Diplomacy: Acquiring Florida

• Diplomacy is the art of conducting negotiations with other countries.
• People who engage in diplomacy are called diplomats.

Florida

• After acquiring Louisiana through diplomacy, President Jefferson turned his attention to Florida.
• Spain had colonized Florida in the late 1500s.
• By the 1800s, Florida had a diverse population including Seminole Indians, Spanish colonists, English traders, and runaway slaves.
• In 1804, Jefferson sent two diplomats to Spain to buy Florida, but Spain refused.
• Many white Americans in the Southeast wanted the United States to take over Florida.
• Slave owners in Georgia were angry because slaves sometimes ran away to Florida and were accepted by the Seminole Indians.
• White landowners in Georgia were upset by Seminole raids on their lands.
• Over the next few years, Spain's control of Florida weakened because the Spanish government could not stop the raids on farms in Georgia by Seminoles and ex-slaves.
• Escaped slaves were accepted into Seminole Indian communities and often intermarried.
• Chief Abraham was a Seminole leader of both African and Seminole heritage.

Andrew Jackson Invades Florida

• In 1818, President James Monroe sent Andrew Jackson to Georgia with orders to end Seminole raids.
• Jackson was permitted to chase raiding Seminoles into Florida but did not have authority to invade the Spanish colony.
• Despite his orders, Jackson marched into Florida with 1,700 troops.
• Over the next few weeks, Jackson captured nearly every military post in the colony.
• Jackson arrested, tried, and executed two British subjects for stirring up Indian attacks and replaced the Spanish governor with an American.
• Jackson later said that he was sorry that he did not execute the governor.
• Spain demanded that Jackson be called back to Washington and punished for his illegal invasion.
• Fearing war, Monroe asked his cabinet for advice, and all but one member advised him to remove Jackson and apologize to Spain.
• Secretary of State John Quincy Adams advised Monroe to send a blunt message to Spain to either govern Florida properly or get out.
• Fearful of war, Spain agreed to yield Florida to the United States in 1819.
• The United States agreed to pay off $5 million in settlers' claims against Spain and to honor Spain's longtime claim to Texas.
• One newspaper declared that Texas was "worth ten Floridas."
• The Senate ratified the Florida treaty two days after it was signed.

Texas

• Many Americans felt that Texas was valuable and well-suited for growing cotton, the South's most valuable cash crop.
• Many southerners hoped that Texas would become part of the United States.

Americans Come to Texas

• The Texas tale begins with Moses Austin, a banker and businessman who dreamed of starting an American colony in Spanish Texas.
• In 1821, Spanish officials granted Austin a huge tract of land, but when Moses died suddenly, his son Stephen took over his father's dream.
• Stephen arrived in Texas just as Mexico declared independence from Spain.
• Now Texas was a part of Mexico.
• Mexican officials agreed to let Austin start his colony under certain conditions.
• Austin agreed to choose only moral and hardworking settlers.
• Settlers promised to become Mexican citizens and join the Catholic Church.
• By 1827, Austin had attracted 297 families, known as the "Old Three Hundred," to Texas.
• Stephen Austin founded a colony in Texas in 1822.

Rising Tensions

• The success of Austin's colony started a rush of settlers to Texas.
• By 1830, there were about 25,000 Americans in Texas, compared to 4,000 Tejanos, or Texans of Mexican descent, consequently tensions rose between the two groups.
• The Americans were used to governing themselves and resented taking orders from Mexican officials.
• They were unhappy that official documents had to be in Spanish, a language most of them were unwilling to learn.
• Many were slaveholders who were upset when Mexico outlawed slavery in 1829.
• The Tejanos were unhappy that many American settlers had come to Texas illegally.
• Many new immigrants showed little respect for Mexican culture and had no intention of becoming citizens.
• The Mexican government responded by closing Texas to further American immigration and sent troops to Texas to assert its authority and enforce the immigration laws.

The Texans Rebel

• Americans in Texas resented the actions of the Mexican government.
• Hotheads, led by William Travis, began calling for revolution.
• Cooler heads, led by Stephen Austin, asked the Mexican government to reopen Texas to immigration and make it a separate Mexican state so that Texans could run their own affairs.