Negro Fort
Battle of Negro Fort | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of the Seminole Wars | |||||||
Map of Fort Gadsden, inside the breastwork that surrounded the original Negro Fort. | |||||||
| |||||||
Belligerents | |||||||
United States Creek |
Fugitive slaves Choctaw | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Edmund Gaines | Garçon † | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
267 2 gunboats | 334 | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
3 killed 1 captured | 334 killed, wounded and captured | ||||||
The fugitive slave and Choctaw casualties include women and children. | |||||||
Negro Fort was a short-lived fortification built by the British in 1814, during the War of 1812, in a remote part of what was at the time Spanish Florida. It was intended to support a never-realized British attack on the U.S. via its southwest border,[1] by means of which they could "free all these Southern Countries [states] from the Yoke of the Americans".[2]
Built on a site overlooking the
When withdrawing in 1815, at the end of the war, the British commander
The fort was destroyed in 1816 when a "hot cannon ball"
This is the only time in its history in which the United States destroyed a community of escaped formerly enslaved Black Americans in another country.[8] However, the area continued to attract escaped Africans until the U.S. construction of Fort Gadsden in 1818.
The Battle of Negro Fort was the first battle of the Seminole Wars.
Construction of the fort
Construction of the fort began in May 1814, when the British seized the trading post of John Forbes and Company.[9] By September, there was a square moat enclosing a large field several acres in size. There was a 4 feet (1.2 m) wooden stockade the length of the moat, with bastions at its eastern corners. There was a stone building containing soldiers' barracks and a large warehouse, 48 feet (15 m) by 24 feet (7.3 m). Several hundred feet inland was the magazine, in which stands of arms and 73 kegs of gunpowder were stored.[10]
The fort also had "dozens of axes, carts, harnesses, hoes, shovels, and saws," along with many uniforms, belts, and shoes. The British left all these behind.[11] There were over a dozen schooners, barques, and canoes, one 45 feet (14 m) long, along with sails, anchors, and other equipment, and "a number of experienced sailors and shipwrights".[12]
To attract recruits, the British visited the Creek, Seminole, and "negro settlements" along the river and its tributaries, distributing guns, uniforms, and other goods. The Creeks were enthusiastic about this opportunity to attack the United States, whose settlers had taken their land. At the request of the British, they started inviting Blacks to join them. Enslaved Africans of the Spanish in Pensacola were also invited, and came by the hundreds. As a result, the British Post was a "beehive of activity" in 1814.[13] Commander Nicolls had under his command, at Prospect Bluff, or living up the river, some 3,500 men eager to attack the Americans.[14] Most of the Africans/Blacks did not want to return to be slaves of the Spanish in Pensacola, some of them adopting English names and claiming to be fugitives from the United States so that they would not be returned.[15]
A refuge for fugitive slaves
Fugitive slaves had been seeking refuge in Florida for generations, where they were well received by the Seminoles and treated as free by the Spaniards if they converted to Catholicism; the origins of the future Underground Railroad are here. The Spaniards wanted their own Pensacola slaves back, but as far as American slaves they did not much care. In any event, they lacked the resources to find and "recover" them, at one point inviting the American slaveowners to catch the fugitives themselves.
Fugitive slaves continued to arrive, seeking in Florida their freedom; they set up a network of farms along the river to keep them supplied. The Seminoles knew how to do this because the former African slaves, who had learned on plantations how to farm and care for domestic animals, either taught them or did their farming for them, or both. The Creeks knew nothing of farming and were impoverished; even Nicolls commented on the number of starving, resourceless Creeks who were arriving, and the challenge of feeding them. The Creeks had a champion,
The fugitive slave situation became more serious as news of a Negro Fort (African Fort) with weaponry spread through the southern United States.
Negro Fort
The Negro Fort (African Fort) flew the British Union flag (Union Jack), as the former Colonial Marines considered themselves British subjects.[16] The Spaniards continued their policy of leaving the fugitive slaves alone.[17] What was different now was that a corps had had some military training, and was well armed, and had been encouraged by departing abolitionist Nicolls to get others to run away from their owners and join them. The number and ethnicity of men, and in some cases their families, at the Negro Fort was not fixed; they came and went as the unstable political situation evolved. Yet the existence of a fortified, armed sanctuary for fugitive slaves became widely known in the southern United States.
The
It was not to be expected that an establishment so pernicious to the Southern states, holding out to a part of their population temptations to insubordination, would have been suffered to exist after the close of the war [of 1812]. In the course of last winter, several slaves from this neighborhood fled to that fort; others have lately gone from Tennessee and the Mississippi Territory. How long shall this evil, requiring immediate remedy, be permitted to exist?[19]
Escaped slaves came from as far as Virginia.[
When the U.S. boats attempted to pass the fort on April 27 they were fired upon.[22] This event provided a casus belli for destroying Negro Fort.
Hawkins and other white settlers made contact with
Battle of Negro Fort (Indian Fort)
The Battle of Negro Fort (African Fort) was the first major engagement of the
Before beginning an engagement General Gaines first requested a surrender. Garçon, the leader of the fort, refused. Garçon told Gaines that he had orders from the British military to hold the post, and at the same time raised the Union Jack and a red flag to symbolize that no quarter would be given. The Americans considered the Negro Fort to be heavily defended; after they formed positions around one side of the post, the Navy gunboats were ordered to start the bombardment. Then the defenders opened fire with their cannons, but they had not been trained in using artillery, and were thus unable to utilise it effectively.[24] It was daytime when Master Jarius Loomis ordered his gunners to open fire. After five to nine rounds were fired to check the range, the first round of hot shot cannonball, fired by Navy Gunboat No. 154, entered the Fort's powder magazine. The ensuing explosion was massive, and destroyed the entire Fort. Almost every source states that all but about 60 of the 334 occupants of the Fort were instantly killed, and others died of their wounds shortly after, including many women and children.[27] A more recent scholar says the number killed was "probably no more than forty", the remainder having fled before the attack.[28]: 288 The explosion was heard more than 100 miles (160 km) away in Pensacola. Just afterward, the U.S. troops and the Creeks charged and captured the surviving defenders. Only three escaped injury; two of the three, an Indian and a Black person, were executed at Jackson's orders.[27] General Gaines later reported that:
The explosion was awful and the scene horrible beyond description. You cannot conceive, nor I describe the horrors of the scene. In an instant lifeless bodies were stretched upon the plain, buried in sand or rubbish, or suspended from the tops of the surrounding pines. Here lay an innocent babe, there a helpless mother; on the one side a sturdy warrior, on the other a bleeding squaw. Piles of bodies, large heaps of sand, broken glass, accoutrements, etc., covered the site of the fort... Our first care, on arriving at the scene of the destruction, was to rescue and relieve the unfortunate beings who survived the explosion.
Garçon, the black commander, and the Choctaw chief, among the few who survived, were handed over to the Creeks, who shot Garçon and scalped the chief. African-American survivors were returned to slavery. There were no white casualties from the explosion. The Creek salvaged 2,500 muskets, 50 carbines, 400 pistols, and 500 swords from the ruins of the fort, increasing their power in the region. The Seminole, who had fought alongside the
Aftermath
The largest group of survivors, including blacks from the surrounding plantations who were not at the Fort, took refuge further south, in
Garçon was executed by firing squad because of his responsibility for the earlier killing of the watering party, and the Choctaw Chief was handed over to the Creeks, who scalped him. Some survivors were taken prisoner and placed into slavery under the claim that Georgia slaveowners had owned the ancestors of the prisoners.
Anger over the destruction of the fort stimulated continued resistance during the
See also
- Angola, Florida
- Black Seminoles
- Fort Mose Historic State Park
- Fort Scott
- Quilombo
References
- ISBN 9781479811106.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ^ Clavin, 2021, p. 40
- ^ Clavin, 2021, p. 47
- ^ Mahon, John K. (1967) p. 22. History of the Second Seminole War 1835-1842 (Revised Edition), University of Florida Press.
- ^ Mahon p. 23
- ^ Mahon p. 23
- ^ Mahon p. 23
- ^ Clavin, 2021, p. 14
- ^ Hughes & Brodine 2023, p. 859-860.
- ^ Clavin, 2021, p. 23
- ^ Clavin, 2021, pp. 81-82
- ^ Clavin, 2021, pp. 93-94
- ^ Clavin, 2021, pp. 23-24
- ^ Clavin, 2021, p. 58
- ^ Clavin, 2021, pp. 61-63
- ^ Clavin, 2021, pp. 60-61, 72, 86
- ^ Clavin, 2021, p. 8
- ISBN 9780813040127.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ^ "Fort Negro (Fort Gadsden)". 2008. Archived from the original on February 14, 2018. Retrieved February 10, 2018.
- ^ Boyd, Mark F. (1937). "Events at Prospect Bluff on the Apalachicola River, 1808-1818". Florida Historical Society. 16 (2): 77. Retrieved 3 June 2022.
- ^ Boyd, 1937. pp. 78-79
- Naval Historical Center, United States Navy.
- JSTOR 30138779.
- ^ a b c Cox, Dale (2014). "Attack on the Fort at Prospect Bluff". exloresouthernhistory.com. Archived from the original on 2017-11-07. Retrieved December 25, 2017.
- ISBN 9780230342088.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ^ Cox, Dale (2018). "The Fort at Prospect Bluff (July 11, 1816)". exploresouthernhistory.com. Archived from the original on 2018-02-27. Retrieved February 22, 2018.
- ^ a b Federal Writers' Project (1939), Florida. A Guide to the Southernmost State, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 489
- ^ ISBN 0521660432.
- ^ Mahon, 23.
- ^ Mahon, 24.
- ^ Mahon, 23-24.
- ^ ISBN 9780813044545.
- ^ National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, British Fort, Aboard the Underground Railroad, archived from the original on May 14, 2017, retrieved December 22, 2017
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: External link in
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Further reading (most recent first)
- Clavin, Matthew J. (2019). The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community. New York: ISBN 978-1479837335.
- Hughes, Christine F.; Brodine, Charles E., eds. (2023). The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History, Vol. 4. Washington: Naval Historical Center (ISBN 978-1-943604-36-4.
- Nuño, John Paul (Fall 2015). "'República de Bandidos': The Prospect Bluff Fort's Challenge to the Spanish Slave System". JSTOR 24769178.
- Rivers, Larry Eugene (2012). Rebels and Runaways: Slave Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Florida. Project MUSE.
- Millett, Nathaniel (Fall 2012). "Slavery and the War of 1812". JSTOR 42628263.
- ISBN 025202446X.
External links
- USDA Forest Service (2011). Historic Fort Gadsden. The Archeology Channel. Retrieved February 22, 2018.
- "North America's Largest Act of Slave Resistance", a 2015 lecture by Nathaniel Millett
- Tragedy and Survival: Virtual Landscapes of 19th-Century Gulf Coast Maroon