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Governor Holmes on August 1, 1812, issued a proclamation declaring the laws of the United States and the Mississippi Territory in effect in the region, and erected it into the County of Mobile. But the Spanish, of course, had not yet been filibustered out of Mobile itself, in spite of strenuous efforts. On February 12, 1813* the President was authorized to occupy and hold all parts of West Florida west of the Perdido "not now in possession of the United States," and on April 15 the United States at last took possession.
The commissioner east of Pearl River, William Crawford, proceeded about his work meanwhile. The inhabitants of Mobile, Jackson, and Hancock Counties resented the method by which the commissioner operated Their memorial, in French and English, declared that they were Americans and felt as Americans, and that they wished rikg the same treatment as their fellows in Louisiana and the upper part of the Mississippi Territory. The present lav, providing for a confidential report upon their claims by a single commissioner was a grievance, and they wished open commission courts set up in their counties. (February 1, 1816) In response to this and thirty-six other petitions from Louisiana and Mississippi, a committee of Congress reported a bill to establish a commission. The inhabitants, they said, were accustomed to the liberal land policy of the French and Spanish, founded upon customs so obscure and so different that the Congress could not consider them all, nor do them justice. (April 15, 1816)
Crawford's reports were submitted to Congress early in 1316 by Josiah Meigs. They show a few claims under French concession's, more under British grants, and a great preponderance of them under Spanish orders of settlement. There were listed 17*+ actual settlers without claims from any government.
The Senate seems to. have passed a. bill in the spring (April 23? l8r which alarmed the inhabitants in the largest class - Spanish grants of various kinds after 1803. The bill was said to allow latitude to the judgment of the commissioner in confirming claims. But the inhabitants, reading San Ildefonso as the period after which the grants of Spain were void, found on inquiry that the Secretary of the Treasury had referred the Commissioner to the act of March 26, 180^. A mixed group of French, Spanish, and Anglo-American citizens from the polyglot population of the Coast undertook to deny, discreetly, the fundamental thesis which governed this stand, that is, the right of the United States to the territory since the cession of Louisiana, and they attempted to prove that the United States itself had acknowledged at least a d_e fact0 government of Spain. They likewise appealed on equitable grounds for recognition of their claims.
Here again there was the identical problem which so plagued their brethren north of the line of thirty-one. The Spaniards had pursued the same policy of regranting British lands, and the petitioners feared that to tamper with Spanish claims would open the door to British ones.
"Since the change of Government, a host of these claimants have sprung up from the ground, like Cadmus's men of old, and armed with many parchments, dug up from holes and corners ^ where they had for these thirty-five years lain Ihey threaten to drive all the Spanish inhabitants ±rom their possessions entirely." (Dec. 6, 1816)
A.S.P., Public Lands’ III, 251-253	’