by Mark Stein
On the 19th of December, a party of horsemen consisting of 70 or 80 men, and headed by a Major James Brittain, marched into [Walton] County from Buncombe, North Carolina.… They took and made prisoners of Richard Williamson, James Lafoy, J. Cloud, G. Williamson, esquires, and several others.… Five they discharged and ten were kept and marched off like prisoners of war to Morganton, North Carolina.
Brittain’s foray resulted in the battle of McGaha Branch, where his forces quickly overtook the Georgians. Those who escaped regrouped atop Selica Hill. But once again Brittain’s men prevailed. Both “battles” might be more accurately described as skirmishes. The number of casualties is uncertain but known to have been low. Some accounts say one to fourteen people died, others say no deaths resulted.7 What is certain today is that, unbeknownst to those involved, both clashes took place north of the Ophan Strip. Neither side knew, at the time, just where the boundaries were.
Those arrested and taken to the Morganton jail included the leading officials of Walton County. All escaped. How they managed to do so was not recorded. Notably, however, they did not continue to attempt to enforce Georgia’s jurisdictional claims in the region. Though Georgia and North Carolina continued to dispute the region—periodically agreeing to surveys, then disagreeing on the results—only North Carolina’s officials exerted jurisdiction. The people in the region also continued to conflict, often resulting in assaults and vandalism. These acts, along with Brittain’s foray, constitute what has come to be called the Walton War.
North Carolina-Georgia engagements
In 1810, with North Carolina solidifying its control, Georgia hired Andrew Ellicott, one of the nation’s foremost surveyors, to locate the 35th parallel. Milledgeville’s Georgia Journal reported in 1812 what his findings were rumored to be (and, in fact, were): “No official communication has yet been made by Mr. Ellicott to our Executive; but we learn that no part of Walton County belongs to this state.” Georgia took no official action in response to Ellicott’s survey. In fact, it came to act in ways that sought to render the dispute invisible.
During that time, James Brittain too began to disappear from the public mind. When he died (likely in the years near Ellicott’s survey), he was buried in what would become the family gravesite in Mills River, North Carolina. Today his grave is invisible, covered by tract homes.8
More pressing needs also erased his memory. In 1860 Georgia scrapped the constitution it had been using, which included a description of its boundaries, and replaced it with the constitution of the Confederate State of Georgia. It contained no boundary descriptions, since the last thing the Confederate states needed was conflict among themselves. Georgia’s Confederate constitution was replaced during Reconstruction with a constitution that also included no assertion of boundaries. In this instance, those writing this constitution were imposing an end to a national conflict; they too had no wish to stir up local trouble.
For the same reasons, regional historians minimized or totally avoided any reference to the Walton War, seeking to suppress the fact that the North Carolina militia was once led into battle against fellow countrymen from Georgia. One multivolume history of Georgia informed its readers, “For several years a bone of contention between Georgia and North Carolina was the matter of locating the 35th parallel of north latitude, recognized as the boundary line between the two states. In 1806, surveyors representing both states …” Even though 1806 was only two years after Brittain’s foray, this highly detailed history of the state simply skipped it.9 On the North Carolina side, even historians focused solely on the state’s western end ignored the event. One such historian acknowledged the Walton War but wrote of it:
Georgia, about December, 1803, created a county within this territory and called it Walton County. Georgia naturally attempted to exercise jurisdiction over what it really believed was its own territory, and North Carolina as naturally resisted such attempts. Consequently, there were great dissentions, the said dissentions having produced many riots, affrays, assaults, batteries, woundings and imprisonments. On January 13, 1806 …10
In both instances, the transition to 1806 leaves Brittain’s 1804 foray in the narrative’s dust.
In 1971 Georgia suddenly renewed its boundary dispute with North Carolina, though modifying its claim. It also took up a similar dispute with Tennessee. The North Carolina dispute was triggered to maintain consistency in Georgia’s boundary claim with Tennessee. That dispute had been triggered by Georgia’s need for access to the Tennessee River to help supply water to rapidly growing Atlanta, rising in the wake of the civil rights movement as the preeminent city of the New South. Reflecting that change, Atlanta’s leading African American newspaper followed the boundary challenge with equal concern. “Georgia Rep. Larry Thomason … chairman of the Georgia Boundary Commission, contends the state’s present northern boundary is about a mile south of where it should be,” Atlanta’s Daily World reported in September. Noting that the U.S. Geodetic Survey had announced a meeting to be held with representatives of the three states, the article continued, “Georgia has accepted the invitation and is waiting for responses from North Carolina and Tennessee.”
Apparently, Georgia is still waiting. No boundary adjustments have ensued. What has ensued, however, is an awakened awareness of the basis for the conflict, and with it the name of James Brittain has begun to reappear in historical accounts.
· · · LOUISIANA, MISSISSIPPI · · ·
REUBEN KEMPER
From Zero to Hero?
The outrages of the Kempers a few years ago are not yet forgotten. That family has on the recent occasion displayed its accustomed contempt for the laws of society, and was very active in … erecting Florida into a government independent alike of Spain and the United States.
—PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY AURORA, MARCH 3, 1811
Why is the Museum of the Republic of West Florida located two states away in Louisiana? The answer has a lot to do with Reuben Kemper, an American immigrant to Spain’s province of West Florida.
After the Revolution, what had been a trickle of Americans migrating to West Florida turned into a flood. Reuben, Nathan, and Samuel Kemper moved there from Virginia around 1800. Like many Americans, they were attracted by the fact that Spain made it easier for the average person to acquire land than did the United States. In the United States, to obtain title to land one had to have the money to purchase it. In Spanish West Florida, one could apply for title to land, and ultimately obtain that title, simply by living on the land and cultivating it—and by professing loyalty to Spain.1 The policy aimed to discourage absentee land speculators and reward individual productivity. To the extent that it was enforced, Spain’s policy resulted in an industrious—and loyal—population.
The Kempers, however, were not happy campers. In 1804 the Natchez Herald reported that Reuben and his brothers,
with a party of about 30 men, with colors flying and horns sounding, marched from the neighborhood of the line of demarcation between this territory [Mississippi] and West Florida … against the fort of Baton Rouge.… They arrived on the following morning about daylight near the fort. The Spanish commandant … had posted a piquet of 18 or 20 men, who hailed the party as they approached. They immediately answered by a volley from their rifles, which dispersed the Spaniards, two of whom were observed to fall.
Spanish Florida, 1783-1810
The newspaper account reported that the Kemper party then returned to its headquarters at St. Francisville, without explanation of why they retreated. Instead, the account quoted, in its entirety, a broadside that the Kempers had posted at points along the way.
The posting spoke of “the despotism under which we have long groaned,” and their resolve “to throw off the galling yoke of tyranny, and become free men, by declaring ourselves a free and independent people.” The message closely resembled the Declaration of Independence, though at no point did it say they sought to join the United States. Nevertheless, their declaration raised Spanish eyebrows.
Earlier that year, President Thomas Jefferson had signed the Mobile Act, stating that the 1803 Louisiana Purchase included West Florida. But Jefferson also stated that, because of the ambiguity of the document defining the Louisiana Purchase, along with the ambiguity of land transfers between Spain and France, he would not assert American claims militarily.
Although Kemper and his brothers were not in cahoots with the U.S. government, weren’t they freedom fighters nevertheless? Probably not, despite their rousing posters. One month after their attack at Baton Rouge, New York’s Republican Watch Tower revealed that “Mr. [Reuben] Kemper, the leader of the association, was for some time in the service of Mr. Smith, of Tennessee, to whom he became indebted to a considerable amount. Being prosecuted, he fled to Florida, where, at the head of thirty men, he raised the standard of revolt.”
The details were actually somewhat different. Mr. Smith was John Smith, a resident of Ohio—in fact, a U.S. senator from Ohio. He owned land in West Florida, which he paid the Kemper brothers to manage. Smith’s absentee ownership was in violation of Spanish policy, but Spanish policy was laxly enforced (especially for a U.S. senator).2 The debt mentioned in the news account resulted from Smith’s providing the Kempers with dry goods that they were to sell to local residents. When the business failed, Reuben Kemper was deeply in debt to Smith, but he did not flee to West Florida, since that is where he lived and where the litigation took place. The judgment in favor of Smith resulted in efforts by West Florida authorities to evict the Kempers from Smith’s land. These efforts became increasingly violent confrontations that, not unlike a barroom brawl, began to involve additional people.
Spain’s governor of West Florida viewed the Kempers as ne’er-do-wells who attracted bandits and a few otherwise innocent bystanders. He thus sought to isolate them from their followers by pardoning all those who had been arrested during the eviction confrontations, with the exception of the Kempers. The policy succeeded, as evidenced by the fact that the Kempers’ response—the 1804 attack on Baton Rouge—attracted only some thirty men.
What, meanwhile, did the U.S. government think, since it claimed this region? William Claiborne, governor of the neighboring Louisiana Territory, reported to Secretary of State James Madison that the Kemper incident was “nothing more than a riot, in which a few uninformed, ignorant men had taken part.”3 Madison, in turn, repudiated the Kempers’ actions and vowed to arrest them if they entered American territory.
But what the federal government actually thought turned out to be less clear. When the Kemper brothers, seeking to evade capture by the West Florida militia (composed primarily of American immigrants), fled into American territory, they were not arrested as promised. So Spain arrested them. But to do so, the West Florida militia had to step over the line into Pinckneyville, Mississippi. Because they had crossed the boundary, the United States justified its forces’ freeing the Kempers as they were being transported down the Mississippi River to Baton Rouge.
For the next six years, the brothers tended to their own affairs. When Reuben surfaced again in December 1810, the situation had clearly changed. Baltimore’s Federal Republican reported:
Col. [Reuben] Kemper, in service of the [Republic of West Florida] convention, was on the Alabama River with 340 men, where he will probably remain until he receives a reinforcement.… We learn from St. Francisville that the Legislature assembled there last week under the new constitution … that in consequence of dispatches from Col. Kemper, a detachment of 1500 men (with a suitable train of artillery) under the command of Col. Kirkland, marched from St. Francisville for Pensacola.
How had Reuben Kemper gone from being a debtor corralling a gang of bandits to a leadership position in a rebellion against Spain? Two underlying elements contributed to his success: deteriorating relations with Spain and political uncertainty in the United States. One deteriorating relationship involved the United States’ need for unrestricted access to the sea via the Gulf of Mexico. After the Louisiana Purchase, Spain and the United States quarreled over the tariffs charged to American vessels at Baton Rouge and at Mobile (the mouth of the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers). These tensions heightened three years after the Kemper incident, when President Jefferson signed the 1807 Embargo Act, prohibiting trade between the United States and any other nation. This extraordinary ban resulted from frustration with France and England’s refusal to recognize American neutrality. Both nations, then at war, had repeatedly seized U.S. ships engaged in trade with their respective enemy. The act, which sought to curtail all trade until the war ended, aimed to hasten that end by withholding American supplies. To prevent smuggling, the Embargo Act also called for a blockade of Spain’s West Florida ports. Spain was not pleased.
Spain had other problems that also contributed to the change in West Florida. Its Latin American colonies, following in the footsteps of the United States, had begun to seek independence, most notably under the leadership of Simón Bolívar. With its position in the world so uncertain, Spain closed immigration from the United States to West Florida. Even American relatives of West Florida citizens were prohibited from entering the province. The immigration restrictions created widespread animosity among the citizens of West Florida toward the nation to which they had previously been loyal.
Uncertainty on the American side also contributed to Reuben Kemper’s reversal of fortune. This uncertainty emanated from a man whose involvement with West Florida is all but forgotten, but whose duel that killed Alexander Hamilton is not: Aaron Burr.
Burr, who had been vice president during Jefferson’s first administration, never stood trial for the duel, but his reputation was in tatters. He subsequently traveled a great deal, often in Louisiana, in Mexico (where he had leased 40,000 acres that were being cultivated by armed “farmers”), and in West Florida. Burr’s travels raised American suspicions, particularly in light of meetings he had held with the U.S. military commander in Louisiana, James Wilkinson. Though a highly talented general in the Revolution, Wilkinson later negotiated with Spain as a private citizen, seeking privileged navigation for Kentucky along the Mississippi River. Many in the Jefferson administration now wondered whether, in the event of war with Spain, the two men were conspiring to coordinate Wilkinson’s forces and Burr’s “farmers” to separate the Louisiana Purchase, Burr’s Mexican lands, and all or some of West Florida into their own country. Wilkinson ultimately revealed this plot, though questions regarding his credibility only added to American uncertainty.
People don’t like uncertainty, and many cope with it by finding a way to fill in the blanks. Reuben Kemper, who was also entangled in the alleged Burr conspiracy, was able to rehabilitate his reputation by providing the public with a way to fill in the blanks. The opportunity to do so presented itself, ironically, following his arrest by the federal government, which was reported nationwide. In January 1811 North Carolina’s The Star, reprinting a story from the Rhode Island Republican, reported:
Since the [Republic of West Florida] Conventional Party have declared themselves free and independent of Old Spain … a number of the inhabitants of this part of the [Mississippi] Territory wishing well to the cause have taken an active part in the business and about a fortnight since several men, to the number of sixty-five, went below the line of demarcation.… All who have returned above the line have had writs served upon them for the purpose of a prosecution, on account of having engaged in an expedition not authorized by the government of the United States—among whom are Col. Kennedy and Col. Kemper.
Because Kemper had lain low for six years, his dubious past escaped the notice of most newspapers. But his arrest risked revealing his days at the head of what the U.S. government had declared to be a gang. Shrewdly, he seized this moment to publish his own account in newspapers throughout the country. He related how he had been contacted by a man named Lewis Kerr, who knew of his past attack at Baton Rouge and invited him to an important meeting, at which he would have to take an oath of secrecy: “Before taking this oa
th, I told Mr. Kerr that was there anything in opposition to the government of the United States, that it must not be made known to me on any terms whatever! He assured me there was not.” Kemper then employed some classic name-dropping, citing Kerr’s assurance that the secret project “was set on foot by men higher in office than any others in the United States—I believe meaning the president.” Kemper’s article related that the venture being planned—technically not by the United States—was to take possession of West Florida. He was asked how many men he could raise and allowed as he could “fill the place.”
The crux of Kemper’s article followed this account of his recruitment. It sought to separate his participation from Aaron Burr’s alleged conspiracy to create a new country:
I asked him if he had ever learned or could conjecture what Mr. Burr’s plans were, in coming to this country the year before.… His route was a strange one. Mr. Morgan said so it was, but he knew nothing of Mr. Burr’s plans; that he was not in the habit of telling him, but said there was a man in this place some time prior to this had told him that he expected Burr was on some revolutionary plan or other toward Mexico.… I observed that, in my opinion, Burr was an intriguing character, who would stop at nothing in his situation. Mr. Morgan said very true, he was all that, but he was a man of too much sense for that.
Kemper concluded by relating an extraordinary effort he undertook to eliminate any uncertainty about the military action in which he was becoming involved:
