OR THE PAST AND PRESENT OF THE UNITED STATES. HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE. IN TWO VOLUMES, CONTAINING THE GENERAL AND LOCAL HISTORIES AND DESCRIPTIONS OF EACH OF THE STATES, TERRI- ILLUSTRATED BY SIX HUNDRED ENGRAVINGS PRESENTING VIEWS OF ALL THE CITIES AND PRINCIPAL TOWNS-PUBLIC BUILDINGS- BY THE AUTHORS, THE ENTIRE WORK BEING ON THEIR PART THE RESULT OF OVER 16,000 MILES OF TRAVEL AND FOUR YEARS OF LABOR. BY JOHN WARNER BARBER, Author of Historical Collections of Connecticut and Massachusetts, etc. PUBLISHED BY HENRY HOWE, NO. 111 MAIN-STREET. Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1861, BY HENRY HOWE, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of Ohio. FLORIDA was first discovered by Sebastian Cabot, sailing under the flag and patronage of England, in 1497, but he did not land to examine the in ARMS OF FLORIDA. MOTTO; In God is our Trust. terior of the country. In 1512 and 1516, Ponce de Leon, one of the companions of Columbus on his second voyage, explored the country to some extent, and gave to it the name which it still bears. It was called Florida, it is said, from the cirumstance of its being discovered on Palm Sunday; or, as others say, from the numerous flowering shrubs which in many places give the country such a beautiful aspect. In 1528, Narvarez, a Spaniard, having obtained from Charles V the indefinite grant of "all the lands lying from the river of Palms to the cape of Florida," sailed in March from Cuba, with five ships and four hundred men, for the conquest of the country. Landing on the coast, he marched to Apalache, a village of forty cottages, where he arrived on the 5th of June. Having lost many of his men by the natives, with whom he had a sharp engagement, he was obliged to retreat to his shipping. Sailing to the westward, he was lost, with many others, in a violent storm, about the middle of November, near (it is supposed) the mouth of the Mississippi. His people, with great difficulty, provided a kind of boat to cross the rivers on their way, making their ropes of horse-hair and their sails of soldier's shirts. In conclusion, only fifteen were left alive, four of whom, after almost incredible suffering, arrived at Mexico eight years later. In 1539 Ferdinand de Soto, who had been an officer under Pizarro, sailed from the island of Cuba, of which he was governor, with about one thousand men, and landed on the western shore of Florida. From the Gulf of 49 (779) Mexico he penetrated northward and westward, in search of gold. The Spaniards wandered about in the wilderness for four years. De Soto, and about half his men, perished. In 1553 the French attempted to establish a coloony, which occasioned a contest between them and the Spaniards, in which the latter were finally victorious. The Spaniards were obliged several times to contend with the English colonies of Georgia and South Carolina, but they maintained possession, though several times attacked by the French and English forces. In 1763 Florida was ceded to Great Britain in exchange for Havana. Liberal offers were now made to settlers from abroad, and, in consequence, numerous respectable citizens from the British settlements, and even a body of some 1,500 people from the shores of the Mediterranean, were induced to emigrate to Florida. A portion of the territory known as West Florida was conquered by the Spanish governor of Louisiana, in 1781, and the whole was surrendered to Spain, by the treaty of Paris, in 1783. In the war of 1812, with Great Britain, the latter power, disregarding the neutrality of the Spanish territory, introduced her emissaries into Florida to arm the savages against the frontier settlers; and not only this, but British fleets entered the ports, and garrisoned the forts, of west Florida. After the war had terminated, and the treaty of Ghent had been ratified, British emissaries continued to make Florida the theater of renewed operations for involving the United States in another Indian war. This was done from the opinion expressed by Lord Castlereagh, that the ninth article of the treaty of Ghent virtually entitled the Creek Indians to a restoration of all the lands they had relinquished to the United States by the treaty of Fort Jackson. Therefore, the inference that England should assist the Indians, they "being the independent allies of Great Britain.' Captain Woodbine, a British officer acting under the orders of Colonel Nichols, of the royal navy, conducted a colony of negro slaves about twenty-five miles up the Appalachicola River, and there built a strong fort as his head-quarters, which was well supplied with munitions of war from the British fleet, for the use of the negroes and Indians. The commandant of the fort was Garçon, a French negro, in connection with Red Sticks, a Choctaw chief, and it was garrisoned by one hundred negroes and a few Indians. From this general rendezvous marauding expeditions were sent out against the Georgia frontier. As a protection to the American settlements, Camp Crawford, just above the Florida line, was garrisoned by United States troops under Colonel Clinch. In August, 1816, Colonel Clinch, with one hundred choice men under Major Muhlenburg and Captain Zachary Taylor, and a body of friendly Indians, made an attack on the fort, when a red-hot shot penetrated the magazine, involving nearly all the inmates in one indiscriminate destruction. Three thousand stand of arms and six hundred barrels of powder were destroyed. Garçon and Red Sticks were delivered over to the Indians and tortured to death. Woodbine had escaped the evening previous. Next day intelligence was received of the approach of a body of hostile Seminoles, but, as Colonel Clinch was well prepared to receive them, they declined making an attack. Such was the commencement of the first Seminole war in Florida. After the destruction of the negro fort, Colonel Nichols, from the island of New Providence, dispatched Alexander Arbuthnot, a British officer, to succeed Captain Woodbine in his diabolical operations. He arrived in Florida in the guise of a British trader, in the year 1817, and, simultaneously, the war-whoop resounded through the forests, and the blood of American citizens began to flow along the Georgia and the Alabama territory. In December, 1817, Gen. Gaines destroyed an Indian town on Clinch River. The Seminoles embodying in large numbers upon the Clinch and Appalachicola Rivers, and upon the St. Mary's, near the frontiers of Georgia, General Jackson, early next |