St. Augustine, Florida's Colonial Capital

New Orleans

Mississippi River

GEORGIA

1764 BOUNDARY

1763 BOUNDARY

WEST FLORIDA

★Pensacola

Mobile

Apalachicola River

EAST FLORIDA

Chattahoochee

★St. Augustine

New Smyrna

Records show that St. Augustine at the time of the Spanish evacuation had a population of 3,096—961 men, chiefly soldiers and officials; 798 women, and 1,337 children. The majority went to Cuba and the West Indies to find new homes. The English flag with its cross of St. George waved over the capital. The stout Castillo, the narrow streets, and the name St. Augustine remained.

British Rule Begins

St. Augustine became virtually deserted except for the presence of the English staff and garrison. Dust and cobwebs soon covered the Spanish shrines. Weeds and brush grew deep in the yards of the vacated homes. As time went on a few English families began to move in, and English gentlemen of wealth and standing arrived to look over this new province which their country had acquired.

On a hot August day of 1764 a salute of the fort’s guns greeted the arrival of Colonel James Grant, who came from London to serve as East Florida’s first English governor. He had earlier led an expedition against French-held Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh) and had served in the Cherokee Indian wars in Carolina.

Governor Grant brought to St. Augustine all the picturesque qualities of English colonial life. Handsomely attired gentlemen moved about the streets in their white stockings, silk or velvet knee-breeches, and rich embroidered coats with lace at the cuff. Grant’s distinguished Council included the aristocratic Moultries from South Carolina, Chief Justice William Drayton, and the Episcopal clergyman, John Forbes. Also across the scene moved Frederick George Mulcaster, reputed to be the natural brother of England’s King, George III.

Liberal grants of land were offered by the British to attract colonists to East Florida. Glowing accounts of its agricultural possibilities were published and circulated. Titled English gentlemen and wealthy Carolina planters secured grants of land in the vicinity of the capital and along the St. Johns River. The eccentric Denys Rolle established a colony called Rollestown near the present site of East Palatka, where he planned to rehabilitate derelicts from the streets of London.

By 1768 Governor Grant was able to report encouraging progress: “This province, which was a desert when I came into it, although inhabited by the Spaniards two hundred years, will soon be a fruitful country. It fills faster with inhabitants than I could have well expected, and there are already a number of slaves at work on the different plantations.”

In contrast with conditions under Spanish rule, vessels began to sail from St. Augustine with cargoes of indigo, barrels of oranges, casks of orange juice, lumber and naval stores. Grant made various improvements to the governor’s residence, facing the Parade, or Plaza. The Franciscan Monastery was converted to serve as quarters for the garrison, and later large new barracks were erected along the bayfront south of it. One of the churches left by the Spaniards was taken over by the English, and later remodelled by Lieutenant-Governor Moultrie, with the addition of a handsome clock and steeple. It was called St. Peter’s.

The New Smyrna Colony

During Grant’s administration, a Doctor Andrew Turnbull and associates of London secured a large grant of land near Mosquito Inlet, some eighty miles south of St. Augustine. There they planned to establish a plantation colony for the production of indigo, for which the British government offered an attractive bounty. Turnbull named the place New Smyrna in honor of his wife’s native Smyrna, where he had also spent some time.

After visiting East Florida to inspect his landgrant, Turnbull returned to Europe to recruit colonists from the shores of the Mediterranean. He secured some 200 from Greece, 110 from Italy, and then went on to the Island of Minorca, where several years of drought had impoverished many of the inhabitants. This island, one of the Balearic group off the coast of Spain, was then an English possession. At its port of Mahón more people than expected flocked to join the projected colony, bringing the total to around 1,400.

In the spring of 1768 eight vessels brought these hopeful colonists to East Florida, saddened by the death of almost 150 during the long crowded voyage from the British base at Gibraltar. As customary in those days, these colonists bound themselves to work for a period of seven or eight years in return for their passage and sustenance, after which they were to receive parcels of land and freedom from further obligation.

After touching at St. Augustine the vessels proceeded to New Smyrna, where crude shelters were built. Clearing the land for cultivation, and in the meantime feeding and clothing such a large number of people proved more difficult and expensive than anticipated. Due in part to crude living conditions, three hundred died during the first winter. Soon after their arrival, some of the Greeks and Italians broke into the storehouse, fatally wounded an overseer, and were on the point of sailing for Cuba when intercepted by an armed vessel sent from St. Augustine to subdue them. The ringleaders were later captured, brought to the capital, tried, and three condemned to death. One was pardoned on agreeing to act as executioner for the other two.

Governor Grant, who fully supported Turnbull and wanted to see his New Smyrna colony thrive, returned to England in 1771. He was temporarily succeeded by Lieutenant-Governor Moultrie. In 1774 Patrick Tonyn, an ardent and arbitrary Loyalist, arrived from England to take over the governorship of East Florida. Serious friction developed between these officials and a faction in East Florida that included Turnbull, Chief Justice Drayton, and others as to convening a representative assembly, such as Virginia and other English colonies in America enjoyed. The “inflamed faction,” as Tonyn termed them, questioned the power of the governor and his Council to rule arbitrarily in the absence of an elected legislative body. They became bitter personal and political rivals.

In 1776 Chief Justice Drayton and Turnbull sailed for London to seek redress and answer Tonyn’s charges. During Turnbull’s absence, the surviving New Smyrna colonists, who now numbered barely 600 out of the 1,400 who had left their Mediterranean homes, secretly sent a delegation to St. Augustine. They demanded release from their contracts and reported being cruelly treated by their overseers. Assured of Governor Tonyn’s sympathy and protection, all of the surviving colonists—men, women, and children—later marched in a body up the King’s Road to St. Augustine. Turnbull returned from London in the fall of 1777 to find himself and his New Smyrna colony ruined.

At St. Augustine the refugees were assigned lands north of the City Gates, where they built crude shelters and managed to eke out a living by fishing, hunting, and gardening. Time proved them a self-reliant, industrious people, who gradually attained more comfortable circumstances. They and their descendants became a distinctive part of St. Augustine, and continued to live in the city down to the present day.

During the Revolution

Soon after Tonyn became governor of East Florida reports began to reach St. Augustine of unrest in the English colonies to the north, followed by news of bloodshed at Lexington and Bunker Hill. Tonyn suspected some in East Florida of being in sympathy with the rebel cause, including his old enemies, Drayton and Turnbull. Most of the inhabitants, however, had arrived too recently from England or other loyal colonies to desire independence. St. Augustine remained as faithful to its English rulers as it had been to its Spanish Kings.

In 1775 two detachments of troops, comprising 160 men, were sent from St. Augustine to Williamsburg, Virginia, to support hard-pressed Governor Dunmore. During August of that year another incident brought the war home. The British brigantine Betsy lay off St. Augustine’s inlet with a cargo of gunpowder for the garrison. A rebel sloop from Charleston swooped down and captured it within sight of people on shore. When the news of the signing of the Declaration of Independence reached this East Florida capital, there was no rejoicing. Instead angry Loyalists gathered in the Plaza to cheer the burning of straw-stuffed dummies, representing Samuel Adams and John Hancock.

Expeditions left St. Augustine to attack the “traitorous neighbors” in Georgia and Carolina. They in turn organized forces to invade East Florida. These resulted in little more than border skirmishes. The East Florida Rangers, a militia organized by Tonyn, plundered the frontier of cattle, from the sale of which the governor is said to have profited. As the war progressed an increasing number of Loyalists fled from patriot wrath into East Florida.

Some of the prisoners of war taken by the British in various engagements were shipped to St. Augustine to be held until exchanged. In 1780 forty prominent American Patriots, captured at Charleston, were brought here. They included three signers of the Declaration of Independence—Edward Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Heyward, Jr.

The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, marked virtually the end of the conflict. The English evacuation of Savannah in 1782, followed by their withdrawal from Charleston, caused Loyalists to pour into East Florida and St. Augustine by the thousands. Housing was inadequate. Many of the unfortunate refugees lived in mere huts of thatched palmetto leaves. Plays were given in the statehouse for their benefit. One of the newcomers set up a print shop and began publishing Florida’s first newspaper, the East Florida Gazette. The population of East Florida soared to 17,000 including slaves.

In 1781 Governor Tonyn finally called East Florida’s first Legislative Assembly. It met in the statehouse at St. Augustine that year and again during the winter of 1782-83. But there was little left for it to do but pass laws governing the conduct of the many slaves, who had poured into East Florida with their Loyalist owners.

Another Treaty

Toward the end of the Revolutionary War in 1779 Spain declared war on England in alliance with France. A Spanish expedition captured English-held Mobile in 1780 and Pensacola in 1781. Spanish spies were active in St. Augustine, which braced itself for an attack on East Florida that was planned but never carried out.

Across the sea in Paris ministers of England, France, and Spain gathered again at the peace table, and another treaty was concluded. On April 21, 1783, Governor Tonyn announced what had already become generally known, that England had ceded the Floridas and Minorca back to Spain in exchange for the retention of Gibraltar and other territories. British subjects were given eighteen months in which to dispose of their property and evacuate Florida.

This trend of events was a crushing blow to East Florida’s numerous English residents. Many had just recently moved to the province, purchased or built new homes, and cleared land for cultivation. New towns had grown up, such as St. Johns Bluff, which contained 300 houses, two taverns, stores, and even a lodge of Freemasons. Appeals were addressed to the British Crown to retain possession of East Florida, but to no avail.

A period of confusion and disorder followed. Lawless elements, termed banditti, took advantage of the unsettled conditions to plunder plantations and travelers. The painful evacuation of the English continued through the year 1784 and the spring of 1785. Many took the wilderness trails to the west, others went to the Bahamas, some returned to England, or embarked for Nova Scotia, Jamaica, Dominica and elsewhere. They took with them all of their movable possessions. Even the bells and pews of their church, and a crude fire engine were loaded aboard ship for transfer to another colony in the Bahamas.

The Minorcans, who had moved to St. Augustine from New Smyrna in 1777, were not greatly disturbed by the impending change in sovereignty. They were Catholics and spoke a language similar to Spanish. They supported themselves by fishing, hunting, and by cultivating small groves and gardens. Some had become small shopkeepers. St. Augustine was their chosen home.

Many English still remained when Governor Zéspedes arrived off St. Augustine with thirteen vessels to take over the province of East Florida for Spain. The official transfer of the government took place on July 12, 1784. The Spanish flag was unfurled again over the capital to volleys from the Spanish infantry and a fourteen-gun salute from the artillery. “On the following day,” Governor Zéspedes wrote, “we rendered dutiful and solemn adoration to Christ the King, by attending the Te Deum.”

The curtain fell on twenty years of English occupation, and a second period under Spain began.

CHAPTER V
Spanish Rule Returns

When they reoccupied Florida in 1784, the Spaniards had changed but little during their twenty-year absence from the scene. With their return St. Augustine reverted to its former status as an isolated military post, heavily dependent upon outside sources for its supplies and financial support.

Agriculture was neglected and brush soon covered the plantation fields, which the English and their slaves had cleared. Indians again roamed at will through the countryside. On the heels of the departing English they burned Bella Vista, the beautiful country estate of Lieutenant-Governor Moultrie, located a few miles south of St. Augustine in the community now bearing his name.

The population of the capital, which had overflowed into new districts just before the English left, shrank to a fraction of its former size. Only a few score English remained to take the required oath of allegiance to the Spanish Crown. A relatively small number of St. Augustine’s former Spanish residents, or Floridanos, uprooted in 1763, returned from Cuba to claim their former homes. The Minorcan group, including a few Greeks and Italians, made up the major portion of St. Augustine’s civilian inhabitants.

Vacant houses stared blankly along the narrow streets. Some with flat roofs and outside kitchens were relics of the first Spanish period. Others had been remodelled after the English taste with glass window panes, gabled roofs, and chimneys. St. Peter’s Church, in which the English had worshipped, remained unoccupied and soon became a ruin.

Although a Spanish possession, St. Augustine acquired from time to time interesting residents of other nationalities. Juan McQueen, a close friend of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Lafayette, came to the city in 1791 to escape embarrassing debts, and held official positions under the Spanish regime until death closed his colorful career in 1807. John Leslie, the famous English trader, also lived here after the Revolutionary War. The firm of Panton, Leslie and Company enjoyed a monopoly in trading with the Indians of Florida, and supplied St. Augustine with many of its needs on liberal credit.

Philip Fatio, a Swiss, owned a large plantation on the St. Johns River in a section now known as Switzerland. He maintained a store and residence at St. Augustine, and had other extensive land holdings. Among the Minorcan group was an Estevan Benet, one of whose descendants was Stephen Vincent Benet, the noted writer.

Jesse Fish lived across the bay on what is now called Fish’s Island with his many slaves and famous orange grove, from which he shipped fruit and juice to England. He was sent to St. Augustine as a youth by a trading firm during the first Spanish period, won the confidence of the Spaniards, and remained as custodian of some of their property through the English regime. The old patriarch still occupied his coquina mansion across the bay when the Spaniards returned.

Father Pedro Camps, Padre of the Minorcan group, followed them to St. Augustine from New Smyrna in 1777, and continued as their beloved spiritual leader until his death in 1790. Also prominent in the city’s religious life was Father Michael O’Reilly, an Irish priest, who came with Governor Zéspedes in 1784 and remained active until removed by death in 1812.

Life in St. Augustine followed a distinctive pattern, due to its isolation and lack of frequent communication with other cities. It was Spanish in language, dress, customs, and for the most part in architecture and population. Some of its officials and planters owned slaves, fine horses, and lived comfortably if not elaborately. They enjoyed leisure time for gambling, cock fighting, and to lounge through the long summers in a cool patio or at a congenial tavern. The populace was characteristically lazy and did little more than necessary to keep body and soul together. As in other Spanish colonies, the siesta, or after-dinner nap, was routine. During the mid-day heat streets were deserted and nothing stirred as if under the spell of an enchanter’s wand.

One of the chief additions made to the city during its second Spanish period was the construction of a graceful new Parish Church. The building was begun in 1791, dedicated in 1797, and later consecrated as a Cathedral. Damaged by fire in 1887, it was restored the following year with the addition of the present clock tower. The Spaniards also commenced a new Treasury building, which was never completed due to lack of funds. Its mute walls remained standing until after the Civil War.

For a time the Spanish government offered grants of land in East Florida on liberal terms to attract settlers. Hardy pioneers from the adjacent South poured in, who secretly wanted to overthrow Spanish rule. Fearing this influence, Spain closed the territory to further settlement by Americans in 1804.

The story of East Florida and its capital from 1800 on is one of increasing difficulties, caused by the course of events in Europe and friction with neighboring southern states. Spain’s wealth and power were rapidly declining. One after another her American colonies sought and won their independence. In the southeastern United States sentiment for the possession of Florida was fanned by Indian raids and the loss of slaves across the border, which Spanish officials seemed to do little to control.

In 1812, to assuage popular clamor, the Spanish Cortés adopted a more liberal constitution, and decreed that monuments be erected to commemorate it. At St. Augustine a coquina shaft was raised that still graces its Plaza, but scarcely had it been dedicated when the constitution was revoked, and the monuments were ordered dismantled. Here only the tablets were removed and later replaced.

The North Florida Republic

When the war of 1812 broke out between England and the United States, it was feared that England, then allied with Spain, might seize the Floridas as a base for military operations. The Congress authorized President Madison to appoint two agents, who were to endeavor to secure the temporary cession of East and West Florida to the United States. In the event this failed, steps were to be taken to forcibly occupy the provinces, should England threaten to seize them.

President Madison appointed old General Matthews as his agent to East Florida. He was a Revolutionary War veteran and a former governor of Georgia. With promises of liberal grants of land, Matthews encouraged the planters along the northern borders of East Florida to set up an independent republic. The plan was to then turn over the territory it occupied to the United States. After seizing Fernandina these Patriots, as they were termed, advanced on St. Augustine with a small detachment of regular troops, occupied Fort Mosa on its northern outskirts, and called upon the Spanish governor to surrender. He sent a gunboat up the river to dislodge them, but they continued to camp in the vicinity for several months. St. Augustine was cut off from supplies and the surrounding country plundered by Indians and outlaws.

Loud Spanish and English protests caused President Madison to recall his agents and repudiate their actions.

A Bit of Spain

In a Narrative of a Voyage to the Spanish Main, published in 1819, an Englishman gives the following description of St. Augustine’s residents during this period:

“The women are deservedly celebrated for their charm, their lovely black eyes have a vast deal of expression, their complexions a clear brunette; much attention is paid to the arrangement of their hair; at Mass they are always well dressed in black silk basquinas with the little mantilla over their heads; the men in their military costumes.”

The same traveler later returned to St. Augustine by land, and found the city in a gay mood despite its difficulties.

“I had arrived at the season of general relaxation, on the eve of the Carnival, which is celebrated with much gaiety in all Catholic countries. Masks, dominoes, harlequins, punchinelloes, and a variety of grotesque disguises, on horseback, in carts, gigs, and on foot paraded the streets with guitars, violins, and other instruments; and in the evening the houses were opened to receive masks, and balls were given in every direction.”

Ceded to the United States

After the War of 1812 there was still friction between Spanish Florida and the United States. Bands of Indians and escaped slaves occupied choice lands of the Florida interior, fortified the navigable rivers, and made occasional raids across the border. The Spanish garrison was not large enough to control lawless elements. In 1817 Fernandina and Amelia Island were taken over by MacGregor, an English soldier of fortune, later occupied by the pirate Autry, and became a den of outlaws and smugglers. United States troops were sent to dislodge them and restore law and order. General Andrew Jackson led an expedition into north central and west Florida in 1818 to punish the Indians, and after destroying their strongholds occupied Pensacola.

England and Spain vehemently protested these violations of Spanish territory. Negotiations for the purchase of Florida were reopened. During February of 1819 a treaty was concluded whereby Spain finally ceded Florida to the United States, which appropriated up to five million dollars to pay the claims of Americans arising from the recent depredations. Spain ratified the treaty in 1820.

On July 10, 1821, Colonel Robert Butler and a small detachment of United States troops received possession of East Florida and Castillo de San Marcos from José Coppinger, the last of the Spanish governors. After the Spanish flag was lowered, leaving the stars and stripes flying over the fortress, Spanish troops marched out between lines of American soldiers and they mutually saluted. The Spaniards then boarded American transports waiting to convey them to Cuba, one of the few remaining possessions of Spain’s great colonial empire in America.

CHAPTER VI
Under the United States

St. Augustine was at last a part of the United States. Most of its Spanish residents bid the narrow streets farewell. The Minorcans, now firmly domiciled here, made up the major portion of the town’s population. Many by this time had risen to positions of influence in its affairs.

Officials of the new regime found St. Augustine a rather dilapidated old town, devoid of progress and ambition. Due to the poverty that had marked the closing years of the second Spanish period, public and private buildings were badly run down, some almost in ruins. Soon after the change of flags, speculators and promoters flocked to the city, and were quartered in some of the deserted houses. In the fall of 1821 an epidemic of dreaded yellow fever carried off many of the newcomers. A new cemetery was opened up near the City Gates to receive the victims, a few of whom may have been of Huguenot descent. It became known as the Huguenot, or Protestant cemetery.

In spite of its unkempt condition, St. Augustine possessed a certain mellow charm. At times the scent of orange blossoms hung heavy in the air and could be noticed by passing ships at sea. Along the narrow streets latticed gates led into cool courtyards and secluded gardens. There was no industry or commerce to disturb the serenity of the scene. St. Augustine’s shallow inlet, which preserved it from its enemies, also prevented it from becoming a place of bustling trade.

Visitors Begin to Arrive

Although difficult to reach by sea because of its treacherous bar, and by land over a road that was little more than a trail, a few adventurous travelers began to visit this quaint old city, which the United States had recently acquired. They were chiefly invalids and tubercular victims, for whom the mild winter climate was considered beneficial. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was later to become the noted New England poet and philosopher, visited St. Augustine in 1827, at the age of 23, suffering from what he termed a “stricture of the chest.” During his ten weeks’ stay he recorded in his journal and letters his impressions of the city as he then saw it.

“St. Augustine is the oldest town of Europeans in North America,” he observed, “full of ruins, chimneyless houses, lazy people, horse-keeping intolerably dear, and bad milk from swamp grass, as all their hay comes from the North.”

But it restored his health and later he was inspired to comment: “The air and sky of this ancient, fortified, dilapidated sandbank of a town are delicious. It is a queer place. There are eleven or twelve hundred people and these are invalids, public officials, and Spaniards, or rather Minorcans.”

While here Emerson met another distinguished visitor of the time, Prince Napoleon Achille Murat, son of the King of Naples, and nephew of the great Napoleon. Murat came to Florida in 1824, purchased an estate south of St. Augustine, and was a frequent visitor to the city, living here for a time during the Seminole War. He later settled on a plantation near Tallahassee. St. Augustine began to prosper in a small way from its increasing number of visitors and winter residents.

The Freeze of 1835

The growing of oranges was an important industry in St. Augustine and its vicinity at this time. Many of its residents derived their principal income from the sale of the golden fruit, which was shipped by sloop to northern cities. The town was described by visitors as being virtually bowered in groves, and on each side of the Plaza were two rows of handsome orange trees, planted by Governor Grant during the English occupation.

During February of 1835 a biting cold of extended duration swept down out of the northwest. At nearby Jacksonville the thermometer dropped to eight degrees, and ice formed on the St. Johns River. St. Augustine’s beautiful orange groves were killed to the ground, sweeping away the main source of livelihood for many of its people. Only the bare trunks and branches remained, making the city look bleak and desolate.

Some of the trees sprouted from their damaged roots; others were planted, and in a few decades St. Augustine’s orange groves were again the subject of admiring comment on the part of visitors. But during the winter of 1894-95 another freeze destroyed them. The citrus industry moved farther south and was not again revived on a commercial scale in St. Augustine or its immediate vicinity.

The Seminole War

The Seminole War followed closely on the heels of the disastrous freeze of 1835. Shortly after New Year’s day of 1836 St. Augustine learned of the massacre of Major Dade and his command of 110 men. They were ambushed by Seminoles while enroute from Fort Brooke (Tampa) to Fort King (Ocala). On the same day, December 28, 1835, General Wiley Thompson, the Indian agent at Fort King, and another officer were killed. Soon plantations in the vicinity of St. Augustine were attacked and burned, and refugees arrived with gory tales of Indian atrocities. The February 27, 1836, issue of Niles Register carried the following item:

“The whole country south of St. Augustine has been laid waste during the past week, and not a building of any value left standing. There is not a single house remaining between this city and Cape Florida, a distance of 250 miles.”

When this occurred the original Indian tribes of Florida encountered by the early Spaniards had completely disappeared. Some had been wiped out during the long period of border conflict with the English. Others had succumbed to epidemics of disease. By the early 1800’s the principal Indians found in Florida were called Seminoles, and were a combination of several tribal remnants from Georgia and Alabama.

Under United States rule the Seminoles were first restricted to a more limited area by the Treaty of Moultrie in 1823. But as settlers continued to pour in, a demand arose for their complete removal from Florida to reservations in the West, which the younger Seminole leaders were determined to resist. The effort to force their removal to western reservations resulted in conflict that dragged on for seven years, from 1835 to 1842.

Officer after officer was sent to Florida to take command of operations against the Indians, including General Winfield Scott of subsequent Mexican War fame; and General Zachary Taylor, later to become President of the United States. But roving bands of Seminoles continued to strike and vanish into the dense swamps and little known woodlands.

In 1837 two prominent Seminole leaders, Osceola and Coacoochee, with seventy of their warriors, were seized by General Hernandez under orders from General Jesup at a point a few miles south of St. Augustine. The Indians had come in under a white flag for a parley with United States officers. The captives were brought to St. Augustine and imprisoned in the Castillo, from which Coacoochee and twenty companions managed to escape. Osceola died soon after transfer to Fort Moultrie, Charleston.

During May of 1840 a party of actors enroute from Picolata to St. Augustine were attacked by Indians, and near the same point two St. Augustine residents were murdered.

“It is useless to complain,” stated a news item of the day. “The fact remains that we have been pent up in this little city for the last four years and a half by a few worthless outlaws. Our friends and neighbors, one after another, have been hastened to the mansions of the dead, and he who is foolhardy enough to venture beyond the gates may be the next victim.”

But St. Augustine as usual managed to be gay. A young lieutenant, William Tecumseh Sherman of later Civil War fame, was stationed at Picolata and frequently rode into St. Augustine for diversion. In one of his letters home he wrote under date of February 15, 1842:

“The inhabitants (of St. Augustine) still preserve the old ceremonies and festivities of old Spain. Balls, masquerades, etc., are celebrated during the gay season of the Carnival (just over), and the most religious observance of Lent in public, whilst in private they can not refrain from dancing and merry making. Indeed, I never saw anything like it—dancing, dancing, and nothing but dancing, but not such as you see in the North. Such ease and grace as I never before beheld.”

Dr. Motte, a young military surgeon, made a similar observation in his journal: “The St. Augustine ladies certainly danced more gracefully, and kept better time, than any of my fair country women I ever saw in northern cities. It was really delightful to see the beautiful Minorcan girls moving through their intricate waltz to the music of violin and tambourine.”

Finally most of the Seminoles were killed or surrendered for transfer to reservations in the West. A few were allowed to remain deep in the Everglades. There were probably less than 5,000 Indians in Florida at the outset, yet the war involved the enlistment of 20,000 men, an estimated cost of thirty million dollars, and 1,500 United States casualties.

St. Augustine somewhat reluctantly saw the war come to an end. The presence of officers and troops had enlivened its social life, and poured government funds into the city.

A Peaceful Interlude

The end of the Seminole War made Florida safe again for travelers. William Cullen Bryant, the popular poet and author, paid St. Augustine a visit in 1843 and wrote articles about the city that were widely read. He noted that gabled roofs were rapidly replacing the flat roofs of the first Spanish period, and that some “modern” wooden buildings had been constructed. More than half the inhabitants still spoke the Minorcan, or Mahonese language.

Another visitor of 1843 was Henry B. Whipple, later a prominent Episcopal Bishop. He found masquerading still a popular pastime in the city. Masking began during the Christmas holidays and continued until Lent. Small groups of people dressed in various disguises spent the evenings going from house to house, acting out their parts and furnishing their own music with guitar and violin. Whipple wrote that St. Augustine was still full of old ruins, and that “he liked to wander through the narrow streets and gaze upon these monitors of time, which whispered that the hands that built them were long since mouldering in the grave.”

In 1845 Florida became the twenty-seventh state admitted to the Union. Tallahassee had been selected as its territorial capital in 1824, being a compromise between St. Augustine and Pensacola, both of which were difficult to reach from most of the state.

During the Civil War

St. Augustine lived on, enlivened during the winter by an influx of visitors, and drowsing undisturbed through the long summers until aroused by another conflict—the Civil War.

Slaves played a relatively minor role in its economy, as compared with the rest of the state. Although a few plantations in the immediate vicinity employed slave labor, they were chiefly used as domestic servants and were generally well treated. There was considerable Union sentiment in the city due to its number of northern-born residents.

Edmund Kirby-Smith, who had played in St. Augustine’s streets as a boy, became one of the leading Confederate Generals. His father came to the city in 1822 as Judge of the Superior Court and died here in 1846. His mother continued to occupy their home on what is now Aviles Street. During January of 1861 she wrote her son: “Our hearts are steeped in sadness and anxiety. Forebodings of evil yet to come depress us. We are threatened with the greatest calamity that can befall a nation. Civil war stares us in the face.”

In the same letter she tells of how the news of Florida’s secession from the Union was received at St. Augustine: “Our state has seceded, and it was announced here by the firing of cannon and musketry, and much shooting. A large flag made by the ladies is waving on the square. By order of the Governor of this State, the Fort, Barracks, and Federal property were taken possession of. Cannon are mounted on the ramparts of the Fort to defend it if any attempt should be made to retake it.”

Soon the shouting ceased and war became a stark reality with its heartaches, poverty, and privation. Many young men from St. Augustine went into the Confederate armies. The majority of its northern-born residents returned to the North to live for the duration of the war. The flow of visitors to the city ceased.

During March of 1862 a Union blockading squadron appeared off the inlet, and an officer came ashore with a white flag to demand the city’s surrender. During the night its small Confederate garrison withdrew. Next morning St. Augustine was occupied by Union forces and held by them during the remainder of the conflict. Before the Federal troops landed the women of the city cut down the flag pole in the Plaza so that the Union standard could not be raised where their Confederate banner had waved.