118 THE NEGRO FORT [1815 government was his own judgment, would have given such instructions no heed. And in this case he was entirely in the right. So strongly, however, did affairs in Florida occupy his mind that it was with the utmost difficulty and with much delay that the seriousness of the threat against New Orleans was brought to his perception, a passiveness which was to be nobly retrieved the 8th of the following January. Peace came and Colonel Nichols had returned to Florida in April, 1815. Of his own motion, as his action was entirely disavowed by the British government, he made an offensive and defensive treaty between Great Britain and the Seminoles, "declared by his Britannic Majesty a free and independent people," and prompted them to demand the return of the lands ceded by the treaty made by Jackson, as in accord with the ninth article of the treaty of peace with Great Britain. He built a powerful fort on the Appalachicola River, 15 miles above its mouth and 120 miles east of Pensacola, armed with a number of cannon, among which were one 32-pounder and three twenty-fours, and stored with 2,500 muskets and accoutrements, 500 carbines, 500 swords, 400 pistols, 300 quarter casks of rifle powder and 763 barrels of common powder,' and this while the governor of Pensacola in whose jurisdiction the fort was, had not powder enough to fire a salute.' Nichols left for England during the summer, carrying with him the chief Francis and other Indians who received in London attention which extended to the giving by the government of a uniform to the prophet Francis, the presentation of other gifts and a reception by the prince regent. These acts, and the great value of the arms and stores in the Appalachicola fort, show, despite the asseverations to Mr. Adams the American minister, a certain governmental interest, besides a powerful financial support far in excess of ordinary individual means. The fort, occupied on the departure of Nichols by a large number of escaped negroes from Georgia, became known as Negro Fort and was soon the centre of raids upon the Georgia frontier. General Jackson, who commanded the Southern military division, Parton, Jackson, II, 399. Captain Amelung to Jackson, June 4, 1816, State Papers, V, 557. 1816] BORDER DIFFICULTIES 119 was ordered, March 15, 1816, to call the attention of the Spanish governor at Pensacola to the situation, and he demanded, under the treaty of 1795, a suppression of the nuisance, a demand which, though made by Jackson in friendly terms, assured the governor that if not put down by Spanish authority the United States would be compelled, in self-defence, to act. The governor declared his good-will and perfect accord with Jackson's views, and that he had proposed to the captain-general of Cuba, under whose jurisdiction he was, to take action, but that he could not act until he should receive orders and the necessary assistance. General Edmund P. Gaines, second in command to Jackson in the district and, under him, charged with the preservation of its peace, had, in order to overawe the negroes, built Fort Scott close to the Florida boundary, at the junction of the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers which form the Appalachicola. The difficulty of transport through the wild and roadless region made it necessary to send supplies by water from New Orleans. The first convoy sailed thence, June 24, 1816, under the command of Sailing-Master Jairus Loomis of the navy. Gaines thinking trouble probable, ordered Colonel Clinch, in command at Fort Scott, to go down the Appalachicola to the vicinity of the negro fort, to secure the safe passage of the convoy; a message was sent Loomis to await notice of the arrival, near the fort, of these troops. He arrived off the Appalachicola River July 10. While lying at the mouth of the river a boat was fired upon, July 15. Two days later an armed boat under Midshipman Luffborough was sent in with four men for fresh water. The boat was attacked, the midshipman and two men killed; one man escaped, and one, Edward Daniells, was carried off prisoner and, as later known, tarred and burned to death. On July 16 Clinch with 116 men had started down the river. While on the way he was joined by a large body of Seminoles, who were at enmity with the negroes and who agreed to act in concert with him. The Indians, scouting in advance, seized a negro with a fresh scalp from a white man, and learned from him of the attack upon the boat's crew and the retirement of the attacking 1 Jackson to Governor Zuniga, April 23, 1816, State Papers, IV, 556. 120 DESTRUCTION OF NEGRO FORT [1816 party to the negro fort. Word was sent to Loomis, but fifteen miles away, to come up the river and assist in an attack. The negroes hoisted the British union jack and under it a red flag, and opened fire with their heavy guns, with, however, no effect. All the negroes of the vicinity had on Clinch's advance hurried to the fort, which now contained 100 men and 234 women and children. Loomis arrived July 27, and opened fire without effect until a shot heated in the galley fire was fired. The result was the explosion of the 10,000 pounds of powder in the fort and the destruction of nearly all its inmates. Two hundred and seventy were killed instantly. But three were unharmed, among them the leader Garçon, who, delivered over to the Seminoles, was put to death. An unwise promise by Colonel Clinch to the Indians to give them, for their aid, the arms found in the fort, caused the distribution among them of the many hundreds of muskets and pistols later to be used effectively against the United States, and the possession of which, no doubt, had influence in encouraging the Indians to the hostilities soon to come.1 1 Condensed from Parton, Jackson, II, 402-407. CHAPTER VII THE FLORIDA TREATY AND JACKSON'S INVASION FERNANDO VII, released by the overthrow of Napoleon, had returned to Spain in 1814. He refused to accept the revolutionary "liberal" constitution formed at Cadiz in 1812, and urged, it must be said, by a large proportion of the Spanish people, reverted to absolutism as it was understood by the most absolute of his predecessors. The Jesuits were brought back, the monastic orders restored to all their ancient privileges, the inquisition reinstated, and the prisons filled with political prisoners. "The king's crowning act was to decree the death penalty to any one who dared even to speak in favor of the constitution."1 It was with such a government, now also faced by the revolt of the Spanish-American world, that the United States had to deal. The Chevalier Luis de Onis, after much unseemly wrangling, had been received at Washington in December, 1815, as minister. He was to demand the return of West Florida to Spanish jurisdiction, and call attention to the fitting out in United States ports of privateers and expeditions on behalf of the revolted provinces.2 There is no doubt of the great extent of such procedure or of the great damage to Spain. Such vessels under the flags of the newborn sovereignties, manned largely by Americans, swarmed in the western seas, with little inquiry on the part of United States authorities as to the validity of those which frequented our ports and sold their captured goods with impunity. The great booty available to such freebooters, the chaotic state which was the natural result of a world everywhere at war, brought into being a great number of such rovers whose deeds were as often as not pirati 1 Hume, Modern Spain, 192. 'De Onis to Monroe, December 30, 1815, State Papers, IV, 422-424. 122 THE SCANDAL OF THE PRIVATEERS [1815 cal and whose extirpation took years of effort and long occupied the attention of the greater part of the American navy. Baltimore and Charleston were the two ports more particularly concerned in this great scandal. Regarding the former: "The misfortune," said Adams, when he became the American secretary of state in 1817, "is not only that this abomination has spread over a large portion of the merchants and population of Baltimore, but that it has infected almost every officer of the United States in the place. They are all fanatics of the South American cause. Skinner, the postmaster, has been indicted for being concerned in the piratical privateers. Glenn, the district attorney, besides being a weak, incompetent man, has a son said to be concerned in the privateers. . . . The district judge, Houston, and the circuit judge, Duval, are both feeble, inefficient men over whom William Pinkney [one of the most noted lawyers of the time], employed by all the pirates as their counsel, domineers like a slave-driver over his negroes.' The correspondence which ensued between the American secretary of state and the Spanish minister reiterated the claims of the United States to West Florida. Monroe affirmed that there was not only no doubt as to the justice of the claim, but that the United States government had "never doubted, since the treaty of 1803," that the western boundary of Louisiana "extended to the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande)." He showed that the enterprises to aid the revolutionists of New Spain (Mexico), of which De Onis complained, had been forestalled by the American authorities wherever such authority extended, and gave, in a report of the United States attorney for the district of Louisiana, the names of 1 Adams, Memoirs, IV, 318, 319. Adams continues: "The grand jury indicted many, and the petit jury convicted one man, but every one of the causes fell through upon flaws in Glenn's bills of indictment. The conduct of the juries proves the real soundness of the public mind; . . . the political condition of Baltimore is as rotten as corruption can make it. Now that it has brought the whole body of European allies upon us [the Holy Alliance] in the form of remonstrances, the President is somewhat concerned about it, but he had nothing but directions altogether general to give me concerning it. I must take the brunt of the battle upon myself and rely upon the justice of the cause." The editor appends a note: "These proceedings formed much of the staple of the argument of the British government in justification of its ●wn course during the late civil war. It will appear from this passage how little the American government was disposed to justify them." 2 State Papers, IV, 430. |