Abstract
In early territorial Florida, two political groups emerged with allegiances to national presidential leaders. One group was led by Richard Keith Call and other friends of Andrew Jackson.1 The second was led by Joseph M. White, friend of James Monroe and the Adamses. As a symbol of these early antebellum allegiances, Andrew Jackson’s “cronies” in Florida occasionally visited Jackson’s home, the Hermitage, near Nashville, Tennessee. For similar reason, Joseph M. White journeyed to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1831, to pay homage to his presidential circle by attending a Harvard commencement. Both John Quincy Adams and Charles Francis Adams thought it opportune to visit the Whites in their temporary quarters in the Tremont House, Cambridge.2 Although citizens of a territory could not vote in presidential elections, Florida was strategically very important because of unsettled conditions in Spanish colonies nearby. Besides, patronage and internal improvement appropriations were at stake, and as delegate to Congress, White was the only official spokesman for the territory in Washington.
Recommended Citation
Dibble, Ernest F.
(1996)
""We Could Have Sent the Old Barbarian Back to the Hermitage": Joseph M. White and Anti-Jacksonianism in Territorial Florida, 1821-1839,"
Florida Historical Quarterly: Vol. 75:
No.
2, Article 5.
Available at:
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol75/iss2/5
