As a result of the treaties that ended the American Revolutionary War, the British colonies of East and West Florida were returned to Spain in 1784. This Second Spanish Period, which lasted until 1821, was fraught with conspiracies, unrest, and rebellions, generally planned by individuals or small groups. Conditions were ripe: foreign wars reduced Spain's power and ability to enforce territorial claims; the inhabitants of the region were a mix of nationalities and loyalties; foreign powers such as Britain, France, and the United States had an interest in undermining Spanish control of East and West Florida; and there was little certainty the territory would not change hands once again.
"Plan of the Port of Saint Mary in East Florida," by Pedro Díaz Berrio, drawn in St. Augustine on January 17, 1800
Portal de Archivos Españoles
Intrigue and Rebellion in East Florida
In the 1790s, Governor Juan Nepomuceno de Quesada of East Florida was faced with a number of threats to Spanish control. There was danger of invasion from Georgia, which was now part of the United States; the dubious loyalty of English and American settlers in the border region between the St. Johns River and the St. Mary’s River; war against France; and schemes and rumors of plans by French and Americans to seize parts of East Florida. In response to this, Quesada had some Anglo-American Florida-Georgia border settlers arrested for conspiracy and treason, including John McIntosh, Richard Lang, Peter Wagnon, William Plowden, Abner Hammond, and William Jones. While a few were held in St. Augustine, the main suspects were sent to Havana, Cuba. In November 1794, the court in Havana ordered the prisoners to be freed for lack of evidence.
Upon their release, these men headed to the St. Mary’s River and Georgia where they began demanding compensation for imprisonment by Quesada, raising resentment amongst the settlers in this border area. In June 1795, Richard Lang and a party of Georgians crossed the river into East Florida, where they were joined by Spanish subjects who also harbored a grudge against the governor. On June 27, Lang's group of over seventy men captured and burned Fort Juana (present-day north Jacksonville). McIntosh, Wagnon, Plowden, Jones, and other men joined Lang's force, and they proceeded a few miles south on the St. Johns River to capture Fort San Nicolas. Spanish prisoners taken by Lang and the rebels were sent to Amelia Island, where Lieutenant Ignacio Lopez was freed after promising not to take up arms. After informing Governor Quesada of the capture of the fort, Spanish forces gathered for a counterattack. They reached San Nicolas on July 12 and drove the rebels out while a Spanish ship reached Amelia Island, freed the Spanish prisoners there, and forced Lang’s faction to retreat into Georgia.
Lang would not be the only Second Spanish Period rabble-rouser who took advantage of the instability of the region to advance his own interests.
William Augustus Bowles, painted by J. Hardy, engraved by J. Grozer, 1791
Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts
William Augustus Bowles
William Bowles was born in Frederick, Maryland, circa 1763, around the same time that Spanish Florida was being ceded to Great Britain. A teenager when the American Revolution began, he joined a loyalist regiment in Maryland which was sent to Pensacola, British West Florida, in 1778 to reinforce the garrison there. Roughly a year later, young Bowles was either dismissed or deserted from the British Army and went to live amongst Lower Creek tribes for two years, learning their customs and languages. During this period, he married and fathered children with two wives, a Cherokee woman and a Lower Muskogee Creek woman who was the daughter of Chieftain William Perryman.
In 1781, Bowles returned to the British Army at Pensacola, just in time to be taken prisoner when Spanish troops from Louisiana captured the city. He was held prisoner in Havana for a brief time and then paroled, spending the rest of the Revolutionary War in New York on half pay. After the war's conclusion, Bowles went to the British Bahamas, where many other loyalists resettled. Six years later, with the support of Lord Dunmore, governor of the British Bahamas, Bowles entered into a partnership with Nassau merchants who were seeking to break up Panton, Leslie, & Company. Established in St. Augustine towards the end of Florida’s British period, the Company had been granted a monopoly on trading with tribal nations in East and West Florida when the colonies were returned to Spain. Bowles and other British Bahamian traders challenged this by engaging in unsanctioned trade with Creeks, Seminoles, and others tribal nations.
However, Bowles had greater ambitions. He began scheming to establish an independent nation, the State of Muskogee, with himself as the leader. This State would have been located not just in lands claimed by the Spanish in Florida, but in Georgia – land claimed by the United States. In 1788, after gathering some men in Nassau, Bowles landed in Florida with the goal of attacking the Panton, Leslie, & Company trading post at Castillo de San Marcos de Apalache, in present-day St. Marks. This attempt failed; Bowles' men deserted and the local Creeks did not support him.
Then, in 1790, accompanied by five men he claimed were Native chiefs, Bowles presented himself in London as a chief, despite having but a small group of followers. There, he failed to secure any kind of support or recognition.
Plan to Reconquer Fort San Marcos de Apalache by Lieutenant Colonel Don Vicente Folch y Juan, Governor of Pensacola, June 23, 1800
Portal de Archivos Españoles
He returned to Florida, gathered more supporters amongst the Lower Creeks, and attacked the Panton, Leslie, & Company store on the Wakulla River the following year. This act alarmed the Spanish, who captured Bowles by luring him to Castillo de San Marcos de Apalache.
Held prisoner by Spanish authorities for years, Bowles was moved around to various locations, including New Orleans, Spain, and the Philippines. While being transported from the Philippines back to Spain in 1797, he escaped when the ship stopped in western Africa. Bowles was back in London in 1798, where he once again tried to persuade the British government to support him, but they merely provided him with transportation back to Florida.
In April of 1800, Bowles, as self-identified leader of the State of Muskogee, declared war on Spain. He once again attacked the Panton, Leslie, & Company store on the Wakulla River before attacking Castillo de San Marcos de Apalache. The garrison surrendered on May 19, but the fort was retaken by Spanish troops five weeks later. Bowles gradually lost influence among the small groups of Lower Creeks and Seminole who had supported him. He failed to deliver on promises to supply the Lower Creek peoples with necessary goods. In 1803, he was captured at an assembly of tribal nations and delivered to the Spanish authorities. Bowles died a prisoner at Castillo del Morro in Havana, Cuba, in late 1805.
The Kemper Rebellion
Around the same time Bowles died, in 1804, an American settler named Reuben Kemper lost a property dispute in the New Feliciana district of West Florida (north of present-day Baton Rouge, Louisiana). He and his brothers Samuel and Nathan, who were originally from Virginia, were to be evicted from the farm on which they’d been living, after a conflict with the farm owner. Rather than leave, they chose to take up arms. In June, a militia succeeded in chasing the Kemper brothers across the border into the Mississippi territory. Later that month, the Kempers and their supporters returned and attacked those they suspected of siding with Spanish forces against them. They continued to fight with Spanish militia and patrols, refused to leave West Florida, raided, and plundered their way around the territory. In July, the Kempers were declared state criminals by the government; the following month, Nathan and Samuel Kemper and a group of thirty men kidnapped a Spanish local official. Now, they were carrying a flag of their own and calling for the people of West Florida to revolt against Spanish tyranny! Unfortunately for them, few residents of West Florida joined up, and the Kemper Rebellion failed.
The uprisings of Richard Lang, William Augustus Bowles, and the Kemper brothers were driven by individuals with personal grudges against the Spanish, and they failed to gather widespread support among the population. However, the short-lived successes of these rebellions revealed weaknesses in the Spanish empire that contrasted sharply with the power they wielded in the 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries. Spain was able to reassert control over East and West Florida – but just barely.
"Partie des Etats Unis." by Philippe Vandermaelen, 1827. The New Feliciana district is circled in red.
David Rumsey Map Collection
Sources
Cusick, James G. “Some Thoughts on Spanish East and West Florida as Borderlands.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 90, no. 2 (2011): 133–56.
Din, Gilbert C. “Mississippi River Gunboats on the Gulf Coast: The Spanish Naval Fight against William Augustus Bowles, 1799-1803.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 47, no. 3 (2006): 277–308.
——— “William Augustus Bowles on the Georgia Frontier: A Reexamination of the Spanish Surrender of Fort San Marcos de Apalache in 1800.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 88, no. 3 (2004): 305–37.
——— “William Augustus Bowles on the Gulf Coast, 1787-1803: Unraveling a Labyrinthine Conumdrum.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 89, no. 1 (2010): 1–25.
Gould, Eliga. “Independence and Interdependence: The American Revolution and the Problem of Postcolonial Nationhood, circa 1802.” The William and Mary Quarterly 74, no. 4 (2017): 729–52.
Hyde, Samuel C. “Consolidating the Revolution: Factionalism and Finesse in the West Florida Revolt, 1810.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 51, no. 3 (2010): 261–83.
Kinnaird, Lawrence. “The Significance of William Augustus Bowles’ Seizure of Panton’s Apalachee Store in 1792.” The Florida Historical Society Quarterly 9, no. 3 (1931): 156–92.
McMichael, Andrew. “The Kemper ‘Rebellion’: Filibustering and Resident Anglo American Loyalty in Spanish West Florida.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 43, no. 2 (2002): 133–65.
Miller, Janice Borton. “The Rebellion in East Florida in 1795.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 57, no. 2 (1978): 173–86.
Project by Grace Leffler, Flagler College Public History intern, Fall 2024.
