Hispanics in the American Civil War

• 1. Introduction

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  Hispanics in the American Civil War fought on both sides of the deadliest conflict in American history, yet their stories have largely gone untold. When Admiral David Farragut stood on his flagship at Mobile Bay in August 1864 and shouted "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!", few knew that the man issuing that order was the son of a Spanish-born father named Jordi Farragut. That moment encapsulates a broader truth: Hispanic soldiers, sailors, officers, spies, and surgeons shaped the outcome of a war that defined the United States, and they did so on both sides of the divide. Who were these men and women? Where did they come from? And what happened to them after the guns fell silent?

• 2. Who Counted as Hispanic

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  Not every Hispanic fighter in the war was an American citizen. Many were Spanish subjects or nationals from the Caribbean, Central America, and South America who found themselves caught up in a foreign war. Puerto Rico and Cuba, for example, were Spanish colonies at the time, which meant Puerto Ricans and Cubans who enlisted were formally inscribed as Spaniards in units like the Garibaldi Guard's D Company. Some fighters were born in territory that later became part of the United States but never gained the right to citizenship. At the start of the war, roughly 3,500 Hispanics joined the fight, mostly Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans. That number grew to around 10,000 by the war's end, with about 2,500 serving the Confederacy and 1,000 initially joining the Union.

• 3. Farragut and the Navy

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  David Farragut was promoted to vice admiral on the 21st of December 1864, and then to full admiral on the 25th of July 1866, becoming the first person in the Navy's history to hold that rank. His greatest moment came at the Battle of Mobile Bay on the 5th of August 1864. Mobile, Alabama was the Confederacy's last major Gulf port still open for trade. The bay was heavily mined with tethered naval explosives then called torpedoes. When the USS Tecumseh struck a mine and sank, Farragut called out through a trumpet from his flagship to learn what had happened. Told the answer was "Torpedoes!", he gave the order that passed into legend. His fleet pushed through, overpowered the heavy artillery of Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines, and defeated the squadron of Admiral Franklin Buchanan. After the war, Farragut's last active posting was command of the European Squadron from 1867 to 1868, sailing under his flag aboard the screw frigate USS Franklin. He remained on active duty for the rest of his life, an honor shared by only six other American naval officers.

• 4. New Mexico and the Western Theater

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  The New Mexico Volunteer Infantry, mustered in August 1861, was the Union unit with the most Hispanic officers: 157 in total. Colonel Miguel E. Pino commanded the 2nd Regiment. Before the war, Pino had led an expedition from Santa Fe against the Navajos. At the Battle of Valverde, fought from the 20th to the 21st of February 1862, Pino and Lieutenant Colonel Jose Maria Valdez were both cited by Union General Canby in his official report for their performance. The Battle of Glorieta Pass, fought from the 26th to the 28th of March 1862, proved decisive for the entire New Mexico Campaign. Major Manuel Antonio Chaves played a pivotal role there. On the 28th of March 1862, Chaves led 490 New Mexico volunteers down a 200-foot slope, surprising a small Texan guard and capturing the Confederates' supply train. They destroyed the wagons and burned everything. Without supplies, the Confederate push into New Mexico collapsed. Among the last engagements the regiment fought was the Battle of Aro Pass on the 5th of July 1865; the regiment was finally mustered out on the 30th of September 1866.

• 5. The Confederate Side

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  Santos Benavides was the highest-ranking Tejano in the Confederate Army, commanding the 33rd Texas Cavalry Regiment. His most celebrated action came in March 1864, when Union Colonel Edmund J. Davis, who had earlier offered Benavides a Union generalship, led a force toward Laredo. On the 18th of March 1864, Major Alfred Holt moved roughly two hundred Union men toward the San Agustin Plaza to destroy five thousand bales of Confederate cotton. Benavides commanded forty-two men and repelled three Union attacks at Zacate Creek in what became known as the Battle of Laredo. A year earlier, in 1863, he had secured the passage of Confederate cotton to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, in Mexico, providing the Confederacy with a crucial economic lifeline. Far from Texas, Colonel Ambrosio Jose Gonzales, a native Cuban who had settled in South Carolina, volunteered during the bombardment of Fort Sumter and rose to become Chief of Artillery for the Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Despite serving at the Battle of Honey Hill during Sherman's March to the Sea in 1864, President Jefferson Davis declined promotion requests for Gonzales to brigadier general six times.

• 6. Women Who Fought and Spied

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  Loreta Janeta Velazquez was a Cuban woman who enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861 without her soldier-husband's knowledge, disguising herself as a male soldier under the alias "Lieutenant Harry Buford". She fought at Bull Run, Ball's Bluff, and Fort Donelson before her gender was discovered in New Orleans and she was discharged. She reenlisted and fought at Shiloh, where she was unmasked a second time, and then turned to espionage, working in both male and female disguises. Lola Sanchez, born in 1844 in Armstrong, Florida, of Cuban descent, chose a different path. Her father was accused of being a Confederate spy by Union forces and imprisoned. The Union Army occupied her home in Palatka, Florida, and she overheard an officer's plans for a raid. She alerted Confederate Captain John Jackson Dickison, whose soldiers were able to surprise the Union troops in what became known as the Battle of Horse Landing, capturing a Union warship in what the source describes as the only known incident in United States history where a cavalry unit captured and sank an enemy gunboat.

• 7. Medal of Honor Recipients

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  Three Hispanics received the Medal of Honor during the Civil War, the highest military decoration the United States awards. Corporal Joseph H. De Castro, who served in Company I of the 19th Massachusetts Infantry, was the first Hispanic-American to receive it. During battle, De Castro attacked a Confederate flag bearer from the 19th Virginia Infantry with the staff of his own regiment's colors and seized the opposing flag, handing it to General Alexander S. Webb. Seaman Philip Bazaar, based in Massachusetts and assigned to the Union Navy, carried dispatches under heavy Confederate fire on the 12th of January 1865 during the land assault on Fort Fisher in North Carolina, a stronghold protecting the vital port of Wilmington. Seaman John Ortega of Pennsylvania served aboard the USS Saratoga with the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. In August and September 1864, Ortega joined landing parties from the ship that raided the South Carolina coast, capturing prisoners and destroying ordnance, ammunition, buildings, bridges, and salt works. Ortega was awarded the Medal of Honor and became the first Hispanic member of the United States Navy to receive that distinction.

• 8. After the War

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  The post-war paths of Hispanic veterans diverged sharply. Diego Archuleta, who became the first Hispanic to reach the rank of brigadier general, was appointed an Indian Agent by President Abraham Lincoln and later served in the Mexico Legislature. Jose Francisco Chaves became the first Secretary of Education for New Mexico. Federico and Adolfo Fernandez Cavada were appointed United States consuls in Cuba, Federico at Trinidad and Adolfo at Cienfuegos, but both resigned when Cuba's Ten Years' War broke out in 1868. Federico rose to Commander-in-Chief of all Cuban forces and was captured by the Spanish gunboat Neptuno in 1871, tried, and executed by firing squad in July of that year. His brother Adolfo was killed in battle on the 18th of December 1871 at the coffee estate La Adelaida near Santiago de Cuba. David Camden DeLeón, who had become the Confederacy's first Surgeon General in 1864, moved to Mexico after the war, then returned to the United States at the request of President Ulysses S. Grant and settled in New Mexico to practice medicine. Lieutenant Augusto Rodriguez, who had served with the 15th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry and fought at Fredericksburg, became a firefighter in New Haven, then a cigar store owner and saloon keeper, a life as ordinary and American as any veteran could claim.