In the evening of the day on which Jackson’s communication was written, and within a few hours after it was received by Masot, Fort San Carlos was invested by the American army. On the night of the twenty-fifth, batteries were established in favorable positions within three hundred and eighty-five yards of the fort, though the work was interrupted by the Spanish guns. Before the American batteries replied, Jackson, in his anxiety to spare the effusion of blood, sent Masot, under a flag of truce, another demand to surrender, accompanied by a representation of the futility, if not the folly, of further resistance. The refusal of the demand was followed by the batteries and the fort opening upon each other. The firing continued until evening, when a flag from the fort invited a parley, which resulted in a truce until the following day, the twenty-seventh, when, at eight o’clock in the morning, articles of capitulation were signed. Such was Masot’s defense to “the last extremity,” and such the fruit of Jackson’s expostulation with his fiery but feeble antagonist. The military features of the capitulation were that the Spanish surrender should be made with the honors of war, drums beating, and flags flying, during the march from the gate of the fort to the foot of the glacis, where the arms were to be stacked; the garrison to be transported to Havana; and their rights of property, to the last article, strictly respected. But, as in the case of General Campbell’s and Governor Chester’s surrender, in 1781, to Galvez, there was a political aspect to the capitulation of Masot. In Jackson’s despatch to Calhoun, Secretary of war, he says of the capitulation: “The articles, with but one condition, amount to a complete cession to the United States, of that portion of the Floridas hitherto under the government of Don José Masot.” The condition alluded to was, that the province should be held by the United States until Spain could furnish a sufficient military force to execute the obligations of existing treaties. Having accepted the cession of West-Florida to the United States, Jackson further assumed the authority of constituting a provisional government for the conquered province. He appointed one of his officers, Colonel King, civil and military governor; he extended the revenue laws of the United States over the country; appointed another of his officers, Captain Gadsden, collector of the port of Pensacola, with authority to enforce those laws; declared what civil laws should be enforced, and provided for the preservation of the archives, as well as for the care and protection of what had been the property of the Spanish crown, but now, in the General’s conception, become the property of the United States.