The powder magazine of the Negro Fort explodes killing nearly everyone inside. Note the fort flies a British ensign and, ironically, the red flag of no quarter. |
On
July 27, 1816 two United States Navy gun
boats opened fire on a small but modern and professionally
constructed fort on the Apalachicola
River near the Gulf of Mexico. After wasting
a few rounds to find range one of the boats fired a round
of hot shot which landed with in the
walls of the fort on the powder magazine
resulting in a thundering explosion that
completely destroyed the fort and killed almost all of the 300 defenders, their families, and refugees inside. That round has been variously called the deadliest
cannon shot ever fired by the Navy or by any U.S. armed force. Perhaps, although it is likely that one the huge
explosive shells fired from the naval
riffles of the great 20th Century Battle
Ships was at least as deadly but
in the heat of multiple salvo battles we may never know. Suffice it to say it was a hell of a blast.
But
you, the alert history reader, may
well wonder: just who the United States was at war with in 1816, a year and a
half after the end of the War of 1812? The answer
is…no one. The new nation was theoretically at peace with the world. And therein
lies the tale.
Perhaps
it will make more sense to you if I say that those holding the fort
were an unofficial but trained Black militia, recently escaped slaves from both Spanish Florida and plantations in southern Georgia, and a few dozen Native Americans under a Choctaw chief whose name has been lost to history. Those
natives were from the people becoming
known as the Seminole, a tribe or nation in the making consisting of members of small Florida
tribes persecuted by the
Spanish, and elements of the Creek and
Choctaw who fled to Spanish
territories after the defeat of the Red
Stick Creek by General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814. Those Black refugee slaves were also becoming assimilated into the new,
still very informally organized tribe.
When
you understand the target, it is clear why no declaration
of war was necessary to as aggressive a commander as Andy Jackson.
The
Spanish had mostly militarily abandoned
the Florida panhandle, although not
their sovereign claim to it, after
Jackson’s American Army captured Pensacola
and garrisoned Mobile in
November 1814.
Meanwhile
the British had been active in west Florida ostensibly in defense of their Spanish allies and in their own interests. They hoped arm the Creeks and elements of other southern tribes to engage in raiding
and irregular warfare against
American settlers in Alabama and Georgia matching the frontier warfare they were supporting from Upstate New York, through western Pennsylvania and into Ohio territory and into Kentucky and Tennessee.
In
August 1814, a force of over 100 officers and men led by Lieutenant Colonel Edward Nicolls of the Royal Marines was sent into the region to arm, aid, and train native
auxiliaries. He established the English Post at Prospect Bluff, 15 miles above the mouth of the Apalachicola
and 60 miles south of the Georgia. There
he line built a substantial fort to European
field standards of earth works, redoubts, and palisades with gun platforms
for several cannon. He had no trouble recruiting native allies or beginning to launch
raids across the border in Georgia.
Black troops of the Corps of Colonial Marines drilling. Those at the English Fort may not have been so completely uniformed, but they were well trained. |
But
he also found large numbers of escaped slaves.
As was British policy during the war with the Americans, he offered official freedom for enlisting in armed service. He organized several hundred volunteers into four companies of the Corps
of Colonial Marines who he drilled
and trained as infantry. Although the Colonial Marines were not deployed in active combat, word of their
existence spread like wild fire across
Georgia slave quarters encouraging
yet more runaways to seek the
protection of the fort. Georgia planters
were naturally furious, but as long as Jackson’s army was away defending New Orleans they were mostly powerless to do anything about it.
In
November a rag-tag expedition of barely trained Mississippi militia, and
allied Choctaw and Chickasaw irregulars were sent to the region to disrupt the
cross border raiding and scare off runaways.
Under Army Major Uriah Blue
the 1000 man force floundered in unfamiliar
territory and retreated to Fort Montgomery west of Pensacola without
either discovering the location of English Post or making contact with the
enemy.
Unknown
to everyone, a peace treaty already
had been signed in Ghent in December
officially ending the war. Word did not
reach the region until well after Jackson soundly
whipped a British invasion force at
New Orleans on January 8. When word
finally arrived Col. Nicolls had to abandon his fort in keeping with the terms
of the treaty. He paid off the Colonial
Marines but pointedly let them keep
their weapons. Not only that he left
behind the garrison’s cannon and a well
stocked magazine. Clearly the British were up to some mischief and hoped that harassment
of American settlements would continue
as well as slave escapes which threatened
the economy of the region.
The
former Black militia took possession of the fort under the leadership of a
former slave named Garson and that
un-named Choctaw chief. They launched
new raids into Georgia and more runaways flocked to the protection of the fort,
which now existed in virtual
independence of any national control—Spanish,
British, or American.
Jackson
soon turned his attention to Florida and shifted much of his army to Mobile and
other posts near the Spanish possessions.
Georgia planters were officially petitioning
the government for relief and punitive expeditions into the Spanish
territories. Jackson, chomping at the bit, pressured Washington for permission to strike.
Meanwhile
in September of 1815 veteran American
Indian Agent Benjamin Hawkins organized a small force of loyal Creek to
attack what was now being called the Negro
Fort. Garson and his men from their well defended position were easily able
to repel an assault by an inferior force.
The victory may have given
the defenders a false sense of their
own power but it also emboldened them to step up raids. Slaves continued to seek refuge.
To
protect the settlers the Army built Fort
Scott on the west bank of the Flint River in the southern Georgia in early 1816. But it was almost impossible to provision the
post overland trough Georgia. The
quickest route was up the Apalachicola from the Gulf but required trespass on officially Spanish
territory. On July 17 Navy boats
attempted to pass Negro Fort with supplies and were fired on by cannon. Four escorting soldiers were killed and the
boats turned back. This was likely the exact result Jackson hoped for—it
provided an excuse to attack the
fort in retaliation to it “hostile
fire.”
A
few days later Jackson ordered Brigadier
General Edmund P. Gaines at Fort Scott to destroy the Negro Fort. He
dispatched a force of several hundred mostly Volunteer troops with a sizable
contingent of Creeks who were involved in a tribal civil war with their cousins
who had fallen in with the Seminole.
This force attacked from the north
and engaged in a couple of days of skirmishing with Black and native forces
from the fort before closing in for an
attack under the immediate command
of Lieutenant Colonel Duncan Clinch. To counter
the Fort’s advantage in artillery a naval force including two gun boats under the command of Sailing Master Jarius Loomis would lend
support from the river.
The Black and Native defenders of the Negro Fort watch the approach of U.S. Navy Gun Boats. Their inexperienced cannon fire would be useless against the boats. |
Hot
fire was exchanged for much of the July 27.
Several times Garson was called on to surrender. Shouts of “Give me Liberty or give me Death” were heard several times from
behind the fortifications. At some point
Garson defiantly ran up the English flag
and a red flag symbolizing no quarter given in response. This was a critical mistake for two
reasons. First, fort could expect no protection of the long gone
British but by displaying the flag they gave Jackson an excuse that it was evidence the
British were still actively meddling
and sponsoring the raids into
Georgia. Second, besiegers, not the besieged
traditionally hoisted the no quarter banner after their calls to surrender were
refused. Jackson would argue it was
evidence that the “bloodthirsty Blacks and
savages” inside were bent on massacre.
Only
about a third of the fort’s active defenders were trained and armed veterans of
the Colonial Marine force. The rest were haphazardly armed and untrained escaped slaves, and native warriors
unused to fighting on the defense behind
walls. None were experienced gunners. Their fire from the post’s cannon mostly
sailed harmlessly over the heads of the attacking forces. When the Navy flotilla noticed this Loomis
moved his two gunboats up into close range and began to zero in on the fort
with their bow mounted gungs. Then the lucky
hot shot and the battle was instantly
over.
Only
30 of the more than 300 in the fort survived, most of them grievously
wounded. That included Garson and that
nameless chief. The Americans promptly shot Garson for supposed atrocities committed in the Georgia
raids. The Chief was handed over to the
Creek allies who hacked him to death and
scalped him. Black survivors were sent to slavery in
Georgia. Some natives and Black allies
who hid in the forests during the battle managed to flee east where they joined
other bands of Seminole.
Under
the terms of their enlistment the Creek were allowed to loot the ruins of the fort. They took home an impressive haul of 2,500
muskets, 50 carbines, 400 pistols, and 500 swords. Even without powder
and shot this gave that faction of
the Creek an enormous arms advantage
over their rivals and increased their regional power.
The
former Red Stick Creek were forced deeper into the Florida peninsula where they became the dominant element of the Seminole nation.
A Topographical Engineers map show Fort Gadsen which Jackson ordered built in 1818 and the footprint of the destroyed Negro Fort just behind it. |
For
an action so relatively obscure in American history the brief Battle of Negro Fort had dire immediate consequences. Bitterness
over this battle led directly to the
outbreak of the First Seminole War a year later.
The three Seminole Wars would
drag on for nearly three decades and become an embarrassing debacle for the Regular
Army.
A
diplomatic crisis erupted when the Spanish,
quite naturally, vociferously objected
to the blatant encroachment on their
internationally recognized sovereign
territory. Although the Spanish, bled dry from long years of fighting
on their soil during the Napoleonic Wars,
were in no position to retaliate militarily the brouhaha
threatened delicate negotiations over
the undefined Texas/Louisiana border. Moreover it complicated relations with
Spanish ally Britain at a time when several important and contentious issues
remained including finishing British evacuation
of forts and trading posts in the Great Lakes and upper Mississippi region as well as getting clear title for what Jackson had already stolen.
President
Monroe’s Secretary of State John Quincy Adams had to act nimbly on the issue. He was also under pressure from Senators and Congressmen from New England
and other Northern States worried
that Andrew Jackson’s later unilateral
seizure of Florida leading to an
expansion of Slave power. They demanded
Jackson be court martialed for violating his orders and insubordination in ordering operations
on Spanish soil and attacking the Negro Fort.
After victory at New Orleans General Andrew Jackson moved into Spanish East Florida itching for a fight. |
Adams
ultimately vindicated Jackson arguing the attack and subsequent
seizure of Spanish Florida was a national
self-defense response to alleged Spanish and British complicity in fomenting the “Indian
and Negro War.” Adams even produced a
letter from a Georgia planter complaining “brigand Negroes [made] this
neighborhood extremely dangerous to a population like ours.”
Jackson
thus escaped the threat of court martial but fumed
that his honor had been impugned and somehow blamed Adams, who had saved his fat from the fire, for being behind
a plot to ruin him. Jackson plotted revenge and challenged
Adams, the heir apparent to Monroe in the Presidential
Election of 1824. He lost that multi-candidate election but blamed
Adams for striking a corrupt bargain with
Henry Clay to win election in a vote in the House
of Representatives after failing to get a majority of Electoral College votes. Four
years later Jackson defeated the sitting
President in a stunning political
revolution.
Thus
the obscure battle can be said to have led directly to the destruction of the
so-called Era of Good Feelings and
the National Republican Party that
had developed from the old Jeffersonian
Republicans. It led to the rise of a
new two party system represented by Jacksons Democrats and the shaky political coalition called the Whigs. And it ushered in decades of increasing sectional division over the expansion of slavery.
John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State. |
Meanwhile
Adams as Secretary of State managed to coerce
the Spanish into acceding to a fait
accompli and cede East Florida to
the United States in the 1821 Adams-Onís
Treaty. Jackson was appointed Military Commissioner—de facto governor and a year later West and East Florida were
merged into the new Territory of
Florida.
The
new territory remained under and sparsely populated largely due to the seemingly endless quagmire of the
Seminole Wars and the tropical diseases rampant
in the wet semi-tropical climate. As new Englanders feared, Florida was finally admitted to the Union in 1845 as a
slave state shortly before the outbreak of the Third and final Seminole War.
And
what about all those nameless Black and Native dead at Negro Fort? Well, what
about ‘em?
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