Pensacola, Florida

“ Pensacola claims to be the oldest white city in the United States, disputing the matter with St. Augustine, Jacksonville, and is taking the question very seriously in view of any celebration. It is not an important place, but is building toward its own supposed greatness, has a fine new railway station and huge, white stone post office and mammoth hotel. These buildings are puzzling in a town where life seems so placid.
Here was a bad lynching for rape a year ago, [245] and a Negro was burned to death. Representations were made to the governor of Florida on the matter. ”

“ The climate of Pensacola is bracing in winter, but not at all suited to consumptives. All such should avoid it, as they almost invariably grow worse. The pine lands, twenty or thirty miles north of the city, are much more favorable to such patients. ”

“ Pensacola was, therefore, by that arrangement placed geographically in reference to boundary lines as it stands to-day; the result, as before shown, of d’Arriola having made his settlement three years before the advent of d’Iberville to the gulf coast. ”

“ In the centre of it was a star-shaped stockade fort, designed as a place of refuge for the population in case of an Indian attack. Near it were the officers’ quarters, barracks, guard house, ordnance store-house and laboratory, two powder magazines, the King’s bake-house, cooperage shelter, and government store-house. This park was, therefore, in the early days of Pensacola, the liveliest and busiest part of the town. ”

“ Near by is the Pensacola navy-yard, with a marine hospital and barracks. The city has a large domestic trade in lumber, fish, naval stores, cotton, phosphate and coal. It has n public-school
GULF
buildings, an opera-house, court-house and a state armory. Pensacola was settled by the Spaniards before 1700, occupied by the British from 1763 to 1781, and afterward, during the wars with Napoleon, taken from them by Andrew Jackson in 1814. In 1819, with the remainder of Florida, it became a part of the United States. Population 22,982. ”

“ The military (and social) history of Pensacola Bay commences in 1558, when Philip II, of Spain, commissioned Luis de Valesca, viceroy of New Spain, to undertake the settlement of Florida. After a preliminary survey Valesca, in the summer of 1559, sent 1500 soldiers and settlers to make a beginning at Pensacola Bay, this body of water having been adjudged the best roadstead and the most favorable for the support of human life on the Gulf Coast. ”

“ Augustine, Key West, Cedar Keys, Tampa and Pensacola Bay; it also has innumerable islands. There are 19 navigable rivers, the longest being the St. John's. This river is about 300 miles in length, one third of which can be navigated.
Climate. The climate is very healthful, and not intensely hot, being moderated by the sea breezes. There are 250 clear days in the year.
Natural Resources. With its extensive coast-line, Florida has a large fish-trade, the chief seat of which (in fresh fish) is Pensacola. About 8,000 men are employed in the fisheries. ”

“ Buchanan, after the latter had retired to private life, and after new men had come into power who made it their policy to blame the preceding President.
Pensacola, a town in the western end of the State of Florida, is on a broad bay of the same name, which opens into the Gulf of Mexico. The narrow entrance is commanded by Fort Pickens, built on the extreme western point of Santa Rosa Island, and standing boldly upon the Gulf. This fortress, unlike Fort Sumter, could be relieved at any time by a naval force, which nothing could assail before the fort was reached. ”

“ The river Perdido being its western, and the Apalachicola its eastern limit.
The capital of East Florida is St. Augustin; that of West Florida, Pensacola.
During the struggle of Great Britain with her American colonies in 1781; Spain took forcible possession of Florida, and it was confirmed to that crown by the treaty of peace in 1783.
The climate of the Floridas, is for the most part tolerably good; in the summer it is very hot; the winters cold, and the rivers are frequently frozen during that season. Inland, and on the mountains, the air is very pure and salubrious. ”

“ The expeditions to Savannah and Charleston were not the most distant in which the German auxiliaries were engaged. In the autumn of 1778 about twelve hundred men, Waldeckers and Provincials, under Major-general John Campbell, were sent to reinforce the garrisons of West Florida. Sailing early in November and touching at Jamaica, these troops were landed at Pensacola at the end of January, 1779. Pensacola was then a town of about two hundred wooden houses, defended by forts built of logs and sand. It stood in a sandy desert, surrounded by thick and interminable forests. ”

“ The presumption is strong, however, that they took, and followed northward the Indian trail, on the ridge beginning at Pensacola Bay, forming the water shed between the Perdido and Escambia rivers, and beyond their headwaters uniting with the elevated country which throws off its springs and creeks eastward to the Chattahoochee and westward to the Alabama and Tallapoosa rivers. It continued northerly to the Tennessee river; a lateral trail diverging to where the city of Montgomery now stands, and thence to the site of Wetumpka ”

“ Not until the last decade of the 17th century did the Spanish authorities attempt to extend the settlements beyond the east coast. Then, jealous of the French explorations along the Gulf of Mexico, they turned their attention to the west coast, and in 1696 founded Pensacola. When the English colonies of the Carolinas and Georgia were founded, there was constant friction with Florida. The Spanish were accused of inciting the Indians to make depredations on the English settlements and of interfering with English commerce and the Spanish were in constant fear of the encroachments of the British. ”

“ This town was officially known as San Carlos de Barrancas, that being the original application to the locality of the Spanish word barranca, signifying broken, in the sense in which the term is applied to a landscape.
Folch’s purpose in laying out the town was, to substitute it for Pensacola, as the chief town and capital of the province. Of the real motives which prompted the design no information can be obtained. His scheme was defeated, however, by his inability to procure for it the royal approval; the probable result of an appeal to the King by the inhabitants of Pensacola. ”

“ Having demonstrated that the settlement of de Luna was the original Pensacola, that of Arriola was apparently the second, though actually but a resuscitation of the colony of 1559; for the name, the people, though not the same generation, and the place being one, mere lapse of time should not be permitted to destroy 33the unity which may be so justly attributed to the two settlements.
The inhabitants of the town having been largely recruited by malefactors banished from Mexico, must be notched low in the scale of morals. ”

“ A public road to be opened from Pensacola to St. Augustine.Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the President of the United States be, and he is hereby, authorized to cause to be opened, in the territory of Florida, a public road from Pensacola to St. Augustine, commencing at Deer Point, on the bay of Pensacola, and pursuing the Old Indian Trail to the Cow Ford, on the Choctawhatchy river ”

“ Bienville at once organized, with all possible secrecy, an expedition by land and water to capture Pensacola by surprise. The land force, consisting of four hundred Indians and a body of Canadians, was collected at Mobile. The naval force, composed of three vessels, two of them, the Philippe and the Toulouse, carrying twenty-four guns each, under the command of Sevigny, had its rendezvous at Dauphin Island. ”

“ Thus aided, the commercial development of the State advanced very rapidly during the last years of the nineteenth century. In 1899, 2840 vessels, aggregating 2,464,026 tons, cleared the ports of Florida. The places having the largest export trade were Pensacola, Tampa, and Jacksonville; other export centres are Fernandina, Key West, Punta Gorda, Carrabelle, Apalachicola, and Saint Augustine. Most of these export forest products and phosphate for both foreign and home markets. Pensacola has large foreign shipments of grain, cotton, and tobacco. Tampa and Key West have a large trade in cigars. ”

“ That time and the elements are responsible for its disappearance is improbable. That it is not even a 72subject of tradition suggests the painful suspicion that it was willfully destroyed; a suggestion which explains the absence of all memorials of the people who must have died in Pensacola during the nearly twenty years of the British dominion, and removes from their generation the reproach of having had no respect for the memory and ashes of their departed friends and comrades. ”

“ In 1763 the whole of Florida, which, of course, included our brave little fort at Pensacola, passed into the hands of the English by treaty with Spain, and an [211] English garrison took possession of Fort San Carlos. Upon the outbreak of hostilities again between Spain and England, Galvez, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, sailed from New Orleans in February, 1781, with 1400 men and a sufficient fleet to reduce Pensacola. He was joined by squadrons from Havana and Mobile and in May of that year entered Pensacola Bay. ”

“ Its freightage consisted of two hundred and forty human bodies, wasted and worn by fatigue and exposure, and as many hearts heavy and racked with disappointment. It was commanded by His 10Excellency Panfilo de Narvaez, Captain-general and Adelantado of Florida, a tall, big-limbed, red-haired, one-eyed man, “with a voice deep and sonorous as though it came from a cavern.”
These were the first white men to make footprints on the shores of Pensacola Bay and to look out upon its waters. Although they landed on the Island, there is no evidence that their vessels entered the harbor. ”

“ Leaving the store, a short walk brings us to the shore and afterwards to the king’s wharf, which we see covered with troops, some of them getting into boats, whilst others, already embarked, are going to a ship lying at anchor. That ship is the Pensacola bound for Charleston, South Carolina. The troops are the Thirty-first regiment, lately stationed at Mobile, whence they have just arrived, after an overland march, for the purpose of embarking in the Pensacola. ”

“ In 1740 General James Edward Oglethorpe, governor of Georgia, supported by a naval force, made an unsuccessful attack upon St Augustine; two years later a Spanish expedition against Savannah by way of St Simon’s Island failed, and in 1745 Oglethorpe again appeared before the walls of St Augustine, but the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 prevented further hostilities. Pensacola, the other centre of Spanish settlement, though captured and occupied (1719–1723) by the French from Louisiana, had a more peaceful history. ”

“ But they reached Pensacola finally in good shape. George hoped that after all, as the others said, that one little trick on the part of his engine might have only been a slip that would never occur again; though his confidence was shaken, and he watched its working suspiciously after that.
Letters from home greeted them at Pensacola; but no new developments were contained in them, at least nothing positive. The strike [219] had not been settled, and there was warm talk of the town putting men to work regardless of labor unions. ”

“ He also secured a quantity of pitch and turpentine for his Company, as well as two pine spars, each eighty-four feet long, which he sent to Havana in the schooner. This was the beginning of the timber trade of Pensacola, its first known business transaction with New Orleans, and the last authenticated instance of one of its timber dealers engaging in the elegant pastime of sketching. ”

“ Of the sympathy of Pensacola with the great patriotic movement in the 206mother country, there exists memorials in the names of some of its streets, and its chief public square.
It was in the fervor of that sympathy that the square received the name of the exiled monarch; a token of loyalty, of which, however, he proved himself unworthy by his conduct after his restoration to the throne. Never had a monarch a better opportunity of making his reign happy and illustrious, and never did one under such conditions make it a source of greater shame to himself, and misery to his people. ”

“ By that treaty Florida became a British colony. On July 6 of that year Captain Wills, in command of the third battery of Royal 55Artillery, then at Havana, forming a part of the British force which had captured the city during the late war, was ordered by General Keppel to proceed with his command to Pensacola for the purpose of taking possession of the place. Arriving thereon the seventh of August, Captain Wills having presented the order of the king of Spain to the Spanish commander for the surrender of the post, it was promptly obeyed. ”

“ The military condition of West Florida was changed as the revolutionary war progressed. There were no longer seen two or more regiments at Pensacola, one or two at Mobile, and one at Fort Bute, Baton Rouge, and Panmure. The call for troops for service in the northern colonies had, by the latter part of 1778, reduced the entire effective force of the province to five hundred men. ”