Andrew Jackson had signaled his interest in annexing Florida for many years. In October and November 1814, during the
Creek War, Jackson repeatedly angled for permission from President
James Monroe to capture
Pensacola from the Spanish; Monroe responded too late to forestall Jackson's request, writing with a hard no on October 21, when Jackson was already on the road, arriving at the gates of
Fort Barrancas on November 7; "given the Virginian's record of support for
Mathews,
Gutiérrez, and the West Florida rebels, and his later convenient lapses of attention as president and commander in chief during Jackson's second invasion of Florida in 1818, one has to be suspicious." (In short, he took Pensacola in 1814 but they made him give it back.) Two years later, in 1816, Monroe "reassured Jackson...that the transfer of Florida from Spain to the United States was inevitable," in the course of time, with diplomatic talks ongoing. Simultaneously, the empires based across the Atlantic signaled their "acquiescence, however reluctant" to American adventurism; Spain's long-term strategy was to reallocate forces to secure "the northern boundary of Mexico, hoping for some restraint on American recognition of Latin rebels in return for ceding Florida to the United States."
West and
East Florida were backwater provinces of the
Spanish Empire, populated by Indigenous natives and refugees from displaced tribes, fugitive slaves (some of whom had escaped there as early as the
American Revolutionary War; the most Florida-naturalized early arrivals were sometimes termed
maroons or Exiles), mixed-race people, and a few thousand settlers in the capitals of
Pensacola and
St. Augustine. Part of Jackson's motive for conquest was that he had unfinished business with
Red Stick survivors of the
Creek War of 1813–1814. Many Red Stick warriors and their families had been killed in the
battles at Tallusahatchee and
Tohopeka, but a number of Red Stick refugees settled just beyond the southern border of Alabama in the Florida lands. Eventually the increasing population of white settlers in the area and the combined population of Creek refugees, fugitive slaves called "maroons," and a developing community known to history as the
Seminoles were tangling with each other across the border, raiding cattle and horses, and retaliating in turn. The immediately precipitating incident of Jackson's
blitzkrieg action through Florida in the spring of 1818 was the
Scott massacre, the slaughter of U.S. soldiers and their families on the
Apalachicola River. The actual commander of U.S. troops in the south at the time was
Edmund P. Gaines, but he had been ordered to
Amelia Island in the Atlantic Ocean on the far side of Florida near the Georgia border, so Jackson took the initiative to invade without clearing it with any superior officer or the federal government. On January 8, 1818, he wrote James Monroe stating his goal of seizing East Florida and asking that the government give its approval with a wink and a nod in the form of a letter from John Rhea. Jackson's actions, while ultimately defended by the executive branch, including President Monroe and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, were clearly both illegal and
insubordinate. Among many other "irregularities," Jackson's orders were to "call on the governors of Georgia and Alabama for militia," but he ultimately assembled a force composed largely of Tennessee volunteers who were veterans of his Creek War campaign. With these loyal followers at his back, he wrote John Coffee, he had a hedge against a possible Georgian "mutiny" against his command, which he could then "put down, & drive into the Gulf all the Indians and adherents be them who they may." (By adherents Jackson meant Blacks, Brits, and Spaniards.) Jackson's circle was already congratulating itself in July 1818 when
Robert Butler, Jackson's ward, and aide, and soon to be the acting American governor of East Florida, toasted at a dinner to "The Floridas—Ours, without 16 years negotiation." on February 3, reprinted
Alexandria Gazette, February 18, 1818 In the words of historians Jeanne T. and David S. Heidler, Jackson's capture of Pensacola and Spanish forts were "not only beyond the scope of Jackson's orders but explicitly prohibited by them. Quite obviously Jackson had made war on a foreign power without congressional approval." During the course of the raid, troops led by Jackson sacked and burned at least 300 houses of Seminole and Black families along
Lake Miccosukee, and on the right bank of the Apalachicola. They also demolished the black refugee settlements near the
Suwannee River (estimated population 400), "indiscriminately" killing, detaining, and generally terrorizing blacks, Seminoles, and Creek people along the way. Jackson's first-phase defense of the invasion was "ambiguity." Stenberg concludes that Jackson's invasion of Florida was not just self-authorized and premeditated but that he intended to force the annexation of Florida on the Monroe administration. Per Stenberg, Jackson says as much in letters of June 1818 to James Monroe and August 1818 to Secretary of State
John C. Calhoun. Jackson's awareness of the existence of laws of war and the need for both justification and jurisdiction is found in his message to
Washington that his capture of the Spanish fort at St. Mark's was warranted because "hostile Indians threatened the garrison, the Spaniards were too weak to defend it, and the Americans needed it as a supply depot during the war." Immediately before departing for the invasion, Jackson had written to Monroe saying that if he wanted to approve the capture of Florida to please send a letter through
John Rhea, who had served in Congress as a Representative from 1803 until 1815, and again 1817 to 1823; but "neither the evidence nor anyone's behavior in the months that followed indicates that Jackson ever received a direct answer from Monroe or an indirect response from Monroe through John Rhea that would have altered the instructions in the December 16 orders." As historian
James Schouler told it in 1896, "Jackson's January letter, it is perceived, indicates on the general's part a personal wish to carry the war into Spain precisely as he afterwards did. Heedless, perhaps, of the duplicity, of the lawlessness to which such a course must have committed the responsible Executive of the United States, Jackson urged Monroe to drop only a sly hint, and in sixty days the Floridas would be ours. The secret channel indicated was through John Rhea, better known to statesmen of the day as 'Johnny Rhea,' — a member of Congress for many years from Tennessee, a native of Ireland, a man never of much reputation, who is remembered in history only as one of Jackson's constant parasites." However, "Monroe never read nor reflected upon Jackson's January letter at all until after Pensacola had fallen." Letters written by Monroe in both 1818 (to Jackson) and 1827 (to Calhoun) both state this, and Monroe's claim is validated by J. Q. Adams' contemporaneous journal entries. The journal of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams shows "the capture of Pensacola was an entire surprise to the Cabinet, Calhoun included, and to the President, who had summoned them for counsel." Beginning in December 1818, Jackson's communications team began suggesting that perhaps it was "Monroe's failure to answer his January letter" that was at fault, and from "the General may have inferred sanction of his proposal," but historian Richard Sternberg deems this argument "as unsound as it was improper." That the feeble excuse of "misunderstanding" was untenable was also the holding of the Monroe administration, which "parsed the orders to show that his reading of them made no sense. How could Jackson argue, Monroe asked Calhoun in exasperation, that Gaines's orders did not apply to him? If that had been so, Jackson had not possessed authority even to invade Florida. Calhoun's December 26 orders had only told Jackson to repair to the border and, if necessary, request militia reinforcement." Meanwhile, as Monroe and the cabinet met daily to manage the crisis, "Calhoun remained intractable about the event itself, especially its author. He argued that Jackson had set a dangerous precedent by disobeying orders, particularly by making war on his own authority, and he must be publicly reprimanded." Calhoun was consistent in this, and others may have agreed with him, but publicly holding Jackson to account and charging him with making war illegally and on his own authority diminished both the authority of Madison's government and eroded the advantage he had won for American negotiators in the ongoing talks for what became the
Adams–Onís Treaty. In 2008, a letter from Andrew Jackson to Rachel Jackson, written just south of
Hartford, Georgia, on February 19, 1818, was sold at auction. The letter concluded, "P.S. Preserve with care the letter of Mr. John Rhea which I enclose. A.J." This led historian Daniel Feller to conclude that "there really was a letter—some letter—from Johnny Rhea." However, this "absolutely crucial letter—one that sanctioned a campaign of conquest[was] unremembered by the man who sent it (until he was heavily prompted), denied on his deathbed by the man who purportedly authorized it, mysteriously burnt by the man who received it, and unmentioned by anyone for a dozen years after the fact, years during which the entire history of Jackson's Florida campaign was replayed in the Cabinet, in Congress, and in the press, over and over and over again." The predominant theory on this is that "Rhea wrote Jackson a string of surviving letters from Washington around this time, all offering assurances of Monroe's entire confidence and friendship in the wake of a recent dispute between Jackson and the War Department over protocol and the chain of command. The purport of such soothing words could be easily misunderstood. Probably Rhea said something vague in this letter that Jackson interpreted, or misinterpreted, or chose to interpret, as a license from Monroe to do as he pleased in Florida. That would also explain why Jackson later destroyed the letter. Jackson's campaign was ferociously controversial almost from the start, and it is hardly conceivable that he would, at any time, no matter who asked him, destroy the one piece of evidence that incontrovertibly vindicated him. Unless, of course, as he later realized when re-reading it, it didn't." As for Monroe's conduct, Feller holds deems him culpable: "Monroe did not give the tipoff, but neither did he rebuke Jackson or relieve him on the spot. Instead he (either foolishly or cleverly) misplaced [Jackson's January 18] letter." == 1819 investigation ==