How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [43]
with a party of about 30 men, with colors flying and horns sounding, marched from the neighborhood of the line of demarcation between this territory [Mississippi] and West Florida … against the fort of Baton Rouge.… They arrived on the following morning about daylight near the fort. The Spanish commandant … had posted a piquet of 18 or 20 men, who hailed the party as they approached. They immediately answered by a volley from their rifles, which dispersed the Spaniards, two of whom were observed to fall.
Spanish Florida, 1783-1810
The newspaper account reported that the Kemper party then returned to its headquarters at St. Francisville, without explanation of why they retreated. Instead, the account quoted, in its entirety, a broadside that the Kempers had posted at points along the way.
The posting spoke of “the despotism under which we have long groaned,” and their resolve “to throw off the galling yoke of tyranny, and become free men, by declaring ourselves a free and independent people.” The message closely resembled the Declaration of Independence, though at no point did it say they sought to join the United States. Nevertheless, their declaration raised Spanish eyebrows. Earlier that year, President Thomas Jefferson had signed the Mobile Act, stating that the 1803 Louisiana Purchase included West Florida. But Jefferson also stated that, because of the ambiguity of the document defining the Louisiana Purchase, along with the ambiguity of land transfers between Spain and France, he would not assert American claims militarily.
Although Kemper and his brothers were not in cahoots with the U.S. government, weren’t they freedom fighters nevertheless? Probably not, despite their rousing posters. One month after their attack at Baton Rouge, New York’s Republican Watch Tower revealed that “Mr. [Reuben] Kemper, the leader of the association, was for some time in the service of Mr. Smith, of Tennessee, to whom he became indebted to a considerable amount. Being prosecuted, he fled to Florida, where, at the head of thirty men, he raised the standard of revolt.”
The details were actually somewhat different. Mr. Smith was John Smith, a resident of Ohio—in fact, a U.S. senator from Ohio. He owned land in West Florida, which he paid the Kemper brothers to manage. Smith’s absentee ownership was in violation of Spanish policy, but Spanish policy was laxly enforced (especially for a U.S. senator).2 The debt mentioned in the news account resulted from Smith’s providing the Kempers with dry goods that they were to sell to local residents. When the business failed, Reuben Kemper was deeply in debt to Smith, but he did not flee to West Florida, since that is where he lived and where the litigation took place. The judgment in favor of Smith resulted in efforts by West Florida authorities to evict the Kempers from Smith’s land. These efforts became increasingly violent confrontations that, not unlike a barroom brawl, began to involve additional people.
Spain’s governor of West Florida viewed the Kempers as ne’er-do-wells who attracted bandits and a few otherwise innocent bystanders. He thus sought to isolate them from their followers by pardoning all those who had been arrested during the eviction confrontations, with the exception of the Kempers. The policy succeeded, as evidenced by the fact that the Kempers’ response—the 1804 attack on Baton Rouge—attracted only some thirty men.
What, meanwhile, did the U.S. government think, since it claimed this region? William Claiborne, governor of the neighboring Louisiana Territory, reported to Secretary of State James Madison that the Kemper incident was “nothing more than a riot, in which a few uninformed, ignorant men had taken part.”3 Madison, in turn, repudiated the Kempers’ actions and vowed to arrest them if they entered American territory.
But what the federal government actually thought turned out to be less clear. When the Kemper brothers, seeking to evade capture by the West Florida militia (composed primarily of American immigrants), fled into American territory, they were