GENERAL HISTORY 



[173 



which the Spanish title extends, 

 the Government of Spain has 

 scarcely been felt. Its authority 

 has been confined, almost exclu- 

 sively, to the walls of Pensacola 

 and St. Augustine, within which 

 only small garrisons have been 

 maintained. Adventurers from 

 every country, fugitives from jus- 

 tice, and absconding slaves, have 

 found an asylum there. Several 

 tribes of Indians, strong in the 

 number of their warriors, remark- 

 able for their ferocity, and whose 

 settlements extend to our limits, 

 inhabit those provinces. These 

 different hordes of people, con- 

 nected togethei", disregarding on 

 the one side, the authoritj^ of 

 Spain, and protected, on the other, 

 by an imaginary line which sepa- 

 rates Florida from the United 

 States, have violated our laws 

 prohibiting the introduction of 

 slaves, have practised various 

 frauds on our revenue, and com- 

 mitted every kind of outrage on 

 our peaceable citizens which their 

 proximity to us enable them to 

 penetrate. The invasion of Amelia 

 Island last year, by a small band 

 of adventurers, not exceeding 

 150 in number, who wrested it 

 from the inconsiderable Spanish 

 force stationed there, and held it 

 several months, during v/hich a 

 single feeble effort only was made 

 to recover it, which failed, clearly 

 proves how completely extinct 

 the Spanish authority had become; 

 as the conduct of those adven- 

 turers, while in possession of the 

 island, as distinctly shows the 

 pernicious purposes for which 

 their combination had been 

 formed. 



This country had, in fact, 

 become the theatre of every 



species of lawless adventure. 

 With little population of its own, 

 the Spanish authority almost 

 extinct, and the Colonial Govern- 

 ments in a state of revolution, 

 having no pretension to it, and 

 sufficiently employed in their own 

 concerns, it was in a great mea- 

 sure derelict, and the object of 

 cupidity to every adventurer. A 

 system of bucaneering was rapidly 

 organizing over it, which me- 

 naced, in its consequences, the 

 lawful commerce of every nation, 

 and particularly of the United 

 States ; while it presented a temp- 

 tation to every people, on whose 

 seduction its success principally 

 depended. In regard to the 

 United States, the pernicious 

 effects of this unlawful combina- 

 tion was not confined to the 

 ocean; the Indian tribes have 

 constituted the effective force in 

 Florida. With these tribes these 

 adventurers had formed, at an 

 early period, a connexion, with a 

 view to avail themselves of that 

 force to promote their own pro- 

 jects of accumulation and aggran- 

 disement. It is to the interference 

 of some of those adventurers, in 

 misrepresenting the claims and 

 titles of the Indians to land, and 

 in practising on their savage 

 propensities, that the Seminole 

 war is principally to be traced. 

 Men who thus connect themselves 

 with savage communities, and 

 stimulate them to war, which is 

 always attended on their part with 

 acts of barbarity the most shock- 

 ing, deserve to be viewed in a 

 worse light than the savages. 

 They would certainly have no 

 claim to an immunity from the 

 punishment which, according to 

 the rules of warfare practised by 



the 



