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5 Fig. 3. e British Lion engaging Four Powers, an anonymous London engraving (1782), shows the U.S. in the guise of a rattlesnake, om the "join or die" motif popularized by Benjamin Franklin in the mid-eighteenth century. e three other powers are France (a fighting cock), Spain (a cocker spaniel), and Holland (a pug dog ). Only France was formally allied with the U.S.; Spain and Holland were co-belligerents, fighting their own war with Great Britain at the same time as the Revolu- tionary War. of mulattoes and another of African Americans; and Oli- ver Pollock, "an agent from the [U.S.] Congress, who made with me the whole campaign," along with two officers and seven American volunteers. Altogether Gálvez had "667 men of all conditions, nations, and colors, without an engi- neer or artillery officer." 8 Aer his success against the British settlements along the Mississippi, Gálvez returned to New Orleans, where he had a hero's welcome. Julien Poydras, Louisiana's first poet, celebrated the occasion with a poem full of mythological references. 9 From across the ocean came the promotion to mariscal de campo, a two-star general. Aer the initial sur- prise was lost, any other general would have consolidated his position in the very likely event of a British counterat- tack. But Gálvez was not, and would never be, just "another general." Instead, he demanded urgent reinforcements for a new attack, this time against Mobila (today's Mobile, Ala- bama). His patience was put to a test, and not for the last time, by the dilatory tactics of the old generals in Havana, who considered Gálvez little more than a lucky adventurer not worthy of their support. Aer several months of com- plex negotiations he finally set off for Mobile, whose 120- man garrison surrendered to Gálvez's 1,300-man army on 12 March 1780. Reporting to Congress, U.S. Minister to France John Adams included a paragraph from the Gazette d'Amsterdam of 14 July 1780 with which he fully agreed: "the conquest of Mobile . . . appears so much the more important as it leads infallibly to that of Pensacola, by which the Spaniards may cut off one of the principal avenues of Jamaica." 10 To France's minister of foreign affairs, Adams added that "the advantages which Spain has gained in West Florida, and particularly of late at Mobile, and the prob- ability that they will succeed in acquiring both the Floridas, show that the English are on the losing hand in that quar- ter." 11 In the Continental Congress, the news of Gálvez's victory at Mobile was well-received. New Jersey Delegate William C. Houston remarked that they offered a relief from the recent "bitter Cup of ill Tidings" of the British capture of Charleston (May 12) and the American defeat in Waxhaw Creek (May 29), both in South Carolina. 12 THE CAPITOL DOME

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