Chapter 3Inadvertent Expansion in the American South The United States

Historical Background

On the eve of the invasion, in early 1818, Florida had been a backwater province of Spain’s vast New World empire for most of the past three hundred years, predating the founding of the Jamestown settlement by more than a century. While it was fairly large, at nearly 152,000 km2, it lacked the natural resources of other Spanish imperial holdings—such as gold, silver, and sugar—and was, therefore, sparsely populated and only lightly defended.1 It had been divided into East and West Florida during a brief interregnum of British rule (1763–83), and the vast majority of the population of twenty thousand lived in the two provincial capitals of St. Augustine (East) and Pensacola (West).2 Its only neighbor, of course, was the growing American juggernaut, whose population had soared from 3.9 million in 1790 up to over 9 million by 1818.3 The United States had acquired an enormous swath of what was very recently Spanish territory with the Louisiana Purchase, of 1803, and had been chipping away at Spanish West Florida since 1810, taking approximately half of that province in the process.

Anglo-American settler encroachment on Native American lands helped spark a civil war within the Creek Confederacy, in which the United States became deeply involved.4 The August 1814 settlement of this war in favor of the United States led to the expulsion of the Red Sticks Creeks from the Mississippi Territory and the expropriation of approximately 93,000 km2 of tribal lands.5 Many of the Red Sticks fled across the southern border with Spanish Florida, where they connected with other Native American tribes—becoming collectively known as the Seminoles—and launched attacks on the Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama border regions.

The primary agent of the Red Sticks’ expulsion was Major General Andrew Jackson. Jackson was the commander of the Southern Division of the US Army, effectively in charge of the defense of the southern half of the United States. During the Creek War (1813–14) and the War of 1812 (1812–15), he became a national celebrity with his spectacular victories at the Battles of Horseshoe Bend and New Orleans.6 Jackson was the key actor on America’s southeastern frontier who would independently launch the conquest of Florida. The US president at the time was James Monroe, the secretary of war was John C. Calhoun, and the position of secretary of state was held by John Quincy Adams. They were the key leaders in the US capital who would be dragged unwittingly into the conquest of all of Spanish Florida.

The Seminole War, which would be the occasion for the conquest of Florida, began with yet another expulsion.7 In November 1817, US forces attacked the Creek village of Fowltown after it had refused orders to vacate, and the Creeks retaliated by ambushing a US Army transport boat on the Apalachicola River, killing several civilians on board.8 News of the attack shocked and infuriated officials from the frontier to the capital. Andrew Jackson, who was monitoring events from the Southern Division headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote on December 16 that it was time “that the wolf be struck in his den.”9 The Seminole War had begun.

Washington and the Florida Frontier

Washington faced serious principal-agent problems with respect to its peripheral agents in the South, such as Jackson. These were due to information asymmetries favoring those on the periphery and a divergence of preferences between leaders in the capital and their peripheral agents. First, as a result of the highly rudimentary transportation and communications technology of the time, there were stark information asymmetries in favor of the periphery. This was still the prerail and pretelegraph era, and it took approximately one month for a letter to travel from Washington to Spanish Florida on horseback, meaning that it would take at least sixty days to receive a reply.10 Long travel times from the capital to the frontier meant that the administration in Washington was at the informational mercy of its peripheral agents and had to rely heavily on the official reports they sent back.

Second, there was a divergence of preferences between leaders in Washington and their agents on the Spanish frontier. Both sides, ultimately, wanted the Floridas for the United States, indeed Washington had been in negotiations with Madrid over them since the beginning of the War of 1812.11 Yet, they differed as to when and how the Floridas should be achieved. Leaders in the capital felt that time was on their side, and they were certain that acquiring the Floridas could, ultimately, be achieved through diplomacy and negotiation with Spain, without the need to risk war to acquire them immediately. Their agents on the periphery, and particularly Major General Jackson, however, were considerably less cautious in their approach. Jackson felt that, so long as the Floridas were in Spanish hands, and so long as the Seminoles were able to effectively have sanctuary there, the United States’ southern frontier would see no peace or stability.

Florida

Given these preferences in Washington, when the Seminole War broke out, the orders to the Southern Division of the Army were clear: if needed, they could enter Spanish territory in pursuit of the Seminoles, but under no circumstances were they to take territory or attack a Spanish fort. As Secretary of War John Calhoun wrote to the commander of US forces in the war, Major General Edmund Gaines, on December 16, 1817, you should “consider yourself at liberty to march across the Florida line, and to attack them from within its limits, should it be found necessary, unless they should shelter themselves under a Spanish post. In the last event, you will immediately notify this Department.”12 Jackson, of course, saw things differently. After seeing Gaines’s orders, he penned a letter to Monroe, on January 6, 1818, arguing that “the whole of East Florida [should be] seized.” Jackson added: “This can be done without implicating the Government; let it be signified to me through any channel . . . that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished.”13

Jackson never received a response to this letter. In fact, when it arrived in Washington, President Monroe was seriously ill and bedridden, and he happened to be without a secretary. The letter was apparently briefly skimmed by Calhoun and Treasury Secretary William Crawford, only to end up in a pile of Monroe’s other papers, not to be seen by the president until there was a congressional investigation of the Seminole War a full year later.14 What Jackson had not been aware of when he wrote the letter was that General Gaines was to be diverted to another theater and that Jackson himself would be appointed as commander of US forces in the Seminole War. Secretary Calhoun wrote to Jackson on December 26, 1817, that he should “repair, with as little delay as practicable, to Fort Scott, and assume the immediate command of the forces in that section” and that he should “adopt the necessary measures to terminate [the] conflict”—though this order would not arrive in Nashville until January 11, 1818—five days after Jackson had sent his provocative letter to the president.15

While Calhoun’s new orders did not explicitly place the same limitations on Jackson that had been placed on Gaines with regard to respecting Spanish sovereignty, it is clear from his January 6 letter that Jackson had seen Gaines’s orders. And, on January 30, 1818, President Monroe wrote to Calhoun, asking him to instruct Jackson “not to attack any post occupied by Spanish troops, from the possibility, that it might bring the allied powers upon us,” though, for reasons that remain unknown, it seems this order was never transmitted to Jackson.16 Calhoun later claimed, with substantial justification, that he had assumed “that the orders in this case to Genl Gains [sic] are obligatory on Genl Jackson,” adding that “there is no military principle better established.”17 In any case, the administration seems to have believed that its instructions for Jackson were clear. As President Monroe assured Congress on March 25, 1818, over two months after Jackson had departed for Florida, “Orders have been given to the general in command not to enter Florida, unless it be in pursuit of the enemy, and, in that case, to respect the Spanish authority wherever it is maintained.”18

Upon receipt of his orders, Jackson quickly readied his force of eleven hundred and prepared for the 775 km journey southbound to the Florida frontier in Georgia, reporting to Calhoun on January 20, 1818, that they were ready “to inflict speedy and merited chastisement on the deluded Seminoles.”19 Conditions would prove difficult on the forty-six-day journey, with heavy rains, flooded and washed-out roads, multiple crossings of swollen rivers, and ration and supply shortages.20 Jackson’s forces crossed the border into Spanish Florida around March 13, and, on March 16, they arrived at the ruins of the old British fort at Prospect Bluff (also known as “Negro Fort”), where he ordered it rebuilt and renamed Fort Gadsden, after his aide-de-camp. This was a first territorial claim Jackson was not supposed to make.

After ten day’s rest and resupply, Jackson and his forces left Fort Gadsden on March 26 headed for St. Marks, a Spanish fort approximately 110 km to the east. Jackson had written to Calhoun the previous day, reporting that he had “no doubt but that St. Marks is in possession of the Indians” and that he would “take possession of the garrison as a depot for my supplies.”21 On his way, Jackson was reinforced on April 1 by Tennessee militia members as well as two thousand Creek allies, bringing his total forces to nearly five thousand.22 With this larger force, Jackson engaged in what historian and Jackson biographer Robert Remini has referred to as a “thoroughgoing campaign of terror,” killing and capturing Seminoles, seizing their cattle and foodstuffs, and burning their villages to the ground.23 A few days later, Jackson proudly reported to Calhoun that the “duty was executed to my satisfaction; nearly three hundred houses were consumed.”24 Jackson’s forces then took the fort of St. Marks without resistance, on April 7, justifying the conquest to the Spanish commandant there on “the immutable principle of self-defence.”25 With this, his second unauthorized territorial acquisition had been carried out.

Jackson and his forces then headed east for Bowlegs Town, a Seminole village 160 km from St. Marks on the Suwannee River. Jackson’s forces razed the town when they arrived on April 16, and in skirmishes in and around the town they killed forty-nine Seminole warriors and took over one hundred men, women, and children prisoner.26 At St. Marks and then in Bowlegs Town, Jackson happened upon and arrested two British nationals on the dubious charge of instigating the war and aiding the Seminoles.27 Jackson then returned to St. Marks, put his two British captives on trial, and had them executed on the morning of April 29, 1818—one being shot, and the other being hung from the yardarm of his own ship.28 In reporting these events to Calhoun, Jackson wrote on May 5: “I hope the execution of these two unprincipled villains will prove an awful example to the world, and convince the Government of Great Britain, as well as her subjects, that certain (if slow) retribution awaits these unchristian wretches, who, by false promises, delude and excite an Indian tribe to all the horrid deeds of savage war.”29

However, Jackson’s work in Florida was not quite complete. He claimed to have received intelligence that as many as five hundred Seminole warriors had congregated in the capital of Spanish West Florida, Pensacola, some 275 km west of Fort Gadsden.30 On May 10, Jackson gathered a force of approximately twelve hundred and set out across the Apalachicola River for Pensacola.31 Two weeks later, on May 24, Jackson’s forces took the city without resistance, with Jackson warning the governor before storming the city that “the blood which may be shed by a useless resistance on your part to my demand will rest on your head.”32 After taking Fort Barrancas on May 28, a Spanish fort just 10 km outside Pensacola, Jackson issued a proclamation appointing a US territorial governor, seizing the royal archives, and establishing tax collection procedures, while shipping the Spanish governor and garrison off to Havana, Cuba.33 As Jackson would report to Calhoun on June 2, 1818, the articles of capitulation “amount to a complete cession to the United States of that portion of the Floridas.”34 (See figure 3.1.)

With much of Spanish Florida under the control of his forces, Jackson finally saw his job as complete—though he was always ready for more. As he prepared to head back to Nashville on June 2, he wrote to President Monroe, telling him that with some minor reinforcements, “I will insure you Cuba in a few days.”35 However, along with Jackson’s brashness were notable undertones of diffidence. On “our Southern frontier, I have established peace and safety,” Jackson wrote to the president, “and hope the government will never yield it[;] should my acts . . . be disapproved, I have this consolation[:] that I exercised my best exertions and Judgt. and that sound national policy will dictate holding Possession as long as we are a republick.”36 Andrew Jackson had, without orders, taken control of much of Spanish Florida in eighty days, and at a cost of just seven of his forces killed.37 His fait accompli was complete. The question that now seemed to be on his mind was how the administration in Washington would react.

Washington Reacts

News of Jackson’s exploits in Florida began to filter back to Washington through unofficial channels in late April and early May 1818. The first dispatches the administration received from Jackson directly were on May 4, reporting on his conquest of St. Marks. Though it was a clear violation of his orders, the administration’s reaction to this first acquisition was fairly muted.38 With the exception of Secretary of State Adams, who worried that Jackson was acting “without due regard to humanity,” no one in Monroe’s cabinet raised significant concerns.39 For the time being, the administration was content to await further information from the frontier.

However, the Florida issue began to heat up in June. Once the Spanish learned of what was transpiring there, the minister to Washington Luis de Onís lodged a formal complaint on June 17, referring to Jackson’s actions as “monstrous acts of hostility.”40 The following day, the president and his cabinet became aware of the storming of Pensacola and the execution of the two British subjects.41 This was clearly a more serious turn of events, as not only had a major Spanish city been taken but Jackson risked bringing the United Kingdom into the conflict as well. As Secretary Adams noted in his diary that day, “This, and other events in this Indian war, makes so many difficulties for the administration.”42

Matters would come to a head in July. On the seventh, Secretary of State Adams was awoken in the middle of the night by Minister Onís, demanding a meeting the following day.43 There, he would deliver a second diplomatic protest, this time for the conquest of Pensacola, referring to Jackson’s conduct as “excessive aggression, unexampled in the history of nations.”44 On July 9, Monroe received official documents from Jackson at his farm in Loudoun County, and he quickly prepared to return to the capital. The following day, in a letter to former president James Madison, Monroe foreshadowed the debate that would take place in his cabinet by pointing out that “there are serious difficulties in this business, on which ever side we view it.”45 The president arrived back in Washington on July 13, as Adams put it, “in the midst of the storm.”46

The Monroe cabinet held six separate hours-long cabinet meetings from July 15 to July 21, 1818, to discuss the Florida crisis. The basic initial stance of most cabinet members was of opposition to Jackson’s conduct in Florida. Yet, it would not be quite so simple. As it turned out, the very act of Jackson’s conquering Spanish territory in Florida would make it extremely difficult to simply cut the major general loose and withdraw, and this was so for two reasons. First, Jackson’s conquests sunk the costs of acquisition of these Spanish territories. The ease with which Jackson’s forces acquired most of East and West Florida put Spain’s inability to protect and defend these territories in stark relief. Secretary of State Adams, having been in negotiations with Spain over the Floridas from almost the time he took office in September 1817, was quick to grasp this and pushed for approval of Jackson’s actions and retention of the territories on these grounds.47 And Adams’s position was not without foundation. The French minister, who was acting as something of an intermediary between the United States and Spain in negotiations, reported to Adams on July 10 that Spain was ready to cede the Floridas to the United States.48 The following day, the Spanish minister Onís himself told Adams that they were willing to give up the Floridas “for nothing.”49 George Erving, the US minister to Spain, wrote to Washington on July 13, noting that Jackson’s actions were forcing the hand of Madrid with respect to the Florida cession and broader border negotiations.50 President Monroe, too, began to recognize this as the cabinet debate progressed. As he wrote in a letter to Andrew Jackson on July 19, the recent events in Florida “show the incompetency of Spain to maintain her authority” and that Jackson’s actions “will furnish a strong inducement in Spain to cede the territory.”51 Thus, it was difficult to deny that Jackson’s fait accompli had significantly strengthened the United States’ hand in border negotiations with Spain, essentially overnight, making arguments for a blanket withdrawal more difficult to sustain.

Second, Jackson’s unauthorized conquest helped generate significant domestic political pressure on the administration to support its own nationals, rather than siding with Spain. Jackson was the most popular military figure in the country—a veritable national celebrity—and the administration perceived significant domestic political costs associated with repudiating him.52 And Jackson’s notoriously fierce temper and his vengeful disposition likely only strengthened these perceptions.53 Secretary of State Adams, again, came to this realization fairly early on in the debate. On July 16, Adams argued that to disavow the major general would create the appearance that the administration was trying “to put down Jackson in the public opinion; [and] that he would immediately resign, and turn the attack upon the Administration, and would carry a large portion of the public with him.”54 “It would be said,” Adams argued in the cabinet debate of July 18, that “after having the benefit of his services, he was abandoned and sacrificed to the enemies of this country.”55 In the penultimate cabinet meeting, on July 20, Adams summed up his view more generally, noting that if one’s own agent’s actions were “dubious, it was better to err on the side of vigor than of weakness—on the side of our own officer, who had rendered the most eminent services to the nation, than on the side of our bitterest enemies, and against him.”56

The rest of the administration would come around to this point of view.57 Two months later, looking back on the cabinet debates, Secretary of War Calhoun noted in a letter to Senator Charles Tait that “from the popularity of the General, it was inexpedient to punish” Jackson.58 Monroe, too, would ultimately agree, writing in a September 1818 letter to Virginia politician and friend George Hay that turning on Jackson would have created “internal feuds of the most pernicious character.”59 Monroe expanded on these views in a letter to former president Madison, some seven months after the cabinet debates: “Had Gen^l. Jackson been ordered to trial I have no doubt that the interior of the country would have been much agitated, if not convulsed, by appeals to sectional interests, by imputations of subserviency to the views of [Spain’s King] Ferdinand, of hostility to the cause of the colonies, &c.”60 Thus, the administration perceived significant domestic political costs associated with cutting Jackson loose and disavowing his actions altogether.

However, there was also significant geopolitical risk involved in backing Jackson and retaining the Floridas. Secretary of War Calhoun and President Monroe held this view, seeing Jackson as having committed what amounted to an unauthorized act of war against Spain.61 On July 13, Calhoun told Secretary of State Adams that he was “extremely dissatisfied with General Jackson’s proceedings in Florida” and he thought that “we shall certainly have a Spanish war.”62 President Monroe agreed. As he noted in his July 19 letter to Andrew Jackson, if they retained Spanish Florida, it would not be “improbable that war would immediately follow. . . . The war would probably soon become general; and we do not foresee that we should have a single European power on our side. Why risk these consequences?”63 In the view of Calhoun and Monroe, returning Spain’s territory seemed the surest way to avoid war with Spain. As Calhoun argued in the cabinet meeting of July 20, by putting the responsibility squarely on Jackson’s shoulders, the administration “would take away from Spain all pretext for war, and for resorting to the aid of other European powers.”64

This combination of the expected domestic political costs associated with relinquishing the Floridas and the geopolitical risk associated with retaining them created a dilemma for the administration.65 If they stood firm and kept the territories, the administration felt they risked war with Spain, and possibly even the United Kingdom. If they backed down and relinquished them, they risked severe domestic political consequences, potentially bringing down the administration itself. Secretary of State Adams summed up the administration’s precarious position in a diary entry on July 21, 1818:

The Administration were placed in a dilemma from which it is impossible to escape censure by some, and factious crimination by many. If they avow and approve Jackson’s conduct, they incur the double responsibility of having commenced a war against Spain, and of warring in violation of the Constitution without the authority of Congress. If they disavow him, they must give offence to all his friends, encounter the shock of his popularity, and having the appearance of truckling to Spain. For all this I should be prepared.66

Washington Decides

To get out of this dilemma, the Monroe administration ultimately decided to split the difference, settling on a partial rebuke of Jackson as well as a partial withdrawal from Florida.67 With respect to his decision on Jackson, the president decided to make it clear that the major general had acted without prior authorization, absolving the administration of complicity in his actions. Yet, Monroe also emphasized that Jackson was acting from principled motives and in the national interest, aiming to avoid the wrath of Jackson’s domestic political supporters. The administration’s policy on Florida would be published in an article, ghost-written by Attorney General William Wirt, in the Daily National Intelligencer on July 27, 1818.68 In it, the administration made clear that “in attacking the posts of St. Mark and Pensacola, with the fort of Barrancas, General Jackson . . . took these measures on his own responsibility.” Yet, the article was quick to add that Jackson’s “operations proceeded from motives of the purest patriotism.”69 This formulation—of Jackson having acted on his own accord but with noble intent—would be repeated in Monroe’s letters to Jackson himself, communications with Congress, and diplomatic correspondence with Spain.70

With respect to Florida, the administration decided to conduct a partial withdrawal, planning to pull out of Pensacola expeditiously and Fort St. Marks only once Spain was prepared to garrison it sufficiently and retaining Fort Gadsden indefinitely.71 There were three reasons the administration settled on a partial withdrawal. First, it is clear the administration wanted to avoid what was viewed as an unnecessary war with Spain. In a letter to former president Thomas Jefferson on July 22, 1818, Monroe explained that central to his Florida policy was to avoid “giving to Spain just cause of war.”72 The president repeated this rationale in later communications with Andrew Jackson and with James Madison, arguing that one of his primary goals in Florida had been “to deprive Spain and the allied powers of any just cause of war.”73 Thus, withdrawal from Pensacola was seen as an important way to avoid backing Spain into a corner from which war would be its only option.

However, the administration felt that St. Marks and Fort Gadsden could be safely retained without similar attendant risks. Secretary of State Adams had, again, suspected this early on, but it became clearer as the Florida crisis progressed.74 It was obvious that Spain would not be clamoring for war with the United States.75 For much of the past decade, it had been either fighting Napoleon in the Peninsular War (1807–14) at home or struggling to put down Latin American revolutionaries abroad.76 At this point, Spain was clinging to its empire by its fingernails, and there was simply very little it could do to expel the United States from Florida. And, perhaps more importantly, it became clear that Britain had no intention of coming to Spain’s aid.77 The War of 1812 had ended only three years earlier, and no one wanted another North American war. Britain and the United States had also just recently signed an arms limitation treaty for the Great Lakes and were in the midst of negotiating their outstanding boundary issues. While the British press and public were outraged by the unlawful execution of two of their nationals, the British foreign secretary Lord Castlereagh refused to let the fate of the two adventurers disrupt the ongoing rapprochement with the United States.78 As Castlereagh would inform the American minister to the United Kingdom Richard Rush on January 7, 1819, his government had decided that “the conduct of these individuals had been unjustifiable, and therefore not calling for the interference of Great Britain.”79 Thus, it turned out that the United States could hold onto some of Spain’s territory, as there were few geopolitical risks associated with doing so.

The second reason the administration opted for a partial withdrawal is that there were important constitutional issues at stake.80 According to Article I of the US Constitution, Congress, not the executive, is vested with the power to declare war. Thus, by attacking Spanish holdings in Florida, Jackson had potentially usurped the power of Congress and violated the Constitution. By retaining Pensacola in particular—as it was felt that the other conquests could be justified on the basis of self-defense—the administration risked having engaged in an extraconstitutional war. This argument, made by Secretary of War Calhoun from the beginning, clearly resonated with President Monroe and, despite some resistance, even Adams ultimately relented to it.81 As the president explained to Jackson in his letter of July 19, “If the Executive refused to evacuate the posts, especially Pensacola, it would amount to a declaration of war, to which it is incompetent. It would be accused of usurping the authority of Congress, and giving a deep and fatal wound to the Constitution.”82 Thus, at least some withdrawal was seen as necessary.

The third and final reason the Monroe administration settled on a partial withdrawal from Florida had to do with coercive diplomacy. Over the course of the crisis, it became increasingly clear that Spain was in a highly vulnerable position. With the Americans in control of much of Florida, and Britain standing aside, Spanish leaders had few options beyond trying to strike the best deal with Washington they could.83 A partial withdrawal would allow Spain to come to the negotiating table with its dignity intact, but it would also allow the United States to retain coercive leverage for the purpose of the negotiations.84 As President Monroe explained in his same letter to Andrew Jackson on July 19, “If we hold the posts, her government cannot treat with honor, which, by withdrawing the troops, we afford her an opportunity to do.”85 From this position of advantage, the administration could then pressure—even browbeat—Spain into giving up the Floridas. For instance, the Intelligencer article of July 27 closed by pointing out Spain’s “incompetency to maintain her authority in the Floridas” and advised that it would “be much wiser for her to cede those provinces at once.”86 Similarly, in a famously tough-worded letter of November 28, 1818, to the Spanish government, Adams wrote: “Spain must immediately make her election, either to place a force in Florida adequate at once to the protection of her territory, and to the fulfillment of her engagements, or to cede to the United States a province, of which she retains nothing but the nominal possession.”87 Spain would ultimately opt for the latter.

A congressional inquiry into the Seminole War opened in December 1818. It included a floor debate lasting nearly a month, at that point the longest single issue debated in Congress in the nation’s history.88 The high point was a three-hour speech delivered by the Speaker of the House of Representatives Henry Clay of Kentucky.89 Warning of the longer-term risks of Jackson’s military disobedience, Clay admonished his colleagues to: “Beware how you give a fatal sanction, in this infant period of our republic, scarcely yet two score years old, to military insubordination. Remember that Greece had her Alexander, Rome her Caesar, England her Cromwell, France her Bonaparte, and that if we would escape the rock on which they split, we must avoid their errors.”90 But, ultimately, it would make little difference. All resolutions condemning Jackson’s actions would be defeated by wide margins.91 Jackson was simply too popular, and his recent exploits in Florida made him only more so. He was mobbed by adoring admirers wherever he went and was bestowed honors and awards by civil society organizations and local governments throughout the country.92 A future president was very much in the making.

On February 22, 1819, John Quincy Adams and Spanish minister Luis de Onís signed the Transcontinental Treaty, which not only ceded the Floridas to the United States but defined the US-Spanish border all the way to the Pacific.93 Adams would write in his diary that night that the “acknowledgement of a definite line of boundary to the South Seas form a great epocha in our history.”94 Although ratification would be delayed on the Spanish side, the United States would finally take possession of Florida in February 1821, with none other than Andrew Jackson as its inaugural territorial governor.

As part of the Adams-Onís Treaty, the United States, notably, agreed to relinquish its claims to the Spanish imperial province of Texas. President Monroe’s reluctance to add another slaveholding state to the Union was at the forefront of his mind in his decision to exclude the claim.95 As the president wrote to Thomas Jefferson in May 1820, “It is evident that further acquisition of territory, to the West and South, involves difficulties, of an internal nature, which menace the Union itself.”96 But it would not take long for Texas to once again burst onto the national scene. As the Spanish Empire continued to crumble, Texas would present the next major opportunity for American territorial expansion.

Historical Background

Within just six months of the February 1821 Adams-Onís Treaty having entered into force, Mexico declared its independence from Spain after a ten-year armed insurgency. Texas, a territory of 678,000 km2 over which the United States had relinquished all claims, became part of the Republic of Mexico’s northernmost state of Coahuila y Tejas in 1824.98 Like the Spanish Empire before it, Mexico faced the problem of chronic underpopulation on its northern frontier.99 To deal with this, the Mexican government encouraged immigration to Texas both by selling land at rates significantly lower than in the United States and by authorizing colonization agents (or empresarios) such as Stephen F. Austin to facilitate settlement from across the border. And the immigrants—and their slaves—poured in. Starting with a local population of roughly twenty-five hundred at independence, by 1835 approximately forty thousand Americans had settled in Texas, outnumbering the Mexican population by a factor of greater than ten to one.100

These demographic shifts alarmed Mexican officials, who began to make efforts to stem the flow of migrants, putting the government in Mexico City on a collision course with its new Texan inhabitants. In April 1830, the Mexican government passed a law banning immigration from the United States and the importation of slaves.101 In 1832, the Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Anna launched a coup, resulting in the overthrow of the government in 1833 and the establishment of centralized authoritarian rule the following year.102 Uprisings emerged in several Mexican states, only to be crushed by Santa Anna’s forces. The migrant population in Texas chafed under the increasingly heavy hand extending from Mexico City. And, when the Mexican government imposed customs duties on Texan trade and sent its forces out to enforce its new edicts, matters reached a boiling point.103

Washington and the Texan Frontier

Among the migrants aggravated by the centralization of Mexican rule was Sam Houston. Born in Lexington, Virginia, Houston would serve as the state’s governor and became a close personal friend of Andrew Jackson, having served under his command in the War of 1812.104 Houston entered Texas at the suggestion of an old friend in December 1832, having been told that “there will be some fighting there next fall, and that a fine country will be gained without much bloodshed.”105 Within weeks of arriving, Houston was ushered into the elite of migrant Texan society. And within months he had begun plotting the overthrow of Mexican authority there. Sam Houston was the key peripheral actor who would attempt to drag the United States into the acquisition of Texas.

Monitoring events from Washington was Houston’s friend and former commander, President Andrew Jackson. While President Jackson had able support in his Secretary of State John Forsyth and his Secretary of War Lewis Cass, he dominated foreign policy decision-making in the administration.106 Jackson had long coveted Texas for the United States.107 He thought that relinquishing American claims to Texas in the Adams-Onís Treaty had been a mistake, and almost from the time he took office as president in March 1829 he set out to acquire it.108 As Jackson wrote to his friend John Overton in June 1829, “I have long since been aware of the importance of Texas to the United States, and of the real necessity of extending our boundary west of the Sabine. . . . I shall keep my eye on this object and the first propitious moment make the attempt to regain the Territory.”109 Working through his minister in Mexico, as well as his chargé d’affaires there, Jackson made a series of ham-handed attempts to purchase the northern state for as much as $5 million—all to no avail.110

However, this was as far as Jackson was willing to go. In fact, he specifically wanted to acquire Texas, as he put it, “without any just imputation of corruption on our part.”111 Everything had to be aboveboard. Hearing early rumors of his friend Houston’s plans to claim Texas, Jackson referred to these as “deranged,” part of a “wild scheme,” and as the “mere effusions of a distempered brain.”112 If Jackson was to acquire Texas, he intended to do so through negotiation with the central government in Mexico City. “A revolt in Texas,” Jackson told his chargé d’affaires in Mexico in February 1831, “may close the door forever to its advantageous settlement.”113

Texas

But a revolt is precisely what would ultimately occur.114 A small skirmish between American settlers and Mexican military authorities in the town of Gonzales in October 1835 sparked a more general armed uprising, determined to drive the Mexican army out of Texas.115 The following month, the Texan revolutionaries created a provisional government, and named Sam Houston commander in chief of their armed forces.116 By December, the revolutionary army had defeated all Mexican garrisons and was in control of the state. In response, the Mexican president Santa Anna ordered a two-pronged counteroffensive, one of which he led himself, to take the state back from the insurgent army. Santa Anna’s armies slaughtered hundreds of Anglo-Texan revolutionaries after a two-week siege at the Alamo and the surrender at Goliad through February and early March 1836. As this was occurring, Anglo-Texan political leaders gathered on March 2, 1836, and officially declared the establishment of the independent Republic of Texas, drafting a constitution over the following two weeks. On April 15, 1836, former empresario and now-Texan revolutionary leader Stephen F. Austin sent President Jackson an impassioned plea for assistance, writing: “This people look to you, the guardians of their rights and interests and principles, will you, can you turn a deaf ear to the appeals of your fellow citizens in favor of their and your country men and friends, who are massacred, butchered, outraged in Texas at your very doors?”117

However, American assistance would not be necessary. In their final push to drive the revolutionaries out of Texas, Santa Anna’s army was decisively defeated by Sam Houston’s forces on April 21, 1836, at San Jacinto, and Santa Anna himself was taken prisoner. With this victory, the Texas Revolution was over. In September, elections were held, and the constitution and the matter of annexation to the United States were put to referendum. Sam Houston was elected president of the Republic of Texas in a landslide, the constitution was approved, and the voters supported annexation to the United States by 3,277 to 91.118 The question now was how leaders in Washington would respond.

Washington Reacts

The sparking of the Texas Revolution, and the bloody battles that followed, constrained American leaders in two ways that made simply rejecting the Texan fait accompli difficult. First, the costs of acquiring Texas had been sunk. The revolution was over; the Texans had prevailed and made their intentions unmistakably clear. The actual on-the-ground costs associated with acquiring Texas had already been paid by the Anglo-Texan forces. All President Jackson had to do was agree to the request for annexation that was before him. And in light of Jackson’s demonstrated desire to acquire Texas for the United States, along with his close personal friendship with Sam Houston, the successful revolution presented a golden opportunity for the administration.

Second, there was significant public support for the Texas revolutionaries in the United States. The outbreak of the revolution was accompanied by a flood of money and supplies across the Louisiana border in support of the Anglo-Texan insurgents. Young men from across the American South streamed across the border by the thousands to enlist and fight for the Texan cause.119 The national and regional press were strongly sympathetic with the rebels, portraying events in Texas in a sensationalist manner.120 Politicians from both the south and the west put pressure on the Jackson administration, urging them to recognize Texan independence and prepare the way for annexation.121 Aiming to take advantage of this groundswell of support, the Texas government dispatched a number of commissioners to Washington, over the course of 1836, who lobbied members of Congress and the administration for recognition and annexation.122 This broad public support is hardly surprising. After all, most of the revolutionaries were Americans, at least until very recently, and some, such as Sam Houston, had important ties to the US political elite. And the idea of a scrappy burgeoning republic casting off the yoke of distant tyranny to declare its independence clearly appealed to American sensibilities.

However, not all of the American public supported annexation. For Texas at this time had a slave population of roughly five thousand, having been brought in by the American settlers.123 And the Texas Revolution was taking place in the wake of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, as well as the more recent Nullification Crisis of 1832–33, both of which exposed and exacerbated the important sectional conflicts between free and slaveholding states.124 Abolitionists, Whig Party members, and northerners more generally were strongly opposed to the annexation of Texas, horrified at the prospect of adding a large slaveholding territory to the Union.125 While the opposition was initially quiet and on the fringes of political debate, it would grow in volume and importance as the months passed.126 So, while there were reasons to accept the Texan fait accompli, there were also reasons for caution.

Besides the simmering political opposition, there was also potentially significant geopolitical risk involved in annexing the newly independent republic. For one, Mexico, with a newly installed leader, seemed to be intent on taking Texas back from the revolutionaries by force. As the local US minister in Mexico City reported to Secretary of State Forsyth on May 19, 1836, less than a month after the Battle of San Jacinto, the Mexican “national congress has resolved to prosecute the war against Texas with the utmost vigor.” The minister added that “the alleged reason for entertaining such questions is the supposed interference of the United States in the war of Texas.”127 In June, the American minister reported to Washington that “men in the streets in this capital are almost daily impressed and enrolled in the army in large numbers with the avowed intention of reducing that province to unconditional submission.”128 Similar observations were reported back to the capital in August and October.129

There was also at least some concern over the possibility of Mexico gaining the support of a European great power, such as the United Kingdom, in taking back the renegade state. On June 25, 1836, the US minister in Mexico reported to Forsyth that the “application of this government to Great Britain for aid to restore her authority in Texas is a question of great magnitude.”130 Mexico was apparently using its opposition to slavery in Texas as a means to try to elicit British aid.131 And there was clearly concern over this in Washington. For instance, in August 1836 the acting secretary of state urged his minister in Mexico to “be vigilant as to the movements of the Mexican Government towards obtaining foreign aid for the subjugation of Texas, and give early information thereof to the Department.”132 Thus, while Mexico would be ultimately disappointed in its efforts to enlist British support, the possibility clearly weighed on the minds of policy makers in Washington.133

Washington Decides

Facing a combination of enthusiastic, though nonunanimous, domestic political support, as well as considerable geopolitical risk, President Jackson would in the end opt for a rejection of the Texans’ fait accompli. Despite the president’s considerable personal sympathy for the cause, and his own decades-long friendship with Houston, the downside risks seemed too great to consider annexation at this moment. Instead, the administration adopted a neutral stance in the Texas-Mexico conflict and refused to get involved until it had been settled between the two parties.134 Jackson had earlier foreshadowed this position in his annual message to Congress of December 1835.135 However, his position became unmistakably clear when, in reacting to Austin’s request for assistance of April 15, 1836, Jackson coolly wrote: “The Texians[,] before they took the step to declare themselves Independent, which has aroused and united all mexico against them[,] ought to have pondered well, it was a rash and premature act[;] our nutrality must be faithfully maintained.”136 This position, which would be repeatedly referred to as one of “strict neutrality,” defined the Jackson administration’s response throughout the course of the crisis.137

The Jackson administration had a number of motivations when deciding to reject the Texan fait accompli. To the extent that there is a conventional wisdom on this matter, it is that concerns over the domestic political repercussions of annexation, particularly with regard to Texas’s slaveholder status, scared the Jackson administration off.138 These fears were particularly acute, the argument goes, in the context of an impending federal election in November 1836, where Jackson hoped his vice president, Martin Van Buren, would be elected president.139 There is a lot of evidence to support this argument, and it was clearly an important part of what guided the president’s decision-making. In a December 5, 1836, message to Congress, Jackson made reference to the “reconcilement of various and conflicting interests” as a prerequisite for the annexation of Texas.140 And, using almost identical language, Secretary of State Forsyth reportedly told a Texan commissioner in early January 1837 that “various conflicting sectional interests in Congress would have to be reconciled before annexation would be agreed to.”141

However, for three reasons, this “sectional conflict” hypothesis, while not wrong, is at least incomplete. First, it is somewhat difficult to make sense of Jackson’s years of efforts to purchase Texas from Mexico if his primary concern was sparking a sectional conflict over slavery. As late as 1834, Jackson was still actively seeking to acquire Texas through his chargé d’affaires in Mexico via negotiation and purchase, and, in January 1837, in a meeting with the former Mexican president Santa Anna, Jackson, again, offered to buy the state for $3.5 million.142 It seems, to an important extent, that Jackson was more concerned with the way Texas was acquired than with the simple fact of its acquisition. Second, the victory of Vice President Van Buren in the November 1836 election, of which the administration was assured by the beginning of December, should have allayed at least some of these domestic political concerns, but it seemed not to.143 The administration still had three months of annexation opportunities until the end of its term in March 1837, which it elected not to avail itself of. In meetings with Texas commissioners from December through February, Jackson and other members of the administration exhibited the same reluctance toward annexation that they had all along.144

The third and most important reason the sectional conflict hypothesis appears to be incomplete is that there is a lot of evidence that the Jackson administration had other concerns; namely, the geopolitical risk associated with annexing Texas.145 This concern over the possibility of war can be seen clearly in two episodes that occurred during the crisis over Texas. First, in January 1836, as the revolution was heating up, Major General Gaines was dispatched by Secretary of War Cass to establish a defensive position near the Louisiana border with Texas. Gaines was explicitly reminded, in line with administration policy, that it was “the duty of the United States to remain entirely neutral.”146 In late March and early April, Gaines reported back to Washington that he had intelligence that several tribes of Native Americans were preparing to attack the American frontier from within Texas and requested permission to cross the border if necessary.147 Secretary Cass replied on April 25, clarifying that it was “not the wish of the president to take advantage of present circumstances, and thereby obtain possession of any portion of the Mexican territory,” but that Gaines was, indeed, “authorized to take such position on either side of the imaginary boundary line as may be best for your defensive operations.”148 Perhaps out of concern that he had given the major general too much discretion, Cass followed up with dispatches on May 4 and 12, reminding Gaines to “act cautiously,” to not cross the border “unless circumstances distinctly show this step is necessary,” and, if so, to “return as soon as the safety of the frontier will permit.”149

In June 1836, Gaines crossed the Sabine River into Texas and occupied the town of Nacogdoches, some 80 km from the border.150 The major general then called up militia forces from Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana to provide additional personnel, which their governors were only-too-eager to provide.151 When President Jackson learned of the occupation and the militia requisition in early August, he was “much astonished.”152 Within a few days, he had contacted the state governors in question and had countermanded Gaines’s requisition, ordering the militia forces to be discharged.153 In an August 12 letter to Amos Kendall, Jackson’s postmaster general and a key member of his Kitchen Cabinet, Jackson explained his reasoning, arguing that Gaines’s action “was a violation of that nutrality which we had assumed, and was in fact, and which Mexico might have viewed as[,] an act of war upon her if it had been carried into effect.” Thankfully, Jackson continued, he had “stopped it in the bud.”154 In a letter to Gaines himself, on September 4, Jackson reminded the major general that “ours is a state of strict neutrality” and that Gaines, “as the commander of our forces on that frontier[,] must religiously observe and maintain it.”155 Thus, it is clear that Jackson’s reversal of what was a golden opportunity to gain territory in Texas was motivated, in important part, by the desire to avoid war with Mexico.

There was a second episode that makes clear the administration’s concerns over geopolitical risk. In June 1836, President Jackson dispatched an agent to Texas, by the name of Henry R. Morfit, to gather “detailed information of the civil, military and political conditions” there.156 The contents of Morfit’s reports would play an important role in shaping the thinking of the Jackson administration. As Secretary of State Forsyth told the Texan commissioners in July 1836, the president “would not act definitely upon the subject of Texas until the report of a Confidential Agent sent to that country should be received.”157 In his first detailed report, September 9, Morfit cast doubt on Texas’s prospects, and his primary reason for doing so was that “the Mexicans it is said are preparing to invade Texas during this winter.”158 In his second report, the following day, Morfit emphasized the vast imbalance of power that Texas faced vis-à-vis Mexico, noting that the Mexican population was “about 8 million” and that of Texas “between 40 and 50 thousand.” In his view, it could not “be supposed that under ordinary circumstances the issue of this war would remain long undecided.” In closing this second report, Morfit argued that Texas’s “future security must depend more upon the weakness and imbecility of her enemy than upon her own strength.”159

President Jackson seemed to take these findings to heart. Annexation would be definitively off the table, and he even decided to refer the matter of diplomatic recognition to Congress. Jackson’s reasoning for doing so is also telling. As he wrote to Amos Kendall on December 8, 1836, with “the Constitutional power of declaring war being vested in Congress, and [as] the acknowledgment of the Independence of Texas might lead to war with Mexico,” the subject should be referred to that body.160 In a special message to Congress on December 21, Jackson noted that a “premature recognition under these circumstances, if not looked upon as justifiable cause of war, is always liable to be regarded as proof of an unfriendly spirit.” Jackson added that there was, “in appearance at least, an immense disparity of physical force on the side of Mexico.” Thus, Jackson argued, the United States “should still stand aloof and maintain our present attitude.”161 For the time being, Texas was on its own.

After contemplating the matter for two months, Congress would pass a series of resolutions appropriating the funds necessary for the diplomatic recognition of Texas in late February 1837. In his very last day in office, on March 3, Jackson formally recognized the independence of Texas by nominating a chargé d’affaires to the republic.162 Texas would continue to unsuccessfully press for annexation after the inauguration of President Martin Van Buren. A Texas diplomatic official explained the United States’ continued reticence to consider annexation in January 1838 by, among other things, pointing to a fear “of involving this country in a war, in which they are now doubtful whether they would ever be supported by a majority of their own citizens, and which would be at once branded by their enemies at home and abroad as an unjust war, instigated for the very purpose of gaining possession of Texas.”163 Texas would remain a ramshackle independent republic until March 1845, when it would be formally annexed to the United States during the transition period between Presidents John Tyler and James K. Polk. This annexation of Texas would, of course, spark the war with Mexico that Jackson had so feared.

In closing, it is worth reflecting on the sea change observed in the perceptions and behaviors of Andrew Jackson across the two cases. Jackson, as a field commander in the case of Florida, argued that “the whole of East Florida [should be] seized” and that he would happily do it himself. In the course of carrying out the conquest, Jackson also rashly put to death two British subjects for little more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and whose execution, he hoped, would “prove an awful example to the world.” Yet, his behavior as president was strikingly different. In the case of Texas, Jackson characterized the revolution as a “rash and premature act,” decided that his government would maintain “strict neutrality” in the conflict, and urged the US Congress to “stand aloof.” And when he heard that the Texans had captured the Mexican president Santa Anna and were considering putting him to death, he argued vehemently against it. In a letter to Sam Houston on September 4, 1836, Jackson argued that “nothing now could tarnish the character of Texas more than such an act at this late period,” and he urged his friend to “preserve [Santa Anna’s] life and the character you have won . . . this is what I think, true wisdom and humanity dictates.”164 And this was Santa Anna, who had, just a few months earlier, ordered the slaughter of hundreds of Texan (and American) revolutionaries at the Alamo and Goliad. It is difficult to imagine a more fitting illustration of the difference between the “view from the capital” and the “view from the frontier” discussed in chapter 1.

This chapter has presented comparative case studies of successful and failed inadvertent expansion by the United States in Florida and Texas. Both cases strongly support the theory of inadvertent expansion presented in chapter 1. First, the case of Florida showed how unauthorized peripheral expansion is enabled by a lack of adequate control by the capital over its agents on the periphery—that it is a manifestation of a principal-agent problem. Second, both cases support the argument that unauthorized peripheral expansion places constraints on leaders in the capital that make a simple withdrawal significantly more difficult. In both Florida and Texas, peripheral expansion sunk the costs of acquisition for leaders in the capital and generated domestic political pressure in favor of acquisition. And third, in both cases the decision of whether to accept or reject the territorial fait accompli was crucially determined by expectations of the geopolitical risk associated with doing so. In the case of Florida, the Monroe administration deftly retained partial control of the Spanish province, without fear that this would lead to war with Spain. In the case of Texas, President Jackson feared that accepting the Texan fait accompli would mean war with Mexico, which led to its rejection. Across the two cases, what I referred to in chapter 1 as the “view from the capital” and the “view from the frontier” was powerfully illustrated—showing Andrew Jackson to be the hot-blooded frontier agent in the case of Florida but the cool-headed leader in Washington in the case of Texas.