Historical Sketches of Colonial Florida

by Richard L. Campbell

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.

He afterwards attempted an important change in the English plan, by laying off into blocks and lots, so much of the park, or public place as is now embraced in the area between Intendencia and Government streets. He also sold many of the lots, which the purchasers proceeded to improve. But, when Intendant Morales visited the town in 1806, he utterly disapproved of Folch’s proceedings, and refused to confirm the titles of the vendees. Morales’ subsequent conduct in the matter, however, shows that in refusing his confirmation he was influenced more by inimical feeling against the governor, than any just sense of public duty, for he himself afterwards granted the lots. This was the beginning of the mutilation of the great public place according to the English plan; a mutilation which was continued from time to time, until there was nothing left but the two small plats of ground known as Seville Square, and that of Ferdinand VII.

His administration in one of its earlier years was marked by one event for which his generation is entitled to credit. A ship of 800 tons was built at Caranaro, as the cove in which the Marine Railway is now situated was then known. Her name was Pensacola, and during the decade from 1870, she was still in existence, making voyages to and from Spanish ports. This was the first, and thus far, the last private enterprise of the kind by Pensacolians.

In 1804, the firm of William Panton & Co., was dissolved by the death of William Panton, who had been, as we have seen, so prominent a figure in the history of Pensacola, both under the British and Spanish rule. The business of the firm was thenceforward carried on under the style of John Forbes & Co.

In October, 1800, Bonaparte compelled Spain by the treaty of San Ildefonso to cede Louisiana to France; and France, in 1803, sold and ceded it to the United States. The United States, from the time of the purchase, claimed that it extended eastward to the Perdido, which was the eastern boundary of Louisiana in the days of d’Arriola and Iberville, and so remained until the cession, in 1763, to Great Britain of Florida by Spain, and of that portion of Louisiana south of the 31 parallel of N. latitude, east of the Mississippi, by France. The British, after that cession, in creating the province of West-Florida, extended it from the Chattahoochee to the Mississippi. Spain, on the other hand, after the treaty of Versailles, restricted West-Florida to the Perdido, she being at that time the owner of the whole of Louisiana. When, therefore, she ceded Louisiana to France, it was, as claimed by the United States, Louisiana beginning westward of the Perdido; for by contracting the West-Florida of the British, she, to that extent, extended Louisiana to its original limit, and left Pensacola within the boundary line tacitly established by the expeditions of Arriola and Iberville. Spain did not, however, consent to that construction. She claimed that British West-Florida was not embraced in Louisiana; and the question was not finally settled until 1819, when Florida was ceded to the United States. It was, from 1803, up to that cession, a cause of ill feeling and secret hostility on the part of Spanish officials at Pensacola, towards the American settlers in the disputed district.

Folch’s official term extended to 1809, and in the number of sovereign masters to whom he was subject during one year of his administration, his official life was remarkable. He was commissioned by Charles IV., who abdicated the throne of Spain in March, 1808. Upon his abdication, his eldest son, the Prince of Asturias, was proclaimed King, under the title of Ferdinand VII. On May 10, Bonaparte, having insidiously enticed Ferdinand to Bayonne, compelled him, by threats against his life, to resign his crown. On June sixth, of the same year, Joseph Bonaparte was proclaimed King of Spain, by no other real authority than the will of his imperial brother.

Never did any event arouse the patriotic resentment of a people, as Spain’s was aroused, by the ignominy of witnessing her lawful King deposed, to enable an adventurer to assume his crown. The French Emperor marched army after army into the country, to establish the new dynasty by overawing the people into submission. But army corps led by marshals, whose names had theretofore been the synonyms of victory, only intensified the spirit of resistance. As one man, from the shore of the Mediterranean to the Bay of Biscay, the population flew to arms. Mountain and plain, hill and valley, rang with their battle cry as they hastened to their cities, towns, and villages, to be organized into military commands. The patriotic passion that fired every heart in the Kingdom, was shared by Spaniards in every quarter of the globe. Of the sympathy of Pensacola with the great patriotic movement in the mother 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. He was not by nature a cruel, or a bad man; but he was neither firm nor truthful; two weaknesses in a ruler which may prove as fruitful a source of political crimes as a natural inclination to evil actions. In his first proclamation after re-ascending the throne, amid the enthusiastic joy of his people, he said, “I detest, I abhor despotism;” yet he, afterwards, lent himself to schemes which deprived Spain of constitutional government, restored the inquisition, and led to proscriptions involving the lives of some of the patriots who had contributed so largely to the restoration of his crown. The cruel and despotic policy of his advisers, at length, drove the liberal party into a widespread revolt, which would have resulted in his permanent dethronement, but for the intervention of the French, who, in 1823, enabled him by their arms to keep on his head the crown they had snatched from it in 1808.

But, if in the chief square of the town there be a reminder of a perfidious monarch, there are in some of its streets memorials of Spanish glory.

The English names of those streets were changed to the names they bear, at the time when the events with which the latter are associated occurred, and were designed to be commemorative monuments of the glory shed upon old Spain by the illustrious deeds of her sons. Upon their being monumental, must rest the apology for a slight retracing of their legends, which would otherwise be out of place in this book.