This is a little talk I’ve been sharing at local events in honor of America’s semiquincentennial, though most of the Florida story takes place after 1776. Now that we are celebrating 250 years of American independence, we will hear a lot of the classic, inspiring stories of patriotism as they unfolded in regions across the budding United States: New England saw “the problem child” colony of Massachusetts defying Parliament; the Mid Atlantic saw Pennsylvania hosting Continental Congress; the South had Virginia’s devoted George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. But what about the Gulf Coast? What was significant about Florida? The territory of Florida was no stranger to the clash of European empires, and rather was a gateway to revolutionary ventures on the continent thanks to Juan Ponce de Leon’s landing in 1513. But Florida’s unique role in the founding of the United States as a free republic was mostly one of geographic strategy. When the 1763 Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War, Spain ceded Florida to Britain. The British proceeded to divide their new colonial acquisition into East Florida, with St. Augustine – the oldest active European-established city in North America – as its capital, and West Florida, with Pensacola, of the old Presidio San Miguel de Panzacola – perhaps an Apalachee name meaning “long-haired people” – as its capital. West Florida extended as far north as the middle of what is now the State of Alabama, and as far west as the Mississippi River. The proximity to both the Caribbean and the western frontier made Florida an exciting prospect for British colonialism. Yet what made the British Empire so successful in colonizing was its tendency to produce self-governing colonies that were lower maintenance because they were relatively self-sufficient, generating revenue without needing to be micro-managed (the flip side is that feature also made their colonies difficult to hold onto). Florida, meanwhile, didn’t develop to that level. As royal colonies, East & West Florida each had an appointed governor, lieutenant governor, chief justice, and upper house, but couldn’t have an elected lower legislative house until they reached a certain population threshold. Even with multiple incentive packages, it was hard to convince enough people to permanently settle in Florida. Daniel Boone was initially interested and bought some land in Pensacola. But as the story goes, his wife didn’t like the idea of moving so far away from family, so they remained in North Carolina. There was also a learning curve to settling in Florida climate and terrain. English folks started remodeling Spanish houses into the British styles that felt more like home, only to realize the Spanish architecture served a very practical purpose in the hot, humid, mosquito-laden climate that could still experience some chilling winds in winter. Overall, those who resided in British Florida remained dependent upon the Mother Country (English trade was their sustenance), so they understandably took a loyalist position when separation from Britain was on the table. There was a paradox here: Florida being less independent than the more established American colonies made it easier for the British to utilize, but that same lack of independence also made it a vulnerable spot on the geopolitical landscape. Vulnerable in particular to its former empire, Spain. This would work in favor of the American cause. On June 29th, 1779, Spain, after covertly supporting the American rebellion for three years, declared war on Britain. A prominent leader on this front was Colonel Bernardo de Gálvez, governor of Spanish New Orleans (France gave Louisiana to Spain in 1762). Historian Barbara A. Mitchell captures the essence of this uniquely Spanish American mission: “The long-term Spanish strategy was to seize the well-fortified British enclaves of Mobile and Pensacola, which lay east of New Orleans on the Gulf Coast. Gálvez began preparing for a long campaign. Arranging for provisions in July 1779, he dispatched an emissary to the provincial governor of Texas, where Spanish vaqueros—cowboys—managed great herds around Béxar, present-day San Antonio. The next month, they herded 2,000 Texas longhorns to Louisiana to supply Gálvez’s troops—the inaugural long-range Texas cattle drive. By August, Gálvez had assembled a force of remarkable diversity for the 18th century. The initial troop of more than 600 men comprised 170 veteran soldiers, 330 recruits from Mexico and the Canary Islands, 60 militiamen and local citizens, 80 free blacks, and 7 American volunteers, including Oliver Pollock [Irish businessman and fiancier of the American Revolution, interestingly credited with creating the American dollar sign – as an accident of poor handwriting]. Gálvez recruited another 600 men among Louisiana’s German and Acadian immigrants, and 160 Indians. The babel of languages can only be imagined: West African, German, Acadian French, probably Choctaw or Chickasaw, and the Castilian of the Mexicans, Cubans, and peninsular Spaniards, with the Irish lilt of the bilingual Pollock. The troops marched more than 100 miles through the dense forests and swamps northwest of New Orleans to a recently constructed six-cannon British fort on the eastern shore of Mississippi, a few miles south of Baton Rouge. Gálvez preceded them and continued to muster volunteers. Though almost a third of the men became ill from the swarming mosquitoes and fever-inducing swampland, by all accounts their leader managed to instill esprit de corps in them.” Thus began Gálvez’s gradual campaign eastward to reclaim Florida for the Spanish crown. Marching upon Baton Rouge, Gálvez, who himself had a French-American wife and a baby at home, was aware many of his troops were inexperience volunteers with young families. He avoided a direct assault on the city and, as Mitchell explains, “[u]sing a diversionary detachment to draw British fire as twilight fell, Gálvez’s men surreptitiously installed cannons he had hauled upriver on flatbeds in a garden on the opposite side of the fort. In the morning, the dismayed British realized their mistake, but it was too late. Gálvez’s troops launched an artillery barrage from their secure vantage point and wrecked the fort. The British could not bring their own guns to bear on the garden. By midday, the British officers proposed a truce, the terms of which included the surrender of both Baton Rouge and Fort Panmure, at Natchez, Mississippi, though the Spanish could not immediately claim the second prize.” The commanding British officer at Pensacola attempted to thwart the surrender by urging inhabitants of Fort Panmure to rally against the Spanish, but Pollock came in handy here. He believed the Natchez would be supportive of the Americans and the Spanish, so he wrote them a persuasive letter. They immediately surrendered the fort. “It had so fortunate a result,” Gálvez reflected, “that with the loss of only one man and of two wounded, we have taken all the English settlements which they had on this river.” George Washington was also relieved to hear of the Spanish closing in on the British in the Gulf Coast theater. Mobile was more challenging, with storms and shipwrecks hindering the effort. Mitchell writes further, “[t]he story later circulated that Gálvez had thoughts of abandoning his mission. But he persevered, salvaging artillery from one of the ships to establish a battery at the entrance of Mobile Bay. Catching his spirit, the men constructed ladders from the wreckage of their ships to scale the walls of the fort.” In March of 1780, following some attempts at negotiation and intense barrage of artillery, the British surrendered Fort Charlotte on March 14th, 1780. Now Gálvez wanted to complete the mission by taking the West Florida capital of Pensacola. But he had to wait on additional troops from Spain and their surrounding territories, which struggled to endure disease and passage by British strongholds. As Mitchell notes, the junta at Havana “agreed to provide 4,000 men, including reinforcements from Mexico and as many troops as could be spared from Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo.” By the time preparations for the Pensacola campaign were finalized, it was mid-October 1780 – unfortunately, hurricane season [when is it not hurricane season?]. Naval lieutenant José Solano y Bote figured out that a hurricane was approaching and that now was a bad time to make a move. But Gálvez wanted to get this job done and pressed onward. Within two days a hurricane did hit, and it scattered the fleet of 11 warships and 51 transport ships. By January 1781 commanders finally accounted for 3,829 of the men, “862 of them were in Havana, 1,771 in Campeche, 831 in New Orleans, and 365 in Mobile.” By March 1781, the Spanish landed on Santa Rosa Island, a 36 ship squadron under the command of Capt. José Calvo de Irizábal, and Gálvez with his private brig, the Galveztown. Gálvez and Calvo were sometimes at odds as they tried to navigate shallow water, storms, and looming threat of a possible British fleet from Jamaica. As Mitchell writes, “On March 24, the Spanish army and militias at Santa Rosa joined the forces arriving from Mobile. During the first weeks of April, they reconnoitered Pensacola’s fortifications. There were two redoubts, Crescent and Sombrero, protecting Fort George [which today is located at the intersection of North Palafox Street and West Jackson Street], earthen works topped by a palisade, built at Campbell’s direction the previous year. The troops established encampments and began preparations for what became a two-month siege, the longest of the Revolution. Hundreds of engineers and workers brought supplies and armaments to the battlefield. The men dug trenches, bunkers, and redoubts. Then they extended a tunnel toward the British redoubts, large enoug
