On the third of March, 1822, congress established a territorial government for both the Floridas as one territory. The first governor under the territorial organization was W. P. Duval of Kentucky, who had represented a district of that state in congress, and who was the original of Washington Irving’s Ralph Ringwood. He resided, temporarily, in Pensacola, where the legislative council of thirteen, appointed by the President, held its first session. It had hardly begun its work, however, when the yellow fever breaking out compelled an adjournment to the Fifteen-mile house, before mentioned, where the Florida statutes of 1822 were enacted. One of them illustrates the vice or virtue there may be in a name. The title of “An Act for the Benefit of Insolvent Debtors,” was misprinted in the laws of the session so as to read: “An Act for the Relief of Insolent Debtors.” The error destroyed its utility, and no man, it is said, as long as it remained on the statute book, ever invoked the relief of its provisions. The limit assigned to these historical sketches has now been reached. The space that intervenes between the visit of the luckless Narvaez to Pensacola bay and the establishment of the territorial government of Florida embraces a period of nearly three hundred years. The changes and shifting scenes which, during that period, marked the history of the settlements on its shores, stand in contrast with the persistency of the arbitrary boundary line of the Perdido, established by the mutual consent of the Spanish and French in the early years of the eighteenth century. Disturbed by the English dominion for twenty years, it was restored by the Spanish, and finally confirmed in 1822 by the act of congress establishing a territorial government for the Floridas. In 1820 the constitutional convention of Alabama, in anticipation of the ratification of the Spanish treaty, memorialized congress to embrace West Florida within the boundaries of that state. The memorial enforced the measure with all those obvious arguments which come to the mind when it turns to the subject. But they were silenced, as if by the imperious decree of fate that the Perdido boundary should be, and forever remain, a monument of d’ Arriola’s diligence in reaching the Gulf coast three years before d’ Iberville. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Historical Sketches of Colonial Florida, by Richard L. Campbell