Let us not pester the Mexicans ...

[Oregon Bill]

As did the late Henry Crabb:

http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/73winter/crabb.htm

[The Elderly Kid]

In his novel Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy daws on the Crabb filibuster along with others. In the early part of the book Captain White's filibuster sets out in the late '40s fom Texas instead of from California in the late '50s. But it is wiped out in Mexico (by Comanches, not Mexicans), the only survivor is a teenaged boy, and, like Crabb, White ends up with his head in a jar of mescal. Those were rough times.

[Oregon Bill]

Gracias Kid.
That head in the mescal motif also appears in the remake of Zorro with Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas.

[Tsalagidave]

Filibustering was a huge fad in the middle 1800s. It is amazing to think of civilian armies acting in defiance of US law to invade foreign countries and "liberating" them. The three best known events of filibustering is Narcisso Lopez's ill fated attempt on Cuba in 1851; William Walker's Baja-Sonora nation and Walker's campaigns in Nicaragua. There were a whole lot more and the ranks were filled with young Americans, Europeans and Latin Americans.

I find it to be a fascinating lost chapter in American history and have developed an impression just to confuse people at historic timelines. I have a few 1855-57 era newspapers speaking of Walker's exploits.

-Dave