Authors: Daniel Rasmussen
Put upon and attacked—even dismissed—by the planters and their society, Claiborne labored on, seeking to introduce the principles of liberty and republican self-governance to these decadent Europeans. Lost in their disputes over dances and languages, the white elite seemed to have lost sight of the larger problem with their frontier society. Squabbling over petty matters, they did not address the tremendous danger posed by the rapidly growing slave population. Focused on political intrigues, they did not notice the increasingly radical tenor of the political discussions in the slave quarters. They failed to realize that the true conflict at the heart of New Orleans was not between the French and the Americans but between the white elite and the vast African underclass.
WE SHOULD HAVE SUCH AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY AS SHE HAS NEVER SURVEYED SINCE THE CREATION: & I AM PERSUADED NO CONSTITUTION WAS EVER BEFORE SO WELL CALCULATED AS OURS FOR EXTENSIVE EMPIRE & SELF GOVERNMENT.
Thomas Jefferson
I
n the months leading up to January 1811, the troublesome French planters were not the greatest of Claiborne’s problems. Claiborne had focused all of his energy and attention on resolving a grave threat to national security.
While New Orleans was under American control, the city was surrounded by Spanish territory. The Spanish controlled an empire in the Americas that extended from Florida in the east to the Pacific coasts of Mexico and California in the west. Most significantly to Claiborne, however, they controlled the region known as West Florida, which extended from Baton Rouge on the southwest and Natchez on the northwest to Mobile on the east.
The threat to national security came not from the Spanish army, but from the fragile state of the Spanish government. Napoleon had recently conquered Iberian Spain and placed his brother Joseph on the throne—a move opposed by popular juntas that refused to declare allegiance to the “intruder king.” The civil unrest in Spain left the colonies in disarray, with power devolving to local officials and the small garrisons they maintained. With no central government, the Spanish colonies had descended rapidly into a state of near-anarchy.
To prop up their collapsing empire, the Spanish governors allowed native tribes, escaped slaves, and profit-seeking farmers to settle on Spanish land—provided they swore an oath of allegiance to the Spanish crown. The Spanish encouraged and sponsored Native Americans, free blacks, and runaway slaves, attempting to convert these outcasts of American society into allies and supporters of the Spanish cause. The Spanish lands provided a beacon of hope for slaves seeking to escape and rebel, as well as a safe haven for Native American exiles who had been forced off their land by the expansion of American agriculture. Claiborne feared that this chaos could spread like a cancer, corrupting the order he sought to bring to New Orleans.
In 1810, Claiborne decided to take decisive action. He traveled to Washington, D.C., to secure approval for a covert paramilitary action to topple the Spanish government in West Florida without starting a war between the United States and Spain. Because open conquest was blatantly illegal, Claiborne knew that America could not be seen to have instigated this plot. In Washington, Claiborne presented his plan to President Madison: a small group of handpicked adventurers would be enlisted to attack the Spanish garrison, seize power, declare independence, and then request annexation to the United States. The United States would condemn the action publicly and reluctantly agree to annex the rogue state for the sake of national security.
Claiborne and Madison both saw the strategic advantages of such an operation. Conquering Baton Rouge and West Florida would give America full control over the Mississippi River, eliminating a haven for escaped slaves and dangerous native tribes while securing commerce on the river. As an added benefit, West Florida was full of Anglo-American settlers, and Claiborne knew that if he could include West Florida in the Orleans Territory, he could tip the balance of power toward American authority and undermine the French planters’ still-strong political position. After carefully weighing the pros and cons, Madison gave Claiborne approval.
With Madison’s approval, Claiborne drafted a letter to William Wykoff Jr., a wealthy plantation owner and member of the Orleans Territory executive council. Wykoff was well-connected with the Anglo-American settlers in West Florida and seemed to Claiborne an ideal agent. In the letter, Claiborne sketched out the difficulties facing the Spanish government: the Napoleonic conquest, the unrest in Latin America, and America’s sketchy legal claim to much of the land in West Florida under the terms of the Louisiana Purchase.
The American military would take possession of West Florida, Claiborne hinted, but not as a straightforward military conquest. “It would be more pleasing that the taking possession of the Country, be preceded by a Request from the Inhabitants,” Claiborne wrote. “Can no means be devised to
obtain such a request?”
Claiborne suggested a set of rich and prominent planters in the Baton Rouge area as potential supporters for this effort, and he assured Wykoff of the “friendly disposition of the American Government” to any “decided measures” these men might take. Claiborne stopped short of saying what exactly these measures might be, but simply suggested that Wykoff “lose no time in sounding the
views
of the most influential of your Neighbors on the opposite Shores, and in giving to
them
a right direction.” In closing the letter, Claiborne instructed Wykoff to keep the letter absolutely confidential, and to feel free to leave off his signature in future letters to Claiborne.
In the summer of 1810, Wykoff rode to the doorstep of a new settler in the region, Fulwar Skipwith. “Endowed with more than average intelligence, well cultivated by collegiate study, and by his Cosmopolitan associations,” Skipwith “was more than six feet tall, straight as an arrow, with exactly enough flesh for his bone and muscle,” in the words of one friend. Wykoff knew he could trust Skipwith’s loyalty to the American government—he was an eighth cousin of Thomas Jefferson. Using money from his recent marriage to a Flemish baroness, Skipwith had built a 1,300-acre plantation called Monte Sano along the Mississippi River south of Baton Rouge in 1809. He was eager to earn a name for himself—and to support the efforts of Claiborne, a fellow Virginian. He had no problems understanding Wykoff’s plan. He understood, he wrote, that it would be “more satisfactory” for a convention of “honest cultivators of the soil” to overthrow Spanish authority and request annexation by the United States than for the American army to fight the Spanish openly. The device would allow the United States government to avoid violating international law while still obtaining possession of the desired territory. “All would be washed, except the poor Floridian, in holy water,” Skipwith wrote, and “sweet . . . to the palate of the . . . administration.”
Before dawn on September 23, 1810, Skipwith appeared outside the Spanish fort at Baton Rouge with eighty armed American settlers. The fort was situated on high ground overlooking the Mississippi River, surrounded by cypress pickets that slanted outward to protect against invaders. Banks of clay as high as the pickets formed walls that ran between bastions at each of the four corners of the fort. A dry ditch around the outside of the fort added to the defenses. The fort was well guarded: four cannons threatened at the main gate, blockhouses dotted with musket portals, and a band of twenty-eight Spanish soldiers under the command of a young lieutenant named Louis de Grand Pré. The Spaniards were confident of their abilities to beat off any invading force; they did not expect what came next.
A young Kentuckian named Larry Moore had informed Skipwith that he knew how to “get inter the dinged ol’ fort,” describing a small opening in the cypress palisades by the river where the Spanish brought in cows for fresh milk. “Ef them cows kin get 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,” said Moore, spitting out a wad of chewing tobacco. Following Moore, Skipwith’s horsemen circled the fort and guided their horses through a herd of feeding milk cows. Almost immediately, they penetrated the fort and entered the center of the garrison. Emerging into the open, the Americans shouted, “Ground your arms and you shall not be hurt.” But Grand Pré and his men refused to surrender. Standing by the Spanish flag, they fought desperately against the American attackers in hand-to-hand combat. But the Americans had the advantage. “Shoot ’em down,” shouted Isaac Johnson, Skipwith’s deputy. Hails of lead quickly disposed of several Spanish soldiers and the Americans whooped “Hurrah Washington!” at the top of their lungs. One American smashed his rifle butt into the head of the Spanish governor. By midday, the Americans were in full control of Baton Rouge.
Skipwith proudly declared the independence of the new Republic of West Florida. The Spanish flag disappeared and the Bonnie Blue Flag with a white star fluttered in the wind over the fort of Baton Rouge. “Betrayed by a magistrate whose duty was to have provided for the safety and tranquility of the people . . . and exposed to all the evils of a state of anarchy,” Skipwith declared, “it becomes our duty to provide for our own security, as a free and independent State.” In the declaration that he released to the international community, Skipwith made no mention of ties to the U.S. government—or of any intention to ask for annexation. But through private channels, Skipwith made clear that his declaration was a smokescreen—and that his true loyalties lay with Madison and Claiborne. Skipwith expected to be greeted with congratulations and public celebration, but Claiborne had other plans.
Claiborne, who had stayed in Washington to avoid being implicated in the illegal conquest, rushed back to New Orleans in December. Publicly decrying “the intrigues of certain individuals . . . of desperate character and fortunes,” Claiborne ordered the U.S. military to seize control of Baton Rouge and the other parts of West Florida conquered by Skipwith. His plan had succeeded.
Upon return to New Orleans, Claiborne set out to Baton Rouge to assert American authority there. Sending a friend to speak to Skipwith in advance, Claiborne proceeded up the Mississippi River with gunboats, dragoons, and infantry. After receiving word that Skipwith accepted the transfer of authority, Claiborne congratulated Skipwith on his “correct” conduct and assured him that no legal repercussions would follow for his actions. Unlike the more famed filibuster, former vice president Aaron Burr, Skipwith would receive no indictment for treason for his work to take over Florida. Assured that all was in order, Claiborne landed triumphantly on the right bank of the Mississippi River, once the territory of Spain and now fully American. The cavalry and riflemen received Claiborne on the beach, and he marched with pomp and circumstance to the pavilion where the flag of the Republic of West Florida flew. Claiborne read a quick proclamation, declaring that the United States would “protect them in the enjoyment of their liberty, property and religion,” and ordered the American flag raised over Baton Rouge. On December 7, 1810, West Florida formally became a part of America.
Ten days later, Claiborne sat down to write a letter to the Spanish governor and captain general in Cuba to inform him of what had recently occurred in West Florida. Claiborne disavowed all affiliation with “the association of Individuals” who had established “an
independent state”
in West Florida. The actions of these men, Claiborne wrote, “gave to my
Government
much solicitude and imposed upon
it
the necessity of resorting to the most prompt and effectual means.” Blatantly hiding the American association with these adventures and suggesting the United States government was forced by circumstance to annex West Florida, Claiborne sought to deceive the Spanish and prevent an international conflict. “Your Excellency will
not
I am persuaded, attribute this measure to an unfriendly disposition towards Spain,” Claiborne wrote innocently. Claiborne portrayed the Americans as innocent respondents to a crisis—as having had no role in the course of events that led up to the attack on Baton Rouge. By feigning passivity, Claiborne promulgated a story about West Florida that has largely entered the history books—a story of a minor and inevitable border conflict in which the United States had no role in violating international law in order to conquer Spanish territory.
Claiborne believed strongly that American expansion was God’s work, and that whatever actions he took to promote her power and improve her national security would ultimately prove justified by the blessings that would flow from enlightened government and individual liberty. He dismissed the laws of nations and the rules of European diplomacy as corrupt remnants of an old world, irrelevant in the face of the new order he was helping to create. When he spoke of Spanish control over West Florida, he spoke of it as a relic of history, as a footnote to a more important story about the rise of the United States. It seemed Claiborne would do almost anything to contribute to that grand narrative of American expansion, hushing up anything that ran counter to his grand vision of the republic.
* * *
But though America now officially controlled West Florida, Claiborne faced difficult problems the day he scrawled the date
January 6, 1811
on the top of a sheet of paper. West Florida remained in a difficult spot. Groups of armed American settlers roamed the territory, and Claiborne was as yet unsure if they intended to comply with American authority or would continue advocating for a Republic of West Florida. Some of these armed men were committing acts of piracy, stopping travelers on the Pascagoula River and demanding that they swear allegiance to Florida or else forfeit all of their property. One traveler reported the territory in a state of “absolute anarchy.” A gentleman from Pensacola informed Claiborne that the Spanish were en route with 1,500 men and $500,000 from Havana to Florida to retake the territory. Reports were also arriving of a “terrible revolution” in the Kingdom of Mexico, where “ten thousand creoles” were reported to have been slaughtered. Finally, on the night of the fifth, a group of sailors started a riot in the harbor, perhaps in anticipation of Epiphany and the start of Carnival. Claiborne’s mind was consumed with the question of how to combat the Spanish and assert full American control in the anarchical state of West Florida. He believed that a secure West Florida meant a secure Louisiana—and that a secure Louisiana represented the first step in building an American empire that would stretch from sea to shining sea.