Spain and the American Civil War

During the American Civil War, the Kingdom of Spain was the target of intense diplomatic efforts by representatives of the United States and the Confederate States of America. At the start of the war, both sides believed that Spain was the likeliest to recognize the Confederacy among the European nations, due to having poor relations with the United States for a long time before Secession, and the persistence of slavery in Spanish Cuba and Puerto Rico. For her part, Spain appreciated that a successful rebellion would reduce American expansionism and allow the recovery of Spanish influence in Hispanic America, but she was reluctant to intervene unilaterally due to long-standing policies of cooperation with Great Britain and France, as well as avoiding conflict with the United States. Spain discussed the possibility of diplomatic recognition with her allies, and while never going through it she recognized Confederate belligerency from June 17, 1861, which allowed Confederate warships to use Spanish ports. Cuba was also an important base for blockade runners in the American Civil War, most of which were owned and crewed by British citizens. ^[1]

Background

See also: Ostend Manifesto

Spanish territories (red) and countries that became independent from Spain (blue) in the first half of the 19th century

Spain-United States relations were poor long before the war. The US supported the Spanish American wars of independence and created the Monroe Doctrine mainly as a block to Spain regaining its colonies, while Spain protested the Mexican-American War as unfair. Furthermore, as relations between Northern and Southern states deteriorated in the 1850s, Southerners insisted on acquiring Cuba as a slave territory that would tip the slave-free state balance in their favor, by war if necessary. Northerners opposed the acquisition for the same reason, but many including Abraham Lincoln believed it inevitable. However, as the Spanish economy industrialized and grew after the First Carlist War, Spain expanded and modernized its navy with the main aim of defending Cuba from the United States. By 1860, the Spanish Navy was the fourth most powerful in the world, surpassing the US Navy in total firepower and displacement, though not in ship numbers. ^[1]

Diplomacy

At the beginning of the Civil War, the Spanish government declared neutrality. Spain was aware of Southern ambitions in Cuba, but also appreciated that a breakaway South would be weaker than the intact United States. Even more important was Spain's commitment to good relations with Britain and France: if both recognized the CSA and joined the war, Spain would follow, but if neither or only one did, Spain would not. Public opinion mainly ignored the war for those in Mexico and the Dominican Republic, but many aristocrats, military leaders, slave-owning criollos, and Cuban traders favored the Confederacy. Support for the Union gained some traction among middle and lower classes and in the ruling Liberal Union, particularly after the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation. ^[1]

Both Southern and Northern American politicians dismissed Spain as backwards culturally and politically, as well as decadent. However once war began, the same prejudice of Spain as a reactionary power and natural enemy of the United States, ^[2] made both sides assume that she was a natural ally of the Confederacy, and should be courted more vigorously than even Britain and France. ^[1] A rare hispanophile before the war was J. Johnston Pettigrew, who visited Spain in 1859 and wrote on the similarities he found between Spanish and Southern culture. ^[3]

Pierre Adolphe Rost

Pierre Adolphe Rost was appointed Confederate commissioner to Madrid, the only of the first batch of commissioners to be tasked with getting recognition from a single European country rather than two. In March 1861, foreign minister Saturnino Calderón Collantes met unofficially with Rost and told him that Spain would not initiate recognition on its own, but that he didn't rule it out in concert with other powers and with approval of France and Britain. Afterward, Calderón refused to meet any representative of the Confederacy unless the war turned clearly in the South's favor. Recognition was discussed with France and Britain, but never in the presence of Confederate agents. On 17 June 1861, Spain recognized Confederate belligerency and allowed their ships to use Spanish ports. Though not the first country to do this, the instant boost that Cuban ports gave to Confederate trade made Spain the target of attacks in the Union press, which labeled her "the only friend of the rebels". ^[1]

Carl Schurz

After asking Cassius Marcellus Clay, who preferred Russia as destination, Lincoln named Carl Schurz minister to Spain and instructed him to block Spanish recognition of the Confederacy, improve commercial ties, and remind Spain that it had been Southerners who wanted to annex Cuba. The naming of Schurz (an abolitionist, antimonarchist, and veteran of the German revolutions of 1848–1849) was protested by the Spanish minister to Washington Gabriel García Tassara, and the fact that he had been proposed for, and rejected already by Portugal and Brazil was considered a snub. Schurz himself believed that the ministry to Spain was the most important after Mexico, but he despised the country, and resigned after several months hinting that Spain would soon recognize the Confederacy. Returning to the States, Schurz stressed his belief that Spain, France, and Britain would soon recognize the Confederacy unless the Union won decisive battles and pushed for total emancipation in rebel and loyalist states. His provisional replacement was Horatio J. Perry, the husband of Spanish poetess Carolina Coronado. ^[1]

Spain supported French proposals to mediate in the conflict in 1862 and 1863, but allowed France to take the lead. In June 1863, a few months after the House of Commons voted against recognizing the Confederacy, France extracted from Spain a plea to recognize the CSA if France did it first, regardless of British stance. However, emperor Napoleon III became uninterested in the American Civil War due to the lack of decisive Confederate victories, and the outbreak of the January Uprising and Second Schleswig War in Europe. On 5 June 1865, Spain withdrew its recognition of Confederate belligerency, six days after France and three after Britain. ^[1]

Naval policy

During the Civil War, the Union Navy deliberately steered clear from Cuban and Dominican waters to prevent naval incidents with Spain, despite being aware of their use by blockade runners. The Spanish reciprocated by keeping their own navy away from US waters, and rejected Tassara's petitions in April 1862 and late June 1863 (when Tassara believed that the fall of Washington, D.C. was imminent) to send warships up the Potomac River, protect the Spanish legation and evacuate it if necessary. ^[1]

Spain allowed the US Navy to contract for a coaling station near Cádiz. Seward offered the same deal for the Spanish Navy on US soil, but Spain did not pursue it. On January 4, 1862 strong US diplomatic and naval presence in Cádiz forced the damaged CSS Sumter to leave port within 48 hours and take refuge in Gibraltar, where it was sold to the British, repaired, and reused as a blockade runner. In January 1863, CSS Alabama docked in Santo Domingo without incident, but CSS Florida doing the same in Cuba engendered US protests in Havana and Madrid, due to the courtesy not being extended to USS Massachusetts two days later. ^[1]

The most controversial incident happened near the end of the war, when the ironclad CSS Stonewall, unable to sail except in calm seas, docked at Ferrol between 3 February and 24 March 1865, well past the 48-hours allowed per Spain's recognition of Confederate belligerency. From here, the Stonewall proceeded to Lisbon and then to Havana, followed by two Union warships that were unable to pierce the Confederate ship's armor. On 19 May, the Stonewall was sold for $16,000 to the Spanish colonial authorities, who resold it to the United States for the same sum in July. ^[1]

Military observers and weapons trade

Juan Prim at the time of the American Civil War

During the war, the Union granted Spanish representatives unprecedented access to weapons, armies, and military installations. This was a calculated move to dissuade Spain from siding with the Confederacy by showing her the military strength of the Union, all while presenting an outwardly friendly face rather than hostile. ^{[4] [1]}

In the spring of 1861, the Union hosted a delegation of Spanish artillery officers investigating weapons purchases for the garrisons of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Though no purchase was made in the end, this helped build positive relations between the two countries. In 1862, general Juan Prim met Lincoln and William H. Seward in the White House while on his way back from refusing to join the Second French Intervention in Mexico. Prim also observed the Army of the Potomac ahead of the Battle of Richmond and visited a prison in Philadelphia. Back in Spain, Prim warned of the size and quality of the Union Army and US resolve to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, in a veiled but public criticism of the queen's desire to keep Santo Domingo and support the French-installed Second Mexican Empire. ^{[4] [1]} Afterward, Prim evolved to more liberal ideals that culminated with him leading the overthrow of Isabella II during the 1868 Glorious Revolution. ^[1]

On 8 May 1863 the Spanish purchased four steam gunboats from US shipyards. From the same year, Tassara, military attachés, and other Spanish agents were shown the USS Monitor and other ironclads that caused great impression. Tassara reflected that Spain's wooden fleet was useless against such ships despite its own naval buildup. ^[1]

Valeriano Weyler possibly studied William Tecumseh Sherman's scorched earth tactics as attaché in Washington and applied them as captain-general during the Cuban War of Independence, though the evidence is inconclusive. ^[1]

Overseas territories

Santo Domingo

Main article: Annexation of the Dominican Republic to Spain

On 18 March 1861, Dominican president Pedro Santana announced the return of his country to Spain after a fraudulent plebiscite. Despite negotiating with Santana, Spain did not expect this to happen so soon and Isabella II did not ratify the annexation until 19 May, after the Civil War had begun and it was clear that the United States would not intervene. Seward raised the option of war with Spain, but Lincoln only protested, ^[1] as did Haiti and other Latin American countries. ^[5]

The Union refused to arm the Dominican resistance or recognize the Second Dominican Republic. After the Dominican Restoration War broke out in 1863, Tassara commented that the Union remained strictly neutral. ^[1]

From the period of Haitian rule and until 1860, Santo Domingo was a destination for African Americans wishing to leave the United States, specially those with knowledge in agriculture. The Civil War interrupted this flow. In 1863, Spain studied bringing white cotton farmers from the Southern United States instead, who would increase the racial difference with Haiti and be more sympathetic to Spanish rule. However, the Restoration War prevented this. ^[1]

Spain made progress against the Dominicans in 1864, ^[5] but Lincoln's reelection convinced the government that the Union's victory was a fait accompli and US intervention in Santo Domingo would follow. ^[1] The Spanish withdrawal was announced on 1 May 1865 ^[5] and completed on 11 July. ^[6]

Cuba

Robert W. Shufeldt

In July 1861, Robert M. T. Hunter appointed Charles J. Helm Confederate emissary to Havana. Helm met several times with captain-general Francisco Serrano, triggering protests by US consul-general Robert Wilson Shufeldt and a demand for an explanation by the Lincoln administration. Helm told Serrano that the CSA wished to be a close collaborator of Spain and was willing to abandon all claims to Cuba, recognize the annexation of Santo Domingo, and begin negotiations toward a defensive alliance; he said Spain should worry about the Union trying to seize Cuba, not the Confederacy. Meanwhile Shufeldt angered Serrano by reminding him that the Union Navy had left Spanish shipping alone around Cuba, despite being aware of the presence of blockade runners and a powerful US flotilla pursuing them. Serrano told both sides that Spain was committed to neutrality, and that any change would come from Madrid, not Havana. ^[1]

Spain allowed a handful of Confederate leaders and their families to take refuge in Cuba after the war, including John C. Breckinridge, who had ironically campaigned for acquiring Cuba in the 1860 United States presidential election. Despite US protests, the Spanish allowed Breckinridge to leave for Great Britain, where he remained until a federal amnesty allowed him to return in 1869. ^[1]

Slavery

Main article: Slavery in Cuba

By the beginning of the war, slavery had been abolished in all Spanish territories except Cuba and Puerto Rico, and the annexation of the Dominican Republic specified that it would not be reintroduced. ^{[1] [5]} However, abolitionism met much less opposition in Puerto Rico, where traditional low-scale slavery remained and the slave trade had de-facto died on its own in the 1850s, than in Cuba, where profitable large scale plantation slavery expanded in the early 19th century. Most slaves in the history of Cuba, between 700,000 and one million, were imported between 1790 and 1867. ^[4]

Spain abolished the slave trade in 1845, but this was rarely enforced. Following the Lyons-Seward Treaty, the United Kingdom and the United States pressured Spain to make the ban real. ^[4] In the spring of 1862, the United States and Spain collaborated to apprehend a suspected US slave ship, the Southern-based Falmouth, in Cádiz harbor. Spanish authorities alerted that the US consul in Cádiz, E. S. Eggleston, was uncooperative and suspected that he was involved in the trade himself or bribed by slavers. Though Eggleston could not be punished due to his personal connections to Seward, Perry reprehended him. ^[1]

The Emancipation Proclamation and the Union's victory pushed more Spanish politicians to campaign for the abolition of slavery in the Antilles. Lincoln in particular was lionized as a slave liberator and republican icon by Spanish progressives, who paid no attention to his role keeping the United States together. In 1865, the Spanish Abolitionist Society was founded by Spaniards and Puerto Ricans in Madrid. The slave trade was banned again, this time specifically for Cuba, in 1867, but further discussion on slavery was put on hold after the outbreak of the Ten Years' War in 1868. From 1870 slavery was gradually abolished until it was banned completely in 1873 in Puerto Rico, and 1886 in Cuba. ^[4]

Volunteers

Captain Carlos Álvarez de la Mesa, 39th Infantry Regiment, native of Madrid and grandfather of Major General Terry de la Mesa Allen Sr.

See also: Hispanics in the American Civil War and Foreign enlistment in the American Civil War

For the Union

The 39th New York Infantry Regiment of the Union Army, made of European immigrants, included a "Spanish-Portuguese Company" of volunteers from the Iberian Peninsula. One of its Spanish members, Francisco Navarrete, captured a Confederate flag at the Battle of Gettysburg. Though this feat was usually rewarded with a medal, Navarrete did not receive any, for unknown reasons. ^[3]

Two Union commanders had family connections to Spain. Major General George Meade was born in Cádiz to a Philadelphia merchant family and lived there until he was thirteen years old. The first admiral of the US Navy, David Farragut, was the son of Jordi Ferragut, an American Revolutionary War naval officer from Minorca (disputed at the time between Britain and Spain). ^[3]

For the Confederacy

The presence of "Spanish" soldiers in the 13th Louisiana Infantry Regiment of the Confederate States Army is recorded, but all individual information about its members is lost. The 10th Louisiana Infantry Regiment included at least twenty Spaniards, all residents of New Orleans which had been part of the Spanish Empire until 1803 and retained strong commercial ties to Spanish Cuba before the American Civil War. Almost all saw action in Pennsylvania and Virginia, including at Gettysburg against the 39th New York Infantry. ^[3] These Peninsulares in the Confederate forces were dwarfed by seventy Cuban volunteers resident in New Orleans alone, and many others from Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, where they rose to the highest ranks of lieutenant colonel and colonel. The Cuban exile Ambrosio José Gonzales, who supported the annexation of Cuba to the United States before the war, was responsible for logistics and artillery in the Confederate forces, including coastal defenses, and was chief of artillery for P. G. T. Beauregard. Gonzales run afoul of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and was denied a promotion to general despite his merits exceeding those of others that attained the position. ^[1]

See also

• Diplomacy of the American Civil War
• Spain and the American Revolutionary War

References

1. Bowen, W. H. (2011). Spain and the American Civil War. University of Missouri Press. 208 pages.
2. Kagan, R. L. (Ed.). (2002). Spain in America: the origins of Hispanism in the United States. University of Illinois Press, 286 pages.
3. Hernández, J. (2012). Norte contra Sur: Historia total de la Guerra de Secesión. Roca Editorial, 448 pages.
4. Doyle, D. H. (Ed.). (2017). American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe, and the Crisis of the 1860s. UNC Press Books. 272 pages.
5. Losada, J. C. (2012). Batallas decisivas de la historia de España. Ed. Aguilar, pp. 371-386.
6. Scheina, R.L. (2003). Latin America's Wars: The Age of the Caudillo, 1791-1899, Vol I. Brassey's Inc., pgs. 347-353.