With one
hundred and fifty men he sailed from New Orleans and landed at
San del Norte on the Caribbean side. While he formed a camp on
the harbor of San Juan, one of his officers, with fifty men,
proceeded up the river and, capturing the town of Castillo Viejo
and four of the Transit steamers, was in a fair way to obtain
possession of the entire route. At this moment upon the scene
arrived the United States frigate _Wabash_ and Hiram Paulding,
who landed a force of three hundred and fifty blue-jackets with
howitzers, and turned the guns of his frigate upon the camp of the
President of Nicaragua. Captain Engel, who presented the terms of
surrender to Walker, said to him: "General, I am sorry to see you
here. A man like you is worthy to command better men." To which
Walker replied grimly: "If I had a third the number you have
brought against me, I would show you which of us two commands
the better men."
For the third time in his history Walker surrendered to the armed
forces of his own country.
On his arrival in the United States, in fulfilment of his parole to
Paulding, Walker at once presented himself at Washington a
prisoner of war. But President Buchanan, although Paulding had
acted exactly as Davis had done, refused to support him, and in a
message to Congress declared that that officer had committed a
grave error and established an unsafe precedent.
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