The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and Their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World

Notes

261 Notes Abbreviations GDAH Georgia Department of Archives and History, Morrow, Georgia GHS Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Georgia NAGB National Archives of Great Britain, Kew, Richmond, Surrey. Records cited include Admiralty (ADM), Colonial Office (CO), Foreign Office (FO), and War Office (WO) NARA National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C., and College Park, Maryland PKY P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Gainesville, Florida. Records cited include the East Florida Papers (EF) and Papeles Procedentes de Cuba (PC). SHC, UNC Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina Introduction 1. Prospect Bluff is located in the Apalachicola National Forest. It is the furthest bluff to the south of the river and fronts the river for approximately a mile. To the north the bluff is bounded by Brickyard Creek and to the south the bluff terminates in the swamp bordering Fort Gadsden Creek. The official location of Prospect Bluff is NE quarter of the SW quarter of Section 23,T 6 S,R 8W,Franklin County.Taken from Griffin,Report of Investigations at Old Fort Gadsden. 2. Higginson, Memoir of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 296. 3. Throughout the book the community of former slaves is called the “maroon community ,”and its inhabitants are called the“maroons”or“former slaves,”as the term“Negro Fort” meant nothing to the community’s inhabitants. 262  Notes to Pages 2–3 4. The maroon community received the most media attention when it appeared to offer the most direct parallels to contemporary events. These include the partisan bickering that emerged during the rise and presidency of Andrew Jackson, always powerfully associated with the community, and the sectional tensions that led to the Civil War. Nonetheless, the press initially had to overcome official efforts to control public memory of the community in the immediate aftermath of its destruction when the federal government attempted to suppress publication of military reports on the destruction. Prior to this point, newspapers printed collections of various official and unofficial letters relating to the community that they acquired in an effort to satisfy the public’s demand for information. For example, the National Register, on March 6, 1819, printed an assortment of letters from Spanish and American officials that did not include the official account. This worked until late 1819, when after concerted pressure the military’s official report was released and widely published. See Niles Weekly Register, November 20, 1819, as one example among many. A small sampling of the explosion of relevant published and accessible primary sources during this period includes Abridgment of the Debates of Congress from 1789 to 1856; Memoirs of General Andrew Jackson, Together with the Letter of Mr. Secretary Adams; Letters and Writings of James Madison, vol. 3; and Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams. 5. Perkins, Historical Sketches of the United States, 91–117. 6. Barber, Our Whole Country, 780–82. 7. Hildreth, History of the United States, 605–6. During this period reference works regularly featured the maroon community. A good example is Lalor, ed., Cyclopedia of Political Science, which contains a long entry on“Slavery.” One of its subsections, entitled “Insurrections,”begins by positing that the lack of slave insurrections inAmerican history “can hardly be due to the natural cowardice of the race, for its members have made very good soldiers . . . nor to the exceptional gentleness of the system . . . nor wholly to the affection of the negroes for their masters,” before going on to list exhaustively examples of American slave rebellions, including that of the maroons and the “Seminole war in Florida” which“partook very much of the character of a negro insurrection” (731–32). 8. Emerson, A History of the Nineteenth Century, 627. Another interesting example from this period is Alexander Johnston’s The Slavery Controversy, Civil War and Reconstruction , 1820–1876 (volume 2 of his American Political History, 1763–1876), in which he argues that the First Seminole War was“very much of the character of a negro insurrection .”According to Johnston, the drive to reclaim the“very many fugitive slaves” who had “taken refuge” in Florida and intermarried with Indians was the source of many of the region’s Indian difficulties (21–22). In 1816 American troops blew up the“Negro Fort” on the Apalachicola, the headquarters of the fugitives. Johnston also discusses the Stono Rebellion, the New York City Conspiracy of 1741, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner. 9. Montgomery, Student’s American History, 309. 10.Forbes,Sketches, Historical and Topographical of the Floridas,121...