50 Dollars William Walker Military Script

William Walker, the Tennessee-born filibuster who seized control of Nicaragua in 1856 and had himself elected president, needed a functioning treasury almost immediately. This script was printed by El Nicaraguense, the English-language newspaper Walker's regime operated out of Granada — the same press used to publish his administration's propaganda and official decrees. Using a newspaper print shop to produce currency was not ideological: it was simply the only press available to him.

Walker's government lasted less than a year. A coalition of Central American armies, backed partly by Cornelius Vanderbilt — whom Walker had made the catastrophic mistake of alienating — drove him from power in 1857. Surviving examples of this script are rare precisely because the issuing authority collapsed so quickly.