SW0117 Historian Dale Cox Recalls the Tragic, Devastating American Attack and Destruction of the ’Negro Fort’ at Prospect Bluff in July 1816

In a previous podcast, Historian Dale Cox set the stage for the American attack on the Fort at Prospect Bluff.

In this episode, Dale recalls the actual determined American campaign and the fort’s stubborn resistance between July 10 and July 27, 1816. This was not rag-tag defense by desperate self-liberated former slaves. These were well-trained British colonial marines who were black. Some indeed were former slaves, but all considered themselves free men and women. The fort’s defense was an all-hands operation with the wives and children filling bags with gun powder that the marines used to fire artillery rounds that kept the Americans at bay on the Apalachicola River in Spanish Florida. The marines successfully warded off continued American naval barrages until the Americans’ very last shot, when everything changed in a flash.

Reenactors portray British Colonial Marines of the 1816 era.

 

When open, visitors can walk the grounds of the fort. The National Park Service teamed with the US Forest Service to conduct a non-invasive above-ground survey of the fort's former confines. (Below) Pompey Fixico, a Seminole Maroon descendant from Los Angeles, spoke at the 200th Commemoration of the Battle of the Fort at Prospect Bluff, in 2016. 

Amidst the rubble, the Americans landed unopposed at the fort at Prospect Bluff. Authorities interviewed and executed some. And, regardless of previous manumission, the Americans condemned free, self-liberated maroons back into slavery, whether that was in the United States or in Spanish Florida.

A few months later, in the late fall of 1816, the British finally returned, only to find the fort destroyed and its occupants dead or re-enslaved. Then-Captain Woodbine picked up stragglers who had fled into the woods after the explosion. He resettled them at Nero’s Town on the Suwannee River, still, in Spanish Florida.

 

The Secretary of War forwarded to Congress a report on the Destruction of the Negro Fort, wholly "justifying" US action in the Spanish Florida territory, based on military reports. 

Dale Cox examines the fighting, the explosion, and the grim aftermath for the fort’s defenders. TwoEggTV produced a video feature that can be used as a supplement to this podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Uq8tl0tZBc

 

Host Patrick Swan is a board member with the Seminole Wars Foundation. He is a combat veteran and of the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Kosovo, and at the Pentagon after 9/11. A military historian, he holds masters degrees in Public History, Communication, and Homeland Security, and is a graduate of the US Army War College with an advanced degree in strategic studies. This podcast is recorded at the homestead of the Seminole Wars Foundation in Bushnell, Florida. 

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