Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Only Nicaragua resisted the liberal tide; Nicaraguan liberals had disgraced themselves, much as Mexican conservatives did at about the same time, by inviting foreign intervention. . . . Walker was a visionary fundamentalist Christian from Tennessee, and, in his own eyes, a missionary of Progress. The liberal plan backfired when Walker attempted, on his own initiative, to colonize Nicaragua for the United States. With liberal support and force of arms, Walker briefly made himself president of Nicaragua. He proclaimed Progress, including freedom of worship, adoption of English, and land grants for US immigrants. Walker also legalized slavery, which had been abolished in Nicaragua years before. The freebooting Walker was captured and executed in 1860 by a joint Central American army, but the bad smell he left in Nicaragua kept the Liberal Party out of power there for decades. Nicaragua did not join the hemisphere’s liberal trend until the 1890s." [Born in Blood & Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, 4th Ed., p. 173-4]