Some reinforcements reached him by water, but another party that
started overland was dispersed by starvation, their food giving out.
Walker now set out with his buccaneering band on a long march of six
hundred miles through a barren and unpeopled country towards his
"possessions" in the interior. The Mexicans did not need any forces to
defeat him. Fatigue and famine did the work for them, desertion decimated
the band of invaders, and the hopeless march up the peninsula ended at San
Diego, where he and his men surrendered to the United States authorities.
Walker was tried at San Francisco in 1854 for violation of the neutrality
laws, but was acquitted.
This pioneer attempt at invasion only whetted Walker's filibustering
appetite. Looking about for "new worlds to conquer," he saw a promising
field in Nicaragua, then torn by internal dissensions. Invited by certain
American speculators or adventurers to lend his aid to the democratic
party of insurrectionists, he did not hesitate, but at once collected a
band of men of his own type and set sail for this new field of labor and
ambition.
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