1783 - The Return of the Spanish
At the end of the Revolutionary War, Florida was still split into two colonies, East and West Florida.
The two Florida colonies had remained loyal to Great Britain throughout the Revolutionary War.
However, Spain, who was an ally of France, captured Pensacola from the British in 1781.
In 1782, Spain began awarding large tracts of Florida land to those who granted favors.
The Florida territory remained under British control until they gave it back to the Spanish in 1783, as part of The Peace of Paris treaty that ended the Revolutionary War.
However, the treaty did not specify the boundaries of the Florida Territory.
Departure of the British Loyalists
When the Florida colonies returned to Spanish control, there occured a nearly complete exodus of the English colonists and the many Tories (British supporting American colonists), who had fled there from the revolted colonies. This mass exodus was partly due to the Spanish governments ban on religions, except Catholicism. Together, these groups had made East Florida more populous and prosperous than it had ever been as a Spanish colony. Their departure left much of the Florida territory depopulated and unguarded.
Spanish Reoccupation
Part of Spain's reoccupation attempt of Florida involved the arrival of officials and soldiers at St. Augustine and Pensacola but very few new settlers.
As it turned out, Spain could no longer afford to support its vast colonial empire and from 1784 until 1821 (when Spain ceded Florida to the US), Florida became the setting for constant international intrigues as well as a target for greedy adventurers who wished to establish their own personal empires with Florida's vast resources.
The Spanish wanted to retain the expanded northern boundary that Britain had made to West Florida, but the new United States demanded the lower old boundary at the 31st parallel. This border dispute was finally resolved in the 1795 Treaty of San Lorenzo, when Spain agreed to the 31st parallel as the northern boundary.
When the Spanish had reclaimed Florida in 1783, their power had weakened considerably. Spain no longer had enough colonists to support a new colony. This forced them to put an end to their policy of requiring all settlers to convert to Catholicism. This allowed many of the English settlers to return to Florida in the early 1800s.
1800s - Americans Move Southward
Around this time, Spain could not afford enough soldiers to patrol the long frontiers of Florida. This opened up the way for a mix of American and British settlers (mostly from Georgia and South Carolina), escaped slaves, and Native Americans to continue illegally immigrating into Spanish Florida. English war ships anchored off Florida's Gulf coast and English agents encouraged the Seminoles, Creeks, and Mikisúkî to resist US settlement. US officials, angry that the Spaniards could not oust the English or control the Indians, were particularly incensed by the protection and shelter the Seminoles offered to African slaves. These freedom seekers had been finding refuge in Spanish Florida for over a century, but the new US government was determined to stop this practice. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, conflicts, skirmishes, and ambushes erupted and racial hatred flared into violence more and more frequently on the new frontier.
1810 - West Florida Declares Independence
The American migrants, mixed with the settlers from Florida's British period would become the progenitors of the people known as Florida Crackers.
In West Florida, these American and British settlers established a permanent foothold during the first decade of the 1800s.
In the summer of 1810, they began plans for a rebellion against the Spanish authority.
By September of the same year, these plans turned into open revoltas, the settlers overtook the Spanish garrison at Baton Rouge and proclaimed the area as the "Free and Independent Republic of West Florida" on September 23.
(Ironically, the area would later become part of the state of Louisiana, not Florida.)
Their flag was the first known use of the "Bonnie Blue Flag", a single white five-pointed star on a blue field.
On October 27, 1810, most of the area for the Republic of West Florida was annexed into the U.S. by proclamation of President James Madison.
He claimed that the region was included in the Louisiana Purchase and it was incorporated into the newly formed Territory of Orleans.
Some leaders of the newly declared republic objected to the takeover by the United States government.
However, all of them deferred to the arriving American troops by mid-December of 1810.
1812 - The War of 1812
During the War of 1812, Spain allied with Great Britain, while the U.S. annexed the Mobile District of West Florida into the Mississippi Territory in May 1812.
In April 1813, the surrender of Spanish forces at Mobile officially established American control over the area, which was later divided between the states of Alabama and Mississippi.
The Florida Parishes in the modern state of Louisiana include most of the territory that was claimed by the short-lived Republic of West Florida.
1812-1813 - The Spanish Surrender East Florida
... Sort Of
Meanwhile, in East Florida:
General George Matthews, of the U.S. Army, had been authorized by the U.S. government to secretly negotiate with the Spanish governor for American acquisition of East Florida.
Instead, in March of 1812, General Matthews organized a group of frontiersmen from Georgia, who arrived at the Spanish town of Fernandina and demanded the surrender of all of Amelia Island.
They took control of Amelia Island on the Atlantic coast and declared themselves a republic free from Spanish rule.
After declaring the island a free republic, he led his rag tag group, along with a contingent of U.S. army troops, south towards the Spanish controlled city of St. Augustine.
Upon receiveing word of Matthews' actions, Congress became alarmed that he would provoke war with Spain.
Then Secretary of State James Monroe quickly ordered Matthews to return all captured territory to Spanish authorities.
After several months of negotiations on the withdrawal of the American forces and compensation for their foraging through the countryside, the countries finally came to an agreement and Amelia Island was returned to the Spanish in May 1813.
1813-1814 - The Creek War and The Seminoles
Later, the Maskókî tribes in Alabama (whom English speakers erroneously called "Creeks") rose up against their former allies, the British settlers, in the Creek War of 1813-14.
The Creek Indians were defeated in 1814, when Major General Andrew Jackson led an expedition against the Creek Indians climaxing in the Battle of Horse Shoe Bend (near the present day Alabama/Georgia border).
Jackson’s force soundly defeated the Creeks and destroyed their military power.
This was followed by the brutal repression and disastrous treaty forced upon them by General Andrew Jackson.
The appetite of the settlers for Southern lands would not abate, so the Indians adopted a strategy of appeasement.
They hoped that if they gave up a good deal of their land, they could keep at least some a part of it.
The remaining Creek chiefs signed away about half their lands, comprising 23,000,000 acres, covering much of southern Georgia and two-thirds of modern Alabama.
Over the next decade, Jackson led the way in the Indian removal campaign, helping to negotiate nine of the eleven major treaties to remove Indians.
Under this kind of pressure, Native American tribes—specifically the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw—realized that they could not defeat the Americans in war.
This caused thousands of the most determined warriors and their families to migrate southward and take refuge in Spanish Florida.
Once there, they joined their earlier rivals, the last remaining tribes of Seminoles.
The Indians who constituted the nucleus of this Florida group thought of themselves as yat'siminoli or "free people," because for centuries their ancestors had resisted the attempts of the Spaniards to conquer and convert them, as well as the attempts of the English to take their lands and use them as military pawns.
Soon, the European Americans would begin to call all of the Natives in Florida as "Seminoles".
The northern lands of Florida continued to be the home of the newly amalgamated Black and Native American Seminole culture.
It had also become a haven for people escaping slavery in the southern states and territories.
Unlike the other tribes, the Seminole tribe in Florida resisted the U.S. land grabs, resulting in the Second Seminole War (1835–1842) and the Third Seminole War (1855–1858).
Neither the Native attempts of appeasement nor resistance worked.
Settlers in the Georgia Territory demanded that Spain control the Seminole population and capture any runaway slaves.
Spain, not having the manpower nor likely the desire to handle such operations, responded that the slave owners were welcome to come recapture the runaways themselves.
And the conflicts did not end there; they only escalated.
Through the Treaty of Moultrie Creek (1823), the Treaty of Payne's Landing (1832), and numerous "talks" and meetings, US Indian Agents sought to convince the Florida Indians to sell their cattle and pigs to the US government, return runaway slaves to their "rightful owners," leave their ancient homelands in Florida, and move west of the Mississippi River to Arkansas Territory.
1816-1819 - The First Seminole War
While there were threeSeminole Wars only the first occurred during Spanish rule.
The War of 1812 indirectly brought about the U.S. acquisition of Florida.
The First Seminole War began, in 1816, as a result of General Andrew Jackson's excursions into Spanish Florida to fight the Native warriors who fled south after The Creek War.
When the military and political opportunist, General Andrew Jackson, brazenly marched across Florida's international boundaries to settle the "Indian problem," he created an international furor.
Over a period of several tumultuous years, he burned Indian towns, captured Africans, and hanged one Maskókî medicine man, Francis, as well as two Englishmen whom he suspected of inciting the Indians.
This series of events is known as the First Seminole War.
Great Britain and Spain both expressed outrage over the invasion by the United States.
However, as several local uprisings and rebellions by American and british settlers had been occurring, in Spanish controlled Florida, Spain was no longer able to defend or control the territory.
During the First Seminole Indian War, the Seminoles attacked the early settlements.
Forts were built throughout East Florida to defend the settlers against the Seminoles.
Jackson's invasion into Florida (then part of New Spain), demonstrated to Spain that it could no longer control that colonial territory with their small force. In 1819, Spain agreed to cede Florida to the United States with the signing of the Adams–Onís Treaty. However, the official transfers took place in 1821.
1819 - Moses Levy and David Yulee
In 1782, when Spain had re-occupied Florida, they began awarding large tracts of land to those who granted favors.
In 1819, Moses Levy received one of these land grants from the Spanish.
He established a plantation along the St. Johns River, which was to be a settlement for oppressed European Jews.
Moses was the father of David Levy, who later changed his name to "Yulee."
David Yulee was Florida's first senator after aquiring statehood.
[Contributors: Jason Brown]
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