The Other War of 1812: The Patriot War and the American Invasion of Spanish East Florida (review)

The Patriot War that occurred in Spanish East Florida before and during the War of 1812 is often relegated to the status of a footnote in accounts of that larger conflict. Yet, as James G. Cusick argues in a new study, the Patriot War both was illuminating in what it revealed about American expansionism and was effective in advancing the expansionist agenda.

The Patriot War presents a depressing chronicle of staggering ineptitude on the part of almost everybody on the American side, a scheme that went awry even before it started. In 1811, elderly but eager George Mathews, a former governor of Georgia, convinced President James Madison that inhabitants of East Florida were eager to overthrow Spanish authority as a prelude to U.S. annexation. Madison gave secret approval for the shadowy encouragement of East Florida's purported insurrectionary sentiments, presumably under the impression that the Spanish ouster would be quick and the benefits easily reaped, but neither turned out the be the case. Instead of inspiring rebellion in East Florida, Mathews mounted a ragtag invasion of the province that alienated its American, Indian, and black inhabitants as much as it infuriated the Spaniards there. The venture also quickly embarrassed Madison. Especially alarming for the administration was the participation of U.S. military forces, both regular troops and state militia, a circumstance that threatened to make the enterprise a political and diplomatic disaster of the first order. The Spanish, meanwhile, sought to augment their meager forces by employing black troops, a move that terrified Georgians. In addition, these distressing developments occurred while the United States prepared for and then was unsuccessful waging war against Great Britain. Ultimately, Madison and his secretary of war, James Monroe, disavowed the Patriots, and the project sputtered to a confused and contemptible conclusion.

Cusick has masterfully blended these and additional complexities into a dynamic narrative that greatly enhances our understanding of the event itself. A half-century has passed since Rembert Patrick's aptly titled Florida Fiasco told this intricate story, and Cusick's work both supplements and expands on its predecessor, especially by making systematic use of Spanish sources heretofore neglected. What emerges from Cusick's remarkable thoroughness of research is an extraordinarily detailed narrative that vividly portrays the eccentrics, rogues, and opportunists who took part in this scheme while clearly describing their activities.

Cusick's conclusions are generally sound. The motives behind the Patriot War are plausibly explained as a mixture of land hunger, economic and cultural resentments, and racial animosity. Yet, the author perhaps too readily endorses interpretations of Madison and Monroe as determined expansionists, while their behavior indicates that they were more timid gamblers, eager to win the pot but just as cautious to avoid risks while doing so. And while the Patriot War was important, it certainly was not the case, as Cusick asserts, that "the failed conquest of East Florida later resulted in cession of the province;" or that "in the end, the Patriot War accomplished the one thing that the War of 1812 failed to do" by bringing "new territory into the American confederation" (p. 296). In fact, given its dismal conclusion, the Patriot War probably persuaded Spain that East Florida, at least, was defensible. Andrew Jackson, who was a determined expansionist indeed, mounted an invasion in 1818 that convinced Spain otherwise about West Florida, especially when he forcibly occupied the Spanish post at St. Marks and the Spanish capital of Pensacola. Cusick curiously neglects to mention these deeds when he describes Jackson's expedition as merely "a continuation of the 'search and destroy' missions that had occurred in 1813" (p. 305).

Despite this troubling flaw, this is a good and...