While the Fourth of July is celebrated as the day America declared independence from Britain, one region of the modern-day United States remained far outside that fight: Florida’s east coast. Unlike the rebellious thirteen colonies, East Florida stood firm as a loyal outpost of the British Empire — and it would stay that way long after the final shot of the American Revolution.
Today, Florida is woven into the fabric of the United States, but its Revolutionary War story is one of British loyalty, American military failures, and shifting colonial power plays.
A Loyalist Stronghold in the South
When the war for independence broke out in 1775, East Florida—stretching from the Georgia border to modern-day Miami—was barely twenty years into British rule. The land had been ceded by Spain in 1763, and the small population of settlers in towns like St. Augustine were mostly recent British transplants, military men, and merchants with no appetite for rebellion.
“There simply wasn’t the same level of anti-British sentiment you saw in Boston or Philadelphia,” says historian James Cusick, curator of the P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History. “The people who lived in East Florida owed their livelihoods, their safety, and their land grants to the Crown.”
British subsidies kept the region economically afloat. It had little experience with self-governance or local legislatures—the very institutions that sparked revolutionary fervor up north.
Failed American Invasions
That didn’t stop American forces from trying to take it.
Between 1776 and 1778, Patriot militias and Continental troops launched a series of failed invasions into East Florida, hoping to wrest the territory away from British control. One such attempt ended in disaster at the Battle of Thomas Creek near today’s Jacksonville, where Georgia militiamen were ambushed and scattered by Loyalist rangers and Creek warriors.
Logistical challenges and swampy terrain, coupled with fierce Loyalist resistance, meant American forces never made it past the Florida border.
“East Florida was heavily defended,” Cusick explains. “The British saw it as a buffer to protect their valuable Caribbean colonies, especially Jamaica. They weren’t going to give it up easily.”
No Voice in the Revolution
Unlike the colonies that broke away from Britain, East Florida never sent delegates to the Continental Congress. It was offered the chance to join the rebellion, but residents refused. Many were refugees themselves—Loyalists fleeing the violence in Georgia and the Carolinas—and found protection in Florida’s British garrisons.
As the rest of America broke free, Florida remained firmly in imperial hands.
And when the Revolutionary War ended in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris, East Florida wasn’t handed over to the newly formed United States. Instead, it was returned to Spanish control as part of a separate agreement between Britain and Spain—both of which had fought in the war on opposite sides.
The Road to Statehood
It would take nearly four more decades before the American flag flew over Florida. After years of instability and sporadic border skirmishes, the U.S. finally acquired both East and West Florida through the Adams–Onís Treaty with Spain in 1819, formalizing American control in 1821.
In the years between, there were short-lived American-backed uprisings—like the so-called “Republic of East Florida” in 1812—but none succeeded in winning independence or altering the region’s fate.
Today, as fireworks light up the skies over cities from St. Augustine to Miami, few remember that Florida’s east coast was once a steadfast outpost of British power—one of the few parts of modern America that never joined the fight for independence.
