Erasing the Negro Fort

Painting by Pat Elliott of Negro Fort being shelled by the American army in 1816. Courtesy Apalachicola National Forest.

Between July 15 and August 1816, a battle fought on the Apalachicola River in northwestern Florida at Prospect Bluff eliminated a unique and very real impediment to American expansion westward. The Negro Fort was a stubborn legacy of the Creek War, abandoned in the summer pf 1815 by renegade Red Sticks, Seminoles, and their British allies, but still garrisoned by the remaining Maroons, or Black Seminoles – the offspring of Seminoles and escaped Georgian African-American slaves. A porous border and the example of independent Black Seminole towns and accomplished chiefs and advisers encouraged even more slaves to escape. The Creek War had ended with the Treaty of Fort Jackson on August 9, 1815, but a few British entrepreneurs, backed by marines and local Caribbean governors and their Spanish ally waiting for another chance to pounce on the United States, had kept the American-Florida border hot with Native raids. Major General Andrew Jackson, observing the Negro Fort’s strategic importance, saw a way to rid the United States of a few problems all at once.

The Negro Fort was impressive,and the battle to subdue it underhanded. Generals Jackson and Edmund Gaines planned to send American vessels, two schooners and two gunboats, commanded by Sailing Master Jairus Loomis, up the Apalachicola to force the Maroons to fire first, necessitating a honorable response by a detachment of the US Fourth Infantry, commanded by Colonel Duncan Clinch. Inside the Negro Fort, three African-American leaders, Garzon, Cyrus, and Prince, each with military experience leading or assisting Red Stick or Seminole war parties, commanded 250-300 African-Americans, and also 1,600 Seminoles, Choctaws, and Creeks, and a schooner patrolling the river. The eight-sided earthen fort sported 10 guns, including four 24-pounders atop walls 15 feet high and 18 feet thick. Near the Negro Fort lived about a thousand men, women, and children growing crops. The bombardment of the Negro Fort on July 25 went well for the defenders until a freak accident when one American shell, which were now fired “red-hot”, was lobbed from Loomis’ gunboats and rolled through the door of the magazine. The explosion was terrific, and the slaughter devastating. In addition, Clinch allowed his Creek allies to slaughter survivors. Clinch acquired 2,500 rifles, 50 carbines, 400 pistols, and 500 swords, and destroyed the countryside. Clinch’s own recollections were conveniently less barbarous.

“The explosion was awful, and the scene horrible beyond description. You cannot conceive, nor I describe the horrors of the scene. In an instant lifeless bodies were stretched upon the plain, buried in sand and rubbish, or suspended from the tops of the surrounding pines. Here lay an innocent babe, there a helpless mother; on the one side a sturdy warrior, on the other a bleeding squaw. Piles of bodies, large heaps of sand, broken guns, accoutrements, etc, covered the site of the fort. The brave soldier was disarmed of his resentment and checked his victorious career, to drop a tear on the distressing scene.”

Yet, the impressive display did not mollify the Seminoles for long, and the British returned to sow rebellion. In the next year, the First Seminole War commenced. Sean Michael O’Brien, from whose book, In Bitterness and Tears: Andrew Jackson’s Destruction of the Creeks and Seminoles, sums up the the political and economic consequences of the Creek War and First Seminole Wars as “the most disastrous conflicts in Native American history.” The Battle of Horseshoe Bend, the decisive end of the Creek War, resulted in more Native deaths than any single other conflict, and the Treaty of Fort Jackson forced the cession of half of the Creek state, opening up the Alabama and Mississippi for white American expansion. The British and Spanish missed an opportunity to block American expansion by creating a Native border state along the Georgia-Alabama-Florida borders.  And, Southern slave owners’ fears of a slave insurrection lost one major manifestation. As DKos’ gjohnsit argues:

A consistent theme in the history of slavery is the fear – the fear that the people you are doing wrong are going to learn enough to realize the wrongs being done to them and make you pay for it. It’s the manifestations of this fear that are interesting.

What I find compelling is the alternative the Negro Fort offers of another America.

Oh, the Injustice!

It’ll be a sad day for a Marylander when Bangladesh landmass grows. and Maryland’s coastal areas shrinks, all because of global warming.

Yet, looking at the two unrelated reports from which these dire predictions are lifted, I wonder who’s really alarmed, or if there’s cause for alarm.

Mr Sarkar said that in the next 50 years this could add up to the country gaining 1,000 square kilometres.

But others maintain that Bangladesh is going to lose land over that period.

Dr Atiq Rahman, a lead author of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, told the BBC that there was little in the new research to make him think that their projection needed revising.

He said that many people living along the coast had observed that sea levels where higher now than in their grandparents’ day.

“The rate at which sediment is deposited and new land is created is much slower than the rate at which climate change and sea level rises are taking place,” he said.

So while some new land may be created in parts of the country, elsewhere a much larger amount of land will disappear, he said.

Push, pull?

As temperatures climb, cool-water northern species in the Chesapeake estuary, such as soft-shell clams, sturgeon and eelgrass, are likely to disappear, while warm-water species – such as Atlantic croaker – would benefit. Crabs might prosper from higher salinity and warmer temperatures.

“Summertime water temperatures are likely to be similar to those of the North Carolina sounds by 2050,” the panel said.

By 2100, they’ll feel like South Florida.

With added runoff, that will expand “dead” zones, where nutrients in sediments lead to algae blooms, decay and reductions in dissolved oxygen.

On the plus side: Icing across the Chesapeake Bay – formerly a once-in-10-years event – may become as rare as once in 25 to 40 years, the committee said. That could aid oystermen and bay navigation.

Why do both reports sound like pork-barrel legislation written by lobbyists?