Discovery and
Exploration.
AS a term in the geography
of Spanish-America, Florida included all the eastern coasts of the present
United States, from Mexico on the south to New France on the north, and
extended into the interior north and west to a distance unknown and
undefined. Consequently many of the early events of history that are
mentioned in connection with Florida would, under later nomenclature, be
placed in parts of the territory now known to us as Virginia, Carolina,
Georgia and the Gulf states. In this article we shall, so far as possible,
confine our story to the actual territory comprised in the present state
of Florida.
After the discovery of the
islands of the West Indies, as they came to be called, and the
exploitation of Mexico by the Spaniards, the superior attractions of these
regions drew the voyagers that followed Columbus away from the northwest,
and it is to be noted that Balboa had discovered the Pacific Ocean before
any European of the time had put foot upon any part of this territory.
Claims are made that Sebastian Cabot had explored, or at least seen, these
shores nearly or quite as far south as Cape Hatteras, but as these claims
rest on a single paragraph in the Hakluyt translation of Peter Martyr's
travels, the evidence is insufficient to take from Juan Ponce de Leon the
honor of having been the first European to land upon the soil of the
future United States.
Ponce de Leon had been
among the early colonists of Hispanola, having come thither with Columbus
on his second voyage, but on the return of Columbus to Spain De Leon
remained as an officer under Ovando, upon whose recommendation he was made
governor of the Island of Porto Rico, a position he held for twelve years.
His administration was marked by all the qualities that make a successful
commander and colonizer, and he soon brought the country under subjection
and made it highly productive and profitable. As was the practice of the
day, however, he was forced to make way for a court favorite who desired
to gain riches quickly.
De Leon was born in 1460,
and was now over fifty years of age. Although he had amassed considerable
wealth in the course of his public employments, he was not nearly as rich
as some of his contemporaries, so it is probable that the approach of old
age and a desire for greater possessions made him an eager listener to the
tales that were in circulation concerning a not very distant island called
Bimini, where, in addition to fabulous deposits of gold, was a spring
whose waters were capable of restoring to age and decrepitude the form and
vigor of youth. So in the spring of 1513 De Leon sailed from Porto Rico
with a charter from the king authorizing him to search for and settle the
mythical island.
For some weeks he sailed about among the Bahama Islands, to find that his
longed-for island seemed further away the longer he sailed, so with hopes
crushed he abandoned cruising in the original direction and turned almost
directly westward toward a land he must have heard about while sailing
among the islands. On March 27 he sighted a low-lying shore, splendid with
the early bloom and luxuriance of a sub-tropical flora, and as it was the
Easter season of the year, the Pascua Florida or Pascua des flored of the
Spanish, he called the newly discovered island, as he supposed it to be,
Florida. He sailed north looking for a suitable harbor, so that it was not
until the 2d of April that he landed at a point near the place where St.
Augustine now stands. He then took formal possession of the country for
the king of Spain by the right of discovery, unfurled the royal standard
and set up a cross. For eight weeks or more the explorer skirted the
shores of this new world, sailing south and west as far as Apalache Bay,
and without making any attempt to found a settlement because of the
hostility of the natives, he returned to Porto Rico with no more
profitable result of his journey than the announcement that another island
had been added to the Spanish realm. This, however, was not of sufficient
importance to save the disappointed man from the attacks of the wits of
the day, and he was most unmercifully lampooned and twitted for his
failure to return as a youth in his prime.
At the time Ponce de Leon
set sail he had no choice of course, except to sail to the north or
northwest, for after the location of Mexico and the coasts and islands to
the south of the latitude of Vera Cruz, the Spanish crown had been lavish
with its grants and charters, and every foot of this territory had been
preempted by adventurers, who drove away trespassers of their own blood as
ruthlessly as they did foreigners, the only alternative being a union of
forces, or a battle. Cut off from all entrance to these regions, the men
who sailed after De Leon's discovery came upon his realm and returned with
glowing tales of its wealth. De Leon was therefore moved to make an
attempt to perform the duty imposed upon him by his charter, and to get
out of his possession whatever there was in it of value to him. His realm
was evidently much greater than he had supposed, for the explorations of
the trespassers had shown that his principality was not an island, but a
part of an extensive and marvelously rich continent. Among the adventurers
whose tales spurred De Leon was Diego Miravello, who returned with some
specimens of gold, no doubt the product of the mines of Georgia, Fernandez
de Cordova and De Garay, all of whom were prevented by the hostility of
the natives from making settlements, but all telling the same tale of
extraordinary riches to be had for the taking. Using the remnants of his
fortune to fit out another expedition De Leon sailed from Porto Rico, and
after weeks of storm and bad weather reached the coast of Florida,
probably near Tampa Bay. The Indians there were as fierce and intractable
as they had shown themselves to be wherever the Spaniard had shown
himself, and falling on De Leon and his men they killed a number of them
and wounded the governor himself, who, ill and weary, abandoned Florida,
and reaching Cuba, en route for Porto Rico, died there in a few days at
the age of sixty-one. He left a son Louis, on whom the king conferred all
the rights of his father in Florida, but who never made any attempt to
claim or utilize them.
Among the adventurers who,
during the nine years between De Leon's discovery and his attempt to
assume control, had voyaged to the coast of Florida, was one Lucas Vasque
de Ayllon, who made for himself an unsavory place in history by the
treacherous manner in which he entrapped two shiploads of friendly Indians
at Chicora (South Carolina). These Indians he sought to sell as slaves in
Cuba, but as the chronicles says: "These Indians gave him no profit, as
grief and care killed them all." However, at least one of the captives had
not succumbed, for shortly after the death of De Leon, De Ayllon appeared
at Madrid with a converted, Spanish-speak-ing Indian from Chicora, who
assisted him in proving to the king and his ministers the value and worth
of the country for which he sought authority to explore and conquer. This
was given him, and in 1524 his vessels sailed to explore and map the
coasts of Florida, between the 35th and 37th parallels of latitude, the
boundaries of his grant. On the return of his vessels with stories of
great wealth, and some small tangible samples in the way of gold, silver
and pearls, another expedition was sent out comprising nearly 600 persons
and including three Dominican friars and some negro slaves. They landed on
the coast of what is now South Carolina, and the history of their
settlement is that of so many other settlements in this region — it was
destroyed by the Indians.
The next serious attempt to
settle Florida was made by Narvaez, one of the adventurers whom Cortez had
driven out of Mexico, although he bore a patent appointing him Adelantedo
(his Spanish title) of all the lands he might explore. In 1528 he reached
Florida just north of Tampa Bay, with the remnants of a force of more than
600 men, with whom he had left Spain a year earlier; learning that they
had missed the mouth of the bay, the vessels were sent back by water,
while Narvaez and most of the men started overland. Vessels and men never
again came together, and Narvaez started from the bay on a journey in
which he experienced almost incredible hardship and misfortunes.
Surrounded and harassed by hostile Indians, they fought their way north to
the neighborhood of Tallahassee, and then failing to find the sources of
the gold for which they were striving they turned back and reached the
gulf near the present St. Marks. Here they built boats of hides, and in
these frail craft 242 men set sail for Cuba. The historian of the
expedition, who was one of the few survivors, does not make clear why they
sailed westward, but so they did, and in November eighty men, all that now
remained, landed somewhere on the coast of Texas. From this place Narvaez,
who was sleeping in one of the canoes, was blown out to sea and lost to
history. In July, 1536, after years of slavery and wanderings that had
carried them as far as the Pacific, four of the original party reached the
City of Mexico. Later De Vaca, the historian, appeared in Spain, and by
his mysterious manner, vague illusions and wild assertions, convinced many
people that Florida was in fact the richest place on the face of the
earth, Peru and Mexico being but poor seconds. Attracted by these possible
riches, the most noted of the Spanish explorers of North America, Fernando
de Soto, asked for and received the command of the lands called Florida,
to which he sailed from Cuba in May, 1539, landing near the spot whence
Narvaez had disembarked some years earlier. Here he found a Spaniard, a
member of the troop of Narvaez, who, though taken prisoner by the Indians,
had been spared at the intercession of the chief's daughter in the manner
in which Capt. John Smith was saved by Pocahontas. Pursuing in a general
way the course taken by Narvaez, but continuing farther inland, even to
the borders of Tennessee, De Soto turned southwest and reached the head of
Mobile Bay. He had taken about eighteen months to travel from Tampa Bay to
Mobile, yet in all that time he had only lost about 100 of his men, a most
convincing testimony to his skill as a leader and commander.
Although he had so far
failed in his quest, De Soto would not give up, but after recruiting the
health of his men, pushed west, reached the Mississippi River near the
present Memphis, crossed in boats which he constructed, and traveled about
in the territory now included in the state of Arkansas. In the spring of
1542 De Soto turned towards the gulf, but the end was near, and on May 21
he died. The body was first buried, then disinterred, wrapped in a mantle
loaded with sand, and in the darkness of midnight dropped from the side of
a canoe into the depths of the great river he had revealed to the
civilized world. Fifty-one months after landing at Tampa Bay about
one-half of the original army of 621 men reached the Panuco River, near
Vera Cruz, in Mexico.
The coasts of Florida had
thus far proved to be the burial place of nearly every Spaniard who set
foot upon them. The cruelties and treacheries of the earlier explorers had
planted in the Indian mind such a hatred of the white man that the history
of the years following De Soto's journey is a continuous recital of the
murder of missionaries, the ambushing of small bands and the instant
dispatch of the shipwrecked mariners and unfortunate passengers of the
stranded vessels, whose beauty, age or sex did not reserve them for the
fate of slaves to savages. In 1556 the Bishop of Cuba, in whose diocese
Florida was now placed, joined with others in a petition to the throne
asking that the "rich" country of Florida be settled and saved to the
Church and the king. Orders to that effect were given, and in 1559 the
largest and best equipped fleet that had ever attempted the subjugation of
the region sailed from Vera Cruz under command of Tristan de Luna, and on
August 14 landed at what is now Pensacola Bay. The greater portion of the
party remained here for two years, when the discontent and mutiny which
had arisen, because of the failure to find the expected riches, caused the
colony to be abandoned, and De Luna was recalled. Some of the party had
removed to Port Royal Sound on the Carolina coast, but the same reasons
that caused the failure of the mother colony operated here, and when this
promising venture fell through Philip II. decided that the experience of
fifty years proved that Florida was not suitable for Spanish colonization.
It was therefore determined that no more attempts should be made, and the
country was neglected, if not abandoned.
But even the determination
of kings is governed by circumstances, and when word reached Spain that a
party of French Huguenots — heretics and business rivals in one — had
settled in Florida, the prayer of Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who had been
asking for the place of governor-general of Florida, was granted, and
preparations hastened to supply a sufficient force to sail to the new
world and expel the French heretics from Spanish soil. The settlement of
the French on American soil was the result of a plan of the famous Admiral
Coligny, who sought to establish in the new world a haven of refuge for
the persecuted Protestants of France. For this purpose an expedition under
Jean Ribaut reached the coast of Florida, near the mouth of the St. John's
River, April 30, 1562, and set up a stone, but the location not being
quite suitable they sailed north and landed at Port Royal, where it was
decided to establish a colony. Leaving thirty of his men, Ribaut returned
to France to procure recruits and supplies, but on his arrival civil war
was raging, and as nothing could be done he was forced to wait. In the
meantime the colonists, after exhausting the hospitality of the Indians,
decided to return to France, and contriving a vessel which was surely as
crazy a craft as ever ventured over the ocean, they set sail. After a long
voyage, during which they were reduced to cannibalism, they came in sight
of France, but were taken captive by an English vessel, and such as were
fit to travel were carried as prisoners to London.
A truce being declared
between the warring factions in France, Coligny had time and opportunity
to attend to his colonizing scheme and another expedition was sent over
under Rene de Laudonniere, who located at the mouth of the St. John's
River, and built there a triangular fort. Few of the colonists were
workmen, and shut up as they were within the walls of a fort with savages
all about, mutiny was not long in asserting itself, and a party of
thirteen seized one of the vessels and started off for a buccaneering
expedition on the Spanish main. Later a larger body made another venture
of the same kind, but mutiny and mishap quickly ended the voyage, and
those who remained alive returned to the fort and were promptly executed
by orders of Laudonniere. In 1565 Ribaut returned and took command,
Laudonniere going back to France. In this crisis, Spain felt called upon
to act. Such arrogant defiance of her authority, and so open an occupation
of her territory was equivalent to a declaration of war, and the feeling
thus engendered was intensified when the stories of what the French
deserters were doing reached Spain. For years French cruisers had ravaged
Spanish commerce and burned Spanish settlements in the West Indies, and to
the excited imaginations of the Spanish, the new settlement was looked
upon as a fitting-out port for another fleet of destroyers. Under such
circumstances this nest of robbers could not be routed out too quickly,
so, as has been said, Menendez was sent forth to act as the agent of
Providence in saving the American Indian from the contamination of heresy,
and Spanish settlements and commerce from attack and destruction.
On June 29, 1565, about the
time Ribaut was leaving Dieppe with a French force for the relief of
Laudon-niere, Menendez set out with his flotilla, part of which fell in
with some of the ships of Ribaut, and no secret was made of the fact that
the object of the Spanish expedition was to remove the French settlers,
root and branch, wherever found on Spanish soil. On Sept. 6, 1565, a
landing was made at what is now St. Augustine, and from that time the
settlement of Florida dates, the two years 1559-61 at Pen-sacola not being
taken into consideration. Without wasting any time Menendez marched upon
the unsuspecting Frenchmen in Fort Caroline and slew 130 men, only a few
of the garrison escaping to small boats in the river. Straggling parties
of Frenchmen were captured and put to death. Menendez is charged with
having accepted the surrender of these men under promise of mercy and then
wantonly slaughtering them, but looking at the matter in the light of our
fuller knowledge, this charge cannot be substantiated. Throughout the
whole proceeding Menendez was uniformly fanatical and severe, and believed
he was doing God's will in executing vengeance on the heretics. Moreover,
the reply he made to the proffers of surrender, still extant, does not
give any promise of mercy, no matter what the Frenchmen may have thought.
The same answers and the same treatment were accorded to Ribaut and that
portion of his men who later surrendered to Menedez, after shipwreck at
Matanzas inlet, eighteen miles south of St. Augustine. Those who were thus
massacred in cold blood after surrender numbered over 400. This was
immediately after his return from the attack and capture of Fort Caroline.
The French stories of these events make the Spanish commander swear a
solemn oath, but the Spanish writers tell the tale as above and without
any attempt to belittle or soften the facts, for the whole affair was to
them only a signal manifestation of the desire of Providence that Florida
should be saved for the faith and the realm. Menendez in his dispatches
ascribed the victory to God, and gave thanks therefor, a theme that was
taken up in Spain and amplified.
The peculiar conditions in
France made action by the court perfunctory. Spain was certainly the legal
master of Florida, and in expelling invaders had acted only within her
rights. Moreover, as leader of the Church, the action of Philip II. could
not well be complained of by Charles IX. and his mother, Catharine de
Medici, who were then warring in France for the upholding of the faith. As
a matter of fact, few Frenchmen other than the Huguenots seemed to care
much about the matter until Dominique de Gourges, a private gentleman,
under guise of fitting out an expedition to capture slaves, undertook to
avenge the slaughter of his countrymen. When near Cuba he announced to his
men the real object of the trip, and as they supported him
enthusiastically he proceeded to assault the Spanish forts situated at or
near the site of Fort Caroline. Being assisted by the Indians, whose
traditional hatred of the Spanish had been fired into action by recent
atrocities, the attack was successful, and every Spaniard not slain m
battle was summarily hanged, "not as Spaniards, but as traitors, robbers
and murderers," as was explained by the notice he placed upon the gallows.
The forts were demolished, and De Gourges hastened away "after giving
thanks to God" for his victory. Thus both Spaniard and Frenchman, as
Parkman Points out, "laid their reeking swords on God's altar."
As a mere incident of a
freebooting trip, Sir Francis Drake stopped over at St. Augustine one day
in 1586, looted and destroyed the town, but it was at once rebuilt and
became the centre from which the Franciscans continued their efforts to
convert the Indians. For the story of these wonderful men one must consult
the history written by Shea; let it suffice to say that they gave
themselves to almost certain death, the ranks of the fallen being filled
with ardent recruits, who did not have success to fire them, for as late
as 1647 the total number of converts was trivially small in comparison
with the efforts made and the lives sacrificed. No further attempts at
settlement were made until 1696, when a colony was placed at Pensacola,
which two years later had over 300 inhabitants, and this was the only
successful attempt that Spain had made in all the 130 years since Menendez
had founded St. Augustine.
Government.
The colonial government of
the Spanish-American settlements differed as much from the government of
the English colonies as the aims of the one nation differed from those of
the other in their new-world policies. Spain aimed at an imperial domain,
while England planted self-sustaining, independent settlements, each to
act upon its own initiative. When England took up the government of India
her methods approximated to those of Spain in the rule of her American
colonies. It is not generally remembered that Columbus was the first
European who made laws for America, yet such is the case, for between his
first and second voyages he drew up a code of regulations for his new
government which, with such modifications as time and experience proved
necessary, became the foundation of Spanish jurisprudence in America.
Under these provisions the emigration was to be restricted both in number
and quality; the settlements were to be kept at the smallest possible
number, only four for Cuba, and these were to have such municipal
governments as were enjoyed by similar towns in Castile, for it must be
remembered that these new-world possessions were not so much the property
of the kingdom of Spain as they were the personal appurtenances of
Isabella of Castile, whose heirs happened to be the Spanish monarchs and
inherited their ancestors' property. In the rules and regulations of the
early days it was on the mining and shipping of gold that stress was laid,
and in all of the laws of Columbus the only reference to agriculture is a
provision that gold hunting should be permitted only at such times as
would not interfere with the planting and harvesting of the crops. At
first the Indians had been put under a system of tribute, which later was
commuted for services, so that the Indians served their new masters in
much the same manner as they had served their old chiefs. As the Florida
Indians were never enslaved to any great extent, and so did not labor for
the support of the men who would not labor for themselves, it is probable
that the failure of the Spaniards in Florida was due to the lack of a
sufficient laboring population. In all the affairs of the colony the
Spanish monarch, acting through his council, not national officers but
personal servants, was supreme, and though the viceroy had much freedom
within the limits of his authority, he dared not depart very far from the
exact letter of his instructions. As the colonies were the personal
appurtenances of the monarch, he sought to gain from them as great a
revenue as was possible, and one of the favorite methods was through the.
sale of offices. By this means a man who came up from the ranks, through
commerce, was enabled to purchase a place or influence in the community
that was not his either by right of birth or as a soldier. In the matter
of revenue Florida was of little use to the king; quite otherwise, for we
find it sharing to the extent of $4,000,000 in the subsidy that the king
had to give to some of the impecunious colonies in a single year.
Relations With Carolina
and Georgia.
More than one hundred years
after Menendez there were in all the region of Florida only the three
towns: St. Augustine, St. Marks and Pensacola, with a few smaller places
tributary to each. Spain had not attempted to make good her claim to all
the country known as Florida, except some forays upon the places settled
by the English after 1607. These visits were returned in kind, and the
governor of Carolina made a descent upon St. Augustine that was so
successful, that but for the accidental arrival of some Spanish vessels
the city would have fallen. The war was continued and the English, united
with the Creek Indians, fought the Spanish and their Indian allies, and
succeeded in breaking up and destroying whatever had been accomplished in
the establishment of missions. The remains of some of these are to be seen
to-day and are generally given an antiquity much greater than they
possess. To offset these disasters the Spanish authorities sought to
incite the Carolina Indians to revolt, and for years the story is a
wearying and distressing recital of the horrors of savage warfare.
On the western side of the
present state the French, then established at Mobile, were troublesome
neighbors; Bienville assaulted and captured Pensacola in 1719, was in turn
driven out by the Spaniards and then again took possession, but being
unable to hold the town burned it, dismantled the fortifications and
retired. Pensacola, thus assaulted and captured three times within three
months, was abandoned and not again settled until 1722, when it was
rebuilt on Santa Rosa Island near Fort Pickens, where it remained until
1763, when the present town was laid out upon the mainland. Some settlers
had located on the site previous to this, but at best 1750 may be given as
the date of the final settlement of Pensacola.
There being no common
ground on which the contending parties in Carolina and Florida could
settle their differences through discussion, and as the Spanish still
incited the Indians and encouraged and harbored escaped slaves, the
exasperated English resolved on a final clean-up, and in 1727 destroyed
every destructible thing to the very walls of St. Augustine, thus putting
an end for a long time to the forays of the Yemassee Indians and white and
black renegades.
In 1732 Georgia was
established, and so became a sort of buffer between the contestants in
Florida and Carolina, and on the shoulders of Oglethorpe fell the duty of
upholding English claims upon this region. War between England and Spain
broke out in 1739, and Oglethorpe led an expedition against St. Augustine
in 1740, which failed after a siege of several weeks. In 1742 the
Spaniards attacked Oglethorpe, but also failed and withdrew to Cuba.
Oglethorpe paid another visit to St. Augustine in 1743, but could neither
capture the city nor induce the besieged to fight. The treaty of 1748
forced a truce between the fighters, but when war was renewed in 1762,
Havana fell into the hands of the English. By the terms of the treaty of
peace of the same year Florida was ceded to England in exchange for
Havana, which was restored to Spain, and East and West Florida became part
of the realm of Great Britain.
Florida as an English
Province.
A proclamation of the
English king in 1763 divided the new territory into four provinces,
defined their boundaries and gave to East Florida the limits the state now
has, except that the western line was at the Apalachicola River, where the
eastern boundary of West Florida began. The new government was extremely
distasteful to the Spanish people, even the liberal regulations of the
English rulers not appealing to them, and it is said that every Spaniard
but five left St. Augustine and only the utmost vigilance of the new
masters prevented the destruction of the city. The governors of the new
colonies, which were attached to the Crown, were authorized to call
general assemblies, which were to make such laws and regulations as were
applied to other colonies directly under the Crown, and thus for the first
time representative government in Florida was made possible. At the
breaking out of the War of the Revolution, Florida took the side of the
Crown and remained staunch and true during the whole conflict. Under the
circumstances, the colony became a haven of refuge for the persecuted
loyalists of the warring colonies, and it is said that in 1778 alone
upwards of 7,000 of these people came into her hospitable boundaries.
Although the royal governors were given power to establish legislative
assemblies, none of them considered it consistent with their own interests
to do so, and it was not until 1780 that the insistence of the people of
East Florida forced Governor Tonyn to give way, and the first General
Assembly in the province convened in December of that year.
Pensacola, in West Florida,
was having troubles of its own during the time of the English occupation,
most of them of a trivial nature caused by the petty jealousies and
intrigues so common in small communities and which are noticeable now only
so far as they prevented a development of the city at that time. In 1778
the place was said to have had several hundred fine houses; the "palace"
of the governor was a large stone edifice with a tower, a relic of Spanish
days. In 1781 the Spanish under Galvez captured the town, as the British,
then too much taken up with other matters, could not spare reenforcements
for the garrison of 1,000 men under General Campbell. The Spanish now held
the whole of West Florida, and at the conclusion of the war both the
Floridas were returned to Spain as an "equivalent" for the Bahama Islands,
which England was to retain.
Florida Again a Spanish
Province.
Just as the people were
congratulating themselves on the attainment of civil liberty, the
announcement was made that the country had been turned over to Spain. Such
of the inhabitants as chose to go away were given eighteen months to
settle their affairs. This many did, and Nova Scotia, England, Jamaica and
other West Indian Islands gave the refugees a more or less chilly welcome.
Where to go with their slaves was the main question, and such as were
least liable to the troubles of returning "loyalists" or "Tories" ventured
into the states of the Union nearest them. More than 1,400 negro slaves
were added to those in South Carolina by this exodus. The impossibility of
getting rid of all the inhabitants led Spain to offer some concessions, so
those who would take an oath of allegiance to his catholic majesty and
consent to put themselves in the way of being converted to the Catholic
faith were given special privileges. Only a few of the former Spanish
residents returned to the province on the restoration of the old regime,
so the majority of the people were British who chafed under the
reactionary rule of their foreign masters. Almost at once the troubles
between the settlers and the Indians began again, fomented by designing
white men such as Bowles and McGirth, who had married into the tribes and
used the savages for the advancement of their own selfish ends. It is
stated by some writers that the continuance of Spanish rule in Florida at
this time was made possible only by the assistance of Alexander
McGillivary, the son of a Scotch father and an Indian mother, who became,
by election, the chief of the Creeks, whom his influence kept loyal to the
treaty he had made for them with the Spanish authorities. So great was
this influence that it could not be overcome, even when it was proven that
he had held commissions in turn, and occasionally at the same time, from
Spain, England and the United States, which now came upon the scene as the
successor of the Carolinas and Georgia. The exigencies of European
politics necessitated another change in the boundaries of the lands still
called Florida, and in 1795 Spain turned over to France that portion of
her province of West Florida lying beyond the Per-dido River, and from
this time forward the name is restricted to the territory of the present
state to which Spanish dominion in the North American continent was
thenceforward confined, outside the limits of Mexico. Eight years later
the ceded territory was sold to the United States by Bonaparte, and
appears thereafter as the Louisiana Purchase.
During the agitation that
led to the War of 1812 it was thought that the British intended to seize
Florida, and measures were taken to prevent such a movement, and a United
States force was prepared ready to invade Florida the moment the British
intention was made manifest. Nothing resulted from this particular
movement, but in the course of subsequent hostilities a party of
frontiersmen gathered in southern Georgia for the purpose of invading
Florida and assisting a rebellion of those who were seeking "to establish
Republican institutions in Florida." The "patriots" assembled at St. Marys,
formed a provisional government, chose Gen. J. H. Mcintosh to be governor
and Colonel Ashley to be military chief of the "Republic of Florida." In
conjunction with an American fleet which, for strategic purposes, it was
thought should occupy Fernandina (which, as a neutral port, had rendered
nugatory in the southern country the provisions of the "embargo acts"),
the insurgents secured possession of the fort on Amelia Island and
transferred the command to General Matthews, the United States officer,
who was on the spot to take advantage of just such an opportunity. This
breach of international law led to a bitter dispute between Spain and the
United States, but as Congress would not run the risk of war and failed to
support President Madison, he was forced to disavow the act of General
Matthews, relieve him of his command and place Governor Mitchell, of
Georgia, in charge. While the Amelia Island affair was in course of
settlement, a band of negroes sent out by the governor of St. Augustine
ambushed a party of United States troops, mostly invalids, and killed and
wounded a considerable number.
Governor Mitchell called
for volunteers to attack St. Augustine, but the coming of a new Spanish
governor and the indisposition of the Washington authorities to support
the movement led to an accommodation, and the camp was broken up.
During the war of 1812-14
the Spanish authorities favored the English, and with their permission and
connivance a fleet entered and occupied Pensacola, raised the British flag
over the forts, took the nearby Indians under their protection and
encouraged them to kill and destroy. General Jackson attacked the place
and, capturing it, dismantled the forts, which the Spanish rebuilt later.
On the Apalachicola River the British had established a barricade or
fortification, which was professedly a refuge for runaway negro slaves and
hostile Indians. After the war had ended the desperadoes who filled the
place, now transformed into a formidable fortress, defied both the Spanish
and the United States governments, and their depredations becoming
unbearable, General Jackson was commissioned to get rid of them, which he
did in his usual thorough manner, hanging the leaders as murderers (they
had killed some of the besieging force) and returning the slaves to their
American and Spanish masters. The Indians were still ravaging, being
encouraged and assisted by British agents, and when in the course of his
operations Jackson captured some of these alleged agitators, he summarily
hanged two of them, Arbuthnot and Ambrister. The Indian troubles did not
end with the death of the British emissaries, and when Jackson had reason
to think that the Spanish governor was supplying the Indians with
munitions of war, while he endeavored to keep American boats from
ascending the Escambia River, he took possession of Pensacola and held it
until the territory was ceded to the United States. The treaty of Feb. 22,
1819, provided that the United States should assume all the claims of
American citizens against Spain amounting to $5,000,000. This arrangement
was not confirmed by Spain until two years later, so that the United
States did not take formal possession until July 10, 1821, at St.
Augustine, and July 27th at Pensacola.
Bibliography. — Fairbanks,
G. R.: History of Florida; Shea, John Gilmary: History of the Catholic
Church in America; Parkman, Francis: Pioneers of France in America (where
an extensive list of authorities for the early days may be found); Bourne,
E. G.: Spain in America (in The American Nation, ed. by Prof. A. B. Hart);
Fisk, John: Discovery of America; Brooks, A. M.: The Unwritten History of
St. Augustine.
De Witt Webb,
Secretary Florida Historical Society. |