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Evan Kutzler on the Battle of the Negro Fort: the Rise And Matthew J. Clavin. The Battle of the Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community. New York: New York University Press, 2019. 272 pp. $24.95, cloth, ISBN 978-1-4798-3733-5. Reviewed by Evan Kutzler (Georgia Southwestern State University) Published on H-Slavery (March, 2020) Commissioned by Andrew J. Kettler (University of California, Los Angeles) Overlooking a river that once divided east and the abandoned British fort a “pretext for war” west Florida, Prospect Bluff holds a special place in against Spanish Florida (p. 12). “That the US gov‐ the history of the early American republic, Andrew ernment felt compelled to destroy this symbol [of Jackson, and resistance to slavery. The defining African American freedom],” Clavin writes, event—the so-called Battle of Negro Fort on the “proved the nation’s commitment to slavery while Apalachicola River in July 1816—carries a heavy illuminating the extent to which ambivalence over interpretive load. It was at once a postscript to the the institution had disappeared since the nation’s War of 1812, one of several violations of Spanish founding” (pp. 13-14). Wrapped in language of na‐ sovereignty that led to the Adams–Onís Treaty, and tional security, proslavery expansionists argued, in a prologue to aggressive westward expansion. In effect, that protecting white freedom required de‐ hands of recent scholars like Nathaniel Millett stroying a lone symbol of black freedom across an and, now, Matthew J. Clavin, Prospect Bluff repre‐ international boundary. sents a complex crossroads of national interests The destruction of the maroon colony indi‐ and ideas that enhance our understanding of the cates to Clavin that affinity between slaveowners early United States, the Atlantic world, and the ex‐ and the US government was real, and the Slave change between the two. Power existed long before northern abolitionists In The Battle of Negro Fort: The Rise and Fall put a name to it and called it a conspiracy. Ben‐ of a Fugitive Slave Community, Clavin imagines jamin Hawkins, for example, a man who spent Prospect Bluff as a turning point in the United two decades at the Creek Agency in Georgia, dou‐ States’ “transformation into a white republic, bled as “a ruthless slave trader” (p. 27). He turned which served both the interests and the ideology of his government outpost into a holding pen for run‐ an emerging Slave Power” (p. 14). Although Clavin away men, women, and children; moreover, follows Millett’s The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and Hawkins offered Native Americans cash rewards their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World for capturing black fugitives. “Decades later, in the (2013) closely in structure, it is his interpretive middle of the nineteenth century, southern slave‐ framing and accessible narrative that make this owners would threaten disunion if the govern‐ book inviting to a nonspecialist reader. Following ment did not further assist them in the recovery of up on his conquests in the Creek Civil War and the fugitives slaves,” Clavin writes. “But such threats War of 1812, Jackson saw in the maroon colony at were unnecessary at the turn of the nineteenth H-Net Reviews century with federal agents, including Hawkins, let, “a sophisticated and modern political system” serving as slave catchers” (pp. 27-28). Key govern‐ (p. 86). Likewise, Clavin concedes that the defend‐ ment officials were committed to protecting slav‐ ers of Prospect Bluff fought in British uniforms and ery at home and on the frontier borderlands. The under the Union Jack, but he rejects Millett’s asser‐ action against Prospect Bluff carried that commit‐ tation that “the members of the community acted ment across well-known international lines. as British subjects who were defending sovereign In Clavin's telling, American motivations in territory in resisting the American invasion” (p. the War of 1812 included the proslavery goal of 119). In Clavin’s view, then, the Prospect Bluff com‐ eradicating safe havens for self-emancipating munity cared more about survival and autonomy African Americans who fled across the southern than political philosophy and national allegiance. border. Conflicts against both the Redsticks and One reason Clavin may have chosen not to fo‐ the British provided possible pretexts for invading cus on life inside the Prospect Bluff settlement is Spanish Florida. British strategy played into this that the meaning of its destruction matters more pretext by occupying Spanish Florida, arming fac‐ to his central argument. Even calling it “Negro tions of the Creek and Seminole nations, and free‐ Fort,” a name coined by white men who wanted ing enslaved people in exchange for military ser‐ kill or recapture its residents, points to the signifi‐ vice. War provided the context for an interracial cance of its destruction. This is where The Battle of alliance—the symbol of liberation—at Prospect Negro Fort is strongest. As a symbol of black free‐ Bluff in 1814. Peace, on the other hand, became the dom, white southerners were determined to bring first harbinger of disaster for the free black com‐ about its downfall with or without official sanc‐ munity that remained after the British left. tioning. “Approximately one year after Negro Fort Publishers are notorious for letting marketing became the largest independent community of decisions determine book titles—sometimes over fugitive slaves in the history of the present-day the impassioned pleas of authors. For a book United States, Jackson endeavored to bring about whose subtitle points to the origins and destruc‐ its ruin,” Clavin writes. “Ordering a combined tion of a so-called fugitive slave community, it is army-navy invasion of Spanish Florida, he noticeable that only one chapter examines the in‐ launched an illegal, unconstitutional, and unde‐ ternal dynamics of Prospect Bluff. This is curious clared war against fugitive slaves” (p. 101). for two reasons that have to do with the book’s Critics at the time and some modern histori‐ main competitor, Millett’s Maroons of Prospect ans have placed most of the blame on Jackson for Bluf. In Millett’s denser and more comprehensive the illegal invasion that led to the battle at analytical narrative, he takes four chapters to con‐ Prospect Bluff and, two years later, the First Semi‐ textualize the community. Clavin, in contrast, sum‐ nole War. In contrast, Clavin shows how Jackson marizes the day-to-day life at Prospect Bluff simply gambled, correctly, on the direction of US foreign as “a typical maroon colony” and an atypical policy both times. Jackson hedged his first bet in community because of the role the British played Florida by delegating the task of destroying in creating, supplying, and arming it (p. 80). Prospect Bluff to Edmund P. Gaines. This allowed The brief attention to the free black communi‐ the general the flexibility to “avoid culpability if ty is also surprising because Clavin’s main dis‐ the assault proved unsuccessful or particularly agreement with Millett involves what Prospect controversial” (p. 108). After the fact, Jackson in‐ Bluff settlement meant to those inside it. Accord‐ terpreted the silence coming from Washington as ing to Clavin, the residents of Prospect Bluff lived a good sign. “Public acts,” he told a subordinate, “if under “martial law” rather than, as he quotes Mil‐ not publicly censured, are tacitly approved” (p. 2 H-Net Reviews 135). In other words, Jackson correctly predicted pire. Forget New Orleans of 1814-15, and put the the confluence of southern sectional interests and battle of Negro Fort in your next early republic lec‐ US foreign policy. ture. Jackson was not alone. The proto-Slave Power Note required collaborators in the free states and within [1]. David Waldstreicher and Matthew Mason, the US government. Following Jackson’s invasion John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery: Se‐ in the First Seminole War, Secretary of State John lections from the Diary (New York: Oxford Univer‐ Quincy Adams embraced what Clavin describes as sity Press, 2017), 77-78. “a pro-Jackson, pro-slavery, pro-southern point of view” in a letter to the US minister to Spain that was republished in the National Intelligencer (p. 158). Depicting the free black settlement and its survivors among the Seminoles as a menace to a white republic, Adams “provided the blueprint for Jackson’s defenders in the congressional hearings that followed” (p. 158). Adam’s involvement was remarkable for two reasons. As a man who be‐ came only the second early president not to own slaves (the other president being his father), Adam’s acquiescence to proslavery foreign policy shows how pervasive the sentiment was in the so- called Era of Good Feelings. Adam’s involvement is also significant because of his opposition to the ad‐ mission of Missouri as a slave state only one year later. During that controversy, Adams vividly de‐ scribed a "phalanx" of representatives from the slave states metaphorically overrunning the disor‐ ganized representatives of the free states.[2] Adams would spend much of the rest of his life op‐ posing the proslavery interest that Jackson, with Adam’s assistance, had helped unleash. Clavin’s Battle of Negro Fort is an accessible, worthwhile read about a still-underappreciated topic. Rather than merely an aberrant invasion led by a rogue general, the destruction of Prospect Bluff and the First Seminole War resurface in Clavin’s writing as a key turning point in the cre‐ ation of a white republic and the rise of the Slave Power. More than just fugitives from slavery died when the fort’s powder magazine exploded. One of the casualties was any uncertainty about the rela‐ tionship between the US government and the fu‐ ture of slavery in an expanding, proslavery em‐ 3 H-Net Reviews If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at https://networks.h-net.org/h-slavery Citation: Evan Kutzler.
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