Castillo de San Marcos (page 34/35; courtesy of Florida Department State, Division of Historical Resources)

The Patriot War in East Florida (1812-1814) was a military action by a private army to sabotage Spanish rule in East Florida and have the colony join the United States. Spanish East Florida posed problems for the U.S. for several reasons:

• Spain was allied with Great Britain in the war against Napoleon Bonaparte. As tensions grew between the U.S. and Great Britain, Americans feared that Great Britain would use East Florida in plans against the U.S.
• Free blacks in East Florida carrying firearms frightened American slaveholders.
• The Spanish port at Fernandina allowed American merchants to bypass the U.S. embargo and unload their cargo in East Florida, then legally transport goods into the United States.
• Enslaved Africans arrived at Amelia Island to be smuggled into the United States after the 1807 U. S. prohibition of the introduction of new slaves.

President James Madison initially supported armed action against East Florida, although in 1795 a similar invading expedition had failed. On March 12, 1812, General George Mathews led a private army of Georgians, who called themselves “Patriots,” across the St. Mary’s River to take control of East Florida. The Patriots did not receive the support they expected from East Florida residents, and Seminoles and their black allies entered the conflict on the side of Spain. U.S. public opinion eventually forced Madison to withdraw official support for the Patriots’ venture in late April. The invaders, however, did not leave East Florida.

The Patriots first captured Fernandina and its port on Amelia Island, then advanced along today’s Intracoastal Waterway as far south as the area of Daytona Beach.

Plantation and farm families fled into the United States or St. Augustine, doubling the population of the town. The Patriots surrounded St. Augustine, but feared the cannon mounted on the old Spanish fortress, Castillo de San Marcos, and did not attack. Meanwhile most slaves remained on the plantations. Some ran away to the Seminoles; Georgian invaders captured others.

By summer the United States declared war on Great Britain, beginning the War of 1812. The Patriots turned their attention from the coastal area toward the interior and occupied Seminole lands in the area of Gainesville. Two years after the incursion, the Patriots retreated from the still-Spanish colony. Although the invasion failed, the Patriot occupation broke the power of the Seminoles living east of the Suwannee River.

The Patriot War devastated the countryside of northern Florida. For years to come, Floridians who survived the Patriot War talked about “the losses of 1812 and 1813.”