Papers of John Adams, volume 20
By some intelligencies lately from Europe, it is said that
Great-Britain is zealously endeavoring to repossess the Floridas; and I have no doubt of
the fact, because her interest is greatly concerned in the event, and in general she has
seen it better than any other Nation.1
Her frozen possessions to the North are not calculated for Caribean 400 supplies. West-florida is very much so; and the possession of the Navigation of the
Mississippi would secure an exclusive right to the advantages of the immense
agricultures of the west; and which would encrease by that event. The posts that Nation
keeps contrary to her engagements with America, is the link which is intended to connect
her power from the North to the South; and the Bourbon scheme, which aimed at deriving
abundance from a wilderness, is now reviving with the felling axe and hoe. If care is
not taken that enterprising and Commercial Nation will generate another Revolution in
America. Independence west of the Mountains would draw one half of the Eastern
Inhabitants. The result taken from the Union, and put in the scale of Great-Britain,
would greatly compensate her late losses. I take it for certain that an arrangement so
fatal will be defeated, by alarming the Spanish Nation with the formidability of such a
neighbor. To me it appears one of the most important objects that Nation has latterly
contemplated; And success will be equally productive of Wealth, power and revenge. As I
shall be very much obliged to you for your opinion upon this subject, and of the
detention of the Posts, I have taken the liberty of addressing this scrawl, being with
the highest respect & Esteem, / Sir, / Your Most Obt.
Servt.
P.S.
Mr. John Gibbons, in point of
character and ability, is qualified to be the Accountant in this state for the United
States.2
RC (Adams Papers).
At the Nootka Sound conflict’s peak, U.S. newspapers reported
that Vincente Manuel de Zéspedes y Velasco, Spanish royal governor of Florida, was
improving the military fortifications of St. Augustine with the expectation that
“England will make a bold push to regain those valuable provinces.” Although press
reports exaggerated several scenarios of possible European aggression, there was a
kernel of truth to some of the accounts. William Pitt, for example, met secretly with
Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda to discuss the possibility of Britain’s
gaining control over Spain’s colonial possessions, including Cuba, Florida, and
portions of the Mississippi Valley (vol. 17:301; Pennsylvania Mercury, 6
July; New-York Packet, 8 July; Connecticut Courant, 12 July;
ANB
; William Ray
Manning, The Nootka Sound Controversy, Washington, D.C.,
1905, p. 412–414).
Savannah auctioneer John Gibbons (1758–1814), who was an auditor
of Georgia’s public accounts in 1782, did not earn a federal post (“Historical News
and Notices,” Journal of Southern History, 24:137 [Feb.
1958]; Charles C. Jones Jr., The History of Georgia, 2
vols., N.Y., 1883, 2:521; Thomas Gamble Jr., A History of the
City Government of Savannah, Ga., from 1790 to 1901, Savannah, Ga., 1900, p.
494).