How it started. You know how it's going.
Just how did Florida join the US?
Florida is one of my favorite topics for Born Into Blood. Everyone looks at this state and scratches their heads, wondering how all of this could happen. It’s simple; it was born into it. There is nothing noble about Florida’s existence as part of the US. Orchestrated by carpet baggers from Up North with no connection to the place, an elaborate scam played out for the better part of a decade.
We have to step back a bit to see the bigger picture. That’s because decisions collectively made by idiot sons of inbred assholes on the other side of the Atlantic dictated much of Florida’s fate. Spain had “owned” Florida, in the colonizing sense of the word, since the 16th century. Spain and England had hated each other for most of the time that they were neighbors in the New World, to the point that Georgia was created as a buffer between Florida and the affluent growing areas of the Carolinas. Near the end of the Seven Years’ War (taught to folks my age as the French and Indian War), Spain got mad at England again went Leeroy Jenkins with the French from 1762-1763. It didn’t end well for them.
Havanna had the gateway to Spain’s New World empire for the better part of 200 years, and the last thing they thought was that they’d lose it to the English from this. But that’s precisely what happened. Needing a bargaining chip that wouldn’t hurt too much to lose, Spain put Florida on the table as a trade Cuba. The English didn’t want the Spanish knocking on Georgia’s back door anymore and took the deal, making the swap in 1763.
Setting up shop in St Augustine, the Brits assessed their new territory. There are so many moving pieces to how Florida ultimately extended to the Mississippi River that they require a separate story to explain fully. Attempting to do so here would just convolute the main narrative. It’s enough to know that it did. Seeing the difficulty in administering all that territory from the farthest east side in St Augustine, they made the call to split the colony in two. West Florida ran from the Apalachicola River (just west of present-day Tallahassee) with its capital near the center at Pensacola. East Florida constituted most of what we currently know as Florida.
After the American Revolution ended in 1783, the British were happy to rid themselves of Florida and all of the American colonies (for a time) and traded it back to Spain. France jumped in and claimed that the Louisiana portion of East Florida was theirs, Spain claimed that it all belonged to them, and later the US chimed in, claiming it as part of the Louisiana Purchase. There were good ports at Pensacola, Mobile, and Biloxi, not to mention the Mississippi was a key trade route from the northern states and territories. The US didn’t want to see the Mississippi Territory landlocked with control of those ports just out of reach.
Whoever put the most effort in would ultimately own it. In 1810 Spain gave up. All of this back and forth was tedious. The Republic of West Florida operated as a sovereign republic for a few months, but the ultimate winner was the US, who coaxed them into annexation, gaining control of everything west of the Perdido River (the border with Alabama), while Spain kept Pensacola.
Giving an inch to the US was an open invitation to take a mile. It’s important to know that the US’s interest in Florida wasn’t some type of manifest destiny; it was protecting the economic interests of wealthy, southern plantation owners. Because of Spain’s relatively liberal laws regarding enslavement (if such a thing could be called liberal), many enslaved people escaped plantations, slipping across the border to Florida to live a free life in the Spanish colony. Controlling Florida meant that Black people could be captured and returned to their “owners” or sold into slavery in the first place. Being freeborn had zero effect on that outlook.
Covert bullfuckery was the order of the day. Culminating in the “Patriot War,” the US kept poking and prodding at the margins, trying to wrest control of Florida. While the overt military coup authorized by Jameses Madison and Monroe was ultimately a failure, it served notice to what small amount of regard the US had for Spain’s sovereignty in the region.
The minor issue of the War of 1812 prevented further meddling, but the war complicated things for Florida, too. This time, the British came back allied with Spain because political dealings on the other side of the ocean said that they were friends now. The British constructed a fort on the Apalachicola River in one notable instance. The fort’s primary purpose was to control Georgia’s access to the Gulf and serve as a base to launch raiding parties across the border, just a few miles away. The fort is a tale to itself, but let’s just know that the British abandoned it in 1815 left it fully stocked with arms. It became the center point of a Black and Native community known as Negro Fort.
Negro Fort became a beacon of hope for enslaved people as far away as Tennessee. The idea of Black people living freely or escaping in the hopes for the same outcome insulted the delicate sensibilities and enraged the white gentry of the southern states. Falsely claiming that “Indians” living at Negro Fort had been using the base to launch raids on them from across the border, wealthy planters demanded a remedy from Washington. In 1816, Washington responded in the form of Andrew Jackson. Jackson, a famous genocidal maniac, assigned some people to kill some people, and story short, Negro Fort was destroyed, massacring almost everyone in it.
As shown repeatedly, the US government has never been shy to use its armed forces to protect powerful business interests, be it on its own citizens in its own country or a sovereign foreign land. These were just some of the early blatant acts that we’ve numbed ourselves to view as a matter of course today.
But there’s more. With actual raids across the border now occurring in retaliation for Negro Fort, the US launched a full-fledged war on foreign territory against the Seminole people in 1817. Accomplishing little against the Seminoles besides burning a few evacuated villages, Jackson succeeded instead in capturing the Spanish forts at St. Marks and Pensacola, as well as hanging a pair of British merchants.
The Spanish were done. What good is a colony when no one respects the borders? Also, instead of being a source of riches, it was a financial drain for almost 300 years. So they sold Florida to the US.
Sold is a liberal usage of the term. Usually, a sizeable purchase price is agreed on for these types of deals. In this case, the primary condition of the sale was that the US assumed five million dollars in claims for damages incurred during the Patriot War. Many historians considered the agreement as a masterstroke of diplomacy on the part of John Q Adams. But take a step back.
First, the US acted covertly, then overtly to usurp the rightful government of Florida. Failing to do so, the actors involved claimed damages against Spain for their part in this failed coup. The US agreed to pay those damages that they caused in return for all of East Florida. Whether those damages were paid out or not is not easy to find, but what history calls diplomatic genius is really just the equivalent of a slip and fall scam.
Putting this on the Florida Bastard Scale we have: people from Up North causing problems, fraudulent claims of damages, armed forces serving private interests, and the newly arrived from Up North getting rich via the federal government. Not a perfect score, but enough to set the tone for what inevitably has followed. Florida couldn’t help it.