- 7 minutes ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Viewers like you make this program possible.
00:03Support your local PBS station.
00:44It was the dawn of a new era for the British Empire.
00:48For the first time since Spanish conquistadors claimed La Florida 250 years earlier,
00:53all of the Atlantic coast of North America was finally under the control of Great Britain.
00:59We all know about the 13 British colonies,
01:02but at the time of the Revolution there weren't 13 British colonies, there were 15.
01:07Nobody knows that hardly.
01:10Spain had given up La Florida in 1763 in exchange for recovering Cuba from the British.
01:16England created East and West Florida as royal colonies,
01:21making them the 14th and 15th British colonies in North America that would later become part of the U.S.
01:28East Florida stretched from the Atlantic to the Apalachicola River.
01:33St. Augustine, now 300 buildings strong, was the capital.
01:38West Florida, with the smaller settlement of Pensacola as the capital, reached to the Mississippi.
01:44East Florida and West Florida have been completely written out of the narrative.
01:48Search 13 British colonies and you will not find numbers 14 and 15.
01:53It was a radical changing of the guard.
01:57The scrappy melting pot of European, native and black communities that had eked out a rough frontier life under Spanish
02:05rule,
02:06had evacuated to Mexico and Cuba.
02:09And stepping in to govern the colony of East Florida was a British aristocrat, Colonel James Grant,
02:17heir apparent of Ballandalic Castle in the Scottish Highlands.
02:21Grant was literally of the manner born, growing up on this 10,000 acre estate in Speyside,
02:28which has been kept in the family for centuries.
02:31Many of the rooms remain as they were when the castle was built in 1545.
02:37I always think it's such a shame the walls can't talk.
02:41Just think of the wonderful stories that must be in every room.
02:47Grant left his comfortable life here to fight for his country when he was 24.
02:51He was a very great military man. He was obviously very bright.
02:57He had a great estate. He had lots of servants to look after him.
03:02And he needn't have done that. He could have stayed here on the estate and done nothing.
03:10Grant left the lush rolling hills of Scotland for the relentless heat and sandy soil of East Florida,
03:17hoping to transform this unmanageable territory into a viable British trade colony.
03:23The governor of West Florida was another aristocrat who had been a commander in the Royal Navy.
03:29Commodore George Johnstone had a reputation for being hot-tempered, scheming, and duplicitous.
03:35But he was vigorous about encouraging trade in the new colony.
03:39Here was a subtropical region that suddenly they had that might potentially allow them to grow some sort of fruits
03:46or vegetables
03:46they would have to go elsewhere for.
03:48They saw East Florida and West Florida as an extension of the Caribbean.
03:54So they saw agricultural profits.
03:59Many of the missing pieces of the story of British Florida were hidden in the Attic Turret at Ballendalic Castle,
04:06buried among thousands of other papers that had been stored there and forgotten for centuries.
04:11In the 1970s, Grant's descendants asked the Scottish National Archives to inventory what was there.
04:19A decade later, Dr. Dan Schaffer was allowed access to the papers and began methodically reconstructing the history of British
04:27Florida.
04:29That's where the records were. The whole James Grant letter collection were in the castle, in the far attic,
04:37in the cold, in the room where they were stored very well, but nobody knew they were there.
04:44This country, I am convinced, is totally unknown.
04:48Grant's letters describe East Florida as completely undeveloped, still in a state of nature when he arrived.
04:55And since only three families remained after the Spanish left St. Augustine, Grant had no one to help harness the
05:02wilderness beyond town.
05:04How are you going to develop a province when there's nobody here?
05:09Grant began by offering free land to successful plantation owners in other colonies.
05:15He would say, we have better climate, we have better everything than you have there. Come here.
05:19The British sanctioned land grants were anywhere from 100 acres to 20,000 acre parcels.
05:26Well, if they come in to St. Augustine and find a dismal place and have a terrible time, they're not
05:33going to come.
05:33So, he lit up their nightlife.
05:37He was a bachelor, and he had one of the largest collections of wine in this area, and by this
05:47area I'm talking about North America.
05:48He had three slaves who were trained in French culinary arts, and he threw a party probably four or five
05:56nights out of the week.
05:58Yeah, he was quite a party guy. Every month he would do an inventory of the governor's cellars. And if
06:05you were to see that, how much alcohol passed through his cellars.
06:15Those inventories, along with Grant's letters, are now housed in the National Registry of Scotland in Edinburgh.
06:22During his first year in office, beverages drunk from the governor's cellars tallied 86 gallons of Madera wine, 76 gallons
06:32of Tenerife wine,
06:331,200 bottles of Claret, 519 bottles of Port, and ample amounts of champagne, sweet wine, porter, beer, ale, cider,
06:43Eric, and Old Hawk.
06:47He kept a daily inventory of how he entertained all the soldiers and how long and how late they stayed.
06:54Eight bottles of Madera drunk, Captain Rainsford went home speechless, unusual for that captain.
07:00DeBrom, the Surveyor General, once again got drunk. Mr. Roe's daughter, poor girl, got half drunk.
07:08Mrs. Sharp sung, as did Mrs. Box, neither of them well.
07:11They do as they will.
07:14Captain Sutherland was hobbled, but he got home sober.
07:19West Florida was desperately in need of settlers, too.
07:22But its governor was not as charismatic as Grant, and the presence of some 28,000 natives living near the
07:29Mississippi made Europeans wary of moving there.
07:34Grant, however, managed to court dozens of investors to East Florida, developing plantations along the Atlantic coast,
07:42from the St. Mary's River in Georgia to a region just north of today's Orlando.
07:48I think you probably find few examples of more successful governors than he was.
07:55But along with that plantation economy came the British form of chattel slavery, which they introduced into colonial Florida for
08:03the first time.
08:04Keep in mind that settlements in this warm climate must be formed by Negroes.
08:11Success in Florida, my lord, will not be achieved until this country is brought to that rich and plentiful state
08:18by the labor of slaves.
08:22Everything changed when the British came in in 1763.
08:27There was no longer a slave sanctuary for British slaves to run away to from Carolina and Georgia.
08:33And that's why East Florida was overwhelmingly a slave plantation colony.
08:41In the meantime in Cuba, the Spanish free blacks who had left before the British arrived were not faring well.
08:49If it's not a tragedy enough that most of them left, within six years of their departure, 20% of
08:57that group had died in Havana.
09:00The Spanish crown is not able to support them with the money or food.
09:05Like they said, there's a tremendous loss of life.
09:10These are the books of the burials of the people of color at Ceiba Mocha.
09:16For several years, Dr. Jane Landers of Vanderbilt University has been tracking the fate of the residents of Fort Mose
09:24after they arrived in Cuba.
09:26You can track epidemic disease through these burial records and see that so many people are buried on the same
09:33day.
09:34And sometimes they even tell you of what disease.
09:37Landers is working with a team of graduate students to digitize the records.
09:42We're trying to get as many of the oldest books preserved as possible.
09:47As you can see, especially from that other book we're working on there, they're very fragile.
09:52They're old. They're disappearing as we're talking and filming here today.
09:56Some of them look like lace.
09:58Climate is a problem. It's hot and humid.
10:01Bugs are a problem. So you'll see worm pass through the paper.
10:04Fires occasionally.
10:07Sometimes people don't know what was in those records and they got tossed.
10:12At one point there was no roof on this church.
10:15And everything was exposed to the air.
10:18They moved the books to the safest place they could.
10:20And they've since put back a roof.
10:22But all of the damages records and some of them have not survived.
10:29Landers team has found that disease wasn't the only reason why so many of the refugees from Florida died here.
10:35They'd already undergone so many disruptions.
10:38They'd been moved. They'd been under attack.
10:40And some of it may just be emotional distress as well, especially for the older people.
10:47And those indigenous tribes that had gone to Cuba to avoid being enslaved by the British were also in jeopardy.
10:54There were 89 Timucua and Wale Indians who left with the Spanish.
11:00And within six years, more than half of them had died.
11:05So Guanabacoa has an important history also for Florida as the last resting place of many of the Florida Indians.
11:14And as for Francisco Menendez, about a year after he and his family arrived in Cuba, the trail goes cold.
11:22And I'm trying to track Menendez.
11:25I believe you can see when they give up their homestead because you can see them making payments.
11:32And at some point they sort of disappear off of that account book.
11:38So far, Landers has been unable to find his grave in any of the church cemeteries in Cuba.
11:44We may never know what happened to him.
11:49Back in East Florida, illness forced Governor Grant to return to England for medical care.
11:56Two years later, he was elected to Parliament and resigned as governor.
11:59A new leader was appointed, Colonel Patrick Tonin, who ran into opposition almost immediately.
12:08He was the nastiest person I've ever read a letter from.
12:12He hated everybody. He had a chip on his shoulder the size of Ireland.
12:16Such a vindictive nature that he had, and so self-serving, I find it really hard to like the man.
12:23Tonin drew resistance from several of Grant's friends, including one who publicly insulted Tonin's wife.
12:30He announced, I will not allow my wife and daughters to interact with Mrs. Tonin.
12:36I knew her in Scotland and she was a whore.
12:38So the gauntlet was thrown immediately.
12:42And Tonin never forgot, he never forgave.
12:46Several clashed with Tonin over the issue of governance.
12:49The colonists believed they had the same rights as they had had in Britain, such as electing representatives to a
12:56colonial house of assembly.
13:00Tonin viewed such demands as disloyalty to the crown.
13:04Former Governor Grant wrote letters back to Florida, assuring his friends that his successor would soon win them over.
13:12But he didn't.
13:13You predicted that Governor Tonin would bring all into good humor and drowned animosity in a bottle of claret.
13:20You were quite mistaken in your man.
13:23I went to one of his first parties and he served bad food on a dirty tablecloth and then continues
13:33with that in all the comfort of a dirty whore.
13:37Tonin lost even more ground and he began to mistreat the three domestic slaves he had promised to purchase from
13:44Grant.
13:44Do you understand me?
13:46Alexander, who Governor Grant had trained to be a prized baker for all these great affairs dinners that he was
13:52having,
13:53was punished by putting an iron mask around his head that padlocked in the back.
13:59Alexander stopped me in the street. He complains of the iron caps. He wishes very much to be your baker
14:06again.
14:07He complains that Madam is the devil, but since I saw him he has had the cap put on and
14:13been flogged.
14:14Alexander and the two other slaves eventually ran away to the woods.
14:18When Grant heard about this, he insisted that they be given sanctuary at his own plantation.
14:24You are publicly to make it known that Governor Tonin has nothing to do with him, that they have nothing
14:30to fear,
14:31which is the most remarkable thing. To rebuke the other governor publicly was a remarkable thing to do.
14:37But ironically, just a few years later, Tonin would cast himself as a great liberator
14:43and in doing so he would turn people against one of his more vocal critics.
14:49That man was Dr. Andrew Turnbull, who ran the largest plantation in all of North America.
14:55Turnbull is dreaming big, big dreams, amazing dreams.
14:59And he had no idea the troubles that lay ahead of him.
15:02Educated at the University of Edinburgh, Turnbull studied medicine there when he was only 13.
15:08When the British started offering land grants in Florida, Turnbull and his two wealthy partners were granted over 100,000
15:17acres.
15:17Nothing like that in colonial American history. This is just massive in its scale.
15:23Turnbull personally recruited indentured workers from Menorca, as well as Turkey, Greece and Italy.
15:29More than 1,400 people.
15:32And I'm going away as fast as possible as the governor has taken umbrage at my taking so many people
15:39from his place.
15:40I beg, Sir William, that you would not say any of this until you hear from me after I've gotten
15:46safely away from here.
15:48If the Turks had apprehended and jailed him, he wouldn't have gotten out of that jail or they would have
15:52killed him.
15:53Many of those who signed on were fleeing famine and drought in their own homelands.
15:59Everything would be paid for them. He would provide transportation, food, provisions.
16:04And once they arrived in Florida, then they would begin to work under contract for him.
16:10They would be indentured laborers.
16:13For a while, Turnbull turned the colony into a successful indigo plantation.
16:18Accomplished on a huge scale, development of plantation-based economy with export products that are baffling in size.
16:26Turnbull was influential back in England.
16:29When he criticized East Florida's governance, Tonin was reprimanded.
16:34So there was a real clash between these two men.
16:38And if you were Tonin, you would have some hard feelings if Turnbull tried to get you fired, which he
16:43did.
16:44But nine years after it began, the Turnbull venture was finished.
16:49It was a terrible failure, actually, because about half of his labor force died within four years of leaving Europe.
16:58They faced devastating drought, hurricane, money shortages, inability to buy things.
17:09Turnbull's accounts, as well as his record of the number of lives lost, are housed in the Dundee City Archives
17:17in Scotland.
17:18And it's one of the saddest of all the documents that you find in this entire archive at the Dundee
17:24collection.
17:27Males, 406 left alive. Females, 296 left alive.
17:33Within two years after Turnbull had brought more than 1,400 people over from the Mediterranean, half had died.
17:41The desperation of his workers grew worse when Turnbull returned to England on business and left his overseers in charge.
17:50Increasingly, the behavior of the overseers and guards toward the indentured servants was unfair approaching on criminal.
18:01The workforce was just completely depressed psychologically.
18:06One of the Menorkan group gathered together a couple of other Menorkans and sneaked out of the encampment one night,
18:14walked up the beach to Anastasia Island, swam across the river to St. Augustine and approached the English governor begging
18:24him to do something to redress their grievances.
18:27Governor Tonin seized the opportunity to get revenge on this man, who had so openly defied his authority.
18:35Governor Tonin hated Turnbull so badly. And the first thing Tonin did was he had a notary taking the sworn
18:44affidavits.
18:44Turnbull was portrayed as a monster.
18:47And of course, becomes the most hated figure in British colonial history.
18:52The complaints launched against the overseers included rape, beatings, and floggings.
18:58They accused him of whipping, that he whipped people. They accused him of starving his labors.
19:06The stories were very similar in the affidavits. I mean, there were people who, you know, pregnant women beaten.
19:13There were people who had brothers who were beaten to death.
19:17And many of these people were imprisoned. Some were executed.
19:22Turnbull later defended himself against these accusations.
19:27His defense is interesting. His defense is, look, if I was so brutal to them, how can it be then
19:35that my children and my wife were not vindictively killed while I was away for three years?
19:42The infraction Tonin was able to get him on was enslaving white people.
19:46You could indenture them, but they had a contract. Contracts have ending dates.
19:51And they swore in their affidavits he had illegally kept them beyond their dates.
19:55And that's where Tonin said, I've got him.
19:59Turnbull maintained he would have honored his contract once the debts were paid.
20:03The court agreed with him.
20:05Nevertheless, Turnbull's alleged brutality became legendary. And his plantation was eventually closed down.
20:13Governor Tonin, very vindictive man. And at the end he had Turnbull thrown in jail. He came out on bail
20:21and left the province as a result.
20:24But surely each person is guilty of arrogance and haughty vindictive behavior, it seems to me.
20:32Despite how Tonin had treated his own African slaves, he now set himself up as a great liberator by freeing
20:40Turnbull's indentured servants.
20:42Several were too sick to leave.
20:45But with Tonin's blessing, about 500 of them came to St. Augustine and made their homes there.
20:51Most of them were Menorcan.
20:53And there they have been ever since. From their ranks have come mayors, two bishops, two great literary figures, Stephen
21:03Vincent Benet and his brother William Rose Benet.
21:06They've had a very distinguished and long career in the city.
21:11But by this time, Tonin and the rest of the British colonies had bigger problems to contend with.
21:17The American Revolutionary War had begun.
21:22The Boston Tea Party had taken place in December 1773, just a few months before Tonin arrived in Florida.
21:30For the next year, as unrest boiled to the north, Tonin kept a watchful eye on his citizenry.
21:37He was here to keep this colony safe for King and Country.
21:41He was caught in the war almost within months of his arrival.
21:45But he had such an aggravating personality that people of importance became the enemy.
21:51And as he saw them, they were part of the American Revolutionary mentality.
21:56Both East and West Florida were the newest of the royal colonies and had been tightly controlled by the king
22:03and by parliament ever since.
22:06Had it been an older colony, the kinds of grievances rebels are talking about in Georgia and South Carolina might
22:15well have been in East Florida as well.
22:18But population that comes in is settled in so late.
22:22Most of the people who were there had very strong deep ties to England and they had not developed those
22:31sort of self-governing institutional ties.
22:36Meanwhile, the colony of West Florida was dealing with other problems as the War of Independence loomed.
22:42It had gone through numerous governors since it began.
22:46One of them, John Elliott, hung himself just a month after he arrived there.
22:51West Florida was hardly ready for independence.
22:54I think that East and West Florida had been written out of the historical narrative because they remained loyal to
23:01the British crown during the Revolution.
23:04And so they just don't quite fit into that story of the American patriots.
23:12And so it was sort of like phantom pain from an amputated limb.
23:17Nobody paid attention to it and nobody claimed it for a long time and yet it's a politically important place.
23:25Much has been written about the conflicts fought in the 13 colonies and the help the rebels got from the
23:31French.
23:32But little is known about the pivotal role that battles along the Mississippi and Gulf Coast played in turning the
23:39tide of the Revolutionary War or the vital parts Spain had in supporting the American cause.
23:45is just as much a part of American history as Washington crossing the Delaware or Paul Revere's ride.
23:56As iconic as the steeple of the Old North Church, this unfinished tower on the cathedral in Malaga, Spain stands
24:05in silent tribute to the part it played in the American fight for freedom.
24:13Because the money the Malaga Town Council was to use to finish this tower was sent instead to help fund
24:20the American War of Independence.
24:23During the Revolution, Spain secretly funneled money to the Americans through this man, Bernardo de Galvez, a native of Malaga
24:32who was the governor of Spanish-held Louisiana.
24:35Donations came from all over Spain. The cathedral's tower remains unfinished to this day as a lasting tribute to that
24:43effort.
24:44It's a great story. Even on the level of the common man and the common woman, you're seeing support for
24:50what's going on.
24:51By 1777, Galvez had sent an estimated $70,000 worth of medicine, weapons and ammunition to the American rebels.
25:00But in 1779, when Spain declared war on Great Britain, Galvez was free to openly defend the American cause.
25:09He gathered recruits from Mexico, free blacks from Cuba, Native Americans, Spanish soldiers, Germans and Acadian French.
25:19Galvez had a huge army, huge, and it was one that was multicultural in its makeup, multi-ethnic.
25:27And this fleet full of black sailors and militiamen who helped win the independence of the United States of America.
25:35Not memorialized usually, except we find them in the Spanish records.
25:40By 1780, the British had taken Charleston and blockaded the port cities along the East Coast.
25:47The British war effort in the War of Independence is entirely based on the sea.
25:53And eventually they capture key port cities, basically to control the economic life of the colonies.
26:01Because there's no way of getting all those goods that you're producing out into the world trade system.
26:07So what the British are saying, we hold Charleston. If you want to trade, you'll trade through us.
26:12Galvez knew the Mississippi was a vital route that circumvented the British blockade.
26:17He led attacks on the British forts along the Gulf, taking Baton Rouge, Natchez and Mobile.
26:23But Pensacola was the most formidable British bastion on the coast.
26:29Washington makes a statement that much depends on what happens in Pensacola.
26:34That he is placing great value on what is happening with Galvez's efforts as he moves toward Pensacola.
26:40On his way there, Galvez lost more than half of his troops to a hurricane.
26:45Then several of his officers refused to cross a shallow channel to get to shore.
26:51He stood up in the prow of his ship and stated, I alone will take Pensacola.
26:57The rest of the ships followed after this display of courage and the siege of Pensacola began.
27:03The Battle of Pensacola lasted two months, one of the longest conflicts in the American Revolution.
27:11And in taking Pensacola, this was the big prize.
27:15He effectively shut down anything that could have happened from the British front.
27:20along the Gulf Coast, up the Mississippi.
27:22He was brilliant.
27:26The siege of Pensacola was a decisive battle, as it made it impossible for the British to attack from the
27:32rear any of the thirteen colonies.
27:36I think, had there not been the protection from the rear, that Washington would have had a much harder uphill
27:43climb in what he was doing on the Atlantic seaboard.
27:47So, yes, I think that this was a pivotal event in the American fight for independence.
27:53The importance of that battle has not been fully acknowledged in textbooks.
27:58The siege not only kept the British occupied on a second front, but also affected the number of troops and
28:05ships the British sent, just two months later, to Yorktown.
28:09The final battle in the War of Independence.
28:14And after the loss of Yorktown, the British recognized this, there's no way back from this.
28:18We have enough power to defend the West Indies, the Sugar Islands, the Caribbean trade, or to carry the war
28:24on in America.
28:26And it's a no-brainer.
28:27Back at that time, sugar was the oil of the day. Sugar afforded empire.
28:34So, the British West Indies were the most crucial lands in the British Empire at this time.
28:40So, the number one priority of the British Empire during the American Revolution was not to allow the revolution to
28:47distract them to the point that they could lose an island down in the Caribbean to the French or the
28:54Spanish.
28:54So, they're starting to move those people into positions outside West Florida, outside the 13 colonies, so they can hold
29:02what they still have.
29:06East Florida became the haven for thousands of Loyalists leaving the colonies.
29:11East Florida is designated as a haven for refugees from Charleston, from anywhere in the American South.
29:20And 13,000 to 14,000 refugees pour in.
29:25They migrated all over the province, settling on to estates that had not yet been developed.
29:31History books have largely ignored those thousands of Loyalist families, forced to leave their homes at the end of the
29:38war.
29:43But the recent discovery of a shipwreck off the coast of St. Augustine paints a very human picture of what
29:50those men, women and children experienced.
29:57You see these artifacts and you can't help but think about the people who use these artifacts and what a
30:04turbulent period in their life this was.
30:07Chuck Meade is director of the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program, also known as LAMP.
30:13Meade and his team believe this wreck was transporting Loyalists from the fallen 13 colonies.
30:21I remember these people were, you know, living through just perilous times.
30:26A war was raging around them, they were about to lose their country, they had fought for king and country,
30:30and now all of a sudden they have to gather their families up.
30:33What happened to these people on their way to the one last colony that was still loyal to England?
30:39The story is also just unfolding right beneath us on the sea floor as we pick it apart piece by
30:44piece.
30:51It's a story that would take these marine biologists all the way to the British National Archives in Kew.
30:58Gosh, we got, I came back from the archives with more than a thousand pages.
31:02The correspondence, the lists of ships, so it just paints a great picture for us of what was going on.
31:08It's actually very interesting because all of these log books make note of the weather.
31:14Dr. Sam Turner is LAMP's director of archaeology.
31:17And what that weather data tells us is that there was a nor'easter brewing.
31:22It was New Year's Eve 1782.
31:26A fleet of 16 British ships filled with refugees from Charleston was sitting off the coast of St. Augustine, hoping
31:34to cross the bar.
31:35They needed to get into the harbor before American privateers attacked.
31:39Pirates were out there trying to pick off ships and we know the very fleet that our ship was a
31:45member of was being chased by privateers.
31:48Among the hundreds of documents the pair combed through was a diary of a German soldier in the British Army.
31:55He describes his journey down from Charleston.
31:58He describes himself as being flung about pitilessly.
32:01The ship master was very nervous about crossing the bar.
32:08St. Augustine had a reputation for being the most dangerous inlet of all the other British colonies in North America.
32:15And as they sailed in you could see the wooden remains of shipwrecks jutting out on either side of the
32:21channel where ships had been lost before.
32:24You know, the chances of getting across are terribly slim and we're all probably going to die.
32:30And there's wreckage everywhere.
32:32You know, it's all flung up on the beach, half buried in the sand.
32:37It's out on the bar.
32:41To add to the problem, the British ships were far too laden for a shallow inlet.
32:46When we look at some of these tonnages, they're extreme.
32:51335, 384, 365.
32:54They are not going to be able to get across the bar at St. Augustine.
32:58They knew, like, this isn't the time to try to get into St. Augustine.
33:01We're going to wait until we have a better time.
33:03And there's a nor'easter blown.
33:05It's a recipe for disaster, really.
33:07There they are wading offshore and the captain finally dares to cross the sandbar.
33:12Bam!
33:13The ship is running around.
33:15Surf is pounding on the ship.
33:17It's coming to pieces.
33:18All their possessions are spilling out into the sea.
33:21Only, I mean, just within less than a mile of safe refuge, their hopes and dreams are being dashed to
33:27pieces,
33:28just like the ship that they thought was their salvation.
33:35Lamps divers have pulled up a wide array of artifacts from the storm wreck,
33:39including a flintlock pistol, two loaded brown best muskets, six cannons, and the intact ship's bell.
33:48But the most remarkable artifact was one that instantly transported Meade
33:54back to the final moments of the ship's demise.
33:57The visibility was zero, as it usually is, offshore St. Augustine.
34:01So we were really in the dark just feeling this object, and it was round,
34:06and I could feel the lip to it and put my hands inside, and then I realized what it was.
34:11It was a cooking pot, which led the archaeologists to a chilling revelation.
34:16In one of these cooking pots, one of these iron cauldrons we had,
34:19we had the remains of the last meal that was prepared in that pot.
34:23This is something that has not seen daylight in, as it turns out, 228 years.
34:28So that's a pretty special thing.
34:30I mean, you're the first person to touch it.
34:32The last person to touch it did so under very different circumstances,
34:35probably in those chaotic moments in the middle of this tragedy
34:39when the ship was wrecking and was going to be lost forever.
34:44A year after the last of these loyalists arrived in St. Augustine,
34:49the Revolutionary War was over.
34:51The British period in Florida had lasted merely 20 years.
34:55What shall become of the thousands of poor loyalist settlers who are now here
35:00and were just made comfortable and happy, astonished by the crops in the ground?
35:05In the short time the English had been there, the loyalists had turned a barren land into a viable trade
35:12area,
35:12but they were about to lose it all.
35:15As a reward for Spain's contributions to the American cause,
35:20East and West Florida became Spanish territory once again.
35:24Among those chosen to draft the Second Treaty of Paris, ending the Revolutionary War,
35:31was Bernardo de Galvez, the Spanish hero who had defeated British troops along the Gulf Coast.
35:40And now that the territory was back in Spanish possession,
35:44many of those survivors who had fled to Cuba to escape British rule returned.
35:49Most of them were just children when they'd left.
35:53They're sending back certified copies of deeds to prove that they owned property in St. Augustine in the 1760s.
36:01But even though the British were gone, slavery in the new United States remained.
36:07Runaway slaves began heading to Spanish Florida again, hoping for asylum.
36:12And Thomas Jefferson is our Secretary of State, and he writes to the Spanish government and says,
36:18if you still want to be friends with us, you will shut down this sanctuary and this policy.
36:24Spain agrees. Spain is under a lot of duress at this point. Rebellions all over its wide empire.
36:31So in 1790, Spain reversed its century-old edict, offering sanctuary for runaway slaves.
36:37They have to post announcements everywhere that no longer will we receive and free runaway slaves.
36:44The royal policy was now officially closed, thanks to Thomas Jefferson.
36:49But that didn't stop the animosity between Spanish-owned Florida and its American neighbors to the north.
36:56Slaves still ran south, but this time they sought refuge with Seminole Indians in the backwoods of Spanish Florida.
37:04The reason that the people became known as black Seminoles was because they were allies.
37:12South Georgia plantation owners later claimed over $5 million worth of slave property was lost during this time.
37:20They sent bounty hunters to get them back.
37:23And most of the time, their autonomous communities were formed in very inhospitable areas, in swamps,
37:31where it was difficult for the slave catcher to come and get them again.
37:36Adding to the tensions with the United States, the Spanish began offering inducements to move to its colonies.
37:43You know, no taxes, fair amount of land.
37:46Originally, they wanted people to convert to Catholicism.
37:49That was a stopping point for many people that were Protestant by faith.
37:52But they dropped that provision.
37:54They said, no, all you have to do is you have to take an oath of loyalty to the king,
37:58the Spanish king.
37:59For those who doubted the United States would succeed, it was an attractive offer,
38:04particularly for British loyalists, who had lost their land during the war.
38:09Their business was commerce, their business was planting, and they wanted land again.
38:14The increased revenue that Florida was enjoying from trade with Europe also stirred resentment.
38:20Florida was trading like wildfire with Great Britain, and that angered a lot of the Georgians.
38:27They were like, you know, if you look at the Spanish side of the St. Mary's River, it's all full
38:31of British ships.
38:32And if you look at our side of the St. Mary's River, there's nobody.
38:35Moreover, Americans worried that their southernmost border was not well protected.
38:41That St. Mary's River that divides Georgia and Florida today, that was an international border at the time.
38:47You were in one country on one side, a different country on the other side.
38:51In the late 1700s and 1800s, you couldn't stop people from coming in and out of Florida or Georgia.
38:58And sometimes they were coming to seek revenge on someone they had a long-standing grudge against.
39:05So that whole area was almost like a new man's land. Georgians raided and Floridians raided back.
39:14It was a time of complete lawlessness.
39:18I think Florida was always the wild wild west. I think we could have taught the west how to be
39:23the wild wild west.
39:24And the beginning of the 19th century brought more trouble.
39:28In 1800, Spain lost Louisiana, which bordered the Florida colonies to the west.
39:34It remained a French colony until Louisiana was purchased by the United States three years later.
39:40On the world stage, the Battle of Trafalgar destroyed much of Spain's navy.
39:46The Napoleonic Wars took a devastating toll, throwing the country into an era of turbulence.
39:53Spain could not send much aid to its colonies.
39:57The volatile tensions between the U.S. and Spanish Florida came to a head just before the War of 1812.
40:04As America was preparing to declare war over trade restrictions, they feared that the British, now allies with Spain, would
40:14stage troops in St. Augustine.
40:16So we need to seize these Spanish port towns now before we have the British navy sailing into them.
40:24Many Americans felt it was time to seize the territory for the United States.
40:28Former Georgia governor George Matthews created a private army and headed to Florida.
40:34He called his troops the Patriots.
40:38In March 1812, this force of more than 200 men seized the East Florida port of Fernandina on Amelia Island.
40:47This insurgent group moves in and the very next day they raise the American flag and they ask the American
40:53army and the American marines to come take control of the town, which they do.
40:57It was known as the Patriot War, and it's one of the most overlooked events in early 19th century history.
41:04With Fernandina secured, the Patriots headed south to capture St. Augustine.
41:11So by April, there's actually an American force just north of town, up where Fort Most used to be.
41:17And when they get there, the Madison government retracts, politically, any support for what they're doing.
41:25News of the Patriots' move against Spanish Florida took the Madison administration by surprise.
41:32Military preparations for war had been focused on the northern border with Canada, not the southern one.
41:39President Madison did not want to provoke Spain. He refused to publicly support the seizure.
41:45But the U.S. government does not make a move to pull the troops out.
41:49The American troops were told to hold their position, avoid a confrontation, and defend if attacked.
41:56Inside the Castillo, Governor Sebastian Kindelan gave similar orders.
42:02Don't attack the Americans because if you inflict an injury on those troops, there will be 10,000 more troops
42:10coming down for vengeance.
42:11It was a standoff. Unable to capture St. Augustine, the Americans tried to starve out its population.
42:19American officers were given the instructions to kill the cattle because that way the Spanish forces can't drive them into
42:25town and use them for food.
42:26And people said that for miles around St. Augustine, there was just a stench of dead, rotting animals and that
42:36everywhere you went you saw dead cattle lying on the banks of the various rivers.
42:43Meanwhile, the Patriots looted and burned the homes of anyone sympathetic to Spanish rule.
42:51And so the destruction all around this area was just unbelievable.
42:58Incensed by the destruction throughout the area, the Seminoles and black Seminoles took up arms.
43:04They stormed the plantations occupied by the Georgia Patriots and destroyed them, liberating hundreds of plantation slaves who then joined
43:13their ranks.
43:15But the people of St. Augustine were barely holding on.
43:19The governor is actually counting down the days to when he will have no more food and no real chance
43:27of survival.
43:29And ironically, what breaks that is a very small contingent of men from St. Augustine, all free blacks.
43:38It was a militia of about 60 free blacks led by a six foot carpenter and former slave known as
43:45Big Prince Witten.
43:46Prince Witten was a slave and who became kind of a war hero.
43:50He was the leader of the free black militia in the later period.
43:53He and his family had escaped from St. Mary's, Georgia, four times before they successfully made it to Florida.
44:01They had been granted freedom just two years before the Spanish stopped giving sanctuary to runaway slaves.
44:07But this family takes on a very important role, including beating the U.S. Marines in a covert operation.
44:14It's the black militia that goes out on a raiding party, realizes that the American troops are almost in the
44:23same shape.
44:24They're hungry, too, because they're not getting a lot of supplies down from Georgia.
44:28The black militia, along with a band of Seminoles, lay in wait at a place called 12 Mile Swamp.
44:35When American troops set out a convoy to get supplies, Witten and his men ambushed them.
44:41And pinned them down, seized the wagons, and forced them basically either to turn back or to flee for safety
44:47to the St. John's River.
44:48And the American commander, when he finds out that that has happened, retreats.
44:54It was another victory for the people of Florida, but it would be the final victory for Spanish Florida.
45:00The attack at 12 Mile Swamp only fueled America's anger. Newspapers and politicians in the southern states called for these
45:11native and black militias to be punished.
45:14They could not have blacks with guns and giving hope to people on the plantations that they, too, could join
45:24them and get their freedom.
45:25After Seminoles ambushed another American supply convoy a few years later, General Andrew Jackson led a retaliatory attack known as
45:34the First Seminole War.
45:36It was 1818.
45:39Meanwhile, the entire Spanish Empire had been collapsing.
45:43Major colonies were declaring independence and breaking away from Spain.
45:47So you have, during the second Spanish period, the complete and utter collapse of the Spanish New World Empire.
45:55Argentina has gone its way.
45:57Peru has gone its own way.
45:59Mexico gains its independence.
46:01No longer a dominant European power, Spain could not keep its territory from constant conflict.
46:09Secretary of State John Quincy Adams demanded that Spain either control its Florida colonies and their defiance on the issue
46:17of slavery or cede the territory to the United States.
46:21All the trouble that came from the War of 1812 destabilized the area so much.
46:26I think it made the acquisition of Florida, the transfer of Florida to the United States, I think it made
46:30it inevitable.
46:31In February 1821, the Adams-O'Neese Treaty made Florida a territory of the United States.
46:40When the Spanish gave up Florida in 1821, almost immediately the Americans began to turn to the problem of Indians
46:46and how to get them out.
46:48The 1820s is a period of extreme racism against American Indians in the South.
46:52The native population that had thrived in the region for 12,000 years before the Europeans arrived was now nearly
47:00extinct.
47:01A small, remaining group of Appalachies migrated to Louisiana.
47:07The Yamasees, who had long been believed to be extinct, had scattered throughout Florida and South Carolina to survive.
47:15To be Indian in Florida was dangerous, so they would hide themselves.
47:20We went back to our traditional ways of hiding our women and children because we saw that they valued the
47:26women and children.
47:27So that's where the swamp became our friends, but it kept us alive and it kept us here today.
47:33And we'll see moments in the 19th century as white Americans are trying to make all Indians extinct,
47:39that they begin to say, you know, we see here the last of the Amases.
47:44So it leads to this notion that they are gone, that they have become conquered, right?
47:49But they didn't.
47:51So we became known as the Hidden People because that's what we did.
47:54We hid mostly amongst other tribes.
47:56A lot of us have been identified as Cherokee.
47:58Some of us identified as Seminoles.
48:02Andrew Jackson was appointed governor of the territory.
48:05The U.S. began efforts to relocate the Seminole Indians, eventually to present-day Oklahoma,
48:12where other Southeastern tribes had already gone.
48:15They are removed through deception, through force into Oklahoma.
48:21And then several hundred, probably 250 or 300 Seminoles will not go.
48:26And they will hide out in the Everglades.
48:28And they will stay there until the early 20th century, sort of withdrawn from American society because they distrust them
48:36so much.
48:36And they will create their own communities in the Everglades.
48:39And as for the hundreds of escaped slaves known as the Black Seminoles, most of them fled to the Bahamas.
48:46Prince Witten leads the next Exodus in 1821, when the United States is going to take Florida.
48:53And he leads his community into exile.
48:55Because the United States brought their form of slavery and ideas about Black people right down into Florida.
49:05For the second time, the once thriving free Black and Native communities of Spanish Florida disappeared from the landscape and
49:14from American history.
49:28Just because they moved away, doesn't mean they were never here at all.
49:35My nation continues as long as I keep telling these stories and keep telling our histories to our people.
49:40The purpose of my life is to continue these stories and continue to tell the history of the Yamasee people
49:47that we're still here.
49:48They did not kill us. They did not kill us.
49:58It will take until the year 2055 before the American flag will have flown over the first permanent settlement in
50:07the United States,
50:07as long as the Spanish flag flew over it.
50:11We, as Americans, kind of inherited the English version of this story.
50:17And so we didn't really get the full story.
50:19I think it's the time that we put in the minds and in the hearts of the American people and
50:24the Spanish people,
50:25that we went along for a huge period of time.
50:30That make us brothers in terms of history, no?
50:37St. Augustine really is a microcosm of U.S. history when you think about it.
50:42I mean, you have the Native Americans, you have the Spanish, you have the British, you have the Americans.
50:47This whole cornucopia of differences that occur in this one small area that measures probably no more than 10 square
50:57miles in area.
50:58This is how America started.
51:02I think that if we could project St. Augustine as an example of what the United States started as,
51:13then I think that would create a whole different atmosphere in this country.
51:19We're looking at questions of race, religion, diversity.
51:26I think it's very important to recognize that at a certain period of time in American history,
51:31there was a place where different groups came together and were able to live with each other,
51:36despite or because of their incredible diversity.
51:40It wasn't always easy and peaceful, but multiculturalism has been part of the U.S. for a long time.
51:49Will school kids in Boston and Virginia learn about the Spanish who were here before the other founding fathers we
51:57know of?
51:58I don't know. That remains to be seen.
52:01I would like the rest of the United States to accept it as part of the history,
52:07as part of the credible, believable history, that it belongs in the history.
52:12It's not an anomaly like, oh, that's Spanish.
52:16At the very base of it, it's a pretty good story.
52:19You know, it has all these great implications for, wow, this is a history that we've forgotten or underappreciated,
52:26but man, at the foundation of it, it's just a great story.
52:31It's good to have a narrative of persistence.
52:33You know, we will survive.
52:35We will be strong.
52:37We will have problems.
52:39We may even have our towns burned down from time to time,
52:43but we will rebuild and we will carry on.
52:45And that's a powerful story for any country to have.
52:48It's a powerful narrative.
53:11It's a strong narrative.
53:12Our çıktı has an burada database.
53:18We will revolve its different schools.