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121 8 “Left by the Patriots a Perfect Desert” The Patriot War in East Florida After a decade of economic growth and prosperity, the so-called Patriot War initiated a calamitous downward spiral for the planters of Spanish East Florida. “Everything was thrown into disorder,” Kingsley testified, “the houses all burned, the inhabitants flying or keeping up a feeble warfare against the Indians; fields were ravished; the cattle destroyed or driven away; slaves were left to the mercy of the Indians, or to their own control or discretions.” It was Kingsley’s opinion that “The country was in a very flourishing state when the revolution commenced. The lumber and cotton trade made it so. It never was so prosperous before or since. It was left by the Patriots a perfect desert.”1 There was nothing patriotic about the 1812–14 insurgency euphemistically referred to as the Patriot War; it was instead a war of aggression that destroyed a Spanish colony. The insurgency was instigated by the government of the United States of America and participated in by soldiers and sailors of that government. Also involved were dissident Spanish subjects, recent migrants from the United States who plotted to foment rebellion and invite the United States to annex East Florida. Land-hungry Georgians and Carolinians, acting in response to reckless promises of free land grants once East Florida became an American territory, were joined by bands of thugs anxious to loot and plunder properties of Spaniards and sell abducted enslaved men and women north of the Florida border. Banditry, arson, and murder at isolated plantations, a continuing economic depression , a new invasion of West Florida, and the seizure of Fernandina in East Florida convinced the Spanish government it would not be able to stabilize 122 | Zephaniah Kingsley Jr. and the Atlantic World the province and protect its residents. Spain gave in to the inevitable and ceded East Florida to the United States.2 In plan, if not in execution, the events of 1812 in East Florida reflected what had previously occurred in West Florida, where American settlers flocked to the rich lands along the Mississippi River and became nominal Spanish citizens. They may have pledged fidelity to Spain, but their loyalties remained with the United States. On September 23, 1810, a band of approximately eighty American migrants captured the fort at Baton Rouge, declared independence, and requested annexation by the United States. PresidentJamesMadison sentAmericantroopstooccupytheterritoryand incorporate it into Louisiana, justifying his order by proclaiming that the territory was part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and that he was acting to prevent either Britain or France from seizing it. Few were fooled by the ploy.3 In 1811, President Madison authorized General George Mathews, a Revolutionary War hero and former governor of Georgia, to negotiate the acquisition of the portion of West Florida that remained under Spanish control. Making no headway with Governor Vicente Folch, Mathews traveled to St. Marys, Georgia, and focused on recruiting dissident Spanish East Florida residents like wealthy planter John H. McIntosh, formerly of Georgia, with promises of political office and lavish awards of land. With a filibuster army assembled in Georgia that supposedly represented the “Republic of East Florida,” Mathews and the designated president, McIntosh, led rebels calling themselves “Patriots” into Spanish East Florida on March 14, 1812. Fernandina was quickly captured, and the so-called Patriots continued their southward advance toward St. Augustine.4 Zephaniah Kingsley was one of many East Florida residents seized by theinvadersandforcedtojointheirarmy.Someeagerlyembracedthegoals of the insurgents, while others, like Kingsley, joined involuntarily after being threatened with the loss of property. As Kingsley recalled the incident, twelve men on horseback took him prisoner on March 20 or 21 and “carried him off by force . . . to the Patriot camp near a place called ‘Cowford’ upon the [St. Johns River].” At the camp, Kingsley recognized General Mathews and his personal secretary, Colonel Ralph Isaacs. He also identified the “two hundred to three hundred” armed men as “Americans from Georgia who had . . . become united with the American troops.” Kingsley was more “Left by the Patriots a Perfect Desert”: The Patriot War in East Florida | 123 familiar with McIntosh and with two other migrants from Georgia: Daniel Delany and Lodowick Ashley.5 The encounter at the camp was anything but a gathering of old friends. Kingsley said that “General Mathews and the others” relentlessly pressured him to join the Patriots, but despite being promised “great advantages” for joining, he “absolutely rejected all their offers and refused.” After...

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