Battle of Negro Fort

Part of the Seminole Wars, Conquest of Florida

An American map of the later Fort Gadsden next to the older Negro Fort

Date	July 27, 1816
Location	Negro Fort, Florida, United States
Result	United States/Creek victory

Belligerents

United States
Creek

Freedmen
Choctaw
Seminole

Commanders and leaders

Andrew Jackson

Edmund P. Gaines

Jairus Loomis

Garson †

Strength

Land:
~100 infantry
~150 soldiers
Sea:
2 gunboats

~200 capable civilians
~30 tribal warriors
10 artillery pieces

Casualties and losses

Allegedly none

300*; nearly all inhabitants were killed in the explosion

The 300 killed or wounded includes women and children.

The Battle of Negro Fort was a short military siege in 1816 in which forces of the United States assaulted and managed to blow up an African-American fortified stronghold in the frontier of northern Spanish Florida. It was the first major engagement of the Seminole Wars period and marked the beginning of General Andrew Jackson's Conquest of Florida.

In 1814, during the War of 1812, the British Royal Marines established what was known as the Negro Fort on Prospect Bluff along the Spanish side of the Apalachicola River. The garrison initially included around 1,000 Britons and several hundred African-Americans who were recruited as a detached unit of the Corps of Colonial Marines, with a strength of four infantry companies. Shortly after the end of the war in 1815, the British paid off the Colonial Marines, withdrew from the post, and left the black population in occupation. Over the next few years the fort became a colony for escaped slaves from Pensacola and Georgia.

By 1816 over 800 freedmen and women had settled around the fort; there were also friendly natives in the area. Following the construction of Fort Scott on the Flint River by Colonel Duncan Lamont Clinch of the United States Army, Andrew Jackson decided that to resupply the post, they would have to use the navy to transport goods via the Apalachicola through the sovereign territory of Spain without their permission. During one of these resupply missions, a party of sailors from gunboats 149 and 154 stopped along the river near Negro Fort to fill their canteens with water. While doing so, they were attacked by the garrison of the fort and all but one of the Americans were killed.

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