How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [44]
For the next six years, the brothers tended to their own affairs. When Reuben surfaced again in December 1810, the situation had clearly changed. Baltimore’s Federal Republican reported:
Col. [Reuben] Kemper, in service of the [Republic of West Florida] convention, was on the Alabama River with 340 men, where he will probably remain until he receives a reinforcement.… We learn from St. Francisville that the Legislature assembled there last week under the new constitution … that in consequence of dispatches from Col. Kemper, a detachment of 1500 men (with a suitable train of artillery) under the command of Col. Kirkland, marched from St. Francisville for Pensacola.
How had Reuben Kemper gone from being a debtor corralling a gang of bandits to a leadership position in a rebellion against Spain? Two underlying elements contributed to his success: deteriorating relations with Spain and political uncertainty in the United States. One deteriorating relationship involved the United States’ need for unrestricted access to the sea via the Gulf of Mexico. After the Louisiana Purchase, Spain and the United States quarreled over the tariffs charged to American vessels at Baton Rouge and at Mobile (the mouth of the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers). These tensions heightened three years after the Kemper incident, when President Jefferson signed the 1807 Embargo Act, prohibiting trade between the United States and any other nation. This extraordinary ban resulted from frustration with France and England’s refusal to recognize American neutrality. Both nations, then at war, had repeatedly seized U.S. ships engaged in trade with their respective enemy. The act, which sought to curtail all trade until the war ended, aimed to hasten that end by withholding American supplies. To prevent smuggling, the Embargo Act also called for a blockade of Spain’s West Florida ports. Spain was not pleased.
Spain had other problems that also contributed to the change in West Florida. Its Latin American colonies, following in the footsteps of the United States, had begun to seek independence, most notably under the leadership of Simón Bolívar. With its position in the world so uncertain, Spain closed immigration from the United States to West Florida. Even American relatives of West Florida citizens were prohibited from entering the province. The immigration restrictions created widespread animosity among the citizens of West Florida toward the nation to which they had previously been loyal.
Uncertainty on the American side also contributed to Reuben Kemper’s reversal of fortune. This uncertainty emanated from a man whose involvement with West Florida is all but forgotten, but whose duel that killed Alexander Hamilton is not: Aaron Burr.
Burr, who had been vice president during Jefferson’s first administration, never stood trial for the duel, but his reputation was in tatters. He subsequently traveled a great deal, often in Louisiana, in Mexico (where he had leased 40,000 acres that were being cultivated by armed “farmers”), and in West Florida. Burr’s travels raised American suspicions, particularly in light of meetings he had held with the U.S. military commander in Louisiana, James Wilkinson. Though a highly talented general in the Revolution, Wilkinson later negotiated with Spain as a private citizen, seeking privileged navigation for Kentucky along the Mississippi River. Many in the Jefferson administration now wondered whether, in the event of war with Spain, the two men were conspiring to coordinate Wilkinson’s forces and Burr’s “farmers” to separate the Louisiana Purchase, Burr’s Mexican lands, and all or some of West Florida into their own country. Wilkinson ultimately revealed this plot, though questions regarding his credibility