Jackson’s Invasion of West Florida in 1818—Masot’s Protest—Capture of Pensacola—Capitulation of San Carlos—Provisional Government Established by Jackson—Pensacola Restored to Spain—Governor Callava—Treaty of Cession—Congressional Criticism of Jackson’s Conduct.

Hitherto Jackson’s operations had been confined to the province of East Florida. On the tenth of May, 1818, he began his invasion of West Florida by crossing the Appalachicola river at the Indian village of Ochesee. Thence he followed a trail which led him over the natural bridge of the Chipola river—a bridge which it would be difficult for the wayfarer to observe, as it is formed by the stream quietly sinking into a lime-stone cavern, through which it again emerges within a distance of half a mile.

Within a few hundred yards of the trail, and near the north side of the bridge, there is a cave one-fourth of a mile in length, with many lateral grottoes, its roof pendant with glittering stalactites and its floor covered with lime-stones moulded in varied and eccentric forms. Panic-stricken by Jackson’s campaign in East Florida, the Indians on the west of the Appalachicola river, when he began his westward march, made this cave a place of refuge, and were there quietly concealed when his troops unconsciously marched over their subterranean retreat.

The army marched in two divisions. The one commanded by Jackson in person followed the bridge trail, the other moved by a trail which led to the river, northward of the place where it made its cavernous descent. The water being high, the construction of a bridge or rafts became necessary to enable the wagons and artillery to cross. Whilst the northern division was thus obstructed, General Jackson, unimpeded in his march, reached the appointed place of junction. Here he waited, in hourly expectation of the appearance of the other column, until worked up to a frenzy of impatience which was changed to indignation when, after the junction, the interposition of a river—contradicted, as he supposed, by his own immediate experience—was assigned as the cause of the delay. At length, however, the guides, by disclosing the existence of the bridge, solved the riddle and restored the general to good humor.

His march westward, and south of the northern boundary of the province of West Florida, brought him to the Escambia river, which, having crossed, he reached the road that he had opened over the old trail in 1814, when he marched to Pensacola on a similar mission to that in which he was now engaged.

Don JosÉ Masot, who was governor of West Florida, having received intelligence of Jackson’s westward march and his designs on Pensacola, sent him a written protest against his invasion, as an offence against the Spanish king, “exhorting and requiring him to retire from the Province,” threatening if he did not, to use force for his expulsion. This protest was delivered by a Spanish officer, on May 23, after Jackson had crossed the Escambia river and was within a few hours’ march of Pensacola. Notwithstanding Masot’s threat, instead of advancing to meet the invader, he hastily retired with most of his troops to Fort San Carlos, leaving a few only at Pensacola, under the command of Lieutenant-colonel Don Lui Piemas, for the purpose of making a show of resistance.

Masot’s protest, instead of retarding, seems to have accelerated Jackson’s advance. In the afternoon of the same day on which it was received, the American army was in possession of Fort St. Michael and encamped around it. Thence, immediately upon its occupation, Jackson sent Masot a dispatch in reply to his protest, in which he demanded an immediate surrender of Pensacola and Barrancas. In his answer, on May 24, to that demand, Masot, as to Pensacola, referred Jackson to Don Lui Piemas; as to San Carlos he replied: “This fortress I am resolved to defend to the last extremity. I shall repel force by force, and he who resists aggression can never be considered an aggressor. God preserve your excellency many years.” Upon the receipt of this communication, Jackson, by arrangement with Colonel Piemas, took possession of Pensacola.

On the twenty-fifth, Jackson replied to Masot’s dispatch of the twenty-fourth, in which he tells him he is aware of the Spanish force, and hints at the folly of resistance to an overwhelming enemy. In conclusion he says: “I applaud your feelings as a soldier in wishing to defend your post, but when resistance is ineffectual and the opposing force overwhelming, the sacrifice of a few brave men is an act of wantonness, for which the commanding officer is accountable to his God.”

In the evening of the day on which Jackson’s communication was written, and within a few hours after it was received by Masot, Fort San Carlos was invested by the American army. On the night of the twenty-fifth, batteries were established in favorable positions within three hundred and eighty-five yards of the fort, though the work was interrupted by the Spanish guns. Before the American batteries replied, Jackson, in his anxiety to spare the effusion of blood, sent Masot, under a flag of truce, another demand to surrender, accompanied by a representation of the futility, if not the folly, of further resistance. The refusal of the demand was followed by the batteries and the fort opening upon each other. The firing continued until evening, when a flag from the fort invited a parley, which resulted in a truce until the following day, the twenty-seventh, when, at eight o’clock in the morning, articles of capitulation were signed. Such was Masot’s defense to “the last extremity,” and such the fruit of Jackson’s expostulation with his fiery but feeble antagonist.

The military features of the capitulation were that the Spanish surrender should be made with the honors of war, drums beating, and flags flying, during the march from the gate of the fort to the foot of the glacis, where the arms were to be stacked; the garrison to be transported to Havana; and their rights of property, to the last article, strictly respected.

But, as in the case of General Campbell’s and Governor Chester’s surrender, in 1781, to Galvez, there was a political aspect to the capitulation of Masot.

In Jackson’s despatch to Calhoun, Secretary of war, he says of the capitulation: “The articles, with but one condition, amount to a complete cession to the United States, of that portion of the Floridas hitherto under the government of Don JosÉ Masot.” The condition alluded to was, that the province should be held by the United States until Spain could furnish a sufficient military force to execute the obligations of existing treaties.

Having accepted the cession of West-Florida to the United States, Jackson further assumed the authority of constituting a provisional government for the conquered province. He appointed one of his officers, Colonel King, civil and military governor; he extended the revenue laws of the United States over the country; appointed another of his officers, Captain Gadsden, collector of the port of Pensacola, with authority to enforce those laws; declared what civil laws should be enforced, and provided for the preservation of the archives, as well as for the care and protection of what had been the property of the Spanish crown, but now, in the General’s conception, become the property of the United States.

Shortly after these occurrences, General Jackson, with his constitution sorely tried by the fatigue and privations of the campaign, left Pensacola for his home in Tennessee, to find quietude and repose, made sweet by public applause on the one side, and interrupted by bitter censure and criticism on the other.

The views with which Jackson began the Seminole campaign in March, and those which he entertained at its close in May, by the capitulation of Masot, present a strange and striking contrast. He invaded East-Florida to crush the Seminoles, as he had crushed the Creeks of Alabama. This he accomplished by invading the territory of a power at peace with the United States. As an imperious necessity, the invasion was justified by his government. During his operations, however, he acquired information from which he concluded that there existed a sympathy between the Spanish officials at Pensacola and the Indians. Ostensibly, to correct that abuse he marched to Pensacola, where he ended his campaign by procuring the cession of the province of West-Florida, followed by the establishment of an American government, without the authority of the United States.

The United States, without formally disavowing Jackson’s conduct, signified its readiness to restore Pensacola and St. Marks whenever a Spanish force presented itself to receive the surrender. In September, 1819, such a force appearing at Pensacola, the town and Barrancas were immediately evacuated by the American troops. And thus ended the government established by Jackson, after it had existed fourteen months, during which it was administered to the satisfaction of the inhabitants of the Province.

With the troops there came as governor Don JosÉ Maria Callava, knight of the military order of Hermenegildo, who, in 1811, had won the cross of distinction for gallant conduct in the battle of Almonacid, one of the many fiercely fought battles of the Peninsula war.

The advent of the Spaniards seemed to be inconsistent with the fact that, on the twenty-second of the previous February, a treaty had been entered into between Secretary Adams and Don Louis de Onis, the Spanish minister for the cession of the Floridas. But it was subject to the ratification of both governments, and, though ratified by the United States, it had not been acted upon by Spain. At first the re-occupation might have been considered a matter of form, in which a sensitive government consulted its dignity by placing itself in a condition to make a voluntary surrender of territory for a consideration, instead of appearing to submit to a conquest. But, as time rolled on without a ratification of the treaty by Spain, the re-occupation of Pensacola seemed to point to her determination to permanently retain the Floridas.

It was believed, at the time the treaty was negotiated, that Jackson’s bold action had done more to bring it about than Mr. Adams’ diplomatic skill, a belief for which there was an apparent foundation in the delay of Spain to ratify it after the pressure of his conquest was removed.

No instance in the life of that great man more strikingly illustrates than these transactions the beneficent working of that imperious will, to which he made everything bend that stood in the way to the attainment of what he conceived a patriotic end.

The necessity for the campaign of 1814, as well as that which he had just closed, convinced him that Florida, as a Spanish colony, would be a constant menace to the peace and security of the border settlements of Alabama and Georgia, not so much from the hostility of the Spanish as their inability to control the restless and war-like Seminoles. He saw, too, the necessity of making Spain sensible of her obligation to exercise the necessary restraint upon her savage subjects, and at the same time to make her fully realize the large and onerous military establishment it would be necessary to maintain in Florida to accomplish that object. The articles of capitulation brought the United States and Spain face to face upon this question. It impressed upon the former the imperative necessity of securing a permanent cession, and it compelled the latter to count the cost involved in fulfilling the condition by which only the provisional cession could be nullified.

A study of the correspondence between Masot and Jackson, whilst the latter was still east of the Appalachicola river, creates the impression that the reason assigned by Jackson for his expedition to Pensacola was but a pretext, and that the real motive was made manifest by the articles of capitulation—a provisional cession, as the first step to a permanent cession. He was unsustained by his government openly, at least, he was censured by a congressional committee and denounced by the press, but he soon found his vindication in public opinion, enlightened by subsequent events.

Masot, the other chief actor in these transactions, had been appointed governor of West Florida in November, 1816, and, as we have seen, his official term ended with the capitulation of the twenty-seventh of May, 1818. Shortly afterwards he left Pensacola for Havana in the cartel Peggy, one of the vessels provided by Jackson to carry the Spanish governor to the latter place. The Peggy was overhauled by an armed vessel under the “Independent Flag,” as the ensign of Spain’s revolted South American colonies was called. No lives were taken, nor was the Peggy made a prize, for she was an American, but the Spaniards were robbed. Masot had with him eight thousand dollars in coin, which he had concealed. A slight suspension by the neck, however, as a hint of a higher and more fatal one, wrung from him the hiding-place of his treasure, which he lost, but saved his life.^[64] The Peggy was overhauled by the “Independent Flag,” during a voyage to Havana from Campeachy, whither she had taken refuge from what was supposed to be a piratical vessel.

During Masot’s administration there occurred a transaction which occupied a place in the investigations of the special committee of the senate of the United States, appointed, in 1818, to inquire into and report upon the occurrences of the Seminole war of that year, prominent amongst them the capture of St. Marks and Pensacola. The committee condemned all Jackson’s proceedings and seem to have even harbored the suspicion that a land speculation prompted him to exact a cession of the latter place. The circumstances which induced the suspicion are detailed in an affidavit of General John B. Eaton, afterwards secretary of war under Jackson and governor of Florida, which appears amongst the documents accompanying the report of the committee.^[65]

It seems that, in 1817, Eaton and James Jackson of Nashville—nowise related to General Jackson—foreseeing that Florida was to be acquired by the United States, resolved to make a purchase of lots in Pensacola and lands in its vicinity. To them were afterwards added six associates, John McCrae, James Jackson, Jr., John C. McElmore, John Jackson, Thomas Childress and John Donelson, who was a nephew of Mrs. Jackson. Donelson and a Mr. Gordon were appointed to proceed to Pensacola to make the purchases. As a measure of security to Donelson and Gordon, Eaton applied to General Jackson and obtained for them a letter of introduction to Masot. Provided with this letter, which facilitated their operations, Donelson and Gordon went to Pensacola and fulfilled their mission by buying a large number of unimproved town lots, sixty acres of land adjoining the town and a tract on the bay two or three miles to the westward.

Eaton says: General Jackson had no interest in the speculation, nor was he consulted respecting it, his only connection with it being the letter to Masot. As there is no allusion to the transaction in the report of the committee, they must have concluded that the suspicion which prompted the search for evidence respecting it was unfounded. Such at least must be the just conclusion from the silence in respect to the matter observed by a document so full of pointed condemnation of Jackson’s acts, of the manner in which his army was raised and the officers commissioned by himself, the executions of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, the capture of St. Marks and Pensacola, the establishment of a provisional government, the extension of the revenue laws of the United States over the conquered province, and the appointments for it of a governor and a collector of the customs.