While in San Juan Puerto Rico I had the opportunity to visit Fort San Juan. It is ran by our National Park Service. Puerto Rico ended slavery on March 22, 1873 according to the ranger who worked there. Of course it was owned by Spain until the Spanish-American War.

Interestingly the ranger said a few Spanish-American battles were fought in Puerto Rico. And then the park ranger who wore a NPS uniform said something I thought was odd. He said and I will paraphrase that the war 1861-1865 was mainly made up of people with Spanish descent in the South and the North was mainly made up of people with English descent. He said in many ways the war was fought between the people of Spanish descent and people of English descent. I ask him where he received his information and he said it was a well known fact and that it was also his opinion.

I had to correct him on that issue. While there may have been many people of Spanish descent within the ranks of the Confederacy it certainly was not a high percentage that would rank as the majority or mainly. He ask me if I'd heard of St. Augustine, Florida and Saint Mary's Georgia? I said yes and I've also heard of Jamestown, Virginia.

His statements bothered me because he was a United States Park Ranger. I ask him if there were any former Confederates buried in Puerto Rico and he said if there were they were marked as John Doe. I saw no Confederate tombstones while at Puerto Rico. I had thought that perhaps there may have been some former Confederates at Puerto Rico because they still had slavery in 1865.

The ranger stated that some Confederate blockade runners had visited San Juan for sugar cane etc. That might be? I don't know if the entire staff of the Park Service had the same views as this park ranger? But he did refer to the war of 1861-1865 in the United States as the war between the Spanish decent against the English descent. I would not have dreamed that there yet was another name for our war in Puerto Rico.