Attack on Fort Boyer by Percy and Nicholls—Jackson’s March on Pensacola in 1814—The Town Captured—Percy and Nicholls Driven Out—Consequences of the War to the Creeks—Don Manuel Gonzalez.
The first aggressive operation of Percy and Nicholls against the Americans after they had established themselves at Pensacola was an attack on Fort Boyer on Mobile Point, preparatory to an advance on Mobile. But General Jackson’s great victory of the Horse Shoe over the Creeks on the twenty-seventh of March had effectually crushed them, and the treaty with them which followed enabled him to direct his attention exclusively to the movements of the British at Pensacola.
His first step was to put Fort Boyer in condition to resist an attack, by repairing it, mounting additional guns and placing an ample garrison in it. This preparation had hardly been accomplished, when, early in September, 1814, the British commanders made a combined attack upon it by land and water. The former was repulsed, and the latter resulted in the destruction of the Hermes, Percy’s flag ship, and the drawing off of the other vessels in a crippled condition. After the inglorious expedition, the British fleet and land forces retired to Pensacola—a result hardly in keeping with the vaunts of Percy and Nicholls in their several proclamations issued in August.
Pensacola having lost all claim to neutrality, as well by being under the British flag, as by becoming a refuge for the hostile Indians who declined to bring themselves within the terms of the treaty which General Jackson had made with the Creeks after the victory at the Horse Shoe, he resolved to advance upon it. He had previously written Maurique a letter reminding him of the peaceful relations between Spain and the United States, expostulating with him upon his permitting the British to make Pensacola the base of their operations, and allowing it to be an asylum for the hostile Creeks, naming two of them especially, McQueen and Francis, whose strange adventures will be mentioned in a future page. To this mild expostulation the governor made an ambiguous and insulting reply, ending with the threat “that Jackson should hear from him shortly.”[54] The correspondence occurred just before the Percy and Nicholls’ attack on Fort Boyer, and doubtless it was their bombastic prediction of success which prompted old Maurique to send Jackson so defiant reply.
General Jackson, however, did not wait longer than the last days of October, 1814, for the execution of the Spanish governor’s threat. Having collected his forces at Fort Montgomery, on the twenty-seventh he took up his line of march for Pensacola, the Indian trail referred to in an early chapter being its guiding thread. The troops consisted of the Third, Thirty-ninth and Forty-fourth infantry, Coffee’s brigade, a company of Mississippi dragoons and part of a West Tennessee regiment, numbering three thousand effective men, besides a band of friendly Choctaws.
He reached the vicinity of the town on the evening of the sixth of November. He first appeared on its western side, and there, having halted, he says, in the dispatch containing an account of the expedition, “On my approach I sent Major Pierre with a flag to communicate the object of my visit. He approached the Fort St. George with his flag displayed, and was fired on by the cannon from the fort.”[55] Immediately afterwards, with the adjutant and a small party, he himself made a reconnoissance. He found the fort manned by Spanish as well as English troops. He likewise observed that there were in the harbor seven English war vessels, which it was necessary for him to consider in his future movements. His plans were at once formed. A force under Captain Denkins, with several pieces of artillery, occupied the site of Fort St. Barnardo, which was once again to be pitted against its old antagonist, Fort George.[56] Inferring that the enemy would expect his attack from the west, General Jackson, on the night of the sixth, caused the main body of his army to make a circuitous march, so that the morning would find it on the eastern extremity of the town.[57] This movement shielded him from the guns of St. George or St. Michael, whilst by entering the town at the eastern end of Government street he would, in a measure, be protected from the guns of the English vessels. But he encountered a battery of two guns as he entered the street, which fired upon the centre column with ball and grape, whilst there opened upon the troops a shower of musketry from houses, fences and gardens.[58] The battery was soon silenced, however, by a storming party led by Captain Laval, who lost a leg at the last fire of the guns. All the Spanish forces at the battery fled as Laval’s command rushed upon it except a gallant Spanish officer, who, refusing to fly, was taken prisoner. But tradition says, instead of laurels, he won from his own people the imputation of “fool” for his rashness—a rashness, however, which, had it been crowned with success, would probably have secured him the praise of a hero.
When the command had well advanced into the town it was met by the governor in person, with a white flag, and an offer of surrender at discretion. The offer was accepted, but solely for the purpose of enabling General Jackson to accomplish the declared object of the expedition—which was not conquest—but to expel the British, whose presence was due to the imbecility of Maurique, as well as the small Spanish force at his command, consisting, as it did, of two or three companies of the regiment of Tarragona. In order to attain that object, possession of Forts Barrancas and St. Michael by the Americans was indispensable, and, to the extent of his ability, the governor made the surrender. But when Captain Denkins and his command were about to proceed to take possession of St. Michael, Captain Soto, the Spanish officer in command, refused to obey the governor’s instructions to make the surrender. Preparations that were immediately made to take it by storm, however, induced Soto to reconsider his refusal and to admit the American command. The demand was made at six o’clock on the evening of the seventh, and the surrender occurred at midnight. The purpose of Soto’s delay cannot be divined, for Nicholls having on the night of the sixth withdrawn his men to the shipping, there remained in the fort but a small band of Spaniards.
As General Jackson withdrew his forces from the town, which he did on the evening of the same day of its capture, they were fired upon by the British vessels, but without inflicting any injury.
Whilst, on the morning of the eighth, a detachment was preparing to march on Barrancas, with the purpose of cutting off the retreat of the British fleet, there was heard a great explosion, which it was at once concluded was occasioned by the blowing up of San Carlos. General Jackson nevertheless sent the detachment there to verify the fact. On its return in the night it reported the fort blown up, everything combustible burned, and cannon spiked by the British, who had taken to their ships, and sailed out of the harbor.
The only casualties which occurred during these operations on the part of the Americans were seven killed and eleven wounded, including Captain Laval; and on the part of the Spaniards four killed and six wounded.
Captain William Laval was a South Carolinian, the son of a French officer of the Legion of Lauzun, belonging to the French forces in the Revolutionary war. In 1808 he received the commission of ensign in the American army. In 1812, he became a first lieutenant. The breaking out of the Creek war found him a captain. He was with the third regiment, to which his company belonged, at the battle of Holy Ground. For the service of charging the Spanish battery at Pensacola he was specially selected by General Jackson. The loss of his leg prevented his sharing with his regiment in the glorious victory of New Orleans, and ended his military career as well. His aptitude for civil as well as military life was manifested by his filling the offices of Secretary of State, Comptroller General, and Treasurer of South Carolina, as well as Assistant Treasurer of the United States under Polk’s administration.
That the presence of the British was enforced, and by no means agreeable to the Spaniards, was promptly manifested by the good feeling exhibited by the latter towards the Americans, as soon as Percy and Nicholls had taken their departure. The inhabitants were much impressed by the kind and generous conduct of General Jackson; who seems fully, to have appreciated the peculiar position in which the town was placed, by the pretentious audacity of Percy and Nicholls, the feebleness of its garrison, and above all the imbecility of Maurique. In the dispatch before referred to he says: “The good order and conduct of my troops, whilst in Pensacola, have convinced the Spaniards of our friendship and our prowess; and have drawn from the citizens an expression, that ‘The Choctaws are more civilized than the British.’” In letters written from Pensacola to Havana, in relation to the capture of the place, the comparison is thus expressed: “the American Choctaws were more civilized than the religious English.” These letters teem with the praises of the considerate conduct of General Jackson and his army.
When the first account of the invasion reached Havana, American vessels were seized as a retaliatory measure; but when all the particulars of the expedition were learned they were promptly released.
Having blown up St. Michael, General Jackson left Pensacola, on November 9, to go to the defence of New Orleans, which from all indications was threatened with an attack by the British. There he arrived with his army, on December 2, to begin those preparations which were to end on January 8, in the grand and glorious land victory of the War of 1812.
When Percy and Nicholls left Pensacola, they took with them, not only their Indian allies, but also about one hundred negro slaves belonging to the inhabitants of the town. Sailing to Appalachicola, they there landed the Indians and negroes. Still bent on instigating a savage warfare against the American settlements, a fort under their directions was built on the Appalachicola river, which they supplied with guns and ammunition. It was designed to serve as a refuge for fugitive slaves, and a resort for hostile Indians, as well as a salient point from which to carry on an exterminating warfare against the white settlements in southern Georgia and Alabama.
Such were the inglorious results of the Percy-Nicholls expedition to Florida, beginning, as we have seen, with stilted proclamations to the people of Louisiana and Kentucky, coupled with an invitation to a nest of pirates to become their allies; and ending with the robbing and destruction of the property of a community to which they had come under the guise of friendship, and as its shield from wrongs which existed in their own imaginations only.
Aside from the barbarity which marked the warfare instigated by Britain against the Americans in Florida and Alabama during the years 1812-1814, history has cause to lament its fatal consequences to the people who were the cruel instruments by which it was waged.
At the time of Tecumseh’s mission to the Creeks, about twenty years had elapsed since the death of their Great Chief, McGillivray. In that interval, under the impulse of his teachings and example, continued and increased by the fostering care of the United States, they had made considerable advance in civilization. Large numbers of them had learned to rely more upon tillage and their herds for a livelihood, than on the chase. It was no uncommon thing to see in the nation, well-built houses standing in the midst of considerable farms. They owned slaves and large herds of cattle. The hum of the spinning wheel, and the noise of the shuttle, moved by the deft hands of Indian matrons, were common sounds throughout the Creek country; whilst an Indian maiden with her milk pail, or at her churn, was no unusual sight. The schools established amongst them were gradually shedding upon them the light and mellowing influence of knowledge.[59]
The large infusion of white blood into the tribe, owing to the attractions of the Creek women, which have already been noticed, likewise, added the hope of a civilization resting upon the strongest instincts of human nature. Of the possibility of this civilizing and ennobling influence, gradually permeating and elevating the Creeks as a people, we have the evidence in some of their descendants, who at this day, are amongst the most respectable citizens in several communities in Alabama and Florida.
Such was the state of the Creek nation, when the British at Detroit sent Tecumseh, like another Prince of Evil, into that fair garden of a nascent civilization, to convert its peaceful scenes into fields of slaughter, with all the woes that follow in the footsteps of war.
The first fruit of that cruel scheme, as we have seen, was the tragedy of Fort Mims. Then followed in rapid succession the avenging battles of Tallasehatchee, Talladega, Auttose, and Holy Ground. To those succeeded the last great heroic struggle at the Horse Shoe, in which, of one thousand Red Sticks engaged, two hundred only survived. Afterwards came the surrender of Weatherford with that speech[60] which comes to us as the dirge-like epilogue of the woeful drama; and a memorial of that prophetic shadow which fell on his people when they learned their Grand Chief was lying in the “sands of the Seminoles.”
The Spaniards criticised General Jackson’s Florida campaign, because he did not, instead of advancing on Pensacola, proceed at once to Barrancas, to capture San Carlos, and thereby prevent the escape of the British vessels. But the answer to the criticism is, that he was not aware, perhaps, of all the conditions known to the Spaniards, which in their judgment, would have facilitated a surprise, or contributed to a successful assault. Besides, such a movement would have been inconsistent with the purpose of his invasion, which was to procure the exclusion of the British from Florida, by the action of the Spaniards themselves; a consideration which was due to the amicable relations existing between Spain and the United States. Entertaining these views, General Jackson did not deem it proper to seize the Spanish forts in the first instance without communicating with the Governor. This he attempted to do, and it was only after the outrage of firing on his flag, he resolved, without further parley or remonstrance, by his own arms to drive out the British.
That, however, he had considered a movement on Barrancas, before or at the time of his advance on Pensacola, is evidenced by an interview which he had with Don Manuel Gonzalez, who was an officer in the Spanish commissary department, and who had a cattle ranch at a place then known as Vacaria Baja, now as Oakfield, one mile from the trail the American army was following. Don Manuel, with his family, was at the ranch, when the General rode up to the house, and accosted him. There was with the Don at the time, his son, Celestino, then a young man. Through an interpreter, the General made known, that the purpose of his visit was to require the Don, or his son, to guide the army to Barrancas. The Don boldly refusing, the General became insistent, to the degree of threatening the use of force to secure compliance. Roused by the threat, with a mien as dauntless as Jackson’s, Don Manuel replied: “General, my life and my property are in your power; you can take both; but my honor is in my own keeping. As to my son, I would rather plunge a sword into his bosom than see him a traitor to his king.” The General replied by extending his hand with the exclamation, “I honor a brave man,” and thenceforth became his friend.
