THE LOUISIANA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY VOL. 3, No. 4 October, 1920 LOUISIANA COMPLETA A Centenary Relation of West Florida and the Treaty By Edward Alexander Parsons Member Louisiana Historical Society, etc. Address delivered at Garic Hall, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, March 16th, 1921, at the Centennial Celebration, commemorating the Treaty between Spain and the United States transferring the Territories of East and West Florida to the United States of America; and also delivered before the Louisiana Historical Society at the Cabildo, May 24th, 1921. Out of the genius of Italy, out of the industry of Spain, and out of the indomitable spirit of French and English men was born this new world, called America. Out of the spirit of the Declaration, out of the serenity of Washington and the courage of his followers, and out of the wisdom nay, prescience of the Fathers of the Constitution, was created these United States. Out of the dream, audacity and policy of the French, out of the contributions to its law, government and art by the Spanish, and out of the vision, boldness and sound judgment of the Americans was founded the State of Louisiana. Florida and Louisiana! From the beginning the very warp and woof of their tragic, strange and romantic histories are curiously intertwined. The tale is geographical and would naturally be prosaic, if “it were not for that extraordinary race of men who were its early protagonists. The Spanish conquistadores, though by no means superior in courage and often inferior in character, to the English and French discoverers and explorers, yet outshown their rivals in inscrutable pride, in mysterious romanticism, and in an amazing picturesqueness, in which latent fires of all their ancestral races of the Iberian peninsula, the simplicity and savagery of the Celt-Iberian, the prime faith of the Carthagenian, the subtlety and brilliancy of the Greek colonist, the strength and stoic reserve of the Roman, the destructiveness of the Vandal, the love of contest of the Goth, the polish of the Moor and the devotion of the Christian Spaniard,-intermittently blazed forth, forming a vast series of pictures in Venetian colors portraying the history of the discovery and conquest of America in more deathless form, than even that far-famed tale of Greek colonization of the storied shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The new world was indeed a stage for these versatile actors, who were equally in role, whether as a pampered gallant, who to please the ladies of the Court, danced out upon a beam from the Giralda's dizzy height; or as a warrior of iron when fighting the aborigines and wounded with a poisoned arrow could pluck out the dart and taking an iron, red hot, burn out with a steady hand the impregnated part; or who, though master of estates in Spain and accustomed to the best in Europe, could wade for weeks the tractless swamps, sleeping at night huddled on the limbs of trees, like the evil birds in the forests of Hell, hungry and chilled to the bone, and who, after unheard of suffering on at last reaching terra firma would again adventure the savage wilds; or who, with a handful of men and opposition at home could conquer and hold a vast empire; or, who with an enthusiasm suggestive of the mythological ages could search for El Dorado, through pathless forest, crossing vast streams and stopped only by death; or who with romantic mediavialism could seek for the Fountain of Eternal Youth amid the forest and river lands of Florida and, so with illustration without end. It was indeed the Age of Spain. Did not Columbus, Italian though he was, become so imbued with the "atmosphere" or spirit of the time, that when he described his discoveries not only to please his Spanish backers, but naturally it would seem, he takes his metaphors and comparisons from things and places of old Spain. And so Hispania's pageantry passes by, an endless array of monstrous, mighty, cruel, chivalrous, wicked and almost impeccable figures-heroes, like the Cid el Campeador and Isabella the Catholic; monarchs, like the omnipresent Charles (V) and the Tiberian Philip (II); soldiers, like Gonsalvo, the Great Captain, and the iron warriors Cortez and Pizzaro; discoverers, like the unfortunate Balboa and the quioxtic Ponce de Leon; statesmen, like the successful Ferdinand and the astute Cardinal Ximenes; and ecclesiastics, like the zealot Torquemada, the noble Las Casas and the saintly Francis Zavier. Truly, it was the Age of Spain. And Now for the Florida Chronicle Although there is geographical data that would suggest a knowledge of Florida before 1513, still, with justice, the elderly cavalier Ponce de Leon is honored as the discoverer of the country where he arrived on that eventful Easter Sunday (Pascua Florida) though he failed to find the fountain of youth. In St. Augustine I was shown the fountain, which somehow has lost its rare quality, though the region is much sought by society's fairest flowers. Ponce de Leon died from an Indian arrow wound. Then the unfortunate Pamphilo de Narvaez (1528) landed, marched inland, losing many men, returned to the coast to find his ships had vanished and finally in hastily constructed boats, perished in the Gulf near the mouth of our mighty river. The intrepid Hernando de Soto (1539!, companion of Pizarro, who had brought vast wealth from the Inca's hoard, must yet seek for the new El Dorado. Grandiers and notables of Spain, sold or pledged their estates, asking the privilege to share in the golden enterprise. All could not be taken and many were chagrined at what they deemed their want of good fortune. The tragic story of that expedition has been told in winged words, how "for month after month and year after year, the procession of priests and cavaliers, cross-bowman, arquebusiers, and Indian captives laden with baggage still wandered on through wild and boundless wastes, lured hither and thither by the ignis-fatuus of their hopes." On through Florida, what is now Georgia, Mississippi crossing the great river, into Arkansas, back to the Mississippi where the chieftain within its waters found his last place of rest, and down the stream through Louisiana, passed sick, emaciated and desperate men, sad remnant of that proud array, that three years before had set sail for the conquest of golden Florida. The Dominican Monk Cancer came to christianize the Indians. and was murdered by them; the Huguenots attempted to settle and were killed by the Spaniards. Spain permanently settled the land and founded St. Augustine, (1565). Spain had, outside of the discoveries of Columbus and the grant of the Pope, the best claims to Florida. But her mighty rivals never slept. France claimed the land in 1628; England claimed a portion of the Eastern part in 1629; the Spanish and French commandants, in 1702, when England was their common enemy, settled the boundary at the Perdido River. In 1763, by the Treaty of Paris, Spain ceded the Floridas to Great Britain, who promptly took possession. This was the famous settlement, as a result of the Seven Years War. The formula read: East of the Mississippi, except New Orleans ceded to Great Britain, and West of the Mississippi, with New Orleans ceded to Spain. The northern boundary of Florida was then (1763) the 31° No. Lat. In 1768 England extended the boundary northward to the parallel (32° 25' N. Lat.) of the mouth of the Yazoo river. In 1779, Galvez commenced the reconquest of West Florida. With a little army of 1,434 men and a little flotilla of one 24, five 18 and four 4-pounders, in about three weeks he took Fort Bute on Bayou Manchac, the post of Baton Rouge, and Fort Panmure; and finally on May 1, 1781, Pensacola and the whole of West Florida was surrendered to Galvez, who was made captain-general of Louisiana and West Florida. In 1783 in the Treaty between Great Britain on the one part and the United States and her allies, France and Spain, England acknowledged the independence of her former colonies and recognized "as a part of their southern boundary a line drawn due east from a point in the Mississippi in latitude 31 degrees north to the middle of the Appalachicola, and at the same time she ceded to Spain by a separate agreement the two Floridas but without defining their northern boundaries." This further complicated the growing dispute because Spain contended that the Floridas she received from England was not confined to the original Spanish limits (line of 31° N. Lat.) but embraced the extended English bounds of 32° 30′. By the Treaty of Madrid (Oct. 27, 1795) however the line of 31° N. Lat. was confirmed. The ever present question of the navigation of the Mississippi; the discontent of the Kentuckians and Tennesseians, those sturdy frontier Americans, described by one of our historians as men who "spat mightily, swore mightily and shot straight;" rumors of Burr's plots and Wilkinson's intrigues,-all these forces were assumulating like great waves about to engulf the Spanish regime, when Spain, perceiving the dangers of her position, retroceded Louisiana to France. (Treaty of San Ildefonso, Oct. 1, 1800.) Then came the great purchase (1803) with its treaty ambiguous as to boundaries. We purchased Louisiana "with the same extent as when France possessed it," now before her cession to Spain in 1763, France owned to the Perdido river, recognized as the eastern limits of Louisiana and the western present boundary of the State of Florida. The United States Congress (1804) established a custom district in the Mississippi territory, including portion of West Florida but Spain protested and held up our traders. In 1805 the Americans in West Florida unsuccessfully rebelled; and finally in 1810 a revolution was successful. "The United States claimed, it must be repeated, that the act of cession by which they acquired the whole province called Louisiana included all the territory which, under that name had originally belonged to France and had been ceded by that country, through the treaties of 1763-64, to Spain. The western line had been left purposely vague, as has already been noted. The eastern line was also not definitely marked, but the French had colonized and held West Florida, including the town of Mobile, up to the Perdido River. Beyond this point lay the undoubtedly Spanish Possessions of East Florida. Upon such grounds the United States based their claim to West Florida. The territory in question, however, had been transferred by Spain to Great Britain in return for Havana, and had been held by that power until the American Revolution, when the Spaniards of Louisiana under Galvez had recovered Baton Rouge, Mobile, Pensacola, and the whole country which they had originally settled as well as the country colonized but abandoned by France. When Napoleon transferred to the United States all the claims of France to its original territory in North America, Spain retained possession, not only of its original colonies of East Florida, but West Florida as well, that is to say, all that Galvez had won from Great Britain and had subsequently been held as Spanish territory, roughly speaking the land lying between the Perdido and the Mississippi and including Baton Rouge and Mobile. Jefferson's concillatory policy had prevented him from attempting to take possession of this territory, though claimed by the United States, and the Spaniards had been allowed to remain. Governor Folch, stationed at Pensacola, ruled both the Floridas for the Spaniards, and Don Carlos Dehault De Lassus governed West Florida, under his orders, and maintained his headquarters at Baton Rouge. In West Florida were many settlers |