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minimized or totally avoided any reference to the Walton War, seeking to suppress the fact that the North Carolina militia was once led into battle against fellow countrymen from Georgia. One multivolume history of Georgia informed its readers, “For several years a bone of contention between Georgia and North Carolina was the matter of locating the 35th parallel of north latitude, recognized as the boundary line between the two states. In 1806, surveyors representing both states …” Even though 1806 was only two years after Brittain’s foray, this highly detailed history of the state simply skipped it.9 On the North Carolina side, even historians focused solely on the state’s western end ignored the event. One such historian acknowledged the Walton War but wrote of it:

Georgia, about December, 1803, created a county within this territory and called it Walton County. Georgia naturally attempted to exercise jurisdiction over what it really believed was its own territory, and North Carolina as naturally resisted such attempts. Consequently, there were great dissentions, the said dissentions having produced many riots, affrays, assaults, batteries, woundings and imprisonments. On January 13, 1806 …10

In both instances, the transition to 1806 leaves Brittain’s 1804 foray in the narrative’s dust.

In 1971 Georgia suddenly renewed its boundary dispute with North Carolina, though modifying its claim. It also took up a similar dispute with Tennessee. The North Carolina dispute was triggered to maintain consistency in Georgia’s boundary claim with Tennessee. That dispute had been triggered by Georgia’s need for access to the Tennessee River to help supply water to rapidly growing Atlanta, rising in the wake of the civil rights movement as the preeminent city of the New South. Reflecting that change, Atlanta’s leading African American newspaper followed the boundary challenge with equal concern. “Georgia Rep. Larry Thomason … chairman of the Georgia Boundary Commission, contends the state’s present northern boundary is about a mile south of where it should be,” Atlanta’s Daily World reported in September. Noting that the U.S. Geodetic Survey had announced a meeting to be held with representatives of the three states, the article continued, “Georgia has accepted the invitation and is waiting for responses from North Carolina and Tennessee.”

Apparently, Georgia is still waiting. No boundary adjustments have ensued. What has ensued, however, is an awakened awareness of the basis for the conflict, and with it the name of James Brittain has begun to reappear in historical accounts.

LOUISIANA, MISSISSIPPI

REUBEN KEMPER

From Zero to Hero?

The outrages of the Kempers a few years ago are not yet forgotten. That family has on the recent occasion displayed its accustomed contempt for the laws of society, and was very active in … erecting Florida into a government independent alike of Spain and the United States.

—PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY AURORA, MARCH 3, 1811

Why is the Museum of the Republic of West Florida located two states away in Louisiana? The answer has a lot to do with Reuben Kemper, an American immigrant to Spain’s province of West Florida.

After the Revolution, what had been a trickle of Americans migrating to West Florida turned into a flood. Reuben, Nathan, and Samuel Kemper moved there from Virginia around 1800. Like many Americans, they were attracted by the fact that Spain made it easier for the average person to acquire land than did the United States. In the United States, to obtain title to land one had to have the money to purchase it. In Spanish West Florida, one could apply for title to land, and ultimately obtain that title, simply by living on the land and cultivating it—and by professing loyalty to Spain.1 The policy aimed to discourage absentee land speculators and reward individual productivity. To the extent that it was enforced, Spain’s policy resulted in an industrious—and loyal—population.

The Kempers, however, were not happy campers. In 1804 the Natchez Herald reported that Reuben and his brothers,