In Costa Rica there is a marble statue showing that republic
represented as a young woman with her foot upon the neck of
Walker. Some night a truth-loving American will place a can of
dynamite at the foot of that statue, and walk hurriedly away.
Unaided, neither Costa Rica nor any other Central American
republic could have driven Walker from her soil. His downfall
came through his own people, and through an act of his which
provoked them.
When Walker was elected president he found that the Accessory
Transit Company had not lived up to the terms of its concession
with the Nicaraguan Government. His efforts to hold it to the
terms of its concession led to his overthrow. By its charter the
Transit Company agreed to pay to Nicaragua ten thousand dollars
annually and ten per cent. of the net profits; but the company,
whose history the United States Minister, Squire, characterized as
"an infamous career of deception and fraud," manipulated its
books in such a fashion as to show that there never were any
profits. Doubting this, Walker sent a commission to New York to
investigate. The commission discovered the fraud and demanded
in back payments two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. When
the company refused to pay this, as security for the debt Walker
seized its steamers, wharves, and storehouses, revoked its charter,
and gave a new charter to two of its directors, Morgan and
Garrison, who, in San Francisco, were working against Vanderbilt.
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