fact, migrated to the area from Alabama and had relatives there; it was also easier to trade with and travel to southern Alabama than to reach East Florida by slow, arduous journey across the thick cypress swamps and dense pine forests of the Panhandle. It was natural for West Floridians to feel that they had more in common with their nearby neighbors in Alabama than with the residents of the peninsula, hundreds of miles away. In 1821, Pensacola was the only city (in 19th-century terms) in West Florida, with a population estimated to be about 3,000. In the 1850 census, the enumerated population of Pensacola was 2,164 (including 741 slaves and 350 "free Negroes"). Alabama annexation proposals During the course of the century, proposals for ceding the Florida counties west of the Apalachicola River to Alabama were often raised: In 1811, while Florida was still a Spanish possession, American settlers in the territory sent a petition to Congress asking to be incorporated into the Mississippi Territory, which at that time included present-day Alabama. (See West Florida article.) In 1819, the constitutional convention of Alabama asked Congress to include West Florida in their new state. In 1822, only a year after the U.S. acquired the entire Florida territory from Spain, residents of West Florida sent a petition to the U.S. House of Representatives asking that their section be annexed to Alabama, and Alabama Senator John Williams Walker also promoted the idea. In 1826, the Pensacola Gazette published a number of letters advocating annexation to Alabama, though the editor remarked that some Pensacolians opposed the idea. In 1840, a public meeting in Pensacola produced a demand that West Florida be united with Alabama. In the same year, the territorial Legislature notified Congress that it opposed allowing Alabama to annex West Florida, but in 1844, the year before statehood, the Legislature reversed its stance and asked that West Florida be separated. In 1856, advocates of annexation were able to get a bill passed by the Legislature authorizing a referendum on the issue, but Governor James E. Broome vetoed the measure. The Pensacola Gazette reported that "annexation is desired by a large majority of the people" of the area. In 1858, the Alabama Legislature unsuccessfully tried to open negotiations with Florida on the subject. The annexation issue was eclipsed by the Civil War and the war's effects on the region, but in 1868, with