The action was based on the Louisiana claim, which
had not been relinquished since the purchase, and on the danger to the
adjacent parts of the United States in the present crisis.
A secret resolution of Congress at the same time authorised the President
to take possession of the remaining Floridas, if England showed a
disposition to seize the land as an aggressive act. Since Spain had come
under the control of France, this action was not an improbability. But
aside from temporarily occupying Pensacola, the British made no attempt to
take the Floridas during the War of 1812, although rumours of that kind
were frequent. Simultaneous with the end of the war came the restoration
of Spanish authority in the Old World and its threatened restoration in
the New. In this chaotic condition of Spanish affairs, President Monroe
ordered a band of freebooters to be driven out of Amelia Island, in East
Florida, at the mouth of the St. Mary's River, near the Georgia boundary.
The troops employed in this work remained on the island, notwithstanding
Spanish protest. General Jackson, being ordered to subdue the Seminole
Indians in Florida, who were harbouring fugitive slaves, invaded the
Spanish territory, cleaned it up in the true Jacksonian manner, hanged two
Englishmen, and "omitted nothing that characterises a haughty conqueror,"
as Onis, the Spanish Minister at Washington, protested.
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