During the war of 1812-14, between Great Britain and the United States,
the weak Spanish Governor of Florida--for Florida was then Spanish
territory--permitted the British to make Pensacola their base of
operations against us. This was a gross outrage, as we were at peace
with Spain at the time, and General Jackson, acting on his own
responsibility, invaded Florida in retaliation.
Among the British at that time was an eccentric Irish officer, Colonel
Edward Nichols, who enlisted and tried to make soldiers of a large
number of the Seminole Indians. In 1815, after the war was over, Colonel
Nichols again visited the Seminoles, who were disposed to be hostile to
the United States, as Colonel Nichols himself was, and made an
astonishing treaty with them, in which an alliance, offensive and
defensive, between Great Britain and the Seminoles was agreed upon. We
had made peace with Great Britain a few months before, and yet this
astonishing Irish Colonel signed a treaty binding Great Britain to fight
us whenever the Seminoles in the Spanish territory of Florida should see
fit to make a war! If this extraordinary performance had been all, it
would not have mattered so much, because the British government refused
to ratify the treaty; but it was not all. Colonel Nichols, as if
determined to give us as much trouble as he could, built a strong
fortress on the Appalachicola River, and gave it to his friends the
Seminoles, naming it "The British Post on the Appalachicola," where the
British had not the least right to have any post whatever. Situated on a
high bluff, with flanks securely guarded by the river on one side and a
swamp on the other, this fort, properly defended, was capable of
resisting the assaults of almost any force that could approach it; and
Colonel Nichols was determined that it should be properly defended, and
should be a constant menace and source of danger to the United States.
He armed it with one 32-pounder cannon, three 24-pounders, and eight
other guns. In the matter of small-arms he was even more liberal. He
supplied the fort with 2500 muskets, 500 carbines, 400 pistols, and 500
swords. In the magazines he stored 300 quarter casks of rifle powder,
and 763 barrels of ordinary gunpowder.
When Colonel Nichols went away, his Seminoles soon wandered off, leaving
the fort without a garrison. This gave an opportunity to a negro bandit
and desperado named Garçon to seize the place, which he did, gathering
about him a large band of runaway negroes, Choctaw Indians, and other
lawless persons, whom he organized into a strong company of robbers.
Garçon made the fort his stronghold, and began to plunder the country
round about as thoroughly as any robber baron or Italian bandit ever
did, sometimes venturing across the border into the United States.
All this was so annoying and so threatening to our frontier settlements
in Georgia, that General Jackson demanded of the Spanish authorities
that they should reduce the place, and they would have been glad enough
to do so, probably, if it had been possible, because the banditti
plundered Spanish as well as other settlements. But the Spanish Governor
had no force at command, and could do nothing, and so the fort remained,
a standing menace to the American borders.
Matters were in this position in the spring of 1816, when General Gaines
was sent to fortify our frontier at the point where the Chattahoochee
and Flint rivers unite to form the Appalachicola. In June of that year
some stores for General Gaines's forces were sent by sea from New
Orleans. The vessels carrying them were to go up the Appalachicola, and
General Gaines was not sure that the little fleet would be permitted to
pass the robbers' stronghold, which had come to be called the Negro
Fort. Accordingly he sent Colonel Clinch with a small force down the
river, to render any assistance that might be necessary. On the way
Colonel Clinch was joined by a band of Seminoles, who wanted to
recapture the fort on their own account, and the two bodies determined
to act together.
Meantime the two schooners with supplies and the two gun-boats sent to
guard them had arrived at the mouth of the river; and when the
commandant tried to hold a conference with Garçon, the ship's boat,
bearing a white flag, was fired upon.
Running short of water while lying off the river's mouth, the officers
of the fleet sent out a boat to procure a supply. This boat was armed
with a swivel and muskets, and was commanded by Midshipman Luffborough.
The boat went into the mouth of the river, and seeing a negro on shore,
Midshipman Luffborough landed to ask for fresh-water supplies. Garçon
with some of his men lay in ambush at the spot, and while the officer
talked with the negro the concealed men fired upon the boat, killing
Luffborough and two of his men. One man got away by swimming, and was
picked up by the fleet; two others were taken prisoners, and, as was
afterward learned, Garçon coated them with tar and burned them to death.
It would not do to send more boats ashore, and so the little squadron
lay together awaiting orders from Colonel Clinch. That officer, as he
approached the fort, captured a negro, who wore a white man's scalp at
his belt, and from him he learned of the massacre of Luffborough's
party. There was no further occasion for doubt as to what was to be
done. Colonel Clinch determined to reduce the fort at any cost, although
the operation promised to be a very difficult one.
Placing his men in line of battle, he sent a courier to the fleet,
ordering the gun-boats to come up and help in the attack. The Seminoles
made many demonstrations against the works, and the negroes replied with
their cannon. Garçon had raised his flags--a red one and a British
Union-jack--and whenever he caught sight of the Indians or the
Americans, he shelled them vigorously with his 32-pounder.
Three or four days were passed in this way, while the gun-boats were
slowly making their way up the river. It was Colonel Clinch's purpose to
have the gun-boats shell the fort, while he should storm it on the land
side. The work promised to be bloody, and it was necessary to bring all
the available force to bear at once. There were no siege-guns at hand,
or anywhere within reach, and the only way to reduce the fort was for
the small force of soldiers--numbering only one hundred and sixteen
men--to rush upon it, receiving the fire of its heavy artillery, and
climb over its parapets in the face of a murderous fire of small-arms.
Garçon had with him three hundred and thirty-four men, so that besides
having strong defensive works and an abundant supply of large cannon,
his force outnumbered Colonel Clinch's nearly three to one. It is true
that Colonel Clinch had the band of Seminoles with him, but they were
entirely worthless for determined work of the kind that Colonel Clinch
had to do. Even while lying in the woods at a distance, waiting for the
gun-boats to come up, the Indians became utterly demoralized under the
fire of Garçon's 32-pounder. There was nothing to be done, however, by
way of improving the prospect, which was certainly hopeless enough. One
hundred and sixteen white men had the Negro Fort to storm,
notwithstanding its strength and the overwhelming force that defended
it. But those one hundred and sixteen men were American soldiers, under
command of a brave and resolute officer, who had made up his mind that
the fort could be taken, and they were prepared to follow their leader
up to the muzzle of the guns and over the ramparts, there to fight the
question out in a hand-to-hand struggle with the desperadoes inside.
Finally the gun-boats arrived, and preparations were made for the
attack. Sailing-Master Jairus Loomis, the commandant of the little
fleet, cast his anchors under the guns of the Negro Fort at five o'clock
in the morning on the 27th of July, 1816. The fort at once opened fire,
and it seemed impossible for the little vessels to endure the storm of
shot and shell that rained upon them from the ramparts above. They
replied vigorously, however, but with no effect. Their guns were too
small to make any impression upon the heavy earthen walls of the
fortress.
Sailing-Master Loomis had roused his ship's cook early that morning, and
had given him a strange breakfast to cook. He had ordered him to make
all the fire he could in his galley, and to fill the fire with
cannon-balls. Not long after the bombardment began, the cook reported
that breakfast was ready; that is to say, that the cannon-balls were
red-hot. Loomis trained one of his guns with his own hands so that its
shot should fall within the fort instead of burying itself in the
ramparts, and this gun was at once loaded with a red-hot shot. The word
was given, the match applied, and the glowing missile sped on its way. A
few seconds later, the earth shook and quivered, a deafening roar
stunned the sailors, and a vast cloud of smoke filled the air, shutting
out the sun.
The hot shot had fallen into the great magazine, where there were
hundreds of barrels of gunpowder, and the Negro Fort was no more. It had
been literally blown to atoms in a second.
The slaughter was frightful. There were, as we know already, three
hundred and thirty-four men in the fort, and two hundred and seventy of
them were killed outright by the explosion. All the rest, except three
men who miraculously escaped injury, were wounded, most of them so badly
that they died soon afterward.
One of the three men who escaped unhurt was Garçon himself. Bad as this
bandit chief was, Colonel Clinch would have spared his life, but it
happened that he fell into the hands of the sailors from the gun-boat;
and when they learned that Garçon had tarred and burned their comrades
whom he had captured in the attack on Luffborough's boat, they turned
him over to the infuriated Seminoles, who put him to death.
This is the history of a strange affair, which at one time promised to
give the government of the United States no little trouble, even
threatening to involve us in a war with Spain.