USA > Florida > Historical sketches of colonial Florida > Part 9
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action is further glorified by the fact, that within two weeks after the noble woman had saved so many human beings, she added an- other life to the long roll of the living .*
A treaty was speedily negotiated between the Creeks and the United States, by which the Oconee lands referred to in the foregoing letter were ceded for an annual payment of fifteen hundred dollars, and a distribution of merchan- dise. Questions of boundary were settled; the Indian territory was guaranteed against farth- er encroachment ; a permanent peace was pro- vided for; the Creeks and Seminoles placed themselves under the jurisdiction of the United States, and renounced their rights to make treaties with any other nation. All the Indian Chiefs besides McGillivray participated in the negotiation and execution of the treaty.
But besides that open one, there was a secret treaty to which the Grand Chief and the United States only, were parties. It contained a stipu- lation, that after two years the Indian trade should be turned to points in the United States.
*Pickett's History of Alabama, Vol. II. p. 127.
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It provided for annual stipends to be paid to designated chiefs. McGillivray himself was ap- pointed Indian agent of the United States, with the rank of a Brigadier-General, and the yearly pay of twelve hundred dollars. *
These treaties were the grounds of severe criticism upon McGillivray. By the open treaty, it was said, he made a surrender of the Oconee country for an inadequate consideration. But the obvious answer to that objection was, that he had exhausted every expedient that his clear. and fertile mind could command, to stay the encroachments of the Georgians without a war, an alternative which would have eventually ended in crushing his people. Besides, the plighted faith of the United States, that no farther encroachments should be made upon them, was to them a consideration far exceed- ing every other ; for history had not then declar- ed, as it has since, how frail a barrier against encroachments upon Indian territory is the plighted faith of the nation.
Whatever personal advantages he derived
* 2 Pickett's History of Alabama, Vol. II. pp. 110-11.
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from the secret treaty, whether pecuniary or in dignity, inured to the benefit of his people. To honor him was to give consideration to them; and they regarded the tributes which his abili- ties drew from the British, the Spaniards, and the Americans, as so many offerings made to the power of the nation. That each of those tributaries complained that he was not their dupe, is alike a proof of his ability, and his fidelity to his people.
For a short time after the New York Treaty he seemed to be losing the confidence of his people, through the machinations of the self- styled General Bowles, who, it will be remem- bered, assisted with a body of Choctaws, Chickasaws and Creeks, in the defense of Pensa- cola against Galvez. He was a bold, unprinci- pled mischief-maker, who would stop at noth- ing that could be turned to his own advantage ; one of those characters who breed suspicion and create confusion for their own profit and consid-
eration. To sap the confidence of the Creeks in their Grand Chief, was to bring about an un- settled condition of things in which he would find himself in his element; and for that pur-
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pose he availed himself of the New York Treaty. It would have been an easy matter for McGilli- vray to have him driven out of the nation, or by the judgment of a council to have taken his life ; but neither of these courses suiting his pol- icy, he resolved upon one more subtle and yet as effectual. He visited New Orleans, where it was conjectured he held a consultation with Governor Carondolet, on the subject of ridding the nation of the mischief-maker. Shortly after- wards, Bowles was seized by the Spaniards and sent to Spain. Of the end of his exile we are informed by a letter of General Washington's dated at Mount Vernon, fifth of August, 1793 .* "On my way to this place I saw Captain Bar- ney at Baltimore, who had just arrived from Havana. He says, the day before he left that place, advice had been received, and generally believed, that Bowles, who was sent to Spain, had been hanged." Thus ended a chequered life, full of adventures, strange phases, and bad deeds, which it would be interesting to follow were this the proper place.
* The same letter speaks of the death of "our friend McGillivray," Sparks, Vol. 10, p, 335.
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The New York Treaty was an object of sus- picion both to Panton and the Spaniards, although they knew nothing ofits secret feature ; but they naturally inferred that some other con- siderations, besides those made public, must have induced the United States to honor Mc- Gillivray with the commission and pay of Brigadier-General.
The suspicion, however, resulted profitably to McGillivray. Before he went to New York he complained to Panton of the parsimonious con- duct of the Spanish government to him, from whom it expected, and obtained, so much care and labor. Believing this supposed slight on their part was the cause of the favor he mani- fested for the Americans, that government at once took steps to remove it. He was appoint- ed the Spanish Superintendent-General of the Creek nation, with a salary of two thousand dollars, to which fifteen hundred more were shortly afterwards added.
Soon after McGillivray received that appoint- ment, the Spanish government sent to the Hick- ory Ground, as its resident agent, Captain Pedro Olivier, accompanied by an interpreter. This
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man soon became engaged in intrigues to pre- vent the running of the boundary lines provid- ed for by the New York Treaty; and in this matter he was assisted by William Panton, who visited the Creek nation for that purpose.
This state of things naturally excited the sus- picion of the United States, that McGillivray was co-operating with Panton and Olivier. Of any active co-operation by him, however, there is no evidence, as there is' none of his active opposition to their machinations. He was too sagacious a man, and had the good of his people too much at heart to engage in the latter. The boundary line fixed by the treaty, had from the first, been exceedingly ob- jectionable to the Creeks, so much so, that even the influence of their Grand Chief had failed to reconcile them to it. Indeed, he himself feared · that such a reconciliation was beyond his abili- tv. In self-vindication, in the midst of Olivier's intrigues, he writes to General Knox, Secretary of War: "You recollect, sir, that I had great objection to making the south fork of the Oconee the limit; and when you insisted so much, I candidly told you that it might be
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made an article, but I would not pledge myself to get it confirmed." It was against the run- ning of that boundary line, that the intrigues of Olivier and Panton were ostensibly directed; but their real object was to keep the Creeksin a ferment in order to exclude their trade from the Atlantic cities, and confine it to Pensacola; the question of boundary being seized upon as a means of accomplishing that end. McGillivray's position was one of great delicacy and responsi- bility. For him to resist by active opposition those who opposed the running of the boundary line, was not only to do something he had never undertaken to do, but to take a stand that might divide his people into two hostile camps, the most calamitous condition that could befall them.
In the midst of these trials, death came to his relief on the seventeenth of February, 1793, at Pensacola, whilst on a visit to William Panton. He was buried with masonic honors, and, it is said, in Panton's garden. Unfortunately the identity of the spot has defied diligent investiga- tion, and generations have unconsciously dese- crated his dust, as they have that of another dis-
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tinguished man already mentioned. But the sus- picion arises that to a different cause must be attributed the oblivion that has befallen the last resting place of the Great Chief, from that which has been assigned in the case of General Bouquet's. Had Panton erected a respectable brick monument even, over the remains of one for whom he professed so much friendship, and who had done so much to increase his fortune, reverently protecting it up to the time he left Florida, this generation might be able to direct the footsteps of the stranger to the tomb of the most remarkable man to whom Alabama ever gave birth, and the most extraordinary man to whom Florida has furnished a grave.
He has been accused of deceit and duplicity in his dealings with the British, the Spaniards and Americans. But truth and candor, if not exot- ics, are not virile growths in the domain of state craft, while necessity is the ever ready plea on which adepts in the art, or their apologists, rest their vindication. When, therefore, the Great Indian stands condemned at the Bar of Eternal Truth, well may other statesmen and
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diplomatists whose achievements history de- lights to record, shrink from the Judgment Seat.
The Grand Chief watched without interference the struggle of the Spanish and British for su- . premacy in West-Florida, because the true interests of his people pointed to neutrality. Cavour, the ablest and purest statesman of recent times, from a like patriotic motive stood ready, in case of failure, to disavow the inva- sion of Naples by Garibaldi, which he had, nevertheless, secretly promoted. If the New York treaty was a gross violation of the Pensa- cola treaty of 1784, Washington and his cabi- net invited, and encouraged, whatever of bad faith there was in the transaction.
The defense of such characters must rest at last upon the final judgment of their own nation upon their life work. So judged, McGillivray is entitled to no low place on the roll of patri- otic statesmen.
For seventeen years, dating from the Creek troubles in 1776, up to his death, he had been the guide and shield of his people. For them those were years of comparative peace, growth, and preparation for the white man's civiliza-
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tion, by the example afforded in his own person of its benefits and attractions. With war rag- ing around them, under his guidance, they reached a condition which caused him to be honored, and their alliance sought by two mon- archs and a Great Republic. He moved amongst them enjoying the reverence and honor of a patriarchal sheik. Intrigue and detraction brought him under a transient cloud. But when they learned his life was closed in death, their hearts were smitten as those of a family when it loses its head. There went up from the Creek land an universal wail; and again, like a sinister prophecy of evil, there came over it the shadow it was under before the council of Coweta.
Bitter, too, to his people, was the thought, that he slept in the "sands of the Seminoles," and not on the banks of the beautiful Coosa, which he loved so well; where he was born, where he had presided over councils, and made "paper talk " for their good, and where his hos- pitality was ever ready, alike for the distin- guished stranger and the humble wayfarer.
The fate of Milfort may interest the reader. After
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the death of McGillivray he returned to France, where in 1802 he published the "Memoire De Mon Sejour Dans La Nation Crëck," to which we owe the preservation of the traditions of that people. But sad to relate, forgetting his Indian wife, he married a French woman. He was made General of Brigade by the Emperor Napoleon. He died in 1814. His French wife was burned to death at an advanced age at Rheims.
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CHAPTER XVIII.
Governor Folch-Barrancas-Changes in the Plan of the Town-Ship Pensacola-Disputed Boundaries-Square Ferdinand VII .- English Names of Streets Changed for Spanish Names-Palafox-Saragossa-Reding-Baylen Romana-Alcaniz-Tarragona.
GALVEZ remained but a short time in Pensa- cola after the surrender of the British. Ontheir departure, he returned to New Orleans, the cap- ital of his province of Louisiana.
In May, 1781, Don Arturo O'Niell was ap- pointed Governor of Spanish West-Florida, and continued to hold the office until 1792. His successor was Enrique White, who was suc- ceeded by Francisco de Paula Gelabert, whose ad interim tenure expired in 1796, by the ap- pointment of Vicente Folch y. Juan.
The events of any interest which occurred before that year, have been already mentioned in previous chapters. Folch signalized the early part of his administration by causing a town
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to be laid out, "between a quarter and half a mile" from San Carlos, that fort having been reconstructed between 1781 and 1796 .* This town was officially known as San Carlos de Barrancas, that being the original application to the locality of the Spanish word barranca, signifying broken, in the sense in which the term is applied to a landscape.
Folch's purpose in laying out the town was, to substitute it for Pensacola, as the chief town and capital of the province. Of the real motives which prompted the design no information can be obtained. His scheme was defeated, how- ever, by his inability to procure for it the royal approval; the probable result of an appeal to the King by the inhabitants of Pensacola.
He afterwards attempted an important change in the English plan, by laying off into blocks and lots, so much of thepark, or public place as is now embraced in the area between Intendencia and Government streets. He also sold many of the lots, which the purchasers pro- ceeded to improve. But, when Intendant Mor-
* American State Papers, Public Lands, Vol. IV., p. 136.
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ales visited the town in 1806, he utterly disap- proved of Folch's proceedings, and refused to confirm the titles of the vendees. Morales' sub- sequent conduct in the matter, however, shows that in refusing his confirmation he was in- fluenced more by inimical feeling against the governor, than any just sense of public duty, for he himself afterwards granted the lots. This was the beginning of the mutilation of the great public place according to the English plan; a mutilation which was continued from time to time, until there was nothing left but the two small plats of ground known as Seville Square, and that of Ferdinand VII.
His administration in one of its earlier years was marked by one event for which his genera- tion is entitled to credit. A ship of 800 tons was built at Caranaro, as the cove in which the Marine Railway is now situated was then known. Her name was Pensacola, and during the decade from 1870, she was still in existence, making voyages to and from Spanish ports. This was the first, and thus far, the last private enterprise of the kind by Pensacolians.
In 1804, the firm of William Panton & Co.,
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was dissolved by the death of William Panton, who had been, as we have seen, so prominent a figure in the history of Pensacola, both under the British and Spanish rule. The business of the firm was thenceforward carried on under the style of John Forbes & Co.
In October, 1800, Bonaparte compelled Spain by the treaty of San Ildefonso to cede Louisiana to France; and France, in 1803, sold and ceded it to the United States. The United States, from the time of the purchase, claimed that it extended eastward to the Perdido, which was the eastern boundary of Louisiana in the days of d'Arriola and Iberville, and so remained until the cession, in 1763, to Great Britain of Florida by Spain, and of that portion of Louisiana south of the 31 parallel of N. latitude, east of the Mississippi, by France. The British, after that cession, in creating the province of West- Florida, extended it from the Chattahoochee to the Mississippi. Spain, on the other hand, after the treaty of Versailles, restricted West-Florida to the Perdido, she being at that time the owner of the whole of Louisiana. When, therefore, she ceded Louisiana to France, it was, as claimed
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by the United States, Louisiana beginning west- ward of the Perdido; for by contracting the West-Florida of the British, she, to that extent, extended Louisiana to its original limit, and left Pensacola within the boundary line tacitly established by the expeditions of Arriola and Iberville. Spain did not, however, consent to that construction. She claimed that British West-Florida was not embraced in Louisiana; and the question was not finally settled until 1819, when Florida was ceded to the United States. It was, from 1803, up to that cession, a cause of ill feeling and secret hostility on the part of Spanish officials at Pensacola, towards the American settlers in the disputed district.
Folch's official term extended to 1809, and in the number of sovereign masters to whom he was subject during one year of his adminis- tration, his official life was remarkable. He was commissioned by Charles IV., who abdicated the throne of Spain in March, 1808. Upon his ab- dication, his eldest son, the Prince of Asturias, was proclaimed King, under the title of Ferdi- nand VII. On May 10, Bonaparte, having in- sidiously enticed Ferdinand to Bayonne, com-
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pelled him, by threats against his life, to resign his crown. On June sixth, of the same year, Joseph Bonaparte was proclaimed King of Spain, by no other real authority than the will of his imperial brother.
Never did any event arouse the patriotic resentment of a people, as Spain's was aroused, by the ignominy of witnessing her law- ful King deposed, to enable an adventurer to assume his crown. The French Emperor march- ed army after army into the country, to estab- lish the new dynasty by overawing the people into submission. But army corps led by mar- shals, whose names had theretofore been the syn- onyms of victory, only intensified the spirit of resistance. As one man, from the shore of the Mediterranean to the Bay of Biscay, the popula- tion flew to arms. Mountain and plain, hill and valley, rang with their battle cry as they hastened to their cities, towns, and villages, to be organized into military commands. The patriotic passion that fired every heart in the Kingdom, was shared by Spaniards in every quarter of the globe. Of the sympathy of Pensa- cola with the great patriotic movement in the
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mother country, there exists memorials in the names of some of its streets, and its chief public square.
It was in the fervor of that sympathy that the square received the name of the exiled monarch ; a token of loyalty, of which, however, he proved himself unworthy by his conduct after his restoration to the throne. Never had a monarch a better opportunity of making his reign happy and illustrious, and never did one under such conditions make it a source of greater shame to himself, and misery to his people. He was not by nature a cruel, or a bad man; but he was neither firm nor truthful; two weaknesses in a ruler which may prove as fruitful a source of political crimes as a natural inclination to evil actions. In his first procla- mation after re-ascending the throne, amid the enthusiastic joy of his people, he said, "I detest, I abhor despotism;" yet he, afterwards, lent himself to schemes which deprived Spain of constitutional government, restored the inqui- sition, and led to proscriptions involving the lives of some of the patriots who had contrib- uted so largely to the restoration of his crown.
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The cruel and despotic policy of his advisers, at length, drove the liberal party into a wide- spread revolt, which would have resulted in his permanent dethronement, but for the interven- tion of the French, who, in 1823, enabled him by their arms to keep on his head the crown they had snatched from it in 1808.
But, if in the chief square of the town there be a reminder of a perfidious monarch, there are in some of its streets memorials of Spanish glory.
The English names of those streets were changed to the names they bear, at the time when the events with which the latter are associated occurred, and were designed to be- commemorative monuments of the glory shed upon old Spain by the illustrious deeds of her sons. Upon their being monumental, must rest the apology for a slight retracing of their legends, which would otherwise be out of place in this book.
Palafox and Saragossa, or Zaragoza, are the first to arrest attention, as they are likewise suggestive one of the other.
José de Palafox y Melzi, whose ancestral scat
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was near the city of Zaragoza, was in 1808, a young officer of the King's guards. He accom- panied Ferdinand on his visit to Bayonne, which ended in the King's abdication. It was by him the captive King sent the instructions to the Junta which was to exercise the sover- eignty of the Spanish people during the exile of their monarch. Having performed that duty, Palafox went to Zaragoza, to join in the uprising of Aragon, of which it was the capital. Despite his lack of years and experience, his commanding presence led the Aragonese, full of patriotic ardor and warlike impulse, to choose him as their leader, and proclaim him Captain General of Aragon. In a short time he found himself at the head of ten thousand infantry, two hundred horse, and eight pieces of artillery.
Zaragoza, situated on the right bank of the Ebro, was, in 1808, a city of fifty thousand inhabitants. It stood in the midst of an allu- vial plain, rich in its olive trees, its vineyards, and agricultural products. Its fortifications consisted of a brick wall not above ten feet high and three in thickness, pierced for guns, but few were in the embrasures. At intervals,
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however, there were convents, castles, and other solid stone structures. The universal uprising of the Aragonese, and the proximity of the city to the French frontiers, suggested it as one of the most important points for the French to occupy, in the execution of their designs to subjugate Spain. It was, accordingly, one of the first places against which a military force was sent.
In June 1808, Napoleon ordered Lefebvre to advance against it from the Pyrenian frontier. His advance was interrupted by three battles, in which the raw and undisciplined Aragonese peasants did not hesitate to attack the French column, but were in each instance driven back. Lefebvre at last presented himself before Zaragoza, with a demand for its submission. To that demand Palafox made the memorable reply, "War to the knife;" a reply that fore- shadowed the terrific struggle by which those old brick walls were to be won by the enemy. In every attack the French made upon the gates and walls, between the twelfth of June and August fifteenth, they were repulsed with fearful loss. Lefebvre, discouraged by his
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successive failures to carry the place by storm, drew off his army to await the arrival of heavy artillery, to enable him to undertake a regular siege.
The second attempt on Zaragoza began in December, 1808. In the interval between this and the first attack the defences had been greatly strengthened, and a large supply of arms procured. As the French columns advanced towards the city there was presented a specta- cle not often witnessed by one doomed to a siege. The entire population, men, women and children, were engaged in the work of preparing for resistance. None left the walls, but on the contrary the peasantry of the surrounding country rushed within them to share in the perilous defence. By the time the French took their position around the city, it had within it fifty thousand defenders, the most of them undisciplined and uninured to arms, vet animat- ed with the spirit of their leader's reply to Lefebvre's demand of surrender.
The French force consisted of two army corps of fifty thousand men, commanded by Marshals Moncey and Montier, with all the necessary
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artillery and appliances for a siege. For fifty days after the French artillery began to play upon the city the conflict between the besieged and the besiegers was incessant. In that time, thirty-three thousand cannon shot, and sixteen thousand bombs had been hurled against the place. When a breach was made in the wall, immediately and under the terrific fire of the enemy it was closed up with sand bags. If at any point an entry was made within them by the besiegers, the stone houses became citadels for the besieged. If the defenders were driven from a room, a stand was made in the next one. Women and children shared in the labors and the perils of the fight. As a gunner fell at the feet of his wife, stricken down by a cannon shot, she promptly took his place at the gun. Napoleon, dissatisfied with the slow progress made by Moncey and Montier towards a reduction of the place, sent Junot to take the command. Becoming dissatisfied with him, he sent Lannes to bring the operations to a close. Pestilence, too, came to his aid as well as addi- tional forces sent by the Emperor. At last Pala- fox was confined to his bed with the prevailing
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