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Hispanics
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The
Cuban patriot Narciso López approached Mexican War heroes Jefferson Davis and Robert
E. Lee in 1848 with the request to head a liberation army to free Cuba from
Spain -- Lee seriously considered the offer, but turned it down.
José Agustín Quintero, a Cuban poet and
revolutionary, ably served Confederate President Jefferson Davis as the C.S.
Commissioner to Northern Mexico, ensuring critical supplies from Europe flowed
through Mexican ports to the
Santiago Vidaurri, governor of the border states of
Coahuila and Nuevo León, offered to secede northern Mexico and join the
Confederacy; Jefferson Davis declined, afraid the valuable "neutral"
Mexican ports would be then blockaded.
The Spanish inventor Narciso Monturiol offered the
Confederacy his advanced submarine Ictineo to smash the Federal blockade. Never
purchased, Jules Verne apparently based the Nautilus on this, the world's most
advanced vessel of the day.
Ambrosio José González, a famous Cuban revolutionary,
served Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard as his artillery officer in
Charleston; earlier, in New York, he helped design the modern Cuban and
(inversed) Puerto Rican flags.
The Mexican Santos Benavides, a former Texas ranger,
commanded the Confederate 33rd Texas Cavalry, a Mexican- American unit which
defeated the Union in the 1864 Battle of Laredo, Texas. He became the only
Mexican CS colonel.
Thomas Jordan, a Confederate general responsible for
early codes used in spying on Washington, after the war led the Cuban
revolutionary army as Commander-in-Chief, training its generals and in 1870
routing the Spaniards at two-to-one odds.
Lola Sanchez, of a Cuban family living near St.
Augustine, had her sisters serve dinner to visiting Federals, while she raced
out at night and warned the nearest Confederate camp. The Yankees thus lost a
general, his unit and a gunboat the next day.
Loretta Janeta Velazquez, a Cuban woman, claimed to
have fought in the war disguised as a Confederate soldier, Lt. Harry Buford.
She chronicled her amazing and harrowing adventures in an account called The
Woman in Battle.
James Hamilton Tomb, a Confederate engineer on the
innovative semi-submarine ship David, accepted a post-war offer from the
Brazilian emperor as technical expert on torpedoes (submarine mines) in the
Paraguayan War of 1865-1870.
Hunter Davidson, a Confederate torpedo (submarine
mine) scientist, assumed the head of the Argentine Torpedo and Hydrographic
Bureau for some years, training its leadership, and retired to Asunción,
Paraguay, where he is buried.
John Randolph Tucker, head of the Charleston
Confederate Naval Squadron, accepted a post-war position as Vice-Admiral
heading the combined Peruvian-Chilean fleets in a Pacific conflict against
Spanish coastal incursions.
John Newland Maffitt, who before the war captured
illegal slave-trading ships, served the Confederacy as the
Thomas Jefferson Page, a Confederate naval commander
who learned of the war's end in Cuba after sailing the ironclad
Mexican service influenced Confederate general
Stonewall Jackson; he often spoke Spanish endearments to his wife, Anna.
After
the war, many prominent governors and other Confederates established a colony,
Carlotta, in Mexico.
More Info? Check Out These Fine Books:
Richard H. Bradford, The Virginius Affair, 1980
Light
Townsend Cummins, Spanish Observers and the American Revolution, 1775-1783,
1991
James W. Daddysman, The Matamoros Trade: Confederate Commerce, Diplomacy and
Intrigue, 1984
Ella Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy, 1965 (reprint, 1940 edition)
Andrew Rolle, The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico, 1965
Ronnie C. Tyler, Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy, 1973
Frank de Varona (ed.), Hispanic Presence in the United States: Historical
Beginnings, 1993
David Werlich, Admiral of the Amazon: John Randolph Tucker - His Confederate
Colleagues and Peru, 1990
John O'Donnell-Rosales, Hispanic Confederates, list of several thousand who
served the Confederacy, 8 1/2 x 11, 90 pp., paper, (1997), reprint 1998.
Clearfield Publishing Co., 200 E. Eager St., Baltimore, MD 21202