History of the United States I / Unit 12 USH1 1718 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Walker Legalises Slavery
The idea
In eighteen fifty-six Walker legalised slavery in Nicaragua, where it had been illegal for thirty years, in order to gain southern support, and reopened the slave trade there. He became president of Nicaragua that year and was expelled in eighteen fifty-seven. Returning to Central America in eighteen sixty, he was captured by British forces, handed to Honduran authorities and executed by firing squad.
In practice
A private American citizen installing slavery in a foreign country that had abolished it a generation earlier.
Where people slip
Filibustering widened the North–South gulf, which is the reason it belongs in a chapter about the antebellum South rather than in a chapter about foreign policy. Northerners read Cuba, Nicaragua and the Ostend Manifesto as evidence that the Slave Power intended to expand without limit and would use private violence where politics failed. Unit 14 opens with a decade in which that suspicion governs everything.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
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