Negro Fort

Negro Fort (African 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, by means of which they could "free all these Southern Countries tatesfrom the Yoke of the Americans."

Built on a site overlooking the Apalachicola River, about 15 miles north of present-day Appalachicola, Florida, it was the largest structure between St. Augustine and Pensacola. Trading posts of Panton, Leslie and Company and then John Forbes and Company, loyalists hostile to the United States, had existed since the late eighteenth century there and at the San Marcos fort, serving local Native Americans and fugitive slaves. The latter, runaway or freed colored slaves from plantations in the American South, used their experience of farming and animal husbandry to set up farms stretching for miles along the river.

When withdrawing in 1815, at the end of the war, the British commander Edward Nicolls, insured that "the fort was left intact for the use of the Indians. Instead, it came into the possession of a band of free renegade Negroes." It is the largest and best-known instance before the American Civil War in which armed fugitive Africans (they were no longer enslaved) resisted European Americans who sought to return them to slavery. (A much smaller example was Fort Mose, near St. Augustine.)

The fort was destroyed in 1816, while under the command of General Edmund P. Gaines, when a "hot cannon ball" landed in the magazine, destroying the fort. This action is also sometimes referred to as the Battle of Negro Fort (also called the Battle of Prospect Bluff or the Battle of African Fort). The formerly enslaved Africans were not familiar with use of cannons and other heavy munitions, and they were thus unable to defend themselves. Colonel Duncan L. Clinch, the attacking commander, reported salvaging approximately "2,500 muskets, 50 carbines, nd400 pistols" from the ruins; as well as inflicting nearly 300 casualties to the fort's occupants. The salvaged arms were given to Colonel Clinch's allies, the Creeks, as war booty for their help in taking the fort.

This is the only time in its history in which the United States destroyed a community of escaped formerly enslaved Africans in another country. However, the area continued to attract escaped Africans until the U.S. construction of Fort Gadsden in 1818.

The Battle of Negro Fort (African 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. By September, there was a square moat enclosing a large field several acres in size. There was a 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, by . Several hundred feet inland was the magazine, in which stands of arms and 73 kegs of gunpowder were stored.

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. There were over a dozen schooners, barques, and canoes, one long, along with sails, anchors, and other equipment, and "a number of experienced sailors and shipwrights."

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. Commander Nicolls had under his command, at Prospect Bluff, or living up the river, some 3,500 men eager to attack the Americans. 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.

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, Indian Agent Benjamin Hawkins, who tried to help them recover their lands. They had never been enslaved and thus did not have to worry about being returned to slavery. They wanted to return to their lands, taken or threatened by white settlers.

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 Jack, as the former Colonial Marines considered themselves British subjects. The Spaniards continued their policy of leaving the fugitive slaves alone. 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 pro-slavery press in the United States expressed outrage at the existence of Negro Fort. This concern was published in the ''Savannah Journal'':

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 f 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?

Escaped slaves came from as far as Virginia. The Apalachicola, as was true of other rivers of north Florida, was a base for raiders who attacked Georgia plantations, stealing livestock and helping the enslaved workers escape. Other slaves escaped from the militia units near the border, in which they had been serving. To correct this situation, seen by Southerners as intolerable, in April 1816 the U.S. Army decided to build Fort Scott on the Flint River, a tributary of the Apalachicola. Supplying the fort was challenging because transporting materials overland would have required traveling through unsettled wilderness. The obvious route to supply the Fort was the river. Although technically this was Spanish territory, Spain had neither the resources nor the inclination to defend this remote area. Supplies going to or from the newly-built Fort Scott would have to pass directly in front of the Negro Fort. The boats carrying supplies for the new fort, the ''Semelante'' and the ''General Pike'', were escorted by gunboats sent from Pass Christian. The defenders of the fort ambushed sailors gathering fresh water, killing three and capturing one (who was subsequently burned alive); only one escaped.

When the U.S. boats attempted to pass the fort on April 27 they were fired upon. This event provided a ''casus belli'' for destroying Negro Fort.

Hawkins and other white settlers made contact with Andrew Jackson, seen as the person most capable of doing so. Jackson requested permission to attack, and started preparations. Ten days later, without having received a reply, he ordered Brigadier General Edmund P. Gaines at Fort Scott to destroy Negro Fort. The U.S. expedition included Creek Indians

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