|
English Occupation, continued - 1779-1784. Reinforcements having been received at St. Augustine, Major Prevost, who had been promoted to the rank of general, leaving the militia to guard the province, advanced, in December, 1778, to join the forces on their way from New York to attack Savannah. Rory Mcintosh had attached himself to the 60th Regiment, which was engaged in this expedition. On their way the English forces laid siege to the fort at Sunbury, commanded by Captain, afterwards General, Mcintosh, the same officer who had been taken "prisoner by the Spaniards in 1740 at Fort Moosa. Rory Mcintosh was in the British lines, in front of the fort at Sunbury. Early one morning, when he had imbibed rather too freely of mountain dew, he insisted on sallying out to demand the surrender of the fort. His friends could not restrain him, and out he marched, claymore in hand, followed by his slave Tom, and, approaching the fort, roared put, ''Surrender, you miscreants! how dare you presume to resist his Majesty's arms?" Captain Mcintosh, the commander of the fort, knew him, and, seeing his condition, forbade anyone firing on him, and, throwing open the gate, said, ''Walk in, Mr. Mcintosh, and take possession." "No," said Rory, "I will not trust myself among such vermin; but I order you to surrender." Some one fired" a rifle at him, the ball from which passed through his face immediately below his eyes. Stumbling, he fell, but recovered, and retreated backwards, flourishing his sword. Several shots followed, and Tom called out, "Run, massa! dey kill you." ''Run, poor slave," says Rory; ''thou mayest run, but I am of a race that never runs," (1) and succeeded in getting back safely into the lines. (2) The attack upon the fort at Sunbury and Savannah, under General Prevost, proved successful, and that officer's gallant defence of Savannah against the combined attack of the forces of D'Estaing and Lincoln, in 1779, added very greatly to his reputation. Don Bernardo de Galvez, a young and enterprising Spanish general, had been placed in command of the Spanish
possessions west of the Mississippi, and of New Orleans and its dependencies. Upon the breaking out of hostilities
between England and Spain, in September, 1779, he invested the English fort at Baton Rouge, which was within the
then limits of West Florida. Lieutenant-Colonel After Charleston had fallen into the hands of the British forces, the general in command at that place, in order to remove from Carolina those whom he supposed to have been the principal promoters of the Revolutionary cause, caused some forty gentlemen, of high standing, to be transferred, in August, 1780, to St. Augustine, and at a later period twenty-one others were forwarded to the same point. The following list comprises the names of these distinguished prisoners of state: John Budd, Edward Blake, Joseph Bee, Richard Beresford, John Berwick, D. Bordeaux, Robert Cochrane, Benjamin Cudworth, H. V. Crouch, J. S. Cripps, Edward Darrell, Daniel Dessaussure,John Edwards, George Flagg, Thomas Ferguson, General A. C. Gadsden, Wm. Hazel Gibbs, Thomas Grinball, William Hall, Thomas Hall, George A. Hall, Isaac Holmes, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Richard Hutson, Noble Wimberley Jones, William Johnstone, William Lee, Richard Lushington, William Logan, Rev. John Lewis, William Massey, Alexander Moultrie, Arthur Middleton, Edward McCready, John Mouatt, Edward North, John Neufville, Joseph Parker, Christopher Peters, Benjamin Postell, Samuel Prioleau, John Ernest Poyas, Edward Rutledge, Hugh Rutledge, John Sansom, Thomas Savage, Josiah Smith, Thomas Singleton, James Hampden Thompson, John Todd, Peter Timothy, Anthony Toomer, Edward Weyman, Benjamin Waller, Morton Wilkinson, and James Wakefield. Subsequently, General Rutherford and Colonel Isaacs, of North Carolina, were added to their number. These gentlemen were taken early in the morning from their beds, and placed on the vessels, in violation of the paroles which had been granted to them. (3) Upon their arrival at St. Augustine, upon giving new paroles, they were allowed the freedom of the city. General Gadsden refused to accept a parole, and, with a sturdy independence, bore a close confinement in the castle for forty-two weeks, rather than give a second parole to a power which had violated the engagements contained in the first. These prisoners of state were officially treated with great indignities at St. Augustine, and were annoyed by being informed of several decisive battles, which were represented as having destroyed all chance of success by the rebels, and told to expect the fate of vanquished rebels; they were also told, from high authority, that the blood of the brave but unfortunate Andre would be required at their hands, and were cut off from all intelligence of their friends. The English governor, Patrick Tonyn, in an official letter to Lord St. Germain, says that ''to prevent" these rebel prisoners "from poisoning the minds of the people, and for their former conduct, they are treated with great contempt, and to have any friendly intercourse with them is considered as a mark of disrespect to his Majesty and displeasing to me." This conduct, it is said, tended to increase the number of the disaffected rather than to excite the inhabitants to acts of aggression against them. These prisoners remained at St. Augustine nearly a year, when they were sent to Philadelphia, to be exchanged at the general exchange of prisoners in the year 1781. An order was issued in 1780, by Sir Guy Carleton, directing the entire evacuation of the province of East Florida, but, remonstrances having been forwarded, the order was countermanded. (4) The letters patent of the king, in 1763, upon the occupation of Florida, had provided that the governors of the colonies, so soon as the state of the country would admit, should summon General Assemblies. This, however, had never been carried into effect in Florida during the seventeen years of British occupation, the governors having availed themselves of the discretionary power placed in their hands as to the period of calling such Assemblies, and being quite willing to withhold as long as possible a partition of power. In 1780, the state of public opinion in the province forced Governor Tonyn, apparently a weak- minded and conceited individual, to call a General Assembly, which assembled in December, 1780. This step was taken very reluctantly by the governor. In a dispatch to the British Secretary of State, he says, "I have, my lord, maturely weighed the expediency, necessity, advantages and disadvantages, benefits and danger, of convoking a House of Representatives, and nothing but the necessity of it (to remove deep-rooted prejudices) for the benefit of this province could have induced me to request instructions from your lordship relative thereto, how to proceed further on this point ; but these great objects must actuate my conduct, and determine me to take this arduous and dangerous step. I perceive the cry for a provincial legislature to remedy local inconveniences is as loud as ever, and suggestions are thrown out, that without it people's property is not secure, and that they must live in a country where they can enjoy to their utmost extent the advantages of the British Constitution and laws formed with their consent. But mention the expediency, propriety, reasonableness, justice, and gratitude of imposing taxes for the expenses of government, they are all silent, or so exceedingly poor as not to be able to pay the least farthing." (5) In a dispatch of January, 1781, the governor informs the Secretary of State that the first General Assembly of the province had met, and that the freeholders had elected the most substantial, sensible, and best-affected persons in the province as their representatives. The business was transacted with moderation and zeal, and the governor seems to have been relieved of the fear of revolutionary- tendencies, very naturally suggested by the example of the neighboring American colonial assemblies. If there were any in the Provincial Legislature of Florida who had sympathies with the American cause, they must have been too few in number to make any demonstration. The Assembly appears to have confined itself to the enactment of a few laws of local importance, and the organization of a militia force. The governor made an address to the two Houses at the opening of the session, in which he congratulates them that during his administration of the government the province had arrived at such a state of affluence and importance as to enable him with propriety to fulfill his Majesty's most gracious engagements in his Royal Proclamation of the 7th of October, 1763, by establishing a Provincial Legislature, for the purpose of making constitutions, ordaining laws, statutes, and ordinances, as near as may be agreeable to the laws of England, under such regulations and restrictions as are used in other colonies, for the public welfare and good government of the province and its inhabitants. ''Of late," he says, ''the increase of property from your success in commerce and planting has been considerable, and the industry and the judgment of a few may evince to Great Britain that ample returns in produce may be made for money laid out in raising a produce equally beneficial to the planter and mother-country, in one of the most healthy and fertile climates upon earth." (6) The condition of the province at this period appears to have been prosperous, and, by the influx of a hardy race of planters from Georgia and Carolina, experienced in farming and inured to the difficulties and obstacles attending new settlements, a new impetus had been given, and the province had attained a position which promised to make it, aided by the fostering power of the home government, quite as prosperous as the other colonies. The commerce of the colony had steadily increased, the agricultural productions, stimulated by the liberal bounties offered upon indigo, rice, and naval stores, had been constantly growing larger, and nothing seemed now to forbid the hope that Florida would become one of the most productive and valuable of the English transatlantic possessions. The climate, especially upon the coast, had proved eminently favorable to health, and the variety and value of its natural productions gave promise of a bountiful reward to industry and labor. All who had explored Florida gave animated accounts of the beauty of its forests, lakes, and rivers, the wonderful growth of vegetation along its streams, and its adaptation to all the productions of the tropics. Among the most valuable articles which could be profitably cultivated were enumerated sugar-cane, cotton, rice, indigo, oranges, lemons, figs, grapes, bananas, pineapples, etc., while the forests abounded in timber of the best description, and the waters teemed with fish, oysters, and turtles.It is hardly to be doubted that had Florida remained a British colony it would at this time have equaled any of the seaboard States of the South in population. One can even now hardly penetrate a swamp or hammock along the Atlantic coast of Florida without finding distinct traces of the English cultivation and remains of improvements made by them. As an evidence of the healthiness of the country, the important fact may be referred to that the 9th British Regiment remained in St. Augustine eighteen months without losing a single man by sickness and it was also observed that a detachment of artillery which arrived from the West Indies with a great deal of sickness soon recruited, and left no traces of the contagious disease from which it had suffered. During the whole period of the British occupation there were but ten medical men in East Florida. Mr. Rolle, under date of September i, 1766, indicates the favorable impression made upon him by saying, ''Everything in nature seems to correspond towards the cultivation of the productions of the whole world, in some part or other of this happy province, the most precious jewel of his Majesty's American dominions." The exports of the province of East Florida amounted in 1768 to the sum of £14,078; in 1778 they had increased to £48,236; in 1781 they were £30,715. During the year 1770 there were fifty schooners entered the port of St. Augustine coastwise, besides several
square- rigged vessels in the trade to London and Liverpool. In 1 771, five vessels arrived at St. Augustine from
London, seven from New York, and eleven from Charleston; and there were imported into the province about one thousand
Negroes, of whom one hundred and nineteen were directly The Florida indigo brought the highest price of any sold in the London market. Forty thousand pounds were exported in 1772. During the year 1779, forty thousand barrels of naval stores were shipped, and an increase in the quantity was anticipated the following year. The British government allowed the very liberal bounty of ten shillings per barrel upon turpentine shipped from Florida; its value at St. Augustine was thirty-six shillings per barrel. A large trade was also carried on in peltries by several Indian trading-houses, among the more important of whom were Panton & Leslie, Spaulding, Kelsull, McLatchie, Swanson, and McGillivray & Strother; and in West Florida by Panton, Leslie & Forbes, and Matthew & Morgan. The Spanish governor of Louisiana, Don Bernardo de Galvez, who had captured in 1779 English post at Baton Rouge, made an investment of Pensacola with a vastly superior force, in March, 1781, assisted by a naval force under Admiral Solana. The place was strongly fortified, and held by a garrison of one thousand men, under the command of General Campbell, The English occupied two strong forts, called St. Michel and St. Bernard, which were bravely defended for a long time against the heavy bombardment of the troops of Galvez and the ships of Solana. The Spaniards were able to make no impression on the works until an unlucky accident occurred, by a chance shell entering the magazine of Fort St. Michel at the moment it was opened to take out ammunition. This explosion carried away the principal redoubt, and enabled the Spanish troops to possess themselves of Fort St. Michel. Preparations were then made to avail themselves of the position, in order to carry Fort St. Bernard by assault. Being satisfied that St. Bernard was now untenable. General Campbell capitulated on honorable terms, being allowed to withdraw with his whole force, under an engagement not to serve against Spain until exchanged. In consequence of the necessity of employing all their disposable forces in the military operations with the American colonists, the English commanders in America were unable to send reinforcements to General Campbell, and much mortification was experienced at the capture of so important and well-fortified a post. The same causes which prevented the sending of reinforcements made any attempts to recapture it out of the question at that time, and from Pensacola westward to the Mississippi the country and all the military posts remained in the possession of Spain until the treaty of 1781, when they were formally re-ceded to her by Great Britain. The mortification which the British government experienced in the loss of West Florida, Pensacola, Mobile, and Baton Rouge was in part compensated by the capture of the Bahama Islands. An expedition fitted out by Colonel Devereux, who had come to Florida from Carolina, and had a high reputation for spirit and gallantry, sailed from St. Augustine, in 1783, in two private armed brigs, for the purpose of attacking New Providence. The brigs carried twelve guns each, and the forces on board consisted of some fifty adventurers, who were desperate and reckless enough to engage in an expedition to capture strong fortifications well garrisoned. The vessels stopped at Eleuthera, where they took on board a number of negro recruits. The vessels arrived off the point on which Nassau is built, at night, and the men were landed without discovery on the east side of Fort Montague, which stands at the entrance of the harbor. The garrison, resting in fancied security, exhibited so little vigilance that the English troops reached the ramparts without alarming the Spaniards. Colonel Devereux rushed upon and surprised the sentinel before he could challenge or give an alarm, and without difficulty disarmed the sleeping garrison and obtained possession of the fort. The colonel then proceeded to the summit of a ridge opposite the governor's house. In order to deceive the inhabitants in reference to their numbers, he arranged a show of boats passing to the fort, crowded with men, and returning apparently empty to the vessels, with their occupants concealed by lying down. Men of straw were posted as sentinels on the heights, and some of the party were dressed up and painted as Indians to strike the inhabitants with terror. One or two galleys in the harbor were taken possession of with an appearance of being sustained by a considerable force. Colonel Devereux, with a pompous description of his force, summoned the governor to surrender. The governor hesitating in complying with his demand, he directed a shot to be fired over the governor's house, which produced an immediate capitulation. The Spanish troops, as may well be imagined, were astonished and chagrined when they discovered the number and character of the troops to whom they had surrendered, and by what a miserable force they had been deceived. (7) The consequences of the expedition were very important, as these valuable islands have ever since remained a part of the British Empire. At a period when the inhabitants of Florida were flattering themselves with the prospect of a long career of peaceful prosperity, and when they had attained the fullest measure of constitutional liberty, they found themselves suddenly made the victims of one of those political set-offs, or equivalents, by which diplomats endeavor to make amends for the ill success of cherished plans, and by a new arrangement of political divisions, the acquisition of new territory, and the transfer of equivalents, shield themselves from the acknowledgment of failure. At the close of the American Revolution, the ministry of Great Britain found themselves compelled to acknowledge the independence of the colonies. They were also desirous of closing a fruitless war with Spain. In order to effect this, they assumed that the provinces of East and West Florida, extending from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and the island of Minorca, were of little value to the crown, as all the colonies north of Florida had passed from under the British flag, and it was proposed to make a recession of these provinces, and also of Minorca, for the comparatively insignificant Bahama Islands, important only as a naval station. Almost the first intelligence the unfortunate people of Florida received of the coming disaster was the promulgation of a treaty, entered into on the 3d September, 1783, ceding East and West Florida. In this treaty the religious toleration which was exacted by the King of Spain for his Roman Catholic subjects from his Britannic Majesty in 1763 was not reciprocated, but it was simply provided that the English inhabitants might have eighteen months within which to remove with their property, or to dispose of their effects. The evacuation was to take place within three months after the ratification of the treaty. The unfortunate inhabitants of Florida, who were thus summarily disposed of, were placed in a most miserable predicament. For years the British government had been offering to its subjects every inducement to establish themselves in the province; they had come there relying implicitly upon the good faith of the government, and had undergone all the hardships incident to the settlement of a new country. Many of them had left the adjoining colonies in consequence of their adherence to the royal cause, and could not return. Their property consisted largely in slaves and lands, and they had no point of refuge except the unwelcome rocks and barren islets of New Providence and the Bahamas. In June, 1784, Governor Zespedez, the new Spanish governor, arrived at St. Augustine with a few troops, to take possession of Florida in the name of the King of Spain. The British government had sent to the harbor of Amelia, at the mouth of the St. Mary's River, a fleet of transports to remove the inhabitants of East Florida. Some returned to England, some went to Nova Scotia, some to the Bahamas. A large number of others carried their Negroes to Jamaica, where they were received with much jealousy, and a system of government and regulations adopted in reference to them, so injurious that they made application to the home government for relief, which was tardly granted, but not until many had sunk under the pressure of difficulties and annoyances. Afterwards, some of the inhabitants of Florida preferred returning to the Amenean States and trusting to the generosity of their former fellow- citizens to obliterate past differences. Many of those who thus returned to Carolina had emigrated to Florida before the war, and had not therefore to encounter the odium attaching to the tories and refugee loyalists who had taken up arms on the British side. These parties carried back with them to South Carolina one thousand three hundred and seventy-two Negroes. Of the number carried to Jamaica and the Bahamas we have no account, but it must have been very considerable. The time for removal was extended four months by the Spanish crown, and in April, 1786, a further order was passed in consequence of representations made by "the governor of Louisiana, allowing the former inhabitants 10 remain on condition that they should take a solemn oath of fidelity and obedience to his Catholic Majesty; that they should not change their residence or go away without leave of the government; that "at Natchez, and other places of both Floridas, where it is convenient, parishes oi Irish clergy be established, in order to bring said colonists and their children and families to our religion with the sweetness and mildness which it advises." (8) St. Augustine was the only town of any importance in East Florida at the period of the evacuation by the Spaniards, in 1763. It contained three thousand inhabitants at that time. All the gardens in the town were well stocked with fruit-trees, such as figs, guavas, plantains, pomegranates, lemons, limes, citrons, shaddocks, bergamot, China and Se' 'He oranges. The city was three-quarters of a mile in length, and about a quarter of a mile in width. It had four churches, ornamentally built of stone in the Spanish style. One was pulled down during the English occupation, the steeple of which was preserved as an ornament to the town. One of the churches was attached to the Convent of St. Francis. The houses were all built of stone, their entrances shaded by piazzas supported by Tuscan pillars or pilasters. Upon the east the windows projected eighteen inches into the street, and were very wide and proportionally high. On the west side the windows were commonly very small, and there was no opening of any kind to the north, upon which side they had double walls, six or eight feet asunder, forming a kind of hall for cellars and pantries. Before most of the entrances, which were from an inner court, arbors of vines, producing fine and luscious grapes. None of the houses were supplied with chimneys or fireplace's. For the purposes of warmth, stone urns were filled with coals, and placed in the rooms in the afternoon to moderate the temperature in weather sufficiently cool to require it. The governor's residence had piazzas on both sides, also a belvedere and grand portico, decorated with Doric pillars and entablatures. At the north end of the town was the castle, a casemated fort, with four bastions, a ravelin counterscarp, and a glacis, built with quarried stone, and constructed according to the system of Vauban. Half a mile to the north was a line, with a broad ditch and bastions, running from the Sebastian Creek to St. Mark's River; a mile from that was another fortified line, with some redoubts, forming a second line of communication between a staccata fort upon St. Sebastian River, and Fort Moosa, upon the St. Mark's River. (9) Within the first line, near the town, was a small settlement of Germans, who had a church of their own. Upon the St. Mark's River, within the second line, was also an Indian town, with a storte church built by the Indians themselves, and in very good taste. During the English occupation, large buildings were erected for barracks, of sufficient extent to quarter five regiments of troops. The brick of which they were built was brought from New York, although the island opposite the city afforded a much better building-material, in the coquina stone. The lower story only of the British barracks was built of brick, the upper story being of wood, These barracks stood at the southern extremity of the town, to the south of the present barracks, and the length and great extent of the buildings fronting on the bay added greatly to the appearance of the city as viewed from the harbor. The city, in English times, contained many gentlemen of distinction, among whom were Sir Charles Burdett, Chief-Justice Drayton, Rev. John Forbes, the Admiralty Judge, General James Grant, Lieut. Governor Moultrie, William Stark, Esq., the historian. Rev. N. Frazer, Dr. Andrew Turnbull, Bernard Romans, Esq., civil engineer, James Moultrie, Esq., and William Bartram, the naturalist. Some few English families remained after the evacuation by the British in 1784, and the entire settlement of Greeks and Minorcans, who had come up from Mosquito from Dr. Turnbull's colony. As they were all Roman Catholics, and were accustomed to a language resembling the Spanish, they were not affected to any great degree by the change of rulers. It is a sad thing for an entire people to be forced to give up their homes and seek an asylum in some foreign land ; and melancholy was the spectacle presented on all the routes leading to the harbor designated for the embarkation of the English inhabitants of Florida. Families separating perhaps forever, long adieus between neighbors and friends who had together shared the privations and pleasures of the past, leaving behind them places endeared by the most sacred associations, and containing, perchance, the precious dust of the departed. Homes embowered among the orange-groves, and made pleasant by the fragrant blossoms of the honeysuckle, the rose, and the acacia; a land where Nature had lavished her choicest beauties, and created a perpetual summer, such was the land upon which the unfortunate residents of Florida were obliged to turn their backs forever.
(1) White's Ga. Hist. Coll., p. 471. (2) When at St. Augustine, upon one occasion, Rory was introduced to a Scotch gentleman of the name of Morrison. Rory addressed him in Gaelic Mr. Morrison regretted his ignorance of that language. " I pity you," said Rory; " but you may be an honest man, for all that." - White's Ga. Hist. Coll.,. 470. (3) Ramsay's Hist, of S. C, vol. i. pp. 370-373. (4) Forbes' s Florida, p. 50. (5) Foibes's Sketches, p. 35. (6) Forbes's vSketches, p. 47. (7) Forbes's Sketches, p. 53. (8) Vignoles, Observations on Florida, p. 196. (9) These lines may be still distinctly traced. The churches spoken of, outside the city,
as well as Forts Moosa and Staccata, have long since disappeared, but their sites are known. The outer line passed
through the grounds formerly occupied by the writer. Table of Contents |
