Benjamin Franklin, Spain, and the Independence of the United States

On November 29, 1775, more than six months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Congress’s Secret Committee of Correspondence gave instructions to Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee to travel to Paris to secure European aid and alliances. Deane arrived in Paris in July of 1776. Lee, who was in London, was the second commissioner to arrive, just before Franklin in late December.

By that time, Franklin’s fame as an inventor and philosophe was well known. His relationship with Spain began in 1774, when Don Gabriel de Borbón, the twenty-two-year-old third son of Spain’s King Carlos III, asked to purchase one of Franklin’s glass armonicas. Franklin gladly provided the instrument to the prince, charging only the cost of repairs. In appreciation, Don Gabriel sent Franklin his 1772 translation of the Roman historian Cayo Salustio Crispo’s La conjuración de Catilina y la Guerra de Jugurta, which had originally been published in the first century BC.

In a telling letter dated December 12, 1775, thanking the prince, Franklin used the opportunity to suggest that Spain’s “wise Politicians may contemplate the first efforts of a rising State” that will likely “soon . . . act a Part of some Importance on the stage of human affairs, and furnish materials for a future Salust.” He noted that Spain and the United States had a common cause to be close allies and that “a good foundation” for this already existed in the colonies.

Franklin and his colleagues already knew that Spain and France were sending covert aid to the colonies under the shield of neutrality. Both governments had secretly sent supplies through a dummy company named Roderique Hortalez et Cie. At the same time, Congress had sent a secret emissary to Spanish New Orleans seeking aid. In the same month that Franklin arrived in Paris, the Spanish government issued a royal order that instructed all responsible officials, including the governors of Louisiana and Cuba, to quickly supply the Americanos with gunpowder and fusiles.

Both Spain and France anxiously waited to hear what congressional proposals Franklin carried with him. The two countries had lost the recently concluded Seven Years’ War to Great Britain. They resented the terms of peace and Great Britain’s constant aggression toward their colonies.

Spain’s ambassador to France, Pedro Pablo Abarca de Bolea, the Count of Aranda, would become Franklin’s major Spanish contact. They would work together through the final signing of peace in 1783. Already disposed in favor of the colonies, Aranda was quick to arrange meetings with the three Americans.

After the first meeting, Aranda arranged to have a translator present because “Franklin speaks very little French, Deane much less, and Lee none.” Nevertheless, the diplomatic talks with Spain continued. The initial conversations were amiable, and Franklin made a point of thanking the ambassador for Spanish aid already given as well as for the asylum Spain had granted to American ships in its ports.

Franklin promised to provide a full report of what Congress wanted, the delay of which concerned Aranda. The ambassador was told that the manpower of the British fleet had been significantly diminished without American sailors and merchantmen. Franklin observed that a decrease in shipbuilding materials from the colonies also affected Great Britain.

Aranda and his superiors knew that America and France both needed Spain. He asked his government to consider an immediate entry into the war, but was unanimously rebuffed. Spain would wait to strengthen its own forces while checking Portugal’s involvement on the side of Great Britain and prolonging the rebellion through covert aid. The Spanish authorities, especially the minister of state, the Count of Floridablanca, felt that they would have a real opportunity to negotiate a favorable peace that would include American independence.

Initially, the diplomats in Paris all agreed that the Americans would not go to Spain but deal with Aranda in Paris. As long as Spain remained neutral and above suspicion, it could continue to provide covert aid. But the American commissioners were anxious to get something more done before the winter’s thaw. George Washington had vacated New York, returned across the Delaware River to claim a small moral victory, and followed it with another victory at Princeton, New Jersey, before settling into winter quarters at Morristown.

As a result, the commissioners decided to send Arthur Lee to Madrid. For some reason, Aranda agreed. Maybe he believed such a move would force Spain’s hand. But it backfired. Floridablanca’s predecessor, the Marquis de Grimaldi, and the Basque banker and merchant Diego de Gardoqui, who would later become Spain’s first ambassador to the United States, intercepted Lee before he could get to Madrid. The Spaniards conveyed in specific terms the aid and support Spain was giving and made a promise that they would intercede on behalf of the Americans to solicit aid from the Netherlands. Lee returned to France.

In March 1777, Franklin wrote two letters that he sent to France’s minister of state and to Aranda. Franklin acknowledged that dealing with one or the other of the two countries was as if dealing with both, and that Congress was willing to tie its goal of independence, even subordinate it, to the goals of Spain and France. He listed a number of particulars dealing with the Floridas, the Mississippi River, the Gulf Coast, and the West Indies.

At the same time, Franklin gave Aranda an oversized certificate with a wax seal signed by John Hancock, the president of Congress. That document instructed Franklin “to communicate, treat and conclude with his most Catholic Majesty, the King of Spain . . . a treaty . . . for the just purpose for assistance in carrying on the present war between Great Britain and these United States.” An accompanying letter, written by Franklin, informed Aranda that he had been appointed “Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Spain” but understood why he should stay in France.

Spain’s aid went through France as well as directly through its own port of Bilbao under the supervision of Gardoqui. Funds from Mexico helped pay for France’s forces in the Caribbean, and other aid was processed through Cuba to New Orleans and then shipped upstream to Spanish St. Louis and on to the colonies through Fort Pitt.

Aranda reported that the Americans “want nothing for free” and had set up a system of credit in a Paris bank. Mostly because of Franklin’s efforts, France signed two treaties and entered the war. The failure of its plan to surprise the British fleet at New York made Spain’s participation the key to victory. However, Spain continued to seek a negotiated peace while organizing its own forces for the possibility of war.

The Spanish negotiations failed. On June 21, 1779, Spain declared war on Great Britain. The colonies sent John Adams and John Jay to replace Deane and Lee. Jay was sent to Madrid. Protecting Spain’s neutrality was no longer an issue. Now aid would be direct, including actual military action.

Spain’s importance became most evident when Spanish money and an econo-military strategy overseen by Francisco de Saavedra resulted in the defeat of the British army at Yorktown by the combined American and French forces.

Negotiations for peace began in earnest in Paris. Still, there were delays, as all the parties had their respective positions. At Franklin’s behest, Jay joined the American negotiators. Jay, in effect, went behind the backs of Spain and France to seek a separate peace. He is given credit as well as criticism for the eventual peace agreement.

Largely overlooked are the activities of Francisco de Saavedra, who traveled to Paris to organize a major invasion of British-held Jamaica. French and Spanish armadas were assembling in the port of Cádiz. A force of twenty-five thousand soldiers with seventy-five ships-of-the-line was being prepared for the attack. The English were aware of this, and one wonders how that played into their eventual desire to agree to terms ending the war and granting the colonies their independence.

Thomas E. Chávez, PhD, is a research associate at the Latin American & Iberian Institute at the University of New Mexico and former executive director of the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. He is the author of Spain and the Independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift (University of New Mexico Press, 2002).