Historical Sketches of Colonial Florida

by Richard L. Campbell

The army marched in two divisions. The one commanded by Jackson in person followed the bridge trail, the other moved by a trail which led to the river, northward of the place where it made its cavernous descent. The water being high, the construction of a bridge or rafts became necessary to enable the wagons and artillery to cross. Whilst the northern division was thus obstructed, General Jackson, unimpeded in his march, reached the appointed place of junction. Here he waited, in hourly expectation of the appearance of the other column, until worked up to a frenzy of impatience which was changed to indignation when, after the junction, the interposition of a river—contradicted, as he supposed, by his own immediate experience—was assigned as the cause of the delay. At length, however, the guides, by disclosing the existence of the bridge, solved the riddle and restored the general to good humor.

His march westward, and south of the northern boundary of the province of West Florida, brought him to the Escambia river, which, having crossed, he reached the road that he had opened over the old trail in 1814, when he marched to Pensacola on a similar mission to that in which he was now engaged.

Don José Masot, who was governor of West Florida, having received intelligence of Jackson’s westward march and his designs on Pensacola, sent him a written protest against his invasion, as an offence against the Spanish king, “exhorting and requiring him to retire from the Province,” threatening if he did not, to use force for his expulsion. This protest was delivered by a Spanish officer, on May 23, after Jackson had crossed the Escambia river and was within a few hours’ march of Pensacola. Notwithstanding Masot’s threat, instead of advancing to meet the invader, he hastily retired with most of his troops to Fort San Carlos, leaving a few only at Pensacola, under the command of Lieutenant-colonel Don Lui Piemas, for the purpose of making a show of resistance.

Masot’s protest, instead of retarding, seems to have accelerated Jackson’s advance. In the afternoon of the same day on which it was received, the American army was in possession of Fort St. Michael and encamped around it. Thence, immediately upon its occupation, Jackson sent Masot a dispatch in reply to his protest, in which he demanded an immediate surrender of Pensacola and Barrancas. In his answer, on May 24, to that demand, Masot, as to Pensacola, referred Jackson to Don Lui Piemas; as to San Carlos he replied: “This fortress I am resolved to defend to the last extremity. I shall repel force by force, and he who resists aggression can never be considered an aggressor. God preserve your excellency many years.” Upon the receipt of this communication, Jackson, by arrangement with Colonel Piemas, took possession of Pensacola.

On the twenty-fifth, Jackson replied to Masot’s dispatch of the twenty-fourth, in which he tells him he is aware of the Spanish force, and hints at the folly of resistance to an overwhelming enemy. In conclusion he says: “I applaud your feelings as a soldier in wishing to defend your post, but when resistance is ineffectual and the opposing force overwhelming, the sacrifice of a few brave men is an act of wantonness, for which the commanding officer is accountable to his God.”

In the evening of the day on which Jackson’s communication was written, and within a few hours after it was received by Masot, Fort San Carlos was invested by the American army. On the night of the twenty-fifth, batteries were established in favorable positions within three hundred and eighty-five yards of the fort, though the work was interrupted by the Spanish guns. Before the American batteries replied, Jackson, in his anxiety to spare the effusion of blood, sent Masot, under a flag of truce, another demand to surrender, accompanied by a representation of the futility, if not the folly, of further resistance. The refusal of the demand was followed by the batteries and the fort opening upon each other. The firing continued until evening, when a flag from the fort invited a parley, which resulted in a truce until the following day, the twenty-seventh, when, at eight o’clock in the morning, articles of capitulation were signed. Such was Masot’s defense to “the last extremity,” and such the fruit of Jackson’s expostulation with his fiery but feeble antagonist.

The military features of the capitulation were that the Spanish surrender should be made with the honors of war, drums beating, and flags flying, during the march from the gate of the fort to the foot of the glacis, where the arms were to be stacked; the garrison to be transported to Havana; and their rights of property, to the last article, strictly respected.

But, as in the case of General Campbell’s and Governor Chester’s surrender, in 1781, to Galvez, there was a political aspect to the capitulation of Masot.

In Jackson’s despatch to Calhoun, Secretary of war, he says of the capitulation: “The articles, with but one condition, amount to a complete cession to the United States, of that portion of the Floridas hitherto under the government of Don José Masot.” The condition alluded to was, that the province should be held by the United States until Spain could furnish a sufficient military force to execute the obligations of existing treaties.

Having accepted the cession of West-Florida to the United States, Jackson further assumed the authority of constituting a provisional government for the conquered province. He appointed one of his officers, Colonel King, civil and military governor; he extended the revenue laws of the United States over the country; appointed another of his officers, Captain Gadsden, collector of the port of Pensacola, with authority to enforce those laws; declared what civil laws should be enforced, and provided for the preservation of the archives, as well as for the care and protection of what had been the property of the Spanish crown, but now, in the General’s conception, become the property of the United States.