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| "Attack on Apalachicola River" by Jackson Walker, Museum of Florida Art. |
July 27, 1816 - Apalachicola
River, Florida: Built by the British Military as a southern advance point
against the United States in the War of 1812 the “Negro Fort” stood like a
thumb in the eye to the United States, or at least many in the south, particularly
in Georgia.
Built-in 1814 by Lieutenant
Colonel Edward Nichols, His Majesty's Marines. The intention was to convince the Seminole people to align themselves with the British. This plan
did not work and was abandoned by the Marines in 1815.
The fort was built on Prospect
Bluff overlooking the Apalachicola River, around a territorial store built in 1783.
The area was minimally settled by a variety of indigenous people and escaped
slaves and their descendants. Many of these were Colonial Marines, free
Africans who were trained by the British Marines to help in the war. The fort became
the center of a farming community created by a diverse people,
who used native and West African knowledge to clear land and cultivate.
However, this success and the
community’s ability to defend themselves with English weapons was considered an
insult to the United States, in fact, some people claimed it was a place of evil
from where bandits and outlaws made raids. Georgian plantation owners sent
letters to the U.S. government demanding that action be taken to destroy the autonomous
free black community. Less than 60 miles from the Georgia frontier some in the
government felt that the fort was, “a beacon of light to restless and
rebellious slaves," or so said well-known bigot Major General Andrew
Jackson. As the commanding officer of the army on the frontier Jackson had
basically the power to decide the fate of thousands of people. With slave
owners in Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina living in fear of slave rebellion, it
did not take long for a decision to be made to destroy the community by
destroying the fort.
By that July nearly 1,000 people
lived in and around the fort, 300 in the fort itself. All of them were either
escaped slaves or a mixture of the indigenous people and the free Africans. These
people were slowly becoming the ethnic Seminoles. Such a large community was
quickly becoming a threat to the institution of slavery itself which is why even
though they were living in peace the existence of the community could not
continue in the eyes of most government and military leaders of the South.
When ordering the fort's destruction U.S.
Secretary of War William H. Crawford stated, “If the Spanish governor
refused to ‘put an end to an evil of so serious nature,’ the U.S. government
would promptly take measures to.” He ordered Jackson to send his message, ordering
the Spanish governor to “destroy or remove from our frontier these banditti,
put an end to an evil of so serious a nature, and return to our citizens and
friendly Indians inhabiting our territory those negroes now in the said fort, and
which have been stolen and enticed from them.”
Unmentioned in this demand was
the fact that many of these families had been free for generations. Their
ancestors had fled from their colonial masters to Spanish Florida many decades
ago.
The truth was that Crawford and
Jackson had already planned for the fort’s destruction and ordered General Edmund
Gaines to do so. The first step was to build Fort Scott out of Camp Crawford 16
at the junction of the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers, where they joined to
form the Apalachicola. The next step is one of the questions of history,
factual what happened was that two gunboats coming upriver with supply boats
were attacked near Fort Gadsden by the Black militia that occupied the fort and
their crews killed. For generations though there has been speculation that
Jackson arranged it. The attack became known as the Watering Party Massacre
since the gunboats had stopped to refill their canteens.
Whether Jackson had somehow
preplanned this or not has never been proven, what is easily proved is that
Crawford and Jackson used the event to show the Spanish officials that they
needed to destroy the fort to protect, “National Interests.” Also, Jackson had
been hiring members of the Creek Nation to go into Florida to capture Blacks as
runaway slaves. In the days leading to the full assault on what was now known
as the “Negro Fort” these Creek had joined with troops under the command of Colonel
Duncan Clinch. Clinch himself was a slave owner in Georgia and had no
compassion for freed Africans.
From July 24 to July 27 the warriors
at the fort defended themselves fairly well, they had the munitions and were
committed to defending their community. Gunboats arrived on the river on the
27th and began lobbing heated shells into the fort, one of these hit
the fort’s gunpowder magazine and the explosion leveled the fort and killed at
least 270 of the men protecting their community. Clinch reported the horrific
destruction: back to Gaines and Jackson, “The explosion was awful, and the
scene horrible beyond description,” Clinch said. He gave a “divine
justification” for the massacre in the official report.
Regardless of this all happening
on Spanish territory Gaines gave orders for all negro survivors to be collected
and any negro to be taken into custody to be returned to their owners, even if
they were descended from former slaves. Several runaway slaves who lived and
farmed on the river scattered about to safety. Most fled to the protection of
the Africans and Seminoles at the Suwannee and others left to a free black
community just south of what is now Tampa Bay.
The attack led to the Seminole
wars, which was something Jackson had desired. He was a firm believer in “Manifest
Destiny,” and felt it was obvious for the United States to take over Florida.
This happened rather quickly. Spain protested the violation of its soil, but
it lacked the martial power to do more. Jackson ordered the construction of a
new fort, which became Fort Gadsden after Lieutenant James Gadsden led the
construction of the new fort. The trading post of John Forbes and Company, with
storekeeper Edward Doyle, was reestablished following the fort's
destruction. Jackson used the Seminole wars as justification for a full
invasion of Florida. This helped lead to the territory being ceded by Spain to
America in the Treaty of Adams-Onis in 1819 and the Transcontinental
Treaty in 1821. Jackson became the first territorial governor in 1821.
Sources:
https://arthurashe.ucla.edu/2016/07/27/massacre-unveiled-remembering-the-negro-fort/
https://libcom.org/article/negro-fort-massacre
https://aaregistry.org/story/the-negro-fort-florida-a-story/
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| Historical Markers in Florida |
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