William Panton, John Leslie & Company Papers Finding Aid

The Swain Report, Number 11




William Panton, John Leslie & Company Papers

by David Swain

Introductory Information

The University of West Florida has conducted an exhaustive research and archiving project among dozens of sources to collect, abstract, catalog, and microfilm huge quantities of documents and document copies pertaining to the operation of Panton, Leslie & Company. They have accumulated research documents that fill 525 reels of microfilm (MF 1986-10). Over 10,000 documents were selected from the much larger research collection, of which 8,357 (having received owner authorization) were abstracted and microfilmed separately. The David Library owns the 26 reels of these selected microfilmed documents and their abstracts, which are organized in chronological order (MF 946). The first 12 reels cover the years 1739 through 1800, within the time period of the David Library’s particular interest.

Note that this review pertains to only reels 1 through 12 and the time period 1739 through 1800.

Rather than consisting of a large set of business and accounting papers (although some of these are included), the contents of this collection tell a story of high intrigue and human (and political) drama. They include a great variety of papers, including government documents and letters (in both English and Spanish), personal and business correspondence, a variety of business records, and more. The microfilms display each document side-by-side with the archivist’s typewritten transcript. In addition, English translations are included for many of the documents in Spanish. Some of these translations are typescripts; others are pages from printed documents. Yet others have both typed and printed translations. For some documents in English, typescripts are also included.





Useful Secondary Sources

Researching this collection can be assisted by the use of several sources, each (except for the on-line information) available in the David Library:

-- On-line information on the Panton Leslie & Company Collection, 1739-1847 at the University of West Florida library is available by searching for “Panton Leslie” at http://fusionmx.lib.uwf.edu/archon/index.php…. The full research collection contains 525 reels of microfilmed information, nearly 100 of which contain images of Spanish archival records housed in Spain.


-- The Papers of Panton, Leslie & Co.: Guide to the Microfilm Collection. Woodbridge, CT, Research Publications, Inc., 1986. This is a printed index of the abstracts of the documents from the UWF archiving project, presented in chronological order and therefore in order by microfilm reel (over 700 pages, the first 342 of which pertain to documents from between 1738 and 1800). An alphabetical list of names with the dates of documents written by them is included at the end of the volume. In addition, what appears to be the same set of abstracts, organized alphabetically by “author,” is available online at microformguides.gale.com/Data/Download/3040000A.pdf (680 pages).

-- William S. Coker and Thomas D. Watson, Indian traders of the Southeastern Spanish Borderlands: Panton, Leslie & Company and John Forbes & Company, 1783-1847. University of West Florida Press, 1986.

-- J. A. Brown, “Panton, Leslie and Company: Indian Traders of Pensacola and St. Augustine,” The Florida Historical Quarterly. Vol. 37 No. 3/4, January-April 1959, pp. 328-336.


Historical Background

A proper drama requires a gripping plot and a striking cast of characters. The Panton & Leslie story has both:

Historical Context

The territory of what we now know as the State of Florida was, for most of the 2½ centuries between 1565 and 1819, a Spanish colony, or rather two colonies—East Florida, centered on St. Augustine San Augustin in Spanish), and West Florida, centered on Pensacola (Panzacola in Spanish). The one exception was East Florida between 1763 and 1783. After being a loser in the Seven Years War (French and Indian War), Spain ceded East Florida to Britain in 1763. Britain, being the loser in the American Revolution, ceded it back to Spain in 1783. The brief time during which East Florida was a British colony coincides with the time of the American Revolution. For geo-political reasons, East Florida became a haven for loyalists fleeing the southern colonies of the Carolinas and Georgia. After 1783, these loyalists found themselves living in Spanish territory. Many left, but some chose to remain. Ironically, their ancestors later became American citizens in the State of Florida.

Between 1783 and 1818, border hostilities smoldered between Spanish Florida and the US State of Georgia (which initially stretched westward all the way to the Mississippi River and northward to the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers). White settlers moving into Georgia’s interior aggressively pushed Indians off of their ancestral lands and tested the frontier borders between Georgia and Florida. Spain considered the settlers’ actions to be provocations threatening to Spanish sovereignty. Part of the Spanish response was designed, by giving gifts and encouraging trade (especially providing the Indians with guns, ammunition, and gunpowder), to obtain the ongoing friendship of Indians living on their side of the border and to encourage Indians living in the “wilderness” beyond to resist the expansion by Georgians. Thus, governmental relations with Indian tribes became a centerpiece of foreign policy for both Spain and the US.

By 1818, frontier hostilities had mushroomed into international conflict. Hotheaded General Andrew Jackson, choosing to interpret his military orders expansively, invaded Spanish West Florida, capturing both St. Marks (San Marco in Spanish) and Pensacola. Thereafter, West Florida remained de facto American territory. East Florida was ceded to the US the following year in 1819. In 1795, the border between Florida and Georgia had been set farther south, in Jay’s Treaty between Spain and the US, at the 31st parallel. This reduced the size of Florida but regularized the border line. After 1819, Americans from both Georgia and Florida jointly participated in the dislocation, relocation, and annihilation of the Indians. By 1838, most of the remaining Indians in the Southeast were forced to follow a “Trail of Tears” to be “resettled” in Oklahoma Territory. Florida remained a frontier territory until finally becoming a state in 1845.


Characters in the Panton & Leslie Drama—both individual and institutional

William Panton (1842?-1801): Born in Scotland; immigrated to Charleston, SC by the 1760s; became a coastal trader, soon moving his operation from Charleston to Savannah, GA. He was a staunch loyalist before, during, and after the American Revolution. This caused him to move his operation again, by 1775, as the Revolutionary conflict was starting, to St. Augustine, East Florida, then British territory and not a part of the American rebellion. His trading operation prospered, and he decided to remain in Florida when it again became Spanish.

Sometime in the 1770s, he met John Leslie (1749?-1803), another Scotsman who came to the southern British colonies, became a trader, operating independently of Panton, was also a loyalist, and also moved to St. Augustine. (John’s brother Robert Leslie (1758?-1798) was also involved, especially in the company’s Bahamas shipping operations.) In 1783, Panton and Leslie established a joint trading company that would continue in operation until the early 1840s. By 1784 they were expanding both into the Bahamas and to St. Marks (once a sizeable coastal port town south of present-day Tallahassee). By the late 1780s, Panton and Leslie moved their operations to Pensacola in West Florida, also continuing to trade out of St. Marks.

Early in their trading careers (separately, going back to their American colonial days), Panton and Leslie had found the same lucrative niche for their trading operations—1) providing supplies and munitions to colonial governments (mostly early, to the British, but later, as well, to the Spanish) and, more importantly, 2) trading with the Indian tribes of East Florida and West Florida. In what was largely barter trading, the Indians sold mostly “skins” (that is, furs and deerskins) and in return received various supplies, including especially salt, rum, coffee, and munitions. For some time, the traders ran a triangular shipping operation, selling “skins” in London, picking up manufactured goods in London and agricultural goods in the West Indies (especially New Providence and Nassau in the British Bahama Islands), and delivering these goods to warehouses in East and West Florida, from which they were sold to Indians or to the colonial government.

By the mid 1790s, the shifting complexities of hostilities in Europe among Spain, Britain, and France severely limited the number of Spanish ships that could transport goods from London to Florida, first to two and then to one per year. During this period, Panton & Leslie’s ships plied mostly the route between Florida and the Bahamas. At its height (around 1800), the company was running 15 ocean-going ships plus numerous coastal boats. It had offices in London, Nassau, Havana, St. Augustine, New Orleans, and Mobile. It also had agents along the St. Johns River in East Florida, at St. Marks, near the mouth of the St. Mary’s River (now the boundary between Florida and Georgia), and at trading sites on the lower Apalachicola River and lower Mississippi River.

Although Panton and Leslie’s main business was the Indian trade, they took advantage of opportunity as it presented itself. For example, they occasionally brought ships full of slaves into Pensacola and perhaps to other ports. The company also owned at least one plantation with its own slaves, a rice plantation along the middle St. Johns River in East Florida.

As a part of doing business as traders, the Panton & Leslie company needed to acquire land in a variety of places. This necessitated additional dealings with the Spanish authorities, who controlled land grants. The papers contain a number of documents pertaining to the settlement of Panton land claims by Spanish officials. The Spanish were crafty in this respect. By retaining title to the lands on which the company leased space for stores and warehouses, governmental authorities maintained the option of “evicting” them at will.

Judging from the papers, Panton was clearly the “front man” and probably the “brains” of the trading operation. Leslie seems to have been involved in more of the detailed business of shipping and trading. Panton was reputed to be a shrewd—but scrupulously fair—businessman. He was operating not in an open, free market but in a closely regulated market, especially so because he was dealing directly with colonial governments, Indian nations, and merchants in foreign countries.

Relationships with the colonial government (first British and then Spanish) were perhaps similar to those between modern US military contractors and the Pentagon. Relationships with foreign-country merchants were regulated by the mercantile laws, in this case, of both Spain and Great Britain (regulations on what goods from one country could legally be transported by ships of what country to what other country). Relationships with Indian nations were regulated by treaties and by the Indian policies of the current colonial government. These dynamics made the trading operation, in effect, an aspect of governmental foreign policy as well as mercantile commerce.

Throughout his long trading career, Panton was amazingly consistent in his primary goal in life—to make money. To succeed at making money, he sought to negotiate and maintain monopoly trade arrangements with the colonial government of the time. Secondarily, he remained a devoted British loyalist, but he tried hard to submerge this motivation in order to ingratiate himself with Spanish colonial officials for the benefit of his business, which required him to take an oath of allegiance to the king of Spain (but not to become Catholic).

Despite his best efforts, American settlers and traders kept intruding into “his” territory, jeopardizing “his” monopolies and his profits. By 1794, he was petitioning the Spanish government either to buy out his Indian trading business (for 400,000 pesos) or to grant him a 10-year loan of the same amount to make his continuing the business profitable. Although he raised this issue at least once more, in 1797, the Spanish successfully stalled him off, and he and Leslie kept the business going for the rest of Panton’s life.

After Panton died in 1801 (he died at sea, but he was at sea trying to get medical assistance, in Havana or the Bahamas, as his health was failing), the company soon lost its trading monopolies. It continued in business, under the management of brothers John and Thomas Forbes, who had been involved in the company under Panton. But it gradually declined, having lost its colonial “patron,” and finally was dissolved in the early 1840s, just before Florida became a state. The papers continue until 1853.

Colonial Florida government: Both British and Spanish colonial policy in Florida included a strong effort to keep surrounding Indian nations “happy,” meaning peaceful and friendly. As the colonial government saw it, “happy” Indians would be less of a frontier threat to their own land-hungry European settlers and citizens, nor would they as easily be enticed to ally with other governments on their borders, meaning especially Georgia as a colony and later a US state. The colonial government sought to accomplish this purpose by negotiating treaties and then by encouraging and funding trade with the Indians, meaning that some of the “trade” items were gifts. Because of the importance of their Indian policies, the colonial government sought to maintain strict control over the Indian trade.

Besides seeking to maintain control over its own Indian policy, it was obligated to enforce its parent country’s mercantile laws. As political alliances shifted in Europe, Spanish officials in Florida found themselves changing their policies on whether English or French goods could be imported, along with Spanish goods. Great numbers of the papers consist of official documents and letters (in Spanish) by the major Spanish officials with whom Panton & Leslie worked for many years—especially Spanish governors in St. Augustine, Pensacola, New Orleans, and Havana, as well as royal officials in Spain. Additional quantities of papers consist of Panton & Leslie correspondence (in English) to and from these Spanish officials.

In the late 1790s, when Spain was at war with Britain, making money forced Panton & Leslie to try an economic arrangement antithetical to their political proclivities. They sought to convince the Spanish officials to allow them to do their annual shipping to and from London using neutral, meaning American-owned ships. Furthermore, Panton even took the step of swearing an oath of neutrality, in essence declaring himself to be siding with those hated Americans. This plan did not work out well at the time because Britain refused, officially at least, to accept neutral ships but would have been happy to allow British ships to carry the goods.

Colony of Georgia, state of Georgia, and US governments: During the Revolutionary War period, Georgia, as well as the Carolinas, sought to root out loyalists and to confiscate their property. Both Panton and Leslie were among those who left both personal and business property (as well as personal credits and debts) when they moved to East Florida. Georgia declared Panton a traitor and confiscated his property in 1778. In 1782, he was officially “banished,” along with numerous other loyalists. The papers include governmental documents on the confiscation of Panton property and on his efforts to sort out his business affairs and reclaim his property.

After Georgia became a state, it actively encouraged settlement in its interior, which soon brought conflict with Indians already living there. Georgia’s Indian policy was more bellicose and less diplomatic than Spanish Florida’s. This helped the Spanish to maintain friendly relations with the Indian nations to their north, as long as they kept up the flow of gifts and trade goods. It also led eventually to Andrew Jackson’s 1818 invasion of West Florida and Spain’s loss of all of Florida in 1819.

The new US government established in 1789 largely agreed with Georgians’ attitudes toward Indians, generally supported their expansionist activities, and encouraged American trade with the Indians, for purposes similar to those of the Spanish. As documented in the papers, President George Washington sought also to deal with the Indians through diplomacy and treaties. In August 1789, he established a three-man commission (General Benjamin Lincoln, Cyrus Griffin, and Colonel David Humphries), which he instructed to negotiate a treaty with the southern Indian nations, both to achieve some peace and stability in the western wilderness and to open the door for American trading opportunities with the Indians. This appears to have been a conscious ploy to both emulate and confront the Panton & Leslie trading monopoly on the Spanish side. The documents in these papers do not suggest much success on the part of the commissioners. Perhaps the only tangible result was a very strange, rather bogus “treaty” negotiated with US authorities in New York in 1791 by Alexander McGillivray (see below) on behalf of the Creek nation.

Indian nations: The Indians were motivated primarily to find ways to hold onto their lands and continue to live their Native American lives. By the late 18th Century, they felt that only by “playing ball” with the Europeans would they succeed in their goal. This meant negotiating and signing treaties that carved out parts of their land for European settlement and governing. It also meant relying on European traders for supplies they felt they needed to maintain their livelihoods and to protect themselves—and paying for these in the only way they could, by supplying something the European market wanted, which at this time was furs and skins from animals they trapped and shot.

The Indian nations learned the political “game” early and, where possible, sought to play one European government off against another, for what they hoped would be their own benefit. In the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, Seminole, Creek, Choctaw, Cherokee, and Chickasaw Indian tribes living in the territories then known as Florida and Georgia found themselves having to deal with both Spanish Florida and US Georgia governments, as well as these governments/’ traders and frontier settlers. The Indians tried hard to maintain their way of life but found themselves in a losing battle. Through all this, the Indian nations continued to interact among themselves through a complex, shifting mix of alliances, hostilities, and open warfare. The difference now was that Indian “foreign and military policy” became intertwined with European foreign and military policy.

The papers contain English-language abstract texts of a number of Indian treaties, both those negotiated by the British in East Florida starting in 1765 and later treaties negotiated by the Spanish and Americans. Panton paid special attention to these treaties, as they regulated his opportunities for Indian trading.

Alexander McGillivray: This almost fictional character was a half-breed who had become a Creek chieftain. Early on, he calculated that he and his Indian people would be better off if he worked closely with the Europeans. He did so partly by establishing a close but shady relationship with William Panton. The two became very close friends and sought over many years to help each other’s causes. By 1785, McGillivray had become a 1/8 owner in the Panton and Leslie company, although this fact did not become public until he got into trouble with the Spanish authorities and had to disavow it. He helped “grease” the Indian trade for his and Panton’s financial benefit.

He also was a “loose cannon” in the political game playing, actively arming and leading Indian bands friendly to the Spanish on raids into territory to the north, in areas that later became the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama (or were already a part of Georgia). For a time in 1778, it appeared that McGillivray was trying to establish a European-style independent Indian nation (which the Spanish perceived would somehow be pro-British) in the wilderness interior of disputed Spanish-US territorial jurisdiction. These activities gave the colonial rulers major headaches, as documented in the papers, and they sought to “neutralize” him by restricting his authority to trade and to act on his own.

In the early 1790s he again took independent action, actually negotiating a treaty of sorts, in New York in 1791, between the Creek nation and the US government. The Spanish never recognized this as a valid treaty, and it appears the Americans didn’t trust McGillivray either. Through all this, the Spanish understood that he, in cooperation with Panton, was providing a valuable, irreplaceable service to the Spanish with quiet trading and noisy political shenanigans. So, when he died in 1793, they were sorry he was gone. Panton was more directly aggrieved, having lost a close friend and valuable trading colleague. When difficulties arose about where the half-breed could be buried, Panton had him interred in his own backyard.

William Bowles: This adventurer was another interesting loose cannon in the Panton & Leslie story. Although, like Panton, a dedicated loyalist during the Revolution, after 1783, Bowles sought his “fortune” and political revenge by turned to Britain against Spain and Panton. A freelance “troublemaker” apparently financed by private interests and (unofficially) the governor in the British Bahamas, he tried at least twice to upset the Panton & Leslie monopoly on the Florida Indian trade by raiding the company’s St. Marks warehouse. In 1792, he plundered the warehouse, using the goods inside as “gifts” to Indians he was trying to organize into an independent Indian-nation alliance (cooperating at this point with Alexander McGillivray, although the latter was working with Panton), to use mostly to destroy the Panton & Leslie company. With this, the Spanish authorities had had enough.

After many intrigues, he was lured on board a Spanish ship and taken to New Orleans. Although not actually a “prisoner,” (as he kept pointing out in his complaints), he was jailed as the only way of keeping him securely. As the wheels of the Spanish bureaucracy slowly turned, he was transferred first to Havana and later to Cadiz, Spain, where he was kept under house arrest (now an ocean away from his few faithful Indian followers). Later, he was exiled to the Spanish Philippines, but in 1798, he escaped, returning to London and then to the Bahamas, where he proceeded to enact a rerun of his own previous act.

Once again, he allied with the Creek Indians; once again, in 1799, he captured St. Marks with the intent of destroying the Panton & Leslie operation (this time forcing the Spanish garrison to surrender). This time, the Spanish took the fort back by force, but Bowles escaped, only to be captured again, finally, in 1801. This time, the Spanish was locked up in Castel El Morro in Havana, where he languished until he died in 1805. Bowles was an amazing character who lived a larger-than-life life (as did others in this drama). His specialty was lying—to others and to himself—to manipulate his way to the most advantageous result he could accomplish. The papers document well that he was a consummate con-artist. But ultimately, when he lied to others, they ceased believing him. And when he lied to himself, he fell into traps that led him to prison.

Around the edges, other loose cannons lurked. One was a man named Wellbank, one of Bowles’ lieutenants. Sometime after their 1792 raid on St. Marks, when Bowles was in prison in Spain, Well bank apparently thought up a scheme to capture Panton, to be exchanged for Bowles’ freedom. Apparently, the plot was never hatched.

Yet another loose cannon turned up in 1794, a certain “General” Elijah Clark, a Georgia backwoods adventurer, who apparently assembled an irregular band of Georgian and Indian fighters to engage in raids along the Georgia-Spanish border, all in the cause of (white) Georgian expansion. A year later, their cause was helped by the redrawing in Jay’s Treaty of Florida’s northern boundary at the 31st parallel, leaving only a thin strip of land along the Gulf Coast in Spanish hands (now the Florida “panhandle”). Clark dropped in and out of the papers rapidly and apparently never did any serious harm to the Panton & Leslie Company.


The Drama—more fantastic than fiction

The drama of the Panton & Leslie story is revealed by untangling the complex interactions among the characters. Researching the papers promises rich rewards from such untangling. Whether a researcher is seeking information on colonial British or Spanish colonial government, on European settlement of the Old Southwest frontier, on the politics and violence of Indian-European relations in the decades before and after 1800, or on the policies, practices, and intrigues of trading in a colonial/Indian environment on the southern frontier, he or she will find much of interest in these papers.

A few examples and comments may illustrate why “untangling” may be the operative verb and “intriguing” an appropriate adjective to keep in mind as a researcher approaches these papers:

Going beyond trading to “military” activities: Panton’s vocal support for the loyalist cause, as well as his desire to make money, led him beyond trading, in 1781, to parlay his business of supplying British military needs in St. Augustine into a couple of temporary “naval” operations to assist in making prisoner-of-war exchanges between British and Spanish combatants. For this service, Panton’s company was, of course, paid by the British. Spain had declared war on Britain in 1779 and was clandestinely supplying arms to the Americans. Although it never became directly involved militarily in America, it appears to have engaged British ships at sea, leading to the need to exchange prisoners. Not long after the war, Britain was gone from Florida, and it was the Spanish who were paying Panton, Leslie and Company to trade with the Indians.

Indian trading preferences: As merchants, Panton and Leslie had to sell goods the Indians wanted. For some time since 1763, the Indians had been receiving British-made goods, which they thought were of superior quality to goods they started receiving from Spain and France after 1785. Panton continued trading through London but had to wrangle with the Spanish authorities (as mentioned above) to allow British goods to be landed in Spanish Florida, in apparent violation of Spain’s mercantile laws and the current distribution of its political friends and enemies in Europe.

Gaining a monopoly at Mobile: A competing company, known as Mather and Struther, had negotiated a trade monopoly at Mobile (later in Alabama). As Panton and Leslie expanded their operations into West Florida and later moved their headquarters to Pensacola, Panton was intent upon adding the Mobile market to his own monopoly. The process of obtaining this goal took years but was ultimately successful. Success required currying favor with Spanish officials in both New Orleans and Pensacola. It also required showing Mather and Struther up as less competent. An opportunity arose for such a maneuver when the latter company was unable to meet a particular demand for supplies and munitions. Panton saw his opportunity, supplied the goods, sowed uncertainty among Spanish officials about Mather and Struther’s ability to meet their Indian trade needs, and ultimately prevailed in 1788. Later, other traders sought to “horn in” on the company’s monopolies, and Panton was kept busy persuading the Spanish officials not to change the status quo.

Paying duty on goods shipped into West Florida: In St. Augustine, Panton had not had to worry about import duties. East Florida did not charge any such duties. However, West Florida had for some time been charging a 6% duty on incoming and outgoing goods. When Panton began expanding his operation westward, he first began trading at St. Marks. When he opened business there, the Spanish had designated St. Marks as a part of East Florida, hence no duty. However, in 1788, for reasons apparently unrelated to Panton & Leslie, the Spanish transferred St. Marks to the jurisdiction of West Florida, hence a duty.

For some time after the transfer, Panton apparently conveniently neglected to pay the duty in St. Marks. When the Spanish realized what was happening, they insisted not only that Panton pay the duty but that his ships stop in Pensacola, to make sure the duty was collected. Panton disputed this both officially (in the papers) and by diversionary action, clearly feeling entitled to continuing his company’s “deal” with the Spanish colonial government for a no-duty trade monopoly. In the long run, Panton won this battle, as he did so many others, by patient diplomacy (call it wheeling and dealing) combined with shrewd business practices. For Panton, the obvious profit-making incentive of not paying the duty was intertwined with his political agenda. By reducing his costs, he could undersell the hated American traders and perhaps deter the expansion of Americans into “his” and Spanish trading territory.

Dangers to the monopoly: Throughout his business career, Panton had to work constantly to maintain the monopolies he had so carefully negotiated. The papers reveal how frequently he and his company’s “legitimacy” was on the line.

During British rule in East Florida, he was busy developing a reputation and negotiating monopolies. Here, he had the advantage of being a Scottish native and vocal British loyalist. His relationships with Spanish rulers in East and West Florida and Louisiana were more tenuous. At first, he had to reestablish with the Spanish the monopolies he had enjoyed under the British. That accomplished, he had to maintain them, and then he sought to expand them westward across Florida and beyond.

Under Spanish rule, he was always susceptible to suspicions—he had been pro-British; he was a Protestant; he had perhaps too much influence over the Indians, especially through his shady relationship with Alexander McGillivray; he was a self-serving merchant potentially liable to make money at Spanish expense, or at the expense of the Indians he claimed to be helping. For years, Panton steadily and fairly successfully maneuvered through the minefields of intrigue. Only after he died in 1801 did the magic of his management fall way from the company’s operations.



Indispensability of Panton: Most of the Spanish officials did not really trust Panton and from time to time contemplated ending their relationship with him (Governor O’Neill of West Florida, in particular, was convinced that Panton was working for the British, the Indians, and especially for himself, against Spanish interests). Nevertheless, they never went that far, realizing what an invaluable service he was providing to them, in a more effective manner than anyone else seemed capable of doing. So, Panton kept on getting rich, and Spain kept on using him as a major pawn in its relations with the Indian tribes and, by extension, with other governments on its colonial American borders and in Europe.

Still, by the 1790s, Panton was being worn down by the political intrigues, bureaucratic hassles, and economic losses resulting from frontier violence and maritime disasters. His strategy was to petition the Spanish Crown to buy out his “monopoly” or to loan him the equivalent of the value of his business to remain in business. Although Panton was also constantly seeking various ways to obtain indemnity compensation for his various losses, his “buy or loan” proposal does not appear to have been just a ploy. He honestly “wanted out.” However, the Spanish still found him to be indispensable, and they never let him off the hook, to the end of his life in 1801.



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