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The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community
The dramatic story of the United States’ destruction of a free and independent community of fugitive slaves in Spanish Florida
In the aftermath of the War of 1812, Major General Andrew Jackson ordered a joint United States army-navy expedition into Spanish Florida to destroy a free and independent community of fugitive slaves. The result was the Battle of Negro Fort, a brutal conflict among hundreds of American troops, Indian warriors, and black rebels that culminated in the death or re-enslavement of nearly all of the fort’s inhabitants. By eliminating this refuge for fugitive slaves, the United States government closed an escape valve that African Americans had utilized for generations. At the same time, it intensified the subjugation of southern Native Americans, including the Creeks, Choctaws, and Seminoles. Still, the battle was significant for another reason as well.
During its existence, Negro Fort was a powerful symbol of black freedom that subverted the racist foundations of an expanding American slave society. Its destruction reinforced the nation’s growing commitment to slavery, while illuminating the extent to which ambivalence over the institution had disappeared since the nation’s founding. Indeed, four decades after declaring that all men were created equal, the United States destroyed a fugitive slave community in a foreign territory for the first and only time in its history, which accelerated America’s transformation into a white republic. The Battle of Negro Fort places the violent expansion of slavery where it belongs, at the center of the history of the early American republic.
In the aftermath of the War of 1812, Major General Andrew Jackson ordered a joint United States army-navy expedition into Spanish Florida to destroy a free and independent community of fugitive slaves. The result was the Battle of Negro Fort, a brutal conflict among hundreds of American troops, Indian warriors, and black rebels that culminated in the death or re-enslavement of nearly all of the fort’s inhabitants. By eliminating this refuge for fugitive slaves, the United States government closed an escape valve that African Americans had utilized for generations. At the same time, it intensified the subjugation of southern Native Americans, including the Creeks, Choctaws, and Seminoles. Still, the battle was significant for another reason as well.
During its existence, Negro Fort was a powerful symbol of black freedom that subverted the racist foundations of an expanding American slave society. Its destruction reinforced the nation’s growing commitment to slavery, while illuminating the extent to which ambivalence over the institution had disappeared since the nation’s founding. Indeed, four decades after declaring that all men were created equal, the United States destroyed a fugitive slave community in a foreign territory for the first and only time in its history, which accelerated America’s transformation into a white republic. The Battle of Negro Fort places the violent expansion of slavery where it belongs, at the center of the history of the early American republic.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published September 10, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 9, 2019
This was an incredible, riveting read from start to finish. Immaculately researched, it tells of an incredibly painful series of tide-turning battles against the British in the War of 1812, and Andrew Jackson's role in putting down what could have been a massive, equally tide-turning British plan to work with the Spanish, runaway slaves, and indigenous Americans, with the latter two groups promised various levels of freedom and their own land, either on the continent in the case of the latter, or away from the threat of being "repatriated" with their former owners, in the case of the former. Expertly planned but ultimately mishandled tactically by the British, this and the Battle of New Orleans paved the way for Jackson to ultimately saunter into the White House.
It's a fascinating study, and an excellent exercise in what could have been. It's not a battle routinely taught in the public schools of today or yesterday; I'm hopeful that the publication of this book will help set it up to be taught in future classes. Hats off to Matthew Clavin for a sober portrayal of a dark day in our history.
It's a fascinating study, and an excellent exercise in what could have been. It's not a battle routinely taught in the public schools of today or yesterday; I'm hopeful that the publication of this book will help set it up to be taught in future classes. Hats off to Matthew Clavin for a sober portrayal of a dark day in our history.
January 25, 2020
During the War of 1812, Great Britain - in a manner not made clear to me - assumed control of Spanish Florida. A highly defensible fort was established on a bluff overlooking the Appalachicola River a short distance from the US(Georgia)/Florida border, provisioned, armed, & manned by a sizable collection of white British marines, Seminole, Creek & other tribe Indians, & Blacks most of whom had escaped from slavery in the southern US or Spanish Florida. This fort, which became known as Negro Fort, at the cessation of the War of 1818 & signing of peace treaties, was abandoned by the white British troops as Florida was returned to the possession of Spain but it continued to be manned by Blacks & Indians. Furthermore, it served as a magnet for additional runaway slaves much to the irritation of slave-holding interests in nearby southern US states & Spanish Florida. For this reason, the fort was attacked & destroyed with overwhelming loss of life of its inhabitants by US military forces indirectly under the authority of General Andrew Jackson.
At this juncture, we reach the point of the book. The destruction of the fort was hailed & applauded in the US by essentially all stakeholders, state & federal government, citizens, North & South, & even authorities & residents of Spanish Florida. The moral rights of Blacks to freedom, in peace & safety was unrecognized & unremarked for many years - essentially up until the lead up to the US Civil War but it was, to a large extent, an important motivation for certain abolitionists including John Brown.
The book did not contain a great deal of drama was it was interesting & certainly informative. This is very little known material. It is also timely & interesting in the context of contemporary comparisons between Andrew Jackson & tRump.
At this juncture, we reach the point of the book. The destruction of the fort was hailed & applauded in the US by essentially all stakeholders, state & federal government, citizens, North & South, & even authorities & residents of Spanish Florida. The moral rights of Blacks to freedom, in peace & safety was unrecognized & unremarked for many years - essentially up until the lead up to the US Civil War but it was, to a large extent, an important motivation for certain abolitionists including John Brown.
The book did not contain a great deal of drama was it was interesting & certainly informative. This is very little known material. It is also timely & interesting in the context of contemporary comparisons between Andrew Jackson & tRump.
August 6, 2023
Review of: The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community,
by Matthew J. Clavin
by Stan Prager (8-6-23)
In yet another fortuitous connection to my attendance at the Civil War Institute (CWI) 2023 Summer Conference at Gettysburg College, I sat in on an enlightening presentation by the historian David Silkenat1 on the environmental history of slavery in the American south that turned to a discussion of the frequently overlooked phenomenon of communities in secluded geographies that were populated by runaways who fled enslavement. These so-called “maroon communities” appeared mostly on the margins of settled areas across the upper and lower south, sometimes in tandem with the indigenous, with inhabitants eking out a living by hunting and gathering as well as small scale farming, supplemented by limited and surreptitious trading with the outside world. The origin of some of these maroon societies can be traced back to the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, when the British offered freedom to the enslaved if they were willing to serve in the military. Many jumped at the chance. On both occasions, when hostilities concluded, those who were unable or unwilling to withdraw with British forces went into hiding to avoid recapture and a return to slavery. One such refuge in the Spanish Floridas became known as the “Negro Fort.”
My next out of state trip subsequent to Gettysburg brought me to a small town in southern Vermont that one lazy afternoon found me exploring a used bookstore—housed in, of all places, a yurt2—where I stumbled upon The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community [2019], by Matthew J. Clavin. Silkenet’s fascinating talk about maroons rang in my head as I bought the book, and I started reading it that very day.
Southern planters often held competing, contradictory notions in their heads simultaneously, while sidestepping the cognitive dissonance that practice should have provoked. On the one hand, they deluded themselves that their enslaved “property” were content in their condition of servitude. At the same time, they held them inferior in every sense and thought them nearly helpless, unable to successfully function independently. Slaveowners also dismissed the idea that African Americans could possibly make good soldiers, even though they did manage to fight on both sides during the Revolution. On the other hand, whites nursed a deep visceral fear of slave uprisings by armed blacks, whom despite their apparent contentment and incompetence might somehow team up and murder them in their sleep.
This heavy load of contradictions got hoisted menacingly above them to cast an ever-lengthening shadow when numbers of escaped slaves recruited into service by the British in what was then the Spanish colony of East Florida during the War of 1812 opted to remain behind after the Treaty of Ghent in a military fortification on Prospect Bluff overlooking the Apalachicola River heavily stocked with cannon and munitions and bolstered with support from allied Native Americans. These were not handfuls of fugitives out of reach in an unknown, inaccessible swamp somewhere, like most maroon settlements; this was a prominent, fully equipped, self-sustaining, armed camp, which even had the temerity to continue to fly the Union Jack—the so-called “Negro Fort.” This was an invitation to fellow runaways. This was not only a challenge to the white man’s “peculiar institution,” this was a thumbing of the nose to the entire planter mentality. This was an unacceptable threat. They could not bear it; they would not bear it.
In The Battle of Negro Fort, Clavin, Professor of History at University of Houston, deftly explores not only the origin of this community and its eventual annihilation through the machinations of then General Andrew Jackson, quietly countenanced by the federal government, but places the fort and its destruction in its appropriate context by opening a wider lens upon the entire era. This was a surprisingly significant moment in American history that for too long fell victim to superficial treatments that overlooked the significance of the multiplicity of forces in play, a neglect much more recently remedied by Pulitzer Prize winning scholar Alan Taylor, whose body of work points not only to the far greater complexities attached to the War of 1812 that have usually remained unacknowledged, but also identifies the broader consequences that rose out of the series of conflicts Taylor collectively terms the “Wars of the 1810s.” Taylor’s brilliant American Republics3 specifically cites actions against the Negro Fort, and connects that to a series of events that included the First Seminole War, sparked by attempts to recapture runaway blacks living among Native Americans, and finally to Spain’s relinquishing of the Floridas to the United States. While never losing focus on the fort itself, Clavin too walks skillfully in this larger arena that hosts war, diplomacy, indigenous tribes pitted against each other, related maroon communities, as well as overriding issues of enslavement and the predominance of white supremacy.
The Battle of Negro Fort is very well-written, but it takes on an academic tone that makes it more accessible to a scholarly than a popular audience. But it is hardly dull, so those comfortable in the realm of historical studies will be undeterred. And it is, after all, a stirring tale that leads to a dramatic and tragic end. Just as the Venetians blew up the Parthenon in 1687 by scoring a hit on the gunpowder the Turks had stored there, a gunboat’s cannonball struck the powder magazine located in the center of the fort, which exploded spectacularly and obliterated the structure. Scores (or hundreds, depending upon the source) were killed, the leaders who survived executed, and those who failed to make their escape returned to slavery.
The author’s thesis underscores that the chief motive for the assault on the Negro Fort by Jackson’s agents in 1816 was to advance white supremacy rather than as part of a greater strategy to dominate the Floridas, which strikes as perhaps somewhat overstated. Still, Clavin cites later antebellum abolitionists who reference the Negro Fort with specificity in this regard, so he may very well have a point. In any case, this contribution to the historiography proves a worthy addition to the literature and an understanding of this less well-known period of early American history will be significantly enhanced by adding it to your reading list.
1Note: David Silkenat is the author of Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South.
2The used bookstore in the yurt is West End Used Books in Wilmington, VT
3Note: I reviewed the referenced Alan Taylor book here: Review of: American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850, by Alan Taylor
Review of: The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community, by Matthew J. Clavin – Regarp Book Blog https://regarp.com/2023/08/06/review-...
by Matthew J. Clavin
by Stan Prager (8-6-23)
In yet another fortuitous connection to my attendance at the Civil War Institute (CWI) 2023 Summer Conference at Gettysburg College, I sat in on an enlightening presentation by the historian David Silkenat1 on the environmental history of slavery in the American south that turned to a discussion of the frequently overlooked phenomenon of communities in secluded geographies that were populated by runaways who fled enslavement. These so-called “maroon communities” appeared mostly on the margins of settled areas across the upper and lower south, sometimes in tandem with the indigenous, with inhabitants eking out a living by hunting and gathering as well as small scale farming, supplemented by limited and surreptitious trading with the outside world. The origin of some of these maroon societies can be traced back to the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, when the British offered freedom to the enslaved if they were willing to serve in the military. Many jumped at the chance. On both occasions, when hostilities concluded, those who were unable or unwilling to withdraw with British forces went into hiding to avoid recapture and a return to slavery. One such refuge in the Spanish Floridas became known as the “Negro Fort.”
My next out of state trip subsequent to Gettysburg brought me to a small town in southern Vermont that one lazy afternoon found me exploring a used bookstore—housed in, of all places, a yurt2—where I stumbled upon The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community [2019], by Matthew J. Clavin. Silkenet’s fascinating talk about maroons rang in my head as I bought the book, and I started reading it that very day.
Southern planters often held competing, contradictory notions in their heads simultaneously, while sidestepping the cognitive dissonance that practice should have provoked. On the one hand, they deluded themselves that their enslaved “property” were content in their condition of servitude. At the same time, they held them inferior in every sense and thought them nearly helpless, unable to successfully function independently. Slaveowners also dismissed the idea that African Americans could possibly make good soldiers, even though they did manage to fight on both sides during the Revolution. On the other hand, whites nursed a deep visceral fear of slave uprisings by armed blacks, whom despite their apparent contentment and incompetence might somehow team up and murder them in their sleep.
This heavy load of contradictions got hoisted menacingly above them to cast an ever-lengthening shadow when numbers of escaped slaves recruited into service by the British in what was then the Spanish colony of East Florida during the War of 1812 opted to remain behind after the Treaty of Ghent in a military fortification on Prospect Bluff overlooking the Apalachicola River heavily stocked with cannon and munitions and bolstered with support from allied Native Americans. These were not handfuls of fugitives out of reach in an unknown, inaccessible swamp somewhere, like most maroon settlements; this was a prominent, fully equipped, self-sustaining, armed camp, which even had the temerity to continue to fly the Union Jack—the so-called “Negro Fort.” This was an invitation to fellow runaways. This was not only a challenge to the white man’s “peculiar institution,” this was a thumbing of the nose to the entire planter mentality. This was an unacceptable threat. They could not bear it; they would not bear it.
In The Battle of Negro Fort, Clavin, Professor of History at University of Houston, deftly explores not only the origin of this community and its eventual annihilation through the machinations of then General Andrew Jackson, quietly countenanced by the federal government, but places the fort and its destruction in its appropriate context by opening a wider lens upon the entire era. This was a surprisingly significant moment in American history that for too long fell victim to superficial treatments that overlooked the significance of the multiplicity of forces in play, a neglect much more recently remedied by Pulitzer Prize winning scholar Alan Taylor, whose body of work points not only to the far greater complexities attached to the War of 1812 that have usually remained unacknowledged, but also identifies the broader consequences that rose out of the series of conflicts Taylor collectively terms the “Wars of the 1810s.” Taylor’s brilliant American Republics3 specifically cites actions against the Negro Fort, and connects that to a series of events that included the First Seminole War, sparked by attempts to recapture runaway blacks living among Native Americans, and finally to Spain’s relinquishing of the Floridas to the United States. While never losing focus on the fort itself, Clavin too walks skillfully in this larger arena that hosts war, diplomacy, indigenous tribes pitted against each other, related maroon communities, as well as overriding issues of enslavement and the predominance of white supremacy.
The Battle of Negro Fort is very well-written, but it takes on an academic tone that makes it more accessible to a scholarly than a popular audience. But it is hardly dull, so those comfortable in the realm of historical studies will be undeterred. And it is, after all, a stirring tale that leads to a dramatic and tragic end. Just as the Venetians blew up the Parthenon in 1687 by scoring a hit on the gunpowder the Turks had stored there, a gunboat’s cannonball struck the powder magazine located in the center of the fort, which exploded spectacularly and obliterated the structure. Scores (or hundreds, depending upon the source) were killed, the leaders who survived executed, and those who failed to make their escape returned to slavery.
The author’s thesis underscores that the chief motive for the assault on the Negro Fort by Jackson’s agents in 1816 was to advance white supremacy rather than as part of a greater strategy to dominate the Floridas, which strikes as perhaps somewhat overstated. Still, Clavin cites later antebellum abolitionists who reference the Negro Fort with specificity in this regard, so he may very well have a point. In any case, this contribution to the historiography proves a worthy addition to the literature and an understanding of this less well-known period of early American history will be significantly enhanced by adding it to your reading list.
1Note: David Silkenat is the author of Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South.
2The used bookstore in the yurt is West End Used Books in Wilmington, VT
3Note: I reviewed the referenced Alan Taylor book here: Review of: American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850, by Alan Taylor
Review of: The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community, by Matthew J. Clavin – Regarp Book Blog https://regarp.com/2023/08/06/review-...
February 8, 2020
I found this story fascinating. I had no idea that this fort of runaway slaves and native Americans ever existed. Throw in the fact that Andrew Jackson, a future president, was responsible for destroying and murdering over 300 individuals. It’s a deep delve into understanding the United States in that period as it continued to face threats from Great Britain, Spain, Native Americans and African Americans that had escaped slavery. It provides a history of the south that is rarely told. Very well done.
September 16, 2019
This was a brilliantly written book about a little known battle in American history and how it impacted our lives today. The author was able to take a very controversial topic and write about it in a way that educated the reader without allowing his personal opinions to influence the reader. I found this to be extremely interesting and wish that schools taught students about this important period in our history.
December 27, 2022
A very detailed and exhaustively-researched account of a little known blot on American history. The illegal raid and execution of a community of escaped slaves and rebellious Natives is not often mentioned in history books, but it served as a foundation for many very significant events that followed (i.e., Trail of Tears, the Civil War). This book can be dense at times, but that’s a minor criticism in the grand scheme of everything I learned.
August 1, 2020
A concise, insightful account of the largest maroon community in the history of the present-day United States. The little-known expedition by U.S. forces to destroy the community in Spanish Florida reveals and early manifestation of the slave power and imperialist tendencies in America.
July 2, 2022
A very thorough account of a neglected chapter in American history. I did not find the prose as riveting as others have, but Calvin clearly shows the lengths that Andrew Jackson and others would go to promote white supremacy. An invaluable resource for those interested in this time period…
February 1, 2025
Why was I never told any of this growing up?
A shameful part of our history. The older I get, the more I realize how much of our history I was never taught because it didn't square with what the powers that be wanted me to think.
A shameful part of our history. The older I get, the more I realize how much of our history I was never taught because it didn't square with what the powers that be wanted me to think.
April 3, 2022
History class read
February 10, 2023
Fantastic read about a little-appreciated part of American, British, Spanish, Native American, Afro-Carribbean, African-American, and Afro-Seminole history.
November 14, 2023
i just don’t love nonfiction. had to read this for my history class.
April 4, 2024
I am not drawn to history books but I’m glad I read this one. It is well researched and detailed story of happenings I was not familiar with and explains the lead up to the civil war.
November 9, 2019
Despite having grown up in Florida and having the mandatory courses in Florida history in 4th and 7th grades, this significant incident did not enter my consciousness until I was in my mid-twenties and then as a result of reading a history of the Seminole wars. In a move of very questionable legality, Andrew Jackson ordered troops into Florida, still Spanish in 1816, to destroy the fort on Appalachicola. The fort had been established earlier by the British during the War of 1812. Claiming it was a base for outlaws, pirates, hostile Indians, and brigands whose sole purpose was to attack the southern U.S. frontier, the raid was actually a slave-catching expedition aimed at eliminating a refuge for runaway slaves. This move would put the power of the federal government staunchly behind slave owners and would be federal policy for decades. It's interesting to note that contrary to our national mythology, contemporary British, Native Americans, and almost anyone of mixed race did not view the young republic as the beacon of freedom we aspired to be. Indeed, the British could claim with some justification that they, not us, were fighting for human freedom
February 1, 2020
Clavin does an excellent job explaining how the British fort at Prospect Bluff eventually became a fort held by former British Colonial Marines and fugitive slaves. The "Negro Fort" was eventually destroyed by the US Army and Navy although the fort was on Spanish land at a time when the US was not at war with the Spanish or the British. This eventually became the start of the First Seminole War.
December 15, 2019
very interesting
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews