This post is a part of the 2023 Selected Papers of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, which were edited and compiled by members of the CRE’s board alongside editors at Age of Revolutions.

By Colin Mathison

On September 23, 1810, a group of Spanish subjects rose in rebellion by storming the Spanish fort at Baton Rouge and declaring the independent Republic of West Florida. This was not a unique occurrence. That same month, Simon Bolívar departed Britain for Venezuela for his first attempt at the liberation of his homeland. Earlier in the year, the May Revolutions broke out in Argentina threatening to oust the Spanish regime, and in September, Padre Hidalgo had rung his “Cry of Delores” beginning the Mexican War for Independence. The revolt in West Florida, then, was part of a wave of Spanish-American revolutions that broke out across Spain’s empire in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Although there have been several studies dedicated to the territory, most of the scholarship on West Florida and its revolution have treated it as a distinctly American event, and even applying a teleological lens that portrays West Florida as an early example of the manifest destiny that spread over the North American continent.^[1] Instead, this paper seeks to analyze the West Florida Revolution in an Atlantic context. The events that unfolded in West Florida in 1810 cannot be separated from the other revolutions against Spain in North and South America, nor the developments in the mother country in their struggles against Napoleon. With this framework in mind, an examination of the events in West Florida shows that West Floridians were aware of their place in the Atlantic world and used that knowledge and experience to negotiate for their own ends. 

West Floridians had long been accustomed to negotiating their interests with the empires of the Atlantic world. Indeed, West Florida is the only territory on the North American continent that was once held by Britain, France, and Spain before being absorbed into the United States. It was, in fact, a “nexus of empire,” as some historians have described it.^[2] Throughout their struggles, West Floridians were aware that they occupied a sort of in-between place amid the imperial Atlantic world and used this position and professions of loyalty to further their own interests. As fully immersed in the Atlantic economy from the hub in New Orleans, West Floridians professed and negotiated their national loyalty to whichever side they felt would ensure their welfare – a game West Floridians were quite used to, given the shifting imperial boundaries of the revolutionary era – and they adopted and adapted the systems of those empires that best suited their interests. This negotiation continued after incorporation into the United States, allowing the former revolutionaries to use their loyalty to the American government as a bargaining chip in advocating for their benefit. Another Atlantic conflict, however, forced many West Floridians to flock to the American standard in defense of their homes against the British in the War of 1812. Only after Andrew Jackson’s victory at New Orleans, more than four years after American annexation, did West Florida emerge as thoroughly American.^[3]

In the decades before the revolution, West Florida became home to an extremely diverse (white) population. Before the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, the area from the Mississippi River to the Perdido River was part of French Louisiana. With the British victory in that war, Great Britain acquired all the land east of the Mississippi River, with the exception of New Orleans. They then split their holdings along the Gulf Coast into East and West Florida. During the American Revolution, Bernardo Galvez conquered the territory, and it came under Spanish dominion. Within twenty years, West Florida had existed under French, British, and Spanish rule. Each time, the residents were faced with a choice: leave or swear allegiance to the new regime. Admittedly, West Florida was sparsely settled under the French, but the British succeeded in enticing settlers around their administrative center of Natchez through generous land grants.^[4] Many of these British subjects settled in what would later be called the Florida Parishes. After the Spanish conquest, many chose to remain on their land and swear an oath to the Spanish Crown. The Spanish then invited immigrants with their own land grants, and many from the fledgling United States took the opportunity to settle in West Florida. 

Thus, on the eve of the 1810 revolution, West Florida was home to French, British, and American immigrants who all swore their loyalty to Spain, not to mention the Spanish settlers and administrators that followed Galvez’s conquest. Even many of the “Americans” had been former British subjects themselves before the American Revolution and pledged their loyalty to a third government in moving to West Florida. For all these West Floridians, no coherent form of nationalism was present. As Eric Hobsbawm has observed, “national identification and what it is believed to imply, can change and shift in time, even in the course of quite short periods.”^[5] This shifting national identity was especially evident in West Florida. Furthermore, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, nationalism as a concept was still developing. Benedict Anderson asserts that the “blueprint” for an independent national state did not coalesce until the 1820s.^[6] Before the West Florida Revolution of 1810, and indeed before the end of the War of 1812, no sense of nationalism existed in West Florida. 

Often historians have analyzed the West Florida Revolt through a teleological lens. Aware that the majority of the population consisted of former Americans and armed with the knowledge of the eventual annexation by the United States, the incorporation into the American union sometimes seems inevitable. However, West Floridians, with the exception of the enslaved Africans, were willing Spanish subjects who, like their other Spanish-American revolutionary counterparts, only rose in rebellion when the instability of the mother country threatened their security and property at home. Only then did West Floridians look to another Atlantic empire to secure their interests. Even the term “American” is somewhat misleading since most residents themselves did not always identify themselves that way. For example, Frederick Kimball, who had served in the South Carolina militia during the American Revolutionary War, settled in West Florida around 1798. In his letters that have survived, he only once refers to himself as “an American.” Earlier in the same document, he refers to himself only as a “friend to Amarica [sic].” Throughout his other letters, he uses the term “Americans” to describe William C. C. Claiborne, the U.S. Army commander and governor of the Orleans Territory, his forces, or the American government imposed in West Florida, often in a negative connotation. Alternatively, Kimball uses the words “we” and “our” to describe the West Floridians and often presents those as in opposition to the “Americans.”^[7] Reuben Kemper, perhaps one of the most famous revolutionaries and another former American who pledged his loyalty to the Spanish Crown, referred to Spain as “our Mother Country” to his fellow West Floridians even after the outset of armed revolt.^[8] It would then seem that Frederick Kimball, Reuben Kemper, and other West Floridians identified themselves with neither their birthplace nor present government. Instead, their identification was regional, and their loyalty was linked to their land, security, and local economy.

Their local economy was part of the larger Atlantic market. With the close hub of New Orleans and its placement bordering the Mississippi River, West Floridians had easy access to the Atlantic trading routes. The initial British settlers forged economic ties with merchants and traders in then Spanish New Orleans. Those ties, coupled with an already tenuous allegiance to the British Crown, may have contributed to the slight resistance that Galvez encountered in taking the territory during the American Revolution.^[9] Furthermore, the ties to New Orleans allowed for the sustaining of markets and communication throughout the Atlantic World. Ships arriving in New Orleans frequently traveled from Havana, which served as a hub of Spanish colonial activity in the Caribbean and the Americas. Traders and merchants from New Orleans, Veracruz, Montevideo, and Santo Domingo, among other ports, would congregate in Havana before departing to their next destination. This network intricately tied West Floridians into the Atlantic economy, as well as the spread of news and ideas in Spain’s New World.^[10]

This reliance on the Atlantic market was nowhere more visible than in the trade of enslaved Africans. Even after Great Britain and the United States outlawed the slave trade in the first decade of the nineteenth century, West Floridians still demanded the importation of enslaved Africans to continue to develop their plantation-style economy. However, this continued trade after the Anglophone world abolished it was complicated by the system in which the enslaved lived. Whereas in Virginia, for example, the government restricted the manumission of slaves, enslaved people in West Florida enjoyed an easier path to freedom. Between 1770 and 1810, almost 1,500 enslaved people were manumitted in the territory, even as new arrivals entered through Pensacola and Mobile.^[11] This shows that West Floridians pragmatically relied more upon Spanish systems than any adherence to the Anglo-American institutions that would supplant it after annexation. The Spanish system, which they swore allegiance to upon immigration, best served their interests. In fact, as Andrew McMichael has shown, this was the reason that West Floridians held fast to their allegiance to the Spanish Crown up until the very eve of the revolution.

When Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Spain in 1807 and set his brother Joseph on the throne the following year, all Spanish America felt the effects. Spanish colonial officials balked at proclaiming loyalty to the new regime but were left without direction. In 1809, the Central Junta in Spain claimed authority and led the resistance against Joseph. They also invited representatives from across Spain’s empire to join the Junta and represent their regions’ interests. However, events moved faster than the Central Junta. By 1810, as West Floridians were coming together in their Convention, the leading elites around the Spanish empire formed independent juntas in Caracas, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, and Santiago. In June, while the West Florida Convention was negotiating with Spanish Governor De Lassus, Simon Bolívar made plans with Francisco de Miranda to form the first Venezuelan Republic. One week before Philemon Thomas led his forces to storm the Spanish fort at Baton Rouge, Padre Hidalgo spearheaded an uprising in Mexico that sparked the Mexican War for Independence.^[12] The revolution in West Florida, then, was not an isolated event. It was, rather, just one iteration of the wave of Spanish-American revolutions that began in 1810 in response to Napoleon’s aggression. Each colony, including West Florida, saw its place in the Atlantic world threatened by the imbalance of power and decided that Spain could no longer protect their interests. Across Spanish America, though, these wars of independence often ignited civil wars among the population, and West Florida was no different.

When revolution broke out in West Florida in the fall of 1810, three distinct factions emerged and vied for control. Those who wished to remain loyal to Spain were primarily merchants who sought to maintain the status quo so that their ventures in the Atlantic economy remained undisturbed. Some, including John Hunter Johnson, an influential member of the West Florida Convention, have been noted among those who wished for American incorporation. As has been pointed out, however, national loyalty was not prevalent among the population. Those who wished to join the United States believed that the best chances of their interests being served lay within the new republic. Many of the leading revolutionaries, including the commander of the militia, Philemon Thomas, and the president of the republic, Fulwar Skipwith, belonged to the “independent” party.^[13] These individuals, along with the “American” party, were more than willing to negotiate their place in the United States and, if unsuccessful, were willing to negotiate with another power for their security and prosperity. Fulwar Skipwith was the most logical choice as the leader of the West Florida Republic precisely because he held the experience of negotiating in the Atlantic world. He had served as the American counsel in the West Indies as well as the Consul General to France.^[14] The choice of Skipwith as president shows the revolutionaries’ faith in a “Gentleman of his capacity” in navigating their precarious position in the Atlantic atmosphere.^[15]

During their negotiations with Spanish Commandant Carlos de Hault de Lassus and after West Floridians rose in armed revolt, they viewed their predicament in Atlantic terms and sought to negotiate through their vulnerable position in the same context. When dealing with the Spanish, they constantly proclaimed their allegiance to the fallen king, Ferdinand VII.^[16] As elsewhere in Spain’s empire, the deposing of Ferdinand VII struck a blow to the colony’s security. When they began their revolt against Spain, however, the West Florida Convention recognized their precarious position. They realized that such a small territory could not remain independent, especially with the strategic value the territory held on the Mississippi River and along the Gulf Coast. In fact, it was this strategic value which fueled both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison’s obsession in acquiring the territory. Realizing their vulnerability, West Floridians petitioned the American government for protection and incorporation, believing their interests would best be served by joining the United States. Even in their vulnerable state, though, they used their unique position among Atlantic empires in attempting to obtain the best possible conditions for their incorporation. In a letter to the Secretary of State, the president of the Convention, John Rhea, appealed for the incorporation into the United States by justifying their place in the Atlantic world. He claimed that since the United States had refused to recognize the authority of the Central Spanish Junta, and since they claimed the rights to West Florida through the Louisiana Purchase, they were then entitled to offer assistance to West Florida since they “cannot but regard any force” sent by Spain to take back the territory as anything other than “an invasion of their territory by a foreign enemy.” Rhea further explained that since Napoleon had invited the Spanish colonies to declare their independence, the acknowledgment of West Floridian independence “could not be complained of by France.” But also recognizing West Florida’s place in the Atlantic world, as well as its strategic and economic value to the United States, Rhea subtlety threatened that “our weak and unprotected situation will oblige us to look to some foreign Government for support, should it be refused to us by the country which we have considered our parent State.”^[17] Indeed, rumors abounded that unless the United States accepted West Florida, the Convention would appeal to Great Britain for protection.^[18] The residents who were formerly British subjects especially wished for that outcome.

Others, though, wished for incorporation into the United States. The notion of the United States being their “parent State” appears frequently when the West Floridians were negotiating with the American government, just as those same individuals professed their loyalty to Ferdinand VII when dealing with the Spanish. In a later memorial to the U.S. Congress advocating for the approval of the Spanish land claims, the signers from West Florida referred to the United States as “our beloved Country,” which they had always hoped “that we should become annexed to.”^[19] These statements are often used to provide evidence for West Florida’s inevitable incorporation into the American union, but it is more likely, given their same professions of loyalty to Spain, that West Floridians had recognized their precarious position and pragmatically appealed to their closest neighbor for protection using language that would connect them to the United States.^[20]

The manner of the incorporation into the American union, though, left many resentful. Apart from their physical and territorial security, West Floridians had two primary concerns upon annexation: the validation of their land claims and the liquidation of the debts from the revolution. The generous land grants that the Spanish and British issued were the primary motive for immigration to the territory, and early in their revolution, the West Florida Convention made the certification of land grants an utmost priority.^[21] These acts by the West Florida Convention, though, were not initially adopted by the officials of the United States upon annexation. In fact, land claims remained one of the most contentious subjects in the years after the revolution. Shortly after the stars and stripes were raised over St. Francisville and Baton Rouge, Secretary of State Robert Smith warned that “the people of West Florida must not for a moment be misled by the expectation that the United States will surrender for their exclusive benefit what had been purchased with the treasure and for the benefit of the whole.” He instructed Holmes, however, to assure the residents of “the liberal policy” of the United States “which it has uniformly displayed towards the people of the Territories” and that this assurance should “be a sufficient pledge to the inhabitants of West Florida for the early and continued attention of the Federal Legislature to their situation and their wants.” ^[22] His assurances largely fell on deaf ears, as the government’s “continued attention” dragged out for almost a decade.

In December 1811, a full year after annexation, West Floridians elected to send John Ballinger, who commanded the fort at Baton Rouge before Claiborne’s occupation, to relate their concerns to the Secretary of State. Ballinger warned that if the lands were “not Confirmed by this Goverment [sic] it will be a serious stroke upon the Happiness & prosperity of that Country.” He further alludes to the consequences of inaction by the government: “But should all their expectations fail or be unnecessarily retarded,” then the government would, in effect, “stifle its [the region’s] patriotism and sink it into its original nothingness.”^[23] Essentially, Ballinger insinuated that the patriotism and loyalty West Floridians felt towards the American government were contingent on their needs being addressed. Once again, West Floridians used their loyalty as a bargaining chip to advocate for their interests.

These petitions and grievances continued for years after the fall of the West Florida Republic. West Floridians continued to advocate to Claiborne for their inclusion in government. They repeatedly wrote to Congress concerning their status in the Union, the debts accrued during the revolution, and the confirmation of their land claims.^[24] One event in particular highlights the frustration held by the former revolutionaries. Josiah Lawton, a resident of St Francisville, recalled an event in May 1811 where some residents had raised West Florida’s Lone Star Flag again in Feliciana. Incensed at the effrontery, Claiborne ordered the flag be taken down and buried. Lawton then recounted that the men responsible “dug up the coffin as if determined not to be in peace.”^[25] Obviously, some of the citizens of the former republic thought that independence would better serve their interests than under the United States government. In writing to Philemon Thomas, the former commander of the West Florida forces, Claiborne confided that “the rearing of the Florida flag and the reluctance with which it was taken down, may by some be construed as evidence of ill-will towards the American Government.”^[26] It is easy to imagine why. Although this episode was not a serious attempt to break away from the United States, it was yet another example of West Floridians using their loyalty as a condition to further their own goals, especially in their continued negotiations with the federal government. The loyalty of West Floridians was paramount at the time, given the conflict brewing with Great Britain.

Their continued campaigning for redress led to belated success. For the most part, their grievances were settled by 1819.^[27] Interestingly, however, the persistent agitation largely disappeared by 1815. The letters of grievances and petitions become silent in the archival record right around the time the British threatened invasion of New Orleans. During the Gulf Coast campaigns of the War of 1812, West Floridians were faced with a choice: they could support their new country or capitulate to the British. In fact, the British counted on the support of the former Spanish subjects in Louisiana and West Florida to aid them in their Gulf Coast campaigns. British Colonial Secretary Lord Bathurst advised Major General Robert Ross that if he found “in the inhabitants a general and decided disposition to withdraw from their recent connection with the United States, either with the view of establishing themselves as an independent people or of returning under the dominion of the Spanish Crown, you will give them every support in your power.”^[28]

However, the War of 1812 and the British invasion of the Gulf Coast rallied West Floridians’ support for the American government. By September 1813, Claiborne could boast that “The people of the several parishes of St. Tammany, St. Helena, Feliciana, and Baton Rouge seem disposed to rally, at the first call, among the standard of their Country.”^[29] In fact, one group of soldiers that included Reuben Kemper and over fifty others from the Florida Parishes, over half of whom were from the Feliciana district, were personally commended by Andrew Jackson.^[30] Likewise, Philemon Thomas, along with other influential members of the West Florida Convention, were enrolled in the Louisiana militia.^[31] West Floridians played an essential role in Jackson’s monumental victory at New Orleans, and although the Treaty of Ghent was signed before the Battle of New Orleans occurred, the victory at New Orleans and the end of the War of 1812 ensured that Britain would no longer be an influence in the Gulf Coast region. More importantly, though, the loyalty expressed by West Floridians ensured their commitment to the American government. 

Through the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, West Floridians consistently recognized their place in the Atlantic world, and they used their position and loyalty as a bargaining chip to reinforce their own security and prosperity. However, they also pragmatically recognized the need to be attached to one of the Atlantic empires to realize those goals. The incorporation into the American union was not inevitable nor, as other scholars have shown, was even desired by the majority of West Floridians on the eve of the revolution.^[32] In fact, as we have seen, West Floridians were adamant about their resistance to the manner of American incorporation and used their tentative loyalty as leverage to achieve their aims. In the end, however, the threat of another Atlantic empire – the British – forced West Floridians to embrace the American government and become some of its strongest supporters along the Gulf Coast.^[33] Albert Gallatin observed in 1816 that the war had “renewed and reinstated the national feelings” and that the people “feel and act more like a nation.”^[34] It was not the West Florida Revolt, then, but rather the War of 1812 that transformed West Florida from an unruly Atlantic colony to truly American.

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Colin Mathison is a Ph.D. Candidate at Mississippi State University. His work focuses on Florida and the Atlantic World.

Title Image: A 1903 map showing the territorial changes of “West Florida”; a historical region that now incorporates portions of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama by Henry E. Chambers. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Endnotes:

^[1] For the most comprehensive study on West Florida and the Revolution, see Isaac Joslin Cox, The West Florida Controversy, 1798-1813: A Study in American Diplomacy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1918). This was followed by a collection of articles from the St. Francisville Democrat in Stanley Clisby Arthur, The Story of the West Florida Rebellion (Baton Rouge: Claitor’s Publishing, 1975). For more recent studies on the West Florida Revolution and the events prior, see David A. Bice, The Original Lone Star Republic: Scoundrels, Statesmen and Schemers of the 1810 Spanish West Florida Rebellion (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing, 2004); William C. Davis, The Rogue Republic: How Would-Be Patriots Waged the Shortest Revolution in American History (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., 2011); Gilbert C. Din, “A Troubled Seven Years: Spanish Reactions to American Claims and Aggression in ‘West Florida,” 1803-1810,” Louisiana History 59, no. 4 (2018): 409–52; Cody Scallions, “The Rise and Fall of the Original Lone Star State: Infant American Imperialism Ascendant in West Florida,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 90, no. 2 (2011): 193–220. For a study on Spanish West Florida, especially highlighting the loyalty of the West Florida residents to the Spanish regime, see Andrew McMichael, Atlantic Loyalties: Americans in Spanish West Florida, 1785-1810 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008). For studies of federal intervention in West Florida, see J.C.A. Stagg, Borderlines in Borderlands: James Madison and the Spanish-American Frontier, 1776-1821 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Frank Lawrence Owsley Jr. and Gene Allen Smith, Filibusters and Expansionists: Jeffersonian Manifest Destiny, 1800-1821 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997). For the legacy of violence in West Florida, see Samuel C. Hyde, “Bitter Legacy:  Spanish Colonial Policies and the Tradition of Extra-Legal Violence in Louisiana’s Florida Parishes,” Tulane European and Civil Law Forum 32 (2017).

^[2] Gene Allen Smith and Sylvia L. Hinton, eds., Nexus of Empire: Negotiating Loyalty and Identity in the Revolutionary Borderlands, 1760s-1820s (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010).

^[3] For more information, see Robin Reilly, The British at the Gates: The New Orleans Campaign in the War of 1812 (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974) or William C. Davis, The Greatest Fury: The Battle of New Orleans and the Rebirth of America (New York: Dutton Caliber, 2019) among others.

^[4] During the American Revolution the British governor of West Florida also enticed between 1,300 and 1,650 loyalist settlers to immigrate from the eastern colonies and Caribbean islands, see McMichael, Atlantic Loyalties, 15.

^[5] E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 11.

^[6] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), 81.

^[7] Frederick Kimball Letters, Louisiana Lower Mississippi Valley Collection, LSU. Hereinafter referred to as LLMVC. Quotes from Frederick Kimball to Andrew Wade, Aug 15, 1806, and March 5, 1811. The pattern of word usage and identification, however, is prevalent throughout the letters.

^[8] Reuben Kemper to Perez and Joseph Kennedy, Nov. 3, 1810, found in James A. Padgett, ed., “The West Florida Revolution of 1810, as Told in the Letters of John Rhea, Fulwar Skipwith, Reuben Kemper, and Others,” The Louisiana Historical Quarterly 21, no. 1 (January 1938): 100.

^[9] McMichael shows that “the loyalty of British residents stemmed more from political isolation from the colonies than from political association with the Crown,” McMichael, Atlantic Loyalties, 15; For more on Galvez’s conquest, see Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia, Bernardo de Galvez: Spanish Hero of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 138-180.

^[10] McMichael, Atlantic Loyalties, 33.

^[11] McMichael, Atlantic Loyalties, 37; Even after American annexation, Claiborne complained about the continued shipments of enslaved people through Mobile, see Claiborne to John Shaw, June 12, 1811, in Rowland, Official Letter Book of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801-1816, 1917, V:274.

^[12] There is a wealth of scholarship focused on the independence movements in Central and South America. For a general survey of the Latin American Revolutions, see John Charles Chasteen, Americanos: Latin America’s Struggle for Independence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

^[13] For more information about these factions and their struggles for power, see Samuel C. Hyde, “Consolidating the Revolution: Factionalism and Finesse in the West Florida Revolt, 1810,” Louisiana History 51, no. 3 (Summer 2010): 261–83.

^[14] Hyde, “Consolidating the Revolution,” 278.

^[15] Convention to De Lassus, August 28, 1810, found in James A. Padgett, “Official Records of the West Florida Revolution and Republic,” The Louisiana Historical Quarterly 21, no. 3 (July 1938): 715.

^[16] See letters of Convention to De Lassus, found in Padgett, “Official Records of the West Florida Revolution.”

^[17] John Rhea to Secretary of State, Oct. 10, 1810, found in American State Papers: House of Representatives 11:395.

^[18] Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., Territorial Papers of the United States, vol. IX (1803-1812), 896; William C. Davis, The Rogue Republic: How Would-Be Patriots Waged the Shortest Revolution in American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), 135, 203.

^[19] Memorial to Congress on Land Claims, found in Padgett, “West Florida Revolution Letters,” 200.

^[20] For the sense of inevitability of American annexation, see William C. Davis, The Rogue Republic.

^[21] For more on the settlement of West Florida, see McMichael, Atlantic Loyalties, 10–34; Cox, The West Florida Controversy, 1798-1813, 64–101; Journal of the Revolutionary Convention, Oct. 6, 1810, found in Padgett, “Official Records of the West Florida Revolution,” 737.

^[22] Robert Smith to David Holmes, Pittsfield Sun, Dec. 19, 1810.

^[23] John Ballinger to the Secretary of State, Dec. 26, 1811, found in Carter, IX (1803-1812):967, 969.

^[24] For negotiations with Claiborne, see Dunbar Rowland, ed., Official Letter Book of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801-1816, vol. VI (Jackson, Miss: Mississippi State Department of Archives and History, 1917), 11–271. For concerns over the debt, see Claiborne to Robert Smith, Dec. 17, 1810, found in Rowland, Official Letter Book of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801-1816, 1917, V:56; Claiborne to Albert Gallatin, Feb. 1, 1811, found in Rowland, V:140; Memorial to Congress from Inhabitants of Feliciana County, Mar. 17, 1812, found in Carter, Territorial Papers of the United States, IX (1803-1812):1011. For negotiations over land claims, see John Ballinger to the Secretary of State, Dec. 26, 1811, found in Carter, IX (1803-1812): 967, 969; Journal of the Revolutionary Convention, Oct. 6, 1810, found in Padgett, “Official Records of the West Florida Revolution,” 737.

^[25] Josiah Lawton Letter, May 26, 1811, LLMVC.

^[26] Claiborne to Philemon Thomas, Apr. 9, 1811, found in Rowland, Official Letter Book of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801-1816, 1917, V:209.

^[27] The status of West Florida was finally solidified by the signing of the Transcontinental Treaty in 1819. The debts were finally discharged in April 1818 but took until 1848 for all of them to be paid, see Padgett, “West Florida Financials,” 944, 953. The land claims were confirmed by Congress, with some stipulations, in December 1818, see “Land Claims East and West of Pearl River,” American State Papers: House of Representatives 14:6-72.

^[28] Lord Bathurst to Major General Robert Ross, September 6, 1814, quoted in Reilly, The British at the Gates, 175.

^[29] Claiborne to Thomas Flournoy, Sep. 29, 1813, found in Rowland, Official Letter Book of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801-1816, 1917, VI:271.

^[30] Andrew Jackson, “General Orders, January 21, 1815,” in Arsène Lacarrière Latour, Historical Memoir of The War in West Florida and Louisiana in 1814-1815, With an Atlas ed. Gene Allen Smith (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999), 340; The muster rolls of Hinds’ Battalion, found in Dunbar Roland, Mississippi Territory in the War of 1812, (Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, Centenary Series, Vol. IV, 1921), cross-referenced with the 1820 Census reveals fifty-five men enlisted were from the Florida Parishes, thirty-five of whom were from Feliciana.

^[31] Philemon Thomas commanded the Second Division. Under his command was Phillip Hickey, the influential Feliciana planter and former member of the West Florida Convention, led the 11th Regiment, and Llewelyn Griffith, a member of the West Florida cavalry who stormed Baton Rouge, also assisted in repelling the British. “War of 1812 Muster Rolls for Louisiana Militia in Federal Service Finding Aid.” War of 1812 Muster Rolls Collection, Louisiana National Guard Museums, New Orleans, LA; The involvement of Llewelyn Griffith in the West Florida Revolt can be found in Davis, The Rogue Republic, 221, 283. A Resolution of the Legislature of Louisiana, found in Latour, Historical Memoir of The War in West Florida and Louisiana, mentions a captain Griffith from Bayou Sarah who led a cavalry group at the Battle of New Orleans.

^[32] See Hyde, “Consolidating the Revolution” and McMichael, Atlantic Loyalties.

^[33] Claiborne to Thomas Flournoy, Sep. 29, 1813, found in Rowland, Official Letter Book of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801-1816, 1917, VI:271.

^[34] Gallatin to Matthew Lyon, May 7, 1816, quoted in George Dangerfield, The Awakening of American Nationalism, 1815-1828 (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 3-4.