Bernardo de Galvez in Louisiana, 1776-1783 - Paperback

by John Caughey (Author)

Spanish colonial governor Bernardo de Gï 1/2lvez gained the respect and admiration of the citizens of both Louisiana and the newly formed United States for his vigorous, capable leadership and military action during the American Revolutionary War. This comprehensive study follows Gï 1/2lvez's career in Louisiana and the important role he played in the war, a role often left out of American history books.

Back Jacket

Spanish colonial governor Bernardo de Gï¿1/2lvez gained the respect and admiration of the citizens of both Louisiana and the newly formed United States for his vigorous, capable leadership and military action during the American Revolutionary War. This comprehensive study follows Gï¿1/2lvez's career in Louisiana and the important role he played in the war, a role often left out of American history books.
Divided into three sections, the book includes the history of Spain's governance in Louisiana before Gï¿1/2lvez, his governorship, and his brief career as viceroy of New Spain before his death in 1789. Though a large portion of the text focuses on Gï¿1/2lvez's military campaigns, which were the only battles west of the Allegheny Mountains during the American Revolution, the account also chronicles his daily colonial struggles, such as how to keep Louisiana safe from Indian attacks. A bibliography with notes about the location of records consulted and a portrait of Gï¿1/2lvez round out the biography. This thorough, well-researched, and readable work is an essential for any history lover's collection.

Author Biography

John Walton Caughey was born in 1902 in Wichita, Kansas. He attended the University of Texas and gained his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1928. A few years later he joined the staff at UCLA, where he taught classes on the Pacific Coast and the American West and Spanish borderlands and specialized in California history. He also edited the Pacific Historical Review and sat on the editorial boards of various Western historical journals. He authored, coauthored, or edited over twenty-six books throughout his career. History was Caughey's passion, and he was very active in several different organizations. He was on the board of the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians. He was also the chairman of the UCLA Department of History. He was a dignified, gentlemanly, and gifted teacher at UCLA for more than forty years. He was a mentor for two generations of historians of California and the West and supervised three dozen doctoral dissertations. He was also a social activist and civil libertarian who cared deeply about education and wrote one of the first textbooks that took into account the role of women and minorities in American history. Caughey championed desegregation of the Los Angeles Unified School District; opposed capital punishment, blacklisting, and quotas; and fought for the preservation of the wilderness and ecology. In 1950 he fought McCarthy, as he and thirty other members of the University of California faculty were fired for refusing to sign a