Resurrecting a forgotten chapter in transatlantic history, James G. Cusick tells how, just before the United States went to war against Great Britain in 1812, an ill-advised invasion of a Spanish colony became a stage on which the young republic clumsily acted out its imperial ambitions and racial fears. With the halfhearted backing of President James Madison and Secretary of State James Monroe, a party of Georgians invaded East Florida, confident that partisans there would help them swiftly wrest the colony away from Spain. The raid was a strategic and political disaster. Few sympathizers materialized, official U.S. support dissolved, and an extended guerrilla war ensued.
This was the "other war of 1812," or the Patriot War. Cusick, a lively storyteller as well as a meticulous scholar, conveys the savagery of the borderlands conflict that pitted American adventurers and anti-Spanish partisans against Spanish loyalists and their allies, who included Seminole Indians and escaped slaves. At the same time, Cusick looks at the American motivations behind the invasion, including apprehensions about Florida's growing population of unregulated blacks and geopolitical intrigues involving Spain, Britain, and France.
JAMES G. CUSICK is curator of the P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History at the University of Florida. He is a research associate of the St. Augustine Historical Society and the Historic St. Augustine Research Institute and serves on the board of directors for the Seminole Wars Historic Foundation, the Gulf South History and Humanities Conference, and the Florida Historical Society.
JAMES G. CUSICK is curator of the P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History at the University of Florida. He is a research associate of the St. Augustine Historical Society and the Historic St. Augustine Research Institute and serves on the board of directors for the Seminole Wars Historic Foundation, the Gulf South History and Humanities Conference, and the Florida Historical Society.
Table of Contents
Contents
List of Figures vii Preface to the Paperback Edition ix Acknowledgments xiii Time Line for the Patriot War xv Americans vs. Spaniards: A Different View of the War of 1812 1 1. Mr. Madison's Worries 13 2. A Plot Thickens 29 3. Georgia and Spanish East Florida, a Clash of Cultures 38 4. Intrigues and Discoveries 56 5. The Diplomacy of Deception 67 6. General Mathews Meets a Crisis 78 7. The Fall of Fernandina 103 8. Reactions 126 9. At the Gates of St. Augustine 144 10. Governor of Florida vs. Governor of Georgia 169 11. Life in the Occupied Land 193 12. War Even to the Knife 209 13. The Price of Victory 236 14. The Americans Withdraw 258 15. The Last of the Patriots 279 16. The Patriot War and American History 293 Notes 311 Bibliography 349 Index 363