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SHORT NORMAL LONG 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [First [127], Lines: —— 0.0pt ——— Norma PgEnd [127], chapter six Testing the Bounds of Loyalty Property and Crime The period up through 1807 presented West Floridians with a series of concrete events that could have tested their loyalty to the Spanish Empire. Filibustering and the potential for slave revolt linked them to the broader U.S. South and the circum-Caribbean in ways that might not seem either positive or profitable. Their loyalty weathered those trials in large part because those tests did not fundamentally challenge the stability of their system. Spain continued to distribute land to immigrants, and residents could expect to profit from their landholdings and the produce of that land. Yet, despite the residents’ seeming adherence to the forms of Spanish legal culture, after the Louisiana Purchase and the Kemper raids life began to change in ways that they could not have foreseen—and in ways that seemed counter to their interests. While the Kempers had not brought about the revolution that they had hoped for in 1804, they nonetheless set in motion a series of events that would end with the independence of West Florida in 1810. Records from the period between 1806 and 1810 speak of a growing dissatisfaction among some residents, and a few of the more recent, although anonymous, arrivals from the United States began to talk of revolution. Yet prominent planters and most residents did not share this feeling; the revolutionary sentiment expressed in West Florida before 1810 took the form of the occasional anonymous broadside quickly torn down, replaced by petitions of loyalty. Further, the dissatisfaction did not mirror emigration patterns to any discernible extent.1 But dissatisfaction there was. For the most part, residents usually expressed their unhappiness within the context of solving the district’s problems under the aegis of the Spanish governmental system. Therefore, when several leading West Floridians met first in Feliciana and then east of Baton Rouge in 1810, it was with the purpose of asserting some local control over their government while addressing existing grievances and quieting the seemingly rebellious sentiments among some residents. The 1810 convention that met on July 26 and 27 did not declare West Florida’s independence from Spain. Nor did it—in the minutes and declarations—have any stated intention of doing so. Instead the group, consisting of four men from 127 128 • chapter six SHORT NORMAL LONG 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [128], Lines: —— 0.0pt ——— Norma PgEnd [128], Feliciana, five men from the Baton Rouge area, four men from Saint Helena to the east, and one man from Tanchipaho and Chifuncté still further east, hoped only to reform the local Spanish administration. Of these fourteen men sent to the 1810 convention by their neighbors, only one bore a Spanish surname, Manuel Lopez, who had probably been sent by the government to keep an eye on the proceedings. The remainder of the men were Anglo-American settlers, including William Barrow, a North Carolinian who had been pro-American since his arrival in 1801.2 The first act of the convention, after establishing parliamentary rules of procedure, declared its intent to “promote the safety, honor, & happiness of his Majesty’s province of West Florida.”3 Next the delegates listed their grievances, which bear close examination in that they relate directly to many of the problems experienced by residents over the previous five years. The first of the five items dealt with what were actually two problems. The committee complained: “[T]he country is a place of refuge for deserters and fugitives from Justice of the neighboring States & Territories,” and at the same time “men of character are prohibited from settling among us.”4 This seemingly simple complaint strikes to the heart of nearly every major social and economic problem in the district between 1805 and 1810. The next day the committee elaborated on the issue of settlement, complaining of residents’ inability to obtain titles for new land, indicating that the Spanish government had ceased survey work. Finally, the group reassured...

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