{"id":6409,"date":"2026-07-04T05:04:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T05:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=6409"},"modified":"2026-07-04T05:04:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T05:04:18","slug":"5-things-you-might-not-know-about-floridas-role-in-the-american-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=6409","title":{"rendered":"5 things you might not know about Florida\u2019s role in the American Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"
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George Washington feared Florida. He wrote at least 80 letters warning about threats the peninsula posed during the Revolutionary War. And he authorized five invasions into the \u201c14th colony.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It may be surprising to learn, as we approach\u00a0the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary, that 18th-century Floridians supported the British, fighting a \u201cWar for Dependence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s because theme parks and Florida Man overshadow the state\u2019s storied past, one history professor said.<\/p>\n

Maybe, another professor said, it\u2019s because when we teach American history, we focus on the winners.<\/p>\n

Here are five things to know about\u00a0Florida\u00a0during the Revolutionary War.<\/p>\n

We were young<\/h4>\n

When the war started, Florida had been a British colony for only a dozen years. Northern colonies had a century to develop towns, build businesses, choose leaders and form alliances. But Spain had controlled Florida until 1763, when it traded the territory to the British in exchange for Havana.<\/p>\n

We were 2 colonies<\/h4>\n

Britain\u2019s Florida stretched from the Atlantic Ocean, across the peninsula, to the Mississippi River \u2014 a tract too large, officials decided, to manage as a single parcel.<\/p>\n

Land east of the\u00a0Apalachicola River\u00a0became\u00a0East Florida, the 14th colony. Its capital was\u00a0St. Augustine, which boasted the only stone fortress south of the\u00a0Chesapeake Bay.\u00a0West Florida, the 15th colony, chose\u00a0Pensacola\u00a0as its capital.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

By 1776, about 3,000 British landowners, slaves and loyalists fleeing other colonies lived in\u00a0East Florida, and a few hundred occupied\u00a0West Florida, mostly along the coasts. The two Floridas were combined in 1821 when they joined\u00a0the United States.<\/p>\n

We backed the Brits<\/h4>\n

In the 1770s, Britain had 33 colonies in the Western Hemisphere, from Nova Scotia to Grenada. Only 13 rebelled. When the First Continental Congress invited the Floridas to send delegates, they declined. Floridians wanted British protection and purchasing power.<\/p>\n

Escaped slaves also sought refuge beneath the\u00a0Georgia\u00a0border. And some Native American tribes fought for the British, believing they were less likely to invade their lands than the Patriots.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlorida was known as a place for freedom. It was the wild, wild west. There was no sovereignty here, no bureaucracy,\u201d said\u00a0Richard Byington, who teaches history at the\u00a0University of South Florida. \u201cThis place was full of independent contractors more concerned with their personal interests than in state-making. That\u2019s the origin, you could say, of the Florida Man.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

We pushed away the Patriots<\/h4>\n

George Washington wrote to John Hancock in December 1775, warning the Continental Congress that the British were stockpiling weapons and gunpowder in St. Augustine and might be planning to attack the southern colonies.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0August 1776, on Washington\u2019s orders, more than 2,500 Patriot troops left Savannah for\u00a0St. Augustine\u00a0\u2014 braving swamps, snakes, alligators and mosquitoes, carrying powder kegs above their heads as they swam across rivers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis wasn\u2019t a border skirmish,\u201d said historian\u00a0Roger Smith, author of \u201cThe 14th Colony,\u201d a book about\u00a0Florida\u00a0in the late 1700s. \u201cIt was an invasion of a loyalist colony.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hostile terrain, lack of supplies and poor planning forced the Patriots to turn back.<\/p>\n

The next year, 500 Patriot soldiers marched from\u00a0Georgia\u00a0into\u00a0Florida\u00a0and clashed with\u00a0Thomas Brown, who refused to swear an oath to the \u201cSons of Liberty.\u201d Patriots tied him to a tree, where they scalped, tarred and feathered him. When he recovered, he rallied more than 100 other loyalists and\u00a0Native Americans\u00a0to form the East Florida Rangers. They surprised the invading\u00a0Continental Army\u00a0at a campsite on\u00a0Thomas Creek, near modern-day\u00a0Jacksonville. That was the southernmost skirmish of the war.<\/p>\n

In 1778, about 1,000 British soldiers,\u00a0Native Americans\u00a0and Brown\u2019s Rangers thwarted the last Patriot attack at the Battle of\u00a0Alligator Creek Bridge, also near what is now\u00a0Jacksonville. No one had official uniforms, so soldiers struggled to determine if they were attacking the right people.<\/p>\n

We had to leave<\/h4>\n

In 1781, more than 7,000 Spanish troops invaded West Florida, recapturing it from the British. The Siege of Pensacola \u201ctook up valuable resources that the British could have deployed elsewhere,\u201d said Erin Stewart Mauldin, a professor at USF.<\/p>\n

Two years later, when the revolution ended, the British gave\u00a0East Florida\u00a0back to\u00a0Spain\u00a0in exchange for\u00a0Gibraltar. After 20 years in\u00a0Florida, more than 17,000 British colonists left, boarding ships bound for the\u00a0Bahamas\u00a0and other colonies.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome stayed,\u201d said Smith, the historian. \u201cWe thought we\u2019d be like the Canadians, living peacefully on the other side of the border.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a92026 Tampa Bay Times. Visit\u00a0tampabay.com. Distributed by\u00a0Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/p>\n

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George Washington feared Florida. He wrote at least 80 letters warning about threats the peninsula posed during the Revolutionary War. And he authorized five invasions into the \u201c14th colony.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-florida-news","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n5 things you might not know about Florida\u2019s role in the American Revolution - Orlando Relocation Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=6409\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"5 things you might not know about Florida\u2019s role in the American Revolution - Orlando Relocation Report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"George Washington feared Florida. 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