author
William Walker
b. 1821
A restless 19th-century adventurer, physician, and journalist, he became one of the most controversial Americans of his era. His brief seizure of power in Nicaragua made him famous—and infamous—far beyond the United States.
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About the author
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 8, 1824, William Walker was known early on for his ambition and wide-ranging education. He studied medicine, later turned to law and journalism, and built a reputation as an unusually driven young man with a taste for risk and reinvention.
Walker is best remembered for his private military expeditions in Mexico and Central America during the age of Manifest Destiny. In 1855 he entered Nicaragua, took advantage of a local civil conflict, and for a short time made himself president of the country. His rule drew international attention and strong opposition, and he was eventually forced out.
After further failed attempts to return to Central America, Walker was captured in Honduras and executed in 1860. He remains a striking and deeply polarizing figure in American and Latin American history: to some, a symbol of reckless expansionism; to others, an example of how personal ambition could shape international events.