Tossing Beads—Fat Tuesday Mardi Gras and Murfin Verse

There are downsides to having been raised vaguely Protestant and residing in sometimes inhospitable northern climes.  Perhaps the biggest is regarding with wistful envy the liberating extravagance of Carnival and Mardi Gras.  It is the un-religious holiday—a day of wallowing in the ways of the flesh and merry making before getting down to the serious and unpleasant tasks of the proper piety of Lent.

Revelers are crowding the French Quarter again in New Orleans.

Catholics seem to know how to take advantage of the opportunity, especially in warm places where the streets beckon—New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro most famously.  But folks from countries where Romance languages are spoken can find ways to celebrate even in icy Quebec City.  

It's Mardi Gras in warm places.

The idea is simple.  Finnish up the Christmas season on the Feast of the Epiphany, the fixed day of January 11, and then coast down the hill of Ordinary Time until Ash Wednesday kicks off of Lent, which by the lunar calendar falls anywhere from February to March, gathering speed all the while.  It is the “dead of winter.”  Even in Mediterranean countries it was dark and often cold.  Folks stayed inside more, got on each other’s nerves.  But by Fat Tuesday, the sap was running and Spring seemed just over the horizon.  Perfect for one last opportunity to bust loose before breaking out the sack cloth and ashes.

Protestants, particularly Calvinists, their decedents, and those who stood close enough by to be infected, took a dim view of the whole process.  More Papist/pagan nonsense to them.  A good Calvinist existed in a state of perpetual Lent.  The experience of any sensual pleasure was regarded as a sinful distraction from contemplation of the awesome majesty of God and our totally undeserving souls.  It was for good reason that Puritanism has been described as the nagging suspicion that somewhere, somehow, somebody is having a good time.  

Cute.  But English altar boys flipping pancakes is a poor substitute of sex, sin, and degradation.

England, I am told, once celebrated Carnival—a cultural gift of the Norman French aristocracy.  Cromwell and his boys pretty much wiped that out at the point of the sword.  Even when Kings remounted the Throne and the Anglican Church regained the upper hand, the old traditions fell away.  Instead, they shrank the celebration down to something called Shrove Tuesday, which is celebrated mostly by making and eating pancakes.  Now I bow to no man in my affection for the flapjack or griddle cake, but even a high pile drenched in butter and real maple syrup is a poor substitute for dancing semi-naked in the streets.  They passed this tradition on to all the former pink spots on the globe where the Empire once ruled and to all the Protestant sects derived from Anglicanism and Calvinism.

Of course, not all Catholics party with absolute abandon.  Those from northern and eastern Europe either never celebrated or toned down Carnival.  The Poles celebrate with Pączki Day (pronounced pŭtch-kē).  In the old country it was held on the Thursday before Ash Wednesday, but in the immigrant communities of North America it is held on Fat Tuesday.  Folks line up at bakeries at the crack of dawn to purchase pączkis, a kind of jelly doughnut made only once a year.  This is a much bigger deal than it sounds on Chicago’s Milwaukee Ave, the main street of the Windy City’s Polonia.

Near riots have been known to break out at certain celebrated Chicago bakeries.  Purists denounce the faux Pacziki sold in boxes at supermarkets starting weeks before Fat Tuesday--pretty much ordinary jelly donuts with plenty of preservatives.  Only fresh bakery ones served by a grandmotherly lady in a hairnet with a thick accent are acceptable.

In Germany, the Baltic states, and Scandinavian Fat Tuesday is likewise celebrated with special local pastries meant to use up the supply of sugar and lard before the Lenten fast.

Tonight, the biggest and most honored Krews will be conducting their parades in New Orleans.  Down there, they take Mardi Gras seriously and have stretched it to the whole season between Epiphany and Lent.  Various parades have been winding down the streets of different neighborhoods for weeks, each followed by its own Ball.  The streets of the French Quarter will be crowded.  Many revelers will be drunken northerners and Calvinist escapees.  They will party next to the locals, drinking copiously, begging for beads cast from the parade floats, and eying the pretty young girls flashing their tits.  Everyone will forget Covid, the attempted insurrection at the Capitol and its endless investigation, inflation, and the war in Ukraine that threatens to spin out of control. A good many of the former Cheeto in Charge, his Hellfire and damnation Evangelical acolytes, and the rest of that tribe will be at the big party in the Big Easy hoping that TV cameras do not broadcast their participation back home. 

Nine years ago, Social Justice Committee of the Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry was scheduled to dutifully meet to do its earnest work on the evening of Fat Tuesday.   We were, after all, the stepchildren of those old Massachusetts Puritans.  As Chair it was customary for me to open the proceedings with a reflection.  Usually, it’s a reading I snatched from the internet.  But that bitterly cold night smack dab in the Winter that would not end with howling winds blowing snow dangerously across the roads, we gathered anyway. I read them this.  Fitting and apt.   Sitting through my poetry ought to be hair shirt enough for any Puritan.

                                          The radical equality of Samba dancers in Carnival in Rio.

A Prayer for a Committee Meeting on Mardi Gras

March 4, 2014

 

Drudges like us throw on our heavy coats

            and slog through the still arctic night

            to rendezvous around a table

            for the earnest business of making the world

            a kinder place

            or so we tell ourselves.

 

We pass the hours elbow deep

            in the common dishwater

            of routine and rote,

            duty and debate

            and adjourn the world not moved

            a centimeter from its calamitous orbit.

 

But tonight in the Big Easy,

            down in Rio or far off Nice,

                        any of the warm places

                        where the evening pulses expectantly,

            they don masks and dance heedless

            in the streets.

 

In timeless Carnival

            the rich and poor,

                        Black and White,

                                    queer and straight

                                                alien and citizen

            revel together in absolute equality.

 

In the common streets

            justice rolls down like bons temps

            and righteousness,

                        the enemy of comity,

            is tucked away in a samba dancer’s thong.

 

For this one night there is Joy

            and the old world dances to a coronet.

 

—Patrick Murfin

They All Get Tiny Participation Trophies on Presidents Day

Note—A Version of this post last appeared in 2019.  Now updated.

Finding it hard to get into the spirit of the day, Bunky?  Are pictures of George and Abe, fly-over panoramas of Mt. Rushmore, your kid’s cherry tree and log cabin school projects magneted to the refrigerator, mattress sales, crazy deals on Korean cars, and all the bunting in the world not doing it for you this year, eh Bunky?  Can’t erase the fetid stench of corruption, betrayal, ignorance, racism, and lingering around White House despite a new resident and through disinfectant makes you want to retch when you hear the word President?  You are not alone, Bunky.

Well, suck it up!  Pull up your big boy/girl panties!  Take a stroll down memory lane with us today to remember what Presidents Day is and some of the gents it honors.  And we will play the drinking game of bests and worsts, knowing the last Occupant blew all competition for the latter category out of the water.

Presidents Day is a bastard holiday, born of merchant avarice on one hand and the despair of parents stuck with small children at home twice in February.

These guys each had their own Federal Holidays once upon a time.

The old Federalists made sure that the nation marked George Washington’s Birthday. It was to be a patriotic celebration emphasizing dignity, decorum, and authority.  In short, it was to celebrate a Founder as demigod, an old revolutionary stripped of rabble and insurrection.  The old Republicans—the Jeffersonians—not to be confused with the current squatters on than honorable appellation—despised the celebration as monarchical and preferred to swarm the streets carrying Liberty Caps on poles—French style—on other occasions.

But Washington deserved the honor.  He invented being President.  He served honestly and honorably, and if he preferred the council of his Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton to that of his fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson, at least he resisted all of the former’s blandishments toward aristocracy and his desire to advance himself as Grand Vizier to the President’s Caliph.  Most importantly Washington earned every accolade he has received by the simple act of voluntarily leaving the job and allowing his successor to peacefully follow him into office.  This precedent setting feat has seldom been matched in post-revolutionary nations.  That Americans take it for granted is astonishing.

Later, most Northern states added Lincoln’s Birthday to their calendars following the Civil War.  It began amid the hagiography of the fallen leader and his elevation to martyr status and continued as a way for the Grand Army of the Republic and the new Republican Party to Wave the Bloody Shirt at home while sticking their collective thumbs in the eyes of their vanquished foes.  Across the old Confederacy Lincoln was reviled as a murderous tyrant.  They preferred to celebrate Jefferson Davis, or better yet the unblemished knight of the Lost Cause, Robert E. Lee.

When Harry S Truman finally proclaimed Lincoln’s Birthday a Federal holiday, his very Confederate mother, then residing with him and Bess at the White House, cursed her son and never forgave him.

So the nation ended up with two holidays in inconvenient February.  If only they had managed to get born at a decently separated interval of months, both might have been able to retain their own celebration.

Presidents Day give retailers a three day weekend to tastefully promote their wares.

But, alas, they did not.  And the days fell either inconveniently mid-week or on a weekend.  The former disrupted the work week for employers.  The latter cheated workers of a paid holiday.  Educators hated the disruption to their pedagogy for two holidays.  Parents despaired of rug rats at home.  Merchants yearned for an extended weekend of sales.  So Congress, in its infinite wisdom, decreed Presidents Day, conveniently set down on a Monday between the actual natal anniversaries of the original honorees.  Whoopee! Three Day Weekend!

Better yet, none of the rest of the denizens of the White House need feel slighted—this was going to be their holiday too.  Like a first grade T-ball player spared the sting of losing by playing a “fun game where no one keeps score,” Rutherford B. Hayes could rest easy in the comforting knowledge that he was the peer of the Founder and of the Emancipator.  It also silenced the partisans of Franklin D. Roosevelt on one hand and Ronald Reagan on the other, who dreamed of raising their respective heroes to a loftier pantheon and a place on the national calendar.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson posited that “All men are created equal…”  Unitarian Universalists treasure our First Principle—“Respect for the inherit worth and dignity of every person.”  Neither of these are assertions of blanket uniformity of talent, capacity, wisdom or Honesty.   Nor has there been equality of ability, opportunity, and circumstance among the occupants of the Presidential chair.  There have been great presidents and there have been failures.  There have been, however, no saints and no pure knaves—until the last one.

A popular pastime for the holiday is the annual articles listing the best and worse presidents.  By almost universal consensus the two original February honorees are listed one and two, occasionally swapping spots followed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, his distant cousin Theodore and either Thomas Jefferson or James Knox Polk (for Manifest Destiny fans.)

The classic roster of worsts includes such luminaries as Franklin Pierce, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Warren G. Harding .

All of which begs the question of how more recent Presidents fare.  Lately historians are rating Dwight D. Eisenhower as a comer, even breaching the top five on a few lists.

Presidents Day give retailers a three day weekend to tastefully promote their wares.

During his occupancy of the office, I boldly suggested that George W. Bush may have done the impossible and reached the pinnacle of presidential awfulness.  He left office with few fans even in his own party, who were beginning to hate him not for his unnecessary wars but for being the champion spendthrift to that point in history.  Even his staunchest supporters have pretty much given up the campaign to paint the Shrub as a misunderstood Lincolnesque figure, boldly pursuing a noble cause while the ignoble people doubted.  It was simply too ludicrous to be maintained.

Does my harsh judgment hold up?  Most of the bottom dwellers on the list got there not for doing  bad, but for being lazy, incompetent, drunk or for not doing anything at all to stave off the long slide to Civil War.  Grant and Harding presided over notoriously corrupt administrations, but neither did lasting harm to the nation or Democracy.

But the legacy of George W. Bush was far more damaging and longer lasting.  He sponsored and presided over unnecessary war, prosecuted that war with stunning incompetence, nearly destroyed the ground forces of the U.S. military, proclaimed a doctrine of preemptive war that left the nation nearly friendless in the world, embraced a policy of torture, systematically attacked the civil liberties of American citizens, subverted the Constitution by asserting  a new doctrine of the unitary executive, turned a budget surplus into a staggering Federal debt, pursued a policy of showering the rich with tax breaks and relief from regulation that compounded the class divide in the nation to 19th Century levels, allowed an American city to be virtually destroyed and abandoned it citizens, attacked the “bright line” separating Church and State, ignored science whenever it drew conclusions that threatened his ideological preconceptions, and ignored Global Warming as a tipping point crisis neared.  And he exited shoveling money at the bankers who caused the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression—and managed to make people think that that was his successor’s idea. That’s a pretty impressive list.  It surely means that he must at least have a spot alongside the “Northern men of Southern Principles”—Pierce and Buchanan—whose malfeasance set the stage for the Civil War. 

Despite all of this, and it is a lot, the Shrub never seemed intrinsically evil.  Dim, yes.  Often clueless and way out of his depth.  He generally was trying to do the right thing as he understood it through his religious and political lenses.  He was capable of human empathy and compassion.  He was reasonably honest and did not use the office for personal aggrandizement or his private ATM.  He did not need to be worshiped and adored 24/7.  He expected to be criticized as a public figure, although the criticism must frequently have chaffed and did not launch vendettas against a critical press.  He did not obsess over slights and sought to personally humiliate or destroy his perceived enemies.  And he even had enough self-awareness not to always take himself too seriously and could even joke about his limitations and foibles.

Donald Trump blew away the competition for the title of Worst President ever over the likes of James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson.

In other words, Bush was the opposite of the narcissistic sociopath later sitting in the Oval Office in front of his golden drapes waiting for his ring and ass to be kissed.  On a policy level that played out with orders and actions meant to enrich himself and his class; harshly punish the poor, the alien, the other of every stripe; and indiscriminately insult the world.  Bad policy in Donald Trump’s case was a direct result of bad character.  That makes him hands down the worst and most dangerous President ever.                                                                                                                                     

And what of the Orange Menace’s predecessor?  It is, of course, too early for the ultimate judgment of history.  Barack Obama certainly came into office at a time of crisis—a boost to any chances to make one’s mark.  Brilliant men and able men have served and been forgotten simply because of the relative tranquility of their terms.  Faced with almost unprecedented economic disaster and two unpopular wars almost impossible to easily and safely withdraw from, Obama soldiered on with dignity and surprising success given the implacable opposition of an ideologically driven opposition in control of Congress.  He even managed to secure the passage of the first major health care reforms since Medicare, however half-hearted and flawed they may be.  And after stunning the world by winning re-election by solid popular and Electoral College majorities he staked out a bold progressive agenda for his second term.  Finally giving up on hopes of compromise with the Republican Congress, he became more daring in shaping the national agenda by executive orders where possible.

But there is a major fly in the ointment—the fatal flaw that overwhelms real achievement and merit.  For example Lyndon B. Johnson advanced civil rights and social reforms continuing a New Deal legacy but was bogged down in a senseless and unpopular war.  Richard Nixon had foreign policy triumphs like opening relations with China and presided over the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration but was undone by his own paranoid criminality.  Woodrow Wilson’s international idealism and reluctant support of women’s suffrage was matched by unprecedented domestic repression of labor and socialists and by the introduction of Jim Crow segregation into the Federal Government.  Andrew Jackson may had democratized American politics, modeled a strong modern Chief Executive, and boldly clamped down on the nation’s first secession crisis, but his murderous Indian Removal policy, oppression of the early stirrings of organized labor, destruction of the economically stabilizing Second Bank of the United States, and establishment of the spoils system all showed how much lasting damage a truly ruthless but capable President can do.

Desperate for a way to extricate ground troops from Iraq and Iran and to counter the lingering threats of an already largely smashed and dismantled terrorist enemy, Obama embraced the star chamber secrecy and brutality of a secret war established by the Bush administration which he had once railed against.  And he came to rely on war-at-a-safe distance drone technology and a policy of targeted assassinations.  Not only did the targets include American citizens, more importantly they were blunt instruments with plenty of civilian deaths in collateral damage and by simple mistake.  Every Pakistani village hit earned generations of implacable new enemies sworn to revenge.  Far from restoring, as the world hoped after his first election, American prestige and respect, those policies further isolated this country.  Further policies of domestic surveillance and coordination of attacks on the Occupy Movement and other social protests threatened freedom of speech and protest in this country.

Trump made many nostalgic for Barack Obama.

On the other hand, he comes off looking pretty good by comparison to the petulant would-be dictator who took his job.

Neither can Joe Biden who is in the third year of what may, or may not, be his first term be assessed from the prospective of history rather than the fluctuating circumstances of the news cycle.  He was elected handily in both the popular and Electoral Collage vote by a deeply divided nation that was mostly sick to death of his predecessor.  He immediately faced ludicrous claims of election fraud and the attempted insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.  He took office amid turmoil and tried to offer a steady, uniting hand.

Biden got off to a strong start under the circumstances despite the skepticism of the progressive wing of his party.  He acted quickly to un-do by executive order many of disastrous dictates of the previous White House occupant in areas of the environment, education, labor relations, job safety, voting rights, medical access and women’s health, and other critical areas.  He appointed the most widely diverse Cabinet, agency leadership, and White House staff in history as well as among his judicial nominees.  He acted quickly to mend fences with allies, particularly in Europe.

Most critically, he faced the Coronavirus pandemic entering its second year head on.  He promoted basic science and research and worked to make access to vaccination available to Americans as quickly as possible at no cost to the inoculated.  He succeeded in getting a rare bi-partisan package through Congress that included sweeping measures to aid those affected by the economic dislocation.  Most Americans received emergency cash relief, tax breaks, and other benefits.  State and local governments received discretionary funding.  As a result of the infusion of cash the economy began a remarkable recovery and record shattering unemployment began to recede.  A serious recession, or even a crash, was averted.

Yet the persistence of the pandemic and new variants, and relentless anti-vaccination propaganda eroded Biden’s support among a population yearning for a return to some kind of normalcy.  What should have been his greatest success turned into a political liability and his public support in the polls sank.

He also came under attack for his attempts at immigration reform.

Politically weakened, Biden had to accept a bi-partisan Build America Better package that stripped provisions most cherished by progress but still pumped billions into the economy and began to address long ignored crumbling infrastructure.  But he was unable to pass the high priority John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act even though a Supreme Court decision undercut generations of voting rights protection.  In response, Republican states have rushed through many new voter suppression initiatives.

Many thought Joe Biden's 2023 State of the Union Adress was his finest hour and an effective argument against those who think he is too old to run again. 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine presented Biden with his first and greatest international crisis.  His experience as a Cold War liberal in the Senate served him well.  He quickly asserted U.S. support of Ukraine, acted to build a united response among NATO allies, invoked crippling economic sanctions on Moscow and other actions to internationally isolate Vladimir Putin, and arm the resilient defenders.  He directed billions in military and economic aid and got Congressional action for more.

But the disruption to world petroleum supplies by sanctions on Russian oil as well as the effects of disruptions of delivery of Ukrainian grain set off a sudden dramatic surge of inflation which Republicans were quick to blame Biden for.  Food and fuel costs in the US seriously hit middle class pockets and eroded the President’s political support further.  Meanwhile the dominant Trump wing of the GOP in Congress openly supported Putin and Russian expansionist ambitions.

When he was elected, many assumed that Biden would be a one term transitional president due to his age.  But despite health concerns and a tendency to ramble off the cuff, Biden has signaled his intention to run for re-election when he is near 90.  Some doubt it.  But the stance makes him less of a lame duck.  So far few Democrats have signaled a serious intention to challenge him in the primaries if he runs.  That may change if there is a health emergency or some serious age-related gaffe.  Or Biden might announce an intention to retire when it is too late for most candidates to get up and running giving a leg up to his Vice President Kamala Harris.

At any rate, happy Presidents Day to one and all.  Go and buy a mattress.  Millard Fillmore will thank you.

 

One Shot Blew Up The Negro Fort in Andy Jackson’s Private Racist War

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 within 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 of the huge explosive shells fired from the naval rifles 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 be as aggressive a commander as Andy Jackson.

The Spanish had mostly abandoned the Florida panhandle militarily, although not their sovereign claim to it, after Jackson’s American Army captured Pensacola and garrisoned Mobile in November 1814.

Meanwhile the British had were 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, 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 line.  There he built a substantial fort to European field standards of earth works, redoubts, and palisades with gun platforms for several cannons.  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 wildfire 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.

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.

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 for “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.

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.

After victory at New Orleans General Andrew Jackson moved into Spanish East Florida itching for a fight.

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.

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.

                         John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State.

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 Jackson’s Democrats and the shaky political coalition called the Whigs. And it ushered in decades of increasing sectional division over the expansion of slavery.

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?