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PERSISTENT BORDERLAND: FREEDOM and CITIZENSHIP in TERRITORIAL FLORIDA a Dissertation by PHILIP MATTHEW SMITH Submitted To

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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Texas A&M University PERSISTENT BORDERLAND: FREEDOM AND CITIZENSHIP IN TERRITORIAL FLORIDA A Dissertation by PHILIP MATTHEW SMITH Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 2007 Major subject: History PERSISTENT BORDERLAND: FREEDOM AND CITIZENSHIP IN TERRITORIAL FLORIDA A Dissertation by PHILIP MATTHEW SMITH Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved by: Chair of Committee, Walter L. Buenger Committee Members, Cynthia A. Bouton April L. Hatfield John J. McDermott Head of Department, Walter L. Buenger August 2007 Major subject: History iii ABSTRACT Persistent Borderland: Freedom and Citizenship in Territorial Florida. (August 2007) Philip Matthew Smith, B.A., Principia College Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Walter L. Buenger Florida’s Spanish borderland was the result of over two hundred and fifty years of cooperation and contention among Indians, Spain, Britain, the United States and Africans who lived with them all. The borderland was shaped by the differing cultural definitions of color and how color affected laws about manumission, miscegenation, legitimacy, citizenship or degrees of rights for free people of color and to some extent for slaves themselves. The borderland did not vanish after the United States acquired Florida. It persisted in three ways. First, in advocacy for the former Spanish system by some white patriarchs who fathered mixed race families. Free blacks and people of color also had an interest in maintaining their property and liberties. Second, Indians in Florida and escaped slaves who allied with them well knew how whites treated non-whites, and they fiercely resisted white authority. Third, the United States reacted to both of these in the context of fear that further slave revolutions in the Caribbean, colluding with the Indian- African alliance in Florida, might destabilize slavery in the United States. In the new Florida Territory, Spanish era practices based on a less severe construction of race were soon quashed, but not without the articulate objections of a cadre of whites. Led by Zephaniah Kingsley, their arguments challenged the strict iv biracial system of the United States. This was a component of the persistent borderland, but their arguments were, in the end, also in the service of slavery and white patriarchy. The persistent border included this ongoing resistance to strict biracialism, but it was even more distinct because of the Indian-African resistance to the United States that was not in the service of slavery. To defend slavery and whiteness, the United States sent thousands of its military, millions of its treasure, and spent years to subdue the Indian- African alliance and to make Florida and its long shorelines a barrier to protect whiteness and patriarchy in the Deep South. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the encouragement and knowledge of many scholars and friends. One of the pleasures of this project was to combine the two and to make friends with so many excellent scholars. My academic committee was always supportive and steered me toward asking fruitful questions and away from making disastrous overstatements. Without elaborating, I will let them chuckle over their memories of my blank face when asked, “And what does this have to do with your thesis?” This project first came to mind in a graduate seminar taught by April Hatfield, and I owe her special thanks for the initial impulse to take Florida seriously and for her strong-minded guidance. Soon thereafter I met Jane Landers and Daniel Schafer, who had been taking Florida seriously for decades, to say the least. Their works are critical to the field, their advice has been most important to me, and their friendship has been a wonderful added bonus to my life as a graduate student. Archivist Charles Tingley and staff at the St. Augustine Historical Society and curator James Cusick at the P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History at the University of Florida responded to my frequent questions. Staff at the State Archives of Florida, the Amelia Island Historical Society, the Jacksonville Public Library, and the county courthouses in Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties provided much appreciated assistance. Years ago, a number of teachers and associates inspired me to look deeper and harder at assumptions, which is of course the bread-and-butter of academic work. I want to thank especially Archibald Carey and Charles Hosmer at Principia College, Paul vi Bookbinder at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, Rudolph Binion at Brandeis University, Peter Keen at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and David Lubin at Wake Forest University. The graduate faculty at Texas A&M University have freely shared their wisdom and advice, and I am grateful for their examples of scholarship and teaching. Errors and omissions in this dissertation are certainly my own and not in any way attributable to all those to whom I am so thankful. Along the way, I have been fortunate that mentors and friends guided me from time to time. The influence of Gregory Lamb, Brent Nettle and Ronald Ballard surely shows up in all that I do. My father, Percy M. Smith, Jr., and mother, Elizabeth Camp Smith, spent most of their lives in Jacksonville, Florida. My father always read books and kept books in the house. I sometimes wonder what would have happened to me if I had not come to love books and ideas the way he did. I look forward to finishing this project so I can spend time with my children, Molly, Andy and Lucy, whose passion for life, justice and art give me inspiration. I am very grateful to their mother, Jennifer Holman, with whom I share many of my life’s greatest memories. There could be no better guide and partner through this process than Harriet Vardiman Smith. She supported me at every step. Her ability to have a successful career, raise a family and tend to a sometimes grumpy, sometimes perplexed, occasionally elated graduate student makes her overqualified to be Queen of Everything. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………...……… iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ………………………………………………...…….. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS …………………………………...………...………… vii LIST OF FIGURES ………………………………………………...…………… viii LIST OF TABLES ………………………………………………………………. ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION……………………………………………….. 1 The problem …………………………………………………. 1 An imaginary line …………………………………………… 6 II FLORIDA’S BORDERS………………………………………… 10 First-contact Florida…………………………………………. 10 First Spanish Period, 1565-1763…………………………….. 12 British Period, 1763-1784…………………………………… 24 Second Spanish Period, 1784-1821………………………….. 27 The Adams-Onís Treaty, 1818-1821……………………….... 31 III A NEW TERRITORY………………………....………………… 35 “The Province is as yet such a Blank”……………………….. 35 First impressions……………………………………………... 37 “…warm climates are congenial to bad habits….” …………. 45 “There is such a heterogeneous mass here.…” ……………… 49 Who was in Florida? ………………………………………… 52 Appendages and sustenance ………………………………… 54 Who can be a citizen? ……………………………………….. 61 “…no law except the law of force…” ………………………. 68 “…the retreat of the opulent, the gay and the fashionable….” 72 Citizenship, lotteries and matrimony………………………… 77 Color, race, and subjection of the borderland……………….. 82 viii CHAPTER Page IV OPPORTUNITIES IN A CARRIBEAN PLACE……………...... 89 Borderland or profitable periphery…………………………... 89 Unlocking the economy……………………………………… 93 Infrastructure………………………………………………… 101 “In a Spanish street…” ……………………………………… 107 “The sickness rages here….” ……………………………….. 111 “…an added peculiar charm” ……………………………….. 115 V INDIAN LANDS AND CARIBBEAN THREATS…………...... 117 “ – the land was not theirs, but belonged to the Seminoles”.... 117 Natural and unnatural connections…………………………... 121 “…apprehensions of hostilities on our southern border…” … 123 “…a separate and distinct people....” ……………………….. 133 “…most exposed, but important frontiers of the Union” …… 135 “…apply force to a much greater extent….” ………………... 141 “the horrors of St. Domingo enacted over again in earnest…” 146 VI WHITE ADVOCATES………………………………………...... 158 Liberty for people of color…………………………………… 158 Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr. and Anna Madigigine Jai…………... 161 Kingsley’s arguments………………………………………... 164 “…this species of our population” …………………………... 170 “…the grand chain of security…” …………………………... 174 “…the materials of our own dissolution” …………………… 182 Colonization versus naturalization…………………………... 186 The difference between biracial and multi-tier slavery……… 193 Memorial to Congress of 1833………………………………. 195 Leaving Florida for Haiti…………………………………….. 199 Other signers…………………………………………………. 200 Another white advocate……………………………………… 218 Legacy of white advocacy…………………………………… 222 VII BLACK CITIZENS……..……………………………………...... 224 Free blacks in Florida………………………………………... 224 Slavery laws and manumission………………………………. 228 Free black rights reduced…………………………………….. 229 Free blacks resist…………………………………………….. 239 Mixed families, white allies…………………………………. 241 Parents and children………...…………………….…………. 245 The good old flag of Spain....................................................... 248 ix CHAPTER Page VIII CONCLUSION…..……..……………………………………...... 252 Summary..................................................................................
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