In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

3 Barbarians at the Gates Robert R. Reid was a “thoughtful, introspective man with an affection for biblical study and the classics.”This native Georgian, who had graduated from South Carolina College and served in Congress from 1819 to 1823, had come to Florida in 1832 as a federal district judge. He would rise to occupy the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee. The final day of August 1836 found Reid anxiously mulling over the events of the Patriot War. Initially, he had found it difficult to believe traumatized witnesses as they testified in their neighbors’ lawsuits against the United States. He hypothesized that time had failed to erase the mental “state of excitement and agitation” that exaggerated their losses. The Second Seminole War’s outbreak, however, tempered his skepticism, as he saw with his own eyes the horrible violence that U.S. policies had engendered. The conflict with the Seminoles did not shock Mrs. Jane Redding so deeply. “People complain of the Indian War, and no doubt suffer much,” she adamantly proclaimed, “but the suffering of the poor People during the Revolution of 12 and 13 was far greater.” James Plummer, another “old inhabitant,” voiced his assent. “[T]hose were sharp times,” he laconically mused in 1840, “worse than these.” Even persons whose familiarity with the Patriot War rested solely upon copies of claims cases forwarded to Washington from St. Augustine felt repulsed by the behavior of the invading forces. In 1852, one Treasury Department lawyer indignantly railed against the “monstrous atrocities committed by those unfeeling barbarians.”1 The solicitor’s evocation of uncivilized white American hordes running amok is telling, as is the fact that men of color stemmed the tide of this “barbarian” invasion. Nonwhites’ valor turned racial hierarchy topsy-turvy. In accordance with a time-honored principle of folk diplomacy stretching back to the colony’s Barbarians at the Gates / 51 foundation, Afro–East Floridians seized upon frontier turmoil to craft alternative identities that transcended the degradation of blackness. The martial traditions and intercultural skills that they exercised during the Patriot War ensconced them as heroes in local lore. Over a generation later, this exalted niche in white memories permitted veterans of African descent to gamely employ a legal loophole to lodge public protests against the American regime that had marginalized them. Their subtle jeremiads, like the apocalypse of 1812, presented whites with an opportunity to reconsider the wisdom of racial oppression and to remedy it. Enslaved diplomats as well would hitch popular history to the engine of their liberty. According to Susan Parker’s research, Francis Philip Fatio Sr., like scores of free black East Floridians, had mastered the art of benefiting from the “tumult of both in- and out-migration of people and governments.” Thirty miles from St. Augustine, Fatio’s ten-thousand-acre New Switzerland plantation lined the banks of the St. Johns River for twelve miles. Here he quartered eighty-six slaves, whose toil generated the wealth that enabled him to live in baronial splendor. Fatio was born in the francophone region of Switzerland and in 1743–48 joined the French in their struggle against England during the War of the Austrian Succession. After residing in Sardinia and Albion itself, he emigrated to British East Florida in 1771. During the American Revolution, he cast his lot with the former enemies of his Swiss youth. When Britain retroceded its peninsular colony as a consequence of defeat, Fatio, sensing an opportunity to “make himself nearly indispensable to the incoming Spanish,” opted to remain. He subsequently prospered due to his knack for efficiently devoting his resources to diverse economic activities well suited to the frontier region’s natural and political milieu. Fatio’s thriving enterprises in ranching, forestry, and citrus cultivation demonstrated that the “country could support the material comfort of those who correctly analyzed what actions and adaptations were needed to succeed in that . . . environment.”2 Magnificent holdings such as New Switzerland were microcosms of the colony ’s booming economy. Indeed, even East Floridians of modest means could engage in the ventures that had made Fatio rich. Moreover, as a man “noted for his fine library and love of learning,” Fatio was no mere crass entrepreneur.3 His New Switzerland mansion functioned as a bastion of western civilization in the midst of a wilderness. He personified the wealthy Renaissance man that the province’s lesser inhabitants could become, thus fueling their dreams of upward mobility. Therefore, when the...

Share