23 Stars for 2023: TWAM launches “New Flag for Florida”
By Ben Gunter
Just over 200 years ago, in 1821, Florida became US territory. That meant a new flag for Florida – a new flag where (just like the new year that we’re just embarking on) the magic number was 23. There were 23 states in the Union and 23 stars in the flag when Florida changed from Spanish province into US possession.
Changing flags meant big changes for Floridians. As the first officially multicultural territory governed by the US, Florida was home to people whose backgrounds were Spanish, French, Scottish, Irish, cracker, creole, Caribbean, African, and Native American. Rachel Jackson, wife of Governor Andrew Jackson, wrote to her friend Elizabeth Kingsley on 23 July 1821 that Florida possessed “perhaps a greater diversity of character, color, and physiognomy and withal a greater variety and confusion of tongues than any place of the same magnitude could boast since the ancient days of Babylon. The inhabitants all speak Spanish and French. Some speak four or five languages. Such a mixed multitude, you, nor any of us, ever had an idea of.”
This diversity in the new territory raised big questions about equality. The Florida Treaty guaranteed that every inhabitant of the territory would be “admitted to the enjoyment of all the privileges, rights and immunities of the Citizens of the United-States.” But Spanish policies promoted living side by side with Native Floridians – policies you can still see evidence of at Tallahassee’s Mission San Luis. Those policies differed drastically from US plans for Indian Removal. And US law defined slavery as a race-based system where whites owned blacks as chattel, while Spanish law protected basic human rights for all enslaved people and provided wide-ranging opportunities for slaves to earn their freedom. Under the new flag flying over Florida, what would liberty and justice for all look like?
Theater with a Mission (TWAM) is saluting “A New Flag for Florida” with stories which bring you face to face with this big question. One of TWAM’s stories take you to Pensacola, where flag-changing ceremonies took place on 17 July 1821. The near-forgotten story that TWAM retells pits outgoing Spanish Governor José María Callava against incoming US Governor Andrew Jackson. With meaty roles for a “mulatto native of Florida” named Mercedes Vidal and newly-appointed US judge Eligius Fromentin, here’s the plot in a nutshell.
Señora Vidal asks Governor Jackson, who is famous for championing wronged women, to settle a land claim for her – a claim that has been tied up in Spanish courts for years. Governor Jackson orders Gobernador Callava to hand over court documents. Without prior permission from Cuba, Callava declines. Jackson throws Callava in jail. Judge Fromentin, horrified at this highhanded behavior, orders Callava released. Jackson countermands Fromentin’s writ of habeas corpus, leaving Callava incarcerated overnight (where the irrepressible Spaniard throws a prison party for his friends) and highlighting a battle about who has the final say-so in enforcing US law – a battle that is still going on in American public life today.
You can dive deeper into this headline-making story, which TWAM is dramatizing as “The Habeas Corpus Fracas,” even before it steps onstage. Visit www.theaterwithamission.com to read eyewitness accounts from 1821 about the cultural collision that accompanied the change of flags in Pensacola, to see portraits of the colorful characters involved, to hear samples of the songs that Gobernador Callava might have sung during his prison party, and to learn more about Rachel Jackson and Mercedes Vidal, the wronged women at the center of this banner-waving chapter from American history. Twenty-three cheers for Florida!
