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Cantonment Clinch was an Army fort in Pensacola, Florida built about 1822 (originally called Camp Hope and Camp Brady) and active through the early 1830s. It was established during the First Seminole Wars to house United States troops during a yellow fever epidemic in Pensacola and at Fort Barrancas. [1]
In 1822, the Fourth Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army, which had been stationed at positions since December 31, 1821, underwent changes due to a yellow fever outbreak in Pensacola. Company I was moved to Dauphin Island, Alabama. The remaining companies relocated to two camps west of Pensacola on Bayou Chico, called Camps Hope and Brady. Here, they constructed Cantonment Clinch in honor of their respected Colonel. This facility was built using logs for nine companies as per the 1821 military regulations, with each company constructing their own log housing. The troops were responsible for the entire construction, including flooring and roofing, with minimal reliance on nails and utilizing wooden pegs and clay for durability. The cantonment, which was whitewashed, provided comfortable quarters that were used for several years without further relocations until at least December 31, 1822. [2]
The camp also served to facilitate the relocation of Creek and Seminole tribes to central Florida and to preempt any Spanish or English military action in the area. Reflective of the expedient fortification practices of the era, it was one of many forts built in mid-19th century Florida, with varying degrees of permanence and purpose, catering to the immediate defense needs of the coastal region. Cantonment Clinch, serving its intended short-term role, was ultimately disbanded as part of this broader pattern of transient military installations. [3]
Officers took United States Army troops to this location to flee an outbreak of yellow fever at other forts and in Pensacola city; they built this cantonment at the head of Bayou Chico circa 1822. The Cantonment lay three miles west of Pensacola. It was then a small town of 181 households, with about one-third the population of mixed race, reflecting its Creek, European and African residents, and their descendants of unions. [4] In 1823, the military renamed this Camp Galvez Spring, and later that year as Cantonment Clinch, after a beloved colonel of their regiment.
The cantonment was built to include ten log barracks and ten quarters for officers, arrayed around a large parade ground. The Post Surgeon began recording weather observations in 1822, summarized in the Army Meteorological Register.
The US Army likely drew from these forces in local wars against the Pensacola and Creek tribes, as well as early Seminole Wars. The Seminole relocated to central Florida. The US military also used their troops to construct roads to other military facilities in west Florida and adjacent portions of Alabama.
The post closed circa 1830; the troops were evacuated to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The Seminole Wars were a series of three military conflicts between the United States and the Seminoles that took place in Florida between about 1816 and 1858. The Seminoles are a Native American nation which coalesced in northern Florida during the early 1700s, when the territory was still a Spanish colonial possession. Tensions grew between the Seminoles and American settlers in the newly independent United States in the early 1800s, mainly because enslaved people regularly fled from Georgia into Spanish Florida, prompting slaveowners to conduct slave raids across the border. A series of cross-border skirmishes escalated into the First Seminole War, when American General Andrew Jackson led an incursion into the territory over Spanish objections. Jackson's forces destroyed several Seminole, Mikasuki and Black Seminole towns, as well as captured Fort San Marcos and briefly occupied Pensacola before withdrawing in 1818. The U.S. and Spain soon negotiated the transfer of the territory with the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819.
The Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between the United States and groups of people collectively known as Seminoles, consisting of Creek and Black Seminoles as well as other allied tribes. It was part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars. The Second Seminole War, often referred to as the Seminole War, is regarded as "the longest and most costly of the Indian conflicts of the United States". After the Treaty of Payne's Landing in 1832 that called for the Seminoles' removal from Florida, tensions rose until fierce hostilities occurred in Dade's massacre in 1835. This engagement officially started the war although there were a series of incidents leading up to the Dade battle. The Seminoles and the U.S. forces engaged in mostly small engagements for more than six years. By 1842, only a few hundred native peoples remained in Florida. Although no peace treaty was ever signed, the war was declared over on August 14, 1842 by Colonel William Jenkins Worth.
The Territory of Florida was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 30, 1822, until March 3, 1845, when it was admitted to the Union as the State of Florida. Originally the major portion of the Spanish territory of La Florida, and later the provinces of East Florida and West Florida, it was ceded to the United States as part of the 1819 Adams–Onís Treaty. It was governed by the Florida Territorial Council.
Prospect Bluff Historic Sites is located in Franklin County, Florida, on the Apalachicola River, 6 miles (9.7 km) SW of Sumatra, Florida. The site contains the ruins of two forts.
Francis Langhorne Dade was a United States Army soldier who served in the War of 1812 and the Seminole Wars. Dade was killed in a battle with Seminole Indians that came to be known as the "Dade Massacre".
Fort Barrancas (1839) or Fort San Carlos de Barrancas is a United States military fort and National Historic Landmark in the former Warrington area of Pensacola, Florida, located physically within Naval Air Station Pensacola, which was developed later around it.
Fort Brooke was a historical military post established at the mouth of the Hillsborough River in present-day Tampa, Florida in 1824. Its original purpose was to serve as a check on and trading post for the native Seminoles who had been confined to an interior reservation by the Treaty of Moultrie Creek (1823), and it served as a military headquarters and port during the Second Seminole War (1835–1842). The village of Tampa developed just north of the fort during this period, and the area was the site of a minor raid and skirmish during the American Civil War. The obsolete outpost was sparsely garrisoned after the war, and it was decommissioned in 1883 just before Tampa began a period of rapid growth, opening the land for development.
Fort Gibson is a historic military site next to the modern city of Fort Gibson, in Muskogee County Oklahoma. It guarded the American frontier in Indian Territory from 1824 to 1888. When it was constructed, the fort was farther west than any other military post in the United States. It formed part of the north–south chain of forts that was intended to maintain peace on the frontier of the American West and to protect the southwestern border of the Louisiana Purchase. The fort succeeded in its peacekeeping mission for more than 50 years, as no massacres or battles occurred there.
Cantonment is an unincorporated community in Escambia County, Florida. Once considered an isolated, rural community, it has rapidly expanded with residential growth in recent years. Cantonment is located north of Pensacola, and south of Molino. It is a bedroom community of Pensacola, and is located in the Pensacola Metropolitan Statistical Area. Cantonment is centered around Highway 29, and extends to the Perdido River to the west, and the Escambia River to the east.
Fort King was a United States military fort in north central Florida, near what later developed as the city of Ocala. It was named after U.S. Colonel William King, commander of 4th Infantry Regiment and the first governor of the provisional West Florida region.
George Mercer Brooke was a brevet major general in the U.S. Army. While a colonel, Brooke was ordered in 1823, along with James Gadsden, to establish a military presence in the vicinity of Tampa Bay, in the newly acquired Florida Territory.
Richard Woodward Colcock was the second Superintendent of the South Carolina Military Academy from 1844 through 1852.
Negro Fort was a short-lived fortification built by the British in 1814, during the War of 1812, in a remote part of what was at the time Spanish Florida. It was intended to support a never-realized British attack on the U.S. via its southwest border, by means of which they could "free all these Southern Countries [states] from the Yoke of the Americans".
The 75th New York Infantry Regiment was an infantry and mounted infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Neamathla (1750s–1841) was a leader of the Red Stick Creek. His name, in the Hitchiti language, means "fat next to warrior", "fat" being a reference to great courage. The Hitchiti language had no written form, but modern scholars agree that Eneah Emathla is the "proper" spelling of his name in English; however, there were two other men also named Eneah Emathla, so the modern convention is to use the spelling Neamathla for the leader.
Fort Gardiner was a stockaded fortification with two blockhouses that was built in 1837 by the United States Army. It was one of the military outposts created during the Second Seminole War to assist Colonel Zachary Taylor's troops to capture Seminole Indians and their allies in the central part of the Florida Territory that were resisting forced removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River per the Indian Removal Act.
The Indian Removal Act provoked many Seminole Indians and their allies to revolt against being forcibly relocated from their lands and homes in the Florida Territory to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. After the Dade Massacre on 28 December 1835, the Second Seminole War was escalated with armed skirmishes and guerilla warfare. Early in the Second Seminole War, the strategically located town of Palatka, Florida Territory was attacked and burned by a group of Seminole Indians and their allies. Most surviving white settlers and black slaves fled to St. Augustine for safety, and the area was mostly abandoned except for free roaming groups of Seminole Indians and their allies. Realizing the importance of a militarily protected and efficient supply line along the St. Johns River General Walker Keith Armistead ordered the main depot moved from Garey's Ferry on Black Creek to Palatka where the U.S. Army built Fort Shannon.
Gad Humphreys was an officer in the United States Army and an Indian agent in Florida. He was appointed to his post in 1822. He was supportive of the Indians and tried to help them and protect them from encroachments by White settlers. He was accused of abusing his post by preventing or delaying the return to their owners of fugitive slaves that had taken refuge with the Indians. An investigation was conducted, but none of his accusers were willing to testify. Even so, he was removed from his post in 1830.
Fort Montgomery was a stockade fort built in August 1814 in present-day Baldwin County, Alabama, during the Creek War, which was part of the larger War of 1812. The fort was built by the United States military in response to attacks by Creek warriors on encroaching American settlers and in preparation for further military action in the War of 1812. Fort Montgomery continued to be used for military purposes but in less than a decade was abandoned. Nothing exists at the site today.
