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HISTORICAL MEMOIR*	57
passed by the legislature, requiring the governor to call upon the inhabitants of such parishes as he might think proper, to send all such male negroes as they could dispose of to fort St. Charles or to the English Turn, to be thence sent to the different points that might be judged proper to be fortified, there to work on the fortifications. The governor in his circular letter, makes known to the inhabitants, that the state is in danger, that the enemy is in considerable force on our coast, and that his movements indicate a disposition to land. He concludes by expressing his reliance on the patriotism of the inhabitants, and his hopes that in the hour of peril, the voice of government will be listened to and respected by every good citizen.
CAPTURE OF THE GUN-BOATS.
The arrival of a great number of the enemy?s ships of various force on our eastern coast, sufficiently announced the intention of the British, soon to make an attack in this quarter. Commodore Daniel T. Patterson, commanding the New Orleans station, had received from Pensacola, a letter, dated the 5th of December, informing him of the arrival of sixty sail of British vessels, and of a still greater num- 1 ber being expected; that those vessels had on board a considerable number of troops destined to act against New Orleans. (See Appendix, No. 18.) On this information, the commodore had sent five gun-boats, one tender, and a despatch boat, towards the passes Mariana and Christiana, to watch the ene*
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HISTORICAL MEMOIR
OF
THE WAR
IN
WEST FLORIDA AND LOUISIANA
in 1814-15.
WITH AN ATLAS.
BY MAJOR A. LACARRIERE LATOUR,
Principal Engineer ia the late Seventh Military Diltrict United St*te?? Army,
A FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION of the 1816 EDITION with
INTRODUCTION by JANE LUCAS de GRUMMOND
QUADRICENTENNJAL EDITION of the
FLORID1ANA FACSIMILE &? REPRINT SERIES
University of Florida Press GAINESVILLE, 1964