Historical Sketches of Colonial Florida

by Richard L. Campbell

Shortly after these occurrences, General Jackson, with his constitution sorely tried by the fatigue and privations of the campaign, left Pensacola for his home in Tennessee, to find quietude and repose, made sweet by public applause on the one side, and interrupted by bitter censure and criticism on the other.

The views with which Jackson began the Seminole campaign in March, and those which he entertained at its close in May, by the capitulation of Masot, present a strange and striking contrast. He invaded East-Florida to crush the Seminoles, as he had crushed the Creeks of Alabama. This he accomplished by invading the territory of a power at peace with the United States. As an imperious necessity, the invasion was justified by his government. During his operations, however, he acquired information from which he concluded that there existed a sympathy between the Spanish officials at Pensacola and the Indians. Ostensibly, to correct that abuse he marched to Pensacola, where he ended his campaign by procuring the cession of the province of West-Florida, followed by the establishment of an American government, without the authority of the United States.

The United States, without formally disavowing Jackson’s conduct, signified its readiness to restore Pensacola and St. Marks whenever a Spanish force presented itself to receive the surrender. In September, 1819, such a force appearing at Pensacola, the town and Barrancas were immediately evacuated by the American troops. And thus ended the government established by Jackson, after it had existed fourteen months, during which it was administered to the satisfaction of the inhabitants of the Province.

With the troops there came as governor Don José Maria Callava, knight of the military order of Hermenegildo, who, in 1811, had won the cross of distinction for gallant conduct in the battle of Almonacid, one of the many fiercely fought battles of the Peninsula war.

The advent of the Spaniards seemed to be inconsistent with the fact that, on the twenty-second of the previous February, a treaty had been entered into between Secretary Adams and Don Louis de Onis, the Spanish minister for the cession of the Floridas. But it was subject to the ratification of both governments, and, though ratified by the United States, it had not been acted upon by Spain. At first the re-occupation might have been considered a matter of form, in which a sensitive government consulted its dignity by placing itself in a condition to make a voluntary surrender of territory for a consideration, instead of appearing to submit to a conquest. But, as time rolled on without a ratification of the treaty by Spain, the re-occupation of Pensacola seemed to point to her determination to permanently retain the Floridas.

It was believed, at the time the treaty was negotiated, that Jackson’s bold action had done more to bring it about than Mr. Adams’ diplomatic skill, a belief for which there was an apparent foundation in the delay of Spain to ratify it after the pressure of his conquest was removed.

No instance in the life of that great man more strikingly illustrates than these transactions the beneficent working of that imperious will, to which he made everything bend that stood in the way to the attainment of what he conceived a patriotic end.

The necessity for the campaign of 1814, as well as that which he had just closed, convinced him that Florida, as a Spanish colony, would be a constant menace to the peace and security of the border settlements of Alabama and Georgia, not so much from the hostility of the Spanish as their inability to control the restless and war-like Seminoles. He saw, too, the necessity of making Spain sensible of her obligation to exercise the necessary restraint upon her savage subjects, and at the same time to make her fully realize the large and onerous military establishment it would be necessary to maintain in Florida to accomplish that object. The articles of capitulation brought the United States and Spain face to face upon this question. It impressed upon the former the imperative necessity of securing a permanent cession, and it compelled the latter to count the cost involved in fulfilling the condition by which only the provisional cession could be nullified.

A study of the correspondence between Masot and Jackson, whilst the latter was still east of the Appalachicola river, creates the impression that the reason assigned by Jackson for his expedition to Pensacola was but a pretext, and that the real motive was made manifest by the articles of capitulation—a provisional cession, as the first step to a permanent cession. He was unsustained by his government openly, at least, he was censured by a congressional committee and denounced by the press, but he soon found his vindication in public opinion, enlightened by subsequent events.

Masot, the other chief actor in these transactions, had been appointed governor of West Florida in November, 1816, and, as we have seen, his official term ended with the capitulation of the twenty-seventh of May, 1818. Shortly afterwards he left Pensacola for Havana in the cartel Peggy, one of the vessels provided by Jackson to carry the Spanish governor to the latter place. The Peggy was overhauled by an armed vessel under the “Independent Flag,” as the ensign of Spain’s revolted South American colonies was called. No lives were taken, nor was the Peggy made a prize, for she was an American, but the Spaniards were robbed. Masot had with him eight thousand dollars in coin, which he had concealed. A slight suspension by the neck, however, as a hint of a higher and more fatal one, wrung from him the hiding-place of his treasure, which he lost, but saved his life.[^[64]] The Peggy was overhauled by the “Independent Flag,” during a voyage to Havana from Campeachy, whither she had taken refuge from what was supposed to be a piratical vessel.