The following is an excerpt from my book Florida and the American Revolution

Following the British defeat at Yorktown, loyalists began flooding into East Florida. In 1782 alone, over 6,000 refugees fled to East Florida. The assumption in this period was that East Florida would remain part of the British Empire, even though West Florida had in fact fallen out of British hands.  

During colonial times, St Augustine’s shallow inlet and sand bar made it a difficult target to reach via sea. This is part of what made the sieges of St Augustine in 1702 and 1740 so remarkable, because it was a locale largely immune from the use of massive sea power, something Britain had in abundance. 

Even if the sand bar could be navigated the channel into the Matanzas River was almost as treacherous and filled with potential danger. This protected St Augustine during the Revolutionary War from American privateers as well as the French and Spanish navies that in the later stages of the conflict, hovered in close proximity to the town in the Atlantic Ocean. 

Tory refugees flooded into East Florida after the Battle of Yorktown made American Independence inevitable. This mass movement swelled the population in and around St Augustine to upwards of 15,000 (five times what the population of the area had been at the start of the conflict) or perhaps even more. This influx included many plantation owners bringing their slaves with them as well as free blacks who had run away behind British lines. British military officials began pouring into St Augustine as well at this point in time. 

It’s often not appreciated how much the loyalists that fled the Carolinas and Georgia sacrificed in the way of property and comfort to escape to St Augustine. Patriot control of the southern colonies absolutely terrified many loyalists. Explaining this terror is difficult in hindsight given our prevailing views across the ideological spectrum on Republicanism and Monarchy in the 21st Century. 

St Augustine was a town that wasn’t prepared for this influx – already swelling from loyalist refugees and British troops during the course of the war, after Yorktown it became an untenable situation. In fact, East Florida, seen as a backwater at the start of the conflict, now suddenly had nearly as many people in and around its capital city as Boston, New York and Philadelphia had. 

The Spanish still harbored designs on East Florida, having recaptured West Florida and in 1782, defeated the British in the Bahamas. An attack on East Florida seemed inevitable in 1782, as the Revolutionary War had shifted into a more global conflict with battles between the Patriot-aligned European powers and the British taking place all over the world. 

However, the English were determined to keep East Florida and Tory’s kept flowing into the colony. This flow of refugees included planters and their slaves as noted above but also merchants, artisans and farmers. Even though the noose was tightening over British control of East Florida, a hope persisted, perhaps naively, that St Augustine and its surrounding areas would remain tied to the kingdom of George III.