José de San Martín (1778-1850) In March 2002, Robert (ND '63)
and Beverly O'Grady presented the University Libraries a
collection of 45 letters of the great South American liberator
José de San Martín. The letters, dated between 1814 and 1821,
were written in Argentina, Chile and Peru during San Martín's
military campaigns against Spanish royal forces. The earliest
deal with preparations of the campaign to liberate Chile; the
later, generally longer, letters offer extensive detail of the
military campaigns into Peru. Most of these are addressed to the
first president of Chile, Bernardo O'Higgins, requesting
supplies and reporting on progress during San Martín's famous
Peruvian campaign. Apart from two letters reproduced in
Documentos del archivo de San Martín, (Museo Mitre, Buenos
Aires, 1910) the remainder are not known to have been published.
Born in 1778 to the household of a Spanish colonial
administrator in the Argentine outpost of Yapeyú, Corrientes,
José Francisco de San Martín would reside only seven