The Middle Period, 1817-1858. John William Burgess
to the source of the River St. Mary, and thence by the course of this stream to the Atlantic. Spain thus held, as the result of these several treaties, all of the territory south of this line, unless England reserved in her recession of Florida that portion of Louisiana lying between the Iberville and the Perdido, ceded by France to Great Britain in the Treaty of 1763, and united by Great Britain with Florida. There is no evidence in the text of the Treaty of 1783 that Great Britain made any such reservation, or in the subsequent actions of the British Government.
By the Treaty of St. Ildefonso, of October 1st, 1800, also a secret treaty, Spain receded Louisiana to France. The description of the territory thus receded was very vague. It reads in the official translation of the treaty, "His Catholic Majesty promises and engages, on his part, to cede to the French Republic, six months after the full and entire execution of the conditions and stipulations herein relative to his Royal Highness the Duke of Parma, the Colony or Province of Louisiana, with the same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it; and such as it should be after the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and other states."
There was here certainly opportunity for a dispute between Spain and France as to the correct boundary between Louisiana and Florida. France could claim with some reason the Perdido as the eastern boundary of Louisiana, and Spain could meet this with a counterclaim that, after the cession in 1763 of all Louisiana east of the Iberville and the Lakes to Great Britain, and its union by Great Britain with Florida, the line of the Iberville and the Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain was the eastern boundary of Louisiana.
Before, however, any actual contest arose over the question, France sold Louisiana to the United States, with the same vague description of boundary contained in the cession of the territory from Spain to France by the Treaty of St. Ildefonso. The question of boundary became now one which must be settled between Spain and the United States.
The United States claimed at once that Louisiana reached to the Perdido. Spain disputed the claim, and held that Florida extended to the Iberville and the Lakes. Spain could make out the better abstract of title. Spain certainly did not intend to recede to France in 1800 anything more as Louisiana than France had ceded to her in 1762. But the United States had a show of legal title. It could be held that the ancient boundary of Louisiana was the one intended both in the Treaty of St. Ildefonso and in that of 1803, in which France passed the possession of Louisiana to the United States. The reasons of physical geography and of national development certainly favored the annexation of the whole of Florida to the United States; and with such forces to back the apparent legal claim to a large part of it, the result of the dispute could not well have been otherwise than it was.
The United States enforced its claim by military occupation of the disputed district before the close of the War of 1812.
| Occupation of Florida by the United States forces during the War of 1812. |
During the course of the war, the British forces had occupied Pensacola. The Spanish governor either could not, or would not, prevent them from doing so. Florida became thus, in spite of its nominal neutral status, a base of operations for the enemy of the United States. No more convincing evidence of the necessity for its annexation to the United States could have been offered. It was thus seen that not only the geography and the national growth of the Union demanded it, but that the safety of the Union, in case of war with any power, required it. The sea is the natural boundary of the United States on the south, and it was the "manifest destiny" of the Union to reach it.
The occupation of Florida would have been a sound and justifiable policy for the United States, had the Government commanded a sufficient military force for the purpose, when the British troops took possession of Pensacola. General Jackson did expel the British from Pensacola, but restored the place to the Spanish authorities, in order to avoid a conflict with Spain while engaged in war with Great Britain. We know now that the Congress of the United States had, by secret acts passed before the beginning of the War, authorized the President to occupy Florida east of the Perdido temporarily. The President did not deem it wise, under the circumstances which prevailed, to make use of this power; but the readiness of the Congress to intrust the President with the authority to take possession of the territory of a friendly power certainly shows that a strong feeling existed among the representatives of the people that Florida must be acquired by the United States upon the first fair opportunity.
| The hold of the Spaniards on Florida weakened by the War of 1812. |
The occasion was destined soon to appear. The power of Spain upon the American continents was everywhere in rapid decline. At the close of the War of 1812, the Spanish occupation in Florida was confined substantially to three points—Pensacola, St. Mark's, and St. Augustine. The remainder of the province, by far the greater part of it, was a free zone, in which desperate adventurers of every race and land might congregate, from which they might make their raids for murder and pillage into the United States, and into which they might escape again with their prisoners and plunder.
| The British troops in Florida during and after the War of 1812. |
We have noticed the occupation of Pensacola by the British troops during the War of 1812, and their expulsion by General Jackson from this position in November of 1814. After this, they concentrated upon the Appalachicola and established a fort some fifteen miles above the mouth of this stream for their head-quarters and base of operations. The British commander, one Colonel Nicholls, pursued from this point the policy which he had already inaugurated at Pensacola. This policy was the collection and organization of fugitive negroes, Indians, and adventurers of every character, and their employment in raids into the territory, and attacks upon the inhabitants, of the United States.
It appears that Colonel Nicholls did not regard the Treaty between the United States and Great Britain concluding the War as putting an end necessarily to his hostile movements. He remained in command at his fort on the Appalachicola for several months after the ratification of the Treaty, and then went to London, taking with him the Indian priest Francis, for the purpose of securing a treaty of alliance between the British Government and his band of outlaws in Florida.
| Nicholls and his buccaneer state in Florida. |
Before leaving the Appalachicola, he had incited the Indians and their negro auxiliaries to continue hostilities against the United States, by representing to them that the ninth article of the Treaty of Ghent contained a pledge on the part of the United States to reinstate the Indians in all lands held by them in the year 1811. He represented to them that this provision restored to the Creeks the lands in southern Georgia surrendered by them to the United States in the Treaty between the Creeks and the United States made at Fort Jackson in August of 1814, although it was well understood by both of the high contracting parties to the Treaty of Ghent that only those lands were intended under this provision whose seizure by the United States had not been confirmed by an agreement with the Indians; and the pledge as to these only was conditioned upon the immediate cessation of hostilities on the part of the Indians when the Treaty of Ghent should be announced to them. This announcement had been made, and the actual continuation of hostilities, therefore, after the announcement, made this whole article nugatory.
Nicholls left the fort, with all its munitions, in the hands of the negroes and Indians. The garrison consisted of some three hundred negroes and about twenty Indians.
| The British Government's repulse of Nicholls' advances. |
The British Government would not listen to Nicholls' proposition for an alliance between Great Britain and the buccaneering state which he was endeavoring to establish upon territory belonging politically to Spain.