Historical Sketches of Colonial FloridaCampbell, Richard L.
History
Historical Sketches of Colonial Florida
Campbell, Richard L.
Florida -- History -- To 1821; Pensacola (Fla.) -- History
Where is that monument? That time and the elements are responsible for
its disappearance is improbable. That it is not even a subject of
tradition suggests the painful suspicion that it was willfully
destroyed; a suggestion which explains the absence of all memorials of
the people who must have died in Pensacola during the nearly twenty
years of the British dominion, and removes from their generation the
reproach of having had no respect for the memory and ashes of their
departed friends and comrades.
An exodus of the English occurred in 1783, as a future page will show,
like that of the Spaniards in 1763 already mentioned. The town was
filled by a new and strange population, whose needs for building
material were urgent, and their reverence for the dead too feeble,
perhaps, to resist the temptation of supplying their wants by plundering
tombs deserted by their natural guardians.
Nature, too, conspired with man in the work of desecration. The
necropolis of the English was at the western extremity of the town,
extending southward and embracing a slight bluff on the Bay. From 1860
to 1870 the water abraded that place, washing out human bones, and thus
compelled the earth to surrender its dead to the sport of the waves.
General Bouquet was born at Rolle, in the canton of Berne, Switzerland.
That he attained so high a rank is evidence of his merit. His masterly
campaign, in 1763, against the Ohio Indians, including the Delawares,
the Shawnees, and Mingoes, as related by the classic pen of Dr.
Kingsford, in his History of Canada,[6] is a most interesting and
striking chapter of our colonial annals. The result was the removal of a
terrible scourge from the western borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia,
and the restoration to liberty and to friends of three hundred white men
and women by a treaty, the terms of which were left to the discretion of
General Bouquet by General Gage. So highly appreciated were his skill
and courage at the time that both colonies honored him with votes of
thanks for his “great services,” which were supplemented by a
complimentary letter from the king.
But the royal letter and his promotion were only Dead Sea apples. Their
result was a voyage in a small vessel to the distant shores of the Gulf
of Mexico, where he was to die in a few months in a little garrison town
with his laurels yet fresh on his brow, away from the friends and that
admiring social circle he had left so recently at Philadelphia. Had he
been the son, or cousin, whether first, second or third, would have
mattered not, of a minister, he would have won a pension and obtained an
enviable appointment.
General Bouquet was not only a distinguished soldier, but he also left
behind him another claim to distinction in the thirty volumes of
manuscript in the British museum, known as the “Bouquet Collection,”
which now calendared is available to the historical student.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Historical Sketches of Colonial Florida — John Shaqi
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