Louisiana Anthology

Stanley Clisby Arthur.
The West Florida Rebellion.

INTRODUCTION

That section of Louisiana east of the Mississippi river, south of the Mississippi state line, north of lake Pontchartrain and Maurepas, extending to the Pearl River, which includes the parishes of West Feliciana, East Feliciana, East Baton Rouge, St. Helena, Livingston, Tangipahoa, Washington, and St. Tammany — a territory once called the “County of Feliciana,” is known today by many as the “Florida Parishes.”

It was the westernmost section of a land that was known for nearly half a century (1763-1810) as “West Florida” and over it flags of two European kingdoms flew, the Union Jack of England for 16 years, and the banner of Spain for 31 years. On the soil of this fruitful southern land was enacted one of the most spectacular events in Louisiana’s colorful history. For the space of 74 days, this part of the present state was a free and independent nation, with its own governing officials, its own army, its own navy, its own flag, its own declaration of independence. To secure this daring, if short-lived freedom, liberty-loving Anglo-Saxon inhabitants, many British to the backbone, literally fashioned their plowshares into swords and, at the point of these weapons, captured a fort by force and beat down the defenders, to throw off the shackles of a hated European despotism.

It is a pulse-stirring story — one that every Louisianian should know in its intimate detail for, although the event is mentioned in our standard histories, full justice has never been done either the tale or the men who wrote the tale in blood and courage.

This manly move for freedom, which resulted in annexation to the United States in 1810 — seven years after the Louisiana Purchase — had its inception in the minds and courage of those living in that place and section of West Florida upon which Spanish masters had bestowed the pleasing name of Feliciana. Therefore, it seems only fit that these details should be chronicled in a newspaper published in the very territory where lived and died the men who were not only the instigators but the very brains of this liberty-winning event.

To this end, Mr. Elrie Robinson has volunteered to preserve by type in the “Pictures of the Past” section of the Saint Francisville Democrat the mass of documentary material I have gathered from here and there during the past seven or eight years that I have been seeking “more light” on the story of the West Florida Rebellion, so that what has been unearthed from the files of the past may be made available to present and future historians.

Files of old newsprints have been searched; letters, in faded ink and crumbling paper, have been placed at my disposal by descendants of those who wrested this land from the haughty Dons; museums and libraries, private, state, and national, as well as other institutions, even the archives of Spain, have placed their treasures at my disposal so that the picture can be made complete in its every detail.

To understand and correctly picture this event of past years, it appears necessary that a backward glance be given the land and the people before detailing the taking of the fort at Baton Rouge, or the unfurling of the first “Lone Star Flag,” the signing of the “Floridian Declaration of Independence,” the forming of the Tom Thumb Republic, the selection of Saint Francisville as its capital, and then the inclusion of the tiny independent territory as a section of the young United States by making it a part of Louisiana.

So we will consider first — the place and its people, the flags of domination that waved over its hills, productive acres, and beautiful forests and streams, something of the names bestowed upon it by French, English, and Spanish masters.

The ancient banner of Castile and Leon, the same red and white ensign Columbus flew on the Santa Maria, was the first bit of white man’s bunting to flaunt its folds over Feliciana. The flag was quartered red and white with two golden castles and a pair of rampant red lions.

INTRODUCTION
As It Was In The Beginning

A paucity of historical documents has for a considerable length of time made difficult positive assertions regarding the baptism of that section of Louisiana known as Feliciana, or to throw light on the exact time of the settlement of the two present towns now called Bayou Sara and Saint Francisville.

This lack of ancient authorities has made my search for authentic data on the naming of this region and the founding of the towns all the more interesting. As one of the most adventurous and romantic periods in Louisiana’s colorful history, “The West Florida Rebellion,” had its inception on the soil of this particular territory it is first necessary before the story is told that we become acquainted with the land so pleasantly named “Feliciana” in the musical tongue of the empire that dominated its flower-strewn hills and dales for the space of thirty-one years.

The Bayou Sara’s First Name

The Bayou Sara did not always bear the name that now distinguishes it. One ancient map, located many years ago in the Bureau de la Marine, Paris, indicates that the stream was originally designated by the French as “La Rivière de la Pucelle Juive.” In English this means “The River of the Jewish Virgin.”

Why such a strange baptism is not now clear. Was the Jewish maiden named Sarah? Certainly, that was the ancient Biblical spelling, and it must be remembered, too, that a hundred years and more ago the English-speaking inhabitants of Feliciana always added the final “h” when they named the bayou or the village in their letters. Spanish maps, particularly one drawn by Don Vincente Sebastian Pintado, the crown surveyor who served under Governor Carlos de Grand Pré, spelled the bayou “Zara,” but as z’s and s’s were used interchangeably by the Spanish we may take it that the shorter spelling began about this time.

Miss Louise Butler in her charming “West Feliciana — A Glimpse of its History,” states that the village of Bayou Sara “was called for an old woman who dwelt on the banks of the creek or bayou then named Clay’s Bayou and changed to Sara in her honor.”

No early map I have examined gives the name “Clay” to this stream. The military chart prepared in 1765 (and admittedly based on earlier work of French cartographers) by Lieut. John Ross of the 34th Regiment, has long been recognized as a correct delineation of the course of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. He was a British engineer who surveyed the great river from the Balize to Fort Chartres in the Illinois country. Lieutenant Ross conducted his historic survey two years after the territory along the Gulf of Mexico and far up the Father of the Waters was taken from France to fall under the domination of England. On the map we find he named the stream we now call Bayou Sara as “Clap River.”

Examination of earlier French maps proves that this name given by Ross is a literal translation of a rather horrid French term and not a misspelling for “Clay.” Four French maps in my possession all carry the same designation. The first is one by Gonichon, dated 1731, with names Bayou Sara as “baiouc à la Chaudepisse,” meaning “Bayou Gonorrhoea.” The others, one by Saint d’Anville, drawn in 1732 and published in 1752, who calls it “R’re à la Chaude-pisse;” another, also drawn in 1732 by Crenay, and a fourth, by an unknown cartographer under date of 1740, give the Bayou Sara this same offensive French name.

Lieutenant Ross’ map, as well as some of the earlier French charts, locate near the mouth of the Bayou Sara “Fort Ste. Reine, abandoned.” It has been impossible to obtain from any printed or manuscript source examined a history of this early settlement or fortification. There are several references to it, however. Professor Chambers speaks of it as “St. Reine’s concession in the Tonicas;” Fortier indicates it as “St. Reine in the Tonicas;” as does Gayarre and Martin in their histories of Louisiana. Father Charlevoix mentions that in 1721 he stopped at “Ste. Reine” on his memorable voyage down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Usually the French maps indicate the spot as “Ste. Reyne,” the “i” and the “y” being used interchangeably but meaning the same thing.

It appears that the concession was that of one M. de Sainte Reyne who also held lands in and about New Orleans at the very beginning of the founding of that city. The concession up the river was undoubtedly established during the first days of the period when John Law’s Company of the West held jurisdiction over Louisiana and about the same time that Diron d’Artaguette settled at Baton Rouge and Athanase de Mézières erected his concession further north. In Cabildo records we find that on November 9, 1720 the ship “La Loire” had on it “186 persons for Ste. Reine under the direction of MM. Sicard and Tibain,” but whether they were bound for the properties near New Orleans or the concession in the Tunicas is not proved.

Another map of Louisiana, drawn by N. Bellin, Ingenieur de la Marine, which carries the date of 1764, specifically locates “Concession de St. Reine” at the same place where Saint Francisville now stands. Below it we find he names “Thompson’s Creek,” which is evidently the first time this name so appears on a chart. The stream now called Bayou Sara, on the Bellin map, is properly located but the engineer names it “Rivière des Tunicas” and on the north side of this Bayou he locates the Tunica village.

The map of the province, drawn 32 years previously by Saint d’Anville, is not only one of the best but the earliest maps of the Mississippi river and the settlements along its banks. This Frenchman was a noted engineer and acknowledged one of the best sent to the colony. His full name was Jean Baptiste Bourguion d’Anville and he was born in Paris in 1687, where he died in 1782. Unquestionably the French were the first Europeans to settle in the Feliciana country. One of the first pioneers, if not the very first, to erect a habitation in this “Happyland” was a certain Frenchman named Le Jeune. His plantation lay on “the eastern bank of the Bayou Sarah about 10 miles from where it emptied into the Mississippi.” This would place his habitation quite near the dividing line of the present Ventress and John M. Parker properties, and today, on this spot, a grove of age-old live oak trees, “the Le Jeune Oaks,” still defy the relentless and ruthless march of time.

M. le Jeune, in addition to his farming enterprise had a store or “magazine” as it was then termed, as well as a tavern at this ford or crossing of the bayou, for the main trail to Fort Rosalie at Natchez passed this way.

Houmas the First Indians

However, other documents examined point to an early occupancy of this territory. It was originally the land of the Houmas (Oumas) Indians. They occupied the land that extended from the high ground in the extreme southern part of what is now Wilkinson County, Mississippi, to the bluffs at Baton Rouge where, as is well known to all readers of Louisiana history, a red pole, called by the French Baton Rouge (red stick) marked the boundary line between the Houmas and the Bayou Goula tribes.

The Houmas had two landing places on the Mississippi river. This mighty stream in the early days made a wide sweep to the westward in front of the bluffs to meet the mouth of the Red River. The first village, and the principal one, was located above the head and their smaller village below it.

In 1682, La Salle on his historic voyage down the Mississippi to its diverging mouths, when he claimed the entire wilderness drained by this stream for Louis of France, did not visit this tribe although the hardy Frenchman knew of the existence of the villages. Four years later, Tonti of the “Iron Hand” (on his ascent of the Mississippi following his failure to join forces with La Salle at the mouths of the river) did land at the Houmas village and from his journal we learn he considered them “the bravest savages on the river.”

Therefore, to Henri Tonti goes the honor of being the first white man to set foot on the soil of Feliciana.

In March of 1699, Pierre Le Moyne, the Sieur d’Iberville, together with his brother Jean Baptiste, the Sieur de Bienville, and another Frenchman who deserves to have his name written large in the pages of Louisiana’s history — Sauvol de Villantray, who became the first governor of Louisiana (Sauvol was not a Le Moyne, in spite of statements in our early histories that he was a brother to Iberville and Bienville — he was not even related to them!) visited the “Ouma” Indians, for so Iberville spelled the tribe’s name in his journal, and the three white men learned much about the savages occupying the highlands of Feliciana. Sauvol in his able narrative, “The Journal of the Frigate Le Marin,” has preserved for present day readers many interesting details of Iberville’s visit to the chiefs and something about the habits of these original inhabitants of the Bayou Sara region.

A study of ancient maps indicates that the upper village was close to the present upper or northern boundary of West Feliciana parish, and that the second village, the one just above the “big bend,” must have been on the bluffs on which Saint Francisville is now located. There is, of course, a possibility that it was further north, where Bayou Tunica empties into the Mississippi, but Sainte d’Anville’s splendid map of 1732 indicates that the high ground just above the “big bend” (which later became Pointe Coupèe) is the site of Ste. Reyne.

Father Gravier, whose journal of his memorable journey down the Mississippi in 1700 is a valuable source book for those delving into Louisiana’s early history, arrived at the village of the Houmas in late November of that year. He records: “I counted 70 cabins in the village, which I visited with Father de Limoges, who chose to give me the first fruits of his mission in the baptism that I administered to a child three days old. I gave him the name of Saint Francis Xavier, the patron of the mission.”

A strange coincidence, is it not, that the first child to be baptised in this territory by the white man’s rites should have been given the same name now borne by the present seat of government of the parish?

The Houmas papoose thus christened by the good Jesuit did not live to bear the name of the patron saint for, as Father Gravier piously adds to his account, “God took him to paradise a few days afterwards, there to labor for the conversion of his parents and of his countrymen.”

The Tunicas

Although the Houmas were the original inhabitants of Feliciana popular belief is that the Tunicas were the aboriginals found there. The Tunicas originally inhabited the country in the neighborhood of the mouth of the Yazoo river. They abandoned that location in 1706 (or 1709, there is a conflict of dates), migrated down river, and were hospitably received by the Houmas. Shortly thereafter the Tunicas fell upon their hosts and massacred most of them. The remnant of this tribe, those few who escaped the arrows, knives, and clubs of the perfidious Tunicas, fled to the south and a Houmas colony settled first on the banks of Bayou Saint Jean back of New Orleans and then moved up the river to what is now Ascension parish and settled along Bayou Lafourche.

It was this usurpation of the Houmas’ territory by the stronger Tunicas that caused the name of the victorious but treacherous tribe to be fastened upon the Tunica Hills, the Tunica Bayou, and the tiny village that nestles in the hills that guide a pleasant little stream to its union with the mighty Mississippi. As Miss Louise Butler has so neatly put it: “Of the name of Houmas, not an echo remains in the parish, while that of the betraying Tunicas is perpetuated in hill and stream and town.”

Who were the Houmas?

The Houmas belonged to what has been described as the Muskhogean tribes; their name meant in their tongue “Red” and their totem or war emblem was the crawfish. The French found them a peaceable people and Iberville said that the main village was about three leagues from the landing place on the Mississippi. It was composed of from six to seven hundred persons, according to Sauvol, who claimed they were much more civilized and honest than their southern neighbors the Bayou Goulas. They put their dead on posts and when anyone fell ill two men of the community were chosen “to sing, so as to chase away the evil spirits” that caused the illness.

Iberville described a formal entertainment the head man gave in honor of the French adventurers. It was held in the center of the square and music was furnished by “drums and chychycouchy, which are gourds in which there are dry seeds, and sticks for holding them; they make a little noise and serve to mark the time for the dancers.” Could the “chychycouchy” have been the forerunner to the celebrated “hoochy-couchy” of the first Chicago’s World Fair?

The Houmas’ dance was perform ed by “twenty young people of from 20 to 30 years old, and fifteen of the prettiest young girls magnificently adorned after their manner, entirely naked, having only their breechcloths on, which they wore above a kind of belt, a foot broad, made of feathers and skin or hair painted red, yellow, and white, the face and body daubed or painted with different colors, bearing feathers in their hands, which served them as fans to keep time.” Not unlike Sally Rand’s fan dance, eh? The young men participating in the dance, continues Iberville, were also naked, “having only a belt like the girls, which concealed them in part, they being well daubed with paint and their hair well provided with bunches of feathers. Many had pieces of copper in the form of flattened plates, two and three together fastened to their belts, and hanging as far down as the knee, which made a noise and assisted in marking time.”

The young Houmas danced for three hours in a very active and sprightly manner, Iberville goes on to say, and when night fell the white visitors supped with the chief and the meat consisted of a hominy made of Indian corn. After the feast, the Indians armed themselves with bows and arrows, war clubs, and other warlike instruments, and danced until midnight.

Iberville described the village being about 2 ¹⁄₂ leagues from the river towards the north, the woods being open, a mixture of all kinds of oaks; the entire country being of quite good black earth with no rocks; situated on a hill, in a double row of cabins, in a circle, there being about 140 cabins which housed about 350 men, in addition to many squaws and children. The cornfields were in the valleys, although some of the stalks grew on the sides of the hills. “They have not cultivated anything else,” said Iberville, “except melons and have sowed tobacco.”

The Houmas had a sacred fire, which was kept alive by an old man charged with the duty of never letting it become extinguished, in front of a temple situated at one side of the main square. The square was the main gathering place and in it the youngsters played their games. The young men of the tribe exercised themselves by “running after a flat stone, which they throw in the air from one end of the square to the other, and try and make it fall on two cylinders, which they roll wherever they think the stone will fall.”

Father Gravier, the first Jesuit to descend the Mississippi, was impressed with the docility of the Houmas. “The women and girls are more modest than those of neighboring tribes,” he related. “May God be pleased to convert them and make the road in their village impracticable for certain French libertines.”

When the men sallied forth to hunt, the women wept over them, as though they were going to their death, and when they returned unscathed, they wept again — for joy. While the Houmas had a reputation for bravery and were feared as warriors, they were not cruel and did not put to death those of neighboring tribes they captured, but made slaves of them and treated them like their own children, and, still according to Father Gravier, there were few villages in France where there were more hens and cocks than in the Houmas’ villages, “because they never kill any and will not even eat any of those that their dogs quite often kill. When one wishes to obtain chickens from them he must not say that he intends to kill or eat them.”

The Houmas women were described as wearing fringed skirts, which covered them from the waist to below the knees, and when they went out of their cabins they threw over their shoulders a robe made either of muskrat skins or turkey feathers. They tattooed their faces with figures, plaited their hair, and blackened their teeth as aids to beauty and masculine allure.

After the coming of the white men the Houmas became lazy, diseased, and debased with the Frenchmen’s “fire water.” The Tunicas, who succeeded the Houmas in Feliciana, were in name and fact “the people,” for that is what Tunica meant in the Indian tongue, and they continued as such until the white men ousted them from the pleasant hills of their “Happyland.”

First White Settlers

The domination of the white man over this section of Louisiana is divided into five epochs:

The first white settlements in the district included the concessions granted Diron d’Artaguette, who settled at Baton Rouge, the one given de Mézières, just above the Red Stick, and the settlement of Sainte Reyne. These and others inhabited by Frenchmen were taken over about 1717. The erection of a habitation by M. le Jeune on the Bayou Sara has already been recorded.

The Second Flag

The fleur-de-lis banner of Saint Louis which waved over Feliciana and Louisiana from 1682, when La Salle claimed most of the continent for his king, until 1763, when France ceded most of Louisiana to Spain, and Feliciana and West Florida to east. This banner of Bourbon France was white with three golden lilies and not blue with trois fleurs-de-lis as sometimes shown.

On the authority of a number of maps, near to the spot where the Bayou Sara empties into the Mississippi a fort was erected and later abandoned, and its name was Fort Ste. Reyne. Whether it was close to the river’s edge or on the heights where now sets Saint Francisville is not clear, although the natural presumption is that the elevated spot would have been selected for the practical purposes of a fortification. The date of the establishment of Fort Ste. Reyne, or “Queen’s Fort,” as it can be translated, or when it was abandoned and allowed to fall into decay, has not yet been ascertained.

It is known however, that Jean Joseph Delfau de Pontalba (grandfather of the Baron Pontalba who married the daughter of Don Andres Almonester) was at one time in command of the Ste. Reine fort. Delfau de Pontalba, at the age of 19, came to the colony in 1732 as an enseigne en second of the Louisiana troops. He was first sent to Fort Rosalie (Natchez) where he served under Captain de Bénac, before being transferred to Ste. Reine. Etienne de Périer de Cenier, governor of Louisiana from 1726 to 1733, evidently erected the fort at Ste. Reine as a protective measure following the Fort Rosalie massacre when the French commandant, Sieur d’Etchéparre (his name has been erroneously spelled Chepart, Chépart, de Chapeare, etc., in Louisiana histories), all of his soldiers, and most of the planters in the Natchez concession, about 300 all told, were put to death by the Choctaws, this Indian uprising occurring in December of 1729.

When Governor Périer was recalled to France and Bienville, after seven years absence in France, again ruled over Louisiana, one of his first moves was to place Lieutenant de Pontalba, June 1733, in command of the “fort at the Tonicas.” Here he remained until the early part of 1736 when he, with his whole command, was ordered to join Bienville at New Orleans to participate in the governor’s disastrous campaign against the Chickasaw Indians. In 1740 de Pontalba was placed in charge of Fort St. Joseph at Pointe Coupée and he served here, in the Illinois country, and at other posts in the colony with distinction, was raised in rank to captain and was made a chevalier of the Order of Saint Louis. He married Marguerite Madeleine Broutin, the widow of François Philippe de Marigny de Mandeville, in 1743. His only son was Joseph Xavier Delfau de Pontalba, in turn the father of Celestine de Pontalba who married Almonester’s daughter and it was she who erected the celebrated Pontalba buildings that flank Jackson Square in New Orleans.

It appears most probable, while not proved, that “Fort Ste. Reine” after being established in the early part of 1730, was abandoned when Lieutenant de Pontalba marched his troops away from it in April of 1736.

The British Domination

In 1763, following the end of the seven-year struggle in America known as the French and Indian War, France lost Canada and her other North American colonial possessions. Canada and that part of Louisiana lying east of the Mississippi river were relinquished to the triumphant British and the Union Jack, bearing only the two crosses of Saint George and Saint Andrew, flew over the former French territory. The rest of her colonial property France ceded to her late ally Spain — this included the territory west of the Mississippi river as well as “the Island of Orleans,” and the red and white pavilion of Castile and Leon waved over the city Bienville founded and the wilderness that stretched out towards the setting sun. The golden lilies of Saint Louis disappeared forever.

For sixteen years, 1763 to 1779, the Union Jack of Great Britain waved over the two Floridas and Feliciana. At that time it displayed two crosses only — St. Andrew’s cross, white on a blue field, and superimposed upon it the red cross of St. George. The cross of St. Patrick was not added to England’s famed Jack until 1801. In this and the other reproductions of flags in black-and-white the colors of each are indicated, viz.: horizontal lines, “blue;” vertical, “red;” dotted areas, “yellow;” blank, “white.”

In 1763, when England began plans for taking possession of her newly acquired property along the Mexican Gulf, Lieutenant Ross, a British engineer attached to the 34th Regiment, was instructed to chart the course of the Mississippi from its mouths to Fort Chartres in the Illinois country. This he did, basing many of his surveys on former French works, and on this first English chart we find names of many of the villages and streams emptying into the big river not only correctly positioned but their names correctly spelled. While St. d’Anville in 1732 located le Baton Rouge, Isle Iberville (Profit’s Island), les Ecors blanc (Port Hudson) and Ste. Reyne on his map, when Lieutenant Ross came along 33 years later he designated the site as “Fort Ste. Reine, abandoned.”

The location of the lower Pointe Coupée village on the opposite shore, the indication of the Port Hudson bluffs, the course of Thompson’s Creek and the Bayou Sara proves that Ste. Reine occupied the present site of Saint Francisville.

Under the Union Jack

For sixteen years the criss-crossed banner of England waved over the Feliciana country, taking the place of the white banner bearing the three golden fleur de lis of Bourbon, France. When good King George’s government wrested New France (Canada) and Louisiana from Louis XV covetous English eyes were turned on the possessions that Spain owned in America.

After witnessing five years of conflict between St. George and St. Denis, and observing that France was losing on sea and on land, Spain, in 1761, allied herself with France and pledged her resources and forces in the famous “Family Compact” to treat the enemies of France as her own. England promptly declared war against the kingdom of Castile and Leon and her far-flung possessions in the New World. Havana was captured in the very beginning of 1762 and, panic-stricken over the possibility of further disasters, Spain sued for peace. France, completely exhausted and having lost Quebec — the long-considered impregnable Gibraltar of America — also bent the knee and asked for the price of peace. The price was high for both France and Spain — but each paid what was asked after but little haggling. We know what France had to relinquish — everything she owned in North America.

What price did the Dons have to pay for attempting to thwart the purpose of Albion? England, to Spain’s great dismay, demanded Florida because the ownership of this peninsular was necessary to insure the peace and prosperity of the English colonies of Georgia and the Carolinas. France, it is true, tried to spare Spain the humiliation of being stripped of this prized possession and even offered to surrender to the English all French Louisiana lying west of the Mississippi but the offer was refused — the British not only wanted Florida but other lands along the Gulf of Mexico.

In such a fashion, as Professor Chambers pointed out in his excellent (and the best) history of Louisiana, did Louisiana become a pawn in the great game of diplomacy-chess that the European masters of the world payed in those far-off days. Beg as did both Spain and France, England refused to be moved by tears and stubbornly demanded Florida — and the land of flowers, in which Ponce de Leon sought the fountain of youth in vain, was ceded to the victorious British.

As it then devolved upon France to make some sort of reparation to her late ally for what she lost in making common cause with her against England, all of Louisiana lying west of the Mississippi river, and the island of Orleans on the east bank from the Iberville (Manchac or Ascantia) river to the mouths of the Mississippi were given Spain as balm to her hurts.

In such fashion came the British to Feliciana — it was not thus named, of course, for it was indeed an unnamed wilderness, a terra incognita, which even France at that time considered of insignificant value. It was in February of 1763 that the terms of peace were signed at Paris and before the ink was dry on the parchment England became the possessor of Canada, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and all land in North America, east of the Mississippi river, with the single exception of the island of Orleans. Spain was given back her island of Cuba as a concession for relinquishing Florida. In such a fashion was the banner of Bourbon France, the white banner sprinkled with three golden fleur-de-lis, furled in Louisiana in general and in the Feliciana country in particular.

In October of 1763, eight months after the treaty of peace and parceling of territory was signed in Paris, George Rex, the third of that name, and in the third year of his reign, issued a lengthy proclamation from his court of St. James, and in it for the first time the name “West Florida” was penned.

Said his Britannic Majesty, after penning a number of whereases a firstly and a secondly,

“The government of East Florida, bounded to the Westward by the Gulf of Mexico and the Apalachicola river; to the Northward, by a line drawn from that part of the said river where the Catahouchee and Flint Rivers meet, to the source of St. Mary’s river, and by the course of the said river to the Atlantic Ocean, and to the East and South by the Atlantic Ocean, and the Gulf of Florida, including all islands within six leagues of the sea coast.”

And so we had East Florida. But listen to the crow-quilling of his rotund, gouty majesty as he dipped afresh into the ink:

"Thirdly, The government of West Florida, bounded to the Southward by the Gulf of Mexico, including all islands within six leagues of the coast from the river Apalachicola to lake Pontchartrain; to the Westward by the said lake, the lake Maurepas, and the river Mississippi; to the Northward, by a line drawn due East from that part of the river Mississippi which lies in 31 degrees North latitude, to the river Apalachicola, or Catahouchee; and to the Eastward by the said river.”

In such fashion was West Florida, on the seventh day of October, 1763, formed and baptised. Pensacola was made its capital, and the Gentleman’s Magazine of London, soon after the royal proclamation was issued, predicted: “The immense gain which this trade produces will probably soon make West Florida be numbered among our most flourishing colonies.”

The first British governor of West Florida was a Scot, George Johnstone, who ruled from 1763 to 1766; he was followed by Governor John Elliott, who was a suicide; in 1770 Peter Chester took charge and was the eye and the instrument of the British crown until West Florida was wrested from England by force in 1779-1780.

Governor Johnstone when he took possession of the former French and Spanish territories changed many of the old-time names. Especially so was this true of the forts, the one at Pensacola was rebaptised Fort George, the fort at Natchez became Fort Panmure instead of Rosalie, and a new fort was set up at Manchac on the Mississippi and named Fort Bute. Baton Rouge was renamed “New Richmond,” and a stockade was erected on Thompson’s Creek.

Settlers were invited to this fertile land nestling along the course of the Mississippi river and Governor Johnstone was authorized to make free grants of land to retired British officers and soldiers who had participated in the war just ended against France and Spain. A field officer was entitled to 25,000 acres; a captain to 3,000 acres, while a private’s portion was 2300 acres. Thus Feliciana and Baton Rouge received many of their early inhabitants — men of quality, energy, and intelligence — and so was implanted a sturdy stock in this heretofore Latin-infested territory.

For years all went well. Then, on the eastern seaboard the colonists began rebelling against King George. A declaration of independence was signed, a long war was begun, and soon, as a result of this rebellion, many loyalists ("damned Tories” to those enlisting under George Washington’s banners) decided to immigrate to a land where the Union Jack fluttered in every breeze without being tainted with the poison of the rebellious. And in such fashion came many others of the English tongue to the lands of West Florida in general and the Feliciana district in particular.

All went well, the settlers in this new Southern Utopia resisted every inducement proffered to make them become the “Fourteenth Colony,” and every night the plantation owners, those who spoke English, of course, nightly petitioned the Almighty with their “God Save the King.” And he certainly needed their prayers!

Into this new British possession came many settlers — all bearing sturdy Anglo-Saxon names. Many were, of course, British, some canny Scots, and others turbulent Irishers. They were mostly Loyalists fleeing the war-wrecked provinces along the Atlantic seaboard. With these settlers came such names as Barrow, Baker, Brown, Campbell, Carson, Cox, Clark, Collins, Cooper, Devall, Ellis, Green, Herries, Hicky, Johnson, Jones, Kemper, Kennedy, Lilley, Norwood, McDermott, Mather, Mills, O’Fallon, O’Connor, Percy, Pollock, Randolph, Stirling, Thomas, Moore, and many were named Smith — which is not surprising.

They worshipped God through the kindly offices of the Church of England, raised huge cotton crops with the aid of negro slaves imported from Jamaica, and large families by their own unaided efforts.

Spanish Domination

For the sixteen years that England exercised sway over the East and West Floridas, Spain had waited a chance to get even, to regain what she had been forced to yield at the point of the bayonet, and to teach perfidious Albions a lesson in Spanish hate.

The American colonists had struggled on alone against the master England until 1777 in the attempt to gain independence. In that year France espoused the cause of the Americans. Two years later, in 1779, Spain scenting a possibility of regaining the lost American possessions, stripped from her in 1763, and also winning back the coveted fortress of Gibraltar, allied herself with the struggling colonists.

Word was sent to the stripling acting governor of Louisiana at New Orleans, Don Bernardo de Galvez, to take up arms and drive the hated British from West Florida. How well young Galvez did this, how he retook not only West Florida but planted the banner of Castile and Leon along the Mississippi as far north as Natchez is history that here needs no repeating. Suffice it to say he overwhelmed Fort Bute at Manchac at the point of the bayonet, took “New Richmond” by cannonade, restored its original name of Baton Rouge, and later invested Pensacola.

From that time on the sun set at eventide across the wide twisting course of the Mississippi without its yellow rays shining on the criss-crossed banner of Old England and gave lie to Britain’s proudest boast.

For the many true-hearted British who had taken up lands there were two courses open — they could move out bag and baggage and leave behind their productive acres, or they could remain with their British grants recognized — providing they renounce their allegiance to the British crown, swear fealty to his Catholic Majesty, Carlos of Spain, and embrace the tenets of his church. This latter proviso a bitter, bitter pill for the Church of England men to swallow. In spite of this nauseous dose, practically all the leading Britishers owning rich lands decided to stay and, in spite of their oaths, signatures, and protestations of fealty, there slumbered in each Britisher’s heart a flickering hope for a return of England’s sovereignty — as soon as His Britannic Majesty had thoroughly chastised George Washington and his ragged band of rebels on the Atlantic coast.

When the red and white banner of Castile and Leon was raised over this happy land there was, apparently, no settlement at either Bayou Sara or Saint Francisville, but the countryside, especially that along the Tunica Hills, was known as “Distrito de Bayou Sara” and a census taken by the British in 1792 lists twelve names as inhabitants. This census, in all likelihood incomplete, did not refer to a village of the same name — as a matter of fact it is difficult to determine just what constituted the district of Bayou Sara which was, in turn, attached to the “Distrito de Natchez.” Those named in the census were:

Land office records show dates upon which a number of the earlier settlers made their purchases of land, and frequently footnotes to the records carry interesting information. For instance we learn that John H. Mills purchased from William Wikoff certain lands on January 12, 1789, and that Bayou Tunica was settled by Patrick McDermot in 1795. Other settlers and the dates of their acquisition of lands follows:

There were, naturally, many others whose names at this late day are not easily procurable but the foregoing indicates the class and nationality of those who took up lands here under the Spanish rule.

These English-speaking inhabitants led a care-free and prosperous life on their plantations and their hospitality was a tradition — listen to what one visitor wrote:

“These Feliciana planters live profusely — they also drink profusely costly port, madiera, sherry, after the English foolish, and are exceedingly hospitable. Your coffee in the morning before sunrise; little stews and sudorifices [something which causes sweats] at night, warm footbaths if you have a cold; boquet of fresh flowers and mint juleps sent to your room; a horse and saddle at your disposal — everything free and easy and cheerful and cordial.”

There were places along the twisting roads where the traveler could purchase a “coonbox” to slack his thirst or to satisfy a certain yearning of the stomach, for, be it known, a “coonbox” proved to be Jamaica rum sold in an egg shell! Illegally sold at that! To a flip [a flip was a mixed drink usually sweetened, spiced, and heated generally by the immersion of a hot iron in the concoction] generally one loaded egg was used. “Coonboxes” were not costly — two rum laden eggs shells cost the wayfarer one bit, and the taverns and wayside houses did a thriving business in supplying the demand in those happy Hispanic days. The eggs were deftly blown of their albumen and yolk contents through one hole in the end, the contents as deftly replaced with the fiery product of sugar cane molasses, and then again deftly sealed to await the coming of a traveler who needed a little rum, tax free, for his stomach’s sake.

Those were the happy days.

Bayou Sarah Village Founded

The present village of Bayou Sarah was founded in 1790 by John H. Mills. He settled first in the Natchez district, near Second Creek, where he formed a partnership with Isaac Johnson, an Englishman from Liverpool, and the two erected a sawmill there. When the profitable mill was swept away by a spring freshet, Mills prevailed upon Johnson to move to the Bayou Sarah region. Johnson established himself upon a plantation near the Mississippi river, which he named “Troy,” and there with his wife (she had been Mary Routh, a Virginia girl), reared a large family, and a grandson who bore his name became a governor of the State of Louisiana in 1846.

John Mills, after leaving the Natchez district, entered into a partnership with Christopher Strong Stewart, set up a trading post on the river batture to care for the growing Mississippi flatboat trade. In a short time the settlement at the mouth of Bayou Sarah became the most important flatboat stop between Natchez and New Orleans, and the village that sprang up about the Mills’ trading post took its name from the nearby bayou.

In 1809 Christopher Stewart moved to Mobile where he died. Even when steam-propelled boats began their conquest of the Mississippi river, the little village founded by John Mills retained its importance in the river trade.

“The settlement at Bayou Sarah, or Saint Francisville, only commenced about 1790 when John Mills established at this place,” wrote Dr. William Marbury Carpenter in De Bow’s Review (vol. III, 1846), and his statement agrees with the records of the Johnson family which shows that Ann Waugh Johnson, eldest daughter of Isaac Johnson, married Gilbert Mills, a son of the founder of the Bayou Sarah. A daughter, Mary Mills, became the second wife of Stephen Minor of Natchez.

Doctor Carpenter was one of Feliciana’s distinguished sons but few today seem to be aware of that fact. William Marbury Carpenter, son of James Carpenter, was born on his father’s Feliciana plantation June 25, 1811, and before he died in 1848 had attained prominence as a botanist, physician, and general scientist. As a lad he became interested in natural history and at the time his three sisters, Mary, Anne, and Louise, were pupils of Mrs. Audubon when she taught at the William Garret Johnson plantation, the boy collected specimens for John James Audubon, then in London publishing his monumental “The Birds of America.”

In his mature years botany and the study of the Indians of Louisiana became Doctor Carpenter’s hobby and medicine his life work. He was a careful student of folk lore and one of his works was a translation of Martin Duralde’s account of Chitimacha Indian mythology, one of the earliest works of its kind, now in the collection of the United States Museum of American Ethnology.

Doctor Carpenter’s grandfather was Richard Carpenter, who settled in Louisiana in 1771. Richard Carpenter’s brother Caleb, who had first settled at Pensacola, wrote a journal of a trip he made up the Mississippi in 1776 and it proves to be a very interesting and valuable historical document as it describes the many settlements and plantations between New Orleans and Natchez but strange to relate, he said nothing about a settlement at Bayou Sarah, not even mentioning that Ste. Reine had been established there.

The Saint Francis Village

The original naming of Saint Francisville, too, seems shrouded in mystery. A settlement on the very backbone of a mile-long ridge overlooking the tawny Mississippi river appears to have been a logical place for a village more so than the batture which John Mills selected as a site for his town, and in all probability houses were erected there when the Bayou Sarah town was begun.

The name of this ridge, when the French were in possession, unquestionably was “Sainte Reine,” as proved by the several French maps already mentioned. But between the days of the coming of the first Frenchmen and 1790 when John Mills established there, the ridge appears to have been only a burial place for the dead, mostly those ferried across the wide river from the Pointe Coupée side. About this time New Orleans was founded, the French built a fort on the low lands on the opposite side of the river and named it Fort Saint Joseph. It was quadrangular in shape with four bastions, storehouses were erected, as well as a prison, so documents tell us, and the place was guarded by a considerable garrison.

In 1736, when Father Raphael, a Capuchin from Luxenburg and superior of the Capuchin missions in Louisiana, visited the Pointe Coupée fort he was horrified to find the place without a church and expressed fear for the souls of the members of the garrison. It was not until 1738, however, that Father Anselm de Langres was authorized to build a chapel at Pointe Coupée under the patronage of the patron saint of the Capuchins — Saint Francis of Assissi.

Thereafter, when deaths occurred on the lowlands, the bodies were boated across the river to the highlands on the east and interred in consecrated ground. And, so tradition further has it, the name of Saint Francis was likewise ferried across the muddy waters and the name of the patron given the village that later arose there.

When the British took possession of this land in 1765 it would seem probable that there was a settlement of some kind on this ridge that marked the extreme western boundary of the new British territory, but the maps of that period do not designate one.

About 1785, after Spain’s banner succeeded the British ensign, Spanish Capuchins supplanted their French brethern of the cowl and crucifix, a grant of land was acquired from the Spanish king and a church and rectory erected, only to be destroyed by fire shortly thereafter. The grant fixes the church property on the lands now occupied by the cemetery of the Catholic church and also included the ground where the present Episcopal church now stands. One of the first priests stationed there was the Reverend Michael O’Reilly, educated for the priesthood in Spain, who came to Louisiana to administer religion to the English-speaking inhabitants in 1787.

When a village grew up around the church the name Saint Francis became attached to it. The Britishers, Scots, Irish, and Americans who had set up nearby plantations usually referred to the settlement as the “Village of Saint Francis,” but, according to documents handed down in the Routh and Johnson families, when John Mills founded Bayou Sarah and Saint Francisville the latter “was named for an old Catholic priest, Father Francis, a wandering missionary, who baptised and married the people with impunity.”

This Father Francis was, undoubtedly, François Lennan, not a Capuchin but a secular priest attached to the diocese of Bishop Peñalvert y Cardenas, and who had been stationed at a number of places along the river, including Natchez and Pointe Coupée, as noted by Mr. Roger Baudin, who is presently writing a comprehensive history of the Catholic Church in Louisiana, which promises to be a notable and sadly needed work. Father Francis, or “Don Francisco,” as he was termed by the Spanish, was located at Saint Francisville in 1810 when the Spanish were expelled by the Feliciana patriots when they rebelled, captured the fort at Baton Rouge, and established their own spectacular although short-lived republic.

In the testimony given by Spanish soldiers relating to the taking of the fort at Baton Rouge, one of the soldiers stationed at Bayou Sarah spoke of the place as “El pueblo de San Francisco.”

Letters written by English-speaking planters in the each part of 1800 show that many of these landowners mention the settlement on the ridge as “the village of Saint Francis” — the “ville” being, evidently, a later Anglo-American addition. An abomination not confined to this place — as witness the many “villes” and “burgs” throughout Louisiana and other sections of our country.

Whether named in honor of the Indian papoose Father Galvez baptised with the name of Saint Francis Xavier, for the patron saint of the Franciscan order, Saint Francis of Assisi, or for the wandering cura Francisco Lennan — Saint Francisville is Saint Francisville. And that’s that.

New Valentia

Saint Francisville was never called Nuevo Valencia by the Spanish, as has sometimes been stated. This naming refers to an entirely different village, one that was projected early in 1800 as a possible rival settlement to Bayou Sarah.

Nor was the place named for Valencia, the Spanish seaport on the Mediterranean, but was christened by a patriotic Irish man for his birthplace in County Kerry — the tiny island of Valentia on the west coast of the Emerald Isle, the same port that today is the westernmost harbor of the British Isles where transatlantic cables are brought to shore.

New Valentia (which became Latinized and written frequently “Valencia") was intended as a rival of Mills’ Bayou Sarah, and high hopes were expressed by its originators that it would become the most important settlement in Feliciana. It was to be situated on the Bayou Sarah, just a little above the town laid out by John Mills, and its sponsor was the notorious Senator John Smith of Ohio, the same Baptist clergyman who came to grips with the formidable Kemper brothers, as detailed in my “The Story of the Kemper Brothers,” published in the Saint Francisville Democrat July 8, 15, 22, 29, 1933.

Senator Smith purchased the land from Armand Duplantier in 1804 and evidently planned the new town then but his troubles with the Kempers, particularly Reuben Kemper, put a temporary stop to his ambitious plan. In 1807 the land was deeded to one Ambrose D. Smith (his relationship, if any, to Senator Smith is not clear at this writing) who launched what was in those days a strenuous advertising campaign to induce investors to purchase town lots.

Why the establishment of this new port on the Mississippi was not a success, and whether or not wharves, piers, and warehouses were ever started or completed is not known, but Ambrose Smith’s advertisement in the Louisiana Courier (New Orleans) of Friday, March 25, 1808, is in existence, and as it tells its own story it is worth reprinting here.

The Town of New Valencia

The tract of land at the mouth of Bayou Sarah having been legally transferred to the undersigned Ambrose D. Smith, he hereby offers at private sale, after the thirty-first of March next, a number of lots which form the town of New Valencia; the lots containing sixty feet in front, and from 120 to 150 feet in depth, and of other sizes, of French measure; a formal sale of each lot will be made to the respective purchasers, and the title guaranteed; the lots to remain mortgaged for the security of the payment. The proprietor reserves to himself the exclusive right to erect wharves or piers for the preservation of the banks and general utility and to erect warehouses thereon, whether on the shore of the river or bayou; as also the rights to all the lands on the two bayous not laid out in Lots or Streets, and every benefit resulting therefrom, either by a ferry or otherwise.

As a number of reports have been circulated, tending to prejudice the interests of the proprietor, respecting the validity of his title, the following documents may serve to elucidate that point:

Don Charles de Grand Pré, Colonel of the Royal Armies, Governor Civil and Military of the Place and Jurisdiction of Baton Rouge in West Florida, etc. . . .

I do hereby certify that in consequence of the final settlement of accounts between Mr. John Smith and Reuben Kemper, the said John Smith is the sole and only legitimate proprietor of the land which they formerly bought from Mr. Armand Duplantier, as appears by the records kept in the archives of this jurisdiction, and besides of one hundred and twenty acres which the said John Smith bought afterwards of the said Duplantier, the whole consisting of 750 acres, according to the figurative plan of the Surveyor General, and the original grant of the government. In testimony whereof I have delivered the present certificates under my hand and seal at the request of those concerned, in Baton Rouge, this 29th day of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seven.

CHARLES DE GRAND PRE.

I certify that the present has been well and truly translated, to the best of my knowledge, date ut supra.

PEDRO LUIS MOREL, Interpreter per interim.

The naturally advantageous position of New Valencia, which by uniting all the public roads through a large extent of the richest highlands on the river, and the excellence of the landing are such, as must forever render it the depot of all the produce of the finest country on the Mississippi, as well as the center of business; a further description of it is deemed unnecessary.

A Plan of the Lots may be seen at the Coffee-House in New Orleans, Mr. Byrnes Hotel at Natchez, and with Mr. John Murdock, the attorney of the property, who will make known the terms of sale on application. Baton Rouge, 26th February, 1808.

AMBROSE D. SMITH.

“Feliciana”

For a long, long time, in this search for information regarding the early days of the West Florida section of Louisiana, much time and energy has been given over to what appeared to be a fruitless endeavor to discover the genesis of the name “Feliciana” and why it was bestowed upon this land.

Truly Spanish, and meaning in that graceful and poetic language “happyland,” the name does not appear on either the early French or English maps nor is it so mentioned in any of the early documents concerning the historic periods of occupation by Frenchmen or the English.

“Feliciana!” — was ever a beautiful region more appropriately named? But who named it so? And why? And when?

The name apparently first appears on maps designating the course of Thompson’s Creek, a stream for which I have not as yet been successful in finding an Indian or French designation. During the British occupation a man named Thompson was given the privilege of operating a ferry from the lower Pointe Coupée village on the west side to the eastern bank of the Mississippi. His landing on the east side of the river was just inside this creek where was situated “Port Jackson” where Cochrane & Rhea conducted a store. It would seem that the creek was given the ferryman’s name.

After Galvez and his Spanish soldiers took possession of West Florida, the creek’s name was changed to “Rio Feliciana,” for it is so designated on a number of Pintado’s survey maps, and as it ran through the very heart of the district the Dons had designated Feliciana, the naming of the stream was not inappropriate.

A beautiful land named for a beautiful woman.

Who was she?

None other than a fair daughter of Louisiana. A very beautiful Creole whose charms of body, face, and mind so captivated two manly hearts that they married her. A charming beauty who became not only a governor’s wife, but in turn a Comtesse, and then Vice-reine of Mexico.

Let me then introduce Mlle. Félicité de Saint Maxent, wife of Don Bernardo de Galvez, governor of Spanish Louisiana who wrested West Florida from the British.

As she was the godmother of Feliciana we should know more of her. She was the daughter of Gilbert Antoine de Saint Maxent and Elisabeth Maroché, both of distinguished French families. The Saint Maxents had six children —

1. Gilbert Antoine de Saint Maxent, Jr., the first to enter the fort at Manchac when Galvez took it from the British at the point of the bayonet, who married a daughter of the house of Forstall;
2. François Maxmillian de Saint Maxent, who later became a Spanish governor of West Florida;
3. Josephine de Saint Maxent, who became the wife of Governor Louis de Unzaga y Amezaga;
4. Félicité de Saint Maxent, the godmother of Feliciana;
5. Pupon de Saint Maxent, a girl who married into the d’Estréhan family;
6. Celestino de Saint Maxent, who became a captain in the Third Louisiana Regiment, and was one of the Spanish defenders of the fort at Baton Rouge in 1810.

Félicité de Saint Maxent was first married to Jean Baptiste Honoré d’Estréhan, member of a prominent Louisiana French family. After her husband’s death, which occurred October 20, 1773, shortly after he led the accomplished Creole girl to the altar, Félicité was wooed by Colonel Bernardo de Galvez, at that time commander of the Louisiana Regiment, and second in rank only to Governor Unzaga.

Galvez, only 21 at the time of his arrival in Louisiana, came from a distinguished Spanish family. He was a son of Don Mathias de Galvez, then Viceroy of Mexico, a nephew of Don José de Galvez, the president of the Council of the Indes, and, as the ranking officer of this council, Don José was, next to the king, the most powerful official in Spain.

In marrying Félicité, Bernardo de Galvez merely followed the example of Governor Unzaga who had chosen from among the many daughters of the Sieur de St. Maxent. In 1776, after he head ruled Louisiana for six years, Governor Unzaga was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and sent to rule at Caracas in Venezuela, and his brother-in-law and brother in arms was made acting governor. In such fashion did Félicité take her sister’s place in the governor’s mansion.

With the triumph of Spanish arms over British valor, and the land that George the Third had named West Florida occupied by the Dons, the territory was called officially “Florida Occidental Jurisdiccion de Baton Rouge.” This regained territory was further divided into districts, viz.: Distrito de Baton Rouge, Distrito de Sainte Helena, Distrito de Chifoncté, and Distrito de la Feliciana, and the sturdy Anglo-Saxon plantation owners in the district named for Señora de Galvez began their 30-year term as faithful vassals of His Catholic Majesty Carlos the Fourth of Spain.

And so was named Félicité’s land — Feliciana. In 1785 she followed her husband to Havana, where he was raised to the peerage with the title of Count and appointed Captain General of Cuba, the Province of Louisiana and two Floridas. Upon the death of his father, Count de Galvez succeeded him as Viceroy of Mexico and Félicité became Vicereine. She was, so one writer claimed, “of surprising loveliness, as charitable, gracious and intelligent as she was beautiful. She was literally adored by the Spaniards and Mexicans, and she greatly contributed to her husband’s popularity.” Galvez died in Mexico in 1794 at the age of 38 years. His only child, Guadalupe, like her mother, gave her name to a portion of that land — a section of Northern Mexico that carries the child’s name today.

Feliciana was well named — it is indeed a beautiful happyland.

All of the foregoing, long as it has turned out to be, is at that only a sketchy history of the region that became the scene of the most romantic and adventurous series of events that led up to the determined action on the part of Feliciana planters to throw off the yoke of Spain and strike a telling blow of freedom and independence.

Not only did these Feliciana planters burst asunder the chains that bound them to an Old World power, but they declared this land free and independent, and established a lusty Tom Thumb Republic that lived for seventy-four hectic days — a short life but a merry one.

Now that the stage has been set, let us look to the actors and the parts they played in the stirring drama that ensued. Soon after wresting West Florida from England, Spain’s national emblem was changed from the banner of Castile and Leon to the “Bars of Aragon,” adopted in 1787. It had three horizontal stripes — the top and bottom ones red, each a quarter of the whole breadth, while the middle stripe of yellow, constituting one-half of the banner, carried the royal arms.

Part 1
The Purchase

It is still a prevalent impression that when President Thomas Jefferson consummated his famous “Louisiana Purchase”, when he paid Napoleon and France $15,000,000 for a great pie-shaped slice of land cut of the very heart of the North American continent, at the rate of four cents an acre, that all the territory which today comprises the present State of Louisiana was included in the domain that passed to the United States on December 20, 1803, the day William C. C. Claiborne raised the stars and stripes in the ancient Place d’Armes in New Orleans. Such was not the case; the Spanish flag continued to fly over West Florida, Baton Rouge, Ste. Helena, Feliciana, and Spanish governors and their soldiers and alcaldes continued to rule.

With the exception of “the island of Orleans,” all the territory south of the 31° line and east of the Mississippi river remained a province of Spain. For seven long years after the banner of fifteen stars and fifteen stripes was unfurled over Louisiana, this strip along the Gulf of Mexico was doggedly held by the Dons who maintained that the “Purchase” had not included this area. This brought on an argument, for the United States claimed that this particular piece of property was included in the sale by France. In this, as in many other like cases, possession proved nine points in a ten-point debate. In consequence Governor Claiborne’s jurisdiction on the east bank of the Mississippi extended north only to the junction of the big river with the stream called the Iberville, at Manchac, to the great and outspoken disgust and disappointment of many in this Spanish-ruled territory, for they had expected to become citizens of the United States coincident with the Purchase.

The majority of those populating this western section of West Florida, as had already been pointed out, were of the English-speaking races. But all were not British; many and many a settler came from that independent pioneer, and turbulent western section, Kentucky. “Kaintucks” they were called. There were many from Georgia. “Crackers” these latter were designated; still others came from the Carolinas, and, while a considerable number were Loyalists, still there were those there who were proud of the fact that they had been patriots and not “damned Tories” during the war of the Revolution.

Practically all of these English-speaking planters and settlers in Spanish West Florida openly resented the fact that this land had not been included in the Purchase, and it was with impatience that they watched the seven-year period of bickering between the diplomats who argued the case, with the shirt-sleeved Yankee diplomats getting the worst of the duel of words with the more experienced and limber-tongued representatives of Castile and Leon.

That section of West Florida which had for its seat of government the fort at Baton Rouge was ruled by Colonel Don Carlos de Grand Pré, Frenchman by birth, who had won fame and promotion for himself when he commanded French troops in the colony during the time the Bourbon flag waved over Louisiana. When the province was ceded to Spain in 1763, like many another French officer, Colonel de Grand Pré offered his sword to Spain. When he was placed in charge of the Baton Rouge sector his troubles began, especially during the Kemper rebellion in 1804 when Reuben, Nathan and Sam Kemper, exasperated by the fact that the United States had not taken West Florida as part of the land it had purchased from Napoleon, courageously raised their own flag of seven white and blue stripes and twin stars on a red union and started their own move for freedom which, (as related in “The Story of the Kemper Brothers” q.v., “St. Francisville Democrat”, July 9, 15, 22, 20, 1933) came to an untimely end.

However, dissatisfaction among the inhabitants continued and the feeling of unrest under the continuing rule of Spanish officials grew and threatened to burst all bounds. What else could be expected when the nationality of these “Spanish” citizens is considered?

No better picture of these people has been given than that by Henry Skipwith of Clinton who, in his pen portraits of these pioneers in his little known and exceedingly scarce “East Feliciana, Past and Present,” wrote in 1889:

“Vast schemes of colonization were generated in the older settlements when Mr. Jefferson made proclamation, in October, 1803, that a boundless fertile unpopulated empire had been transferred the previous April by France to the United States. That famous state paper found eager readers among our immediate ancestors.

“Still hunting our genealogical source which is common with the population of each of the eight wards without groping in the dark, we can inquire a step farther back for the origin of the sturdy mountaineers who colonized East Feliciana. We can go back to a settlement on the shores of Albemarle Sound by the Cavaliers, fleeing from the cruelties and oppression of Cromwell, back to the settlement along the South Carolina sea coast by the persecuted Huguenots who, after the siege of Rochelle, sought an asylum in the new world for the freedom of conscience denied them by Cardinal Richelieu and the Pope of Rome.

When the sea coast hives of the Cavaliers of North Carolina and the Huguenots in South Carolina became over-populated, they spread out in search of homes, the two lines of homeseekers crossed and commingled among the mountain ranges of the Carolinas. From the comminglings of these two lines sprang the great Marion, Sumter, Laurens and Pickens, and many of the great southern chiefs of the Revolutionary war; and from the commingling of these two historical lines, we claim lineal descent.

“If here amid the cane-breaks and vine clad forests of these southern wilds, we have constructed a civilization characterized by all the virtues of both lines of our haughty aristocratic forefathers, we arrogate to ourselves with pardonable pride some little credit.

“If under the enervating influence of southern heats, our progress and development has been slow, when contrasted with the more populous, faster moving northern societies still we claim to be the better, happier, purer civilization, because we have maintained uncontaminated and undefiled the moral and social characteristics of our patriotic high strung ancestors, and because no new fangled ‘ism’, foreign or native, has ever taken root in our societies which we have always jealously guarded against the poisonous preachings of visionary enthusiasts who come from abroad to teach them to be freer, who know and feel that they are already free as they ought to be — as free as they want to be.

“By these cautionary acts of vigilance we have maintained our civilization, socially and politically free from the turbulent teachings of Irish saloonists and from the socialist heresies of the beer guzzling Germans. Happy would it be for our own country if the older and more trumpeted colonies of Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, and Manhattan Island had preserved the civilization entrusted to them by ancestors as jealously as we have guarded ours.

“A population clinging to the sides of the mountain ranges of the Carolinas and Southwestern Virginia, cultivating the narrow valleys of the Clinch and Holston, rugged as the crags; impetuous as the torrents of their native mountains, still full of the military spirit inspired by the camp fires and on the battlefields of the Revolutionary War, still rehearsing by the light of their pine torches, the shame of Camden and Guilford Courthouse and the glory of Saratoga, King’s Mountain and Yorktown, still burning with patriotic fires which lighted Sumter, Pickens, Laurens and all the heroic chiefs of cavalier and Huguenot strain the path of glory, and many a Tory minion of King George the way to dusky death.

“On such a population restless and ill at ease, environed by the dull monotonies of peace, paying willing homage to the authority of the law, relying more on their own valor and trusty rifles for the protection rarely extended by the laws in those early days to segregated and remote communities. On such a population, the stirring announcement that a boundless and fertile empire, larger than the thirteen original states, for which they had risked their lives and freely shed their blood, lay to the south of them waiting to be peopled; and the promise of homes in the genial southland dazzled their imaginations, as did the spoils of England, the restless imaginations of the feudal chieftains who rallied to the standard of William Duke of Normandy.

“Tradition, corroborated by vestiges of a decayed Fort, Mission House, Cemetery and Store House, tell of a small center of population settled between Murdock’s Ford on Thompson’s Creek, and the great river and along the public thoroughfare leading from Baton Rouge, the metropolis of the political and ecclesiastical power of Spain, in West Florida to St.?Francisville, and the Church of St.?Francis. An old blotter or day book, of Cochran &?Rhea, an adventurous firm doing business in September,?1802, in the old store house now decayed, informs us from day to day until the close of?1803, who were the clients of that earliest commercial venture within the borders of our parish, and likewise discloses the names of many of the old pioneers who first awakened the primeval forests of East Feliciana with the echoing thuds of the woodsman’s axe.

“Inasmuch as the junior partner of the old store on Thompson’s Creek, by his marriage with one of old Dr. Raoul’s (a French Emigré) lovely daughters, founded a family which has played a prominent part in the material and social development of Ward One, and has moreover fastened his name and deeds conspicuously on the pages of history, I will devote a short paragraph, to keep green the memory of old John Rhea, who in 1802 was merchant, planter and alcalde for Feliciana (an officer about the equivalent of parish judge in our system). The King of Spain’s jurisdiction, as it was administered by his mild and benevolent Anglo-Saxon alcalde, was doubtless equitable and paternal, and the people of that day lived contentedly under it. When, however, a few years later, the country began to fill up with the fiery Huguenot and Cavalier immigrants from the Carolinas, and loud protests against monarchial government began to stir the hearts of the Anglo-American communities, I am afraid the King of Spain’s old Anglo-Saxon alcalde, blinded by that love of liberty characteristic of his race, forgot his royal master at Madrid, and in 1810 the alcalde figures prominently as member and president of the convention which founded and governed the free and sovereign State of West Florida.”

Don Carlos de Hault de Lassus

As he played such an important role in the events to be later described it is necessary I properly introduce Charles de Hault de Lassus de Luzière, to give him his full name. He was the eldest son of Chevalier Pierre de Lassus de Luzi�re, holder of the knight grand-cross of the royal order of Saint Michael, of an ancient noble family established in the town of Bouchaine, in Hainault, French Flanders, who had married Domitille Joséphe Dumont Danzin de Beaufort, of Beauchamp, bishopric of Arras. The chevalier was probably the same “Delousiere” mentioned by Michaux, the botanist, as having been exiled from France for having been concerned in a plot to deliver Havre to the combined English fleets. At any rate he fled from France during the Revolution, went to Spain, and then removed to Louisiana, arriving in New Orleans in 1793.

Charles de Lassus (or Don Carlos, as he becomes better identified in Louisiana history) was born in France in April of 1764, and entered the Spanish service at the age of 18 as a cadet in the Royal Regiment of which the king was colonel, known as the Cuerpo de Guardias Walonas or the Waloon Infantry. He became a second lieutenant of the Grenadiers of the Fifth Battalion, and when 29 was brevetted Lieutenant Colonel in recognition of his bravery in leading a successful assault upon and capturing Fort Saint Elmo in the Pyrenees in 1793. A year later he was again promoted and placed in charge of the king’s bodyguard in Madrid. Shortly thereafter he requested his transfer to the Louisiana regiment so that he could follow his father, sister and brothers to the New World colony.

Upon his arrival in New Orleans, Governor the Baron de Carondelet, upon receipt of orders from the Spanish court, made Don Carlos commandant at New Madrid, a post on the Mississippi river, and at the same time gave his father the command of the post of New Bourbon. In 1799 Don Carlos was made Lieutenant Governor of Upper Louisiana and stationed at Saint Louis where he ruled until 1804, when he turned over that portion of Louisiana to Captain Amos Stoddard of the United States Army under the terms of the Louisiana Purchase. It was while he was lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana in 1802, that he was promoted to the full rank of colonel in the Spanish armies.

When he was at the New Madrid post Don Carlos had for his secretary an interpreter, Pierre d’Herbigny (he later changed the spelling of his name to Derbigny and became in 1828 a governor of the State of Louisiana) who married Félicité Odile de Hault de Lassus de Luzière, sister of the commandant. Two of his brothers were also in the Spanish service in Louisiana, Jacques Marcelin Céran de Hault de Lassus de Saint Varin, who had served in the French navy before the Revolution, in Louisiana commanded the galliot or war galley “La Flecha” (The Arrow); while Camille de Hault de Lassus de Luzière was interpreter and adjutant of the New Bourbon post.

In the spring of 1807 Don Carlos de Lassus was placed in charge of Baton Rouge fort where he was immediately plunged into hot water, raised to the boiling point by the corruption of the officials under him and the lax methods by which they handled crimes. Spain, and the immediate superiors of de Lassus at Pensacola and Havana, being so far away and engrossed with other affairs, it was nigh to impossible for the complaining planters in Feliciana to refer any of their grievances to other than local officials, and these gentlemen, naturally, were prejudiced against any and all complaints lodged against their own actions and activities.

In the midst of this general discontent a trustworthy rumor was spread throughout the district that Napoleon Bonaparte had decided to regain the territory he had sold to the United States and that this occupation of West Florida would be merely his opening wedge in a campaign to retake all Louisiana. Many of the planter folk of Feliciana, although they preferred the jurisdiction of the United States, were tolerant of Spanish rule as long as they were justly treated, but the very thought of being ruled by the Corsican threw them into a state of apprehension. Something must be done to stave off the coming of the French. Consequently they, those of the better element, met secretly and decided upon a bold action to end uncertainty.

The Feliciana planters decided what they needed was a more effective, a well organized local government; but how could they accomplish this and at the same time maintain an attitude of loyalty? Admittedly this was a big problem but one, so they believed, they could solve. These planters sensibly realized that they were about to engage in a ticklish proposition and that any move they would make might be construed as treasonable; that the rope, or incarceration at Morro Castle at Havana, would result if their plans were made public or went astray.

“On the Square”

Absolute secrecy was essential to success and the planters, British, Irish, Scottish and American, realized that there was only one bond that could keep these several nationals together — their membership in an old, a very old, secret society. In consequence all their meetings were held “on the square,” and on the “five points of fellowship,” in spite of the fact that in the Feliciana district, as elsewhere in Spanish West Florida, such fraternal gatherings were strictly taboo.

The months of May and June, 1810, in the Feliciana country were hectic ones. There were many imputations of graft leveled against the governor’s secretary, one Don Raphael Croker (there seems to be evidence he was called “Croquer” at different times) and a captain in the Louisiana regiment. Governor de Lassus objected to the general tone of the complaints against his confidential assistant and demanded specific charges; he even objected to the form of remonstrances made by Captain Croker’s fellow-officers stationed at the Baton Rouge fort.

El Capitán Croker airily characterized all the charges of bribery made against him as the “pretext of embryo insurgents to justify the revolution they were fomenting”, claimed that “American officials in Mississippi and in New Orleans were inspiring the unrest”, and charged that the movement then getting underway in the Feliciana countryside was “due to the machinations of a group of physicians who were meeting secretly with some of the wealthy planters in the neighborhood of Bayou Sara and Saint Francisville.”

The commandant of the Feliciana district was one Tomaso Estevan, who, before being placed in charge of the Bayou Sara post, had been the head Spanish officer at Galvez-town, a settlement on the Iberville river below Baton Rouge which had been named for Bernardo de Galvez. When the Louisiana Purchase was consummated, Estevan turned over Galvez-town to the United States representative. While some records refer to him as being a captain, other records stamp him as a “Teniente” or lieutenant of the Spanish Louisiana regiment. He had risen from the ranks, a rather unusual thing in the Spanish army, and had married a daughter of Don José Moller, a planter, who lived on the American or west bank of the Mississippi river, evidently below the lower Pointe Coupée village.

This commandant, who represented the force and arm of Spain in Feliciana, was not invited to attend any of the meetings of the planters in his district, which is not at all strange; neither was the cura in charge of the church of San Francisco asked to attend. This priest, the Cura Francisco Lennán, and the Spanish commander were exceedingly unpopular, the charge frequently being made that between “the Cross and the Crown” the planters were continuously being bled for services of all kinds. Only one of the English-speaking population, so it appears, had anything in common with these two. He was John Murdock, an attorney, who owned a tavern at the “Murdock’s ford,” the crossing of Thompson’s Creek on the Baton Rouge road, the tavern being kept by a man named Horton.

The first news that Governor de Lassus had that an uprising of the planter folk of Feliciana was under way was when Estevan advised him of the circulation of a petition calling for a people’s convention and that already secret gatherings had taken place.

The Johnson Family

These secret gatherings were held at “Troy” plantation, the home of John Hunter Johnson, a captain in the militia. John was the eldest son of Isaac Johnson, a Britisher, who had come to West Florida about 1775, when West Florida was held by the English. Isaac was the son of the Reverend John Johnson, an Episcopal minister, and Margaret Hunter, both of Liverpool. Soon after his arrival in West Florida, Isaac Johnson settled near Natchez, married Mary Routh, who had floated down the Mississippi river with her two brothers, Job and Jeremiah, from Virginia. In partnership with John H. Mills he went into the sawmill business at Second Creek, and when this was floated away by a spring freshet, he moved to the Saint Francisville section and established “Troy” plantation about this time Mills founded Bayou Sara, as has already been related.

Isaac Johnson became the father of twelve children, rearing five sons and five daughters to maturity. The eldest of this sturdy brood being John Hunter Johnson, who married Thenia Munson. (John’s eldest son, named for his grandfather Isaac, and born in 1805, became the first Democratic governor of Louisiana in 1846, its war governor during the hostilities with Mexico, and the first governor of Louisiana born in Feliciana). Other children of Isaac Johnson and Mary Routh were:

2. Ann Waugh Johnson, who married Gilbert Mills, son of John B. Mills, and later became the wife of Moses Semple.
3. Isaac Johnson, Jr., who married Melissa Jane Williams.
4. Mary Johnson, who married Aaron Gorham.
5. Charles Grandpré Johnson, who married first Anna Ruffin Dawson, and later Eliza Eddington, of England.
6. Carolina Matilda Johnson, who married Benjamin Collins.
7. Joseph Eugenius Johnson, who married Martha Lane.
8. William Gayoso Johnson, who married Eliza Collins Johnson, daughter of William Garrett Johnson, not related.
9. Elizabeth Johnson, who married Thomas Withers Chinn. The tenth and last child was Martha Johnson, who married Dr. Nathaniel Wells Pope, the friend and clerk of John James Audubon.

Unquestionably John Hunter Johnson was not only the brains and moving spirit, but with his dare-devil brothers, Isaac, Charles and Joseph, became the strong right arm of the rebellion of the Feliciana planters against the Spanish rule in 1810. It was at his plantation that most of the preliminary secret meetings were held. It was he who dictated the wordings of the various proclamations issued, and the demands made by the members of the convention when it held the first open meeting.

While the Feliciana planters were thus quietly organizing, other trouble was brewing at Baton Rouge. Two Frenchmen from New Orleans began holding secret meetings there, practically under the very muzzles of the guns of the fort. They called nearby Frenchmen into parley under pretext of defending themselves from the Spanish but, according to word sent Governor de Lassus by Diego Morphy, Spanish vice-consul at the Crescent City, these French emissaries were in fact planning a revolution for Napoleon Bonaparte; raising a force in West Florida to join forces with others from New Orleans, to capture not only Baton Rouge but Pensacola as well. De Lassus, seeing in these French activities a well-planned propaganda against his jurisdiction in particular and Spain in general, banished the French malcontents and their local followers. The Frenchmen, fleeing Spanish wrath, crossed the Mississippi to Iberville on the American side and there openly threatened to return and overwhelm de Lassus and his entire force. Whereupon, the governor issued a call for the entire territorial militia to take up arms, he prepared for a defense of Spanish soil, and placed the fort in a state of defense.

While de Lassus was in this perturbed state of mind he received a secret dispatch from Don Tomaso Estevan in the Bayou Sara country, advising him of the circulation of an anonymous petition, calling for a popular convention. Estevan coupled these dire tidings with a fervent plea that de Lassus, accompanied by a considerable force, should come at once to Saint Francisville. Deciding that the peril from the French orators at Baton Rouge was more acute than the trouble brewing in Feliciana, de Lassus refused to leave his fort but dispatched two trusted English-speaking “citizens” to consult with Estevan and to urge the planters not to start any disturbance as by so doing they would only favor the enemies of Spain, particularly Napoleon’s scheme to repossess the Floridas and then take over Louisiana.

Señors Hicky and Mather

The two messengers were Philip Hicky and George Mather, Sr., both long residents of the district. Parents of both had come to the province when it was under the domination of England and had remained when Spain ousted the British. Hicky was the son of Daniel Hicky of Ennis, County Clare, Ireland, and Martha Scrivner, of Worstershire, England. This couple came to Louisiana and West Florida in 1775 and their one child, Philip, was born at Manchac, June 17, 1778.

Mather’s father was James Mather, of Bochin Lane, London, who emigrated to British West Florida in 1777, on the chartered ship “Royal Oak,” which also brought Richard Devall, Daniel Hicky, and others. George Mather’s sister, Ann, the third daughter of James Mather, married Philip Hicky.

George Mather and Philip Hicky had always been staunch supporters of the Spanish government in West Florida and Hicky, after the death of his father becoming a wealthy man, had, on more than one occasion loaned Spanish government of the Baton Rouge jurisdiction money to keep up its functions. The Mathers had long been among the more substantial English-born citizens forced to become Spaniards to retain their properties along the Mississippi. Therefore, the two brothers-in-law were friends and advisers that a governor could select with safety to his own interests to go to a disaffected region and urge loyalty in place of revolt.

Before Hicky and Mather could attend to the duties of their errand, John H. Johnson had summoned the principal planters of the Saint Francisville region to “Troy”. A few hours later, in a body, they rode along the dusty roads to Bayou Sara where the Spanish commandant Don Tomaso Estevan had his headquarters. They found the right arm of Spain in bed, complaining of a sudden illness (which one of the liberty-demanding planters whispered in an aside to another that it was probably “yellow” fever), but marching into his very bedroom, John Johnson presented a petition which he demanded the official should receive, read and approve. It was to the effect that he, Don Tomaso Estevan, commander of the Bayou Sara and Feliciana district should summon all of the inhabitants of Feliciana to a people’s convention, that he order all the alcaldes, syndics, militia officers, and the leading inhabitants to form a general meeting “to discuss measures to restore public tranquility.”

After a general demurrer, after a plea that he must first consult his superior, Governor de Lassus, after vainly trying to get the determined band of petitioners to put off the matter for a week or two, Estevan signed the call as he was bid and thus saved himself a hurried trip across the Mississippi river to the American side — or into the water!

The date set for the people’s convention was Saturday, June 23, and to be held at “the farm of Mr. Stirling, some 15 miles from the Mississippi river and about 10 miles below the line of demarcation,” according to one report. To another record, it was held “at Saint Francisville.” My investigations prove that this first outspoken move for liberty was held at the Stirling place, not at “Wakefield,” as some have supposed, but at “Egypt” plantation, first established on Alexander’s Creek by Alexander Stirling, which passed to his son, Lewis Stirling, upon his death in 1808. Today “Egypt” is known as “Rosale” plantation. This agrees with “10 miles from the Mississippi river,” but not with “15 miles from the line of demarcation.”

All was set for the first move; according to one of the physicians of the district “the imposthume [boil] was ready for the lancet!” Messengers dashed to and fro along the roads of the district summoning all who wanted to have a say in the future of Feliciana to be present, at high noon, at the Stirling place on the following Saturday, for then “Vox populi”, the voice of the people, would be heard roaring through the hills and dales of flower-spangled Feliciana.

It was in the midst of this activity that Señors Hicky and Mather arrived in the Feliciana district, ready to call the inhabitants together so that they could read them the letters from the Spanish consul at New Orleans, warning of the French plan, and to show these Feliciana folk that any internal disturbance would only favor the enemies of Spain, which was having its own difficulties across the Atlantic: its king, Ferdinand the Seventh, in one of Napoleon’s prisons, and the Corsican’s brother seated on the throne of Castile and Leon. They delivered the message, but —

After interviewing commander Estevan, talking matters over with the curate, Francisco Lennán, and holding a secret meeting “on the square” with the planters planning the convention movement, the two messengers returned to Baton Rouge. They assured the governor that he need have no apprehension over the coming meeting, that Estevan and the priest Lennán were jumping at shadows, that the inhabitants of Feliciana were loyal, and the governor need have no fears over what would eventuate. Hicky denied positively that there was any truth to the statements contained in a letter the frightened cura Lennán had written de Lassus; that the coming meeting of the folk of Feliciana merely cloaked a plan to seize the fort at Baton Rouge and deprive the governor of his command. Hicky and Mather had become, too, apostles of liberty.

Early in May, before matters had reached the crisis stage in West Florida, Governor William C. C. Claiborne of the Territory of Orleans (for as such was Louisiana known before it attained statehood), had left the southland and proceeded to Washington where he immediately went into a series of conferences with President Madison. That matters in West Florida formed the topic of the discussions between the head of the territory and the head of the nation is obvious, and is made certain by the contents of a confidential letter Governor Claiborne wrote in Washington on June 14, and dispatched by messenger to William Wikoff, Jr., an American planter and legislator, or as Claiborne described him in a letter to Secretary of State Robert Smith: “Wam. Wykoff, Jun., is a planter, a native of Penn. and resides on a cotton plantation nearly opposite Baton Rouge, a very honest man, is now and for some time past judge of his parish, speaks English, French, and Spanish.” Judge Wikoff was related by marriage to the Hicky and Mather families and was quite familiar with conditions on the Spanish side of the big river. First, let us read Governor Claiborne’s letter to his friend and confidant, William Wikoff:

Governor Claiborne’s Views

Although this letter had been written during the middle of June, owing to the delays of transportation of mails in those times, it was some days after the planters had met at Lewis Stirling’s place to initiate their own move for independence, that Wikoff received Claiborne’s missive, which clearly showed how President Madison regarded West Florida, and that he had not abandoned the claim that West Florida, at least as far as the Perdido river, belonged to the area purchased from France under the terms of the Purchase.

The Voice of the People

On Saturday, June 23, 1810, a great concourse of inhabitants of Feliciana gathered at “Egypt” plantation. There were more than five hundred Spanish citizens in attendance when the “voice of the people” was raised in one great shout. Ostensibly their object was “to secure themselves against foreign invasion and domestic disturbance”, if what the ringleaders said to those assembled on the lawn in front of the plantation home was the truth. These leaders, head by John Johnson, submitted a prearranged plan and it was adopted viva voce and only eleven voices, out of the five hundred, were raised in objection.

Under the plan submitted by those responsible for calling the people together, the inhabitants of Feliciana were asked to “select four of their respectable and influential neighbors” who were in turn empowered to ask each of the remaining districts of Baton Rouge, Ste. Helena, Chifoncté, Christianna, to elect their representatives to a common council. This council of the whole to be invested with the general powers of government, which they were to administer “in a manner best calculated for the common good.” Spanish officers then governing the territory would be empowered to continue in force, provided they would submit to the new authority of the people!

The plan was agreed upon with roars of approval. There were only 11 dissenting voices raised in the 500 and more who crowded the lawn in front of “Egypt’s” plantation home, and cheering Feliciana folk selected the four representatives before the meeting was declared ended, and they were: John Hunter Johnson, William Barrow, John Mills, and John Rhea. The people who had delivered the first blow for liberty then wended their way homeward.

Let us be present at this momentous meeting, witness it through the account written by a “gentleman of Pointe Coupée” to “a friend in the Louisiana territory.” It was penned the next day and said:

Baton Rouge Joins In

The news of the action of the Feliciana planters quickly spread and the other districts of the territory were soon asking permission to call similar conventions. On July 6, those in the Baton Rouge district petitioning the chief executive and signing the call were Philip Hicky, George Mather, Joseph Sharp, Samuel Fulton, Fulwar Skipwith, Dr. Andrew Steele, Thomas Lilley, John Davenport, George and William Herries, Philemon Thomas, John Morgan, Edmund Hawes, fourteen in all, anxious to follow the lead of the Feliciana patriots.

News of the contemplated convention filtered into New Orleans and the newsprints of that city were soon taking cognizance of the unsettled affairs of West Florida. Printed the “Louisiana Gazette” June 27: “Letters have been received today from Bayou Sara and Baton Rouge, stating that the people of those districts in West Florida had it in contemplation to form a government for themselves; that they had been for sometimes without law, or the semblance of government, and that self preservation drove them to the measure they were about to take. We are promised extracts of the letters, which, if handed us, shall be printed tomorrow.”

Three days later the “Gazette” stated: “We are not able to give the extracts of the letters on the subject of the commotions in West Florida. The business has assumed a serious shape, and the gentlemen who received the letters, on due consideration, think they ought not to have publicity. We are promised a communication on the subject which will appear Monday.”

As promised, in a letter signed “Common Sense,” the “Gazette” published July 2, 1810, a long letter from the Bayou Sarah region, which read:

Independence Day was celebrated with pomp and gusto in New Orleans, although the editor of the “Louisiana Gazette” noted that there was a lack of warmth and zeal among some of the citizens, particularly those of French sympathies, as witness:

Below this item was another which pertained to the troubles in Feliciana and West Florida. It read:

Governor de Lassus did not mull very long over the petitions sent him by the other inhabitants to call an assembly similar to the one held in the Feliciana country so they could select delegates. He replied immediately. He said that as the avowed purpose was to preserve intact the dominions of the Spanish monarchy and sustain Spanish laws, and as such an action would tend to insure the tranquility and well being of every citizen in the jurisdiction, therefore he freely granted permission to hold such meetings in Baton Rouge, Ste. Helena, Chifoncté, and even sanctioned the meeting already held in Feliciana.

Samuel Fulton

With this assurance that their delegate-selecting meeting would be recognized as legal, official, and non-treasonable, the Baton Rouge petitioners assembled at the home of Samuel Fulton in that village. This makes necessary a pause in the recital of events to introduce Señor Fulton. He was at that time adjutant-general of the West Florida militia and the husband of a daughter of former Governor Carlos de Grand Pré. Before settling in the Baton Rouge district, Samuel Fulton was one of the French agents in the service of the Directory in its plan to reoccupy Louisiana when the Spanish held it. He visited General George Rogers Clark in 1796, and confirmed the captor of Vincennes in his French sentiment. Later Fulton was at work, with a man named Milfort, among the Creek Indians in an endeavor to help out France’s plan to limit the western boundaries of the United States to the Appalachian mountains rather than by the Mississippi river. In August of 1804 we find Fulton in West Florida where, with the assistance of Armand Duplantier and George Dupassau, he assembled a force of some 150 men from among the settlers in the Amite and Comite region to balk the Kemper brothers in their revolt, attempt to take over the Baton Rouge fort, and make Governor de Grand Pré a prisoner.

That same summer Sam Fulton had been appointed by Governor Claiborne as “a discreet person” to open the mail bags passing through the Spanish territory on their way to New Orleans and distribute the letters in them directed to persons living in West Florida. The appointment was made by the American governor, strange as it seems, upon the advice of President Madison. The two natural postal routes to New Orleans had to pass through Spanish West Florida, one route being from Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee via Natchez, Fort Adams, Saint Francisville, and Baton Rouge. The alternate road was from Muscle Shoals to Mobile, thence to the north of the Pascagoula, and by water through lakes Borgne and Pontchartrain to Bayou Saint John and into New Orleans. In either case, for a bag of mail to reach the Crescent City where the American executive governed, the Spaniards controlled an important part of both routes. A “discreet person” to open the mail bags was necessary.

In spite of his duties as Spanish adjutant general of West Florida militia, we find among President Madison’s private papers a communication from Samuel Fulton, written during the early part of 1810, wherein Fulton confided to Madison his belief that Spain would yield to Bonaparte and that this would so change conditions in West Florida as to bring about British intervention. Consequently if the American government desired to take possession before the British Lion put its paw on the territory, he, Fulton, might be able to render the United States “effective assistance” and would be only too glad to do so. It can therefore be understood that as the adjutant general of the West Florida militia, which de Lassus would have to depend upon in case of armed revolt, Sam Fulton’s defection could seriously embarrass the régime of de Lassus and Spain.

When the petitioners filed out of Sam Fulton’s house, July 8, they had named their five delegates to the convention called for by the planters of Feliciana. Those who were to represent the Baton Rouge district were: Philip Hicky, Thomas Lilley, John Morgan, Manuel Lopez, and Edmund Hawes.

Alcalde Shepherd Brown

The convention idea was not welcomed by everyone in West Florida. The commandant and alcalde in the Ste. Helena district, Shepherd Brown by name, was one of the objectors. He had been receiving rumors of the movement and the desire “for a new order of things” which included the taking over of the reins of government, therefore he was, to say the least, astounded to receive from the governor a written permit to allow the inhabitants of Ste. Helena and Chifoncté to meet and select delegates. Suspicioning that de Lassus had been forced to issue the permits because he was not strong enough to forbid such gatherings or to punish those behind the movement, Brown sent one of his trusted lieutenants, Joseph Thomas, to Baton Rouge to learn from the governor’s own lips whether or not he had voluntarily issued the permits or whether they had been extorted.

If the governor was not acting on his “own free will and his course was designed to preserve intact this part of the kingdom and of our loved and worthy sovereign, Don Ferdinand VII, and to sustain his government and wise laws,” and the right to meet in convention assembled “had been extorted by fear,” then Shepherd Brown declared that the Ste. Helena district which he commanded did not desire a change of any kind, and, if the governor needed help, he, Brown, “could muster in a few hours more than five hundred men ready and willing to sacrifice their lives for the honour of the Spanish flag, and who would obey his word!”

The author of these bombastic words was an American-born individual who settled in the West Florida section soon after John McDonough arrived in Louisiana to begin his work of amassing a fortune in the New Orleans trade and in cypress swamps along the Iberville, Amite and Comite rivers. In this latter endeavor McDonough was ably assisted by his confidential agent in West Florida, Shepherd Brown. It was Brown who greased Spanish palms to secure these “worthless” lands for the notorious spendthrift of the Crescent City. No small wonder then that Shepherd Brown did not look with friendly eye on any move for any kind of government.

The governor reassured Brown’s messenger, wrote the alcalde of Ste. Helena, that he had not been “forced” to permit the meeting, that all who had asked to hold them had done “so with proper respect”, that he believed the people not only well disposed towards him but to Spain and their sovereign Ferdinand, and the “real meaning of the coming convention is merely an endeavor on the part of the inhabitants to prove their loyalty to Spain.” Which either means de Lassus was a fool, or that he was ready to make a corrupt bargain with the leaders, or that he was craftily playing for time to recruit a sufficiently large force to crush the revolt at one paralyzing blow. Events seem to prove the third suspicion.

Reassured that the governor was not acting under force, Brown issued the call in his district for popular gatherings to elect delegates to the greatly feared convention. As it would be impossible to secure one convenient common meeting place, he divided it into three sections (Ste. Helena at that time took in what is now that parish and Livingston, bounded on the west by the Tickfaw and on the east by the “Chifoncté”), two delegates to be chosen from one section, and one from each of the remaining two precincts. Those “elected” were Joseph Thomas, Shepherd Brown’s trusted and confidential lieutenant; John W. Leonard, son of Don Gilberto de Leonardo (the father served under de Lassus as Ministro Interventor y Tesorero, which means he was the comptroller and treasurer, but when Don Gilberto left the Emerald Isle he was plain Gilbert Leonard and, even when he learned to speak Spanish, he spoke it with a thick Irish brogue); William Spiller and Benjamin O. Williams were the two selected from the outlying precincts of St. Helena. The Chifoncté, or Tanchipaho region sent one delegate only, he was William Cooper, a former “North Carolina Tory” now an adherent of Shepherd Brown.

The date set for the meeting of the convention of delegates was set for July 25, and the designated spot, a plantation on Saints John Plains, or “The Plains,” sometimes designated as “Buhler’s Plains,” but usually written “St. John’s Plains.” The place was noted for its many massive live oaks about the house and was on the right hand side of the road leading from Baton Rouge to Jackson, La., near the Presbyterian or “Plains” church. According to most accounts it was the home of Richard Devall, although one record states it was the home of Thomas Lilley; their places were not far apart.

While awaiting the action of the other districts the Feliciana ringleaders were not inactive. They gathered at “Troy” plantation and drew up a tentative code, or constitution, a sort of declaration of purpose to acquaint the people in general as to their aims. Those concerned in confecting this proclamation, as it may best be termed, included John H. Johnson, William Barrow, Judge Rhea, John Mills, Lewis Stirling, et al., but most of the evidence at hand seems to prove that this “constitution” was wholly written by Edward Randolph of Pinckneyville, a partner of Daniel Clark of New Orleans.

Word of the activities and intentions of the Feliciana patriots filtered into New Orleans and were the subject of conversation in the streets and were also noticed by items in the daily press. In its issue of June 18 the “Louisiana Gazette” published, under the heading “Extract of a letter from Bayou Sarah, received this day’s mail":

The next day’s issue contained the following paragraph:

The First Proposed Code

Ten days before the delegates gathered in convention, assembled as representatives of the people of West Florida, the “Natchez Chronicle", July 17, published in full the tentative constitution or declaration, “code” would be a better word, that Edward Randolph, Johnson, Barrow, Rhea, Mills, Stirling and other Feliciana planters had put to paper in advance of the meeting. Said the “Chronicle", which sent one of its editors to the meeting to report what eventuated:

On July 25, the “Louisiana Gazette” republished the Natchez paper’s account so that the people of New Orleans would know the aims of the patriots; the “National Intelligencer” picked up the story for the information of the whole nation, and later a clipping sent to England was republished in Yorke’s “Weekly Political Review.”

If Thomas Jefferson is to be regarded the author of America’s famous “declaration,” so must Edward Randolph be entitled to a like fame as the author of the first West Florida declaration. Although it was not either the declaration or the constitution finally adopted by the conventionalists, it should be again reprinted in full:

While this tentative “code” was never adopted by the convention of the people, it does, however, give us an insight into the desires and intentions of those planning the orderly uprising that ended in a rough and tumble fight.

The tricolor of Republican France and Napoleon Bonaparte’s Empire, first raised in 1794 in France, flew for only 20 days over New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana, but never over West Florida. This flag was designed after the banner of the Netherlands, which had red at the hoist instead of blue.

Part 2
The Convention

The day set for the meeting of the Convention, July 25, found the delegates from the various districts gathered at Saints John Plains, and the opening meeting was given over to organization. John Rhea, of Feliciana, was unanimously selected as the presiding officer; Dr. Andrew Steele, of Baton Rouge, was made secretary; George Mather, Sr., acted as recorder, and a Feliciana planter named Samuel S. Crocker was designated clerk.

Feliciana was represented by Judge Rhea, John Hunter Johnson, John Mills, and William Barrow. The five delegates from Baton Rouge included Philip Hicky, Thomas Lilley, Edmund Hawes, John Morgan, and Manuel Lopez (the latter, it will be observed, was the only delegate who did not bear an Anglo-Saxon name). The four from Ste. Helena were John W. Leonard, John Thomas, William Spiller, and Benjamin O. Williams. The lone delegate from the Chifoncté district was William Cooper.

“The members naturally hesitated to proceed along the unaccustomed path of self-government,” says one account. “Their experience under the Spanish régime and a certain mutual distrust caused them to avoid hasty action until each had disclosed his attitude. Some of them were ready for common action and were doubtless responsible for circulating an anonymous code that had already been favorably received. This was designed to place all political power in the hands of the convention, acting jointly with de Lassus.” This “anonymous code” was the so called constitution or declaration written by Edward Randolph, which had been circulated by the Feliciana ringleaders. As has already been stated this “code” was never adopted, the real declaration and constitution being entirely different documents and adopted later.

The first act of the convention was to pass comprehensive resolutions defining its powers. They were:

After thus deftly hamstringing Don Carlos with this forced complicity, the delegates called it a day and on Thursday, July 26, got down to business when the several delegates opened their budgets of grievances.

It is worthy of note that neither John Morgan of Baton Rouge nor William Cooper from the Chifoncté district had any grievances to air; they probably agreed upon what some of the others believed needed correction in the government of the whole district.

The First Convention Ends

So ended the first meeting the greatly feared and cheered convention of the people. Before adjourning to meet again on the second Monday in August, the members addressed a communication to Governor de Lassus, and appointed a committee consisting of Philip Hicky, Manuel Lopez and Joseph Thomas to present it to him.

This fulsome address advised the governor of the satisfaction the delegates derived from his approval of their meeting and, in the name of their constituents, they thanked him for his efforts “to preserve popular tranquility in a time of general anxiety and alarm.” They assured his excellency that the sole object of their deliberations was “to promote the safety, honor, and happiness of our beloved king, Ferdinand VII, to guard against his enemies, foreign and domestic, and to punish wrongs and correct abuses dangerous to the existence and prosperity of the province.”

They closed with the hope that their future action would meet with his approval, called attention to the passages in their resolutions which dealt with the powers of government and his salary, notified him of the appointment of a committee that would seek to redress their grievances, and advised him that it was their intention to meet again August 14, to receive the report of said committee and to proceed in the discharge of any duties enjoined by our constituents.

“May God preserve you many years,” was the ending.

New Orleans was evidently very much interested in what went on in West Florida as the “Louisiana Gazette” reported every bit of Florida news that came within reach of the typecases. Of the first meeting it printed:

This closing sentence could not have been at all reassuring to those responsible for this first move for liberty. Was Governor Folch actually on his way to Baton Rouge? That was a serious question, especially to the Feliciana ringleaders.

The Governor Accepts

Two days after receipt of the address from the convention delegates, Don Carlos de Hault de Lassus dipped his crow quill into the ink horn and in a lengthy communication informed the delegates that he accepted their terms. The original letter in Spanish and an English translation of it by William Herries of “Montesano,” are in existence today and from the original English translation the following is transcribed:

The answer was promptly dispatched, it appears, as three days later John Mills punctiliously acknowledged its receipt.

The delegates departed to their several homes at the conclusion of their labors but during the following two weeks the Feliciana men were not idle. It was necessary to draw up a comprehensive set of ordinances and resolutions that the delegates could adopt as future laws for the province. Much paper and ink was used in the confection of these ordinances, for it was realized that the tentative code drawn up by Edward Randolph would not answer all the needs.

William Barrow — Patriot

William Barrow, after his return to his Feliciana plantation “Locust Grove,” on August 5th, wrote a lengthy communication to his friend, Dr. J. R. Bedford, of Nashville, Tenn. Barrow confessed that notwithstanding the apparent harmony, which he hoped would continue, the delegates were at a loss as to what course they should adopt. He said that some were for the United States, some for Great Britain, and others were for a continuation of the Spanish rule under Ferdinand VII. Therefore, for the present, at least, the delegates had determined to continue the present Spanish laws but that they should be amended, but with responsible men of the province put into the offices, and that all inhabitants should be treated with equal justice.

Barrow confided to Doctor Bedford that in the midst of this popular confusion and ignorance his fellow-citizens wished to know what they “might reasonably expect from the United States.” He declared the delegates “had no desire to cast a stigma on themselves or risk their best rights and interests.” Barrow admitted that he hoped the measures taken “would quiet the minds of the people and give the leaders opportunity to determine the best method of procedure.” As the United States had “excited them by laying claim to the territory,” Barrow believed the Washington government was in duty bound to advise the delegates in the present crisis, and to act as was becoming to “a free and independent nation.” Barrow closed his letter by mentioning a persistent rumor that Spanish soldiers were being sent to Baton Rouge from Pensacola by Governor Folch to “restore the old order of things, and made no secret of the fact that he and his fellows responsible for starting the convention movement regarded such a possibility with proper apprehension. The people have definitely selected their delegates and Barrow declared he believed the inhabitants would support their delegates if such danger arose.

Doctor Bedford immediately forwarded this communication to President Madison. It was the second letter from Barrow that the Nashville physician had sent to Washington. Early in June Barrow had confided to Bedford of the unrest in Feliciana and the rest of the province and had stated that he firmly believed the people of the district “were absolved from allegiance to the mother country and had a natural right to assume self-government,” and that “in time West Florida must become a part of the United States.” To facilitate such an ambitious step, Barrow believed, it might be best, pending action by the Washington government, for the liberty-loving Floridians “to form a temporary independent government,” and to “include East Florida, if the latter desired to co-operate.” William Barrow was born in Edgecombe county, North Carolina, in 1765, and accompanied his mother, Olivia Ruffin Barrow, to Feliciana in 1798, where he established “Locust Grove” plantation (now “Highland") under a Spanish grant. Before leaving Carolina he had married Pheraby Hillard, and on his Feliciana plantation his many children were born, they were: Robert Hilliard Barrow (who married Eliza Pirrie), Ann, or Nancy Barrow; William Ruffin Barrow, Bennett Barrow (died in infancy); Martha Hilliard Barrow (who married Daniel Turnbull), Bennett Hilliard Barrow, and Eliza Eleanor Barrow who married a cousin, William Hill Barrow.

William Barrow became one of the solid men of the Feliciana country. He was of a retiring disposition but proved a tower of strength in the deliberations of the convention. To use his own words to Doctor Bedford “his neighbors had been weak enough to choose him as a delegate” but he showed no sign of weakness in championing the ideal that Feliciana and the rest of West Florida must, in time, become a part of the United States.

There were others who believed that the people desired intervention, that the American eagle must hurry to this territory before the British Lion could retake both the Floridas. In an early issue of the Natchez “Weekly Chronicle” a writer, one evidently familiar with all that was going on “below the line", reviewed the situation and, evidently wishing to prod the Washington government into early action, closed his review with these words:

Governor Holmes of the Mississippi Territory, instructed by Washington to keep an eye on what was going on in West Florida, advised President Madison of the actions of the convention delegates and inclosed in his letter this clipping from the Natchez newspaper. Holmes wrote that it was evident to him that the people of the district desired to join the United States but that “they feared to make known such a desire or take the necessary step until they knew the attitude of President Madison,” that Governor de Lassus “had only sanctioned something he could not prevent,” and ventured to suggest that West Florida could be obtained without any material expense or “even the loss of a single life.”

But President Jimmy Madison answered never a word. He and Governor Claiborne continued their discussions of the situation at Washington, but, even though Governor Holmes of Mississippi, and Acting-Governor Thomas Bolling Robinson of Orleans Territory at New Orleans, obeyed his instructions to keep a “wakeful eye” on Baton Rouge, the president sent into the disturbed area secret messengers who fraternized with the delegates and people in general. Although he said nothing, Madison was thoroughly alive to what was transpiring.

The Convention’s Second Meeting

When the delegates of the people reassembled in convention, one of the Feliciana delegation was absent. Illness, a fever, kept John H. Johnson confined to “Troy” plantation. Merely as a spectator, Colonel Joshua G. Baker, an officer of the Mississippi Territorial militia, was sent to St. John’s Plains as the personal observer of Governor Holmes. His duty was to ascertain the real views of the delegates and those they represented.

On the eve of this second gathering, Monday, August 13, a number of the prominent planters sent an address to their Feliciana representatives so that they might know of the sort of backing they had at home. Addressed to “The members of the Representative Convention assembled at St. John’s Plains”, it read:

Twenty-one Gun Salutes

Governor de Lassus’ lot was not a happy one during these dog days of 1810.

His officers, those constituting the garrison of regular Spanish troops, objected to their chief’s course in recognizing or dealing with the members of the so-called people’s convention. They saw nothing but armed revolt and urged their commander to cease all contact with the delegates. Some of these sessions with the governor were stormy ones but the unhappy executive put a pudgy hand over each ear when the protests of the Dons wearing the uniform of Spain became too vociferous.

On Sunday night, August 19, de Lassus was host at a dinner he gave in honor of the members of the convention. The banquet was held in the Government House or “Governor’s House,” which had been erected by Carlos de Grand Pré, its site was what is now the “corner of Repentence and Convention streets.” The governor, in his anxiety to do all honor to the conventionalists, invited other citizens of the province and village to attend, but scenting possible complications, if not actual danger, only a few not directly interested gathered about the festive board.

The governor’s entire staff, arrayed in their gaudy uniforms and glittering orders, was in attendance, though with sour faces. They included Don Gilberto de Leonardo, the treasurer; Captain Celestino de Saint-Maxent (he was a brother of Félicité, wife of Don Bernardo de Galvez) second in command; Captain Raphael Croker, the governor’s secretary; sub-Lieutenant Louis de Grand Pré; Lieutenant Juan Metzinger, and Lieutenant Francisco Morejon, and some others. The feast was punctuated by many toasts to His Catholic Majesty Ferdinand VII. Hopes were expressed for his speedy restoration to the throne of Spain, and before the feasters staggered to their beds, a salute of twenty-one guns was fired from the guns of the fort — in spite of the plea of the magazine guard, Eulogio de las Casas, that his supply of powder was low and might be needed for other purposes!

Several days later the delegates returned the governor’s gesture by a banquet spread at the home of M. Folquier, some distance from Baton Rouge, where, in addition to the customary salute to His Catholic Majesty of Spain, a rousing toast was also drunk to the president of United States. In addition to these formal feasts, de Lassus gave frequent small dinners, entertaining guests from Feliciana, and usually among those at the governor’s board was Philemon Thomas, commander of the militia of the province.

While all was serene on the surface, all was not quiet in the governor’s household — his officers were in a near state of mutiny. As a result stormy sessions became the order of the day in the fort. Lieutenant Juan B. A. Metzinger, commandant of artillery, and the magazine guard, Las Casas, told the governor to his face that they would attend no more peace dinners, and further more, as the store of powder at the fort was being so rapidly eaten away by the firing of twenty-one gun salutes in honor of the delegates, and every time an American gunboat sailed up or down the Mississippi, that they would fire no more! In a rage, de Lassus said they would either fire the cannon, as he directed, or they could consider themselves under arrest for disobeying orders! The harassed governor, at one rough session with his protesting officers, declared “If I do not rule to suit you, take my baston and govern!”

The Seditious Broadside

While the Spaniards were fuming, fretting and fussing with their hard-headed superior, the delegates were whipping their ordinances into shape, as they were many and varied in character they needed lots of writing and much revision. While they were thus preparing the new laws which de Lassus must approve, alarming news was brought into Baton Rouge by one of Captain Tomaso Estevan’s soldiers. The commander at Bayou Sarah wrote that John Murdock, so friendly to him and the Spanish regime, had discovered, affixed to a tree in the Saint Francis village, a proclamation most revolutionary in character. Murdock had reported this to a guard but when the soldier reached the tree, the offending broadside had been removed. However, the curate, Francisco Lennán, secured a copy from a parishioner and so Captain Estevan was able to send it on to de Lassus as proof a revolt was being planned.

Estevan also advised that he was in a critical situation and begged the governor to send him a boat so that he and his soldiers “could flee Bayou Sarah” and seek the safety of the Baton Rouge fort. Estevan said he was willing to sacrifice himself but did not want his loyal soldiers to “become victims of public vengeance.”

The proclamation that terrorized the Bayou Sarah commander was signed: “A Friend of the People.” Its opening sentence said that any man who would destroy the proclamation “deserved to live forever under a despotic government,” and the author went on to urge the people of West Florida to “declare themselves independent, just as the people of Spanish America were doing.” The anonymous writer drew contrasts between the administration of justice in West Florida and in the United States, which were unfavorable to the Spanish brand. He cited cases of forcible imprisonment from which release could be secured only by bribery. He made sarcastic reference to King Ferdinand VII, “then absent on a visit to his friend Bonaparte!” He intimated that Floridians should throw off allegiance to him and seek a union with the neighboring American territory, and as the inhabitants had already taken one step towards self-government “NOW was the time to take another.” Having elected men recognized as of firm character, just principles, and republican spirit, the people should now further their efforts to the uttermost. “Spanish oppression is no more.” The people could now freely communicate with each other and adopt a form of government that would afford them not only protection but liberty. The people were advised to form little parties among their friends and send to their representatives a report of their action, then the members of the convention would know that the people were ready to sustain them in any step towards independence they might elect to make. As the delegates had already heard from those who wished to continue the Spanish system, they should now “be given the views of the friends of liberty and justice.” It was promised that all such communications would be kept secret so that their authors need fear no betrayal.

Although the writer of the broadside asserted he “was known to many of his fellow-citizens,” he withheld his name purposely. He declared that he, along with others, had long suffered the evils flowing from Spanish despotism, but now, so he informed all who would read, that the party in favor of independence was growing, and that “their brothers of the United States would fervently rejoice in their return to liberty and a system of pure republicanism.” He entreated them to repose confidence in their delegates and sustain their actions and thereby avoid the necessity of calling another convention before they were ready to choose an independent legislative body.

As if this was not enough to scare de Lassus and his military officers, on top of the news of the circulation of this broadside in Feliciana came a secret missive from Shepherd Brown. In it the commandant of the Ste. Helena district confided that he “now distrusted even the delegates he had picked to represent the Ste. Helena and Chifoncté districts in the convention.” Also that his people were so aroused over a report that the former Spanish commandant Lieutenant Francisco de Hevia was about to leave Pensacola and assume charge of the Tickfaw region that they were about to rebel. Shepherd Brown was also distrustful of his militia officers since they learned of the attitude of the Feliciana people. However, in spite of all this Alcalde Brown “believed” the greater portion of his people would prove loyal should a recourse to arms be the outcome.

Came another missive from the frightened Estevan at Bayou Sarah, carried to the fort by a soldier on a blown and lathered horse. The members of the convention from Feliciana were carrying on what he termed a referendum among the people and this amounted, so the Spanish commander declared, to a “lifting of the mask,” for Isaac Johnson had ordered his troop of horsemen to be ready at any hour for a sudden descent upon Baton Rouge. Estevan again declared his life to be in danger and warned the governor that in all probability he would have to take refuge on the American side of the river, consequently de Lassus need not be surprised if the next communication from him would be written at Pointe Coupée!

The Spanish Junta

On Tuesday, August 21, the bewildered governor called a junta to meet at the government house to consider the critical situation. The conventionalists were to meet the following day to put the finishing touches on their series of ordinances that in future would govern the province. All of his officers attended the junta in a body and each was as concerned as was the governor.

Attending were Don Gilberto de Leonard, the comptroller and treasurer, whose son John was a member of the convention and who, so some of the Spanish officers charged, had gone over to those plotting against the government; Captain Celestino de Saint Maxent, second in command; Captain Raphael Croker, the governor’s secretary; Lieutenant Francisco Morejon, Sub-tenente Don Louis Anton de Grand Pré, Lieutenant Juan Baptiste Antoinette Metzinger, in charge of artillery; Sub-lieutenant Antonio Balderas, Lieutenant Manuel Castaños, Don Eulogio de las Casas, the guardia almacen; Don Juan Perez, cabo de sala; Cadets Don Felipe de Grand Pré and Don Estevan de Grand Pré, brothers of Louis and sons of the former governor of Baton Rouge; Don José Maria de la Peña, Don Domingo Ullio, patron de Falua; Don Pedro Gondeau, the cirujano or surgeon; and Don Santiago Rault, the surgeon of the Feliciana district, who had left Tomas Estevan alone to face the “infuriated Gringos of Feliciana.” There were other officers and Dons gathered fearfully in the government house, which was outside the fort, awaiting his excellency’s word.

The governor began by explaining why he was agreeing with the requests and demands of the convention delegates, claiming he had adopted such a course to “avoid any calumniating attacks” on his character. He pointed out to his inferiors that he was without proper resources to resist and had endeavored to avoid insults to the flag of Spain. He had warned his superiors at Pensacola and Havana what might happen because he knew he could not depend upon the militia of the province and therefore needed veteran troops at his back. He claimed he had reported the fort in need of repair and the lack of powder but had received neither reinforcements nor a reply to his many letters asking for help. Time was needed for assistance to arrive from Havana.

He reminded his officers that the convention delegates had at least professed loyalty to the Spanish king, and if he did not accept their declarations on face value he would only expose the flag of Spain to greater insults and his officers, soldiers, and himself to violence. These “disturbers of the peace, joined by vicious roving vagabonds,” would lay siege to the fort at the first sign of opposition from him and “visit their rage on the peaceful inhabitants.” At each salute the artillery in the fort approached uselessness.

Therefore, he told the junta, he believed he was acting correctly in appearing to accept the program of the convention and thereby save the province from the horrors of civil strife. As long as he and his officers thought they could safely do so, they should pretend to embrace the provisions of the new ordinances with the exception of accepting the salaries offered, and maintain the situation as it existed “as long as the delegates maintained an appearance of loyalty” and seemed “to be working to preserve the province for Ferdinand VII.” On the first indication of a contrary purpose, the governor proposed that he, officers, and soldiers would repair to the fort and “defend themselves to the last extremity!”

For two hours discussion raged in the government house. The governor’s course did not gain an unqualified approval from his subordinates. Lieutenant Louis de Grand Pré expressed himself freely, declared if the governor would take the proper steps he still could quell the uprising, and Don Louis offered to lead the troops that would arrest the ringleaders. In this he was backed by Lieutenant Metzinger. But theirs were the only dissenting voices. The others agreed that the crafty action de Lassus counseled was the course of wisdom.

The next day, August 22nd, the delegates met and with only one dissenting vote passed the ordinances and resolutions they had been confecting for weeks. This remarkable document, which consisted of 32 pages, was set up and printed at Natchez, but today only one copy of it appears to be in existence, the one owned by Richmond Favrot of New Orleans.

When Don Carlos de Hault de Lassus attached his name, with its flowing paraph below it, to the ordinances the planters of Feliciana had won their first step for liberty.

Wrote a correspondent of the “Louisiana Gazette” to that New Orleans newspaper:

The same day he signed on the dotted line, the governor and the delegates issued a proclamation to the public. It read:

Baton-Rouge, August, 22, 1810.

In addition to the joint proclamation in which they joined their names with that of Governor de Lassus, the members of the Convention believed that the inhabitants of the entire jurisdiction should become acquainted with what they had done and to that end prepared an address August 25, in which they explained what they had done to correct the abuses the people in West Florida had long borne. It read:

This expression and forerunner of what had been accomplished made public, the delegates sent the fruits of their labors, the Ordinances, to John W. Winn at Natchez, to be set in type and distributed in pamphlet form. Seemingly, these ordinances covered every phase of the series of contentions that had wracked the province for the past several years, truly an ambitious plan concocted by ambitious men.

To thoroughly understand what these men planned for the people they represented, the whole series of articles should be read . . . many as they were . . . as promulgated. Copied from the only known record, they are:

An Ordinance

Providing for the Publick Safety, and for the Better Administration of Justice within the Jurisdiction of Baton-Rouge, in West-Florida.

Whereas the Good People of this Jurisdiction, ever faithful to their Legitimate Sovereign, and willing at this eventful period to contribute whatever may be in their power, to maintain the integrity, honor and independence of the Spanish Nation, have a right to enjoy the privileges of Loyal Subjects, and to exercise the powers which may be necessary for their preservation:

And whereas, from causes which could not have been foreseen or avoided, their situation has become extremely perilous, at a time when they cannot look with confidence to the mother country for protection, and when internal regulations and powers of the Government are too imperfect to be relied on, either for preserving domestic tranquility, or for employing the strength and resources of the country in its defence:

And whereas, the evils and dangers originating from the causes before mentioned, are of such a nature as to make it necessary that the most prompt and efficient measures be adopted for the preservation of the province, it becomes lawful and expedient for the people, in conjunction with the chief magistrate of the jurisdiction, to establish such ordinances as the present exigencies require.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the people of this jurisdiction, in convention assembled, recognizing his Excellency Charles Dehault Delassus, as Governor thereof, and acting with his concurrence, with a view to preserve and defend this portion of the dominions of our beloved King, Ferdinand the seventh, and holding ourselves responsible to all superior authorities, deriving their powers from him, for the rectitude of our intentions and acts, declare ourselves for the time being, the guardians both of the publick interests, and of the rights of the individual members of the community, for the whole benefit we establish this ordinance.

Article I.

Whereas, it is necessary for the publick safety, that permission be given to strangers of reputable character to become residents, and enjoy equal privileges with us, who may thereafter become interested in maintaining order and obedience to the laws.

Section 2. Be it therefore ordained by the Representatives of the people of the Jurisdiction of Baton Rouge in convention assembled, with the concurrence of the governor thereof, and it is hereby ordained, by the authority of the same, That from and after the establishment of this ordinance, it shall be lawful for the commandants of the several districts of this jurisdiction, to grant permission to all free persons of good character and peaceable conduct, emigrating from any foreign country whatever, in amity with us, and wishing to establish themselves in any lawful trade or occupation within this jurisdiction, and also professing their willingness to support the laws and government thereof. And all such residents having demeaned themselves in a peaceable and orderly manner, and contributed their due proportion for the support of the Government and defence of the country for two years, shall enjoy thereafter, the same privileges and rights with the present inhabitants.

Section 2. And be it further ordained, That with such permission of residence, the said commandants shall also grant permission to all such emigrants as aforesaid, to import and bring into the district, all slaves and other movable property belonging to them, or which they may have in charge, to be employed or disposed of lawfully, in any manner which to them may seem fit and expedient, the owners or importers of such slaves, or moveable property paying such duties therefor, as may be prescribed by law, or hereinafter ordained.

Section 3. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of all such emigrants as aforesaid, within fifteen days after their arrival within any district of this jurisdiction, to report themselves to the commandant thereof, and exhibit to him an accurate statement of the number appertaining to their respective families, or whom they may have in charge, both of free persons and slaves, and to pay for such slaves the lawful duties to the said officer, together with his lawful fees, for granting permission of residence; on failure whereof, the party so offending shall be subject to a fine of twenty dollars, and every slave imported, for whom the duties shall not have been paid as aforesaid, or secured to be paid within six months thereof, shall be confiscated and sold for the benefit of the district.

Section 4. And be it further ordained, That no deserter from the armies or navy of any nation in amity with us, or fugitive from justice, or any person bound to service in any foreign state as aforesaid, shall obtain permission of residence within this jurisdiction, or derive any benefit from such permission, if obtained by fraud or in contravention of this ordinance; but any person of that description who may hereafter take refuge within this jurisdiction, or on satisfactory proof hereafter thereof being made to the governor or commandant of a district, shall be delivered by either of said officers, to an officer of such foreign state, as shall be duly authorized to demand the same.

Article II.

For the Organization of the Militia.

Section 1. And be it further ordained, That the governor of this jurisdiction shall be the commander in chief of all the militia thereof, and shall commission all officers therein, and have authority to call the whole or any part thereof into actual service, at any time when it may be necessary for the publick safety.

Section 2. And be it further ordained, That the military of this jurisdiction shall be divided into four regiments, which shall be composed of all the free white men above the age of sixteen and under fifty years, civil magistrates, ministers of religion, doctors of physic, millers, keepers of publick ferries, and invalids excepted, who shall be enrolled in the manner herein after prescribed. Those within the district of Baton Rouge shall compose one regiment; those of the district of New Feliciana, one regiment; those of the district of St. Helena, one regiment; and those of the district east of Ponchitoola, including Chiffonta, Bogcheto and Pearl river settlements, to be called the district of St. Ferdinand, one regiment.

Section 3. And be it further ordained, That one colonel commandant shall be appointed by this convention, and commissioned by the governor, who shall command the said regiments when formed into one brigade, and there shall be appointed and commissioned in like manner, one colonel and two majors for each regiment.

Section 4. And be it further ordained, That there shall be appointed by the colonel commandant, and commissioned by the governor, one brigade inspector, with the rank of major, who shall be aid to the colonel commandant, and under his direction shall appoint a regimental muster in each district, in the month of November, and a muster of each battalion in the month of April annually, at which muster it shall be the duty of all the officers and men belonging to the said regiments and battalions respectively, to attend, armed and equipped in the manner herein after prescribed, and they shall be subject to the orders of the commanding officer of the day, at each of the said musters, during the time of parade.

Section 5. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the colonel commandant to attend personally, together with the brigade major, at each of the said regimental musters, to inspect the discipline and equipment of the troops, and give such orders as he may think proper, to the colonel of the regiment, respecting the manoeuvers of the day.

Section 6. And be it further ordained, That the brigade inspector shall attend each battalion muster, and inspect the arms and accoutrements of the troops: He shall moreover receive from the colonels their regimental returns, and transmit a copy thereof to the colonel commandant, who shall cause the same to be laid before the governor.

Section 7. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of each colonel, immediately after the receipt of his commission, to nominate the officers of his regimental staff viz.: one adjutant, one surgeon and surgeon’s mate, one pay master and one quarter-master, making a return thereof to the governor, who shall commission the said officers accordingly.

Section 8. And be it further ordained, That each colonel, together with the two majors of the same regiment, with himself, assembled by him for that purpose, immediately after they shall have been commissioned, shall divide the bounds of the regiment into two battalion districts, as equal in population as may be, assigning one major to each battalion.

Section 9. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of each major, under the direction of the colonel, to proceed without delay to lay off the bounds of the several companies within his battalion district, and to advertise the times and places of holding elections for one captain, one first lieutenant and one second lieutenant within the bounds of said company, at not less than three of the most publick places in said bounds, and at least ten days previous to the times appointed for the said elections.

Section 10. And be it further ordained, That each major shall be judge of the elections aforesaid, within his battalion district, and shall report the persons having the greatest number of votes for each of the said offices, to the colonel of the regiment, who shall transmit the same to the governor, whereupon commissions shall be issued by him for the said offices, without delay.

Section 11. And be it further ordained, That the field officers of regiments shall have power from time to time to lay off new companies, and divide or alter the bounds of such as may have been established, when they may think proper, causing elections to be held for officers where necessary, in the manner herein before stated.

Section 12. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of each captain immediately after the receipt of his commission to appoint any number of sergeants and corporals, not exceeding four, one drummer and one fifer within the bounds of his company, who shall serve for one year, and until others shall be appointed; and to enroll every free able bodied white man within the bounds of his company, between the ages of sixteen and fifty years: He shall also continue from time to time to enroll all such as may remove into the bounds of his company, or attain the age of sixteen years, within the same, who are not exempted from performing militia duty by the ordinance: In all doubtful cases whether with respect to nonage, overage or infirmity, of any person claiming such exemption, the captain shall refer the question to be decided by the next court martial of the battalion, to be held as hereinafter provided.

Section 13. And be it further ordained, That each captain shall muster his company once in every month, of every year in which there shall not be a regiment at all or battalion muster, and shall exercise them under arms at least two hours on each muster day: He shall also note all delinquents, either from nonattendance on muster days, or for appearing without the arms and accoutrements prescribed by this ordinance, and make report thereof to the next court martial; and he shall make an accurate return of the strength arms and accoutrements of his company to the adjutant of the regiment, before the first day of September in every year: At every muster he shall give publick notice of the time and place of holding the next succeeding muster, which shall be deemed sufficient notice for the absentees, as well as those who may be present.

Section 14. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the adjutant of each regiment, with the aid of the sergeant major thereof, to execute the orders of the colonel commandant of the regiment. The sergeant major shall be appointed by the colonel, he shall obey the orders of the adjutant, and keep a roster of the sergeants of the regiment to which he belongs. It shall be the duty of the adjutant to keep a roster of all the commissioned officers of the regiment, to receive from the captains their company returns, and make therefrom an accurate regimental return, to deliver the same to the commandant of the regiment, on the first day of October in every year.

Section 15. And be it further ordained, That one drum major and one fife major for each regiment, shall be appointed by the commandant thereof, whose duty it shall be to conduct the music of the regiment, and previous to each regimental and battalion musters the commandants shall cause to be assembled at such places and times as they may appoint, all commissioned officers and musicians of their respective regiments, for the purpose of training the commissioned officers under the direction of the adjutant of the regiment and the musicians under the direction of the drum and fife majors.

Section 16. And be it further ordained, That at every regimental, battalion and company muster, the commanding officer shall have the power to punish all complaints and irregularities, either in the troops or by standards, with a fine not exceeding ten dollars for each offence, or imprisonment under guard during the time of parade, at his discretion.

Section 17. And be it further ordained, That commandants of regiments for the regular annual musters shall have at least forty-five days notice of a regimental or battalion muster, adjutants forty days, majors thirty-five days, captains thirty days, non-commissioned officers twenty days, and privates ten days previous notice: But in cases of publick danger, when there may be occasion for extraordinary service, every officer, and non-commissioned officer shall be on the alert, and one day’s notice to privates shall be sufficient.

Section 18. And be it further ordained, That each commandant of a regiment shall order two courts martial to be held within the bounds of his regiment every year, for the assessment of fines, and to decide on all questions relative to the exemption of any individual from militia duty, according to the provisions of this ordinance. One court martial shall be held not less than ten nor more than fifteen days after the last battalion muster, and the other not less than ten nor more than fifteen days after the regimental muster in every year; there shall be a judge advocate appointed by the commandant of the regiment, who shall act as clerk for the said courts, and prosecute on behalf of the government, and shall within ten days after the adjournment of each court deliver to the commandant of the regiment a statement of all fines imposed by said court, signed by the president thereof, and certified by himself. And every person appealing from the judgment of said court, shall also notify the same by writing to the commandant of the regiment, within ten days after the adjournment of the said court.

Section 19. And be it further ordained, That the collection of all fines imposed by any of the said courts, and not remitted by order of the court of appeals, as hereinafter provided, shall be enforced by any alcalde of the district, at the request of the commandant of the regiment, and delivered to the said commandant to be applied to the purchase of drums, fifes and colors, for the use of the regiment.

Section 20. And be it further ordained, That any four officers of the regiment, other than field officers, together with the president who shall be a captain, shall constitute a court martial for the assessment of fines; but every commissioned officer under the rank of major shall be entitled to a seat therein. The members of the said court shall in all cases be sworn to discharge their duty faithfully, and shall have power to adjourn from day to day until the business before them is finished.

Section 21. And be it further ordained, That for neglect of duty the officers, non-commissioned officers and privates shall forfeit and pay the fines as hereinafter provided, viz.: For failing to attend any regimental or battalion muster, or training, an adjutant shall forfeit and pay ten dollars; a captain, five dollars; a subaltern, four dollars; a drum or fife major, three dollars; and any other non-commissioned officer or private, two dollars. For failing to attend any company muster, a captain shall forfeit and pay five dollars; a subaltern, three dollars; and a non-commissioned officer or private, two dollars. For failing to attend the court martial for the assessment of fines, appointed by the commandant of the regiment, a captain shall forfeit and pay three dollars; and a subaltern, three dollars. For failing to give notice of any regimental or battalion muster, or training, an adjutant shall forfeit and pay ten dollars; a captain, five dollars; and a non-commissioned officer, two dollars. For failing to make out and deliver to the proper officer in due time any return, an adjutant shall forfeit and pay five dollars; a captain, three dollars. For failing to enroll the militia of his company, or form them into divisions, or note his delinquents, a captain shall forfeit and pay five dollars. For failing to execute any order of the adjutant respecting musters, train days, or courts for the assessment of fines, a sergeant major shall forfeit and pay three dollars. For failing to keep a roster of the sergeants, two dollars. For failing to notify delinquents to appear at court for the assessment of fines, a sergeant shall forfeit and pay two dollars. And in the absence of a captain the senior subaltern present shall act in his stead, and for any neglect of duty incur the same penalties as a captain.

Section 22. And be it further ordained, That within twenty days after the adjournment of each court for the assessment of fines, the field officers of the regiment shall meet as a court martial at the same place where the other courts martial shall have been held, and all persons who think themselves to have been aggrieved by a sentence of the court for the assessment of fines, may have a rehearing in the said court of appeals, whose judgment shall be final. Notice of the time and place of holding courts martial for the assessment of fines shall be given at each regimental and battalion muster, by the commandant of the regiment, to captains and subalterns, and by the commandants of companies, through the non-commissioned officers, to their respective companies.

Section 23. And be it further ordained, That a brigade court martial for the assessment of fines, shall be ordered by the colonel commandant, or by the governor, on the report made to him by a commissioned officer, charging the field officer or the brigade inspector with neglect of duty. The said court consisting of a president, who shall be a colonel, nominated by the officer who shall have ordered the court to be held, a judge advocate appointed by the court, and four field officers at least, (every field officer being entitled to a seat therein) shall be governed by the same rules as have been prescribed for a regimental court martial, for the assessment of fines, and the report of the proceedings of the said court, shall be made to the colonel commandant, for his approbation, unless he be implicated thereby, in which case the report shall be made to the governor; and in either case, it shall be the duty of the officer to whom the report may be made, to certify the judgment of the court, if approved by him, to some civil magistrate, having competent jurisdiction, who shall forthwith enforce the collection of the fines, to be applied to the use of the brigade.

Section 24. And be it further ordained, That the colonel commandant, the brigade inspector and field officers, for neglect of duty, shall forfeit and pay the fines hereinafter provided, for each neglect, viz.: The colonel commandant, for failing to furnish the brigade inspector with orders for regimental and battalion musters, in due time, twenty-five dollars; for failing to attend a regimental muster, twenty-five dollars; and for failing to forward the brigade return to the governor in due time, ten dollars. The brigade inspector, for failing to give orders to the commandant of a regiment, in due time, for a regimental or battalion muster, ten dollars; for failing to attend a regimental muster, ten dollars; for failing to attend and perform his duty at a battalion muster, ten dollars; for failing to render to the colonel commandant a brigade return, five dollars. The commandant of a regiment, for failing to give notice of, in due time, or to attend a regimental or battalion muster, or training, ten dollars; for failing to transmit the regimental return to the brigade inspector, in due time, five dollars. A major, for failing to attend a regimental or battalion muster, or a court of appeals, five dollars; for failing to perform the duties assigned to him by the eighth, ninth or tenth section of this article, ten dollars.

Section 25. And be it further ordained, That every officer holding a commission in the militia, who shall be charged with a high misdemeanor in his office, such as unmilitary conduct, shameful neglect of duty, disobedience of orders, cowardice, appearing, or behaving himself when on duty in an unofficerlike manner, or wilfully injuring those under his command, he shall be liable to be tried by a court martial, and if found guilty, to be sentenced to be reprimanded in orders, or to be removed from office, and declared incapable of holding any military commission under this government for life, or for a term of years, according to the nature and aggravation of his offence.

Section 26. And be it further ordained, That all charges of high misdemeanor against any officer above the rank of captain, shall be presented by the officer requesting the arrest to the governor or commander in chief, and against any captain, or officer below the rank of captain, to the colonel commandant, and in either case, the officer to whom the charge may be presented, if it shall appear to him of such a nature as to merit the attention of a court martial, shall cause the accused to be arrested and served with a copy of the charge or charges against him, and also notified of the time and place of his trial. He shall also, by orders under his hand, appoint at least five field officers of the brigade, designating the officer who shall preside, to constitute a court martial for the trial of the accused, at the time and place which he shall have prescribed.

Section 27. And be it further ordained, That the said court when constituted, shall appoint a judge advocate, whose duties shall be the same as have been prescribed for the same officer in other courts martial, and besides the customary oaths, the judge advocate, and every member of the court shall severally take an oath not to divulge the opinion of any individual member at any time, nor the sentence of the court, unless required to give evidence thereof as a witness in a court of justice, until the same be approved by the officer who shall have ordered the trial. Section 28. And be it further ordained, That every court martial appointed for the trial of any officer for a high misdemeanor shall have power to adjourn from day to day, to issue compulsory process for witnesses for or against the accused, to appoint a provost marshal to execute their process, and to send for persons and papers which may be necessary to a fair and impartial decision of the case.

Section 29. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the judge advocate to deliver to the officer who shall have ordered the trial, a fair and accurate statement of all the testimony produced to the court, relative to the charges exhibited and tried, together with the sentence of the court, signed by the members thereof, within five days after the adjournment of the said court; and it shall be the duty of the officer who shall have ordered the trial, to express in writing his approbation of the sentence of the court martial, within ten days after the proceedings thereof shall have been presented to him as aforesaid.

Section 30. And be it further ordained, That in all courts martial the oath to the judge advocate shall be administered by the president of the court, and to all other persons by the judge advocate. It shall always be the duty of the officer who shall have appointed the court martial, to approve or disapprove the sentence of such court by him appointed.

Section 31. And be it further ordained, That no officer shall be permitted to resign in less than three years from the date of his commission, unless he be rendered incapable of serving by infirmity, of which a court martial shall judge, and in all cases the resignation of any field officer shall be tendered to the colonel commandant, and that of regimental officers, to the commandant of the regiment to which he may belong.

Section 32. And be it further ordained, That where two or more commandants of regiments shall have commissions bearing the same date, the seniority of either shall be decided by the number of the regiment to which they belong, the first having the preference to the second, &c., the seniority of other officers whose commissions bear the same date, to be decided by lot.

Section 33. And be it further ordained, That it shall be lawful for any number of men who may be required to perform military duty, to form themselves in volunteer companies of cavalry, provided there be not more than one company of cavalry of sixty-eight men, for each regiment of six hundred infantry, or in that proportion within the bounds of the brigade; and any such company of cavalry who shall conform to all the regulations prescribed for the government of the same, shall be exempted from the performance of any other militia duty.

Section 34. And be it further ordained, That one major of cavalry shall be appointed in the same manner as the other officers of the same grade, and whose duties shall be the same in all respects, but he shall not be attached to any particular regiment; and he shall receive his orders from the colonel commandant through the brigade inspector.

Section 35. And be it further ordained, That the several companies of cavalry, shall be governed by the same rules with respect to the election of their officers, musters, returns, courts martial and fines, as have been prescribed for other companies of militia, and shall attend properly equipped at such regimental or battalion muster, as the colonel commandant may from time to time direct.

Section 36. And be it further ordained, That every cavalry man shall be equipped with a suitable horse, saddle and bridle, sword, pistols and holsters, cap, boots and spurs, and such uniform as the several companies may establish; and it shall be the duty of each captain to have his company divided by lot or otherwise, into four divisions, as nearly equal as may be, one of which divisions shall be in readiness for actual service at any time when called.

Section 37. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the brigade inspector with the major of cavalry, immediately after receiving their commissions, to call a muster of each troop of horse now formed within this jurisdiction, and receive the same, enrolling as cavalry all the men that may appear as volunteers for that purpose of the said troops, equipped in the manner herein before specified, forming them into such companies as may be found most convenient and agreeable to the said volunteers; and instructing them to elect and make returns of officers to be commissioned in the same manner as other militia officers.

Section 38. And be it further ordained, That all the militia of this jurisdiction, not enrolled in any company of cavalry, shall be armed and equipped, each commissioned officer with a sword, and each non-commissioned officer and private with a good rifle, shot pouch and powder horn, and twenty-four rounds of powder and ball, or a good musket, bayonet and cartridge box, and twenty-four rounds of powder and ball. Every person who shall furnish himself with arms as aforesaid shall forever retain the same, free and exempted from all execution for debt, taxes, fines or any other demand whatever; and those who may not be able to furnish themselves with arms as aforesaid, shall be furnished with the same from the publick arsenal, in such manner as shall be hereafter provided.

Section 39. And be it further ordained, That the governor shall have power whenever he may be of opinion that the publick safety requires it, to call out all or any part of the militia, for the defence of the country, or to enforce obedience to the laws, and when in actual service they shall be governed by the same rules and articles of war, and shall receive the same pay and rations as the regular troops in his majesty’s service. Provided, That no militia man shall be subject on any account to suffer corporal punishment, without the sentence of a court martial.

Section 40. And be it further ordained, That one fourth of all the militia of this jurisdiction being warned by their officers for that purpose, shall from and after the organization of each company, hold themselves in readiness for actual service at a moment’s warning, at all times, for the space of ninety days, after which another similar portion being warned in like manner, shall do the same duty, and the first shall not be called on again until all the men of each company shall have served in rotation the same length of time, unless there should be occasion for a greater number, or the whole be called into actual service; and any person legally called on to perform a tour of duty, and who shall fail to appear in his place, either in person or by an able bodied substitute, not liable to the then existing call, shall be fined by a court martial, in a sum equal to double the hire of a substitute; which court martial shall be ordered by the commanding officer, immediately after the rendezvous.

Section 41. And be it further ordained, That if any man hired as a substitute be called on to take his own place, whilst in service, the man who hired him shall take his place, but the hire shall be refunded; and any man who shall be excused from service at a particular time on account of sickness, or any other lawful reason, shall nevertheless be liable to be called at any time, until his proportion of service be performed.

Section 42. And be it further ordained, that the brigade inspector shall be allowed five dollars per day, for each day he may be employed in the change of the duties of his office, or for every twenty miles which he may travel while employed in performing the same, according to the rules prescribed by this ordinance; and his accounts certified by the colonel commandant, shall be paid from the publick treasury, such certified account being a sufficient warrant to the treasurer for the payment of the same.

Section 43. And be it further ordained, That the militia of this jurisdiction being destined exclusively for the defence and the safety of the country, no part thereof shall on any account whatever, be ordered on any service or compelled to go beyond the limits of this jurisdiction.

Section 44. And be it further ordained, That the free men of colour may be organized into one or more companies and officered as the commander in chief may direct, and they shall be subject to be called into actual service, or employed in any way within this jurisdiction, at such times and under such regulations as the commander in chief or colonel commandant may think expedient and necessary for the public safety.

Article III.

For the better Administration of Justice.

Section 1. And be it further ordained, That for the better administration of Justice, there shall be one superior tribunal within this jurisdiction, of which the governor when present shall be the presiding judge, and three judges appointed by the convention, viz.: One for the district of Baton Rouge, one for the district of New Feliciana, and one for the district of St. Helena and St. Ferdinand, shall be associate judges thereof; and the said court shall have full powers to decide finally on all criminal prosecutions for capital, and other offences not within the jurisdiction of any inferior tribunal, and also to decide finally on all appeals in civil cases.

Section 2. And be it further ordained, That the said tribunal shall be styled the superior court of the jurisdiction of Baton Rouge, in West-Florida, and shall hold the sessions in every year at the town of Baton Rouge, commencing on the second Mondays in March, July and November, and continuing in session by adjournments from day to day, Sundays excepted, until all the business before them be finished, attending first to all criminal prosecutions, and afterwards to all appeals in civil cases.

Section 3. And be it further ordained, That any two or more of the said judges shall form a court, and in the absence of the governor the senior judge, who may be present at the time and place of holding any session of the court, shall preside therein, and any one of the said judges shall have the power to adjourn the court from day to day for five judicial days, at which time if there be not a number present sufficient to form a court the session shall be closed and the court adjourned until the next session in course.

Section 4. And be it further ordained, That the said court, at their first election, which shall commence on the second Monday of November of this present year, shall appoint one clerk, whose duty it shall be to make and keep in his office a fair and accurate record of all proceedings of the said superior court, to enter in a register kept for that purpose, all petitions of appellants from the inferior tribunals of this jurisdiction, in the order of time as they shall be presented at his office, and to issue all process of the court according to the forms prescribed by law or by this ordinance. He shall also file in his office all documents produced to him relative to any matter of controversy or criminal prosecution pending in said court, and produce the same to the court at the time when such cause or prosecution shall be heard and determined.

Section 5. And be it further ordained, That one sheriff shall be appointed by this convention and commissioned by the governor, who shall keep his office at the town of Baton Rouge; and previous to his entering upon the duties thereof, he shall execute and deposit in the office of the clerk of the superior court aforesaid a bond, with four sufficient securities in the sum of ten thousand dollars, conditioned upon the faithful performance of all the duties of his office; the form of which bond shall be prescribed by all the judges of the said superior court at their first session, and they also shall be the judges of the sufficiency of the securities proposed to be given by the sheriff as aforesaid.

Section 6. And be it further ordained, That the said sheriff shall appoint one or more deputies in each district, who shall be recommended each by the court of the district for which he shall be appointed, and it shall be the duty of the sheriff in person, or his deputies, for whose good conduct in all things appertaining to his office, he shall be responsible, to execute all process both of the superior and interior courts established by this ordinance, to take charge of all persons imprisoned by virtue of any civil or criminal process, and them safely keep as the court may direct until discharged by due course of law, and in general to execute all orders relative to the administration of justice issued by proper authority; for which purpose he shall have the same powers, and enjoy the same privileges and emoluments, as have usually been allowed to similar officers under this government.

Section 7. And be it further ordained, That one counsellor learned in the laws of Castile and the Indies, shall be appointed by this convention and commissioned by the governor, whose duty it shall be to attend the several sessions of the said superior court, and give his opinion in writing, when required, by the court on questions or points of law which may be involved in the discussion of the causes submitted to their decision. The said counsellor shall reside within this jurisdiction, and shall give his opinion in like manner, to any of the inferior tribunals thereof when required, but shall not be permitted to act as counsellor or attorney for either party in any suit at law instituted or pending in any tribunal within this jurisdiction. He shall receive an annual salary of fifteen hundred dollars for his services aforesaid, from the public treasury, and no other compensation thereof under any pretext whatever.

Section 8. And be it further ordained, That said counsellor before entering upon the duties of his office, shall take and subscribe the following oath in presence of the superior tribunal aforesaid, or of the presiding judge thereof: “I, A. B., do solemnly swear faithfully to discharge the duties of counsellor for the tribunals of justice within the jurisdiction of Baton Rouge, according to the best of my judgment, and that I will not in any case or under any pretext whatever, receive any compensation therefor, other than that which may be allowed by law, and paid from the publick treasury of this justice. So help me God.”

Section 9. And be it further ordained, That all actions of appeal brought before this tribunal, shall commence by petition, addressed to the court, and presented to the clerk, who shall file the same in his office, and shall deliver to the sheriff a copy thereof, with an order annexed, to the other party in the suit to answer the same within twenty days thereafter; the said order shall bear test in the name of the presiding judge of the court, and be signed by the clerk; all other process of the court shall be issued in the same form, and all other proceeding conducted as heretofore, except that all judgments shall be pronounced and signed by the presiding judge according to the opinion of a majority of the members present, and except such other changes as may be hereinafter ordained.

Section 10. And be it further ordained, That three civil commandants shall be nominated by this convention and commissioned by the governor, viz.: One for the district of Baton Rouge; one for the district of New Feliciana; and one for the districts of St. Helena and St. Ferdinand, who shall reside each within the district for which he shall have been appointed, and in all civil cases shall have and exercise the powers and perform the duties heretofore assigned to a commandant of a district within his jurisdiction, together with those of a notary publick for the said district, except in the cases hereinafter mentioned and provided.

Section 11. And be it further ordained, That there shall be one district court in and for each of the said districts, those of St. Helena and Tanchipaho including the settlements of Chefuncte, Bogcheto and Pearl River, being considered as one district, of which court the commandant when present shall be the presiding judge, and the alcaldes shall be associate judges thereof, each for the district in which he resides. Any three or more of the said judges shall form a court, and in case of the absence of the commandant from whatever cause at the time of holding any session of the court, the senior alcalde present shall act as presiding judge thereof.

Section 12. And be it further ordained, That each of the said district courts shall hold four sessions in every year, at some convenient place within the district for which it shall have been established, viz.: For the district of Baton Rouge at the town of Baton Rouge, to commence on the third Mondays of January, April, July and October. For the district of New Feliciana at the town of St. Francisville, to commence on the first Mondays of February, May, August and November. And for the districts of St. Helena and St. Ferdinand, at the habitation of William Spiller, to commence on the first Mondays of January, April, July and October of each year; and each session of the said district courts shall be continued by adjournments from day to day, Sundays excepted, until all the business before them be finished.

Section 13. And be it further ordained, That the said district courts shall have original jurisdiction in all cases, civil and criminal, within the districts respectively, for which they shall have been established, not within the jurisdiction of any single alcalde; but in all trials of criminal cases they shall order six free-holders of the vicinity to come and hear the testimony in open court, and to declare upon oath their conviction as to the guilt or innocence of the party accused, who shall be immediately discharged if the said declaration be “not guilty.” If the accused be found guilty by the free-holders aforesaid and the court be of the opinion that the offence is of such a nature as to merit capital punishment, or confinement to hard labor for a longer term than six months, or a fine exceeding five thousand dollars, they shall order the prisoner to be conveyed to the fort at Baton Rouge, to abide the judgment of the superior court, giving notice thereof to the governor, and shall transmit all the documents relative to his case, or certified copies thereof to the clerk of the said superior court. In all other cases they shall pronounce such sentence authorized by law as the nature of each offence may seem to deserve, and cause it to be executed by the proper officer.

Section 14. And be it further ordained, That each of the civil commandants aforesaid, shall keep in his office a register, in which he shall enter all civil actions instituted for any amount, which may not come within the jurisdiction of any single alcalde, in order of time as they shall be brought; and at each session of the said district courts, it shall be the duty of each commandant to exhibit to the court in which he may preside the register so made by him as aforesaid, with all the documents relative to the causes or actions instituted at his office and not determined or withdrawn, when each of the said courts shall proceed to hear and decide all the causes aforesaid in the same order as they shall be found on the register of the commandant. Provided always, that any cause or action for reasons approved by the court, may be continued from one session to another, until a reasonable time shall have been allowed to the parties to procure all testimony which may be necessary to obtain a fair and impartial decision thereof.

Section 15. And be it further ordained, That in all civil actions the judgments of the said district courts shall be final for all sums not exceeding five hundred dollars; but in all cases in which the judgment given by the district court, shall be for a sum exceeding that amount, an appeal shall be allowed at the request of either party, to the superior court, the appellant paying the costs which shall have accrued thereon, and given sufficient security in the office of the commandant, within fifteen days after such judgment shall have been given, to prosecute the appeal without delay, and abide the decision of the superior tribunal aforesaid.

Section 16. And be it further ordained, That the said district courts shall have been established; and also for making and keeping in repair everything necessary and conducive to the publick welfare and convenience respecting the government of slaves, and the management of live stock of every description in the several districts respectively, for which they shall have been established; and also for making and keeping in repair public roads and bridges, causing public roads to be opened and bridges to be erected where necessary, either through publick or private property, and to establish reasonable tolls where they may think proper, to defray the expense of making and keeping the same in repair. Provided always, That where it may be found necessary for the public convenience to open a public road or erect a bridge in any situation which may occasion injury to an individual inhabitant, it shall be the duty of the court to cause the damages occasioned thereby to be estimated by six free-holders of the vicinity and paid by the inhabitants of the district. The said district courts shall also have power to give such orders as they may think proper for the erection of publick buildings in their respective districts, and for defraying the expenses there by the inhabitants within the same.

Section 17. And be it further ordained, That each district court shall appoint one person who shall be sworn to regulate and stamp weights and measures, and establish his fees for the same, to be paid by the owners of such weights and measures as he may examine and seal; and it shall be unlawful for any person to sell any kind of produce or merchandise thereafter by weights or measures inferior to those duly regulated and sealed, under penalty of being fined by the court of the district not exceeding twenty dollars for the first offence and at the discretion of the court for other offences.

Section 18. And be it further ordained, That the said district courts shall at their discretion grant licenses to merchants, tavern-keepers, pedlars, and keepers of ferries, and billiard tables and establish the rates and general regulations to be observed by all persons obtaining such licenses. Provided always, That the applicant for any license as aforesaid, shall pay to the commandant, or presiding judge of the court, for the benefit of the publick treasury, the tax established by this ordinance on the license for which he applies; and any person who shall be convicted of retailing merchandise or spirituous liquors, or keeping a tavern, a ferry, or a billiard table, and of receiving any emoluments therefor without such license, shall forfeit and pay for the first offence twenty dollars, and for every after offence such fine as the court may sue for the same, one-half of all such fines to be paid to the person who may sue for the same, and the other half to the public treasury of the district.

Section 19. And be it further ordained, That either of the said district courts upon information given them of any person or persons keeping a disorderly house or establishing any institution for the purpose of gambling under whatever name or pretext, within their jurisdiction, shall cause to be arrested such person, or persons, and on conviction of any crime as aforesaid, shall punish all such offenders by fine and imprisonment at their discretion, not exceeding the general powers granted to the district courts in criminal cases.

Section 20. And be it further ordained, That twenty-four alcaldes shall be elected by the people of this jurisdiction, and commissioned by the governor, viz.: Eight for the district of Baton Rouge, eight for the district of New Feliciana, and eight for the districts of St. Helena and St. Ferdinand, who shall have final jurisdiction in civil cases in which the amount of the matter in dispute does not exceed fifty dollars, and who shall have in all other respects the same powers and emoluments, and perform the same duties as have heretofore been assigned to similar officers under this government.

Section 21. And be it further ordained, That the election for the alcaldes aforesaid shall be held in each district on Thursday the 20th day of September next, at such place or places within the same, and according to such regulations as the representation of each district in this convention may determine; and that a return be made within five days thereafter, by the persons appointed to conduct the said elections, of the names of the persons elected to the office of the commander of the district for which they shall have been elected respectively, placing on one roll all the names of the persons elected in one district; and it shall be the duty of each commandant to preserve and file the said roll in his office, and to make a return of the names of the persons elected in the same order, within fifteen days after the receipt thereof to the office of the government at Baton Rouge. Section 22. And be it further ordained, That the commissions shall be issued by the governor in the usual form to each of the alcaldes so elected, within ten days after the return of their names so made as aforesaid to the office of the government, and the seniority of the said alcaldes shall be regulated according to which their names shall be found on the returns made to the commandants of the district as aforesaid.

Section 23. And be it further ordained, That the powers of the present commandants of districts and of the alcaldes and syndics now in office within this jurisdiction, shall cease and determine so soon as the commandants and alcaldes appointed agreeable to the provisions of this ordinance, shall have been duly commissioned; and all civil magistrates appointed under this ordinance, shall continue in office at least one year from the time of their appointment unless sooner removed from office, and until removed by this convention.

Section 24. And be it further ordained, That the forms of procedure in all the tribunals of justice within this jurisdiction, not otherwise prescribed by this ordinance, shall be conformable, in all cases, as near as may be, to those heretofore established and practised, except only such changes as may have been rendered necessary by the changes herein ordained, which alteration in the forms of procedure the said tribunals are authorized to make in such manner as to them may appear most convenient to facilitate the distribution of justice.

Section 25. And be it further ordained, That in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall have the privilege of a speedy and public trial, in which he shall be confronted with and allowed to examine all the witnesses against him, and to produce testimony in his defence. He shall also have compulsory process to procure the attendance of witnesses if required, and shall in no case be compelled to give testimony against himself.

Section 26. And be it further ordained, That all trials in civil as well as criminal cases shall be public, and all judgments pronounced and signed in open court, by the presiding judge thereof, according to the opinion of the majority of the judges present; that all process shall be conducted and all records made either in the Spanish or English language, as may best suit the convenience of the parties concerned, and that all witnesses may be examined by both parties on all points relative to the matter in controversy.

Section 27. And be it further ordained, That each of the courts established by this ordinance shall have the power to appoint one interpreter, who shall be sworn to perform his duties faithfully, and shall receive such compensation therefor, as the court for which he may be appointed shall determine from the publick treasury when employed in the publick service, and from individuals when employed by them in the exercise of his functions.

Section 28. And be it further ordained, That the president of any of the courts established by this ordinance, shall have the power to call a session of the court in which he presides, at any time when he may think it expedient, giving three days’ notice thereof to every associate judge of such court, by a circular letter addressed to each, in which shall be specified the occasion for which the said session may be called. Provided always, that no other business be entered upon at any session so called than that specified in the circular letter of the presiding judge aforesaid.

Section 29. And be it further ordained, That when judgment shall be given for debt by any alcalde or court of justice within this jurisdiction, all the legal costs which may have accrued to the plaintiff in prosecuting his suit for the same, shall be taxed by the said officer or court, and the judgment shall be given for the debt and costs so taxed, and after such judgment obtained for any sum now due and payable within this jurisdiction, there shall be a stay of execution allowed to the party who may demand the same for the term of ninety days, when such sum may not exceed one hundred dollars; for the term of one hundred and twenty days, when the sum may be over one hundred dollars and not exceeding three hundred dollars; for the term of six months when the sum may be over three hundred dollars and not exceeding five hundred dollars; and for the term of twelve months when the sum may exceed five hundred dollars; sufficient security being given for the payment of the debt and costs at the expiration of the time for which the execution may have been stayed in each case as aforesaid.

Section 30. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the superior court of this jurisdiction at their first stated session after the establishment of this ordinance to make a fair and accurate table exhibiting all fees to which every civil officer of this government is entitled by law for his services, in all things relating to his office, and where any civil officer may be required by this ordinance to perform services for which no compensation may be allowed by law or by this ordinance, the said court shall allow such compensation therefor, as to them may appear reasonable and proper, specifying the same in the table aforesaid. And it shall be the duty of the clerk of the said superior court, to furnish to each civil commandant within this jurisdiction, a certified copy of the said table of fees, within ten days after the adjournment of the said first session of the superior court, to be affixed in his office for the inspection of all persons concerned.

Section 31. And be it further ordained, That all the civil officers of this jurisdiction who receive compensation for their services other than a fixed salary from the public treasury, shall make fair tables of all the fees to which they are entitled by law for their services; and each officer shall cause to be affixed in some conspicuous place in his office, within one month after the adjournment of the first session of the superior court aforesaid, for the inspection of all persons who have business in such office, on pain of forfeiting for each day the same shall be missing through such officer’s neglect, the sum of twenty dollars, which shall be paid one-half to any person who shall sue for the same, and the other half to the public treasury.

Section 32. And whereas, difficulties may arise in the ascertaining the amount of the perquisites appertaining to the office of the governor of this jurisdiction;

Be it therefore ordained, That from and after the establishment of this ordinance a nett salary of three thousand dollars per annum be allowed to the governor of this jurisdiction, and paid from the publick treasury thereof, as a full compensation for all his services while exercising the said office.

Section 33. And be it further ordained, That each of the associate judges of the superior court of the jurisdiction of Baton Rouge shall be allowed an annual salary of six hundred dollars for his services, while exercising the said office, to be paid from the publick treasury of the jurisdiction aforesaid.

Section 34. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the commandant of each district, accompanied by two or more of the alcaldes, as soon as they shall have been commissioned, agreeable to the provisions of this ordinance, to receive all the public archives within the district in which he may reside, with a proper inventory of the same, and that the commandant of the district of Baton Rouge shall receive and keep the archives of this jurisdiction until they be otherwise disposed of by the superior court.

Section 35. And be it further ordained, That all suits now pending before any tribunal within this jurisdiction may either be withdrawn by those who have instituted the same, or transferred to any alcalde or district court, having competent jurisdiction according to the provisions of this ordinance; and to those against whom judgment may have been rendered for debt, and not yet satisfied, the same indulgence shall be given as has been provided and allowed by the 29th section of this article, in cases of judgments hereafter to be given; the time of the stay of execution to be computed from the first session of the district court of the district in which such judgment may have been given. And all persons against whom any criminal prosecution may have been instituted, shall be brought to trial at the first sessions of the respective district courts.

Article IV

And, whereas, the irregularities and abuses which have been practiced by some of the officers entrusted with the distribution of lands, and establishing the boundaries thereof, within this jurisdiction, for some years past, may give rise to much litigation, and injustice to the publick, as well as to individuals, if suffered to continue. And, whereas, it is the duty of those who exercise the powers of litigation for the publick welfare to prevent as far as possible the evils which might originate from this source, both to the public and the individual inhabitants of the country.

Section 1. Be it therefore ordained by the authority aforesaid, That a register of land claims shall be appointed by this convention, and commissioned by the governor, who shall, before entering upon the duties of his office, execute and deposit in the office of the clerk of the superior court of this jurisdiction, a bond with two sufficient securities, approved by the judges of said court, in the sum of ten thousand dollars, conditioned for the faithful performance of all the duties of his office, as prescribed by this ordinance.

Section 2. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the said register of land claims to make and keep in his office at the town of Baton Rouge, a fair and accurate register of all grants or sales of lands made by any officer or tribunal duly authorized to grant, or in any way sell or alienate, the lands of the royal domain within this jurisdiction, and all other documents which may be produced to him by any person or persons, as evidence of any claim or claims for lands in the said jurisdiction, of what nature soever, which they may consider to be vested in them or in any other person, whether residing within this jurisdiction or elsewhere.

Section 3. And be it further ordained, That any person claiming lands within the said jurisdiction by virtue of any grant or sale made by any officer or tribunal authorized as aforesaid, and every person claiming lands within the said jurisdiction by any incomplete title of what nature soever, shall before the first day of September of the year one thousand eight hundred and eleven, deliver to the said register of land claims a notice in writing, stating the nature and extent of his claim or claims, together with platt of the said tract or tracts of land so claimed if they have been surveyed by any officer commissioned for that purpose, and shall, on or before the said first day of September of the year aforesaid, deliver to the said register for the purpose of being recorded, every grant, order of survey, deed, conveyance, or other written evidence of his claim: And it shall be the duty of the said register to record the same in books to be kept by him for that purpose within six months after the receipt thereof, each claimant paying to him at the rate of twelve and one-half cents for each hundred words contained in such written evidence of his claim as aforesaid; and the said register shall return to each claimant his original papers deposited at his office as aforesaid, at any time when called for, after same has been recorded.

Section 4. And be it further ordained, That any claimant as aforesaid who shall neglect or refuse to deliver such notice in writing of his claim together with a platt, if any there be, or cause to be recorded such written evidence of his claim as aforesaid, all his right, in case his title be incomplete, shall become void, and forever thereafter be barred, nor shall any incomplete grant, warrant, or order of jury, deed of conveyance, or other written evidence which shall not have been recorded as above directed, ever after be considered or admitted as evidence in any tribunal within this jurisdiction.

Section 5. And be it further ordained, That no grant or sale of lands appertaining to the royal domain, within this jurisdiction, which may be made after this date, without the knowledge and approbation of some tribunal established with full powers for that purpose within this jurisdiction, shall be valid, and no such grant or sale shall be received as evidence of title in any tribunal within this jurisdiction, or be admitted to be recorded in the office of the register of land claims established by this ordinance.

Section 6. And be it further ordained, That every actual settler who now inhabits and cultivates a tract of land within this jurisdiction, for which he had obtained no complete title, and which has not been legally granted to any other person, shall be entitled to such quantity including his improvements, as has usually been granted to settlers, according to the laws, usages and customs of the Spanish government: And no actual settler as aforesaid shall be deprived of a tract so inhabited and cultivated by him, in consequence of any claim hereafter brought by any person, of which the said inhabitant, has not now or heretofore been notified.

Section 7. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of every actual settler as aforesaid to deliver to the register of land claims before the first of September, one thousand eight hundred and eleven, aforesaid, a declaration subscribed and sworn by himself, in presence of some alcalde or civil magistrate of this jurisdiction, stating how long he may have inhabited and cultivated the said tract of land, with the number both of free persons and slaves appertaining to his family, which said declaration shall also be accompanied with the certificate of two or more disinterested persons also sworn, testifying to the truth of the facts stated therein.

Section 8. And be it further ordained, That the said settler at the time of making the declaration aforesaid, together with the persons subscribing the said certificates, shall also declare upon oath every claim of any other person, if any there be, for the said tract, of which they or either of them may have been notified before this date.

Section 9. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the register of land claims aforesaid, to record all declarations and certificates made in form as aforesaid, and deliver to him in due time as evidence of the claims of the persons making such declarations, for the tracts by them so inhabited and cultivated as aforesaid; and all such settlers who may refuse or neglect to deliver such evidence of their respective claims to the register on or before the said first day of September, 1811, shall forfeit their said claims, and shall not thereafter be allowed to produce any evidence of the same facts in any tribunal within this jurisdiction for the purpose of establishing their said claims.

Section 10. And be it further ordained, That from and after the first day of January, one thousand eight hundred and eleven, the surveyor-general of this province shall reside and keep his office at the town of Baton-Rouge.

Article V

Whereas, the publick safety requires that provision be made as soon as possible for defraying the expenses of this department of the government, from such resources as may be found within the country, and that some uniform mode of taxation be established for that purpose.

Section 1. And be it therefore ordained by the authority aforesaid, That it shall be the duty of the alcaldes of the several districts of this jurisdiction to make every year, in the month of December, an accurate census of all the inhabitants each for the division in which he may reside, stating therein distinctly every free white person by name, with the number of slaves, and also the number of arpents of land claimed by each within this jurisdiction, causing every person to declare to him upon oath, the whole amount of property claimed by him as aforesaid.

Section 2. And be it further ordained, That each of the said alcaldes shall make and return to the commandant of the district in which he resides, a fair transcript of the census so made by him on or before the first day of January in every year, and it shall be the duty of the commandants to make from the returns of the alcaldes a complete census of all the inhabitants and their property as aforesaid, each for the district in which he may reside, and to return the same to the office of the clerk of the superior court for the jurisdiction of Baton-Rouge, on or before the first day of February in every year.

Section 3. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the clerk of the said superior court, to make every year, an accurate table containing the names of all the free inhabitants of this jurisdiction subject to taxation, with the amount of the tax to be paid by each, placed opposite his name, estimating the same from the returns made by the commandants of the districts in the following manner, viz. :

For every hundred arpents of land claimed by a resident within this jurisdiction, not exceeding one thousand arpents, four rials; for every hundred arpents claimed by one inhabitant over and above one thousand arpents, one dollar; and for every slave, four rials.

Section 4. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the said clerk of the said superior court, to keep in his office the said table, and to make and deliver to the sheriff of this jurisdiction, a certified copy thereof, on or before the first day of March in every year.

Section 5. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the sheriff immediately on the receipt thereof, to give notice to the inhabitants by advertisements in the most publick places in each district, mentioning the places and times at which they may attend and pay the said tax to the proper officer; appointing the places not less than three in each district, as convenient as may be for the inhabitants, and the times not more distant than thirty days from the time at which the return of the amount of taxes shall have been made to him by the clerk of the superior court as aforesaid.

Section 6. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the sheriff in person, or by his deputies, to attend at each of the places and times so appointed by him as aforesaid, to receive the said tax, and give receipts for the same, and he shall furnish to every individual inhabitant requesting the same, a fair account of the amount of the tax which he is required to pay, with a receipt of such sum as shall be paid by each, in discharge thereof.

Section 7. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the sheriff in person, or by his deputies within fifteen days after the time appointed for the last meeting aforesaid, to give notice in writing to every inhabitant personally or by leaving the same at the usual place of residence of each inhabitant who shall not have attended at any of the times and places aforesaid, or paid the amount of tax due, stating in such notice the amount due by each; and if the same be not paid within thirty days thereafter, it shall be the duty of the sheriff to seize and sell such goods and chattels of such inhabitants as may be necessary to satisfy and pay the tax aforesaid, with the cost of collecting the same; the proceedings respecting the seizure and sale, being the same in all respects as are directed in cases of debts for the same amount.

Section 8. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the register of the land office for this jurisdiction to make every year an accurate statement of the number of arpents claimed by each and every person not residing within the jurisdiction, and to form a table exhibiting the name of each non-resident as aforesaid, with the number of arpents claimed, and the sum payable by each opposite thereto, estimating the said sum at one dollar, for every hundred arpents claimed by the non-resident.

Section 9. And be it further ordained, That the said register shall deposit the table so made in his office, and shall furnish an attested copy thereof to the sheriff at the time in every year in which it is ordained that the return of the amount of taxes due by residents shall be made by the clerk of the superior court.

Section 10. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the sheriff to cause to be published within twenty days thereafter, the names of such non-residents, with the number of arpents claimed by each, and the amount of the taxes due thereon, in such manner as may appear most effectual, to extend the same to the places where such claimants or their agents may reside, with a notice that if the tax be not paid within six months thereafter, the said lands shall be sold, or such part thereof as may be necessary to pay the tax and costs accrued there.

Section 11. And be it further ordained, That if the said tax be not paid within the said term of six months thereafter, it shall be the duty of the sheriff to seize and sell such part of the lands belonging to each non-resident as may be sufficient to pay the amount of taxes due thereon, together with all legal costs which may have accrued; the proceedings being the same as are prescribed for the seizure and sale of lands for debt of the same amount.

Section 12. And be it further ordained, That until a treasurer be appointed for this jurisdiction, the sheriff shall act as treasurer thereof and shall pay of the publick monies in his possession from time to time all accounts which may be due and payable from the public treasury, and take discharges for the same. Provided always, That the said accounts be certified to be truly and justly due, by the superior court, or one of the district courts of this jurisdiction.

Section 13. And be it further ordained, That the sheriff shall be allowed for collecting the taxes aforesaid, four per cent on the amount so collected, and for his services as treasurer, one per cent on all sums paid by him in discharge of public debts.

Section 14. And be it further ordained, That the civil commandant of each district within this jurisdiction, shall pay every three months into the hands of the sheriff, it being the duty of the sheriff to call upon them for that purpose, all sums received by them for the publick treasury of the jurisdiction, arising from the tax on licenses granted by the district courts, and from the tax on slaves imported into this jurisdiction.

Section 15. And be it further ordained, That the said taxes be established as follows, that is to say, for every slave imported after this date, above the age of ten years, ten dollars; for every slave imported as aforesaid, under the age of ten years, five dollars.

For a license to retail merchandise at any one specified place within this jurisdiction, ten dollars; for a license to keep a tavern, twenty dollars; for a license to keep a permanent ferry over the Mississippi river, twenty dollars; for a license to keep a ferry over any other river or stream, ten dollars.

For a license to retail merchandise, travelling from place to place, five dollars; and ten dollars for every cart, horse and mule employed in conveying such merchandise.

For a license to keep a billiard table, fifty dollars. Provided always, That the said license be issued for one year, and to have full force and virtue for that space of time and no longer.

Section 16. And be it further ordained, That all fines and forfeitures exacted by any of the district courts or such parts thereof as revert to the publick treasury, by this ordinance, shall be paid to the commandant for the use of the district; and all fines and forfeitures imposed by the superior court, not otherwise directed to be disposed of, shall be paid to the sheriff for the benefit of the publick treasury.

Section 17. And be it further ordained, That it shall be the duty of the sheriff to exhibit to the superior court, at each of their stated sessions, a fair and accurate statement of all publick monies received and expended by him, and that the said superior court shall have power at any time to investigate his conduct relative to any or all the duties of his office, and in case of his delinquency to the prejudice of the publick, or of any individual, to give such judgment against him, and to inflict such penalties authorized by the laws, as to them may seem fit and according to justice.

Done in convention at the town of Baton Rouge on the twenty-second day of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ten.

In testimony whereof, we, the representatives aforesaid, have hereunto in presence of each other, subscribed our names.

JOHN H. JOHNSON,
JOHN MILLS,
WILLIAM BARROW,
     For the District of New-Feliciana.

JOHN W. LEONARD,
JOSEPH THOMAS,
BENJ. O. WILLIAM,
      For the District of St. Helena.

PHILIP HICKY,
THOMAS LILLEY,
JOHN MORGAN,
EDMUND HAWES,
      For the District of Baton-Rouge.

WILLIAM COOPER,
     For the District of St. Ferdinand.

CARLOS DEHAULT DELASSUS, Governor.

JOHN RHEA, President.

Resolutions

Resolved, That all the physicians and surgeons now residing and exercising their professions, with the permission of the government, within this jurisdiction, be formed into a Medical Society, with permission to assemble, foretold, for the purpose of debating on subjects relating to their profession, and of communicating to each other such interesting cases as may occur in practice. The said society shall hold their first meeting at St. Francisville on the first day October next; any six or more of them to form a society at the said first meeting; and they shall meet afterwards on their own adjournments. They shall have power to form such bye-laws for the government of the society as to them may seem fit and expedient, not inconsistent with any of the general laws of the country; and they shall form a bill of rates for medical and surgical services, which they shall make publick without unnecessary delay; and the same shall hereafter be recognized by the tribunals of justice within this jurisdiction, as the established rates of the country for such services.

Resolved, That the said medical society be authorized, and required, to choose annually, three or more of their members to form a committee for the purpose of examining all persons who may hereafter come within this jurisdiction with a view of exercising the profession of medicine or surgery, or any branch thereof, and of granting licenses to such as they may find sufficiently skilled in the profession which they may propose to exercise as aforesaid; who shall thereafter be members of the said medical society; and any person who shall be found exercising either of said professions within the jurisdiction after this present year, not now exercising the same with the permission of the government, nor duly licensed by the committee of the medical society aforesaid, shall forfeit and pay for each offence, a fine and less than one hundred dollars, nor more than five hundred, at the discretion of the district courts of this jurisdiction; one-half of such fine to be paid to any person who shall sue for the same, and the other half to the civil commandant of the district.

Baton-Rouge, August 22, 1810.

Resolved, That this convention, with the consent of the governor, have power to borrow money on credit to the government and the revenue of the same, whenever the publick service may require.

Baton-Rouge, August 25th, 1810.

Resolved, That the inhabitants of towns and villages within this jurisdiction be authorized to form such local regulations within the same as may be conducive to their own convenience and prosperity, not contrary to the general established laws of the country.

Baton-Rouge, August 25, 1810.

WM. SPILLER,	PHILIP HICKY,
JOHN MILLS,	MANUEL LOPEZ,
JOS. THOMAS,	THOS. LILLEY,
JOHN MORGAN,	JNO. H. JOHNSON,
JOHN W. LEONARD,	WM. BARROW,
BENJ. O. WILLIAMS,	EDMD. HAWES.
JNO. RHEA, CARLOS DEHAULT DELASSUS.

PART 3
THE REVOLT

Although successful in obtaining the governor’s signature and approbation to their lengthy and all encompassing ordinances, the members of the convention did not immediately return to their homes. Much more had to be done. First and foremost they must select the new officials named by the ordinances who would governor the province “in the name of the people.” Care was needed in these selections for, while some of the friends of the governor should be recognized in the appointments, it was vitally necessary that the majority be chosen from among those whole-heartedly in sympathy with the “for freedom” movement.

Forsaking the Saints John Plains for Baton Rouge and holding their meeting in the principal store in the village, one kept by an Irishman named Egan, the delegates, desiring to recognize the valuable services that John H. Johnson had given the convention proceeding, wanted him to take one of the principal judicial offices, but he refused, as did William Barrow and Judge Rhea.

It was the 25th of August before the delegates finished their labors and advised Governor de Lassus of their selections. Transcribed directly from the original document, it reads:

“To His Excellency Charles Dehault Delassus, Colonel of the Royal Armies, Governor Civil and military of the place and jurisdiction of Baton Rouge, &c.

“Sir:

“The Representatives of the people of this jurisdiction in convention assembled make known to your Excellency that agreeable to the provisions of the ’ordinance providing for public safety, and for the better administration of justice within the Jurisdiction of Baton Rouge in West Florida,’ they have made the following appointments, viz. :

“Robert Piercy of New Feliciana, Fulwar Skipwith of Baton Rouge, and Shephard Brown of St. Helena, to be associate Judges of the Superior Court; Joseph E. Johnson of New Feliciana, Sheriff; and Andrew Steele of Baton Rouge, Register of land claims for this “Gilbert Leonard of Baton Rouge, Bryan McDermott of New Feliciana and Daniel Rainer of St. Helena to be Civil Commandants and Daniel Rainer of St. Helena to be Civil Commandants each for the district in which he resides.

“Officers of Militia

Philemon Thomas, Brigadier General.
Isaac Johnson, Major of Cavalry.

1st Regiment of Infantry:

Samuel Fulton, Colonel.
George Mather, Junr., first Major.
Reuben Curtis, second Major.

2nd Regiment:

William Spiller, Colonel.
Joseph Thomas, first Major.
Abraham Spears, second Major.

3rd Regiment:

Aquila Whitaker, Colonel.
Robert McCausland, first Major.
John M. Pickford [?], second Major. [His name is crossed out in the original.]

“Baton Rouge, 25 Augt.
1810.”

First, consideration was given the three who were to compose the superior court. The appointment of Shepherd Brown of Tickfaw, the alcalde of the St. Helena district, was unquestionably a sop thrown to Governor deLassus. The delegates were not unanimous in wanting Brown on the bench of the high seat of justice; those from Feliciana were suspicious of him and were outspoken in their belief he would not prove faithful to or sympathetic with the cause of the people. Their suspicions were soon justified.

Lieutenant Robert Percy

Robert Percy, chosen as member of the superior court from the Feliciana district, was a retired British naval officer. He was born in Kilkenny, Ireland, in 1762, and the son of Charles Percy, a former British army officer who came to West Florida in 1776 and settled in what is now Wilkinson County, Mississippi. Robert chose the sea for a career and entering the King’s navy as a cadet rose to the rank of lieutenant. A the death of his father (who committed suicide by throwing himself into a stream which still bears the name of Percy’s Creek), Robert Percy came to Louisiana in 1796 to settle his father’s estate and reach a property division with his half brothers and sister, for Charles Percy had married again. Liking this new country, after his return to England Robert Percy obtained a leave of absence from the navy and in 1804 with his wife, Jane Middlemist, and oldest children, he settled in Spanish West Florida. Here, in Feliciana, on the Loyal Bayou Sarah, he erected “Beech Woods” plantation where he reared his numerous family and left behind him a splendid name borne today by many in Louisiana. Although a sturdy Britisher at heart, Lieutenant Percy became a staunch backer of the Convention movement.

Judge Fulwar Skipwith

Fulwar Skipwith, whose name later blazed bright in the annals of the tiny Republic of West Florida, was an American and, even in 1810, he was a man of note in national afters. He had been in the Baton Rouge district only a short time when he was called to the bench. He was born in Dinwiddie county, Virginia, February 21, 1765, and died at “Montesano” plantation, just above Baton Rouge, January 7, 1839, at the age of 74 years. In 1790 Skipwith had been appointed by President George Washington, American consul to a small group of West Indian islands, including Martinique, Guadaloupe, and Sainte Lucie, etc. Ten years later, President Thomas Jefferson made him Consul General of the United States to France, with headquarters in Paris. While carrying on the functions of this office, during the trying days of the French Revolution, the Directory and Empire, the French, displeased with the United States, refused to hold communications with American ambassadors, consequently Skipwith was the sole commercial and diplomatic representative of his country in France, and during the existence of Napoleon’s Milan and Berlin decrees, he was compelled to draw heavily upon his private purse to relieve American shipmasters and sailors detained in French ports by the embargoes — a sum, by the way, which he never recovered.

In 1809 Fulwar Skipwith appeared in Spanish West Florida to settle on a plantation on the Montesano Bluffs, near that one operated by the Herries brothers. He had failed to get on harmoniously with General John Armstrong, the American minister to France, so had resigned and left Paris. It was his intention in coming to West Florida to regain his fortune by operating a sheepwalk but George Herries soon convinced him that the operation of a cotton plantation would prove more lucrative, consequently he became a cotton planter. With him came his wife, a Flemish countess named Vanderclooster, his daughter, Lelia, who had been educated in France, and his other children. The daughter, Lelia Skipwith, later became the wife of Thomas Bolling Robertson, who was governor of Louisiana in 1820-1824.

Fulwar Skipwith, according to his nephew, was “endowed with more than average intelligence, well cultivated by a collegiate study, and by his cosmopolitan associations in different climes. Of splendid physical development, he wasmore than six feet tall, straight as an arrow, with exactly enough flesh for his bone and muscle.” Another friend wrote that Skipwith was “quite celebrated for his high-bred courtesy, his general literary accomplishments, and his splendid style of living. When he came to West Florida he brought back with him from Paris French politesse and French notions and habits. He drove into Baton Rouge from his palatial residence in the country in a splendid coach and four, with outriders and lackeys to match.”

Therefore, the planters had picked a distinguished-looking and, mentally and by experience, a well-equipped individual to help Percy and Brown govern the province from the bench of justice.

For the sheriff of the whole province, which now consisted of the districts of Feliciana, Baton Rouge, Ste. Helena, and Saint Ferdinand (this last, named for the Spanish King then in durance vile, was to consist of all territory “east of Ponchitoola, including Chiffonta, Bogcheto and Pearl River settlements"), the delegates had selected a native son of Feliciana, Joseph Eugenius Johnson, a brother of delegate John. The important post of Register of Land Claims was given to Dr. Andrew Steele, who had acted as secretary of the convention.

For the three civil commandants the delegates designated Bryan McDermott for the Feliciana district; Daniel Raynor was selected to preside over the Ste. Helena and Saint Ferdinand districts, and for the Baton Rouge sector the governor’s comptroller, Gilbert Leonard.

These selections gave the friends of liberty a two-to — one majority on the high tribunal, and the same advantage among the civil judges, for McDermott and Raynor were heart and soul for the convention. The sheriff and land office registrar were also “loyal to liberty.”

Philemon Thomas

When it came to selecting militia officers the conventionalists took no chances . . . threw no sops! For the commandant, brigadier general they named him, the unanimous choice was Philemon Thomas, later to be termed by Governor Claiborne as the “Ajax of the Revolution.” He was a native of Virginia, born in Orange county, Feb. 9, 1764, who at the age of 17 ran away from home to join the American Revolutionary army, in spite of the fact his father, fearing such a move, had locked up his clothes. He bore a distinguished part in the battles of King’s Mountain, Eutaw Springs, and Guilford Courthouse, and eight years after he had fled the parental roof to “jine the sodgers” his father and mother beheld a strange young man ride up to the home, dismount and proclaim himself their son Philemon.

In 1805 he moved to West Florida and settled in the Baton Rouge village. He married in Kentucky, first, Elizabeth Craig, daughter of one of the two dissenting ministers whom Patrick Henry defended when charged with preaching the Gospel without a license from the Church of England, and second, Fannie Thomas. His boys were all girls, two of whom married Thomases, and two became Gales. Thomas, who lived at the corner of America and St. Ferdinand streets, was colonel of the militia of the jurisdiction of Baton Rouge, for under the Spanish laws all men were compelled to be part of this citizens’ corps. He has been described as a Baptist, tall and with a powerful frame, with red hair, and clear blue eyes, and known to be the possessor of unquestioned courage. At the time of these disturbances, according to Henry L. Favrot, Philemon Thomas kept a grocery store or “doggery” and one of the signs on his place of business proclaimed he had “Coughpy for Sail,” while another stated there could be found “Akomidation fur Man & Beest.” While unlettered there is no doubt that he possessed native military acumen, which stood the revolting planters in good stead.

Thomas was one of the most conspicuous and remarkable of the many taking part in the revolt, according to W. H. Sparks, who in his “The Memories of Fifty Years,” which has preserved for us many interesting facts and incidents connected with the revolt, wrote: “He was almost entirely without education; but was gifted with great good sense, a bold and honest soul, and a remarkable natural eloquence. His manner was always ancestral and genial, never, under any circumstances, embarrassed or affected; and, in whatever company he was thrown, or however much a stranger to company, somehow he became the conspicuous man in a short time. The character in his face, the flash of his eye, the remarkable self-possession, the natural dignity of deportment, and his great good sense, attracted and won everyone. In all his transactions, he was the same plain, honest man, never, under any circumstances, deviating from truth — plain, unvarnished truth; rigidly stern in morals, but eminently charitable to the shortcomings of others. He was, from childhood, reared in a new country, amid rude, uncultivated people, and was a noble specimen of a frontier man; without the amenities of cultivated life, or the polish of education, yet with all the virtues of the Christian heart, and these, perhaps, the more prominently, because of the absence of the others. It is frequently remarked of him that he did not think education would have been of any advantage to him. It enabled men, with pretty words, to hide their thoughts, and deceive their fellowmen with a grace and ease he despised; and it might have acted so with him, but it would have made him worse and a more unhappy man. He never did or said anything that he was ashamed to think of. He did not want to conceal his feelings and opinions, because he did not know how to do it; and he was sure if he attempted it he should make a fool of himself; for lies required so much dressing up in pretty words to make them look like the truth, that he should fail for want of words; truth was always prettiest when naked.”

Isaac Johnson, who already had recruited the “Bayou Sarah Horse,” and was spoiling for an opportunity to display the abilities of his men a — horseback in a brush with the uniformed regular soldiers of Spain, was given the commission of major of cavalry. With Joe Johnson as sheriff of the entire jurisdiction, and Isaac placed in command of the fast-moving fighters of Feliciana, the Johnson family was well represented in this move for independence, even if Brother John, the “brains” of the movement, refused an office. The other militia officers appointed were known and tested “patriots.”

Lull before the Storm

These important appointments made, the delegates prepared to disperse to their several homes, planning to meet again the first Monday in November. They had assumed control of the purse, the sword, and the scales of justice, giving nothing to Governor de Lassus except an annual salary of three thousand dollars.

What had transpired was immediately transmitted to Washington by Governor Holmes, who had kept in close touch with all going on “below the line.” The Mississippi executive informing Secretary of State Robert Smith that, “contrary to general expectations,” de Lassus had sanctioned the ordinances of the convention and in so doing had “divested himself of most of the powers of his office, retaining only title and salary.” Holmes also wrote it was necessary to add that “this surrender of authority was not a matter of choice on his part” and predicted, as this apparent harmony was a forced one and that as a majority of the people favored the intervention of the United States, that the agreement would be of short duration. Holmes knew whereof he wrote.

The Mississippi governor believed, as did many others, that the new order of things could not long maintain a separate existence if the inhabitants should finally declare for independence, nor could the leaders of the movement escape the resentment of Spain should that power regain control. Holmes further informed the Washington government that the leaders and the people behind them were determined to hazard everything rather than submit to Spanish officials. There need be no fear of the French, as Napoleon’s government was so obnoxious to everyone concerned that it scarcely had an advocate in the province. The friends of Great Britain, however, were numerous, intelligent, and active in seeking proselytes, and were continually representing the commercial advantages to be gained by a union with England, so warned the Mississippi governor.

Before concluding their labors the members of the convention composed a written, but evidently never printed, justification of their activities in meeting and drawing up ordinances for a people’s government of the province. Their original draft reads:

“To the Inhabitants of the Jurisdiction of Baton Rouge:

“The Convention of your Delegates being about to Adjourn until the first Monday in Nov. feel it their duty to lay before their Constituents the subject of their proceedings, that the impression made on the minds of many by reports in some cases accidental, in others wilfully False, may be removed. When entering upon the important duty assigned to our care, the prospect was awful & embarrassing. The embarrassment of Gov[ernment], owing to the almost total subjection of the Spanish Empire, is well known, and the Leniency of justice, in a manner, dried up; the Spirit of the Law Lost, Corruption had crept into almost every Department. The benevolent intention of our Monarch to grant his Lands to Inhabitants & imigrants of good character had been entirely frustrated, and they have been abandoned as Lawful Pillage to the Wealthy Stranger & indigent Adventurer thro bribery and intrigue. This, as well as other Regulations prevailing, for those of worth among us while the profligate and [lawless] found a ready asylum, and like Birds of Prey Prowle on the peaceful Inhabitants. The arm of Gov[ernment] paralised & a Scene of Chaos and Anarchy approaching.

“In the course of their deliberations the Convention of Delegates have invariably directed their attention to the Public Good. They have endeavoured while correcting abuses to preserve the integrity of the Government. How far they may have met the wishes of their Constituents remains for the expression of the Public Will to decide. The Convention invite this expression. They are anxious to know how far their Conduct gives Satisfaction to the People.”

The rough draft was obviously written on the 25th of August, a day that, evidently, found every delegate with a crow quill in his hand and an ink horn at his elbow, busy filling sheets of paper with words.

However, with the news of the adoption of the ordinances and the issuance of the joint proclamation of governor and delegates, a quiet settled over the province, and even in heretofore turbulent Feliciana a decided calm took the place of the storm that had so exercised the planter folk for months. As proof of this the “Louisiana Gazette” published the following extract of a letter:

“Bayou Sarah, Sept. 9th, 1810.

“Confidence is at length restored here. We now have some security for our persons and property, and justice will be administered in due form, and according to our system of laws. The proceedings of the convention so far, have given universal satisfaction, and sanguine expectations are entertained of the happiness we shall enjoy, and the great prosperity of the country under the system adopted.

“I have long wished to have you my neighbor, convinced your removal here would tend greatly to your interest, as it is well known the lands of your low country are not equal to ours for the culture of the cotton tree. A very short time will make the district of Feliciana, the garden spot of the Floridas, possessing the many advantages which it does. Many rich and respectable emigrants are now coming in here, and our lands are augmenting in price. Lands which a short time since were selling at four and five dollars per acre have within a few days been sold at six and seven dollars, and must continue to increase in value; this circumstance alone bespeaks the increasing prosperity of our country.”

Which would indicate that the Feliciana folk aside from winning liberty, and the right to happiness, were also going to profit through rising land values.

The Governor rejects “Judge” Skipwith

The governor, although he did not hesitate to place his signature and flowing paraph on the many new ordinances, proved to be a trifle stubborn about affirming the selection of the new officers that the delegates had selected to govern the province under the provisions of the ordinances.

On the 25th of August de Lassus penned communication to the “Señores diputados” in which he refused to confirm the appointment of Fulwar Skipwith to the high court, and also balked at giving Philemon Thomas the title of “brigadier general,” suggesting that he could retain the title he already had, that of colonel of the militia. His translated words read:

“In reply to your letter of this same date may I explain that the arms stored in this place are intended for use in the defense of this fort and the country, the command of which has been intrusted to me against the enemies of our flag; and you may be assured that, as soon as I am informed of the forces actually in existence and of the individuals who do not have arms to defend the cause of our legitimate sovereign, Ferdinand 7th, I shall make the proper arrangements for them to be so provided and in the manner which you have asked.

With regards for the plans for the defense, I myself being responsible for them, and the officers of the General Staff having been appointed, and after each of them shall have been installed each in his post, I shall make arrangements for all such dispositions which you do not treat of in your aforementioned letter.

“Inasmuch there has not been presented to me, even in translation, your deliberations, I do not find myself sufficiently well informed regarding them to make replies and observations which might occur to me to promote the general good of this jurisdiction, as I shall duly express to you on the day when they shall be presented to me; nonetheless I approve the suggestions which you make to me that I should give approval to the different officers, civil as well as military, which your second letter dated today contains.

“I must call to your attention that while I believe Don Fulwar Skipwith has all the qualifications necessary to discharge the duties of the post for which you recommend him, our laws prohibit any foreigner who has not resided in the province two years and has not taken the proper oath of loyalty to the government, from enjoying and profiting from the privileges of a subject of Spain, and, additionally, this same Skipwith has stated to me that he would accept no appointment; therefore it is necessary that you elect someone else in his place.

“As there does not exist, and as I myself do not recognize in our military ordinances, the post of ’brigadier general’, it appears to me that Mr. Philemon Thomas can take the same post with the title of colonel commandant of the whole militia in this Jurisdiction, with the approbation of his Excellency the Captain General.

“God preserve you many years.

“CARLOS DEHAULT DELASSUS.”

The refusal of de Lassus to place his official “O. K.” on the former American consul at Paris and his further disinclination to invest Philemon Thomas with any title that had “general” to it, especially when the best the governor could do was to rise to the rank of colonel in the armies of Spain, rather nonplussed the convention delegates who were preparing to quit Baton Rouge. Once again the whole was summoned into meeting and, three days later, they answered Don Carlos’ letter with a letter of their own. The reader, by this time, will not have failed to gather the impression that all concerned in this remarkable political upheaval delighted to write long letters, filled to the brim with flowery expressions and honeyed words! What must their speeches have been!

What the governor had said about Skipwith’s standing in the community was true enough. When he arrived in West Florida he applied, as every foreigner had to do, for the right to remain in the province for six months preparatory to taking out regular citizenship papers. For some not known reason, Governor De Lassus had denied Skipwith these documents, although he allowed Skipwith to invest his scanty funds in the “Montesano” plantation, just above the Herries brothers’ saw mill and their projected new town. At the time he was named judge he had, in fact, outlived his legal stay.

The delegates did not take kindly to the demand of de Lassus that they select some one else for the high court. They recalled countless other occasions when the established laws of the province had not been so strictly observed in appointing “aliens” to office. In consequence, on August 28th, they sent the governor the following rejoinder:

“The Convention of Representatives in reply to the communication of your Excellency of the 25th Instant have to observe that although it is not intended to make any unnecessary innovations in the existing laws of the country, yet at the present crisis in which the preservation of the Province becomes the primary object of attention, we conceive it our duty to deviate in some points of minor importance from the established laws, when some important advantage may result from the change. The appointment of Mr. Skipwith to be one of the judges of the Superior Court, we consider to be justifiable on this principle, although he be not entitled to that office, from the time of his residence amongst us. To obtain a gentleman of his capacity and good character in that station we believe ourselves justifiable at the present moment in deviating a little from ancient forms.

“The change which you propose of the title of the Commanding officer of the Militia we have no objection to make, as it will in no wise affect the general regulations of the organization of the Militia, to conform in this instance to the established military ordinances of the country.”

Recent discovery of papers handled by the delegates indicates that the conventionalists proposed additions to the communication printed in full above for a rough draft, on the back of another letter reads:

“Your Excellency having expressed your readyness to commission the officers of the militia proposed by the Convention on the 24th ult. and a speedy organization of the militia being an object of the first importance for the preservation of the Province, the Committee request your signature to the letter enclosed herewith if the same should meet with your approbation, as an authority for the said officers to exercise their respective offices until commissions can be obtained in due form.”

Although the delegates wanted to reorganize and arm the militia, which, according to the new ordinances, would be under the jurisdiction of the convention, it was evident should they press the governor on this point, it might prove disastrous through arousing his suspicions. It will be noted that de Lassus, while he craftily agreed to the proposals of the delegates, always held in reserve the fact that anything he agreed to must have the approbation of the Captain General, the Marquis de Someruelos, in far-off Havana, Cuba. In other words, de Lassus had an ace up his sleeve.

De Lassus gets 6,000 Pesos

About the middle of September a Spanish army officer, Captain Louis Piernas, appeared in Baton Rouge from Pensacola. A few weeks before he had arrived at Pensacola from Havana with fifty thousand pesos for Governor Vizente Folch to pay the soldiers serving in West Florida. Folch immediately dispatched Captain Piernas to Baton Rouge with six thousand pesos for de Lassus, and instructions to observe conditions which he was to report in detail on his return.

Piernas found Baton Rouge quiet and peaceful. At some length Governor de Lassus explained what he had been forced to do in the circumstances in order to preserve public tranquility, and that all he had done was to agree with the delegates pending the decision of El Marqués de Someruelos, the Captain-General of Cuba. However, other officers of the Baton Rouge garrison told Piernas another story and gave it as their opinion that matters were not as de Lassus represented them to be.

About the time Captain Piernas was preparing for his return trip to Pensacola, Governor de Lassus, in a letter addressed to the whole convention, advised that he desired an important change made in the ordinances. As they were written, in case of his absence or inability to act, the senior judge of the Superior Court would govern. The governor wished that article changed so that one of his own military officers would act in his stead should he be compelled to leave the seat of government or suffer any disability. Because the convention as a whole had dispersed, de Lassus sent his demand to the committee, Philip Hicky, Manuel Lopez, and Thomas Lilley, designated to act with the governor in administrative matters until it should reassemble. Wrote the governor:

“Attending to the critical circumstances of this province, and the declaration of the council of the officers of the date of the 21st of August last with the subjects expressed in my proclamation signed by the representatives of the people on the 22d of the same month; and being assured by all the declarations of the inhabitants who have ever manifested their attachment to our government, that there is no other method to preserve the tranquility of this territory, against either foreign or domestic enemies, whose perverse machinations were at the point to revolutionize, and kindle the flame of rebellion which would have destroyed this part of the Dominions of His Catholic Majesty Ferdinand 7th, and which through the Divine goodness appears to have subsided since my said proclamation. I find myself imperiously compelled to approve these laws, as I promised in that proclamation, that they may have their complete operation until the approbation of his excellency the Captain-general of the Province: and as the representatives have pledged themselves not to neglect their duty or molest the authorities but on the contrary to support them. Relying on this declaration, thinking it my duty to refuse the salaries offered to me, which I do not accept until the approbation of his Excellency aforesaid, as I have always declared, I will only observe that in case of my absence or infirmity as expressed in the 3d section of the Article provided for the better administration of justice, the senior officer present will of right represent the superior authority in my place.

“And moreover the lands of the Royal domain which may be vacant will be preserved in statu quo until the approbation of the Captain-general aforesaid.

“In Baton Rouge signed with my hand and sealed with the seal of my arms and certified by the undersigned Secretary, 12th Sept. Anno Domini 1810.

CARLOS DEHAULT DELASSUS.

Raphael Croker, Secretary.”

This move on the part of the governor, to provide that his senior officer should act in his stead, so he assured the three committeemen, would make no substantial change in the form of government outlined in the ordinances, consequently he hoped they would agree to it. Unquestionably this sudden move by de Lassus was prompted by something Captain Piernas suggested during their conferences.

However, (so we find in the Papeles de Cuba, Legajo 1857, where complete copies of the correspondence have been preserved), Hicky, Lilley and even Lopez objected to this, pointing out that such an inferior would perform military as well as judicial functions! This was the one thing that planters objected to! The committee agreed to submit the matter to the whole membership of the convention and pointed out that there was no hurry to do this as the superior tribunal was not scheduled to hold its initial session before the convention would again meet. To this de Lassus, balked in his first intention, acquiesced; although in his letter of reply on the 14th he reiterated his stand not to accept salary until permitted to do so by the Captain-general, and should any vacancy occur on his staff, he agreed that he and the deputies should determine the successor until the convention again met in regular session or the Captain-general should decide otherwise. In this exchange of notes there was the usual and mutual beseeching of the Almighty to “preserve” each “many years!”

When Captain Piernas quitted Baton Rouge he carried with him a long explanatory letter which de Lassus had penned to his superiors. The Spanish army officer also carried another letter back to Pensacola. It had been written by William Cooper, delegate to the convention from the Chefuncté region and dated September 12. In penning his missive Cooper said he felt in duty bound to report the dangerous situation then existing at Baton Rouge. He told of the calling of the convention and how the inhabitants of the Bayou Sarah region, which had been in a rebellious condition since the first of the year, had wanted to declare for independence but that he, with some other members “constituting a vigorous minority,” had declared for the Spanish régime. Cooper then charged the majority with making up a code of laws which deprived the Spanish officials of all power, and from that moment on he was certain that “the aim of the malcontents was that of overthrowing the existing system.”

Cooper claimed that the people of the province in general, were opposed to this attempt on the part of the Feliciana people, but that de Lassus’ agreement had prevented those loyal to Spain from resisting. Therefore, these loyal folk desired the immediate presence of Governor Folch. Cooper warned the Spanish executive that at its next meeting the convention would overthrow the last vestiges of the Spanish system. This was his reason, and the reason of Captain Michael Jones (a "damned old Tory,” according to the Feliciana folk), for wanting Folch to hurry with considerable force “to save the unfortunate but well-disposed inhabitants of the province.”

This appeal, which was in Folch’s hands the first week in October, determined him to go at once to the disaffected region, and he ordered a force of one hundred and fifty men to prepare to move immediately. But before he could get started distressing tidings came to the governor of West Florida!

Guile vs. Duplicity

The quiet that pervaded Baton Rouge was, as future events proved, only the calm that precedes the hurricane. Don Carlos was positive that he was cunningly concealing his real sentiments from the conventionalists, while the delegates, although they declared they were satisfied with the adoption of the new laws, felt that, in spite of the time and attention they had given the construction of the ordinances, some other course must be adopted. So both sides sparred for time. Time for what

Rumors began to steal into the province, into Baton Rouge, into Feliciana, into the Ste. Helena district. From the district where Bill Cooper and Michael Jones were holding forth came the whisper that “the violent aristocrats and the old American Tories” were arming and recruiting men so as to join the force of Spanish soldiers that Folch, at the behest of de Lassus, was then marching on from Pensacola.

At Springfield, John Ballinger, who had recently emigrated there from Kentucky, was told that Michael Jones and William Cooper were “erecting a fort on the Nictalbany” under the instructions of Shepherd Brown so that a fortified base, from which Folch could operate, would be ready when he and his veteran troops arrived. In relaying this news to Philemon Thomas, Ballinger urged that the conventionalists act at once and capture Baton Rouge, and added another rumor, believed by many, that the Spanish governor planned to stir up the slaves, and the Indians would also be urged to rise. Ballinger claimed such news came to him from responsible sources.

Shepherd Brown’s conduct was open to suspicion. Designated a member of the high court, he put off his acceptance from day to day. As he procrastinated, Brown moved about the Baton Rouge village smiling and assuring the others that he was in full accord with the new measures. But he would not take the oath of office. Finally he returned to St. Helena, telling the governor and close friends that he preferred to retain his office as alcalde of his district. Just before he quitted the fort, in conversation with the commander of the artillery there, he gave it as his opinion “the Bayou Sarah people would be the better for having a little blood drawn.”

The actions of de Lassus were also open to suspicion, too, consequently Philip Hicky and George Mather conferred with the governor. Was his procrastination in not signing certain documents sent him by the committee of the convention due to any change of mind Don Carlos blandly denied this was so. Was the governor engaging in double-dealing No, no — on his honor, no! The delegates had nothing but their suspicions to make them believe that he was.

Estevan is evicted from Bayou Sarah

A week passed. At Bayou Sarah, on the morning of September 20, Major Isaac Johnson called upon Commandant Don Tomas Estevan. Exhibiting written orders from the convention which instructed the Spaniard to turn over all property and stores held by him and to betake himself and his soldiers to Baton Rouge, Major Johnson told “El Capitán” to get busy, whereupon the right arm of Spain did not protest nor did he stand upon the order of his going, but went at once! The next morning, with his “garrison” Francisco Glavan, Manuel Villanueva, Francisco Ximenez, Alexandro Lopez, Manuel Matamoros, and Pasqual Polonesa, we find him going downstream in the goleta “Proserpina,” and in the prow of the barge was a passenger, the cura Francisco Lennán, who had decided that Saint Francisville was no longer a safe place for him. When all reached Baton Rouge, safe and sound, Don Tomas Estevan repaired to the Real Hospital, he was sick, he told the physician in charge, and went to bed.

On the night of this same Thursday, the 20th, Governor de Lassus gave another of his “peace dinners” to which he invited the representatives of the convention. Hicky and Lilley were not present but Manuel Lopez attended and among the dozen or so guests were the Mathers, father and son, and “Colonel” Philemon Thomas, who listened to the governor’s protestations of friendship with a grim smile and gleaming blue eyes; his red hair seemed redder than usual. Thomas was still smiling when de Lassus ordered another salute of twenty-one guns from the fort to again “commemorate the perfect harmony” existing between the chief executive and the people of Feliciana since he had signed the ordinances.

Philemon Thomas had a reason for smiling. Only that morning some of his trusted men had intercepted a messenger that de Lassus had sent to Shepherd Brown during the night. The dispatch-bearer carried communications that Brown was to forward to Pensacola. In them Governor de Lassus implored Governor Folch to dispatch an armed force to his assistance at once, so that he, de Lassus, could quell an absolute insurrection of His Catholic Majesty’s subjects! He informed his superior that he had been deprived of all authority vested in him by the King and had been superseded by self-constituted officers. Although he had not yet been placed in confinement, such a close watch was being kept over him that he feared at any time he would be thrown in gaol and the fort occupied.

Don Carlos, in the other letter found on the messenger, urged Shepherd Brown to hurry with his preparations to arm every loyal citizen he could muster, to erect forts, and be ready to lend all assistance possible when he, governor, would give the word to strike. Then, the ringleaders would be rounded up and punished. At last! Proof of de Lassus’ duplicity; proof of Shepherd Brown’s treachery!

When these communications were read to General Thomas, for he himself was unable to do so, his lack of education did not prevent him from knowing what to do in the circumstances. He placed the governor’s messenger in close confinement, then quietly apprised Philip Hicky of what he had uncovered. Thomas planned to dispatch couriers to the Feliciana district so the leaders of the liberty movement could be informed of the governor’s deception and intention of hanging the convention delegates higher than Gilroy’s kite.

Philip Hicky, however, volunteered to carry the information himself, and was soon in the saddle. When he paused at The Plains and delivered his budget of news to Thomas Lilley and Richard Devall, Lilley joined him. The two galloped their horses over the road, stopping at friendly plantations to exchange their blown mounts for fresh horses, splashed through the ford at Thompson’s Creek, and then up the hill to “Troy” plantation.

“Strike for Liberty!”

On the night of September 21, six members of the convention were gathered at “Troy” plantation, just outside Saint Francisville. They were, John Hunter Johnson, William Barrow, John Rhea, John Mills, Thomas Lilley and Philip Hicky. The two latter had delivered their budget of news and echoed Philemon Thomas’ warning that their necks were now in danger. They grimly acknowledged that the Spanish governor had outwitted them and therefore they must act quickly. The futility of continuing their mock allegiance to Spain was apparent to each. A quick, decisive blow for liberty must be struck at once, even if they had not yet secured muskets from the fort for the militia. Pistols, fowling pieces, knives were at hand, with stout arms, and stout hearts behind the arms, to wield them. Post haste messengers were supplied with fresh horses and sent back to Thomas with the convention’s orders. These orders were that he should arm all the men available and storm the fort at Baton Rouge as quickly as forces could be assembled, the latter to be done secretly. The militia leader was assured he could expect armed assistance from Feliciana to join him in the attack.

From now on it was to be war! The sword was to take the place of the crow quill!

Saturday, September 22, was a day of activity in and about Baton Rouge. While the governor bustled about the fort and the village, Philemon Thomas dispatched riders to Daniel Raynor in Ste. Helena ordering him to amass loyal planters and march to an appointed place just outside the village.

In the Feliciana country Major Isaac Johnson and Captain Llewellyn C. Griffith rounded up their dragoons and early that day the clattering hoofs of their mounts on the dusty road leading to Baton Rouge gave notice that the “Bayou Sarah Horse” was on its way. At the head of the column rode a flag-bearer. The banner that waved in the early morning breeze from the staff he carried was a strange one, all blue, like the azure of the sky, in its center a single five-pointed gleaming white star. It had been made, several days before, by Isaac Johnson’s wife, Melissa, and represented the “five points of fellowship” under which the Feliciana planters had first gathered in secret session to confect their plans for liberty in West Florida.

The West Florida Flag

The blue banner of the Feliciana patriots which replaced Spain’s red and yellow ensign September 22, 1810, when the fort at Baton Rouge was taken by assault, was the first “lone star flag” in the history of the United States, thus antedating the famous flag of Texas by 26 years. It waved over the “free and independent state of West Florida” for 74 days until hauled down by Governor Claiborne at Saint Francisville, December 6, 1810. The white star represented the “five points of fellowship” under which the ringleaders of the rebellion held their secret gatherings. Masonic in character, it is the same emblem that gave the Order of the Eastern Star its title.

While the Feliciana dragoons were on their way, Philemon Thomas himself went to Springfield as fast as horseflesh could take him there and assisted John Ballinger to muster the grenadier company. When this “army” took up the line of march, forty-four armed men tramped behind their commander as he turned back towards Baton Rouge, all “fit to fight a battle for the freedom of the world.”

It was an hour after midnight before two columns met just outside the village. Impatiently Commander Thomas awaited the arrival of the third column due from Ste. Helena. His present army consisted of the 21 mounted men from Feliciana, there were 44 from Springfield, and eight or ten “patriotic gentlemen” who brought the effective force up to about 75 men. Additional men from Ste. Helena were on their way but whether they would arrive before daylight was problematical. A few of the Ste. Helena patriots had arrived on their piney-woods tackies. They were headed by a quaint character named Larry Moore, who was spoiling for a chance to fist-fight those in the fort. It might be pointed out that neither Mr. Moore or his companions ever referred to Spaniards, officials or private citizens, as Dons or Hidalgos. To these hardy sons of the piney woods such humans were either “yaller bellies” or “pukes".

The Fort at Baton Rouge

While the patriots were secretly gathering and making ready for the onslaught, Spanish officers in the fort were making that place ready for any possible trouble. Early Saturday morning a horseman had dashed into the village seeking the governor, he told Lieutenant Morejon that he had been sent from Bayou Sarah to advise the authorities that the Feliciana people were arming and securing horses for a descent on the fort. In the late afternoon another messenger, dispatched by John Murdock, arrived and informed the governor of the suspicious movements of those who had backed the convention. To make sure his message would reach the governor, Murdock had sent another courier by water. Quietly the fort was put in readiness to relieve the delegation with appropriate ceremonies.

The fort at Baton Rouge was situated on a piece of ground that overlooked the Mississippi river, an elevation ten or fifteen feet higher than the surrounding land. The fort was surrounded by high cypress pickets, which were set so they slanted outwardly, and then enclosed about three acres of ground. Behind them banks of clay, nearly as high as the cypress pickets had been thrown up so as to form a solid rampart. The stockade itself was square with four small bastions at the corners. The fosse or ditch, about nine feet deep and fifteen feet wide, was dry but it would hinder, in spite of its lack of water, an attacking party from investing the fort on the land side. The fort would prove, to a force not supplied with artillery, a difficult nut to crack.

There were several well-appearing houses within the enclosure, one being a rather substantial blockhouse. Facing the river were mounted about a score of guns, all apparently in good condition, whose mouths gaped on the turgid flow of the mighty Mississippi; scattered about the grounds were a number of rusty old cannon, of many fashions and of varying calibres, mounted on decrepit carriages, the whole looking for all the world like a gathering of cripples home from the wars.

But the main gates, which faced south and the village, were flanked by four cannon, which Lieutenant Metzinger saw were well loaded with grape. Any attack from the land side would result in the charging columns being swept with a hail of lead. It was from the direction of the village that an attack, if any, would be made, so the soldiers decided and they were prepared.

Surrounding the parade ground were the blockhouse, with many musket portals; a well-buttressed arsenal, and a thick walled storehouse. In the center of the presidio or parade ground rose the tall white-painted staff from which floated the red and yellow banner of Spain.

If there was blood to be let, then the soldiers of Castile and Leon were ready to let it, and let it flow from the bodies of those who would dare flout the dignity and authority of His Catholic Majesty, Ferdinand VII, of Spain!

Louis de Grand-Pré — Creole

On this September Saturday, while the Dons were on the qui vive for eventualities, Sub-Lieutenant Don Louis Antonio de Grand Pré, eldest son of the late governor Don Carlos de Grand Pré, left the fort and was rowed across the river to the American side. He went to the plantation of Don Pedro Favrot, a former French and Spanish army officer, where he had promised to spend the Sabbath.

Don Pedro Favrot, (in the days of the French domination of Louisiana he was called Pierre Joseph de Favrot), was a native of Louisiana, who served in the French colonial army until his native land was ceded to Spain. In 1778 he was allowed to hold his same commission in the Spanish colonial army and was in charge of Fort Saint Philip on the Mississippi in 1803, when the Louisiana Purchase was consummated and the province passed under the control of the United States. Thereupon Don Pedro forsook his military career, retired to a plantation he had purchased on the west bank of the Mississippi nearly opposite Baton Rouge, and with his wife and children prepared to live out the rest of his life in peace and contentment as an American citizen.

His eldest child was Joséphine, described as a beautiful and talented Creole. Her betrothed was young Louis de Grand Pré. They were childhood sweethearts, for Carlos de Grand Pré and her father had been companions-in — arms in both the French and Spanish colonial troops. Joséphine Favrot and Don Louis were Louisiana-born French Creoles and pardonably proud of this distinction. When Louis announced the fact he would be unable to pay his regular Sunday visit to the Favrot plantation, regret was expressed, and the young officer in the service of Spain was urged to stay for the night.

Don Louis said that, as much as he desired to remain and court his lady love, his duty made it imperative that he return to the fort for, should anything occur in his absence, he would never forgive himself. The Favrots pointed out to him that he was too loyal to the Spain that had cast such a stigma on the name of his honored father. To this Louis replied that he must prove by his devotion to the Spanish cause that the charges against his father had been baseless. So he ordered his men to row him back to the fort where he arrived soon after darkness fell.

Upon reaching the fort, Don Louis sought out his friend Lieutenant Metzinger, the artillery officer. He was told that everything was quiet and, in the estimation of all in charge of the fort, the reported uprising would prove untrue. All the regular soldiers were instructed to sleep on their arms, however, and the night guard was cautioned to be extra alert and report any suspicious movements. Sentinels paraded the ramparts and Metzinger saw to it that the guns were in readiness to repel any attack.

At midnight, when the sentries patrolling the ramparts were calling into the star-studded night: “Ave Maria purisima! Las doce de la noche y sereno. Salve Espana!” a third messenger from John Murdock reached the fort. He was in search of Tomaso Estevan and was conducted to the bedside of the former commandant of Bayou Sarah, who was being treated in the Real Hospital. Murdock’s message was to the effect that he had positive information that the Feliciana mounted men, under Major Isaac Johnson and Captain Griffith, had left Saint Francisville to attack on the fort. The sentinels were reenforced, the guard called out, artillerymen were ordered to their guns, officers sleeping outside the stockade were summoned to the fort, and word was sent to de Lassus, who was abed in his house, which was only two hundred paces away.

A half hour later the governor was at his post where he waited from two in the morning until nearly four. A slight fog was rising from the surface of the river. Anxiously the officers paced up and down the stockade. Would there be an attack Scarcely at night, they reasoned, and besides, it was now Sunday; would the Feliciana planters desecrate the Sabbath by war Unthinkable!

The governor, after satisfying himself that the guards were alert, returned to his house and his interrupted sleep.

“Hurrah for Washington!”

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the village, in the dark, the forces of the patriots were gathering. The Ste. Helena contingent was slow in arriving and the leader feared the sun would be up before they would join his forces. Philemon Thomas had marched his Springfield foot soldiers forty miles in the space of thirteen hours. Isaac Johnson, with his one score and one of mounted men, had reached the designated rendezvous on time and with him rode a number of planters and convention delegates who had hastily armed themselves with pistols and fowling pieces. The delegates were as ready to participate in the coming physical encounter as they were to write laws.

How was he to crack the fort with the least harm to his men This was Philemon Thomas’ problem at that time. Informed of the preparations made within the fort to receive his forces, he realized that to march directly on the stockade and force the main gate would merely mean his men would be raked by a killing fire from the four cannon whose grape-filled muzzles faced the port. Thomas’ force was small, not many more than sixty-odd, he was without artillery, and he knew that the Spanish inside the fort would have the advantage should he elect to take the place by storm.

At this point Larry Moore, a Kentuckian by birth, and settler in the Ste. Helena district, a close friend of Philemon Thomas, as illiterate as he was bold, but as cunning as a piney-woods fox, spoke up and claimed he knew how to “git inter that dinged ol’ fort.” He explained that the cows, such supplied the garrison with fresh milk, always entered and left the fort through an opening in the cypress palisades on the river side. As this opening was opposite the commons, Larry claimed that those on horseback could sneak in. “Ef them cows kin git in thar an’ outen again, I knows my pony kin tote me in the same way, an’ do h’it as easy as fallin’ offen a log.”

Isaac Johnson was immediately interested and he secured permission from the commander to try entering the fort by this round-about ruse. Led by the tobacco-chewing Larry Moore, the Bayou Sarah cavalry set off to circle the fort, approach it by the river bluffs, and approach the fort by the cow path and enter it through the broken cypress pickets, while the defenders were keeping vigilant watch on the main gate.

In single file the horsemen urged their mounts up the steep river bluff and threaded their mounts through the herd of feeding milk-cows; the cow path was distinct in spite of the thickening fog that hung close to the surface of the wide Mississippi, for day was about to break. The opening in the cypress palisades was found just as Larry Moore had predicted and so quietly did the horsemen make their way into the fort that they were lined up on the edge of the parade ground before the sentry, Corporal José de la Polvora, who first the stamping of horses’ hooves, cried: “ Ole! Qué es eso!” Getting no reply to his inquiry, the sentry yelled “ Quien vive ” and then, like rapid shots, the shrill “ Alerta! Alerta! Alerta!” of the other sentinels tore into the black morning air to apprise the rest of the garrison that the Gringos were inside the fort!

Sharp commands in purest Castilian ordered out the guard and Louis de Grand Pré dashed into the guardhouse and then out of it with the Cuerpo de Guardia at his back. The intrepid young Creole made straight for the line of mounted men now forming the width of the parade ground. Waving his sword and bidding his men follow, Don Louis reached the invaders. “Mis amigos” he called in Spanish, “my friends we are more numerous than you; we do not want to hurt you!” As he spoke, he started slashing with his sabre, at the flanks of the horses within reach of his blade as though to turn them back the way they had come.

But the mounted men only urged their horses on towards the blockhouse. Don Louis ran back to his guardsmen, and as he reached them he shouted “ Fuego! Fuego!”

Obeying the order to fire, the soldiers put up their muskets and discharged a volley at the oncoming mounted men. Horses reared and whinnied in pain, but not a Bayou Sarah man was struck by a flying ball. Then, for the first time since entering the fort, Isaac Johnson voiced an order, “Shoot ’em down!” From the men on horseback came the answering hail of lead. The brave young leader of the Spanish guard fell with four balls in his body. Lieutenant Juan Metzinger, endeavoring to wheel his guns into a new position, was struck twice, a bullet punctured his sword arm, while a pistol ball fractured his wrist.

Breaking their silence, whooping with might and main, and shouting “Hurrah for Washington!", Isaac Johnson and his men from Feliciana dashed forward, leaping their mounts over the prostrate forms of the Spanish dead and wounded, for six of the defenders of the fort were rolling and thrashing about in the dust of the parade.

Artillerymen, endeavoring to face their guns in the opposite direction, scattered before the earth-shaking throb of galloping hooves. In a trice the gates were reached and the Spanish foot soldiers guarding the main port were soon madly fleeing for the safety of the guardhouse. To throw open the gates was the work of a few seconds and Philemon Thomas, followed by his foot soldiers, came boiling into the fort. At the first cry from the fort, the shrill “ Alertas!” of the sentinels informing them that the horsemen sneaking into the fort via the back way had been discovered and then the sound of firing, sent the whole patriot force in a mad rush for the fort to engage in the mêlee.

Governor de Lassus entered the fort to find the whole patriotic force of about 65 men gathered about the blockhouse busily making Spanish soldiers prisoners. Ordered to hand over his sword, the governor refused so one of the Feliciana invaders, who had just wrested a musket from a captured Spanish soldier, knocked de Lassus down with the butt, and would have run the bayonet through him had not Philemon Thomas intervened. As the dazed governor rose to his feet another Bayou Sarah patriot discharged a pistol so close to his bald head, that the power of Spain in the jurisdiction of Baton Rouge near to swooned from fright.

The Spanish defenders were demoralized, not only by the night attack, but by the violation of the recognized rules of warfare, “the capture of a fort by cavalry alone!” These Gringos! The jubilant captors had no time to discuss the amenities, Spanish soldiers had to be disarmed and herded into the guardhouse. The ex-governor was also locked up. Then a hasty survey was made of the attacking force. Not a man had been killed, not a man wounded!

Tenderly, the pain-wracked Louis de Grand Pré was carried into the hospital and a surgeon summoned to attend his hurts. The young Creole’s order to his men, “Fire! Fire!", had proved his own death warrant. He had been struck twice in the arm, a ball had broken his thigh, and another had punctured his chest. The victors also carried into the hospital, which had been hastily deserted at the first sound of firing by “sick” Don Tomaso Estevan, a dead soldier, Manuel Matamoros, one of Estevan’s force at Bayou Sarah; and two badly wounded soldiers, Francisco Ximenes and Corporal Andres Martinez.

While the members of the Convention were busy with their plans for governing the now freed jurisdiction, the rank and file of patriots in the fort prepared an address, advising the delegates of the people of their loyalty to the cause. They assured conventionalists:

At the first sitting, the delegates decided upon a preliminary proclamation or resolution declaring West Florida a Free and Independent State. Several handwritten copies were made, and one of them, together with a letter to the American governor of the Mississippi Territory was dispatched to Natchez by Abner L. Duncan. This first liberty resolution, read:

The other letter, which Duncan placed in Governor Holmes’ hands, read:

The Declaration of Independence

While the foregoing appeal was being hurried “above the line" to Governor Holmes, the members of the Convention finally decided upon the wording of their formal declaration of independence. Finished to their satisfaction, it was signed, September 26, 1810, by John Rhea, as president, Andrew Steele, as secretary of the Convention, and the other members of the Convention, all save Bill Cooper and Benjamin O. Williams. On Saturday, the day before the taking of the fort, Williams had sent John Rhea his resignation as a delegate from Ste. Helena, the gist of what he said in his letter was that his “local situation not permitting my longer attendance as a representative for this District, in the Convention.”

Finally signed and sealed, the Declaration of Independence of the people of West Florida was given to the world. It meant as much to these liberty-loving folk of the South as did a similar document signed and sealed in the city of Philadelphia on that historic fourth day of July, 1776. While it was not as long as the avowal written in the Quaker City, but it was to the point, as you can read for yourself:

With utmost dispatch this formal declaration was enclosed in letters addressed to the governors of the Orleans and Mississippi territories. Read the letter to Claiborne:

Governor Holmes promptly acknowledged receipt of the Convention’s communications but all he permitted himself to say was that the declaration would be promptly sent on to Washington. No reply was received from Claiborne, because that executive was then in the capital of the United States. Replied Holmes:

The Mississippi executive, it will be noticed, did not reply to the plea that United States troops be sent into the district. His letter, written from the “Town of Washington", was penned at the village of that name a few miles from Natchez, then the capital of the Mississippi territory. Holmes, however, did order out the American soldiers. Regulars under Colonel Thomas P. Cushing were sent to the border to protect American interests in the neighborhood of Pinckneyville and the territorial militia was ordered to be in readiness for any emergency.

The Eulogy of a Brave Creole

The day after the capture of the fort, the mortally wounded Don Louis de Grand Pré died in the arms of Philogene Favrot. A romantic idyl regarding this young Louisianian and his lovely betrothed, remains to be told. At four in the morning, the very time that the fort was taken by the patriots, Joséphine Favrot awoke everyone in her father’s home by her screams. Hastening to her bedroom, her father, mother, and brothers found her pacing up and down her bedroom shivering in terror and hysterically declaring that she had seen, in a vivid vision, men on horseback entering the fort, Louis de Grand Pré covered with blood defending his post, and calling for her!

The members of the family unsuccessfully endeavored to quiet her, and when daylight came, in answer to her pleas that she must go to Baton Rouge because her lover was calling her, her father and brother Philogene agreed to take her there so she could be convinced her dream was only a dream.

As they approached the fort in their skiff, Don Pedro Favrot and his son were astonished to see that a strange blue flag with a single white star had replaced the Spanish banner. Hurrying ashore the Favrots learned of the happenings of the night, of Don Louis’ plight, and that Joséphine’s uncanny vision had been more than a figment of her imagination.

Louis de Grand Pré lived until two in the morning on Monday. His childhood sweetheart was sobbing at his side as the young soldier, supported by the arms of his chum, Philogene Favrot, breathed his last. The victors of the battle buried their brave foeman with full military honors just outside the fort he had vainly tried to defend.

A touching eulogy from the pen of Don Pedro Favrot on the intrepid Creole who had given his life to prove his father had not been a traitor to the Spanish cause later appeared in the New Orleans newspapers. Said the “Louisiana Courier” October 29:

The verse signed by a friend of Louis de Grand Pré, in testimony of the deep regret that his death caused him, in French follows:

Or in English:

Joséphine Favrot never married, she remained true to her dead lover, and throughout a long life was wedded only to her art, her brush and pencil depicting the lovely flowers that grew in profusion all about the Favrot plantation.

What the New Orleans Papers Printed

The action of the West Florida patriots in throwing off the yoke of Spain was applauded everywhere above and below “the line.” The Natchez newsprints devoted considerable space to the happenings, while the New Orleans dailies set in type all the news obtainable. One or two of the articles appearing in the “Louisiana Gazette” are of interest, if for no other reason than to show how “hot news” was handled in those far-off days.

The first information that New Orleans had of the uprising, aside from the buzzing that went on in the coffee-houses and on street corners, was found in the “Louisiana Gazette", Wednesday, Sept. 26:

The next morning the “Gazette” concluded the news was important enough to justify a one-column head. Said the issue of Sept. 27:

It was not until Friday, the 28th, that the “Louisiana Courier” realized the importance of the news for tucked away in one column was:

For several days following these first publications the New Orleans newsprints were devoid of any mention of the startling events that had taken place up the river, but on Wednesday, October 3, the “Gazette” said:

Forming a New Government

Meanwhile, at the seat of trouble, the members of the Convention were kept active arranging for a defense of the territory just won at the point of the sword. Fears of reprisals by Folch and his columns of marching men were uppermost and a flood of wild rumors and a decided lack of extra information kept these new masters of West Florida in constant apprehension.

News of the success of the patriot force in storming the Baton Rouge fort in the dead of morning, the raising of an independent flag, and the general hip — hip-hurrah welling in every American’s heart over the coup, sent men of all classes flocking to the fort to support “the American cause” by enlisting “under the Star.” So depleted were many families on the United States’ side of the border of their “men folks” that pleas were hurried to the Mississippi executive to furnish them with protection in case there might be “another San Domingo” uprising of negroes. The rather lawless character of many of the men rushing to Baton Rouge to join in the contemplated onslaught against the Dons in the rest of the province was a matter of serious apprehension, for many were deserters from the U. S. army and navy, or had other good and sufficient reasons for fleeing American courts of justice.

Substantiated rumors were to the effect that Alcalde Shepherd Brown, and “that damned old Tory” Captain Michael Jones, were actively recruiting settlers still favorable to the Spanish regime so that they could act in concert with Governor Folch and his regulars coming from Pensacola. The very day the Spanish Governor of West Florida received word of the fall of the Baton Rouge fort and the imprisonment of Governor de Lassus, Brown wrote him that he and his “fellow loyalists” were determined to oppose the “rebels” until Folch would arrive and, so said Brown, if Folch would come in person, he “would find 500 loyal settlers to help him reestablish the royal authority.”

While Folch planned an early relief of de Lassus, as a matter of fact he never left Pensacola. He asked Cuba for men and money for the purpose but so delayed from day to day holding long-winded councils-of — war and juntas that by the time he was ready to start westward other events convinced him that such a relief expedition would be useless, and that West Florida, from the Pearl to the Mississippi at least, was gone from Spain forever. However, the patriots in Baton Rouge did not know this; what they did know was that Shepherd Brown and Michael Jones were arming and defying and flouting the new authority, and such news was not received with good grace by the members of the force guarding the captured fort. They had won one battle and yearned for more worlds to conquer; wouldn’t the Convention do something about it To spur the delegates into action, the patriot soldiers formed themselves into a body, designated Colonel Bill Kirkland president, and Captain John Ballinger, as clerk, and then confected an address. If the Convention delegates could write addresses, proclamations, ordinances, codes, and such, what was to prevent the fighting men from doing the same. Not a thing! So this is what they wrote:

The prayers for orders to capture Shepherd Brown, Bill Cooper, and Michael Jones and scatter the forces they were forming to resist the new masters of West Florida were quickly given. On the first day of October the punitive expedition set forth in the direction of Ste. Helena. In the van were the Feliciana Dragoons, led by Major Isaac Johnson and Captain Llewellyn Colville Griffith. The Springfield grenadiers were under the command of Major Robert McCausland, while Colonel Kimball headed another detachment of foot soldiers. Exactly what was done on this expedition to “quiet matters” in the eastern section of the new republic, and how Shepherd Brown and Michael Jones were tamed is set forth in General Thomas’ report:

The Brown Shepherd Flees his Flock

Shepherd Brown, failing to raise his boasted "500” and very apprehensive of his own skin, advised his few, about 80, followers to disperse and save themselves, when he was apprised of the coming of General Thomas and his force of four hundred men. Brown set the “loyalists” a good example by fleeing on a boat bound for New Orleans. He was overtaken before he could get into neutral territory and sent to the fort at Baton Rouge to keep de Lassus company.

When the Lone Star patriots appeared before the fort on the Nictalbany, the defenders fled before the rapid approach of the Feliciana Dragoons. Although Brown had slipped away, William Cooper was captured, and later the patriots destroyed his stock and other property; the animus they displayed against him was twofold, his record as a former and notorious Tory back in North Carolina, and his desertion of the proceeding of the Convention after being elected as the lone delegate of the Chifoncté district. Before the punitive returned to Baton Rouge, Cooper was killed trying to escape. With William Cooper dead, Michael Jones, a penitent convert to the cause of independence, and Shepherd Brown locked up in the fort with his former superior, all opposition to the Convention came to an abrupt end in Ste. Helena. Captain Samuel Baldwin, who had been designated by General Thomas as a sort of peace officer, recruited and equipped a considerable force and ruled with a rigid hand, and slapped irons on all men in the district who would not sign the Convention’s declaration of independence.

With insurrection smothered the Convention could now get down to the business of creating a new nation. At Pensacola the Spanish authorities believed that they could soon retake the lost territory on the Mississippi River when the inhabitants of the jurisdiction learned they had become tax-payers under the ordinances of the Convention. This was something the Spanish regime had not required for the money to run the government came from the Crown and the officials secured their extra money in other ways. Evidently there was some such thought in the master minds of the Convention for on October 5, when General Thomas was sending Shepherd Brown scuttling through the cypress swamps like a frightened rabbit, the ordinances adopted in August, which fixed taxes in slaves imported into the district, were repealed and the taxes on lands reduced, as witness the text of these important resolutions are:

Rhea Pleads with President Madison

However, there was another important matter for the Conventionalists to consider: Would they continue as an independent republic or fly to the bosom of the United States, be received by that great republic as one of its own children and as such receive protection While sentiment in the Baton Rouge jurisdiction was overwhelmingly for annexation to the United States, the proponents of such a move were divided as to the terms upon which it should be brought about. Finally, on October 10, John Rhea attached his signature to a letter sent Secretary of State Robert Smith for transmissal to President Madison; in it he established the contentions of the convention for annexation.

The Lone Star Shines

The delegates decided, for the present, not to change the frame of the government they had prepared with their set of ordinances with the exception that the Convention as a whole would assume the powers granted to the deposed Governor de Lassus. Anxiously they awaited a response to their appeals to President Madison for annexation to the United States. It was also decided that the present force of five to six hundred armed men was too large to maintain, so they; reduced the force to one hundred and four regular soldiers to keep order at the fort under the command of Captain John Ballinger.

A committee of “Publick Safety” was appointed, John H. Johnson, Edmund Hawes, and John W. Leonard, and given the power to draft a new constitution while the rest of the members were in recess. The convention at that time consisted of: from Feliciana, John Rhea, John Hunter Johnson, John Mills and William Barrow; from Baton Rouge, Philip Hicky, Thomas Lilley, John Morgan and Edmund Hawes; from Ste. Helena, John W. Leonard and Joseph Thomas were the only representatives, for Benjamin O. William, evidently getting what is known today as “cold feet", sent the Convention his resignation on Saturday, the eve of the capture of the fort.

However, on the date of their adjournment, October 10, the members of the convention issued an address to the people inhabiting the Mobile and Pensacola district, still held by the Spanish, and first calling attention to the fact that distance had prevented them calling the citizens of this section of West Florida into the common deliberation, announced that they had appointed as commissioners Reuben Kemper and Joseph White “to bring about united action with their brethren” and, although they had not “yet ventured to legislate for these unrepresented districts, the object of the Convention was to secure the liberty and happiness of the people of West Florida.” Therefore, it was requested that the citizens of Mobile and Pensacola authorize the Convention to act for them or send their own deputies to join that body. The request ended with the promise of good faith in all measures that would serve the common good.

Reuben Kemper spoiling to get even with the Spanish, for he hated them as much as any man is capable of hatred, immediately repaired to the eastern country along the gulf with the promise that “The Star would rise and shine” with his coming. His mission failed, as has already been related in my “The Story of the Kemper Brothers,” and it was not until years later that the section east of Mobile fell under the domination of the United States.

The Convention was not due to go into session until the 24th of October to receive the report of John H. Johnson and his two co-delegates on the progress they had made in preparing a constitution of the new Republic of West Florida. Before the delegates gathered again a number of things happened. The most important was an attempt to release former Governor de Lassus and Shepherd Brown from their confinement in the Baton Rouge fort. The attempt was engineered by Captain David T. W. Cook, who commanded the third regiment from Feliciana.

Mutiny in the Fort

Said the “Louisiana Gazette” of this frustrated attempt to free de Lassus:

From above the line, where close watch was kept on all transpiring within the new republic, letters were sent to New Orleans to apprise the citizens there of the state of affairs. Below is a typical expression from Pinckneyville, printed in the “Gazette” of October 20th:

Others seized their pens, either to lampoon the Spanish defenders, or to extravagantly praise the captors. No more interesting recital of what occurred during those strenuous September and October days was ever set to paper than a parody of Biblical narratives written by one Jonathan Longworth. This young man at the time of the disturbances was teaching school in the house of Thomas Lilley, at the Saints John Plains, and in all probability, was an eyewitness to the deliberations of the original Convention. In a paper dedicated to Philip Hicky, who long owned the original, devoted to the Grand Sanhedrine [“Great Sanhedrin”, an ancient Jewish assembly or council of 71 members] the young schoolmaster wrote:

St. Francisville the New Capital

It was the 24th of October before the members of the Convention again gathered a report from Johnson, Hawes and Leonard, who had been instructed to draw up the new constitution. The result of their labors was one frankly based upon that of the United States which was to go into force the following month. The convention thereupon appointed an executive committee of five consisting of John H. Johnson, John Mills, William Barrow, from Feliciana, and Philip Hicky and John Morgan of Baton Rouge to conduct the affairs of the new nation, for no news was forthcoming from Washington in reply to their plea to Jimmy Madison that the United States adopt them.

The new steering committee selected St. Francisville as the seat of government and from this capital issued orders. Captain John Ballinger was ordered to keep safe all “state prisoners", maintain strict discipline amongst the 115 soldiers guarding the fort, and was cautioned to be on guard against any surprise attack. He was instructed to salute all American gunboats passing up and down the Mississippi, but at the same time to transfer six pieces of artillery, 200 muskets, and necessary munitions to the new capital city.

On October 26 the Convention issued another declaration of independence, and on the following day adopted a constitution. It provided for a “governor” to be elected by a general assembly biennially, and the government of the republic to be divided into three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. The legislature to consist of a senate and house of representatives, with the representatives seem to be chosen annually; and the senators, triennially. The new state was divided into five districts — “Baton Rouge, New Feliciana, St. Helena, St. Ferdinand, and Mobile.” Each district was entitled to one senator and three representatives, with the exception of Feliciana, which was allowed a single senator and four representatives. Said the proclamation: “The first general assembly shall meet at St. Francisville on the third Monday of November next, and shall choose a governor on the second day after a quorum of both houses shall be formed.”

On the tenth day of November Feliciana made its selection and designated John Rhea as senator, and selected John H. Johnson, William Barrow, Llewellyn C. Griffith, and John Scott the representatives.

On the 12th of November orders were given General Thomas to organize a force of 618 militia to perform service in any part of the territory and to proceed, when ready, to capture Mobile and hoist the Lone Star over that gulf port. That accomplished, Thomas and his army were to reduce Pensacola. Not all of the delegates were favorable to this campaign along the gulf, they preferred to await the action of President Madison upon their request for annexation to the United States.

On the day set, Monday, November 19, the infant government met in the new state capital. The senators and delegates were faced with a new situation, for on that very day word came from Natchez that the United States was about to take action: “We understand from a source that may be relied upon, that orders have been received by the commanding officer at the Cantonment Washington, near this place, Natchez, to hold the army in readiness to march at a moment’s warning. The order, we learn, enters into such details, as to indicate a speedy movement", read the New Orleans “Gazette’s” story.

When met, the senators made John W. Leonard president pro tempore of the upper house, while Dudley L. Avery was selected as speaker of the House of Representatives, these two evidently the selection of the Baton Rouge and Ste. Helena districts. On the following day, the 20th, Fulwar Skipwith was elected by the whole assembly as “governor of the State.”

The New Governor Speaks

Philemon Thomas was placed in command of the army; C. M. Audibert, Samuel Baldwin, and John Mills were appointed navy agents; a committee of safety, with John H. Johnson, as chairman, was also designated, and an expedition of 400 effective men, to join forces with the regular forces of the state, under the command of Colonel William Kirkland, was ordered to reduce the forts at Mobile and Pensacola.

Fulwar Skipwith, who maintained his elevation to supreme command was not of his seeking, said that he supported the West Florida declaration of independence from principle and because he believed that this was the best way to turn the captured province over to the United States. He accepted the governorship, not from vanity, but because he hoped with the aid of the others in the movement to avoid anarchy and confusion until annexation could be consummated. In his inaugural address Skipwith advised the legislative assembly to adopt a better judicial system, an improved militia establishment, a more just system of representation, and apportionment of taxes. He told the members of the legislature they had a natural right to independence, and gave it as his belief that neither gain nor the implied promise of protection had led them to take the momentous step they had taken.

During the first weeks of his government, Skipwith personally directed the preparations for the dispatch of the patriot force to wrest the remainder of West Florida from the Dons. There was great excitement prevailing at Saint Francisville and Baton Rouge as volunteers were recruited and marched away to join the regular forces to be assembled at John Stuart’s plantation preparatory to going overland to raise the Lone Star over the fortifications along the gulf.

To understand the spirit that animated these “sons of liberty” one needs only listen to the song they sang as they marched away from Baton Rouge, leaving Lieutenant Charles Grandpré Johnson, (brother of John, Isaac, and Joseph) in charge of the fort with a garrison of twenty-five men.

The song that the patriotic gun-toters sang carried a French title and, in consequence, the pronunciation of “Vive la” should be given as “Vive-a — lay” to fit the meter and rime correctly. Now, you sing the stirring march-tune:

But the West Floridian army was not destined to come to grips with the Spanish soldiers along the gulf. In Washington, with Governor Claiborne at his very elbow, President James Madison at last was prepared to act. Dispatch riders flying over the Natchez trace had carried word to him of the coup of the Feliciana patriots, the fall of the fort at Baton Rouge, and the copies of the acts of the Convention and their ringing declarations of independence. Jimmy Madison determined not to await the action of Congress and lay the matter before that body, because five weeks must intervene before the nation’s lawmakers would go into session. He determined to act at once to prevent foreign intervention as well as to maintain order.

Therefore, on October 27, while the Floridians were still wrestling with their plans for self-government, Madison issued his proclamation declaring that West Florida formed a part of the Louisiana Purchase! After a wait of seven long years, the United States had tardily claimed its own!

The president ordered Governor Claiborne to return forthwith to the scene of action, take possession of West Florida, invite the people to respect him, obey the laws of the United States, and to preserve order. To do the latter Claiborne would have the backing of the United States army.

Another new day was about to dawn for Feliciana and the rest of the West Florida.

It was Saturday, the first day of December, 1810, when William Charles Cole Claiborne, governor of the Territory of Orleans, after a hurried overland journey from Washington, D. C., reached Washington, T. M., the tiny Mississippi village then the capital of that territory. He wrote Secretary of State Robert Smith:

Governor Claiborne ordered Colonel Leonard Covington to detach for immediate service a force of about 300 effective men, including a detachment of artillerists with two field pieces, to proceed without delay to the post at Pointe Coupée and there await his further instructions. A barge was to be in readiness for him at Fort Adams and two subaltern officers were to be detailed to accompany him on his mission to take possession of West Florida.

On Monday the printer had the proclamations printed. Claiborne immediately saw to the distribution of the printed sheets and left in his barge for Fort Adams. He was not well when he arrived at the frontier post but wrote back to Washington that he was “deeply impressed with the delicacy, the importance of the operation before me, and you may rely on my discretion. The instructions of the president, will be held continually in view, and in obeying them you may be assured that no blood will be shed, if it can be possibly avoided.”

After finishing his message to the president, Claiborne dispatched two messengers, Audley L. Osborne to Saint Francisville, and William King to Baton Rouge, with copies of Madison’s proclamation. Then he crossed the river to Pointe Coupée where he met by appointment William Wikoff, and by aid of other friends prepared to contact the West Florida legislature which, according to information given him, was then in session at Saint Francisville “exercising legislature powers.”

The proclamation that Osborne and King carried with them for distribution in the “Republic of West Florida” read:

By this proclamation, which Henry Adams designated as one of the most remarkable documents in the archives of the United States government, Madison had authorized, by a few strokes of his pen, the seizure of territory belonging to “a just and friendly power”, having legislated for a foreign people without consulting their wishes, sent a sharp message to the Conventionalists through Governor Holmes, to the effect that their independence was an impertinence, and that their designs on public lands were something worse.

The news that the United States had claimed West Florida, after seven years of dilly-dallying, reached the members of the General Assembly and came up for consideration immediately. On the 5th of December the members of the whole assembly passed the following resolution:

Skipwith designated John H. Johnson as the messenger of the West Florida Assembly and addressed the members with a stirring speech in which he referred to their previous willingness to be received as a separate state or territory or to become a part of either Orleans or Mississippi, and he resented the fact that Madison had shown such little deference to the already installed authorities. He declared that in the steps they had taken they had acted wholly within their rights and, so they felt, in accord with the wishes of the American people. In bitterly resenting the president’s proclamation Skipwith asked the members of the Assembly to unite with him “in expressing towards the proclamation the mutual sentiments and honest feelings of freemen.” He declared they had a right to “self-government, despite the imperative tone in which the president summoned them to submit to the Orleans governor.”

Skipwith Defys Claiborne

The members of the General Assembly thereupon declared that the form of annexation that had been proposed by the Convention was the only one that could give the United States a perfect title to the territory and, while they were ready to unite with the people of Orleans Territory, they would not betray their constituents and dishonor their cause by accepting President Madison’s proposals. They assured Governor Skipwith that they were ready “to unite with him in proper resistance.”

While the assembly was fuming and calling Jimmy Madison harsh names, Governor Claiborne arrived in a barge at Pointe Coupée with two army officers and 33 regulars, where he was joined by Governor Holmes and Audley L. Osborn, the latter his messenger to the Feliciana country with the presidential proclamation. Holmes had passed through Saint Francisville and told Claiborne that his arrival and contemplated action was the subject of general conversation. Many had sided with Skipwith in being dissatisfied with the tenor of the proclamation and while he, Holmes, had explained it satisfactorily to some, Governor Skipwith refused to be mollified and, accompanied by three or four members of the Assembly, had left Saint Francisville for Baton Rouge.

When John Johnson greeted Claiborne at Pointe Coupée the Feliciana leader said that he, personally, was gratified with the terms of the proclamation but said, so Claiborne wrote Madison, “he was charged with a message from Governor Skipwith which he held in his hand and gave me. I told John that, as a citizen, Skipwith would be respected but I would not recognize him as governor and commander in chief, nor enter into correspondence with him but that he, Johnson, had my permission and was requested to say to the people that I came among them with views most friendly. The president’s proclamation, which they had seen, was my authority, and that I would proceed immediately to discharge my duties required of me.”

To this Johnson replied: “Governor Skipwith has charged me verbally to inform you that he has retired to the fort of Baton Rouge, and rather than surrender the Country unconditionally and without terms, he would, with 20 men only, if a greater force could not be procured surround the Flag Staff and die in defense of the Lone Star flag!”

Claiborne says he made no reply to this verbal message from Skipwith but requested Johnson to repeat the words. After he had done so, Johnson again took the opportunity to express his devotion to the United States government and urged Claiborne to cross to Saint Francisville where he would find a troop of militia cavalry, a company of Riflemen and a concourse of citizens who would welcome his arrival in the territory and would, with pleasure, recognize Claiborne as their governor.

The Falling Star

Audley L. Osborne was sent across the river to ascertain whether or not Johnson had correctly felt the public pulse. On his return he reported that the presence of Governor Claiborne would give the inhabitants great satisfaction. “I will further state to your excellency,” said Osborne, “that the great point, at which the disaffected seem to stickle, is that the State of Florida should be treated with as an independent nation, and that certain terms should be granted to them by your excellency before they could submit to become citizens of the United States, and come under your authority.” Thereupon, accompanied by Governor Holmes, John H. Johnson, Colonel Covington, and his armed escort, Claiborne crossed the river. From his own pen we can learn how he was received and what he did:

And so the Star fell in Feliciana at the very spot that witnessed its rising, and for the first time, December 7, 1810, the stars and stripes of the United States flew over West Florida soil.

Independence was lost but independence was gained — if such a paradoxical situation can be so expressed.

County of Feliciana proclaimed

Once established in Saint Francisville, Claiborne set about to prove himself the chief executive and boss of this new United States possession.

His very first official act was the drawing up and making public an ordinance designating the late Spanish holdings below the 31 — line, from the mighty Mississippi eastward to the purling Perdido river, its shores on the south lapped by the blue green waters of the Gulf of Mexico the County of Feliciana. Let us read it:

This accomplished the new governor gave his attention to the more pressing business of conciliating the objecting officials of the now defunct Free State of West Florida. Claiborne wrote the president on this subject the very day he raised the flag of the United States over Saint Francisville and it is interesting to note his reactions to the events of that day. So let us look over his shoulder as he takes crow quill in hand and follow the inked words:

As indicated in this letter to Madison, the new executive did not wish to have his occupation of the Baton Rouge fort bring on trouble. The declaration of Skipwith and some of the other members of the West Florida General Assembly that they “were determined sooner to perish under the falling star of Florida than to submit to the sacrifice and disgrace of any of their followers, not even the deserters from the American army, or suffer themselves to be given up to any Foreign Power,” determined Claiborne on sending peace messengers ahead of his own armed approach. He wisely chose Governor David Holmes, together with “a few gentlemen of respectability” from St. Francisville, and Isaac Johnson’s Feliciana Dragoons as escort, to conciliate those who were loud in their intention of refusing to accept President Madison’s sudden and stunning move. So, a — horseback, the peace party took to the long and dusty road that led over Thompson’s Creek, through the Plains, and thence to Baton Rouge where the Lone Star still waved over the fort perched on the banks of the turgid Mississippi.

Skipwith had arrived at the Baton Rouge fort the day before Holmes and his escort got there. The “governor” of West Florida found that Captain John Ballinger, in command of the forces in the fort, had arrested Claiborne’s messenger, William King, for distributing Madison’s proclamation, Ballinger believing Mr. King was distributing a forgery designed by the Spanish to throw the Floridians into confusion. Skipwith at once ordered that King be released and then sat himself down to crow quill and paper and eased his badly lacerated feeling by a long letter to President Madison, in which he admitted that he personally desired to maintain peace and order in West Florida while working for its “honorable return to the bosom of the parent country” but at the same time he strove to “secure for the United States a fair and legitimate title” to West Florida. He warned the president that he and his liberty-loving associates would resist dishonor, repel any wanton outrage to their feelings,” and would assert the rights of their adopted country should circumstances require it.

The next day, however, when Holmes entered Baton Rouge and went into conference with him and Ballinger, Skipwith exhibited a change of demeanor when Ballinger expressed his willingness to surrender the fort to the American forces. As they left the meeting place word was brought to Holmes and Skipwith that five American gunboats carrying Colonel Covington’s regulars and Governor Claiborne had been sighted two miles up the river and the soldiers were landing. When Holmes met Claiborne he handed the Orleans executive a letter from Skipwith expressing his gratification over the prospect of West Florida being annexed to the United States, but he defended his course and again protested against Claiborne’s methods as an outrage against the Lone Star Flag and the constitution of West Florida.

Nor would he give an order to the Florida troops to lower their own flag, but he directed them not to resist the American forces: “as a native of United States he would never sign an order that would lead to the shedding of a single drop of American blood!”

Fifteen Stars over Baton Rouge

Let us again rely upon Claiborne’s own words in picturing the scene that saw the final “falling of the Star” and the first raising of the flag of fifteen stars and fifteen stripes over Baton Rouge:

“A Part of the Purchase at last”

So, after an existence of 74 days, a short life but a merry one, the stout little republic of West Florida had ceased to be one of the nations of the world. The closing scenes that marked the demise of this Tom Thumb republic were as dramatic as those that had witnessed its birth. Exactly at two-thirty in the afternoon of December tenth, the whole force of four hundred men (for the expeditionary force that had started eastward to subject the land beyond the Pearl had marched back) with their muskets at shoulder, gathered about the white staff in the center of the parade in the fort. As the Lone Star descended the pole the muskets crashed out a volley. Then, in obedience to low commands the men tramped out of the gates and formed in line in the esplanade, stacked their arms, laid off their accoutrements, and were marched by their officers into the village and were dismissed.

A half hour later, led by Colonel Leonard Covington and Lieutenant Colonel Zebulon Montgomery Pike, the United States troops marched into the deserted fortification and formed a hollow square about the bare staff. Governor Claiborne, accompanied by Governor David Holmes, and a few citizens, raised his hand in command and a color sergeant fixed the halyards to a new banner and a flag of fifteen stars and fifteen stripes rose into the blue of the sky. When it reached the peak a crashing volley from the muskets of the uniformed soldiers, and twenty-one measured blasts from a field piece, mingled with the cheers from the members of the late garrison, saluted the new emblem of sovereignty.

The flag that succeeded the Lone Star flag of independent West Florida had fifteen stripes and fifteen stars; the return to the original design of thirteen stripes was not made until 1818. The 15 stars shown on the first “Stars and Stripes” to fly over Feliciana included the original thirteen states plus Vermont and Kentucky

Claiborne’s Troubles Begin

No sooner had Claiborne established himself as governor of this new part of his territory than his other troubles began. He must immediately provide for self-government. His first act was to name the new area and as we have seen he proclaimed everything below the Mississippi Territory’s southern boundary from the Mississippi to the Perdido River, “The County of Feliciana.”

It was necessary that judges for the different parishes be selected to rule under the judicial system of the United States and, of course, there was a rush of would — be judges. His selection as judge of East Baton Rouge parish was George Mather, Sr., an Englishman by birth, who for 35 years had been an inhabitant of Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Doctor Andrew Steele was temporarily made judge of Feliciana parish, but for the parishes of St. Helena and St. Tammany (for such was the name Claiborne fastened on the section formerly called Chifuncté and then St. Ferdinand) he did not indicate a choice. “There is in that quarter a great scarcity of talent, and the number of virtuous men (I fear) is not as great as I could wish,” he complained.

Nor did the new executive have the privilege of releasing Don Carlos de Lassus from “durance vile,” for the day before Claiborne reached Baton Rouge, Skipwith freed the former Spanish governor, and de Lassus immediately went across the river to friends living in Pointe Coupée. “He is greatly chagrined at the loss of the Fort and Country,” wrote Claiborne, “and is so apprehensive that his misfortunes will be looked upon as crimes by his Government, that he seems desirous to remain for the present under the protection of the United States.”

Don Carlos had reason for such fears, as he was afterwards court martialed and sentenced to death, but he did not die for he refused to attend the court martial and remained in New Orleans, at the home of his sister, the wife of Pierre Derbigny (afterwards a governor of Louisiana). A year after he had been deposed as governor, he married Adélaide Féliciana Mariana Leonard, daughter of Gilbert Leonard and sister of John W. Leonard. Carlos de Lassus never returned to Spanish soil. He lived for a while in New Orleans, then took up his residence in Saint Louis, where he had once governed, but later returned to the Crescent City where he remained a conspicuous figure until his death in 1842 in his seventy-eighth year. He left a single child, his son, Charles Auguste de Hault de Lassus, who married into the Blanque family and left many descendants in New Orleans bearing his name.

Portrait of a Governor

Claiborne, wanting to do something handsome for Fulwar Skipwith, offered him the post of justice of the peace in Baton Rouge, but the later governor of West Florida refused the post. In later years he became registrar of the land office at Montpelier, serving as a clearing house for all land claims west of the Pearl river. Following the events concerned with the days of the West Florida Republic Skipwith recovered the fortune he lost in France. In his late years on the plantation, he and his wife, the Flemish Countess Vandenclooster, were “not living together as harmoniously as two cooing doves,” and his children, in these domestic broils, took sides with the mother, so wrote Henry Skipwith, of Clinton, his nephew, who also describes his uncle in the following priceless pen-etching:

The Feliciana View

A day or two after Claiborne took charge and West Florida became a part of the United States, the anonymous but verbose correspondent of the “Louisiana Gazette,” that very informative “Bayou Sarah Planter,” sent the New Orleans newspaper the following resumé:

The County of Feliciana

Three days before Christmas, Claiborne named the parishes of the new County of Feliciana he had established December 7, when at Saint Francisville. His proclamation read:

The Why of “St. Tammany”

In such fashion was the name Saint Tammany fastened on Louisiana. It was the name of a celebrated sachem or chief of the Delaware Indians named Tamanend or “Tammany” as it was afterwards spelled, meaning in the Delaware tongue “the Affable.” Even before the American War of Independence there were certain Whig societies called “Sons of Liberty” and “Sons of Saint Tammany” because this Indian sachem had been adopted by these sons of liberty as their patron saint and celebrated his festival on the first of May. They worked their meetings with rituals in which Indian words were used to indicate the American character of their lodges. In 1789 an Irishman named Mooney organized the “Society of St. Tammany” or “Columbian Order,” as a patriotic, benevolent, and non-political organization, with the avowed intent of counteracting the influence of what was believed to be the more aristocratic “Order of Cincinnati.” This St. Tammany society built its own meeting place, which it appropriately called a wigwam, but it was not itself the well-known New York political organization but rents its hall to the “Tammany Hall General Committee", the “Tammany Hall” of political notoriety.

Why Claiborne did not wish to continue the name of the Spanish king on the land lying between the “Ponchitoola” and the Pearl rivers is quite plain, but it is not quite so understandable why he selected the name of an Indian chief of the East when he could have selected a southern Indian, if an Indian name he must have. The probabilities are that he was a member of the Society of Saint Tammany and did not hold membership in the more snooty Order of Cincinnati, and, as there were so many “sons of liberty” mixed up in the revolt that wrested this land from Spain, he believed that a good American, a good Whig name should replace that of Ferdinand the seventh.

It will be noted that Claiborne’s proclamation reduced the area of Feliciana to the very territory occupied by the present-day parish of West Feliciana, and enlarged the parish of Baton Rouge so that it ran north to the Mississippi line. Naturally, the Feliciana folk resented 48” this and John H. Johnson and Judge John Rhea wrote Claiborne about the sudden shrinking of their prized area. So, on the last day of January the governor promised to do something about it:

On January fourth Claiborne had decided on the names and limits of the parishes east of the Pearl River, and he decreed: “all that tract of country which extends from the eastern bank of Pearl River to the River Veloxy and below the boundary of the Mississippi Territory, shall form the fifth parish and be called the Parish of Veloxy; and all that tract of country which extends from the eastern bank of the Veloxy River to the Bayou Batrie (including all the settlements on the Bayou Batrie and the Pascagoula) shall form the sixth parish, to be called the Parish of Pascagoula.”

On the 26th of January, after a series of protests had reached him from the Gulf Coast, Claiborne issued a supplementary note in which he ordained and decreed: “that the Parish of Pascagoula, whose eastern boundary was declared to be by ordinance of Jan. 4 the Bayou Batrie, shall . . . be extended to the Rio Perro, or Dog River, and that all the settlements east of said river shall hereafter be included in the Parish of Pascagoula.”

The governor had left Baton Rouge and was at the Government House in New Orleans when he penned these ordinances. He had remained in the new County of Feliciana until the day before Christmas and won many friends and admirers by his exercise of sound judgment after taking possession of the late Republic of West Florida, and his course of conciliation did much to heal wounded feelings and broken heads. A slight insight is given of his character at this period if we read a letter he wrote President Madison just before he left Baton Rouge. “I set out for New Orleans to encounter the ensuing winter, all the intrigues and all the calumny of Clark & Co., who have at their command every newspaper in New Orleans but the Courier, most of the third party men, and the disappointed Office Hunters, and every Burrite in the Territory. But this coalition gives me no concern. It will be in my power, I trust, to maintain my ground against all my enemies.”

In New Orleans Claiborne was forced to give serious consideration to a proper judicial system for the County of Feliciana; it was first proposed to attach it to the Pointe Coupée jurisdiction, but on April 10, 1811, the governor established the Seventh Superior Court to include the entire county of Feliciana from the River Mississippi to the Perdido, the same river that today marks the boundary between the states of Alabama and Florida, and the act provided that the court “shall be holden in and for the Seventh District, on first Mondays of March and August, at the town of Saint Francisville.”

John H. Johnson was appointed by Claiborne as High Sheriff of the Feliciana County, and Dr. Andrew Steele, who had been sitting as judge of the Feliciana parish, was replaced by Judge John Rhea, president of the convention, on January 19, 1811. When George Mather resigned as judge of East Baton Rouge Parish, Doctor Steele was named to that bench. Audley L. Osborne, who had been Claiborne’s messenger when the president’s proclamation was distributed, was made judge of the Ste. Helena Parish on January 14, and held sway over Saint Tammany as well until July 18, the governor appointed Thomas C. Warren to be judge of the territory between the Tanchipoa and the Pearl.

As the County of Feliciana was now officially a part of the Territory of Orleans it was only meet and proper that its citizens should have a say in the government, therefore they were given, by act of legislature and the governor’s approval, the right of representation.

To date I have found no record of such elections being held nor any names of those who might have been chosen to represent the new country.

However, on April 24, 1811, Claiborne made good his word given Sheriff John H. Johnson and Judge John Rhea and by an act of legislature enlarged the Parish of Feliciana and reduced the area of East Baton Rouge. The act provided that the “County of Feliciana” should be divided into six parishes. “The First shall be called the Parish of Feliciana, lying between the lower line of the Mississippi Territory to the mouth of Thompson’s Creek, and a line running thence due East to the River Amite, and its Western boundaries shall be the Mississippi River.”

East Baton Rouge was designated as the area lying between “the Parish of Feliciana and the Iberville and between Mississippi and Amite.” St. Helena was bounded by the 31 — line on the north, its western and eastern boundaries being Amite and Tanchipao, and on the south by Lake Pontchartrain. Everything east of the Tanchipao to the Pearl River, constituted the Parish of St. Tammany. The act went on to state “That the fifth shall be called the Parish of Biloxi, lying South of the Mississippi Territory and extending from the Pearl River to the river falling into the Bay of Biloxi", while Pascagoula was named as “East from the river falling into the Bay of Biloxi, including all the remainder of the County of Feliciana.”

And so matters remained for a twelve-month, when the state of Louisiana was formed and the territory east of the Pearl was apportioned to Mississippi and Alabama. However it cost the citizens something to be a part and parcel of the Territory of Orleans for the legislative council decided that the County of Feliciana should pay as a portion of the territorial tax, the sum of $6,000 per annum, and 75 cents a head for each slave a citizen owned.

The “Lone Star” Again Rises

All went well with the new American Territory and the citizens settled down to their regular pursuits, secure in their belief that strife and trouble were buried in the past. However, in March of 1811, the inhabitants of Feliciana were once more on the verge of insurrection. Congressman Bibb of Georgia, in the national congress, was energetically backing a bill that would make the former West Florida a part of the Mississippi Territory, while Congressman Rhea of Tennessee held that the West Florida that was should be made a part of Orleans Territory. The debate waxed furious and finally, when a bill was passed admitting Orleans Territory as a state, no provision was made for West Florida! Although considered a part of Louisiana, it did not figure in that state’s admission to the Union!

To suitably express their resentment the Feliciana folk on Sunday, March 17, once more raised the Lone Star flag at Saint Francisville. Governor Claiborne apprised of this fact wrote Secretary Smith:

A fuller account of this “revolt” was printed in the Natchez “Chronicle", which was picked up by the “Louisiana Gazette” for Orleanians who were still greatly interested in everything occurring in the territory that had so lately been the scene of momentous happenings. Said the Crescent City newsprint:

To Mississippi or Louisiana

The Feliciana folk, or at least a goodly portion of them, continued restless and impatient over the slowness of Congress to act and many movements were suggested to bring about a more prompt action upon admission and, what was more to the point, a settlement of the debts contracted by the Conventionalists by the parent government.

In September of 1811, Governor Claiborne visited the region and persuaded the citizens to remain calm and compel the impatient ones to follow suit. On the second of that month he wrote Secretary of State James Monroe from Saint Francisville:

Later Claiborne, in writing John H. Johnson, told the sheriff of the Seventh Superior Court district, something about the progress of the convention that was planning the admission of the Territory of Orleans into the Union, and expressed his personal views and desires. “A decided majority of the Convention is in favor of annexing Florida to the New State, & a strong but respectful Memorial will, I suspect, be presented on the occasion to the Congress of the United States. For myself, there is no political event I more desire than that the eighteenth State may extend from the Sabine to the Perdido, & I indulge a hope that during the present or ensuing session of Congress, an Act may pass, which will recognize such Limits.

In December another meeting of the representatives of the people was called to convene again on historic St. John’s Plains. John H. Johnson had evidently apprised Claiborne of the gathering, for on the 18th of that month the governor wrote him:

As a postscript he added that Congressman Magruder was planning to present a memorial to Congress praying that the tract west from the Perdido River under the Mississippi line would be permanently annexed to the Orleans Territory.

Finally, on April 12, 1812, the ninth anniversary of the day that by treaty of cession Louisiana was acquired by the United States, the Territory of Orleans became the State of Louisiana, and thereafter eighteen stars were displayed on the flag of the United States and the number of stripes reduced to the original thirteen. Four days after Congress approved the admission of the eighteenth state it passed an act to enlarge the limits of Louisiana by including that portion of West Florida from the Pearl to the Mississippi River within the new commonwealth.

In such fashion the “Florida Parishes” became a part of Louisiana, although the state’s legislative assent to this inclusion bears the date of August 4, 1812, four months after the formal admission.

The raising of the Lone Star Flag at Saint Francisville on Sunday, March 17, 1811, was not the last time this banner was flung to the breeze in the Feliciana country; half a century later, at Jackson, Mississippi, January 6, 1861, the State of Mississippi, in convention assembled, voted to sever her alliance with the Union. No sooner had the clerk announced the vote of the delegates, than a man rushed through the crowded convention hall holding aloft a silken banner and thrust this in the hands of the presiding officer, who waved it before the cheering delegates and frenzied spectators.

The flag was a solid blue banner, having in its center a single white five-pointed star! The “Lone Star” of Feliciana and the Free State of West Florida had risen from the grave!

An Irish comedian, Harry McCarthy, by name, then playing at the Jackson theatre, was one of the spectators. Animated by the dramatic scene he had witnessed, McCarthy wrote words so that they would fit an old Scottish choral and sang them from the stage that night. The words had to do with a “Bonnie Blue Flag.” The next day colonel J. L. Power printed the verses in his newspaper, the song was sent to New Orleans for printing, and in another week crowds in New Orleans were singing:

From that time on the Lone Star Flag of the Feliciana patriots became the best beloved of the many flags of the Confederacy.

Here, abruptly, ends my story of the West Florida Rebellion, one of the brightest pages (if a forgotten one) in Louisiana’s book of colorful history, an event crammed with romantic and adventure, of bright deeds and daring, a stirring song sung to the rhythm of clattering horse hoofs, as patriotic Anglo-Saxons, forgetting nationalisms, banded together under the five points of fellowship, wrested their homes from the domination of an Old World power, and with the verve that has always animated true liberty-loving patriots, set up their own establishment. That it did not live long was not their fault.

Long may the Lone Star wave in the hearts and recollections of the descendants of those intrepid Americans, and in the hearts and memories of those now living in “The Florida Parishes.” The Bonnie Blue Flag

A half a century after the Feliciana patriots raised the first “Lone Star Flag” over West Florida, the same blue flag with a five-pointed white star became the best beloved banner of the Confederacy — “the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star.”

Notes

1. Village of Bayou Sara. The founder of Bayou Sarah was John Mills. It was his brother Gilbert Mills who married Isaac Johnson’s daughter, Ann Waugh Johnson, and their son was John H. Mills. The statement that Gilbert Mills’ daughter, Mary Mills, married Stephen Minor was an error — Minor’s second wife was Mary Ellis. Mary Mills was twice married — to Thomas North and a Mr. Sholars. — Author’s note.
2. Reuben Kemper. Further details of the contention between Ambrose Smith and Reuben Kemper will be found in the Louisiana Courier, March 14 to 25, 1808, following the first publication of Smith’s advertisement relative to the sale of town lots in New Valentia. — Author’s note.
3. Thompson’s Creek. The name the French gave to Thompson’s Creek was Bayou des Ecores. — Author’s note.
4. Galvez. Since the foregoing was printed fuller and more accurate details on Bernardo de Galvez have come to light. He was not 21 when he came to Louisiana but was 30 years old. Don Bernardo de Galvez Galardo, of Madrid, was born July 23, 1746 in the town of Macharaviaya, province of Malaga, Spain. He was baptized Bernardo Vincente Polinar. He came to Louisiana in 1776 and was married Nov. 2, 1777, from a sick bed, to Dona Maria Feliciana Saint-Maxent, widow of Don Juan Honorato d’Estrehan, by whom she had one child. The children of Galvez’s marriage were Don Miguel Galvez y Saint-Maxent, baptized Jan. 2, 1783. This son became a cadet of the American company of bodyguards, Knight of the Order of Calatrava, and, from 1797, the second count of Galvez. He died before reaching manhood. The eldest daughter was named Doña Matilde Galvez. A second daughter, expected to be named Guadalupe, after the patron saint of the City of Mexico, was born eight days after her father’s death. She was christened Maria de Guadalupe, Bernarda, Felipe de Jesus, Isabel, Juana Felicitas y Fernanda de Galvez. In 1784, after Galvez returned from Madrid where he was decorated for his successful campaign against the British in Louisiana, he was made governor-general of Cuba and governor of Louisiana and the two Floridas. His father, Don Matias de Galvez, died and the son was sent to Mexico to succeeded him as Viceroy of New Spain. With his wife Feliciana, and three children, he arrived at Mexico City June 28, 1785, when he took the oath of office as Viceroy. His death occurred Nov. 30, 1786. The daughter of Feliciana by her first husband was named Adelaide d’Estrehan. — Author’s note.
5. Red Union. The “twin-starred” flag of the ill-fated Kemper rebellion of 1804, when the three Kemper brothers tried to wrest West Florida from Spain, is worth notice. This banner was first raised at Saint Francisville and had seven alternating stripes of blue and white, the union was red and had two white stars. Why the Kempers selected such a flag is not known nor is it certain what the two stars stood for. Did they mean a star for West Florida and another for East Florida? Did the seven blue and white stripes stand for the seven districts in the Spanish provinces? Quien Sabe! — Author’s note.
6. Gilbert Mills. Gilbert Mills was brother of John Mills. See above note. — Author’s note.
7. A “gentleman from Pointe Coupée.” The letter “by a gentleman from Pointe Coupée” was first published in the Baton Rouge Advocate. — Author’s note.
8. Shepherd Brown. Shepherd Brown, like his friend and business associate John McDonogh, came to New Orleans from Baltimore, and the two formed a co-partnership and did an extensive business under the name of “John McDonogh, Jr. & Co.” In December of 1815 this partnership was dissolved, Shepherd Brown dying soon thereafter. — Author’s note.
9. Don Gilberto de Leonardo. Although documents first examined appeared to identify John W. Leonard as the son of Gilbert Leonard, later information proves he was not the Juan Leonardo, son of the civil commandant at baton Rouge, but that he belonged to a Tory family of New York and Massachusetts. John West Leonard came to Louisiana early in 1800 and lived first at New Orleans. In 1805 he removed to the St. Helena district and soon became intimate with the Spanish authorities and was in their confidence when the uprising began. Leonard was selected by Shepherd Brown as one who would remain loyal to the Spanish but after the first meeting of the delegates Manuel Lopez suspected he was double-dealing and so reported to Don Carlos de Lassus. Other members of the convention were playing the same game with the Spanish masters. As evidence of John W. Leonard’s standing among the patriots is his selection as president pro tempore of the first and only senate of the Tom Thumb Republic. He died in 1818 without issue. — Author’s note.
10. Comprehensive resolutions. For the opportunity to inpect and reproduce the original documents written by the delegates of the Convention, I am indebted to Mrs. C. A. Levert and her daughter, Miss Genevieve Levert, descendants of Philip Hicky. — Author’s note.
11. Only known record. I am indebted to Mr. Richmond Favrot for the opportunity of reproducing the 32-page pamphlet of the "Ordinances" adopted by the Convention delegates. It was found among the original documents in the "Favrot Collection" which were collected and handed down to descendants by Don Pedro Favrot who played a conspicuous part in the early history of Louisiana under the French and Spanish. My acknowledgements, too, to Miss Josie Cerf, of the Louisiana State Museum who called my attention to this pamphlet ? possibly the only one in existence. — Author’s note.
12. Vanderclooster Fulwar Skipwith’s wife, Thérèse Josephine Vandenclooster, described in a notarial act as a Belgique, evidently divorced him and married William Herries of Montesano Plantation, for she is designated as Herries’ widow in an act before L. T. Caire, notary public, of Feb. 11, 1834, and Skipwith did not die until 1839. The daughter of Fulwar Skipwith and Dame Vandenclooster, Lelia Skipwith, remarried after the death of her first husband, Governor Thomas Bolling Robinson. Her second husband was Humberton Skipwith of Virginia — by this marriage regaining her maiden name. — Author’s note.

Text Prepared By

• Bruce R. Magee
• Elizabeth Snyder
• Daniel Thompson
• Lauren Vann
• Brandon Wright

Source

Arthur, Stanley Clisby. The Story of the West Florida Rebellion. St. Francisville: St. Franciville Democrat, 1935. Print.

L’Anthologie  Louisianaise