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2 “Jackasses of the Lion” God’s agents who invaded Spanish East Florida in March of 1812 were Americans . Perhaps some saw themselves on a divine mission to spread the blessings of democracy. None came to undermine the institution of slavery in the colony. But the invaders did exactly that, illustrating that Providence does indeed work in strange ways.Thomas Suárez, in 1838, using a metaphor that evoked an angry deity, compared the troops to a “raging storm” that was “smashing everything.”1 Such disasters give societies pause to take stock of themselves. The invasion enabled white men and women of all socioeconomic classes to suffer splinters from the cross of enslavement. It presented them with the opportunity to consider the burdens that involuntary servitude placed on the bond persons who produced the province’s wealth. It called them to repentance. It portended both the Second Seminole War, when large numbers of African Americans deserted their masters,2 and the Civil War, when the region’s slave owners would lose their human chattel permanently. Thus the howling winds from Georgia prophesied. For many white antebellum witnesses, the invasion, which essentially introduced United States rule to East Florida, had suddenly and permanently quashed their dreams for a happy future. The Patriot War claims cases presented them with a dais from which to voice their displeasure with a republican regime whose promises of security and economic prosperity had, up to that point, proved to have been chimerical. Couched in the language of popular history and voiced within the context of financial gain, the testimonies of “old inhabitants” collectively protested the American takeover, implicitly bemoaning the passing of the monarchical Spanish colonial government that the United States had fatally wounded more than a generation earlier. In keeping with their local diplomatic 30 / “Jackasses of the Lion” traditions, African Americans would harness this divisive undercurrent to their advantage. Witnesses did not mince words with Washington regarding the deleterious impact of its foreign policy upon their homeland. Mrs. Sarah Acosta reminded federal officials that there had been “a great deal of Comfort and independence” in the colony prior to the Patriot War and “had they been left alone those inhabitants would have become rich.” Esteban Arnow added that “many who had lived comfortably died in poverty.” John Egan remembered that the invaders “had broken up everybody.” William Monroe, who had served in the U.S. naval flotilla during the conflict, admitted that the province was in “excellent circumstances ” in early 1812, but that afterward, it was “reduced very much in circumstances .” Samuel Swearingen spoke more bluntly.The American assault, he swore, “ruined East Florida.” Zephaniah Kingsley agreed, recalling how troops had pillaged the lumber and cotton exports that had caused it to flourish, leaving the land “a perfect desert.”3 Memories of these depredations impelled the catastrophe’s survivors to grieve over the passing of Spanish times. Many of them had abandoned any hope that they or their offspring ever would live as well under the United States. In 1838, John Bowden mourned a region that still had not “recovered its former prosperity .”The following year, Abraham Daniels lamented that East Florida “never did recover the shock.” Mrs. Mary Smith testified in 1841 that it had not, before or since the invasion, been so prosperous and “happy.” Esteban Arnow concurred , doubting that he ever would see the return of halcyon days. A depressed Matthew Long bemoaned both his father’s sudden and miserable death in 1812 and his family’s subsequent “life of poverty and blasted prosperity” under the American regime.4 While some old inhabitants focused their thoughts on economic losses or dashed dreams, others offered testimony that reveals a more deeply seated fear. Their memories brimmed with tales of social upheaval, that in turn hinted of the nightmare of seeing themselves enslaved. Mateo Lorenzo expressed this horrifying prospect by employing the phrase “the world turned upside down.” In such a world, masters would become slaves. Similarly, Rebecca Read invoked the Haitian Revolution when she referred to the U.S. invasion as “the reign of terror to East Florida.” The names of her beloved father-in-law’s bond persons indicate that he, Francis Richard Sr., had fled from the chaos of St. Domingue’s version of the French Revolution. In poignant human imagery, Gabriel Priest, a former overseer for the wealthy planter John Houston McIntosh, expressed the relationship between the Patriot War and white enslavement. The Americans, Priest wailed...

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