Fourteenth Colony

Bunn Mike

Description

The British colony of West Floridawhich once stretched from the mighty Mississippi to the shallow bends of the Apalachicola and portions of what are now the states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisianais the forgotten fourteenth colony of Americas Revolutionary era. The colonys eventful years as a part of the British Empire form an important and compelling interlude in Gulf Coast history that has for too long been overlooked. For a host of reasons, including the fact that West Florida did not rebel against the British Government, the colony has long been dismissed as a loyal but inconsequential fringe outpost, if considered at all. But the colonys history showcases a tumultuous political scene featuring a halting attempt at instituting representative government; a host of bold and colorful characters; a compelling saga of struggle and perseverance in the pursuit of financial stability; and a dramatic series of battles on land and water which brought about the end of its days under the Union Jack. In Fourteenth Colony, historian Mike Bunn offers the first comprehensive history of the colony, introducing readers to the Gulf Coasts remarkable British period and putting West Florida back in its rightful place on the map of Colonial America.

Sujets

• Histoire
• USA
• History of the Americas
• History of Europe
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: University of Georgia Press
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781588384140
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

Fourteenth Colony
A LSO BY M IKE B UNN
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NewSouth Books
105 S. Court Street
Montgomery, AL 36104
Copyright 2020 by Mike Bunn
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by NewSouth Books, Montgomery, Alabama.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bunn, Mike, author.
Title: Fourteenth colony : the forgotten story of the Gulf South during America s Revolutionary era / Mike Bunn.
Other titles: Forgotten story of the Gulf South during America s Revolutionary era
Description : NewSouth Books, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020018838 (print) | LCCN 2020018839 (ebook) | ISBN 9781588384133 (Trade Cloth) | ISBN 9781588384140 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: West Florida-History-18th century. | West
Florida-History, Military-18th century. | Florida-History-English colony, 1763-1784. | Florida-History-Revolution, 1775-1783. | American loyalists-Florida.
Classification: LCC F301 .B86 2020 (print) | LCC F301 (ebook) | DDC 975.9/02--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018838
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018839
Design by Randall Williams
Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan

The Black Belt, defined by its dark, rich soil, stretches across central Alabama. It was the heart of the cotton belt. It was and is a place of great beauty, of extreme wealth and grinding poverty, of pain and joy. Here we take our stand, listening to the past, looking to the future.
To Zoey, my light and inspiration
Contents
Preface
1 The British Takeover of the Gulf Coast
2 The Government of West Florida
3 The Role of the Indian Trade
4 Settlement
5 Daily Life
6 Earning a Living
7 The Coming of the Revolutionary War
8 Willing s Raid
9 The March of Galvez
10 The Capture of Mobile and the Battle at The Village
11 The Siege of Pensacola
Epilogue
Bibliography
Notes
Index
Preface
T he Revolutionary Era is one of the most storied and studied time periods in America s compelling national saga. Conjuring visions of righteous colonial protests in Boston Harbor, sober state-making in the chambers of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and martial determination on the frigid meadows at Valley Forge, the 1760s and 1770s are venerated by Americans for having witnessed the formation of the United States from the cooperative efforts of thirteen former British colonies. It is an era studded with iconic moments and rich with legendary figures that are a part of our shared national canon. It is sadly ironic that this grand pageant is a heritage from which Gulf Coast residents have long felt detached owing in large part to geography, for an important but little known chapter in America s colonial and Revolutionary drama played out along their sunny shores.
British West Florida, stretching from the mighty Mississippi to the shallow bends of the Apalachicola and incorporating large portions of what are now the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, is the forgotten fourteenth colony in America s founding era. The colony and its sister province, East Florida, were erected by the British at the conclusion of the Seven Years War in 1763 on the ruins of the vast but rather vaguely defined territory formerly claimed by French and Spanish colonials. Headquartered in Pensacola originally, with scarcely a European settlement west of Mobile Bay, the province grew exceedingly slowly and only began to come of age as the Revolutionary War flared up along the Atlantic seaboard. Eventually the colony featured clusters of European settlements at such places as Pensacola, Campbelltown, Mobile, Baton Rouge, Manchac, and Natchez, and it assumed a position as a dynamic and promising part of Britain s North American holdings. But despite the grand visions of its leaders and the best efforts of its residents, the colony struggled economically and its representative government never quite became the force in provincial life that similar institutions in the east coast colonies did. In fact, West Florida is so obscure to us today at least in part owing to its relatively small population and its pressing daily concerns; the latter occupied residents and precluded their becoming a vital part of intercolonial discussions during a period of political unrest. As it remained officially loyal to the crown throughout the Revolution, West Florida is usually regarded as an afterthought where little of consequence occurred.
Y ET THE R EVOLUTION DID find the colony, and the story of the ways it did so colorfully and substantively shapes the history of the region. First came politely declined invitations by the Continental Congress to join its sister provinces to the east in working towards the establishment of a new, independent American nation. Next came a wave of immigration after being declared a safe asylum for besieged loyalists elsewhere. In 1778 came a daring raid by a ragtag American force along the Mississippi which exposed the province s inadequate defenses and caused a great deal of unrest even if never seriously threatening its takeover by a Continental army. Finally came an audacious, prolonged, offensive spearheaded by the ambitious and capable governor of neighboring Spanish Louisiana, Bernardo de Galvez, which would ultimately bring about the end of West Florida s days as a part of the British Empire. Spain never formally allied itself with the nascent United States in its war for independence, but it recognized an opportunity to take advantage of a distracted colonial rival. Spain s stunning campaign to wrest control of West Florida from the British featured intense and spirited fighting from the fall of 1779 to the spring of 1781. This war within a war helped divert vital resources from other Revolutionary War campaigns by the British and culminated in the martial conquest of the colony by the Spaniards.
But despite all this, somewhat few people know the colony existed at all. A forgotten Gulf Coast entity which graced regional maps for less than two decades, the province goes virtually unmentioned in most histories of the American Revolutionary Era and is all but unknown to the great majority of those living within its former borders today. The situation is understandable to some degree, as precious few historical sites commemorate the people, places, and events of the region s years as part of the British Empire, and almost no extant structures date to its mid-eighteenth century heyday. Its name alone can confuse some, to boot, as West Florida naturally connotes to the modern ear a certain geographical specificity that takes some explaining to communicate the true physical footprint of the colony. Save for the findings of some archaeological investigations and a few scattered historic markers (and one magnificent memorial statue in Pensacola), the British period in Gulf Coast history can only be imagined through the pages of the rather limited historiography on the subject. While that historical literature is solid and features the work of some eminent colonial historians, candidly it is not exactly brimming with best-sellers likely to be familiar to the casual historian. But the fact that the seminal events in America s founding drama-the political unrest and legendary war between the immortal thirteen rebellious colonies and Great Britain which witnessed the birth of the United States as an independent nation-occurred far away from the Gulf has probably been most responsible for rendering West Florida s story so overlooked, understudied, and poorly understood. Scores of textbooks and narrative histories chronicling the era do not so much as mention British West Florida, much less discuss its place in the Empire. It is not uncommon to find within these books maps depicting Britain s North American colonies during the Revolution as existing only along the eastern seaboard, with the amorphous southwestern frontier behind them labeled as simply Indian land or Spanish territory. In short, Americans, both scholars and lay historians, often so associate our nation s founding era with the thirteen rebellious colonies that we have collectively forgotten that there even was an America farther west than the Atlantic coast in 1776.
W HAT FOLLOWS IS MY attempt to put West Florida back on the map of our historical consciousness. I tell the story of British West Florida, tracing the province from its humble beginnings and through the ravaging battles on land and water which led to its eventual transfer into Spanish hands. The book is a narrative overview of this dramatic interlude in Gulf South history, designed to be an introduction to the broad arc of the life of the colony from the viewpoint of those who worked so diligently to establish it. It is a monograph and no comparative study by any stretch of the term. Further, while it contains information on how West Floridians lived and I hope helps readers understand their dreams and aspirations for the colony they labored to develop, it makes no attempt to be a definitive source on the rich native cultural traditions that thrived within its borders. Native societies inherently figure into the narrative, but I leave to other writers the relatively better-trod historical ground of indigenous views and reactions to West Florida s development.
I must point out that the title of this book employs a phrase rather well used in literature on