The History of Florida (26 page)

ritory between Carolina and Florida. In the past, Carolina had claimed that

their charter set the southern boundary at the thirty-first paral el, or just

north of St. Augustine. Later, Carolina insisted that the border was even far-

ther south, seventy miles beyond St. Augustine at Mosquito Inlet. The 1670

Treaty of Madrid, however, established the boundary much farther north, at

the current line between South Carolina and Georgia, but the English colo-

nists refused to comply with the treaty. The construction in 1721 of Fort King

George on the Altamaha River was viewed as provocative by the Spaniards,

who sent Native American auxiliaries to attack the fort in 1722. The attack

was unsuccessful, but the unhealthiness of the site led to abandonment of

the fort in 1727.

James Edward Oglethorpe, an original trustee and resident founder of

Georgia, advocated aggressive military expansion to protect the British

colonies from attacks by the Spanish. Oglethorpe ordered construction of a

series of fortifications on the coastal islands, starting at Fort Frederica on St.

proof

Simons Island and extending as far south as the St. Johns River. In June 1736,

Oglethorpe ordered Fort St. George constructed on Fort George Island, on

north bank of the St. Johns near its merger with the Atlantic. He left a small

garrison in place overlooking a Spanish lookout on the opposite (south)

bank of the river and returned to St. Simons Island.

Rather than go to war, Spain sought a diplomatic solution. In the mean-

time, a military engineer and cartographer, Antonio de Arredondo, assessed

British strength and inspected Spanish defenses throughout Florida. He was

appalled by the tiny palmetto hut that served as a lookout post at the en-

try to the St. Johns, and by the absence of defense posts farther upriver.

Arredondo urged the Council of the Indies to authorize construction of

additional forts and to send more ships and sailors and an additional 800

soldiers for the St. Augustine garrison. Under Arredondo’s supervision,

improvements were made to the earthwork defenses and town wal s at St.

Augustine, the forts at St. Augustine and St. Marks, and the small wooden

blockhouses west of St. Augustine—Fort Picolata on the east and Fort San

Francisco de Pupo on the west of the St. Johns River. With the exception of

the Castillo de San Marcos, however, Spanish defenses were still woeful y

inadequate.

Raids, Sieges, and International Wars · 121

James Edward

Oglethorpe, gov-

ernor of Georgia,

1733–42. Oglethorpe

led unsuccessful

invasions of Spanish

Florida in 1740 and

1743. Courtesy of

the State Archives

of Florida,
Florida

Memory
, http://

proof floridamemory.com/

items/show/6278.

The weakness of Spain’s defensive network in Florida became dramati-

cal y evident in 1739, when Britain declared war on Spain in what became

known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear. The war grew out of trade rivalries in

the Americas and was in its early phases fought primarily in the Caribbean

and South America. By 1742 it had evolved into a wider European conflict

known as the War of Austrian Succession. In North America, the war was

largely a conflict between the English at Georgia and the Spanish at Florida.

In January 1740, Oglethorpe sailed down the Inland Passage west of

Amelia, Talbot, and Fort George Islands to post British ships at the entrance

to the St. Johns and add men to his southern outpost at Fort St. George. He

then proceeded upriver (south on the St. Johns) to capture Forts Picolata

and Pupo, before returning to Frederica to form an army of Carolina and

Georgia regiments and Native American al ies. On May 20, the advance

force of Oglethorpe’s army encamped south of the entry to the St. Johns

and marched south toward St. Augustine. The first impediment encoun-

tered was Fort San Diego, a wooden stronghold built by the Sanchez and

122 · Daniel L. Schafer

Plat map, 640 acres north of St. Augustine surveyed for David Yeats, 1770, showing

paths that converge at the location of Fort Diego. British invaders from Georgia cap-

tured the fort in 1740. Image is from Treasury 77, Records of the Parliamentary Claims

proof

Commission, courtesy of the National Archives, Kew, England.

Espinosa families to protect their cattle herds from Creek raids. The two

families, allied by marriage, had migrated to Florida from Spain and Cuba

after 1670 and established ranches in the Diego Plains. Fort Diego delayed

the British advance for less than a day.

Two miles north of St. Augustine, Oglethorpe called a halt outside the

wal s of Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, one of the most unique settle-

ments in the North American colonies. Fort Mose was constructed in 1738

by free blacks who had, beginning in 1686, escaped from their owners in

Carolina and found refuge and freedom in Spanish Florida. Instructed in

the Catholic faith and employed in St. Augustine, the men had enrolled in

the militia to serve as scouts and defenders of the northern frontier. The

historian Jane Landers has careful y researched the history of Mose and its

leader and commander, Francisco Menéndez, an African-born man who

had fought alongside Native American warriors against the British during

the Yamassee War. Forewarned of the powerful British force approaching St.

Augustine, Governor Manuel de Montiano ordered the evacuation of Fort

Mose and brought its 100 residents inside the protective wal s of the Castillo

Raids, Sieges, and International Wars · 123

de San Marcos. Approximately 2,500 persons were crowded within those

wal s, short of provisions and hoping for resupply and reinforcement from

Cuba.

After inexplicably marching his men back and forth between St. Augus-

tine and the camp south of the St. Johns, Oglethorpe occupied Fort Diego

and Fort Mose. His soldiers skirmished with Spanish militia while British

ships patrolled offshore to block access to the Matanzas River. In late June,

Oglethorpe sent artillery to a camp north of St. Augustine inlet and estab-

lished a second artillery post on Anastasia Island across from the Castillo

de San Marcos. On June 24th, daily bombardments of the fort and town

commenced, but the shells fired by Oglethorpe’s artil ery batteries could

not breach the sturdy wal s of the Castillo. The wal s were constructed of

blocks of coquina, a soft and porous sedimentary rock composed of com-

pacted shells and mineral calcite quarried in mines on Anastasia Island.

The cannonbal s fired by the Georgia artillerists that struck the wal s of the

Castil o either bounced off or were absorbed by the soft coquina blocks.

Consequently, the siege settled into a lengthy stalemate.

On June 25, Governor Montiano ordered a nighttime attack on the Scot

Highlanders garrisoned at Fort Mose. Free black militia men played a lead-

ing role in the daring recapture of their town, kil ing or capturing most

proof

of the defenders. Oglethorpe foolishly demanded a Spanish surrender, for

which he received a curt and immediate refusal. Governor Montiano was

encouraged by the victory at Mose and recognized the uplift in morale that

it provided for the Spaniards inside the fort, yet he was deeply worried that

unless he received a resupply of provisions, he would eventual y be forced

to either surrender or watch the Spanish defenders die of starvation.

He would not have to make that decision. On July 6, seven Spanish ships

arrived at Mosquito Inlet with flour and other provisions that were off-

loaded to smaller vessels. In daring runs up the Matanzas Inlet through a

gauntlet of British fire, the Spanish ships managed to deliver their valuable

cargoes to the Castillo. Montiano also received a troop reinforcement that

brought the number of soldiers under his command to 1,300. Oglethorpe,

although he commanded 2,000 men, acknowledged the invincibility of the

Castillo’s wal s and commanded his troops to begin an orderly withdrawal

and return to Georgia. By July 20, the last of the British soldiers and artillery

had been withdrawn. Oglethorpe, anticipating a retaliatory attack, began

preparing defenses in Georgia.

That attack was delayed almost two years, until July 1742, when Spanish

ships landed 400 men from Florida and 1,300 from Cuba at the south end

124 · Daniel L. Schafer

of St. Simon’s Island. Marching north toward Frederica through unfamiliar

and swampy terrain, the Spanish soldiers suffered serious casualties in an

ambush that became known as the Battle of Bloody Marsh. The survivors

were reembarked on transports and withdrawn from the area, marking the

end of Spanish incursions into the contested territory between Florida and

Georgia.

Oglethorpe would make one more effort to drive the Spaniards from

Florida. In 1743, he crossed the St. Johns with a force of Georgia rangers and

Indian allies, and looted and burned Fort Diego and other Spanish settle-

ments during the advance southward. The goal of the 1743 invasion was not

to breach the wal s of the Castillo or to capture St. Augustine, but to punish

Spaniards and enhance the reputation of an inexperienced and minimal y

successful military leader.

After the withdrawal of Oglethorpe’s army in 1743, Florida experienced

two decades without invasions or Indian raids. These were not easy or pros-

perous times, but the era of Native American rebel ions had ended along

with the Franciscan missions. Small vil ages of Indians of several different

ethnic identities surrounded the wal s of St. Augustine. The few friars who

remained in the province were assigned to Nombre de Dios, the free black

town of Mose, and the portage vil age of Tolomato, where the residents

proof

still transported cargoes embarked at wharfs in St. Augustine over the land

bridge separating the North and San Pablo Rivers, from where they were

floated north to the St. Johns. Persistent shortages of provisions and the

failure of subsidies from Spain often left Governor Montiano desperately

searching for subsistence for the garrison and the town. To fil the need,

Montiano implemented an admiralty court and licensed privateers to prey

on ships of nations that, until 1848, were still at war with Spain.

Montiano and other pragmatic Florida governors, aware that they were

violating Spanish mercantile trade restrictions, also negotiated trade agree-

ments with a British merchant in Charleston, John Gordon, and another in

New York, William W. Walton, to provide provisions for the garrison and

town residents in times of great need. Charles Hicks, an employee of W. W.

Walton and Company of New York, resided in St. Augustine as early as 1735.

His apprentice clerk, Jesse Fish, arrived as a teenager and remained in St.

Augustine for the next half century.

The Sanchez and Espinosa families survived Creek raids and the Ogletho-

rpe invasions, and by the mid-1740s were reviving their cattle ranches and

farm fields in the Diego Plains, twenty miles north of St. Augustine. West of

the town, near the St. Johns, the Solana family was doing the same. With the

Raids, Sieges, and International Wars · 125