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Abstract

In 1793-1794 a motley group of South Carolina and Georgia backcountrymen entered into a conspiracy with French revolutionaries to invade Spanish territories in Louisiana and Florida. Although the plot eventually collapsed under pressure from the French and American governments, support for the expedition and resistance to the planned invasion provide a revealing chapter in the history of the southern backcountry and the Atlantic world. The confluence of multi-national, multi-racial constituencies in the heat of revolutionary fervor is ripe for re-evaluation. The most recent examination of the plot was conducted by Michael Morris, who placed the planned invasion of East Florida within the context of Bertram Wyatt-Brown's analysis of southern honor and violence, which "observed that the southern idea of patriotism was built upon a loyalty to a place, a people, rather than upon abstract concepts of democracy and freedom."1 Notwithstanding the validity of the frontier commitment to expansion, analysis of the events assumes a greater complexity when viewed within the Atlantic migration of revolutionary ideas. Within this expanded framework of regional and global actions, Florida's importance in the scramble for land and position in a world transformed by revolution becomes evident.

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