Gual, Pedro, 1783-1862

Pedro José Ramón Gual Escandón (17 January 1783 – 6 May 1862), was a Venezuelan lawyer, politician, journalist and diplomat who was President of Venezuela for three short periods in 1858, 1859 and 1861. In 1861, he was ousted from power in a military coup. During the Venezuelan War of Independence he came to the United States to buy weapons for the Patriots. In 1815 he came to stay in the home of Manuel Torres. With Torres and other agents he helped organize General Francisco Xavier Mina's ill-fated expedition to Mexico, with Gual acting as Mina's press agent. Gual was one of the men who signed Gregor MacGregor's commission to invade Spanish Florida through Amelia Island in 1817, which offended President James Monroe's administration; thereafter he left the U.S. In 1824 as chancellor of Great Colombia he negotiated with the U.S. diplomat Richard Clough Anderson Jr. and concluded the Anderson–Gual Treaty, the first bilateral treaty that the U.S. signed with another American state. He was the president of Venezuela for three periods (1858, 1859, and 1861) and a member of the Conservative Centralist party.