![]() ![]() Augustine were unacquainted with the wooded terrain of Florida. When the war broke out, the regular garrison troops of St. They received their clothing, provisions, and one Shilling a day, but provided their own horses. The rangers were inhabitants of East Florida and refugees from Georgia and the Carolinas. They were organized in 1776 and ultimately consisted of some 130 men, organized in four companies and engaged to serve for three years. Of all the provincial troops, the East Florida Rangers were the most active. In addition to the British regular army, Florida locals also took up arms against the rebelling colonists. Portraits of Rutledge, Middleton, and Heyward. Augustine burned effigies in the plaza of revolutionary leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock. Likewise, the colony was dependent on English trade with little internal economic growth of its own. Its population was newly arrived in America and had no history or experience of the growing democratic culture in the other colonies. Florida remained a loyalist stronghold throughout the American Revolution. A decade of conflict over economic policy and control, beginning with the Stamp Act crisis in 1765, led to alienation among a rapidly growing population (over 2.5 million by 1776) which was increasingly of non-British origin. The French & Indian War changed the relationship between the northern colonies and their mother country. But storm clouds were brewing to the north. Despite its youth, the colony was showing promise of becoming a flourishing and productive area. Commerce and trade were growing, including cattle ranching, shipping, and plantation agriculture, like Andrew Turnbull's indigo operations in New Smyrna. New houses were built and old Spanish houses were renovated and expanded, most notably with second stories being added (almost all construction during the Spanish occupation was single story). Augustine nearly doubled from what it was in the Spanish period. Indian hostilities had, for the most part, ended, and there had been peace in Florida for over ten years. There was much to celebrate in English Florida. Under the able administration of Governor James Grant, 2,856,000 acres were granted in East Florida. To recruit Southerners, slavery was allowed. Each pioneer settler was given 100 acres of land and 50 acres per family member. Former British soldiers were eligible for special grants. Augustine in East Florida and Pensacola in West Florida. While the Privy Council in London granted land titles, pioneer families could gain land grants at the two colonial capitals, St. ![]() The land, however, had to be settled within ten years with one resident per 100 acres. The London Board of Trade advertised 20,000 acre lots to any group willing to enter Florida. Expansion, blocked to the west, moved south.Įngland had a strong desire to develop Florida trade. Colonial pressure for land found a new outlet. This promoted Florida as a new area of British colonization. To calm Indian unrest on the frontiers, the English Crown Proclamation of 1763 outlawed settlement west of the Appalachians. This exodus temporarily depopulated the peninsula, but Florida was on the eve of the greatest population explosion since its initial colonization 200 years earlier. When Florida was officially transferred to the English, most of the Spanish residents chose to depart for Cuba. Augustine was still a garrison community with fewer than five hundred houses. Great Britain now controlled all of North America east of the Mississippi River. The Treaty of Paris ending the war left Canada to the English, returned several Caribbean islands to the French, and traded Havana and Manila back to Spain in exchange for the province of Florida. Spain also lost Manila in the Spanish Philippines, a transshipment point of the wealth of Asia. ![]() This was Spain’s principal seaport and administrative headquarters for much of Spanish America. They had also stormed and occupied Havana, Cuba. The armies of Great Britain had conquered Canada and several French-held islands in the Caribbean. Great Britain and her American colonies had won against the combined forces of France and Spain. In 1763, the Seven Years’ War (or the French and Indian War, as it was called in America) came to an end. Ironically, after all the fighting in Georgia and Florida, all it took was a signature on a piece of paper in Europe to take Florida away from Spain. ![]()
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