Title: Hispanics and the Civil War (U.S. National Park Service)
Headings: Hispanics and the Civil War
Hispanics and the Civil War
Civil War Defenses of Washington , Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park, Pecos National Historical Park, Stones River National Battlefield
Context for Conflict
Spanish Roots in American Soil
Soldiers in the Southeast
Soldiers in the North
Sailors: North and South
Immigrants Fighting under Different Flags
Soldiers in the Southwest
Hispanics on the Homefront
From Civil War to Civil Rights
Conclusion

Content: This push north- and westward continued with the establishment of trading posts, missions, colonies, and towns. By the 1700s, Spain claimed ownership of much of the continent. On July 4, 1776, while the American colonies in the East boldly declared independence from Britain, the Spanish were celebrating the founding of San Francisco on the other side of the continent. Imperial rivalries and the emergence of the United States of America would carve away this huge empire. By the mid-1800s most of the Spanish lands in North America were gone, now occupied as states and territories of the United States. But a Hispanic population remained, most notably in the Southeast and the Southwest, and these citizens were drawn into the conflict that swept the nation in 1861. Soldiers in the Southeast
Descendants of Spanish explorers and settlers made their homes along the bayous, on large plantations, and in the port cities of the Gulf Coast. National Park Service, Cane River Creole National Historical Park
In the Southeast, Hispanics commonly supported the Confederate cause. Many of Spanish ancestry lived in the Gulf Coast region of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana-lands that had once been Spanish West Florida and Louisiana. This population represented a rich mixture of cultures and languages: