Havana Silver Helps Win Yorktown

In 1781, as George Washington’s Continental Army and French commander Rochambeau struggled to pay troops and finance the Yorktown campaign, Spanish official Francisco Saavedra turned to the people of Havana, Cuba, for help. Havana’s residents quickly raised hundreds of thousands of silver pesos and shipped the money north, giving the Allied forces the funds they needed to keep soldiers supplied and moving. That emergency cash infusion helped Washington and his allies carry out the siege of Yorktown, the decisive victory that effectively ended the American Revolution.

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