ABSTRACT
Regional and class-factional conflict between groups known by the mid-nineteenth century as Liberals and Conservatives became highly institutionalized and made control of the government a form of booty. The stunned Conservatives quickly capitulated, and the US government recognized William Walker's puppet Liberal regime. Americans began to speak of their nation's "manifest destiny"—the goal of expansion across the continent-an idea that had gained great currency in the United States by the late 1830s. The continuing civil war eventually destroyed the Central American Federation and completed the second step of Nicaraguan independence. A major difficulty for early republican Nicaragua was growing US interest in Central American commerce and in a canal route, together with the growing tensions that the British commercial interests engendered between the United States and Britain. The United States tentatively began to challenge Britain's commercial and strategic superiority in the Caribbean region just as Nicaragua embarked upon its voyage as an independent republic.
