Prospect Bluff Historic Sites

thumb|right|Map of Fort Gadsden, also showing the location of the original "Negro Fort". Prepared by Major James Gadsden in 1818.

thumb|right|A [[Union Jack on the site of the original British fort.]]

thumb|right|200px|A [[commemorative plaque marks the location of the fort's powder magazine.]]

Prospect Bluff Historic Sites (until 2016 known as Fort Gadsden Historic Site, and sometimes written as Fort Gadsden Historic Memorial) Nicholls' Fort, Blount's Fort, Fort Blount, African Fort, and Fort Apalachicola. The local natives called the land Achackwheithle.

Listed in the National Register of Historic Places and named a National Historic Landmark in 1972, the Prospect Bluff Historic Sites was acquired by the Apalachicola National Forest in 1940 and is managed by the U.S. Forest Service. The process of memorializing the site began in 1961, when the Apalachicola National Forest issued the State of Florida a term special use permit for an area of approximately including the site to be run as a state park. Administration of the site reverted to the federal government literally "hill with a good view".

Accessible only by river then, the site was and is still remote. The river was the boundary between East Florida and West Florida during the British Florida period (1763–1783) and the second Spanish Florida period (1783–1821). By modern land route it is from Pensacola and from St. Augustine. The area was sparsely populated, and in the twentieth century a large portion became the Apalachicola National Forest. The river was of intense interest to the British, who saw it as an undefended entry into the United States through Georgia. It was of no interest to the Spaniards; it led nowhere they cared about. Spanish forces in Florida were limited and Spain was far less committed to Florida than it was to its other colonies, most of them much more productive. Spain's inability to police its borders or return fugitive slaves was central to Florida's transfer to the United States in 1821.

Control of Prospect Bluff meant control of the river, which had served as a transportation artery for centuries. More recently, it had enabled raiding parties to go upriver into Georgia and the Mississippi Territory via the Chattahoochee and especially the Flint River. The attacks were made on plantations, which had few if any defenses. These parties, besides coming back with material goods, saw to it that the slaves of the raided plantations could get free. This was a great economic blow to the slave owners (slaves were expensive), and an ideological affront as well, This predecessor of the Underground Railroad ran south. The biggest issue about the area discussed by whites was how to get escaped slaves back, or get compensation for them, and prevent or reduce future escapes. The return of Native Americans was unwanted, and they were soon forcibly removed from Florida as well.

As was customary in pre-railroad times, settlement took place first along rivers. The name Apalachicola River derives its name from Apalachicola Province on what is now the Chattahoochee River (the Spanish regarded what is now the Chattahoochee as part of the Apalachicola River). Settlement at Prospect Bluff by maroons (escaped slaves and their descendants), Seminoles, and a few Europeans is documented at the end of the eighteenth century.

In January 1783 a conference was held in St. Augustine between the representatives of the British Crown—Governor Patrick Tonyn, Brigadier General Archibald McArthur, and Thomas Brown, the superintendent of Indian affairs—and the head men and principal warriors of the towns of the Upper and the Lower Creeks, who complained of the long distance they must travel to the stores from which they obtained their supplies. The Indians offered protection to merchants who would move their stores to locations closer to their territory, and pointed out the Apalachicola River as a suitable place for a trading house. The Creeks said it was not only more convenient for themselves, but also much nearer to the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee Indians, and requested that the house of Panton, Leslie & Company, who had been supplying them with goods, should be solicited to settle there for that purpose.

William Panton was present at the conference, and agreed with the Indians to establish a store at such a place as he or his co-partners might find suitable between the forks of Flint river and the mouth of the Apalachicola River, provided that letters of license were issued to him and his partners. The agreement was confirmed by the Crown, and the traders were granted the necessary license. Their store opened in 1784, by which time Spain had regained possession of Florida, at Fort San Marcos de Apalache (modern St. Marks, Florida). This store was attacked and looted by the adventurer William Augustus Bowles in 1792 and again in 1800, at which point it ceased operations.

A trading post run by John Forbes and Company, successors to Panton, Leslie & Company, was set up in 1804 at the more defensible Prospect Bluff at the request of "Indians" ("Mickosuckees" is the only ethnicity mentioned). It was "manned by Edmund Doyle with some assistance from William Hambly, an Indian trader with years of experience in the area." Doyle and Hambly "each owned plantations higher up the river, at Spanish Bluff on the west bank and near present-day Bristol on the east bank."

The site of the trading post was inside the walls of the Fort, built around it; this explains why the precise site has never been identified. It included a building for storing hides (what the Native Americans had to trade), quarters for negro slaves, and a cow pen for several hundred cattle that were raised nearby. During the War of 1812, British troops ransacked the store and freed the slaves.

Figures on the number of maroons who settled in the surrounding area range from 300 to 1,000.

The blacks developed plantations extending up to 50 miles along the river. The British forces, over 100 officers and men led by a Brevet Captain of the Royal Marines, George Woodbine, made camp at the only community between Pensacola and St. Marks: the trading post of John Forbes and Company, surrounded by negro plantations.

It was located at Prospect Bluff. Woodbine began to train local Native Americans as well as escaped slaves. With the offensive cancelled, Nicolls and his men returned to Prospect Bluff.

The British paid off the Colonial Marines in April, in the presence of a Spanish army officer, Vicente Sebastián Pintado, seeking to reclaim the fugitives from Spanish Florida, and withdrew most of their force to Bermuda. On May 16, 1815, the British evacuated the last of the garrison there. At the time of his departure in May 1815, Nicolls promised his allies to return in six months, according to Hawkins.

Blacks and Native Americans under Nicolls' direction built two forts on the Apalachicola River. The larger and more important one was to be on the border of Georgia, at the juncture of the Flint and the Chattahoochee Rivers, in modern Chattahoochee, Florida, and was to serve as the base for a U.S. invasion. Time only permitted the construction of a small wooden structure, which Nicolls called Fort Apalachicola, but is today referred to as Nicolls' Outpost.

The larger one, which actually was built and was intended to be a supply depot for Nicolls' Outpost, did not have a name; it was referred to simply as the British Post. It was above the river mouth and south of Nicolls' Outpost and the border of Georgia. The construction of the larger fort was described by Brigadier General Edmund P. Gaines in a letter of May 14, 1816 to Andrew Jackson, who had charged him with destroying the Fort:<blockquote>The ramparts and parapets built of hewn timber filled in with earth, mounting 9 to 12 pieces of Cannon, several of which are very large, with some mortars and Howitzers. It has a deep ditch intended to be filled with water, but was dry when seen by my informants, two or three months ago. The work is nearly square and extends over near two acres [0.81 ha] of ground, has Comfortable barracks, and large stone houses inside. It is rendered inaccessible by land, except a narrow pass up near the margin of the river, by reason of an impenetrable swamp in the rear and extending to the river above.</blockquote> The fort was very well provided with ordnance:<blockquote>It included 4 twenty-four-pound cannons, 4 six-pound cannons, beside a field piece and a howitzer. In addition there were found 2,500 stands of muskets with accoutrements, 500 carbines and 500 swords ... 300 quarter-casks of rifle powder and 162 barrels of cannon powder, besides other stores and clothing.</blockquote>

The area enclosed by the fort was ; on the eastern corners (those most vulnerable to attack) were bastions with walls high and thick.

The magazine area of the fort was located about 500 feet from the river bank, and consisted of an octagonal blockhouse holding the principal magazine. This was surrounded by an extensive star-shaped enclosure covering about 16 acres with bastions on the eastern corners. The ravelin along the river with cannon was 15 feet high and 18 feet thick.

Gaines estimated that 900 Native American warriors and 450 armed blacks inhabited the fort.

A miniature replica of the later Fort Gadsden was constructed in the 1970s; a picture is in the State Archives of Florida.

Negro Fort (1815–16)

When the British withdrew, they deliberately left all their weapons, hoping that the locals would use them to defend themselves from U.S. attempts to re-enslave them, just as African and Native Americans had assisted the British during the American War of Independence.

The Corps of Colonial Marines detachment in Florida, which had grown to about 400 men, was paid off and disbanded when the British post was evacuated at the end of the war. A small number of men went to Bermuda with the British as part of a refugee group, rejoining the main body of Colonial Marines. Over 200 were disembarked in Trinidad during 1815. Nicolls estimated 350 remained. Others from the Florida unit remained in settlements around the Fort which had become a symbol of slave insurrection.

Over the next year the fort became a growing colony of escaped slaves from Georgia and the Mississippi Territory, and became known as the Negro Fort. It was the center of the largest community of free negroes in North America before the U.S. Civil War.

The fort, located as it was near the border, was seen by the U.S. as "a beacon of light to restless and rebellious slaves," "a center of hostility and above all a threat to the security of their slaves," "a direct threat to the slave-holding interests rapidly flocking to the newly opened lands in what is today Mississippi and Alabama."

After Zúñiga's reply of May 26, 1816, informing Jackson that he could not act "unless I receive the

Orders of my Captain General [in Cuba Juan Ruíz de Apodaca] and the necessary Supplies", It has been called "the single deadliest cannon shot in American history." It was also "the largest battle in history between fugitive slaves and U.S. forces seeking to reenslave them." The fort needed a new name; Jackson named it Fort Gadsden. However, an aide to General Andrew Jackson reported to his superior in August 1818 that Fort Gadsden was "a temporary work, hastily erected, and of perishable materials, without constant repair, it could not last more than four or five years." It was abandoned in 1821, the year Florida became a U.S. territory and there was no longer a national border to defend.

Fort Gadsden had no direct involvement in any military endeavor, either in 1818–1821 or during the Civil War.

Colinton

In 1820, Colin Mitchell would purchase the Forbes Lands, including Fort Gadsden. The following year he made plans to construct a city at the site, Colinton. The planned city would have had 4 squares and wharves for incoming steamboats. However, Mitchell's claim to the land would be found invalid, and Colinton was never built.

"Milly Francis"

A marker at the site recalls the case of Milly Francis, a Creek girl who persuaded her father, Hillis Hadjo (Francis the Prophet), not to execute an American soldier who had inadvertently come into their territory. Her father was captured and hung at Fort St. Marks in 1818. She witnessed his hanging.

Irvington remains

A steamboat, the Irvington, burned and sank in 1838 four miles north of the Site. The rusting boilers and some of the works thought to be from this ship were dredged from the river (when the river was being dredged for navigation) and can be seen at the Site.

Civil War (1862–1863)

During the American Civil War, Confederate troops occupied the fort, using it to protect communications from plantations in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama with the port of Apalachicola. In July 1863, an outbreak of malaria forced its abandonment.

Bicentennial activities

On May 16–20, 2016, the National Park Service held a workshop with 50 participants on using technological tools to non-destructively investigate below a site's surface.
On October 22, 2016, the United States Forest Service commemorated 200 years since the tragic events of July 1816. There was a Seminole Color Guard, "descendants of Prospect Bluff Maroon community", with keynote speaker Chairman James E. Billie of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. A video of the ceremony is available.
The Florida Humanities Council funded a program that created virtual landscapes for 1816 Prospect Bluff as well as the Maroon community of Angola on the Manatee River.

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

Herbert Aptheker. American Negro Slave Revolts. 5th edition. New York, NY: International Publishers, 1983 (1943).
Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and his Indian Wars. Viking Penguin, 2001.

External links

The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution: With Sketches of Several Distinguished Colored Persons (1855) at archive.org
Tragedy and Survival Virtual Reconstruction of the 1816 Fort
Fort Gadsden - official site at Apalachicola National Forest, including a 3-minute video.
Fort Gadsden and the "Negro Fort" at exploresouthernhistory.com.
Map to Fort Gadsden
Negro Fort, 8 Story Panels with Pictures narrating the attack on the fort in 1816, from the documentary site Rebellion: John Horse and the Black Seminoles
Negro Fort at Ghost Towns
Fort Gadsden at American Forts Network
The First Emancipation Proclamation at Daily Kos