Heaven’s Soldiers

Free People of Color and the Spanish Legacy in Antebellum Florida

By FRANK MAROTTI

UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Copyright © 2013 The University of Alabama Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-1784-3

Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………11. Looking Backward and Forward……………………………………..132. The 1820s: Anxious Optimism………………………………………263. The 1830s: Manumission, Property, and Family……………………….464. The Second Seminole War………………………………………….615. Restricted Manumission, Migrations, and Antimiscegenation……………776. Preserving Spanish Days: Marriage and Manumission…………………..997. The Black Martial Heritage……………………………………….1148. Land, Paternalism, and Laws………………………………………129Notes…………………………………………………………….153Bibliography………………………………………………………197Index…………………………………………………………….211

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Looking Backward and Forward

In 1868, Eliza M. Whitwell, the quadroon granddaughter of George J. F.Clarke, a former lieutenant governor of Spanish East Florida, critiqued antebellumUS policy toward free persons of color in a bitter letter to the prominentSt. Augustine physician, John Peck. The “good old Flag of Spain,” shewrote, “enslaved none but the slaves giving equal rights & privileges to all ashis subjects without distinction….” To Mrs. Whitwell, the republican Starsand Stripes, in contrast to Spain’s monarchical banner, had stifled her humanpotential. This chapter evaluates her bold assertion while at the same time illustratingwhat could have been. It concludes with a haunting preview of theworld that the American regime would create.

Under the Spaniards, Afro-East Floridians, through blood ties with prominentwhite fathers, could and did attain freedom, property, social standing,material comfort, and in rare cases, “whiteness.” These blood ties constitutedone important pillar of black liberty. The case of Don Francisco XavierSánchez’s biracial offspring is illustrative. María Beatriz Piedra, the child ofa South Carolina white man and his slave, bore Sánchez, one of East Florida’swealthiest inhabitants, at least eight babies, all of whom were baptized inthe Catholic Church. They would come to inherit one-sixth of his ample estate.Three daughters married white Spaniards in formal church ceremonies,and their unions were not recorded in the parish’s segregated black marriagebook. It was not uncommon for the province’s leading men to acknowledge,free, educate, and pass property to their biracial children.

Sánchez, following another common pattern, never married María BeatrizPiedra. Instead, in his fifties, while Piedra was alive, he contracted churchnuptials with the teenage María del Carmen Hill. She produced a secondfamily of ten white children. They, not their biracial siblings, became the legalheirs to the overwhelming majority of the Sánchez fortune. The names ofSánchez’s octoroon grandchildren, even though the church had proclaimedtheir biracial mothers white, were entered into the black baptismal registries.Joseph Sánchez, the don’s surviving free colored son, was trained as a carpenter.Unlike his sisters, he was not able to take a white spouse. When hewas approaching his midthirties, Lucía Isnardy, a government official’s teenaged,propertied, quadroon daughter, married him in a Catholic ceremony.Six months later, she died. The widower later established a relationship withSusana Sánchez, whose parents had been his father’s slaves. Race relationsin Spanish East Florida contained elements of flexible complexity, but whitesunquestionably dominated the social hierarchy.

East Floridians of African descent also broke the shackles of enslavementby making incremental payments to their owners. This process, called coartación,comprised one piece of a second pillar of black liberty, manumission.Herbert Klein described coartación as the “most important” of severalemancipation arrangements developed in colonial Cuba, from which SpanishEast Florida was governed. Under this arrangement, slaves could requestthat a tribunal set their price, which they then would pay, almost always in installments,thereby attaining free dom. A bond person’s right to own propertyundergirded the arrangement. After making an initial payment, coartados(slaves in the process of buying freedom), could trade masters if they foundone who might smooth their way to liberty. Individuals who took advantageof coartación were resourceful, industrious, ambitious, talented, lucky, andwell-connected. They were likely to be urban slaves. Coartación permittedentrepreneurs to obtain skilled workers at low wages and relieved owners ofthe bother of closely supervising their slaves. Wherever the sys tem operated,many blacks occupied a middle ground between bondage and free dom.

Felipe Edimboro and his wife, Filis, both African born, took advantage ofcoartación, but as in the cases of others who liberated themselves by this process,free dom did not come easily. After enduring the horrific Middle Passageto the Americas, the Edimboros ended up in East Florida. In 1772, FranciscoXavier Sánchez acquired them. Sánchez, a cattle baron, valued Felipefor his butchering. Filis was an excellent domestic. When Sánchez was absentfrom his main plantation, San Diego, a thousand-acre ranch, he left Felipein charge. He also assigned the Edimboros to work in St. Augustine, wherehe held extensive real estate and business concerns. In this urban setting, theEdimboros enjoyed easier access to activities that permitted them to makeextra cash in their spare time. They rented space that they transformed intoa weekend black dance hall. Filis made toys and baked goods. She earnedother funds by washing clothes. Felipe butchered, hunted, fished, peddledfirewood, raised hogs, and picked up other part-time jobs as opportunitiespresented themselves. It took the couple two decades to accumulate their freedomprice, not withstanding an acrimonious court battle with Sánchez, whobalked at granting them their liberty.

The Edimboros secured their position in this life and the next throughthe Catholic sacraments of baptism and marriage. Not only did they solemnizetheir union within the church, they baptized their children there.They also witnessed a marriage and served as godparents numerous times.Through these relationships and their accompanying obligations, the manumittedcouple extended their social networks and increased their communitystanding, thereby spiritually and materially bolstering their freedom.

Nonetheless, the Edimboros were well aware of the limits of Spanish benevolence.Their son, Sandi, was a hothead. They had tried to teach him hisproper social role, but he only learned this lesson through painful experience.At one point, he and a white soldier cast their attentions on the same womanof color. A fight ensued during which Sandi bested his rival, who then tookthe matter to a military court. This body, after conducting an investigation,sentenced the young black man to toil in chains for one year. The better toinstruct him as to show proper deference toward his racial betters.

Prince Witten neither attained freedom from white relatives nor fromcoartación. His liberty was linked more directly to his value as a fighting man.Due to religious and geopolitical rivalries, the Spaniards encouraged slavesfrom English colonies to the north to flee to East Florida. These fugitives, inturn, eventually impelled their new sovereign to proclaim a religious sanctuarypolicy for runaways who requested Catholic baptism. Freedom came tomen and their families who not only accepted Catholicism, but served in themilitary. This policy became a point of contention that led to British assaultson St. Augustine in 1728, 1740, 1742, and 1743. Erstwhile fugitive bondsmenhelped to repel these attacks, thus creating even more international tension.

Witten, a strapping African carpenter, sought refuge in East Florida withhis North American–born wife and children in order to prevent the separationof his family. He subsequently won glory in combat against Americaninvaders in 1795 and against Seminole warriors some five years later. His martialprowess earned him the respect and gratitude of the local colonial authorities.Because Witten had attained freedom under Spain’s religious sanctuarypolicy, Catholicism played an important role in his life. He, his wife,and his children were baptized and married within the church. The Wittensalso were among the leading godparents of color in the colony. Throughsacramental ties, the family established close linkages to a prominent blackgeneral, Jorge Biassou, who had fought for the Spaniards during the HaitianRevolution.

Witten came to own both land and slaves. He also displayed his leadershipability in the civilian realm. He petitioned the government to form a blackcommunity outside of St. Augustine. Here, he and his comrades might attaina greater degree of autonomy. In a lumbering enterprise that he conductedpart-time, Witten employed black men, thus providing income to them independentof white supervision. At least once, he sued a white employer afterthe latter had violated their labor contract by ordering Witten’s wife, JudyKenty, to toil in the fields. But, he also learned the limits to which he couldpush the Spaniards. While waiting in the doorway of a St. Augustine homebelonging to Don José Sánchez, Kenty got into an argument with Sánchez’swife, calling her a “damned bitch” in English. This caused Sánchez to physicallyassault Witten’s spouse. The judicial authorities were unsympathetic toKenty. They sternly reprimanded her for failing to respect East Florida’s hierarchyof color.

Judy Kenty’s outburst gives a brief glimpse of the repressed anger that sheand her husband harbored toward whites, even those who had establishedpolicies that made possible their liberty and social standing. One can onlyimagine what the Wittens thought of their former Anglo-American owners.On 9 September 1812, Prince Witten seized an opportunity to reap vengeanceagainst them within the aegis of royal service, after American invadersfrom Georgia had besieged St. Augustine. Facing starvation, the desperateSpanish governor dispatched the black provincial militia and some Seminoleallies, all under Witten’s command, to cut the besiegers’ supply lines. In abrilliantly executed surprise attack on that September night, the guerilla unitaccomplished its mission, causing the Americans to retreat inland to the St.Johns River. The former refugee had become a savior. Felipe Edimboro alsofought with Witten on that heroic night in the Twelve Mile Swamp, northwestof St. Augustine. He too had turned East Florida’s desperate need forsecurity to his advantage.

The Americans had hoped to stir up a “revolution” that would lead toan independent East Florida which then would request annexation to theUnited States. Due in large part to the resistance of men of color loyal to Spain,the so-called Patriot War of 1812–1813 resulted in a US retreat, but not beforethe invaders devastated the province by plunder and a scorched earthpolicy. On the eve of the incursion, however, East Florida prospered. Freeblacks shared in this prosperity, scrambling to make money like their whiteneighbors. Because of Washington’s ongoing trade war with Lon don, cottonand lumber fetched handsome profits at the port of Fernandina, on AmeliaIsland, a short distance from the Georgia border. Garden farmers near St. Augustineearned good prices for their produce. Cattle ranching also thrived.These economic good times trickled down to even the humblest free blackfarmers who surrounded the provincial capital.

In 1812, at Padan Aram, twenty-five miles northwest of St. Augustine,along the St. Johns River’s eastern bank, Scipio Fleming planted five acres ofcorn, peas, pumpkins, melons, sugar cane, rice, potatoes, and other vegetables.Eight or ten hogs, a horse, and a dozen hens roamed Fleming’s twenty-five-acretract that the Spaniards had granted him in 1809. Two log houses and ashed stood on the property. Good rail fencing enclosed seven acres. Althoughhis other possessions were modest—a boat, two guns, a hoe, an axe, an oven,a few pots, and several pieces of furniture—Fleming had distanced himselffrom his earlier dependence on the white Fatio family’s patronage.

Prince Witten lived about ten miles southeast of Fleming’s place, on SweetWater Branch, some fourteen miles north of town. He cultivated ten acres offoodstuffs on land that he rented from the Minorcan John Leonardy. WhereasFleming’s holdings were estimated to be worth six hundred dollars, neighborsassessed Witten’s property at double that price. His livestock includedfour milk cows, a mule, and three horses. The latter were especially valuablebecause in his spare time, Witten cut cedar for export in the TwelveMile Swamp. After felling and squaring the logs, he hauled them to a landing.From there, he rafted the timber down the North River to St. Augustine,where he exchanged some of it for merchandise and sold the remainder toJohn Forbes and Company, which in turn shipped it to New York or Britain.Witten hired as many as twenty black laborers to assist him. He had acquired,among other implements, a cart, a chain, and timber wheels used to transportlogs. Like other East Floridians, he had striven, according to the accountsof antebellum witnesses, to make “his fortune, hand over hand, as fastas he could” by engaging in the “most profitable employment or labor” availableto blacks.

Two miles closer to St. Augustine, on the west bank of the North River,another man of color, Charles Hill, cultivated several fields, one of whichbelonged to the Minorcan James Arnau. Hill, like other free black farmers,had constructed his own buildings. He grew the usual food crops, in additionto a small quantity of cotton. Hill’s main source of income came fromhis hauling business, to which he devoted his horses and wagon. Further upthe Pablo Road, six miles north of Witten’s place, Sancho Davis and his marriedson Domingo farmed government land and made extra money lumbering.Along the same road, some five miles from St. Augustine, a group offree blacks, which included John Howley, Abraham Rocho, and AbrahamMcQueen, leased acreage from Don Antonio Yguínez. They collectivelyfenced the tract and individually farmed plots within the enclosure. Familiesalso constructed buildings and fencing that was theirs to take away oncetheir lease expired. Howley and Rocho supplemented their incomes by harvestingcedar for export.

South of St. Augustine, at Moses Creek, near the mouth of the MatanzasRiver, other men of color, among them Isaac Bacchus and John Morell, tendedsmall farms and cut timber. Several free blacks worked for Eliza Whit well’sgrandfather, George J. F. Clarke, and for her great uncle, Charles W. Clarke,who owned adjoining estates near Bacchus and Morell. George Clarke, a freecolored man unrelated to the white Clarkes, farmed and logged in the vicinityas well on land that he rented from the Minorcan Antonio Masters.Toby Herreira, another man of African descent, lived nearby. He plantedtwenty-five acres in corn, potatoes, pumpkins, and Sea Island cotton. Herreiraowned a horse, four cows, four breeding sows, a boar, and more thanthirty pigs, plus a hundred chickens, ducks, and turkeys. Decades later, neighborsrecalled that he had lived in “comfortable circumstances,” holding propertyworth more than three thousand dollars.

In 1812, Felipe Edimboro owned land on St. Augustine’s western outskirts,a “good garden in town,” two “prime” slaves, and fifty head of cattle. Hisson-in-law, Benjamin Wiggins, whose sister was the common-law wife ofCharles W. Clarke (a white provincial official/businessman and George J. F.Clarke’s brother), had inherited property from his white father, Job Wiggins.The younger Wiggins worked as a “stock keeper & Pilot to those who traveledthe country.” These activities brought him an income of $500 to $600annually in cattle and cash, plus another $200 to $300 in fees for his servicesas a guide. Indeed, one witness recalled that Wiggins “always had money,”but “he always kept it private & took care not to let any body know whathe had.”

From this brief treatment, one can partially understand why Eliza Whitwelldefended the Spanish regime so strongly. People of color under the Spaniardscould be wealthy and achieve a degree of social prominence. The biracialchildren of white patriarchs typically inherited their fathers’ wealthand a certain portion of his status. Ambitious, hard-working, and talentedindividuals from the ranks of the enslaved could emerge as respected freesubjects of the crown. Men could vie with whites for glory on the battlefield.Free persons of African descent of ten owned land. Participation in the CatholicChurch publicly demonstrated this class’s moral and spiritual equality withwhites. Black small farmers could aspire to better material circumstances.Still, a proud woman of color like Whitwell surely would have chafed underthe racially based insults that the black Sánchez, Edimboro, and Witten familiessometimes endured. A glance into the future, however, will more fullyexplain Whitwell’s fond attachment to Spanish days.

During the summer of 1856, Susan Murphy feebly held on to life, driftingback and forth between the present and the past under the influence ofsenility, brandy, and opiates. Mrs. Murphy was, by some accounts, close toone hundred years old. Her unfortunate final illness, brought on by a brokenthigh, promised to increase the fortunes of some of St. Augustine’s leadingcitizens—men such as US Senator David L. Yulee, the physician Dr.John Peck, and lawyer-politician George R. Fairbanks. Murphy’s slaves, however,harbored mixed feelings regarding their mistress’ impending demise.Belinda, her nurse, stood to gain freedom and an inheritance of $500. Peter,on the other hand, found himself in danger of being separated from hisfamily.

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(Continues…)Excerpted from Heaven’s Soldiers by FRANK MAROTTI. Copyright © 2013 by The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS.
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