El Norte

by Carrie Gibson

  France entered the conflict, declaring war on Britain in 1778, and the following year, on June 21, 1779, Spain made an official declaration of war in support of France. The Spanish were less concerned about Britain’s colonial rebellion and rather hoped to use it as an opportunity to take back Gibraltar, a territory on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula that had been ceded to Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.54 Although the American Revolution is usually depicted as a war between Britain and its colonies, its scope was far larger. Many of the unresolved issues from the Seven Years’ War were playing out in the thirteen colonies, and France and Spain could use the conflict in North America to challenge Britain’s power in Europe.55 No one was certain, however, that the Continental Army would win its war, or what would happen if it did, but France and Spain were willing to join the fight to further their own interests.

  Gálvez had organized a West Florida campaign by August 1779, with royal support from Madrid and backup from the garrison in Havana. It included thirteen hundred men on the ground, composed of regular troops, local militiamen, free blacks, Acadians, and even British refugees who had left West Florida, as well as Houma, Choctaw, and Alabama people.56 His men began to take small British outposts in West Florida, such as those in Manchac and Baton Rouge, in September, but the larger coastal forts—Mobile and Pensacola—were the real targets. In the meantime, U.S. leaders were pleased with Gálvez’s assistance. Thomas Jefferson wrote to him in November 1779, saying, “The weight of your powerfull and wealthy Empire, has given us, all the certainty of a happy Issue to the present Contest, of which human Events will admit.”57

  By early 1780, Gálvez was ready to move on Mobile, the site of the star-shaped Fort Charlotte that overlooked the bay. Around 750 men, including regulars and militia members, volunteers, and slaves, left in January from New Orleans with plans to join a party from Havana. Their efforts to enter Mobile Bay were frustrated by bouts of stormy weather and they were forced to wait at a base near the Dog River, a few miles away. While they were there, reinforcements from Cuba arrived in mid-February, swelling troop numbers to well over 1,000. In the meantime, British regiments were marching overland from Pensacola to Mobile, avoiding Spanish ships, but they arrived too late. By March 13 the fort commander had surrendered after Spanish bombardment the day before had breached Fort Charlotte and the outnumbered British troops had used up their ammunition. Gálvez occupied the fort—soon to be renamed Fort Carlota—and the three hundred British troops retreated to Pensacola. Military leaders were buoyed by the news, and Gálvez’s report detailing the operation was read to the Continental Congress on June 6.58

  Gálvez’s next target was Pensacola, an even larger prize. Capturing that port had a number of advantages, not least its position relative to New Orleans, Havana, and Veracruz. In 1772 the British built Fort George there, its earthen ramparts overlooking the city and its twenty cannons capable of firing on any ships coming into the harbor. The British, under the command of General John Campbell, were at the ready after the events in Mobile. Meanwhile, the Creek and Choctaw in West Florida exacted gifts, including goods such as rum, gunpowder, meat, and bread, from both sides and negotiated how much assistance they would give.

  Gálvez made preparations for an attack in October 1780, but nature intervened once again and a hurricane scattered his fleet, forcing him to regroup. A few months later, he tried again, leaving Havana on February 13, 1781, for Pensacola with a fleet of twenty ships, including the sixty-one-gun flagship San Ramón, and around thirteen hundred troops. General Campbell waited with his seventeen hundred troops, one thousand Native American allies, and three ships. On March 9 the Spanish were spotted, but Gálvez’s fleet was having trouble entering the channel because of its shallowness. With mounting frustration, Gálvez took one of the smaller vessels, the Galveztown, and sailed into the bay on March 18, managing to dodge British fire. He was later followed by some of the fleet’s frigates, and the town was soon under siege. Both sides were waiting for reinforcements, and the ships from Havana arrived in April before the British ones from Jamaica, swelling troop numbers to more than seven thousand. On May 8, a grenade destroyed a British powder magazine, causing a large explosion and ending the battle, with the official surrender on May 10, 1781, leaving the Spanish with seventy dead, and around one hundred British soldiers killed.59 West Florida was once again in Spanish hands, and Fort George became Fort San Miguel.

  The British surrendered to the Americans in October 1781, and peace negotiations began. Under the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Britain relinquished East Florida to Spain, and the boundary with the newly formed U.S. border was set at the St. Marys River. However, the question of West Florida—though it was already under Spanish control—was not so easy to resolve. Well before Gálvez’s attacks in West Florida, there had been talks with Spain about U.S. access to the Mississippi River. Benjamin Franklin had broached the subject in the spring of 1777 in a letter to the Count of Aranda, saying that, should Spain help the Americans’ cause, they would “assist in reducing to the Possession of Spain the Town and Harbour of Pensacola,” though on the condition that “the Inhabitants of the United States shall have the free Navigation of the Missisipi [sic], and the Use of the Harbour of Pensacola.”60 Trade would put the new United States on the path to prosperity, and securing access to the Mississippi River was an early priority. Even while the war was raging, John Jay, then serving as minister to Spain, arrived in Cádiz in 1780 for a diplomatic mission that included concerns about the Mississippi. Jay met the first minister, José Moñino y Redondo, Count of Floridablanca, that May in Aranjuez, where the court was residing. Jay was eager to sign an alliance treaty.61 He had been given instructions by the Continental Congress “to insist on the navigation of the Mississippi for the Citizens of the United States,” but he could not secure a deal. Instead, Floridablanca hinted that if the United States wanted to have a good relationship with Spain, it would need to make sure Spanish navigation of the Mississippi River was not renounced.62 Benjamin Franklin wrote to a frustrated Jay in October 1780, “If you are not so fortunate in Spain, continue however the even good temper you have hitherto manifested.” He was optimistic, telling Jay, “Poor as we are, yet as I know we shall be rich, I would rather agree with them to buy at a great price the whole of their right on the Mississippi, than sell a drop of its waters. A neighbour might as well ask me to sell my street door.”63 However, with no sign of a change of heart over the matter, in February 1781 Congress ordered Jay to stop negotiations and “recede from the instructions above referred to, so far as they insist on the free navigation of that part of the river Mississippi, which lies below the thirty-first degree of north latitude.”64

  The issue would end up being resolved by the Treaty of Paris, which said in Article 8 that “the navigation of the river Mississippi, from its source to the ocean, shall forever remain free and open to the subjects of Great Britain and the citizens of the United States.”65 The peace deal also called for the boundary of the United States to be marked by a “line to be drawn along the middle of said river Mississippi until it shall intersect the northernmost part of the thirty-first degree of north latitude.” However, there had also been secret dealings over this particular provision. British negotiators had made an offer, unbeknownst to Spain, that if West Florida were given back to Britain—a provision that some, including Jay, supported because they thought it would lead to access to the Mississippi River—then the boundary of West Florida would be set at N 32°. However, if West Florida was returned to Spain, Britain would support the line’s placement at N 31°, giving the United States an extra strip of land. In late 1782, U.S. delegates wrote to Congress in secret over the issue of the West Florida border, but with Britain pressuring them to sign they proceeded with the treaty. Spain had little input in the deal because a treaty of alliance between the United States and Spain had never been achieved. In the end, the Spanish agreed to the Paris deal, which gave it back Florida and Minorca, but not
the hoped-for Gibraltar.66 Spanish ministers harbored some trepidation about what would follow, sentiments expressed by the Count of Aranda in a 1783 letter to Carlos III, which warned that the United States “will forget about the benefits it has received from both powers [France and Spain] and will think of nothing but its aggrandizement.”67

  Another immediate problem for Spain was the British loyalists—both free black and white—who now sought refuge in Florida, hoping to avoid retribution. Many did not want to pledge loyalty to the king of Spain, nor convert to Catholicism, but these were the conditions of staying; otherwise they had eighteen months to leave.68 Vicente Manuel de Zéspedes arrived in St. Augustine in 1784 to take up the post of governor of both Floridas, and at this point some 3,400 white and 6,540 black people were leaving East Florida for other parts of the British empire.69 In their place, though not in the same numbers, came some of the Florida families who had fled to Cuba in 1763.70 In the years that followed, Spain clarified the land grants made to non-Spaniards so they would want to remain, and by 1790 settlers in East Florida were no longer required to convert to Catholicism and only had to swear an oath of allegiance. It was a pragmatic decision given Florida’s circumstances, and it had an immediate effect, with around three hundred white planters coming into East Florida and bringing one thousand slaves with them. By 1804 the number of new Anglo settler families reached 750, with four thousand slaves.71

  Despite allowing in enslaved people, Spain had continued to offer sanctuary for runaways. During the transition from British to Spanish rule, Zéspedes received the petitions of about 250 black people who wanted their freedom. The United States, however, was not as willing to tolerate this as the British had been, and, under pressure from Thomas Jefferson, the Spanish stopped offering refuge in 1790. The United States also demanded the return of all slaves who entered Florida after 1783, though Spain would only send back anyone who arrived in or after 1790.72

  UNDER THE BRITISH, the Proclamation Line of 1763 had forbidden colonists to go past the Appalachian Mountains, though many people ignored the rule and started to farm or engage in land speculation in the Ohio valley.73 Now, without British control, and with the Treaty of Paris granting the United States land north of N 31° and west to the Mississippi River, the region opened up. Legislation was passed to legitimize this expansion, including the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which paved the way for these lands to be territories first and states later on. On paper, the ordinance said that Native Americans could not have their land taken from them except in “just” wars, leaving a wide space for interpretation, and for subsequent violent disagreements.74

  In places far from the oversight of the nascent government on the East Coast, the frontier developed its own rules. In 1784, a group of men in the western fringes of North Carolina decided to break away and form their own sovereign state. They represented the interests of farmers and merchants of what was then considered the backcountry, whose economic prospects were at stake. One of their main concerns was over land use and development, issues to which they felt the politicians in the east of North Carolina gave little attention.75 Debts had already forced the state to sell off some of its eastern part to speculators.76 Also of concern was the lack of organized protection from Indian attacks. Some of the earlier settlers created the Watauga Association, which the state approved, to oversee the governance of the region.77 However, North Carolina’s April 1784 Cession Act—the state’s agreement to hand over some of its land to Congress to pay its debt from the Revolutionary War—fueled resentment among opponents who thought the measure was misguided. On August 23, a group of men held their first convention in Jonesborough, electing John Sevier governor. A few months later, on December 14, they cast a vote among themselves to leave North Carolina and create a new state, naming it Franklin, in honor of Benjamin Franklin.78 The territory, though in North Carolina then, corresponded to the twelve easternmost counties in modern Tennessee. Its makeshift capital was moved to a cabin in Greeneville, also in Tennessee, in 1785.

  The Franklinites won little support from the prominent politicians. Jefferson expressed his “increased anxiety” about the situation, fearing that other states, such as Virginia, would follow their example. Congress rejected “Franklin’s” petition for statehood.79 While the Franklinites’ supporters were plotting, in Spain Carlos III issued orders in June 1784 to close the Spanish-controlled parts of the Mississippi to foreign river traffic, sparking an explosion of anger from the United States, which argued that its rights were protected by the 1783 treaty. This action and the establishment of Franklin had a brief, and potentially destabilizing, overlap.

  Like the Creeks and Cherokee who were engaged in ongoing attacks along the Tennessee frontier, the Spanish also wanted to dam the stream of land-hungry arrivals from the east but instead would find themselves enmeshed in frontier politics.80 Although Franklin was nestled in the valleys of the rolling green foothills of Appalachia, the fertile land had rivers that fed into the Mississippi, giving potential access to trading routes.

  In 1786, James White, a former North Carolina congressman, called on the Spanish chargé d’affaires, Diego de Gardoqui—whose family firm had supplied the United States with goods and arms during the Revolutionary War—in New York City. The 1784 order closing the Mississippi was of great concern to everyone in the river valley, and so White proposed to Gardoqui that Spain open the river to trade with the southern territories, which would secede in order to protect their trade interests while also allowing themselves to “draw closer to His Majesty.”81 Gardoqui did not commit himself to White’s plan, though he could see the idea’s merits: the Franklinites wanted to trade, and the Spanish needed more loyal subjects in that region.82

  By 1788, White planned to canvass influential Franklinites about supporting a sort of union between the state and Spain. Sevier also wrote to Gardoqui to outline his vision of the deal, which involved extending the settlements to the Tennessee River, with Spain helping to keep the peace with the Native Americans in order to allow for this expansion. In a second letter, Sevier claimed, “We are unanimously determined” to make the alliance, while reminding Gardoqui that “there will not be a more favorable time than the present” to put the plan into effect.83 At this point, Franklin itself began to unravel under the weight of ongoing disagreements between bickering factions, as well as continued Indian attacks. To add to these matters, Sevier was arrested for treason by the state of North Carolina, though the charges were later dropped. By the end of 1788, panicked residents, who were unaware of the talks with Spain, asked North Carolina to intercede to protect them from the escalating Cherokee raids. Despite the efforts of White and others, talks with Spanish officials collapsed as well. Spain did not have enough confidence in the Franklinites, though White continued to press his case during the spring of 1789, to no avail.84

  Franklin was not the only territory making overtures to the Spanish. The Kentucky territory that was then part of Virginia had also expressed a desire to be separate, though it had not yet drawn up a constitution. Brigadier General James Wilkinson traveled to New Orleans in 1787 to meet with Esteban Miró, then governor of Louisiana. Wilkinson had left the east after the end of the Revolutionary War and bought 12,550 acres in Kentucky, paid for in part with money from friends in Philadelphia who were hoping to profit through land speculation. He set up as a merchant in Lexington and soon began to work out how to get around the Spanish prohibition on the Mississippi, eager to sell tobacco to Mexico via Spanish New Orleans.85 At this juncture the future of the United States was still fragile—in the same year Miró and Wilkinson met, the Constitutional Convention was taking place in Philadelphia, and the resulting document would not be promulgated until 1789. Who was part of the union and how that union would function were still very much up for discussion.86

  Miró had a number of reservations about Wilkinson’s plan, not least the number of Protestants this would involve.87 However, he was willing to allow the Kentucky settlers in
because he expected enough increased revenue from agricultural exports produced by these farmers to pay for the arrival of English-speaking Irish Catholic priests who could try to proselytize the Kentuckians.88 The real issue at stake, however, involved tariffs and diplomacy. As had been the case with Franklin, if Kentucky joined Spain it would have access to the Mississippi and to Spain’s large American market. This had the potential to anger the United States, not least because talks about the issue had been ongoing throughout this period and Spanish officials had to consider what the diplomatic repercussions of that might be.89

  Wilkinson also seized the moment to pursue another opportunity. Although he was still a member of the military, he became in future years a paid informer—later known as agent 13—for the Spanish, involved in a number of intrigues, information about which would often be paid for in silver dollars.90 In 1787, Wilkinson declared his loyalty to the Spanish crown and promised to bring more settlers to the region.91

  Around this time, the Spanish also had to contend with ambitious settlers from Georgia who were moving into the lower reaches of the Mississippi, setting up in the Natchez territory, and going so far as to establish, with the approval of the state legislature in 1785, the “County of Bourbon.” Its name was a rejoinder to Spanish claims as the annexed land was right at the thirty-first parallel, as stipulated by the Treaty of Paris, running from the Yazoo River to the Chattahoochee River.92 Anglo settlers had already been creeping into the area for some time, and in 1781, during the Revolutionary War, Natchez was the site of a brief uprising that the Spanish quashed, after which some of the remaining Anglos pledged their loyalty to Spain. Initially, the settlers found it in their interest to express their loyalty to Spain and take advantage of a booming tobacco market, though this arrangement became more uncertain after the treaty of 1783.93