Pensacola

“ In West Florida, the capital, Pensacola, is situated on the west side of Pensacola Bay; this harbour is one of the finest in the Floridas, safe from every wind, and having from seven to eight fathom water, so that vessels drawing 21 feet may enter.
Pensacola, is in 30° 28ʹ north latitude, and 87° 12ʹ west longitude. The city is of an oblong form, about a mile in length and a quarter of a mile in breadth, delightfully placed, and accounted a very healthy place. The entrance into the bay is fortified by a small fort on Rosa Island, and a battery on the opposite shore. ”

“ Our course lay within a [288] quarter of a mile of the shore, which looked like a white ribbon fringed with fire, from the ceaseless play of the phosphorescent surf. Above this belt of sand rose the black, jagged outlines of a pine forest, through which steal immense lagoons and marshy creeks.
Driftwood and trees strew the beach, and from Fort Morgan, for forty miles, to the entrance of Pensacola, not a human habitation disturbs the domain sacred to alligators, serpents, pelicans, and wild-fowl. ”

“ The most important commercial acquisition of Pensacola by that tory immigration was William Panton, the senior of the firm of Panton, Leslie & Co., a Scotch house of great wealth and extensive commercial relations. They had an establishment in London, with branches in the West India Islands. During the English dominion in Florida they established themselves in St. Augustine; later, during Governor Chester’s administration, at Pensacola, and afterwards, at Mobile. Other merchants also came to Pensacola about the same time, attracted principally by the heavy disbursements of the government. ”

“ So Anthony, beautifully groomed and dressed and taking his Chickasaw valet, rigged a sail to his canoe and started for Pensacola. In the bow he set his clay stove, some precious pounded corn in a bowl, and a porous jar which kept drinking-water cool by evaporation. Nobody then and nobody now in the neighborhood of the Mississippi can get along without a crock.
A vein of earth, a perfect potter's clay, outcrops on the lower reaches of the Great River. ”

“ From Nashville to Pensacola today is a comfortable day’s ride in an automobile over hard-surfaced roads; but then the trip between the two cities was by a long, round-about way. A steamboat carried the new governor and his little family to New Orleans—down the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi—from whence they proceeded coastwise to Mobile, and then on overland to the outskirts of Pensacola where Jackson took up his headquarters in a suburban villa and began his interminable palaver with the Spanish governor. ”

“ Pensacola was the naval station of the gulf coast, and the constant coming and going of men-of-war, with the attendant festivities of balls of welcome and farewell banquets, were a distinctive feature in the social life of that portion of the Territory.
Octavia Walton, the governor's daughter, cultivated intellectually to a degree that made her the appreciative listener and intelligent talker among men of science and of letters, and with a personal beauty that made her the admiration of every one, occupied from her earliest girlhood a position of unusual prominence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the molestation which her galleons may suffer from our station in Pensacola gives us advantages, for which we were not allowed to credit the nation for the Havannah itself; a place surely full as well situated for every external purpose as Pensacola, and of more internal benefit than ten thousand Pensacolas. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is the only place I have found in the Southern country to which Northern people can repair with safety in the summer season; and I know not of a place in the world where they can go with better guarantees of good health, and a reasonable share of the luxuries of life. The town of Pensacola is beautifully situated on the shore of the bay, and contains at present about fifteen hundred inhabitants, most of them Spanish Creoles. They live an easy and idle life, without any energy further than for the mere means of living. ”

“ Now, however, I have good authority for believing that the Spanish Governor at Pensacola is treacherously aiding not only the Indians but the British also. A force of British, I hear, has landed there, and friendly Indians tell me that they are arming the runaway Creeks, meaning to use them against us. The Indians tell big stories, so big that I can place no reliance upon them, and what I want is accurate information about affairs at Pensacola. If there is a British force there, it means to make an attack on Mobile or New Orleans. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The combined danger from the English and the French now made it necessary to protect the northern Gulf coast. La Salle's intrusion was followed by the temporary Spanish occupation of eastern Texas in 1690, already described. At the same time (1689) the viceroy sent Andrés de Pez to Spain to urge the occupation of Pensacola Bay (Santa Maria de Galve) . The council approved the plan and authorized the withdrawal from Texas. In 1693 Pez explored Pensacola and Mobile bays with a view to settlement. Thus, in a sense, the defence of eastern Texas was given up for the founding of Pensacola. ”

“ 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. ”

“ My kind protector had now reached his home, and could accompany me no further, and I could hear of no one who was going in my direction at that season of the year— the human tide was all setting the other way. At length a friend called to inform me that a schooner was about to sail for Pensacola. Knowing my intense anxiety to reach home, he had called to let me know of the opportunity, thinking that from Pensacola I would be able to reach Charleston without difficulty, though, for his own part, he strongly advised me not to attempt going in the schooner. ”

“ All this looked like playing with fire to the Sieur de Bienville. He was young; much younger than Anthony now was. But Anthony still [105] looked so boyish and was so fresh at heart that the two had become cronies on the long voyage. With one mind they now fell to talking of the Gulf pirates. What could they do if their colony was attacked and the skull and cross-bones flaunted in their faces?
They were therefore much dismayed, upon reaching Pensacola, to find that they themselves were objects of suspicion. Their fleet was forbidden to enter the harbor. Pensacola was a Spanish colony. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The destruction of Pensacola by Bienville in 1719, the ravages of Colonel Palmer eight years later, the second demolition of the settlements in Apalache, between Tallahassie and St. Marks, by a marauding party of English and Indians in 1736, the inroad of Governor Oglethorpe four years subsequent, and another incursion of the English in 1745—these following in quick succession, it may be readily conceived rendered of no avail the efforts of the Franciscans to re-establish their missions on Floridian soil. ”

“ When Iberville, in 1699, sailed from France with several vessels containing colonists for Louisiana and when in due course of time he arrived off Pensacola, he found the Spaniards firmly established with a fort with four bastions and some ships of war. The Frenchmen [209] asked for permission to disembark his forces. His request was refused and he then sailed along the coast until he found a landing to his liking near the present-day Biloxi, Mississippi. The governor of Pensacola at this time—and the first governor of the colony—was Don Andre D’Arriola. ”

“ 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 ”

“ There are circumstances in that portion of America which render the invasion easy, and the defence difficult. Pensacola, though the climate be warm, is among the healthiest spots on earth. Not only a large garrison, but an army may remain there without hazard. At Pensacola and St. Augustine, forces may be assembled to operate in that season of the year, when the morasses which separate them from our southern frontier no longer breathe pestilence. By what are those armies to be opposed? Will you call the militia from the North to assist their Southern brethren? They are too remote. ”

“ Primitive commerce was quickened along the great beaten pathways in consequence of the advent of the whites. These original highways extended from the ports of Mobile and Pensacola long distances into the interior. One of these ran from Pensacola by way of Columbus, Georgia, to Augusta, where was intersected another, which reached to Charleston. Another ran by way of Florence and Huntsville to Nashville, whence it extended as far north as old Vincennes, on the Wabash. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Augustine is the capital of East, and Pensacola of West, Florida. This country is, for the most part, a howling wilderness, and is never likely to become thickly populated. The dreary pine-barrens and sand-hills are slightly undulating, and are here and there thickly matted with palmetto.
In pursuance of my original design, I had now to penetrate nearly a hundred miles into the interior; and, as the Indians and fugitive negroes were scouring that part of the country in hostile bands, I contemplated this part of my route with no little anxiety. ”

“ 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. ”