The forgotten Cuban role in America’s independence

The United States today is trying to help Cubans regain their liberty by applying unprecedented pressure to the communist regime that has repressed them for 67 years. It is not the first time America has assisted its smaller neighbor. But Cuba, too, played a role in helping America gain the independence that we rightly commemorate this weekend.

Cubans helped finance the war effort when it was most needed. But Cubans, including members of my own family, also took part in the fighting, including key battles that exhausted the British and led to their surrender at Yorktown.

In one of the most touching parts of this multifaceted story, the upper-class women of Havana sold off their jewels to fund the American war effort at a critical moment, the Battle of Yorktown, raising 1 million French pounds, or livres.

“The million that was supplied … by the ladies of Havana, may, with truth, be regarded as the ‘bottom dollars’ upon which the edifice of American independence was erected,” historian Stephen Bonsal wrote in When the French Were Here.

There was palpable affection for colonists intent on creating their own nation. But this was not altruism, necessarily. Spain, the Catholic power that then ruled Cuba, had been engaged in hostilities with Protestant Britain on and off dating back to the Reformation, if not earlier. For Spain, defeating Britain was a priority. The inhabitants of Havana had also not forgotten the eight-month British occupation of Havana in 1762-63 during the French and Indian War.

Nor is U.S. help to Cubans today altruistic either. Getting rid of Cuba’s communist regime is the most “America First” thing to do. Cuba’s regime has sown disorder inside America since its start and remains an ever-present danger.

The U.S. will most likely not have to get kinetically involved in Cuba this time, since Cuba’s communist regime is like a putrid mango that will fall on its own. The package of 176 economic reforms passed on June 18-19 by Cuba’s rubber-stamp National Assembly, which supposedly aims to decentralize the economy, is an act of desperation that will not save the government.

But Spain and Cuba did get involved in the American revolutionary effort 119 years earlier after King Charles III declared war on Britain in 1779. Spain’s contribution is much less well known than that of France, but proved substantial nonetheless.

The effort was led by Bernardo de Galvez, who was governor of the Spanish colony of Louisiana from Jan. 1, 1777, on, and after whom the Texas city of Galveston is named. News that Spain had declared war on Britain on June 21 reached the Spanish colonies before the British colonies, and Galvez launched a surprise attack to retake the colony of West Florida, which Spain had lost to Britain in 1763 when it traded it for Havana.

Fort Bute fell on Sept. 7 to a force of 1,427 men made up of Spanish, Cubans, and Mexican officers and soldiers, and many people of different ancestry who resided in Louisiana, such as Canary Islanders, and including also American volunteers (comprising some free black soldiers) and Cajuns.

Galvez then marched a short 15 miles to Baton Rouge, arriving on Sept. 12 to face British soldiers and German mercenaries. Galvez started bombing the combined forces on Sept. 21, and after a few hours, British Lt. Col. Alexander Dickson surrendered the fort at Baton Rouge and another one at Natchez.

Galvez turned triumphantly to New Orleans and went back and forth to Havana to beef up his forces and coordinate strategy. He finally departed New Orleans in January the following year with about a dozen ships and approached Mobile in late February. On March 12, Galvez opened bombardment, hitting the fort’s walls. Capt. Elias Drummond raised the white flag a day later, and Galvez captured over 1,000 soldiers and civilians and took control of Mobile Bay.

The Cuban flag is raised over its new embassy in Washington, July 20, 2015. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool, File)

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The Mobile campaign led to the decisive and last battle, Pensacola, the capital of West Florida. The siege started a year later and turned into the longest battle of the American Revolution, lasting from March 9 to May 8, 1781. Galvez departed Havana for Pensacola on Feb. 28 with a huge force of 7,000 men and 40 ships.

Outside Pensacola, Galvez faced reticence among his officers, who feared a barrage of British artillery. Galvez then led the first ship into the harbor, an act of bravery that led Charles III to add to Galvez’s family coat of arms the motto, “Yo Solo”, I alone. Galvez himself was wounded in battle in April.

The British surrender after the two-month siege ended British control of Florida. The battle significantly reduced the number of troops and ships available to Cornwallis in Yorktown, which fell to Gen. George Washington’s Continental Army and the French five months later, ending fighting in our Revolutionary War.

The colonists were also helped with goods and skullduggery. Someone who masterminded a lot of support for the American effort was Juan de Miralles, who moved to Cuba as a young man, made a fortune, and married a member of the local aristocracy.

Miralles arrived in Philadelphia in late 1777 as a secret envoy. Soon he was clandestinely supplying arms, food, uniforms, etc., to the Continental Army. A year later he met George Washington at Christmas and the two became fast friends, often exchanging not just intelligence but also letters and gifts. He also worked assiduously to raise Washington’s profile in Havana and Madrid, commissioning and distributing portraits of Washington.

When Miralles died of pneumonia in April 1780 while visiting Washington at his camp in Morristown, New Jersey, Washington honored him with a military funeral, and had a requiem Catholic Mass said for him in Philadelphia, a most unusual thing, especially as the British were accusing the colonists of “popery” because of the alliance with France and Spain. Washington wrote to the governor of Cuba, “I the more sincerely sympathize with you in the loss of so estimable a friend. … It must however be some consolation to his connections to know that in this country he has been universally esteemed and will be universally regretted.”

Despite Miralles’s best efforts, the Continental Army was still in dire straits about a year later as it faced Cornwallis. Bonsal writes that the Count de Rochambeau, who led the French expeditionary force of some 6,000 and, under Washington’s command, helped set up the siege of Yorktown, sent out word that “the Continental troops [are] almost without clothes. The greater number [are] without socks or shoes. These people are at the very end of their resources.”

That’s when the ladies of Havana stepped in. Adm. Francois de Grasse wrote to Rochambeau, “I will send a frigate to Havana in quest of it, and you may depend upon receiving this amount; one million two hundred thousand livres.” The ladies had raised the funds.

WASHINGTON’S REGIME-CHANGE PLAYBOOK MIGHT STALL IN HAVANA

Two cousins of one of my direct ancestors, Jose Duarte, an ensign of Squadron of Dragoons of America, and Manuel Duarte, a captain in the Volunteer Infantry regiment of Cuba, both Cuban-born, fought in these campaigns. Some other members of my family did as well.

But I am hardly unique. Many Cuban Americans walk around Miami and other cities today not knowing of their ancestors’ involvement in the glorious making of America. The historian Granville Hough was to write, “The refugees and immigrants from Cuba are some of the most interesting people to the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) because the Cuban ancestors of these new Americans fought at Mobile, Pensacola … and were preparing to invade Jamaica when the Revolutionary War was ended by events in Europe.”