The Role of Spain in the American Revolution

Most Americans are familiar with the role leading Frenchmen played in the story of the American Revolution. They admire the young and idealistic Marquis de Lafayette, scorn the wily peace treaty negotiator the Comte de Vergennes, and cheer the brave General Rochambeau. But few recognize the critically important Spanish allies in the struggle for independence, among them Diego de Gardoqui, who was responsible for channeling secret aid to the rebelling colonies via his prosperous trading company; Don Gabriel de Borbón, son of Spanish King Carlos III who befriended Benjamin Franklin; Pedro Pablo Abarca de Bolea, who helped steer aid and supplies to the American army; or Francisco de Saavedra, whose bold plan to invade British-held Jamaica played a critical role in bringing the British to the peace table.

These Spaniards and others are introduced in this issue of History Now. In the six essays that follow, readers will explore not only the individuals who contributed to American victory but also the role Spanish ambitions played in creating the alliance between the United States and its Spanish supporters.

In “The Declaration of Independence: America’s Call to Arms to Spain and France,” Larrie D. Ferreiro establishes the case for the intended audience for Jefferson’s Declaration. Announcing American independence, the Declaration was diplomatically necessary because neither France nor Spain would interfere in an internal British civil war. In essence, the target of the Declaration was not King George III, who was well aware of the colonial goal of independence already; the Declaration was instead intended as an invitation to Spain and France to support the war. Spain and France had their own reasons, of course, for throwing their support behind the American cause: France hoped to recoup the political clout it had lost in its defeat in the Seven Years’ War with Britain, and Spain was eager to protect its Latin American colonies. Ferreiro concludes: “Together Spain and France turned a local war into a world war, which bled off British forces from America.”

In his essay, “Benjamin Franklin, Spain, and the Independence of the United States,” Thomas E. Chávez traces the important relationships Franklin developed with Spanish diplomats, particularly Spain’s ambassador to France, Pedro Pablo Abarca de Bolea, who pressed for Spanish recognition of American independence. With Abarca’s help and Diego de Gardoqui’s assistance, Spanish aid went through France, but also directly from his own country’s port of Bilbao and from Spanish-held Mexico. Chávez makes a case that Francisco de Saavedra’s plans to organize an invasion of Jamaica played a key role in driving the British to the peace table.

Historian Elisa Vargas provides a portrait of Diego de Gardoqui in her essay, “Diego de Gardoqui and the Beginnings of Spanish-American Diplomacy.” Gardoqui, born into a prominent family and educated in London, was a participant in the secret meeting between the former Spanish minister of state and the American diplomat Arthur Lee. The meeting, which these diplomats declared was simply a business discussion with the Gardoqui family’s prosperous trading company, produced an agreement to ship desperately needed supplies and money to the Americans. Cloth, tents, blankets, anchors, ropes, and sails, as well as money, would flow to the United States via the Gardoqui company. By 1779, Spain was at war with Britain, and the aid was no longer discreet. In 1783, the Spanish Crown made Gardoqui its official envoy to settle negotiations with the “new republic.” Spain’s demands included the preservation of its navigation rights over the Mississippi and the definition of its southern and western borders with the new nation. But Britain took steps to drive a wedge between the two allies, and the concessions American Foreign Affairs Secretary John Jay made to Spain destroyed Jay’s reputation as a diplomat. Gardoqui, too, suffered as a result of dissatisfaction with his role in the negotiations.

In her essay, “Spain’s Black Militias in the American Revolution,” Jane Landers traces the century-long history of Black militias serving the Spanish crown. These fighting men were acknowledged by the king as “persons of valor.” When the Bourbon Reformers acquired the Spanish Crown, Black militiamen’s rights were expanded to include the rights to elect their own officers and to design their own uniforms. Cuba’s Black militias helped restore Spanish control of Louisiana in 1769 and participated in the Spanish campaigns against the British in Mobile and Pensacola. Among the Cuban militiamen was José Antonio Aponte, a corporal in the Disciplined Battalion of Free Blacks in Havana, who later fought against the British in the Bahamas. Bernardo de Gálvez, commander of the Louisiana forces, nominated a number of Black troops for royal commendations. France also sent Black troops to fight in the American Revolution; they helped hold Savannah for the Americans. In South Carolina, where loyalism was strong, enslaved men fought on both the American side and the British side, hoping to win their freedom for their participation. But in 1821, the new American government in Florida drove Spain’s loyal Black troops to seek protection in Cuba.

Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia provides us a portrait of a woman caught in the maelstrom of politics in an essay entitled “Felicitas St. Maxent, Wife of Bernardo de Gálvez: From French New Orleans Belle to Exiled Spanish Dowager Countess.” Born in New Orleans in 1775, Felicitas followed a predictable life course, marrying a wealthy husband at twenty-one and soon becoming a mother. But within a few years, she was a widow. By 1762, Louisiana had changed hands from French to Spanish control, and Felicitas’s father, who supported Spanish rule, was rewarded with trade concessions that made him a very wealthy man. He supported his daughter’s secret remarriage to the military officer Bernardo de Gálvez in 1777. The secret was revealed when a child was born the following year. Bernardo’s family did not approve of Felicitas [now known as Feliciana], but the couple loved each other and were inseparable. Bernardo’s career blossomed and he was appointed Viceroy of New Spain. After his death in 1786, the once again widowed Feliciana went to Madrid, where her home became the center of a French-style political and literary salon that attracted leading political figures, artists, and businessmen. But the political environment in Madrid was changing, and Feliciana’s reputation as an admirer of the French made her suspect. In September of 1790, she was exiled from Madrid. She died in 1799.

Kathleen DuVal examines the impact of “The Spanish Siege of Pensacola.” As soon as Spain declared war on Britain, Spanish-held Louisiana and British-held West Florida faced off against each other. Bernardo de Gálvez commanded military affairs for Louisiana, while John Campbell directed British military decisions. Neither the king of France nor the king of Spain proved willing to fully support these opposing generals. Gálvez proved to be expert at recruiting local colonists as soldiers. He wooed the elite gentlemen of New Orleans by giving them fancy uniforms and their own militia unit. He also recruited free Black men, providing them with uniforms and their own militia was well. As we saw in Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia’s essay, Gálvez had married a local woman from a prominent New Orleans family. He sought support from Native Americans in the region, asking them to remain neutral if they preferred not to join forces with the Spanish. Campbell, on the other hand, made little effort to recruit British colonists, for he was suspicious they might prove to be rebels like the US colonists had been. Gálvez quickly and successfully attacked the British colony, and by March of 1781 had laid siege to the capital of Pensacola. He then sailed with his Spanish troops to the West Indies, relieving French troops to sail north to assist George Washington in the siege at Yorktown. After Gálvez won the Bahamas from Britain, the British gave up the war against American independence. So, concludes DuVal, “the siege of Pensacola helped the United States to win its independence, even though that wasn’t really the goal of the Spanish.”

Finally, in his essay, “American Independence and the Spanish Navy,” Manuel Lucena-Giraldo shows us how Spain's priorities shaped that nation’s role in the American Revolution and in its aftermath. A desire to reclaim territories lost to Britain in earlier eighteenth-century conflicts prompted Spanish enthusiasm for the American colonial revolt against Britain. The Spanish navy’s first actions were its failed attempt to restore Spain’s control of Gibraltar and its successful seizure of Menorca from the British. In March 1781, navy officer José Solano y Bote led the Spanish Armada to rescue Pensacola. After American independence was won, however, the interests of Spain and the US diverged. Spanish officials considered the Americans ungrateful and resented US petitions for navigation of the Mississippi and access to the Spanish-held port of New Orleans. Professor Lucena-Giraldo’s emphasis on Spanish motivations demonstrates that “the War of American Independence was not one war, but several wars.” At the same time, he introduces us to the tension between the application of scientific principles in planning and the older reliance on the experiences of veteran naval officers.

The essays in this issue are accompanied by a host of educational materials from the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s archives, including previously published issues of History Now on related topics, episodes of Book Breaks and Inside the Vault on various aspects of the American Revolution, and spotlighted primary sources from the Gilder Lehrman Collection. The issue’s special feature is the video of a 2017 presentation at the Library of Congress by History Now contributor Larrie D. Ferreiro about his book Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History that year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcBCYnuND2c.

For kindly recommending scholars to contribute to this issue, we, the editors of History Now, would like to thank Begonia Santos, the executive director and COO of the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute.

Nicole and I hope that teachers reading History Now are enjoying the start of the new school year. Look for a new issue of our online journal in the months ahead.

Carol Berkin, Editor
Nicole Seary, Associate Editor