Jackson’s Invasion of West Florida in 1818—Masot’s Protest—Capture of
Pensacola—Capitulation of San Carlos—Provisional Government
Established by Jackson—Pensacola Restored to Spain—Governor Callava—
Treaty of Cession—Congressional Criticism of Jackson’s Conduct.
Hitherto Jackson’s operations had been confined to the province of East
Florida. On the tenth of May, 1818, he began his invasion of West
Florida by crossing the Appalachicola river at the Indian village of
Ochesee. Thence he followed a trail which led him over the natural
bridge of the Chipola river—a bridge which it would be difficult for the
wayfarer to observe, as it is formed by the stream quietly sinking into
a lime-stone cavern, through which it again emerges within a distance of
half a mile.
Within a few hundred yards of the trail, and near the north side of the
bridge, there is a cave one-fourth of a mile in length, with many
lateral grottoes, its roof pendant with glittering stalactites and its
floor covered with lime-stones moulded in varied and eccentric forms.
Panic-stricken by Jackson’s campaign in East Florida, the Indians on the
west of the Appalachicola river, when he began his westward march, made
this cave a place of refuge, and were there quietly concealed when his
troops unconsciously marched over their subterranean retreat.
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.
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.
During Masot’s administration there occurred a transaction which
occupied a place in the investigations of the special committee of the
senate of the United States, appointed, in 1818, to inquire into and
report upon the occurrences of the Seminole war of that year, prominent
amongst them the capture of St. Marks and Pensacola. The committee
condemned all Jackson’s proceedings and seem to have even harbored the
suspicion that a land speculation prompted him to exact a cession of the
latter place. The circumstances which induced the suspicion are detailed
in an affidavit of General John B. Eaton, afterwards secretary of war
under Jackson and governor of Florida, which appears amongst the
documents accompanying the report of the committee.[65]
It seems that, in 1817, Eaton and James Jackson of Nashville—nowise
related to General Jackson—foreseeing that Florida was to be acquired by
the United States, resolved to make a purchase of lots in Pensacola and
lands in its vicinity. To them were afterwards added six associates,
John McCrae, James Jackson, Jr., John C. McElmore, John Jackson, Thomas
Childress and John Donelson, who was a nephew of Mrs. Jackson. Donelson
and a Mr. Gordon were appointed to proceed to Pensacola to make the
purchases. As a measure of security to Donelson and Gordon, Eaton
applied to General Jackson and obtained for them a letter of
introduction to Masot. Provided with this letter, which facilitated
their operations, Donelson and Gordon went to Pensacola and fulfilled
their mission by buying a large number of unimproved town lots, sixty
acres of land adjoining the town and a tract on the bay two or three
miles to the westward.
Eaton says: General Jackson had no interest in the speculation, nor was
he consulted respecting it, his only connection with it being the letter
to Masot. As there is no allusion to the transaction in the report of
the committee, they must have concluded that the suspicion which
prompted the search for evidence respecting it was unfounded. Such at
least must be the just conclusion from the silence in respect to the
matter observed by a document so full of pointed condemnation of
Jackson’s acts, of the manner in which his army was raised and the
officers commissioned by himself, the executions of Arbuthnot and
Ambrister, the capture of St. Marks and Pensacola, the establishment of
a provisional government, the extension of the revenue laws of the
United States over the conquered province, and the appointments for it
of a governor and a collector of the customs.
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Footnote 64:
Niles’ Weekly Register, Vol. XV., p. 261.
Footnote 65:
Niles’ Weekly Register, Vol. XV., p. 88.
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