U.S. in Latin America: Postal Subsidies, Cholera, Regeneration

Military Adventures, Postal Subsidies, Malaria, and Cholera
US military commitments after guano (earlier post) turned to subsidizing  mail sent across Central American with postal subsidies. The demand for mail and Americans traveling to California created incentives for US steamship companies to connect via overland routes across Panama and Nicaragua. But those overland routes were through sovereign countries where distance and speed, as well a disease were key concerns. Competition between Panama and Columbia overland routes later led to military interventions.

The US Postal Service has been in the news with calls for increased postal funding to secure delivery of mail-in election ballots. Earlier postal subsidies supported mail to the west coast during the Gold Rush years. Mail and passengers crossed Central America before intercontinental railways were built, but competition among steamship lines and two overland routes created a competition to “capture” the US postal subsidies.

Also in the news in 2020 are Senate “filibusters,” as some Senators want to end the tradition of a single Senator blocking legislation. But “filibuster” had a different meaning: “historical: a person engaging in unauthorized warfare against a foreign country.” Study.com discusses the history:

Today, the idea of a single person deciding to raise a private army to take over another country might seem a bit…overzealous? Insane? Absurd? Probably all of the above. In the mid 1800s, however, this was not such a radical idea. Filibustering, the unauthorized military invasion of foreign nations by an individual, was an idea that many people embraced…

William Walker (May 8, 1824- September 12, 1860) was an American filibuster in the 1850’s. Although he attempted to seize parts of Northern Mexico, he is most remembered for his campaign into Nicaragua. Walker was president of Nicaragua from 1856-1857, before being defeated by a group of Central American armies and executed in Honduras. He was motivated by money, power, an enthusiasm for revolutions, and a desire to help the American South keep slavery going strong. [William Walker in Nicaragua]

Missing from this Study.com history, and relevant for partly locked down America in 2020, was Walker’s motivation as a public health expert and advocate. His goal was “regeneration” for Nicaragua that would rid the overland route of malaria and cholera. Cholera had swept through New Orleans and other American cities, and tropical diseases had long been endemic across Central America. Critics of lockdowns in the US to slow pandemics are also critical of taking over foreign countries to improve their public health programs.

Postal subsidies gave competitive advantage to politically-favored firms, since they were added to passenger fares. These subsidies  contributed to conflict, war, and revolution in Columbia. Federal postal subsidies went to firms in control of the Panama route, not to firms in control of the shorter Nicaragua route.

William Walker’s  filibuster in Columbia had a public health goal. Walker’s fiancé had died of cholera during the New Orleans epidemic (1853), and his medical credentials made him popular as a “regenerator” for Columbia (reducing disease). Overland passengers to California were suffering from malaria and cholera along the Panama route, and Walker took over Cornelius Vanderbilt’s assets for the alternate Columbia route, where he set public health measures to reduce disease.

This page, Chapter Eight Mail Via Nicaragua, 1851-1857, explains how gold in California led to military commitments in Central America:

Profitable businesses attract competition, and the California passenger business was no exception. Several steamship lines tried to compete on the Panama route, but were stymied by the companies holding the Panama mail contracts, since they could use those subsidies to stifle competition. However, one particularly enterprising competitor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, concluded that the real competitive opportunity was to gain control over a route that passed via the Isthmus of Nicaragua, rather than the Isthmus of Panama.

Cornelius Vanderbilt developed the overland route and purchased steamships for both Atlantic and Pacific travel in the early 1850s, and through 1855 his Columbia route offered effective competition for the Panama route to California. From 1853-1855 the Columbia round carried 61,400 passengers compared to 84,000 on the Panama route (which received U.S. postal subsidies).

Although Vanderbilt offered to carry the U.S. mails for half the amount being paid the Panama contractors, the Post Office Department remained committed to the Panama route. This meant that all mail remitted to the post office was carried via Panama on contract steamships. However, letters could be carried on the Nicaragua route if they were given directly to the steamship line, or entrusted to a letter bag operator. (Chapter Eight Mail Via Nicaragua, 1851-1857)

Vanderbilt sold his steamships and Accessory Transit Company in 1853 (to take a vacation in Europe), and William Walker enters the picture in 1855, attracting additional European settlers. Again from Chapter Eight Mail Via Nicaragua, 1851-1857:

William Walker desired to create English-speaking colonies under his control in Latin America, an activity known as filibustering. After a failed effort in Mexico, he set sail for Nicaragua from San Francisco on May 4, 1855 with a small armed force. His first priority was to gain control of the transit route, so that additional reinforcements could easily reach him. After an initial setback, he gained control of the western end of the transit route and captured a transit steamer, although the transit service was unaffected. After a successful attack on the capital, Granada, he found himself as head of the army in a new Nicaraguan government in November 1855.

Bringing the past back to the present, Walker took charge and was elected President of Columbia

For a brief period of time, between 1855 and 1857, William Walker successfully portrayed himself to American audiences as the regenerator of Nicaragua. Though he arrived in Nicaragua in June 1855, with only fifty-eight men, his image as a regenerator attracted several thousand men and women to join him in his mission to stabilize the region. Walker relied on both his medical studies as well as his experience in journalism to craft a message of regeneration that placated the anxieties that many Americans felt about the instability of the Caribbean. People supported Walker because he provided a strategy of regeneration that placed Anglo-Americans as the medical and racial stewards of a war-torn region. American faith in his ability to regenerate the region propelled him to the presidency of Nicaragua in July 1856.” WILLIAM WALKER AND THE SEEDS OF PROGRESSIVE IMPERIALISM: THE WAR IN NICARAGUA AND THE MESSAGE OF REGENERATION, 1855-1860

This historical episode shows the challenge of U.S. military support of business enterprises in other countries, and the dangers of offering federal subsidies U.S. companies may fight over, even to the point of taking over countries.

The foreign policy adventure in our next post has another American business entrepreneur hiring an army to take over Honduras, in order to avoid new banana tax and tariff policies established in Honduras by J.P. Morgan and the US government…