second Haitian insurrection and an establishment of
Speaker 1: a Negro state on the island, it would be very
Speaker 1: injurious and dangerous for US Southern partners to have such
Speaker 1: a neighbor. Of course, we have the right and ought
Speaker 1: to exercise it of preventing any policy that would lead
Speaker 1: to such a disaster. Oh boy, it's funny how disaster
Speaker 1: freedom these moments where like class power structures are about
Speaker 1: to be disrupted and then the the dominant class has
Speaker 1: to go all right, so how are we gonna suck
Speaker 1: in make sure this doesn't happen here? It's like we're
Speaker 1: gonna make sure this freedom thing doesn't spread it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then like with Haiti, it's like, okay, well, we'll
Speaker 1: just punish them forever monetarily with the banks. Uh, and
Speaker 1: we'll make sure not they will never prosper and we'll
Speaker 1: keep them like indebted to this other system. We'll keep
Speaker 1: punishing them right up until the modern era, and no
Speaker 1: one will talk about it because like we'll just assume
Speaker 1: at that point that Haiti has always been fucked up
Speaker 1: for an explicable reason. And then City City Bank is like,
Speaker 1: oh wait what what? Oh is that us back the Okay,
Speaker 1: we gotta get a real Haiti episode up in here.
Speaker 1: Oh my god Jesus, Yeah, I mean, because that's really weak.
Speaker 1: All those slave uprisings really had people shook, like in
Speaker 1: this way you're talking about where they're like, wait, we
Speaker 1: can't we don't want people get an ideas about like
Speaker 1: like liberation over here. They had so many different ways
Speaker 1: to combat it that weren't like, hey, if you stop
Speaker 1: owning people, they won't want to murder you, right, Just
Speaker 1: just just a pitch, just to try that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so um Walker claimed that he supported an invasion of
Speaker 1: Cuba on humanitarian grounds, arguing that the US could stop
Speaker 1: Cuba from importing new slaves and then slavery on the
Speaker 1: island would take the mild and comparatively inoffensive form and
Speaker 1: which it exists in the Southern States. Oh fuck right off,
Speaker 1: I just love again, same pattern. Okay, this country is
Speaker 1: doing something that we don't want to give ideas to
Speaker 1: our people that might be a good thing. Therefore, we
Speaker 1: were just going to force our way in with this
Speaker 1: weird lay mass subtrafuge of like, no, we care about
Speaker 1: the people. It's about the people. Yeah, it's really about
Speaker 1: the people. Um it's not about like humanitarian, not about
Speaker 1: preserving these power structures that we need to like extort
Speaker 1: and you know, exploit the week. But anyway, it's fine.
Speaker 1: It's called a humanitarian humanitarian humanitarian. In his constant editorials,
Speaker 1: William began to explicitly endorsed the practice of filibustering or freebooting.
Speaker 1: Now this is not a term we used today often
Speaker 1: in its original form filibustering, like it's the congress thing
Speaker 1: where you talk for a long time and probably have
Speaker 1: to wear a diaper. But back in the eighteen fifties,
Speaker 1: according to the book Filibusters and Financiers, filibusters were basically
Speaker 1: people who would have been described as pioneers if they
Speaker 1: turned their attentions toward colonizing parts of North America already
Speaker 1: controlled by the government. Quote If, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: they happened to direct their attention towards another nation whose
Speaker 1: sovereignty was formally recognized by their own, they were called filibusters.
Speaker 1: The term filibuster was originally one of a probrim banned.
Speaker 1: Its use in the fifties was much resented by those
Speaker 1: to whom it was applied, inasmuch as it was regarded
Speaker 1: as synonymous with pirate or buccaneer. And it stops meaning
Speaker 1: pirate in this period because a lot of people like filibusters,
Speaker 1: but really it is piracy. It's just grander than normal piracy.
Speaker 1: They're just fucking around in switching labels around to make
Speaker 1: it see them different. Yeah, it's just the label. They're like,
Speaker 1: oh God, please don't call me a buccaneer. I yeah,
Speaker 1: I prefer genocidal. I'm I mean, um, filibuster yea friend
Speaker 1: decide ship. No, that doesn't work. So I find that
Speaker 1: book Filibusters and Financiers really interesting because it was published
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixteen, an age in which most white people
Speaker 1: considered colonialism to be a clear good, in an age
Speaker 1: in which a lot of people still remember the eighteen fifties. Um.
Speaker 1: It credits the growth of filibustering and its support by
Speaker 1: men like William Walker, to the fact that the blank
Speaker 1: map of North America was rapidly being filled. In quote,
Speaker 1: there was a proverb current among Frenchmen to the effect
Speaker 1: that the appetite comes with eating, and in the case
Speaker 1: of the land hunger of the American people, the truth
Speaker 1: of this assertion seems well established. As soon as they
Speaker 1: set foot on American soil, the colonists from Europe were
Speaker 1: compelled to rest their lands from the savages, many of
Speaker 1: whom resisted the invaders to the death. Nature as well
Speaker 1: as the natives, had to be subdued. Rodent Field were
Speaker 1: cleared with acts and spade. Pioneers built their log cabins
Speaker 1: far in the wilderness, and like the advanced guard of
Speaker 1: a march army, kept always ahead of the main body
Speaker 1: of westward moving settlers. There was no arrest of this
Speaker 1: westward progress till the pioneer stood on the shores of
Speaker 1: the Pacific. In eighteen o three, the boundary was moved
Speaker 1: from the Mississippi to the Rockies, and the next generation
Speaker 1: saw it extending from the Rockies to the sea. A
Speaker 1: whole continent had been one, but the land hunger seemed
Speaker 1: keener than ever. The appetite had increased with the eating,
Speaker 1: And you know, it's, uh, I think that's pretty accurate,
Speaker 1: Like obviously they're kind of pro that, but it still
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's an inaccurate assessment of what's going on.
Speaker 1: It's funny too, because I was just reading this study
Speaker 1: about how um like when people who aren't used to
Speaker 1: the American diet um come to the United States and
Speaker 1: begin eating like typical foods, like you know, people like
Speaker 1: that normal people would eat like not gormation all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like nineteen pounds of bacon wrapped up in fat sugar.
Speaker 1: Diet it leads to a normal breakfit, it leads to
Speaker 1: more eating. So like it's still like seemed like the
Speaker 1: metaphor even holds for the way in which we even
Speaker 1: consumed food in this garden is also like yeah, and
Speaker 1: then that also extends to aggressive land grabs where you
Speaker 1: get a little bit and then you get such a
Speaker 1: boner for boundary pushing. Uh, they just keep going to
Speaker 1: you get to a body of water that apparently you
Speaker 1: can't put a flagon. Yeah, it's amazing, Like the the
Speaker 1: American culture is very much like if you, I don't know,
Speaker 1: somehow like magically were to take like the collective hunger
Speaker 1: of like all past generations of human beings who struggled
Speaker 1: with like the wilderness and the seasons and and the tides,
Speaker 1: and then just like lumped that into a relatively small
Speaker 1: chunk of human beings like like like we're just filled
Speaker 1: with this insatiable need to consume that's almost metaphysical and
Speaker 1: it's it's yeah, boundaries anyway, the hunger. Yeah, So we're
Speaker 1: talking about this guy Lopez trying to conquer Cuba. Um.
Speaker 1: He carried out a couple of different unsuccessful expeditions to Cuba.
Speaker 1: He was eventually, like executed and ship Um, it didn't
Speaker 1: work out. But this didn't not dissuade Walker from breathless
Speaker 1: support for the idea of filibustering. He was in general
Speaker 1: more aggressive after the death of his girlfriend than he
Speaker 1: in all spheres of his life. In late eighteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: he got into a dispute with the editor of New
Speaker 1: Orleans largest Spanish language newspaper over the arrest or kidnapping
Speaker 1: of a Cuban citizen by the Spanish government. The dispute
Speaker 1: was based mainly on a misunderstanding by both men, but
Speaker 1: and since by an editorial that had insulted him. William
Speaker 1: Walker found the other publications editor and beat him with
Speaker 1: his cane. So he is like, and he's not really
Speaker 1: He's never before this like a violent physically person. So
Speaker 1: this is like he's there's really a change going on
Speaker 1: in this dude. Oh wow, yacking him up over maybe
Speaker 1: what the whole thing I thought. I thought you're talking
Speaker 1: about Ellien Gonzalez for a second. In the beginning for
Speaker 1: kidnapped Cuban national, completely different time, very similar to, very
Speaker 1: different story. But then he solves his beefs by just
Speaker 1: kine whip and somebody. He gets really comfortable with violence
Speaker 1: after this point, and it's one of those things it's
Speaker 1: totally plausible that like the death of a loved one
Speaker 1: could lead to that kind of change. I also wonder
Speaker 1: maybe maybe just got hit in the head at some point,
Speaker 1: And that's like a part of this story that's just
Speaker 1: not reported because nobody thought it was a big deal.
Speaker 1: Whatever I hear about like a personality change that leads
Speaker 1: to violence, I wonder maybe a t V I yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: or something yeah going on with your brain, Yeah, some
Speaker 1: cte up in air, jeez, or just or hey, maybe
Speaker 1: you were called, you know, a feminate your whole life,
Speaker 1: and or an old celery stick arms and now you
Speaker 1: just have had it and now your toxicity is now
Speaker 1: the world's problem. Yeah, maybe this was something that was
Speaker 1: just simmering inside him his entire childhood and it finally
Speaker 1: blew over. And yeah, maybe the death of a loved
Speaker 1: one was a catalyst. Who knows either way. He is
Speaker 1: a very aggressive man from this point forward. In eighteen fifty,
Speaker 1: Walker left New Orleans and his job at the Daily
Speaker 1: Crescent for the Windy City that Never Sleeps sand from Cisco.
Speaker 1: His journey there was nightmarish by modern standards. He had
Speaker 1: to take a series of boats down to Panama. He
Speaker 1: had to hike through the mountains for days, and then
Speaker 1: book passage on a steamer headed for the West coast.
Speaker 1: It took around five months. Um so long would it
Speaker 1: have taken over land? I guess worse? Probably because it's
Speaker 1: like there, there's it's very much less developed, you know
Speaker 1: at that point, I mean a lot more dangerous. You
Speaker 1: take the ten west, you can take that from Jacksonville
Speaker 1: all the way. Well, I don't know. The ten at
Speaker 1: this point is a series of gun fights with bandits
Speaker 1: and there's no car bowling. Yeah. Uh. Now in sconstin California,
Speaker 1: William got another job at another newspaper, the Daily Herald.
Speaker 1: He had immediately set to work waging a personal war
Speaker 1: with the entire Citi's justice system, which, in fairness, was
Speaker 1: incredibly corrupt and fucked up. Crime was rampant in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: which at that point was a nigh lawless frontier town.
Speaker 1: William viciously attacked the district Judge Levi Parsons or his
Speaker 1: failure to adequately prosecute criminals. After a local businessman was
Speaker 1: murdered during a robbery gone wrong, William began to advocate
Speaker 1: armed crowds of murderous vigilantes is a good solution to
Speaker 1: San Francisco's crime problem. Oh boy, he he wanted armed
Speaker 1: mobs to clean up the streets. Who doesn't Miles that
Speaker 1: old fashioned armed mobs so weird. I just feel like
Speaker 1: this could be a headline we're gonna read in like
Speaker 1: three months from now. Yeah it is. I mean there
Speaker 1: it is like a focus of right wing grifters right now,
Speaker 1: the fact that there's poop in the streets of San Francisco. Sometimes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, putty, I got some news about Dallas for you.
Speaker 1: Um hey, just get some hires, some Pinkerton's and it's
Speaker 1: like what. So Here's how Walker wrote about his desire
Speaker 1: for vigilante murder squads. Quote. When citizens are murdered and
Speaker 1: robbed in their houses, are feloniously entered in the most
Speaker 1: populous portions of the city, is it not time that
Speaker 1: there were some action taken to vindicate the law. We
Speaker 1: have urged the formation of a volunteer night patrol. Until
Speaker 1: such a body be organ nice, we doubt if there
Speaker 1: can be any security. A summary example must be made
Speaker 1: of the first person detected in the commission of these crimes.
Speaker 1: So we just we just got to go out and
Speaker 1: shoot us one criminal and that will scare the rest straight. Ah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's good to know that those terrible ideas
Speaker 1: people have been having those for centuries now, yep, because
Speaker 1: people never learned a single thing ever, not one severistory.
Speaker 1: Has anyone learned a single lessons that we don't learn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll create order by creating more fear. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: that's how it's gonna work. Walker was particularly furious when
Speaker 1: Judge Parsons ruled in the case of another judge who
Speaker 1: had been accused of bribery. Uh. He felt, probably accurately,
Speaker 1: that the judge had just done a favor for his buddy.
Speaker 1: Walker was further outraged when this judge, a guy named Morrison,
Speaker 1: assigned the property of a dead man to one of
Speaker 1: his colleagues, even though the deceased had family back in Boston.
Speaker 1: Walker attacked these corrupt judges with admirable ferocity, eventually provoking
Speaker 1: one of their proteges to attack Walker as a liar,
Speaker 1: a poltroon coward. This prompted William to challenge the man
Speaker 1: to a duel, which was accepted by another one of
Speaker 1: the judges protegees. The terms were set as revolvers fired
Speaker 1: at ten paces. Uh back back when there was honor,
Speaker 1: right before we just cancel people. Exactly when we would
Speaker 1: cruelly cancel people. Instead, we would nobally stand ten feet
Speaker 1: away and shoot each other with handguns. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: ten paces, sir. Not a sembless William lost and received
Speaker 1: a bullet in his leg for his trouble. He kept writing, though,
Speaker 1: and eventually earned himself a charge for contempt of court.
Speaker 1: He was basically he posted through it um. He was
Speaker 1: fined five dollars, which he refused to pay. The people
Speaker 1: of San Francisco mostly seemed to back William in this,
Speaker 1: seeing his crusade against the corrupt judiciary is fundamentally just next.
Speaker 1: According to the book Filibusters and Financiers. A mass meeting
Speaker 1: was held on the Plaza on March nine, with several
Speaker 1: thousand citizens and attendance, whereas a sutions were quickly adopted,
Speaker 1: approving Walker's conduct, calling on Parsons to resign his seat,
Speaker 1: and asking the local representatives in the legislature to initiate
Speaker 1: impeachment proceedings. After adjourning, the citizens marched in a body
Speaker 1: to the jail and made Walker a visit of sympathy
Speaker 1: habeas corpus. Proceedings were next instituted before a judge of
Speaker 1: the Superior Court, who held that Parsons might institute a
Speaker 1: suit for libel, but that his punishment for the contempt
Speaker 1: alleged in a newspaper statement was inconsistent with the freedom
Speaker 1: of the press and a violation of the Constitution. Walker
Speaker 1: was thereupon set free. He had once presented a memorial
Speaker 1: to the legislature, and the committee to which it was
Speaker 1: referred recommended on March twenty six that Parsions should be impeached.
Speaker 1: A special committee was that appointed to investigate the charges, and,
Speaker 1: upon its reporting insufficient grounds for impeachment, the case was ended.
Speaker 1: Had Walker possessed anything like personal magnetism, he might have
Speaker 1: made of this episode the foundation of a successful career
Speaker 1: in California politics. He was indeed not without political ambition,
Speaker 1: but in the prime requisites of a successful politician he
Speaker 1: was woefully lacking. So it's just unable to turn this
Speaker 1: into any kind of political I mean, what how more
Speaker 1: could you fail upward? As a white man you're like, look,
Speaker 1: I started some ship with a judge. I got clapped.
Speaker 1: I had to take that l Then suddenly I became
Speaker 1: like I got a lot of sympathy. I could have
Speaker 1: turned that into something, but then I just didn't even
Speaker 1: know how to do that. So I'm just gonna rob people. Hey, Robert, Yeah, Robert, Yes,
Speaker 1: you know what isn't woefully lacking? Robert, I feel I
Speaker 1: felt like it got he wanted to let you sit
Speaker 1: with that one. What a cruel man, And now you
Speaker 1: at home can sit with these products and services. That
Speaker 1: was shameful, Robert. I know. As we're back, quick question
Speaker 1: about duels. Did you or you only allowed to shoot
Speaker 1: one shot when you turned like it was like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you could want one at a time, all six at once. No, no,
Speaker 1: it's one at a time. Though, Like I think you
Speaker 1: have to like wait for the other person to do
Speaker 1: their second shot if you miss. Oh my god, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. I'm surprised people just
Speaker 1: didn't cheat that, Like, you know what, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: unload this whole clip when I turned. Yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 1: people did cheat. Yeah, and then it would just be
Speaker 1: like it would be a terrible It would be a yeah,
Speaker 1: dishonorable Jackson cheated at a duel and killed a guy
Speaker 1: and it ruled. Um. But anyway, we'll get We'll talk
Speaker 1: about that some other day. So um. William's time in
Speaker 1: California turned him into a powerful supporter of manifest destiny.
Speaker 1: You'll remember he was kind of like on the edge
Speaker 1: about the Mexican American War at first, but like he's
Speaker 1: on board at this point. Over his months in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: he switched from writing about crime to authoring more and
Speaker 1: more essays about the necessity of American expansionism. He could
Speaker 1: see the writing on the wall. The old United States
Speaker 1: was filling in, and one entire massive continent was, in
Speaker 1: his view, not enough for the awesomeness that was America.
Speaker 1: He believed that Wes needed to annex not just Cuba,
Speaker 1: but Nicaragua and probably parts of Mexico too. He also
Speaker 1: felt that the annexation of Central American states might eventually
Speaker 1: provide the US with more slave states, which would be
Speaker 1: pretty cool in his view. Um, there it is there.
Speaker 1: It is, yeah, West debated, but it seems to scan. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: that's debatable whether that's what his actual intent was yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know you. We'll talk about that a little later too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I was like, let's what does he
Speaker 1: think you're gonna do with all this land. He's not
Speaker 1: the only person who believe that there was actually like
Speaker 1: a Southern like Confederates after the Civil War who moved
Speaker 1: to I forget it might have been Costa Rica. I
Speaker 1: forget exactly where to like try to start a new
Speaker 1: confederacy in Latin or in Central America. Um So, this
Speaker 1: is like, he's not the only guy with this basic
Speaker 1: idea and all they all they were able to do
Speaker 1: is create Cancun. Yeah. Well, actually Cabo San Lucas comes
Speaker 1: up in this quite a lot. Um So, as William's
Speaker 1: career in journalism petered out in his brief career as
Speaker 1: a lawyer proved unfulfilling, attention drifted more and more to
Speaker 1: the possibility of filibustering himself and possibly adding new territory
Speaker 1: to the glorious United States. Perhaps he wasn't inspired to
Speaker 1: this work by the example of his arobic grandfather and
Speaker 1: i achieving family full of soldiers and politicians and newspaper owners.
Speaker 1: Conquering a sovereign nation was just about the only way
Speaker 1: to stand out. He found an opportunity lurking just a
Speaker 1: few hundred miles south of San Francisco and the untamed
Speaker 1: wilds of northern Mexico. At that point, the Sonora Desert
Speaker 1: and the place we now call Baja was still largely unsettled.
Speaker 1: It was occupied by numerous indigenous people, of course, but
Speaker 1: by the standards of racists in the US and Mexican government,
Speaker 1: it was essentially empty the few villages that existed there.
Speaker 1: This is just the way people thought. That's like what
Speaker 1: they modern racism at that time just meant and nobody's there. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's it's funny because like the big problem Mexico
Speaker 1: has is that the villages that are there have all
Speaker 1: these problems with like apaches and comanches raiding them. So
Speaker 1: it's like this place is too empty for us to control.
Speaker 1: And this is a problem because all of people that
Speaker 1: are there want to kill us, all of the people
Speaker 1: that are there in this empty place, and there's kind
Speaker 1: of they're not worth it. Um. So the first kind
Speaker 1: of freebooters who sort of sailed in to try to
Speaker 1: deal with this problem, we're actually French, a guy named
Speaker 1: Charles de pendre Um and like a bunch of French
Speaker 1: San Franciscan's um like traveled to uh guy Mus, which
Speaker 1: is like sort of like the big city and Sonora
Speaker 1: apport Um, and they developed an agricultural settlement to like
Speaker 1: essentially try and provide um a base of people that
Speaker 1: would like allow them to like basically provide some sort
Speaker 1: of order against the Apache raiders, right, so like that's
Speaker 1: the goal here um, and it doesn't work out. Pendre
Speaker 1: is eventually murdered after getting into allowed argument with the
Speaker 1: Sonoran government. So like the Mexican government kind of wants
Speaker 1: these French people there because they're having trouble like controlling
Speaker 1: the territory and fighting off these native tribes. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, they don't really trust these people because
Speaker 1: they're like, you're trying to steal this land from us,
Speaker 1: Like we're pretty sure, so like it's it's it's fraught
Speaker 1: and there's a complicated history here that we're not going
Speaker 1: to get into enough. Like both sides are stealing, so
Speaker 1: they have to be. They're like, we're trying to take
Speaker 1: this land too, but we kind of need you, but
Speaker 1: I feel like you're gonna steal it more what do
Speaker 1: we do. Yeah, the colonizers Catch twenty two. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: are both colonizers here. Um. I guess you could say
Speaker 1: Mexico's less colonizery at this point, because there is at
Speaker 1: least like they've been there longer. I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to try to parse that out more. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another wave of French freebooters came next, led by a
Speaker 1: French count, gas Dundrosseau boubone. I'm not going to pronounce
Speaker 1: that right, but fuck him. He receive permission from the
Speaker 1: Mexican government to do the same thing, basically to start
Speaker 1: a settlement to try and like provide a defense against
Speaker 1: the apache um. But again, these would be colonists in
Speaker 1: the local government wound up at logger heads. Uh. The
Speaker 1: count and his men eventually decided to settle their differences
Speaker 1: with the Mexican government by marching on a nearby city
Speaker 1: and conquering it at gunpoint. Uh. They succeeded in this,
Speaker 1: but were eventually beaten by like a kind of a
Speaker 1: grassroots insurgency, and the survivors were chased out of Mexico
Speaker 1: in December eighteen fifty two. All this was closely observed
Speaker 1: by William Walker who thought the whole mess sounded very exciting.
Speaker 1: He'd actually put together a plan with a couple of
Speaker 1: business partners to establish a settlement in Sonora with the
Speaker 1: goal of protecting Mexican villagers and ranchers from Apache and
Speaker 1: Comanche raiders. They had been unable to get the Mexican
Speaker 1: government to give them permission, though, and Walker had shelved
Speaker 1: the idea until the Count's efforts ended in bloody failure
Speaker 1: at the end of eighteen fifty two. In June eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty three, William Walker and two business partners traveled to Guaymas, Mexico,
Speaker 1: with the goal of scouting out possible locations for a
Speaker 1: border settlement. They received passes from the excellent Consulate to
Speaker 1: visit the country, but they were most definitely not allowed
Speaker 1: to go there in order to plot how they could
Speaker 1: illegally build towns full of white settlers in Mexico. The
Speaker 1: captain of the port was immediately suspicious of Walker and
Speaker 1: his friends and sent this message off to the local
Speaker 1: general out, Your excellency will perceive that there was undoubtedly
Speaker 1: an intention to invade this portion of the Mexican territory.
Speaker 1: There's like, yeah, everyone knows what's going on here? You're like,
Speaker 1: you're not slick. Yeah, it's the same thing, like a
Speaker 1: time shared, like pitch. It's like, yeah, yeah, you're you're
Speaker 1: offering me a fucking free trip. What are you trying
Speaker 1: to fucking steal? Yeah? Now, the governor ordered Walker and
Speaker 1: his friends detained, and they spent the next month trapped
Speaker 1: in Guy must trying to convince the governor that no, really, guy,
Speaker 1: we're cool dudes, We're not trying to conquer part of
Speaker 1: your country. And while they waited, Walker made a bit
Speaker 1: of a name for himself around town for dressing like
Speaker 1: a maniac. He was described as wearing a huge white
Speaker 1: fur hat whose long nap waved with the breeze despite
Speaker 1: the hundred plus degrees summer heat. Um okay, fucking big
Speaker 1: fur white fur hat in the Mexican summer. Oh my god?
Speaker 1: To do? What to let people know you're a pickup artist? Hell,
Speaker 1: he's picking up the whole country. I'm negging the whole country, bro,
Speaker 1: I'm neggat him right into my bedroom. Kinda is actually uh. Now,
Speaker 1: Despite his best attempts at argument, the government held to
Speaker 1: the heart of the line that William Walker was absolutely
Speaker 1: not allowed to travel further into Mexico, and so at
Speaker 1: the end of July, William and his friends left. Despite
Speaker 1: their failure, he was optimistic for he had received some
Speaker 1: very exciting news, which he related in an article published
Speaker 1: shortly thereafter. Quote apaches had visited a country house a
Speaker 1: few leagues from gay Mus, murdering all the men and
Speaker 1: children and carrying the women into captivity. Worse than death.
Speaker 1: The Indians sent where that they would soon visit the
Speaker 1: town where water is carried on asses backs, meaning gay Mus,
Speaker 1: and the people of that port, frightened by the message,
Speaker 1: seemed ready to perceive anyone who would give them safety.
Speaker 1: So he's like psyched about this, Like some apaches murder
Speaker 1: a bunch of people, and he's like, fun, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is my chance. Oh boy. The tactics are always the same,
Speaker 1: right yea? What is there an atmosphere of fear there
Speaker 1: I can exploit for my own game? Fantastic. Let me
Speaker 1: hop right in, let me roll right up in that.
Speaker 1: Are you guys fearing for your life? Okay? About come
Speaker 1: through with the homies who have no training but willstely
Speaker 1: no training. But we have guns, more guns than we
Speaker 1: should have, despite the fact that literally no when he
Speaker 1: had met in Mexico had wanted him there. William Walker
Speaker 1: insisted to his readers that several women in the country
Speaker 1: had begged him to repair immediately to California and bring
Speaker 1: down enough Americans to keep off the Apaches. Walker was
Speaker 1: not the least bit dissuaded by the Mexican government's refusal
Speaker 1: to work with him. He felt that the ease with
Speaker 1: which those French settlers had captured a whole town meant
Speaker 1: that a comparatively small body of Americans would surely see
Speaker 1: even greater success. Enough Americans with guns could protect local
Speaker 1: families from rampaging natives, and of course secure themselves significant
Speaker 1: financial benefits. Walker wrote insistently that such an act would
Speaker 1: be one of humanity no less than of justice, whether
Speaker 1: sanctioned or not by the Mexican government, and so William
Speaker 1: Walker returned to California intent upon the goal of invading Mexico.
Speaker 1: He wrote that his plan was to establish as early
Speaker 1: a time as possible a military colony not necessarily hostile
Speaker 1: to Mexico on the frontier of Sonora, with a view
Speaker 1: of protecting that state from the Apaches. It's like, we're
Speaker 1: not necessarily hostile no. I mean, yeah, we have guns
Speaker 1: and we're shooting people that like don't agree with us,
Speaker 1: but like that's not the point though we're here, like
Speaker 1: that's only hostile if you don't agree with us. It's
Speaker 1: just it's pretty simple. I'm pretty sure we laid it out.
Speaker 1: You disagree with me, I shoot you. It is the
Speaker 1: geopolitical equivalent of that scene in Simpson's where Bart walks
Speaker 1: forward swinging his fists in a windmill and if I
Speaker 1: hit you, it's not my fault, exactly. You're the Actually
Speaker 1: you're the aggressor because you knew it was coming your
Speaker 1: way and you've got in the line of fire. Now,
Speaker 1: what Walker was doing was wildly illegal, um and so
Speaker 1: we had to hide his activities. But he was really
Speaker 1: bad at secrecy, and almost immediately local papers started commenting
Speaker 1: on the rumors that he was going to invade Mexico.
Speaker 1: There was criticism for the idea in some papers, but
Speaker 1: at the time many Americans supported the idea of conquering
Speaker 1: more Mexico. One of Walker's fellow Californians wrote this in
Speaker 1: an eighteen fi defour op ed, speaking for a sizeable
Speaker 1: chunk of the territory. Quote, it is the fate of
Speaker 1: America ever to go. She is like the rod of
Speaker 1: Aaron that became a serpent and swallowed up the other rods.
Speaker 1: So will America conquer or annex all lands that is
Speaker 1: her manifest destiny, only get her time for the process
Speaker 1: to swallow up. Every few years of province as large
Speaker 1: as most kingdoms of Europe is her present rate of progress.
Speaker 1: Sometimes she purchases the mighty morsel. Sometimes she forms it
Speaker 1: out of waste territory by the natural increase of her
Speaker 1: own people. Sometimes she annexes, and sometimes she conquers it.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, waste territory. Yeah, this is the attitude common
Speaker 1: at the time. I mean, in fact, yeah, you realize,
Speaker 1: Like whenever I think about this, I'm like, how people
Speaker 1: so callous and like brazen in this time. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it. The language you're using is just sort
Speaker 1: of it's merely looking at it like you're you know,
Speaker 1: at a fucking like a parking lot swap meat, and
Speaker 1: you want to make sure you get there early enough
Speaker 1: to get the good spot. We don't often talk about
Speaker 1: that with manifest destiny. It was not I won't say
Speaker 1: the major ploraty of Americans felt this way, but not
Speaker 1: insignificant number of Americans were like, Oh, no, we're supposed
Speaker 1: to take the whole fucking world, or at least all
Speaker 1: of South and Central Yeah. If I can walk there
Speaker 1: and I don't need a boat, I think it should
Speaker 1: be ours for as long as that goes. Now, Walker,
Speaker 1: in a growing circle of comrades, raised money for their
Speaker 1: venture by selling five hundred dollar bonds at half face
Speaker 1: value for the Independence Loan Fund of the Republic of Sonora.
Speaker 1: They promised that purchasers of these bonds would receive seven
Speaker 1: square miles of Mexico's sovereign soil once their new country
Speaker 1: was established. In conversations with his supporters, Walker did not
Speaker 1: even bother to pretend that his goal was to create
Speaker 1: a settlement for humanitarian reasons. Now he was openly raising
Speaker 1: funds to conquer Mexican territory and establish his own country.
Speaker 1: In order to avoid running a foul of the Neutrality Act,
Speaker 1: Walker carefully worded his sales pitch to prospective soldiers. Rather
Speaker 1: than outright saying I'm recruiting mercenaries, he would talk up
Speaker 1: all the wealth and spoils and excitement to be gained
Speaker 1: in the venture. In the hopes that his target would
Speaker 1: ask if they two could join. For some reason, lost
Speaker 1: of time, Walker felt that people volunteering to invade Mexico
Speaker 1: with him was more legal than him hiring people to
Speaker 1: invade Mexico. So it wasn't he would just have like
Speaker 1: a really cool pitch, and like the whole play was like, dude,
Speaker 1: beat him in with such a dope pitch that they're
Speaker 1: going to be like, yes, i would like to join
Speaker 1: this illegal expedition. I'm not raising an army. An army
Speaker 1: asked me if they could help me invade Mexico. That's
Speaker 1: totally different, so different, your honor, Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: I was like, this is how it started. I'm like, yo, Brett,
Speaker 1: this place Mexico is fucking cool. I'm gonna check it out.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're thinking. Next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: he's coming with like a bunch of home he's out
Speaker 1: of guns. What do you want me to do? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just sort of happened. Yeah Wow, what a pitch though, too.
Speaker 1: And you're like, also, can you put in like five
Speaker 1: bucks on my fucking like colonizer fund and you will
Speaker 1: get you will secure your own piece of land. This
Speaker 1: all does kind of make me want like an eighteen
Speaker 1: fifties like version of The Hangover, where like they all
Speaker 1: wait up having conquered Baja Mexico, and like what had happened?
Speaker 1: What happened? Where's William Walker? You can make a fun
Speaker 1: movie out of that um. Walker hired a ship called
Speaker 1: the Arrow to carry he and his men to Sonora,
Speaker 1: and of course both the Mexican and US government's almost
Speaker 1: instantly realized what was happening. The boat was seized while
Speaker 1: full of guns in San Francisco. Walker responded by suing
Speaker 1: the government to release his boat, arguing that it had
Speaker 1: no authority to take possession of a ship without evidence
Speaker 1: of a criminal act. He loudly denied he was planning
Speaker 1: any kind of invasion. A media storm enveloped the whole issue,
Speaker 1: and Walker was once again successful in getting the people
Speaker 1: of San Francisco on his side. Well, all this attention
Speaker 1: was focused on the Arrow, William Walker went and chartered
Speaker 1: another ship and filled it with guns and ammunition. A
Speaker 1: little bit after midnight on October fifty four, the local
Speaker 1: police caught some of Walker's men moving supplies into the boat.
Speaker 1: They seized a bunch of m O prompting Walker to
Speaker 1: panic and rouse all the men he could get his
Speaker 1: hands on forty, most of whom were drunk, and rested
Speaker 1: them aboard his new ship with whatever guns they had
Speaker 1: on hand. The Minset sail later that night, severely underman
Speaker 1: and under armed, but finally on their way to Sonora.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, fucking disaster. Get on the boat. Get on
Speaker 1: the boat. I don't care how drunk you are. Hey,
Speaker 1: we're going. Hey, Will's going on and there's a cops
Speaker 1: are coming. Man, do you want to get on a boat?
Speaker 1: I don't have my musket. That's cops are angry because
Speaker 1: trying to invade. Get on the boat. Worry mother, there's
Speaker 1: there'll be fucking booze on the boat. Just get on,
Speaker 1: bring your gun now. Walker named his small army, slightly
Speaker 1: larger than a platoon, the first independent Battalion. He declared
Speaker 1: himself colonel because it was the eighteen hundreds and everybody
Speaker 1: was a colonel. And then, shockingly, he succeeded in using
Speaker 1: his small force to conquer the town of Lapaz, population
Speaker 1: six thousand. This was less impressive than it sounds. There
Speaker 1: was no one to defend the town. Walker and a
Speaker 1: bunch of his men just stumbled, probably drunk, into the
Speaker 1: Governor's office waving guns and terrorized every when they're into
Speaker 1: giving them control. As soon as the governor surrendered, William
Speaker 1: Walker ordered the Mexican flag taken down and replaced with
Speaker 1: the new flag he had designed himself, the flag of
Speaker 1: the Republic of Sonora. Looking out from his new base
Speaker 1: of operations, his ambitions expanded. No longer was he content
Speaker 1: in creating a small republic of Sonora. Lapaz had fallen
Speaker 1: so easily that he now desired to conquer the entire
Speaker 1: Baja Peninsula. Within days of capturing the town, he renamed
Speaker 1: his new country, issuing a declaration that the Republic of
Speaker 1: Lower California is hereby declared free, sovereign, and independent, and
Speaker 1: all allegiance to the Republic of Mexico is forever renounced. Okay,
Speaker 1: just like that, huh ambition, man, You just you gotta
Speaker 1: fake it till you make it, just like that. And
Speaker 1: also way to get slowly like deceived by how easy
Speaker 1: one It's like, oh well that was pretty easy in
Speaker 1: this small town easily. You know what, Fuck it, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do, you know what, Yeah, let's do the whole thing. Lesly,
Speaker 1: this is the hardest thing will ever have to do.
Speaker 1: Do you know what did that flag look like? I'm
Speaker 1: always curious when people was pretty boring. Okay, it wasn't
Speaker 1: like indulgent. I would talked about it if it was cool. No, no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. Damn it. That's when these guys fucking disappoint me.
Speaker 1: When there's like a real opportunity for some just straight
Speaker 1: up buffoonery, and it's like, you actually took flags very seriously,
Speaker 1: very minimal design, very minimal design. It's a pretty Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not super crazy. Uh. Walker concluded his declaration by
Speaker 1: announcing that he was now the president as well as
Speaker 1: a colonel, which is a pretty impressive series of title
Speaker 1: changes for a single week. Yeah, the President, I'm the
Speaker 1: colonel of the Hair Club for men. President. Colonel Yeah,
Speaker 1: Colonel President, Yeah, Colonel. President. Walkers set to work at
Speaker 1: once giving a bunch of other people fancy titles, appointing
Speaker 1: a Secretary of War who was by himself three percent
Speaker 1: of the army. Most critically, he appointed a propagandist who
Speaker 1: started mailing off dispatches to the San Diego Harold in
Speaker 1: order to inform Americans about what Walker and his men
Speaker 1: had done. He set to work at confiscating the arms
Speaker 1: and ammunition of the citizens of Lapase so they could
Speaker 1: not rise up against him. He attempted to fortify the city,
Speaker 1: but eventually realized that it was indefensible if the Mexican
Speaker 1: army attacked, and so he moved his forces to Cabo
Speaker 1: San Lucas, which he felt would be an easier place
Speaker 1: to draw Americans and to fight for his costs. He
Speaker 1: moves to Cabo because he's like, this is where if
Speaker 1: I want to get more Americans, I gotta go to Kabba.
Speaker 1: This is where it's at. Lapa is so last year.
Speaker 1: If you haven't been to Cabo, you really must. So
Speaker 1: it's it's he makes the same decision as an insurgent
Speaker 1: general as Jimmy Buffett does. Is Jimmy Buffett, come on, margarite,
Speaker 1: does he um? Is he just thinking like because a location,
Speaker 1: He's like, okay, yeah, this is this is an easier
Speaker 1: place to get reinforcements, like he's relying on. He's not
Speaker 1: an idiot. He knows that like forty five minut isn't
Speaker 1: enough to take all of Baja, but he hopes that
Speaker 1: like the stories that are spreading in the news will
Speaker 1: send hundreds of Americans to join his army. And he
Speaker 1: knows that Cabo San Lucas it's easier for people from Californi.
Speaker 1: You get to right right right there, just going straight
Speaker 1: down the coast. Yes, okay. I also I'm in my mind,
Speaker 1: I'm also thinking of a dude who's like starting at
Speaker 1: like a terrible vacation spot too, and he's like, Nah,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not gonna get a lot of business here.
Speaker 1: We gotta go to Cobbo. Man, They're gonna see these beaches.
Speaker 1: They're gonna love it, and they'll fight my war. And
Speaker 1: they'll fight my war. Uh so, yeah. Well, he and
Speaker 1: his men were loading up their boat to flee the
Speaker 1: capital of their new country for the new capital of
Speaker 1: their new country, which they would have to conquer. Once
Speaker 1: they got there, they ran into a passenger ship waving
Speaker 1: the Mexican flag. Walker's men boarded the ship at once
Speaker 1: and realized it held Juan Clemaco Riboletto, the new governor
Speaker 1: of Lapaz. They arrested him immediately and took him prisoner
Speaker 1: along with the old governor. The Americans hold up on
Speaker 1: their boat for a few nights, with their prisoners waiting
Speaker 1: in the harbor of the city they had conquered. When
Speaker 1: a few of them landed to get firewood, they were
Speaker 1: ambushed by Mexican soldiers and townspeople. Walker and his troops
Speaker 1: responded to the ambush by returning fire, which is fair,
Speaker 1: and also by lighting random people's houses on fire, which
Speaker 1: is not fair. They made it back to the out
Speaker 1: and told Walker what had happened. His first reaction was
Speaker 1: to load his ship's cannons and open fire on La Pause,
Speaker 1: which was again the capital of the new country he
Speaker 1: had founded. Walker landed with thirty of his men after
Speaker 1: this and took to the fight to the enemy for
Speaker 1: ninety minutes or so. The ambushing Mexican forces fled, and
Speaker 1: Walker were at a glowing report of their victory to
Speaker 1: be shared in the newspapers back in California. The enemy's
Speaker 1: lost was six or seven killed and several wounded. Areman
Speaker 1: did not so much as receive a wound except from
Speaker 1: cacti while pursuing the enemy through the chaparal in the
Speaker 1: rear of town. Thus ended the Battle of Lapase, crowning
Speaker 1: our efforts with victory, releasing Lower California from the tyrannous
Speaker 1: yoke of declining Mexico and establishing a new republic. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, man. Yeah, he he got into a gunfight
Speaker 1: over firewood, burned down a quarter of the town, and
Speaker 1: then called at the Battle of lapase n't see. And
Speaker 1: this goes back to fucking Grandpa too, where you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that motherfucker, he's got a few stories and then he's
Speaker 1: having to like self mythologize when he writes back because
Speaker 1: he's like, well, I'm never gonna do that. Um so,
Speaker 1: let me just really pump this story up so it
Speaker 1: sounds a lot way cooler. Yeah, and Miles, that's where
Speaker 1: the story is going to have to remain for the
Speaker 1: end of part one, and we're gonna we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about what happens next with William Walker and his men
Speaker 1: in part two. On Thursday, you get some plug doubles
Speaker 1: to to drop in the p zone. You know, I
Speaker 1: do dailies that want to colonize this podcast. I want
Speaker 1: to I want to put the flag deep into the
Speaker 1: fertile soil of behind the Bastards right now. I do
Speaker 1: want to shout out my new show for twenty Day
Speaker 1: Fiance that I co host with one of your other
Speaker 1: esteemed guests, Sophia Alexandra, where like we just get high
Speaker 1: and talk about ninety day Fiance. It's like, excellent if
Speaker 1: you need a break from life, you know. That's that's
Speaker 1: sort of like why we do it. It's like I'm talking,
Speaker 1: we're talking about all kinds of serious. I'm like, can
Speaker 1: we just talk about my favorite show? But like get
Speaker 1: faded before? That sounds great? And that's all. Well, I
Speaker 1: have no plugs to plug because I do nothing but
Speaker 1: this episode of this podcast, which is the entirety of
Speaker 1: my breadth of work. Um, so the episode is now done. No,
Speaker 1: it's not, Robert, is it not? Do I do other things?
Speaker 1: You do other things? You almost worst your disappointing with
Speaker 1: our good friends Katie Stole and Cody Johnston. I guess
Speaker 1: so yeah. You can also find Robert on Twitter at
Speaker 1: I right, okay, and you can find us on the
Speaker 1: Twistagram at at Bastard's Pod, and we have a tea
Speaker 1: public store, and to be honest, I don't know about
Speaker 1: all that. But if Sophie says so, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna argue. I'm gonna thank you so much. That's
Speaker 1: so kind of me now the episode is over. Excellent,