THE "CONQUEST" OF FLORIDA
The victory at New Orleans made Jackson not only the most popular man
in the United States but a figure of international interest. "Napoleon,
returning from Elba to eke out the Hundred Days and add the name
Waterloo to history, paused now and then a moment to study Jackson at
New Orleans. The Duke of Wellington, chosen by assembled Europe to meet
the crisis, could find time even at Brussels to call for 'all available
information on the abortive expedition against Louisiana.'" π
π Buell, History of Andrew Jackson, Vol II, pp. 94-95.
While his countrymen were sounding his praises, the General, however,
fell into a controversy with the authorities and people of New Orleans
which lent a drab aspect to the closing scene of an otherwise brilliant
drama. One of his first acts upon arriving in the defenseless city had
been to declare martial law; and under the decree the daily life of the
inhabitants had been rigorously circumscribed, citizens had been
pressed into military service, men under suspicion had been locked up,
and large quantities of cotton and other supplies had been seized for
the soldiers' use. When Pakenham's army was defeated, people expected
an immediate return to normal conditions. Jackson, however, proposed to
take no chances. Neither the sailing of the British fleet nor the
receipt of the news of peace from Admiral Cochrane influenced him to
relax his vigilance, and only after official instructions came from
Washington in the middle of March was the ban lifted.
Meanwhile a violent quarrel had broken out between the commander and
the civil authorities, who naturally wished to resume their accustomed
functions. Finding that the Creoles were systematically evading service
by registering as French citizens, Jackson abruptly ordered all such
people from the city; and he was responsible for numerous other
arbitrary acts. Protests were lodged, and some people threatened
judicial proceedings. But they might have saved their breath. Jackson
was not the man to argue matters of the kind. A leading Creole who
published an especially pointed protest was clapped into prison, and
when the Federal district judge, Hall, issued a writ of habeas corpus
in his behalf, Jackson had him also shut up.
As soon as he was liberated, the irate judge summoned Jackson into
court to show why he should not be held in contempt. Beyond a blanket
vindication of his acts, the General would not plead. "I will not
answer interrogatories," he declared. "I may have erred, but my motives
cannot be misinterpreted." The judge thereupon imposed a fine of one
thousand dollars, the only question being, he declared, "whether the
Law should bend to the General or the General to the Law." Jackson
accepted the sentence with equanimity, and to a group of admirers who
drew him in a carriage from the court room to one of the leading
coffeehouses, he expressed lofty sentiments on the obligation of
citizens of every rank to obey the laws and uphold the courts.
Twenty-nine years afterwards Congress voted reimbursement to the full
amount of the fine with interest.
For three weeks after the arrival of the treaty of peace Jackson
lingered at New Orleans, haggling by day with the contractors and
merchants whose cotton, blankets, and bacon were yet to be paid for,
and enjoying in the evening the festivities planned in his honor by
grateful citizens. His pleasure in the gala affairs of the time was
doubled by the presence of his wife, who one day arrived quite
unexpectedly in the company of some Tennessee friends. Mrs. Jackson was
a typical frontier planter's wife--kind-hearted, sincere, benevolent,
thrifty, pious, but unlettered and wholly innocent of polished manners.
In all her forty-eight years she had never seen a city more pretentious
than Nashville. She was, moreover, stout and florid, and it may be
supposed that in her rustic garb she was a somewhat conspicuous figure
among the fashionable ladies of New Orleans society.
But the wife of Jackson's accomplished friend and future Secretary of
State, Edward Livingston, fitted her out with fashionable clothes and
tactfully instructed her in the niceties of etiquette, and ere long she
was able to demean herself, if not without a betrayal of her
unfamiliarity with the environment, at all events to the complete
satisfaction of the General. The latter's devotion to his wife was a
matter of much comment. "Debonair as he had been in his association
with the Creole belles, he never missed an opportunity to demonstrate
that he considered the short, stout, beaming matron at his side the
perfection of her sex and far and away the most charming woman in the
world." π "Aunt Rachel," as she was known throughout western Tennessee,
lived to see the hero of New Orleans elected President, but not to
share with him the honors of the position. "I have sometimes thought,"
said Thomas Hart Benton, "that General Jackson might have been a more
equable tenant of the White House than he was had she been spared to
share it with him. At all events, she was the only human being on earth
who ever possessed the power to swerve his mighty will or soothe his
fierce temper."
π Buell, History of Andrew Jackson, Vol II, p. 97.
Shortly before their departure the Jacksons were guests of honor at a
grand ball at the Academy. The upper floor was arranged for dancing and
the lower for supper, and the entire building was aglow with flowers,
colored lamps, and transparencies. As the evening wore on and the
dances of polite society had their due turn, the General finally avowed
that he and his bonny wife would show the proud city folk what real
dancing was. A somewhat cynical observer--a certain Nolte, whom Jackson
had just forced to his own terms in a settlement for war
supplies--records his impression as follows: "After supper we were
treated to a most delicious pas de deux by the conqueror and his
spouse. To see these two figures, the General, a long haggard man, with
limbs like a skeleton, and Madame la GÈnÈrale, a short fat dumpling,
bobbing opposite each other like half-drunken Indians, to the wild
melody of Possum up de Gum Tree, and endeavoring to make a spring into
the air, was very remarkable, and far more edifying a spectacle than
any European ballet could possibly have furnished." But Jackson was
only less proud of his accomplishments as a dancer than as a fighter,
and it was the part of discretion for a man of Nolte's critical turn to
keep a straight face on this occasion.
In early April the General and his wife started homeward, the latter
bearing as a parting gift from the women of New Orleans the somewhat
gaudy set of topaz jewelry which she wears in her most familiar
portrait. The trip was a continuous ovation, and at Nashville a series
of festivities wound up with a banquet attended by the most
distinguished soldiers and citizens of Tennessee and presided over by
the Governor of the State. Other cities gave dinners, and legislatures
voted swords and addresses. A period of rest at the Hermitage was
interrupted in the autumn of 1815 by a horseback trip to Washington
which involved a succession of dinners and receptions. But after a few
months the much fÍted soldier was back at Nashville, ready, as he said,
to "resume the cultivation of that friendly intercourse with my friends
and neighbors which has heretofore constituted so great a portion of my
happiness."
After Jackson had talked over his actions at New Orleans with both the
President and the Secretary of War, he had received, as he says, "a
chart blank," approving his "whole proceedings"; so he had nothing
further to worry about on that score. The national army had been
reorganized on a peace footing, in two divisions, each under command of
a major general. The northern division fell to Jacob Brown of New York,
the hero of Lundy's Lane; the southern fell to Jackson, with
headquarters at Nashville.
Jackson was the last man to suppose that warfare in the southern half
of the United States was a thing of the past. He knew that the late
contest had left the southern Indians restless and that the existing
treaties were likely to be repudiated at any moment. Florida was still
in the hands of the Spaniards, and he had never a doubt that some day
this territory would have to be conquered and annexed. Moreover Jackson
believed for some years after 1815, according to General Eaton, that
Great Britain would again make war on the United States, using Florida
as a base. At all events, it can have caused the General no
surprise--or regret--to be called again into active service on the
Florida border before the close of 1817.
The hold of the Spaniards upon Florida had been so far weakened by the
War of 1812 that after the restoration of peace they occupied only
three important points--Pensacola, St. Marks, and St. Augustine. The
rest of the territory became a No Man's Land, an ideal resort for
desperate adventurers of every race and description. There was a
considerable Indian population, consisting mainly of Seminoles, a tribe
belonging to the Creek Confederacy, together with other Creeks who had
fled across the border to escape the vengeance of Jackson at Tohopeka.
All were bitterly hostile to the United States. There were Spanish
freebooters, Irish roustabouts, Scotch free lances, and runaway
slaves--a nondescript lot, and all ready for any undertaking that
promised excitement, revenge, or booty. Furthermore there were some
British soldiers who had remained on their own responsibility after the
troops were withdrawn. The leading spirit among these was Colonel
Edward Nicholls, who had already made himself obnoxious to the United
States by his conduct at Pensacola.
At the close of the war Nicholls and his men built a fort on the
Apalachicola, fifteen miles from the Gulf, and began again to collect
and organize fugitive slaves, Indians, and adventurers of every sort,
whom they employed on raids into the territory of the United States and
in attacks upon its inhabitants. The Creeks were falsely informed that
in the Treaty of Ghent the United States had promised to give up all
lands taken from them during the late war, and they were thus incited
to rise in vindication of their alleged rights. What Nicholls was
aiming at came out when, in company with several chieftains, he
returned to England to ask for an alliance between the "mother country"
and his buccaneer state. He met no encouragement, however, and in reply
to an American protest the British Government repudiated his arts. His
rÙle was nevertheless promptly taken up by a misguided Scotch trader,
Alexander Arbuthnot, and the reign of lawlessness continued.
After all, it was Spain's business to keep order on the frontier; and
the United States waited a year and a half for the Madrid Government to
give evidence of intent to do so. But, as nothing but vain promises
were forthcoming, some American troops engaged in building a fort on
the Apalachicola, just north of the boundary line, marched down the
river in July, 1816, bombarded Nicholls's Negro Fort, blew up its
magazine, and practically exterminated the Negro and Indian garrison. A
menace to the slave property of southern Georgia was thus removed, but
the bigger problem remained. The Seminoles were restive; the refugee
Creeks kept up their forays across the border; and the rich lands
acquired by the Treaty of Fort Jackson were fast filling with white
settlers who clamored for protection. Though the Monroe Administration
had opened negotiations for the cession of the whole Florida country to
the United States, progress was slow and the outcome doubtful.
Matters came to a head in the closing weeks of 1817. General Gaines,
who was in command on the Florida border, had tried repeatedly to get
an interview with the principal "Red Stick" chieftain, but all of his
overtures had been repulsed. Finally he sent a detachment of soldiers
to conduct the dignitary and his warriors from their village at
Fowltown, on the American side of the line, to a designated parley
ground. In no mood for negotiation, the chief ordered his followers to
fire on the visitors; whereupon the latter seized and destroyed the
village.
The fight at Fowltown may be regarded as the beginning of the Seminole
War. General Gaines was directed to begin operations against the
Indians and to pursue them if necessary into East Florida; but before
he could carry out his orders, Jackson was put in personal command of
the forces acting against the Indians and was instructed to concentrate
all of the troops in his department at Fort Scott and to obtain from
the Governors of Georgia and Tennessee such other assistance as he
should need.
Jackson received his orders at the Hermitage. Governor Blount was
absent from Nashville, but the eager commander went ahead raising
troops on his own responsibility. Nothing was so certain to whet his
appetite for action as the prospect of a war in Florida. Not only did
his instructions authorize him to pursue the enemy, under certain
conditions, into Spanish territory, but from the first he himself
conceived of the enterprise as decidedly more than a punitive
expedition. The United States wanted Florida and was at the moment
trying to induce Spain to give it up. Here was the chance to take it
regardless of Spain. "Let it be signified to me through any channel
(say Mr. J. Rhea)," wrote the Major General to the President, "that the
possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States, and
in sixty days it will be accomplished."
This "Rhea letter" became the innocent source of one of the most famous
controversies in American history. Jackson supposed that the
communication had been promptly delivered to Monroe, and that his plan
for the conquest of Florida had the full, if secret, approval of the
Administration. Instructions from the Secretary of War, Calhoun, seemed
susceptible of no other interpretation; besides, the conqueror
subsequently maintained that he received through Rhea the assurance
that he coveted. Monroe, however, later denied flatly that he had given
any orders of the kind. Indeed he said that through a peculiar
combination of circumstances he had not even read Jackson's letter
until long after the Florida campaign was ended. Each man, no doubt,
thought he was telling the truth, and historians will probably always
differ upon the merits of the case. The one thing that is perfectly
certain is that Jackson, when he carried his troops into Florida in
1818, believed that the Government expected him to prepare the
territory for permanent American occupation.
In early March, Jackson was at Fort Scott, on the Georgia frontier,
with about two thousand men. Though he expected other forces, Jackson
found that scarcity of rations made it inadvisable to wait for them,
and he therefore marched his army on as rapidly as possible down the
soggy bank of the Apalachicola, past the ruins of Negro Fort, into
Florida, where he found in readiness the provisions which had been sent
forward by way of Mobile. Turning eastward, Jackson bore down upon the
Spanish settlement of St. Marks, where it was rumored that the hostile
natives had assembled in considerable numbers. A small fleet of
gunboats from Mobile and New Orleans was ordered to move along the
coast and intercept any fugitives, "white, red, or black." Upwards of
two thousand friendly Indians joined the land expedition, and the
invasion became from a military standpoint a sheer farce. The Seminoles
were utterly unprepared for war, and their villages were taken
possession of, one by one, without opposition. At St. Marks the Indians
fled precipitately, and the little Spanish garrison, after a glimpse of
the investing force, asked only that receipts be given for the movable
property confiscated. The Seminole War was over almost before it was
begun.
But Jackson was not in Florida simply to quell the Seminoles. He was
there to vindicate the honor and establish the sovereignty of the
United States. Hence there was further work for him to do. The British
instigators of lawlessness were to be apprehended; the surviving
evidences of Spanish authority were to be obliterated. Both objects
Jackson attained with characteristic speed and thoroughness. At St.
Marks he made Arbuthnot a prisoner; at Suwanee he captured another
meddler by the name of Ambrister; and after a court-martial he hanged
one and shot the other in the presence of the chieftains whom these men
had deceived into thinking that Great Britain stood ready to come to
the red man's relief. Two Indian chiefs who were considered ringleaders
he likewise executed. Then, leaving St. Marks in the possession of two
hundred troops, Jackson advanced upon Pensacola, the main seat of
Spanish authority in the colony.
From the Governor, Don JosÈ Callava, now came a dignified note of
protest; but the invader's only reply was an announcement of his
purpose to take possession of the town, on the ground that its
population had encouraged the Indians and given them supplies. On May
24, 1818, the American forces and their allies marched in, unopposed,
and the commander coolly apprised Callava that he would "assume the
government until the transaction can be amicably adjusted by the two
governments." "If, contrary to my hopes," responded the Spanish
dignitary, "Your Excellency should persist in your intention to occupy
this fortress, which 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." To
which Jackson replied that "resistance would be a wanton sacrifice of
blood," and that he could not but remark on the Governor's
inconsistency in presuming himself capable of repelling an army which
had conquered Indian tribes admittedly too powerful for the Spaniards
to control.
When the Americans approached the fort in which Callava had taken
refuge, they were received with a volley which they answered, as
Jackson tells us, with "a nine-pound piece and five eight-inch
howitzers." The Spaniards, whose only purpose was to make a decent show
of defending the place, then ran up the white flag and were allowed to
march out with the honors of war. The victor sent the Governor and
soldiery off to Havana, installed a United States collector of customs,
stationed a United States garrison in the fort, and on the following
day set out on his way to Tennessee.
In a five months' campaign Jackson had established peace on the border,
had broken the power of the hostile Indians, and had substantially
conquered Florida. Not a white man in his army had been killed in
battle, and not even the most extravagant eulogist could aver that the
war had been a great military triumph. None the less, the
people--especially in the West and South--were intensely pleased. Life
in the frontier regions would now be safer; and the acquisition of the
coveted Florida country was brought appreciably nearer. The popular
sentiment on the latter subject found characteristic expression in a
toast at a banquet given at Nashville in honor of the returning
conqueror: "Pensacola--Spanish perfidy and Indian barbarity rendered
its capture necessary. May our Government never surrender it from the
fear of war!"
It was easy enough for Jackson to "take" Florida and for the people to
rejoice in the exploit. To defend or explain away the irregular
features of the act was, however, quite a different matter; and that
was the task which fell to the authorities at Washington. "The
territory of a friendly power had been invaded, its officers deposed,
its towns and fortresses taken possession of; two citizens of another
friendly and powerful nation had been executed in scandalously summary
fashion, upon suspicion rather than evidence." The Spanish Minister,
Onis, wrathfully protested to the Secretary of State and demanded that
Jackson be punished; while from London Rush quoted Castlereagh as
saying that English feeling was so wrought up that war could be
produced by the raising of a finger.
Monroe and his Cabinet were therefore given many anxious days and
sleepless nights. They wanted to buy Florida, not conquer it. They had
entertained no thought of authorizing the things that Jackson had done.
They recognized that the Tennesseean's crude notions of international
law could not be upheld in dealings with proud European States. Yet it
was borne in upon them from every side that the nation approved what
had been done; and the politically ambitious might well think twice
before casting any slur upon the acts of the people's hero. Moreover
the irascibility of the conqueror himself was known and feared.
Calhoun, the Secretary of War, who was specially annoyed because his
instructions had not been followed, favored a public censure. On the
other hand, John Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State, took the ground
that everything that Jackson had done was "defensive and incident to
his main duty to crush the Seminoles." The Administration finally
reached the decision to surrender the posts but otherwise to back up
the General, in the hope of convincing Spain of the futility of trying
longer to hold Florida. Monroe explained the necessities of the
situation to Jackson as tactfully as he could, leaving him under the
impression--which was corrected only in 1830--that Crawford, rather
than Calhoun, was the member of the Cabinet who had held out against
him.
But the controversy spread beyond the Cabinet circle. During the winter
of 1818-19 Congress took it up, and a determined effort was made to
carry a vote of censure. The debate in the House--with galleries
crowded to suffocation, we are informed by the National
Intelligencer--lasted four weeks and was notable for bringing Clay for
the first time publicly into opposition to the Tenneseean. The
resolutions containing the censure were voted down, however, by a
majority of almost two to one. In the Senate a select committee, after
a laborious investigation, brought in an unfavorable report, but no
further action was taken.
When the discussion in Congress was at its height, Jackson himself
appeared in Washington. Certain friends at the capital, fearing that
his outbursts of temper would prejudice his case, urged him to remain
at home, but others assured him that his presence was needed. To his
neighbor, Major Lewis, Jackson confided: "A lot of d------d rascals,
with Clay at their head--and maybe with Adams in the rear-guard--are
setting up a conspiracy against me. I'm going there to see it out with
them."
Until vindicated by the House vote, he remained quietly in his hotel.
After that he felt free to pay and receive calls, attend dinners, and
accept the tokens of regard which were showered upon him. It was now
that he paid his first visit to a number of the larger eastern cities.
Philadelphia fÍed him four days. In New York the freedom of the city
was presented by the mayor on a delicately inscribed parchment enclosed
in a gold box, and Tammany gave a great dinner at which the leading
guest, to the dismay of the young Van Buren and other supporters of
Crawford, toasted DeWitt Clinton, the leader of the opposing Republican
faction. At Baltimore there was a dinner, and the city council asked
the visitor to sit for a picture by Peale for the adornment of the
council room. Here the General was handed a copy of the Senate
committee's report, abounding in strictures on his Seminole campaign.
Hastening back to Washington, he filled the air with threats, and was
narrowly prevented from personally assaulting a member of the
investigating committee. When, however, it appeared that the report was
to be allowed to repose for all time on the table, Jackson's
indignation cooled, and soon he was on his way back to Tennessee. With
him went the news that Adams and Onis had signed a treaty of "amity,
settlements, and limits," whereby for a consideration of five million
dollars the sovereignty of all Florida was transferred to the United
States. This treaty, as Jackson viewed it, was the crowning vindication
of the acts which had been called in question; and public sentiment
agreed with him.
Dilatory tactics on the part of the Madrid Government delayed the
actual transfer of the territory more than two years. After having
twice refused, Jackson at length accepted the governorship of Florida,
and in the early summer of 1821 he set out, by way of New Orleans, for
his new post. Mrs. Jackson went with him, although she had no liking
for either the territory or its people. On the morning of the 17th of
July the formal transfer took place. A procession was formed,
consisting of such American soldiers as were on the spot. A ship's band
briskly played The Star Spangled Banner and the new Governor rode
proudly at the fore as the procession moved along Main Street to the
government house, where ex-Governor Callava with his staff was in
waiting. The Spanish flag was hauled down, the American was run up, the
keys were handed over, and the remaining members of the garrison were
sent off to the vessels which on the morrow were to bear them on their
way to Cuba. Only Callava and a few other officials and merchants
stayed behind to close up matters of public and private business.
Jackson's governorship was brief and stormy. In the first place, he had
no taste for administrative routine, and he found no such opportunity
as he had hoped for to confer favors upon his friends. "I am sure our
stay here will not be long," wrote Mrs. Jackson to a brother in early
August. "This office does not suit my husband. . . . There never was a
man more disappointed than he has been. He has not the power to appoint
one of his friends." In the second place, the new Governor's status was
wholly anomalous, since Congress had extended to the territory only the
revenue and anti-slave-trade laws, leaving Jackson to exercise in other
matters the rather vague powers of the captain general of Cuba and of
the Spanish governors of the Floridas. And in the third place, before
his first twenty-four hours were up, the new executive fell into a
desperate quarrel with his predecessor, a man of sufficiently similar
temperament to make the contest a source of sport for the gods.
Jackson was prepared to believe the worst of any Spaniard, and his
relations with Callava grew steadily more strained until finally, with
a view to obtaining possession of certain deeds and other legal papers,
he had the irate dignitary shut up overnight in the calaboose. Then he
fell upon the judge of the Western District of Florida for issuing a
writ of habeas corpus in the Spaniard's behalf; and all
parties--Jackson, Callava, and the judge--swamped the wearied officials
at Washington with "statements" and "exhibitions" setting forth in
lurid phraseology their respective views upon the questions involved.
Callava finally carried his complaints to the capital in person and
stirred the Spanish Minister to a fresh bombardment of the White House.
Monroe's Cabinet spent three days discussing the subject, without
coming to a decision. Many were in honest doubt as to the principles of
law involved; some were fearful of the political effects of any stand
they might take; all were inexpressibly relieved when, late in the
year, word came that "Don Andrew Jackson" had resigned the governorship
and was proposing to retire to private life at the Hermitage.