Between 1754 and 1819, Florida changed hands three times: The Treaty of Paris (1763) transferred the territory from Spain to Great Britain, the Treaty of Paris (1783) returned it to the Spanish, and between 1795 and 1821 the United States obtained Florida piece by piece through treaties and military action. From before the Revolutionary War (1775-83) to the final acquisition of all of Florida, the territory remained a sparsely settled borderland, often serving as a haven for illegal trade, escaped slaves, and Native Americans raiding across the border.

Before 1763, Spain's hold on Florida, centered on St. Augustine, remained weak. The Spanish encouraged slaves from the British North American colonies to escape to Florida, assuring them freedom and using them to help protect the province. At the time, Florida had an ambiguous northern boundary and stretched only as far west as Pensacola. With the British victory in the French and Indian War (1754-63), Florida became part of the British Empire since Spain had allied with France. After the change in ownership in 1763, many Spanish settlers and their Native American allies left the province for other Spanish colonies. As a part of the Proclamation of 1763, the British encouraged settlement in the region and organized the territory into two separate colonies: East Florida, which consisted of the swampy peninsula and the land directly south of Georgia; and West Florida, with the eastern boundary at the Apalachicola River and the Mississippi River as its western boundary. West Florida reached as far north as the 31st parallel (extended to 32œ28' north in 1764) and included about a third of the present states of Alabama and Mississippi. As British settlers arrived in the two colonies, they sought to establish the slave economy that predominated in nearby Georgia and South Carolina.

The outbreak of the Revolutionary War (1775-83) left the two Florida colonies in an awkward position. While some of the colonists favored the opposition to British imperial regulation, many remained loyal to King George III, recognizing their vulnerability on the frontier. The Floridas thus became a base for Loyalists and Native Americans during the war. However, that haven was threatened by the Spanish after they went to war against Great Britain in 1779. The Spanish governor of Louisiana, Bernardo de Galvez, swept the lower Mississippi River of British forces in 1779. He then captured Mobile on March 12, 1780, and completed the conquest of West Florida by seizing Pensacola on May 10, 1781. Having lost West Florida, the British ceded East Florida to Spain during the peace negotiations in 1783.

At this point, Florida again returned to its borderland status as a haven for escaped slaves and Native Americans. In fact, an influx of Creek refugees who had sided with the British in the Revolutionary War moved into the area to become the nucleus of the Native American group called the Seminole. Although there was some exodus of British subjects, many chose to stay. Florida's British and Spanish populations, however, were minimal.

Almost from its inception, the United States coveted Florida, whose northern boundary remained in dispute. Spain was not happy with the peace treaty that granted the United States territory as far west as the Mississippi River. To preempt U.S. settlement in the region, the Spanish bribed men such as James Wilkinson in an effort to buy their allegiance and developed positive relations with the major Native American groups in the area. Initially, Spain claimed a northern boundary of 32œ28' (which had been the British border of West Florida), but during the 1780s the Spanish king extended that boundary to include the east bank of the Mississippi River to the Ohio River and then along the Ohio River to the Tennessee River to the Appalachian Mountains (comprising almost all of the modern states of Mississippi and Alabama and sections of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia).

The United States chipped away at Florida's expansive boundaries beginning in 1795. That year, the Pinckney Treaty set the northern line for West Florida at the 31st parallel. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) established the next claim for Florida. The negotiators were supposed to buy Florida and New Orleans, not the vast track of land west of the Mississippi. Based on the fact that the purchase treaty with the French had merely stated that the territory that had been ceded from Spain to France was now given to the United States, Robert R. Livingston claimed that most of West Florida was included in the Louisiana Purchase. The Spanish did not agree with this interpretation, nor did the United States push it immediately. But having Spanish control over Florida created problems for the United States, as British traders infiltrated the region and hostile Native Americans used Florida for a base of operations. Moreover, in the 1790s and early 1800s, many settlers from the United States, often debtors and men on the run, crossed into both Floridas. A group of European-American settlers in Baton Rouge, West Florida, declared their independence from Spain on September 23, 1810, and sought to become part of the United States. President James Madison obliged them by proclaiming on October 27, 1810, that West Florida "has at all times, as is well known, been considered and claimed" as part of the United States and then sent troops to Baton Rouge to back up this assertion. By 1811, U.S. troops were stationed outside Mobile in West Florida, and Madison set the Perdido River as the boundary between Spanish and U.S. territory. When Louisiana entered the union as a state in 1812, it included a section of West Florida on the east bank of the Mississippi. That same year, the United States extended its efforts in Florida. A band of Georgians and soldiers from the U.S. Army seized Amelia Island, failed in an attack on St. Augustine, and were ultimately forced to withdraw. However, in 1813 Madison sent General Wilkinson to occupy Mobile using the claim that it had the potential to be a base of operations for the British. Without any basis in international law, another chunk of Florida became part of the United States. The fact that the United States was not at war with Spain seems not to have bothered any of the invaders.

In the years after the Treaty of Ghent (1814), the United States became even more aggressive in its bid for Florida. When escaped slaves established a fort and a haven for other runaways, a military expedition struck across the border in 1816, blew up the fort, and killed 270 African-American men, women, and children. By 1818 Seminole raids had become serious enough to draw the attention of General Andrew Jackson, commander for the southern district of the U.S. Army. He crossed the border, defeated any Native Americans who opposed him, and arrested two British traders, John Ambrister and Alexander Arbuthnot. Convinced that both men had encouraged the Indians and supplied them with arms, Jackson saw to it that Ambrister and Arbuthnot were executed after conviction in an ad hoc court of law. Then, believing that President James Monroe wanted him to drive the Spanish out of Florida, he occupied Pensacola and sent the Spanish governor and his officials to Cuba. These actions created an uproar in Monroe's cabinet and caused an international crisis. Eventually, the controversy subsided. John Quincy Adams persuaded the Spanish to sell Florida for $5 million and, in an effort to concede something to the Spanish, set a western boundary to the Louisiana Territory in the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819. While the purchase of Florida opened up more area for the expansion of slavery, the Seminole in central Florida were not easily subdued and fought the U.S. government for decades to come.

Bibliography:

1) Thomas D. Clark and John D. W. Guice, Frontiers in Conflict: The Old Southwest, 1795-1830 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989)

2) James G. Cusick, The Other War of 1812: The Patriot War and the American Invasion of East Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 203)

3) Robert L. Gold, Borderland Empires in Transition: The Triple-Nation Transfer of Florida (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1969)

4) David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992)

5) William Earl Weeks, John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1992)

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