British West Florida—Pensacola the Capital—Government Established—Johnstone first Governor—British Settlers—First Survey of the Town—Star Fort—Public Buildings—Resignation of Johnstone—His Successor, Monteforte Brown.

The little settlement, mentioned in the last chapter, soon attained an importance in striking contrast with its appearance and condition.

By the treaty of Paris, France had ceded to Great Britain Canada, and that part of Louisiana east of a line beginning at the source of the Mississippi river and running through its centre to the Iberville river, thence through the middle of this river, lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain, to the Gulf. That acquisition, with Florida, extended the British North American empire from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Sea, bringing alike the Seminoles and Esquimaux under its dominion.

On the seventh of October, 1763, by a royal proclamation the limits of the governments of East and West Florida were established; the former extending from the Apalachicola river eastward; the latter embracing all the territory lately acquired from France and Spain south of the parallel of 31° from the Mississippi to the Chattahoochee river; and by another exercise of royal authority, in February, 1764, the northern boundary was pushed to 32°, 28´. This line was also the southern boundary of the territory of Illinois, and it brought Mobile and Natchez within the limits of West Florida.

Of that province, so extensive and so rich in natural resources, Pensacola became the established capital; a natural result of the high estimate placed by the British upon the advantages of the harbor. When Lord Bute’s ministry was assailed in the House of Commons for having procured Florida, by the surrender of Cuba, which Great Britain had conquered in the war ended by the treaty of Paris, the acquisition of the Bay of Pensacola figures as a prominent feature in the ministerial defense.

The first step towards the establishment of civil government in West Florida was taken upon the arrival, in February, 1764, at Pensacola, of Commodore George Johnstone of the Royal Navy, who came as the governor of the province; his first official act being a proclamation announcing his presence, powers, jurisdiction, as well as the laws which were to be in force. There came with him the Twenty-first British regiment as a garrison for the post, and also a number of civilians in search of fortune, or new homes; some as parasites, who are never absent where public money is to be distributed, and others attracted by the charms of the distant, under the delusive misrepresentations of which the immigrant is so often the victim.

In November, 1764, Governor Johnstone, under instructions from the British government—which from the first seems to have taken a deep interest in the development of its late acquisitions—published a description of the province for the purpose of attracting settlers. By efforts like this, a tide of immigration soon began to flow into West Florida, which, during the British dominion of nearly twenty years, it is estimated, brought into it a population of 25,000. In this inflow were observable a large number of Africans, imported under official encouragement, to clear the forests and till the fields of the province; the British conscience being, then, still enthralled by the greedy slave-traders of Bristol, Liverpool and London, was patiently awaiting the advent of Clarkson and Wilberforce, to quicken it into resistance to the cruel traffic.

In the early days of Governor Johnstone’s administration, Pensacola was surveyed and a plan established. The main street was named George, for King George III., and the second street eastward Charlotte, for Queen Charlotte. The area between those streets as far north as what is now Intendencia street was not surveyed into blocks and lots, but reserved as a public place or park. The lots south of Garden street had an area of 80 feet front and 170 in depth. North of that street they were 192 feet square, known as arpent or Garden lots, and numbered to correspond with those lying south of Garden street, which were, strictly speaking, town lots. In order to furnish each family with a garden spot, each grantee of a town lot was entitled, upon the condition of improvement, to receive a conveyance of an arpent lot of the same number as his town lot.

That plan, which was the work of Elias Durnford, appointed, on the twenty-sixth of July, 1764, civil engineer of the province, is still the plan of the old part of Pensacola, with some changes in what was the English park, or public place; and therefore the plan of the town is, strictly speaking, of English origin.

The park, however, though excluded from private ownership, was not intended to be vacant, but on the contrary, was devoted to public uses. In the centre of it was a star-shaped stockade fort, designed as a place of refuge for the population in case of an Indian attack. Near it were the officers’ quarters, barracks, guard house, ordnance store-house and laboratory, two powder magazines, the King’s bake-house, cooperage shelter, and government store-house. This park was, therefore, in the early days of Pensacola, the liveliest and busiest part of the town.

The star-shaped fort was, from 1764 until after 1772, the only fortification of the town, as may be inferred from the official report of Captain Thomas Sowers, engineer, on the fifth of April of the latter year.

The first street pushed through the crescent-shaped swamp, was George street, involving much labor in building a causeway and covering it with earth. It extended to the elevation, then named Gage Hill, in honor of General Gage, of Boston memory, and who, as the commander-in-chief of all the royal forces in the British North American colonies, had much to do with Pensacola in its early days. Upon the highest point of this hill was established a lookout from which the approaches of the town landward and seaward could be observed.

Governor Johnstone, who was a commodore in the royal navy, in the second year of his administration, found himself in jarring relations with the military, resulting from circumstances which, at this distance of time, seem to be trifles, but magnified, when they occurred, into importance by that jealous sensitiveness which appears to exist always between those two arms of the public service. As might be expected, whisperers, busybodies, and parasites, thronging the seat of patronage, ready to catch any stray crumb of official favor, aggravated the conflict, which at last became so bitter and widespread that we find it figuring in the records of the courts-martial of a major, a lieutenant, and even an ensign. Naturally, too, the colonists at length became partisans of the official strife, thereby contributing to bring about a condition of affairs rendering the governor’s further continuance in office so uninviting to himself and so unsatisfactory to the people that, in December, 1766, he resigned.

An incident which occurred shortly after his appointment, manifests his impatience of criticism—a weakness which may have been the cause of his troubles in Florida. He and Grant, governor of East Florida, were appointed at the same time by the Bute administration, when Scotch appointees to office were so ill-favored by the English. The announcement were made in the North Briton with a sarcastic allusion to them as a brace of Scotchmen. At this Johnstone was so much incensed that he sent to the publishers what was equivalent to a challenge. Moreover, on meeting with a Mr. Brooks, who was connected with the North Briton, Johnstone insisted on his stating whether he was the author of the article. Brooks refusing to answer, Johnstone drew his sword to use on him when by-standers interfered. Brooks instituted legal proceedings under which the governor was bound to keep the peace.

In after years, Johnstone became a member of Parliament, and attracted much attention by casting, in the House of Commons, one of the only two negative votes on the Boston Harbor Bill, Edmund Burke casting the other. His course on that memorable occasion secured him such consideration with the Americans as to induce the British government to select him as one of the five commissioners who were sent to America in 1778, under Lord North’s conciliatory bill, intended to concede to the colonies all, and even more, than they had demanded at the beginning of the controversy with the Mother country. But the sequel of his mission proved his unfitness for the position. Besides venturing to enter into correspondence with Robert Morris and Francis Dana, he attempted, through a lady, to bribe General Joseph Reed of Pennsylvania by an offer of £10,000 and the highest office within the gift of the crown in America in the event his efforts at conciliation proving successful. To that offer Reed made the memorable reply: “I am not worth purchasing, but such as I am the King of Great Britain is not rich enough to do it.”

The other commissioners, Mr. Eden, General Clinton, and Lord Carlisle, at least, disavowed all knowledge or connection with Johnstone’s course. His conduct became the subject of resolutions passed by Congress, in which it was declared: “That it is incompatible with the honor of Congress to hold any manner of intercourse with the said George Johnstone, especially to negotiate with him upon affairs in which the cause of liberty is interested.”

From that reflection he sought to vindicate himself by an ill-tempered address, which was followed by his resignation from the commission.

Though a Scotchman, he seems in this affair to have acted with more of the impulse of a Frenchman, like Genet, than with the cool deliberation characteristic of his race. Though he had been a commodore in the British navy, after his appointment of governor of West Florida his historical designation is “Governor Johnstone.”

By virtue of his being lieutenant-governor, Monteforte Brown became Johnstone’s successor.

The troops stationed at Pensacola during Governor Johnstone’s time were the Thirty-first regiment of infantry and the second battalion of Royal Artillery, under General Taylor. In 1765, these troops suffered from scurvy, as a remedy for which the governor undertook means to provide them with fresh meat, a provision which it would seem a thoughtful and considerate ruler would have employed as a preventive, instead of waiting until disease required it as a remedy.

The scourge, however, proved a blessing in the end, as our ills often do, by turning attention to the necessity of securing regular supplies of vegetable food, the acids of which science had determined to be the preventive of scorbutic affections. This led to the clearing, draining and cultivation of large bodies of the Titi Swamp, a process which, once begun, was continued throughout the period of English rule, until the town was surrounded by smiling gardens, extending westward almost to Bayou Chico, of which this generation has evidence in the absence of forest from the district and its meadow-like appearance, as well as its intersections of choked up ditches and drains.

In October, 1766, there was an exhibition in Pensacola of the cruelty with which the British soldier was treated in the last century. For absence without leave, James Baker Mattross of the Royal Artillery received 100 lashes under sentence of a court-martial. Harsh as this sentence may seem, it was mild and humane compared with what was inflicted in other instances at other military posts. Soldiers of the Royal American regiment, stationed at Detroit, were punished for rioting, as follows:^[3] James Wilkins, Derby McCaffny, and Sargeant Deck 1000 lashes each, whilst fortunate Corporal Saums escaped with only 500, but who, even in his luck, was yet five times less lucky than the royal artilleryman at Pensacola. These terrible inflictions provoke inquiry as to the dermal texture of the backs of the British soldiery of the eighteenth century.

With the possibility of such suffering before them, we can appreciate the joy with which Richard Harris of the Thirty-first regiment, charged with stealing chickens, and Lewis Crow on trial for selling liquor, who were tried by court-martial at the same time as Mattross, received their respective findings of not guilty.