Atlantic Loyalties: Americans in Spanish West Florida, 1785-1810

Notes

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 [177], Lines: —— -3.56 ——— Long P PgEnd [177], notes Abbreviations AGI Archivo General de Indias, Papeles de Cuba, Louisiana State University Libraries, Special Collections, Baton Rouge ANC Archivo Nacional de la República de Cuba, Havana LOC Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. NARA National Archives and Record Administration, Washington, D.C. PVP Papers of Vicente Sebastián Pintado, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. SD Slave Database, at WFP WFP Archives of the Spanish Government of West Florida: A Series of Eighteen Bound Volumes of Written Documents Mostly in the Spanish Language (West Florida papers), deposited in the Record Room of the Nineteenth Judicial District Court, Baton Rouge Introduction 1. The terms “American” and “Anglo-American” can encompass a number of different meanings. Following the contemporary standard, I use “American” to mean any person from the United States. Where national origin is not clear for whites, I have used “AngloAmerican ” to designate any white person from either Great Britain (including Ireland and Scotland) or the United States. When possible, when the records permit, or when an explanation requires more specificity, I have been more precise in identifying nationality. However, here I am following the definitions as found in most records from the period. When it becomes necessary to identify Anglo-Americans living in West Florida, I will refer to them as “resident Anglo-Americans.” The West Florida district runs from the Mississippi River in the west to the Apalachicola River to the east. The Baton Rouge district, a subset of West Florida, extended east to the Pearl River and included four divisions— Feliciana, Baton Rouge proper, Saint Helena, and Saint Tammany. The thirty-first degree of latitude defined the northern boundary, while Bayous Manchac and Iberville defined the southern land boundaries. 2. Weber, “Spanish Legacy in North America.” The initial historiography on the West Florida Revolution dates back to Monette, History of the Discovery. The explicit antiCatholicism of the period along with the decline of Spain’s empire influenced Monette, and his book informed later works such as Cox, West Florida Controversy. Cox’s work remains the standard reference for the period but also treats American expansion as inevitable and the monochromatic settlers’ sentiments as invariably anti-Spanish and proAmerican . Stanley Clisby Arthur, a journalist in Saint Francisville, Louisiana—a town in what is now West Feliciana Parish—wrote the most influential and hagiographic work on the subject in a series of newspaper articles in the St. Francisville (La.) Democrat; see the July 8, 1933, edition, “Pictures of the Past: The Story of the Kemper Brothers, Three Fighting Sons of a Baptist Preacher Who Fought for Freedom When Louisiana Was Young,” 177 178 • Notes to Introduction and Chapter One 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 [178], Lines: —— 3.717 ——— Norma PgEnd [178], p. 1, and in Story of the West Florida Rebellion. In recent years Ann Patton Malone, in Sweet Chariot, cites Arthur as the main source of information on West Florida’s late colonial period, and other authors have followed suit. More recently, in Pistols and Politics Samuel Hyde, citing Arthur and others, argues that during this period “the Spanish government appeared weak and corrupt to the inhabitants of West Florida,” and the Spaniards “failed to appoint district courts to deal with the growing criminal activity in the territory” (19). The argument over a lack of judicial review is common but stems from a misunderstanding of the Spanish system of law. Finally, Frank Lawrence Owsley and Gene Smith’s recent Filibusters and Expansionists lists Arthur and three other contemporary authors as the main sources of information on the West Florida parishes during 1803–10 and notes that filibusters during this period “wanted an efficient, responsible local government,” something “Spain’s archaic administrative system could not provide” (9). 3. Other works have described the general political situation in the Floridas, most recently Paul E. Hoffman’s excellent Florida’s Frontiers. Hoffman’s work passes over the 1810 West Florida Revolution entirely...