Unquestionably Walker was carried away by his firm belief in his destiny. He never doubted, until he felt the manacles on his wrists at Trujillo, that he was destined to play the part of a Cortez in Central America. He had risked death a hundred times in battle and skirmish without fear or doubt. Possibly he welcomed it, when at last it came, and was sincere in hoping that it might be for the good of society.
So died, in his thirty-seventh year, the man whose fame had filled two continents, who had more than once imperilled the peace of the world which remembers him only in the distorted and false character of a monster and an outlaw. The country which gave him birth, and little besides, save injustice, forgot amid the bloody conflict into which it was soon plunged, the fame and fate of the filibusters. Into the vortex of civil war were swept many of the restless spirits who had survived the sanguinary fields of Central America, and in it perished some of the bravest and ablest who had learned their first lesson in that stern school.
As most of them were of Southern birth, so they generally joined the ranks of the Confederacy. At the first call to arms, Henningsen offered his services to the seceding states, and was given a regiment in Wise's Legion of Northern Virginia. Frank Anderson went with him as lieutenant-colonel, and did good service for the lost cause. He was one of Walker's oldest veterans, having served in both the expeditions to Nicaragua. At the first battle of Rivas he was wounded three times, and left on the field for dead, but managed to drag himself into hiding before his comrades were all massacred, and so escaped to rejoin his command.
Henningsen served throughout the war; but, in spite of his experience on many fields, and the marked ability with which he filled his subordinate position, he never rose to distinction in the Confederacy. He was a natural leader in irregular warfare, as might have been expected of a pupil in the schools of Zumalacarregui, Schamyl, and Walker; and the scientific campaigning of the Peninsula gave no scope for his talents. But he had espoused the cause with honest convictions of its justice, and he supported it faithfully to the end. When that end and ruin came he returned to private life, a man without a career, and lived quietly and unobtrusively until his death in June, 1877. In his later years he was a devoted adherent of the patriots who were waging a fruitless war for freedom in Cuba. Once he visited the island in connection with a projected uprising, but saw no promise of success in the attempt. His death was sudden. He had been ill but a few days; a faithful friend, Colonel Gregg, a soldier who had fought against him in the Civil War, watched by his bedside. The sick man slept, while the tireless brain dreamed, what dreams who can say? of the chequered career about to close forever. Suddenly his eyes opened, and in them was something of the old fire, as he half sat up in his bed, and pointing to a print on the wall of the arms of "Cuba Libre," said, "Colonel, we'll free Cuba yet!" The ruling passion found voice in his last words--the next instant he fell back dead.