From Rosewood in Florida to Greenwood in Oklahoma, American history is replete with stories of communities of free and enslaved Black people being terrorized and killed in violent attacks – or rebelling against oppression under the leadership of the likes of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner.
A much more obscure but no less horrific historical event is the subject of a new book by University of Houston history professor and historian Dr. Matthew J. Clavin.
In The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community – published by New York University Press and scheduled for September release – Clavin relates the dramatic events of an illegal U.S. army-navy mission into Spanish Florida after the War of 1812. They attacked Negro Fort, a free and independent community of runaway slaves living outside the U.S. border in a wilderness fortress abandoned by the British and turned over to them after the war ended in 1815.
Situated atop a steep bluff overlooking the Apalachicola River, the fort was a haven for runaway slaves, who for generations had been fleeing slavery in the United States. Some had fought on the British side in the war. The fortress population was heavily armed for self-defense and steadily growing, numbering upwards of 1,000 at the time of the battle.
The battle began July 15, 1816 and ended 12 days later, resulting in the capture or death of nearly every fugitive slave while intensifying the subjugation of southern Native Americans who fought alongside them. Led by then-major general and later president Andrew Jackson under the false pretense that the fort’s inhabitants posed a violent threat to the United States, the U.S. forces were among hundreds of American soldiers, Black fugitive slaves and Indian warriors – who fought on both sides – engaged in the fight.
Negro Fort was the largest and most secure sanctuary for fugitive slaves that has ever existed within current United States boundaries. And the 1816 battle over it was the only time in U.S. history when the government destroyed a fugitive slave community on foreign soil.
Clavin, who has authored other books – including one about Toussaint Louverture and the Civil War – chatted with Diverse about his latest project.
