Spanish Florida

“ It may be that some conscripted Spanish peasant brought with his aching heart to the far distant American garrison a fertile spore from some shady glen that he loved in Andalusia, or perhaps the seed ripened in a Devonshire lane and came thence with the besieging and conquering English, or yet again it may have been Florida born and carried thither on some soft wind of winter or in the blanket of an imprisoned Seminole. Centuries go by and bring a thousand accidents caught in the trailing garments of the years. ”

“ The Spanish garrison, and officers connected with it, returned to Cuba, and some of the Spanish families; but the larger portion of the inhabitants remained. A considerable influx of inhabitants from the adjoining States took place, and the town speedily assumed a somewhat American character. The proportion of American population since the change of flags, has been about one-third. Most of the native inhabitants converse with equal fluency in either language.
In the year 1823 the legislative council of Florida held its second session in the government house at St. Augustine. ”

“ In 1820 the constitutional convention of Alabama, in anticipation of the ratification of the Spanish treaty, memorialized congress to embrace West Florida within the boundaries of that state. The memorial enforced the measure with all those obvious arguments which come to the mind when it turns to the subject. But they were silenced, as if by the imperious decree of fate that the Perdido boundary should be, and forever remain, a monument of d’ Arriola’s diligence in reaching the Gulf coast three years before d’ Iberville. ”

“ Zamacona told them of the founding of Florida and New Spain, and made it clear that a great part of the world was stirring with the zest of adventure—Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English. Sooner or later Mexico and Florida must meet in one great colonial empire—and then it would be hard to keep outsiders from the rumoured gold and silver of the abyss. ”

“ The most important and accessible point in Spanish Florida was Pensacola. Here the Governor, Gonzalez Maurequez, held court and dispensed authority over the province. The pride of the Spaniards in the old country and in Florida and Louisiana was deeply wounded over the summary sale of the territory of Louisiana by Napoleon to the United States in 1803; recalling the compulsory cession of the same to France by Spain in 1800. Naturally they resented with spirit what they deemed an indignity to the honor and sovereignty of their nation. ”

“ After the War of 1812 there was still friction between Spanish Florida and the United States. Bands of Indians and escaped slaves occupied choice lands of the Florida interior, fortified the navigable rivers, and made occasional raids across the border. The Spanish garrison was not large enough to control lawless elements. In 1817 Fernandina and Amelia Island were taken over by MacGregor, an English soldier of fortune, later occupied by the pirate Autry, and became a den of outlaws and smugglers. ”

“ To a person who has never visited this island it is almost impossible to imagine that only sixty-five miles from the mainland of Florida is a city so nearly in appearance resembling the Spanish dominions of the Old World—where hardly a sentence of English is heard, business transactions conducted in a foreign language, produce bought and sold, together with fruits from the adjacent islands cried in Spanish by the auctioneers. The wharf is a busy place. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In 1821, the Spanish flag disappeared from the ramparts of San Augustine and Saint Marks, and Spain yielded up possession of this fair province—one of her last footholds upon the continent of America. Literally, it was but a foothold the Spaniards held in Florida—a mere nominal possession. Long before the cession, the Indians had driven them from the field into the fortress. Their haciendas lay in ruins—their horses and cattle ran wild upon the savannas ”

“ Even though San Marcos remained a bulwark against American advances, Florida had lost its former importance to Spain as independence movements sprang up in one South American Spanish colony after another. ”

“ In accordance with Spanish usage, under the term Florida, he embraced all that part of the continent north of Mexico, and consequently but a comparatively small portion is concerned with the history of the peninsula. What there is, however, renders it the most complete, and in many cases, the only source of information. The account of the French colonies is minute, but naturally quite one-sided. He is “in all points an apologist for his countrymen, and an implacable enemy to the Heretics, the unfortunate Huguenots, who hoped to find an asylum from persecution in the forests of the New World.” ”

“ There was, too, the grand old Ponce de Leon, who saw one Easter morning, a land rise out of the Western Sea—a land lovely in all its luxuriant vegetation of a Southern spring, with breath and beauty of flowers. What better name could the romantic hidalgo devise than "Florida," and where more fitly than here could he search for that wonderous fountain of perpetual youth?
Ah, brave old Spanish Cavalier. Did no soft wind wafted gently from afar over the flowery sunset land, whisper to you that, instead of youth and life perennial you should find, under the magnolia shade—a grave? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hence, when in 1558 a Protestant princess succeeded to the English throne, she found the policy which she was expected to pursue in this direction defined for her in public opinion. Here was Florida, the "richest country in the world," still without any owner, or even any pretender to its ownership, though sixty years had passed since Colombo discovered the continent of which it formed a large and prominent part. A whole generation had passed away since the heroic period of Spanish-American history—the conquest of Mexico and Peru ”

“ Such was the condition of the Spanish missions of{162} Florida at their most flourishing period. Shortly after the commencement of the eighteenth century, foes from the north destroyed and drove out the colonists, demolishing in a few years all that the life, and the blood, and the toil of so many martyrs during two centuries had availed to construct. About the middle of the century we have a tolerably accurate knowledge of the country through English writers; and then so few and insignificant were the Spanish settlements, that only one occurred between St. ”

“ By 1768 Governor Grant was able to report encouraging progress: “This province, which was a desert when I came into it, although inhabited by the Spaniards two hundred years, will soon be a fruitful country. It fills faster with inhabitants than I could have well expected, and there are already a number of slaves at work on the different plantations.”
In contrast with conditions under Spanish rule, vessels began to sail from St. Augustine with cargoes of indigo, barrels of oranges, casks of orange juice, lumber and naval stores. ”

“ The Virginia colony survived and others crept down the coast in defiance of Spain’s claims to the territory. The Spanish governors at St. Augustine repeatedly implored authorities in Spain to strengthen Florida’s garrison and defenses to meet this English threat. But the mother country, almost constantly involved in wars with European rivals, or vexed with internal problems, took no decisive action. ”

“ Here they generally maintained friendly relations with the Spanish, who at one period established missions among them, until the arrival of the English. These purchased their land, won their friendship, and embittered them against their former friends. As the colony extended, they gradually migrated southward, obtaining a home by wresting from their red and white possessors the islands and mainland along the coast of Georgia and Florida. ”

“ In the following year, Spain having declared war against Great Britain, Don Bernardo de Galvez (1756–1794) , the Spanish governor at New Orleans, seized most of the English forts in West Florida, and in 1781 captured Pensacola.
By the treaty of Paris (1783) Florida reverted to Spain, and, no religious liberty being promised, many of the English inhabitants left East and West Florida. A dispute with the United States concerning the northern boundary was settled by the treaty of 1795, the line 31° N. lat. being established. ”

“ To the accession of Philip V., a Bourbon prince, to the Spanish crown, whilst Louis XIV. reigned in France, must be attributed the strangely peaceful settlement of the Perdido as the boundary line between Louisiana and Florida. For the politic, if not natural, harmony existing between two kings belonging to the same royal family, a grandfather and a grandson, both the objects of jealousy and suspicion to the other nations of Europe, necessarily inspired a like feeling in their respective colonial officers. ”

“ But, as before intimated, there existed a covert hostility on the part of the Spanish officials at Pensacola against the Americans, growing out of the dispute as to the limits of West Florida; and now intensified by the capture of Mobile on April 13, 1813, by an expedition from New Orleans, under the command of General Wilkinson. Spain herself was too much absorbed by her struggle for existence to take any active interest in a question of boundary in the new world. ”

“ During the late war British officers and adventurers, acting on their own responsibility upon this neutral soil, committed many acts which their government would never have sanctioned. They stirred up Indians and negroes to commit atrocities on the United States frontier. The Spanish government was at that time engaged in warfare with its revolted colonies in South America, and the coasts of Florida became a haunt for contraband traders, privateers, and filibusters. One adventurer would announce his intention to make Florida a free republic ”

“ While others sought gold they labored for souls, and in all the perils and sufferings of long journeys and tedious voyages cheerfully bore a part, well rewarded by one convert or a single baptism. With the same zeal that distinguished them everywhere else did they labor in the unfruitful vineyard of Florida, and as the story of their endeavors is inseparably bound up with the condition of the natives and progress of the Spanish arms, it is with peculiar fitness that the noble toils of these self-denying men become the theme of our investigation. ”

“ The plan followed specifications contained in a cédula issued by the Spanish King in 1573, directing that all Spanish colonial towns should have a central Plaza with the principal streets leading from it. During about the same period an official governor’s residence was established on the site of the present post office.
Women were present in the colony from the beginning, a few having come with the original Menéndez expedition. Others arrived with the Arciniega reinforcements and later fleets. Some of the soldiers married Indian maidens, who had become Christians and been given Spanish names. ”

“ He sometimes destroys calves and pigs, and very rarely, even young children.
History.—The honor of the discovery of this country is disputed by the Spanish, English, and French. It is probable that Sebastian Cabot sailed along the shores of what was afterwards called Florida, but a few years after Columbus discovered America. Spanish authors claim that Juan Ponce de Leon discovered and named Florida, in 1512. Narvaez, another Spanish commander, having obtained a grant of Florida in 1528, landed four or five hundred men, but was lost by shipwreck near the mouth of the Mississippi. ”

“ The most disastrous of these inroads was in 1686,{140} when they drove the Spanish colonists from all the islands north of the St. Johns, and laid waste the missions and plantations that had been commenced upon them. Subsequently, spreading over the savannas of Alachua and the fertile plains of Middle Florida, they conjoined with the fragments of older nations to form separate tribes, as the Chias, Canaake, Tomocos or Atimucas, and others. ”

“ From this province of Patofa, back to the first cacique we found at peace, a distance of fifty leagues, the country is abundant, picturesque, and luxuriant, well watered, and having good river margins; thence to the harbor of Espiritu Santo, where we first arrived, the land of Florida, which may be three hundred leagues in length, a little more or less, is light, the greater part of it of pine-trees, and low, having many ponds; and in places are high and dense forests, into which the Indians that were hostile betook themselves, where they could not be found ”