Fort Montgomery was a stockade fort built in August 1814 in present-day Baldwin County, Alabama (then Mississippi Territory), 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.[2] Fort Montgomery continued to be used for military purposes but in less than a decade was abandoned. Nothing exists at the site today.
The War of 1812 was fought between the United States and allied Native Americans (including members of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Creek tribes) and the United Kingdom, Spain (not initially involved), and various Native American tribes. The war began after increasing tensions caused by territorial expansion of the United States led to the United Kingdom increasing trade restrictions. It initially took place in the northeastern part of the United States and southeastern Canada, but eventually came to include conflicts in the southeastern United States and Spanish West Florida.[3]
The Creek War began in 1813 after two rival factions of the Creek tribe fought over various issues, including the creation of a centralized Creek government. Supporters of the Creek national government were known as White Sticks and were accepting of the "civilization" efforts of the young American government, including subsistence farming. The rival faction, known as the Red Sticks, opposed a centralized Creek government. The Red Sticks were further emboldened by the recent visit of the Shawnee warrior Tecumseh and his calls for the resistance to expansion of American settlers on Native American land. The United States became involved in the Creek War in hopes of preventing the Red Sticks from allying themselves with the United Kingdom. Andrew Jackson commanded Army soldiers, militia, and allied Native Americans against the Red Sticks. After the Treaty of Fort Jackson the Creek War essentially concluded, but sporadic fighting continued in the area north of Mobile and Spanish West Florida. Spies had reported back to Jackson of the presence of British troops in Pensacola and of the fact that Red Sticks were being armed by the British in their continued fight against the United States. Jackson then planned an invasion of Pensacola to prevent the supplying of weapons, culminating in the Battle of Pensacola.[4]
After the close of the Creek War, Jackson defeated a British attack on New Orleans and the subsequent signing of the Treaty of Ghent signaled the end of the War of 1812. Some of the Red Sticks fled into Florida and allied themselves with runaway slaves and members of the Seminole tribe. In response to Seminole retaliatory attacks on American settlers, Jackson then led an invasion of Spanish Florida in what became known as the First Seminole War.[5]
Construction
After the Treaty of Fort Jackson, Jackson sent a large force of troops to the southern portion of the Mississippi Territory to allow for greater protection of settlers in the area around the Mobile River and southern Alabama River and to prepare for further military action in the War of 1812.[6] A section of this force came down the Alabama River and a separate group marched down the Federal Road under the command of General John Coffee, who was serving as Jackson's chief of staff. In August 1814, a detachment of troops under Colonel Thomas Hart Benton began construction of a new fort on Holmes Hill (a high sand hill that was chosen due to the fact it had multiple surrounding freshwater springs), near the present-day community of Tensaw.[6] They were also joined by the 44th Infantry Regiment, who came from Kentucky under the command of William Orlando Butler.[7] The fort was constructed to serve as a supply base for Jackson's further military action in the War of 1812 and was named for Lemuel P. Montgomery, a friend of Jackson's who was killed at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.[8] Fort Montgomery was built over the next two months by members of the 3rd Infantry, 39th Infantry, and 44th Infantry.[9] Typical of other contemporary stockades, Fort Montgomery was built in a star shape, had 14-foot high log walls, a moat, and a blockhouse. The blockhouse was three stories tall and covered with hard logs and pine tar. In addition, it was defended by four 6-pounder guns placed on top of the blockhouse.[9] After construction was completed, the headquarters of the 7th Military District was relocated from Fort Stoddert to Fort Montgomery.[6]
War of 1812
Jackson and his soldiers entering Pensacola on November 6, 1814
While Fort Montgomery was under construction, Coffee camped with 2,800 men on the western side of the Tombigbee River, near the Alabama Cut-Off. After the Battle of Fort Bowyer, Jackson (who was headquartered at Fort Pierce[10]), sent Colonel Arthur P. Hayne to Fort Montgomery to organize troops in preparation for an assault on Pensacola, where the British had fled.[11] Jackson demanded the Governor of West Florida, Mateo González Manrique, to evict the Red Sticks from his territory and to stop harboring British soldiers in Pensacola. González Manrique remained silent on his decision, which led to Jackson invading Pensacola without any direct order in the Battle of Pensacola. Jackson's force of 4,100 men consisted of militia and 2,000 volunteers, supplemented by 520 regulars and 750 Choctaw and Chickasaw warriors.[12][13]Davy Crockett was among the volunteers from Tennessee who arrived at Fort Montgomery to participate in the attack on Pensacola.[14] After the Battle of Pensacola, Jackson returned to Fort Montgomery, then subsequently traveled to Mobile prior to the Battle of New Orleans.[15] After returning to Fort Montgomery, Crockett and other volunteers killed cattle that had become wild after the Fort Mims massacre.[14]
Following the Battle of Pensacola, Jackson was concerned Red Stick warriors would flee to the British Post at Prospect Bluff, join the British, then capture Fort Jackson and sever his supply line. Jackson ordered Brigadier General James Winchester to Fort Montgomery, along with soldiers from General Nathaniel Taylor's Brigade (which was also stationed at Fort Claiborne), Colonel Philip Pipkin's 1st Regiment West Tennessee Militia, a battalion of Major Thomas Hinds' Mississippi Dragoons, and militia from Fort Madison. These were further reinforced by the 2nd Infantry, 3rd Infantry, companies of the 24th and 39th Infantries, 2,500 soldiers from Georgia, and 2,000 from East Tennessee. It was originally planned for this combined force to search West Florida for Red Sticks and provide reinforcements to Jackson at New Orleans.[16] After the Battle of Pensacola, Crockett and some volunteers under the command of William Russell participated in the search for remaining Red Sticks north of Pensacola. The volunteers then reached Apalachicola before marching to Fort Decatur.[14]
On December 8, 1814, Major Uriah Blue was commanded to lead troops in hunting down any remaining Red Stick warriors who remained in the area of the Escambia and Yellow Rivers. Jackson planned to reinforce Blue's command with soldiers from Georgia, but these reinforcements never arrived.[17] Blue led 1,000 Choctaw, Chickasaw (under the command of William Colbert), allied Creek, and Tennessee volunteers to search for any remaining Red Sticks.[18] Due to wet roads, Blue's force was unable to use wagons to transport supplies and was forced to use pack horses to navigate the muddy terrain.[17] Blue remained in the field for one month with only 20 days of rations, attacking at least one camp and sending back any captured men, women, or children to Fort Montgomery.[15][17] Blue returned to Fort Montgomery on January 9, 1815, and sometime after his arrival, Fort Montgomery became the headquarters for the newly organized 7th Infantry.[19] At this time, 421 soldiers were stationed at Fort Montgomery. The original fort was then demolished and the site also became known as Camp Montgomery. Barracks were built of round logs and a hospital was constructed under the direction of Thomas Lawson.[19]
Jackson continued to keep troops at Fort Montgomery to protect against any possible movement by the British on Pascagoula that would cut off his supply line to New Orleans, to prevent possible British excursions against Mobile, to provide reinforcements to any attack on Fort Bowyer, and to keep any remaining British troops at Pensacola in check.[20]
First Seminole War
After the conclusion of the War of 1812, Red Stick warriors continued to join members of the Seminole tribe in attacking American settlers. In response to these attacks, Major General Edmund P. Gaines ordered Major David E. Twiggs to set out from Fort Montgomery and establish a new post on the Conecuh River, which was subsequently named Fort Crawford.[21] Regular supply ships to Fort Crawford were not allowed up the Conecuh River by the Spanish governor of West Florida, José Masot, unless they paid duties to the Kingdom of Spain. In response, Fort Crawford was supplied by regular excursions from Fort Montgomery.[22]
In February 1817, the 4th Infantry Regiment was transferred from Fort Scott and Fort Gadsden to Fort Montgomery.[23] By October of the same year, troops were being transferred back to Fort Scott from Fort Montgomery.[24] In the latter part of 1817, Fort Montgomery became part of the 8th Military District and was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Arbuckle Jr.[25] Command was later handed over to Lieutenant Colonel William A. Trimble.[21]
In May 1817, an advance party of the Vine and Olive Colony stopped at Fort Stoddert, then arrived at Fort Montgomery to meet with General Gaines.[26] In November 1817, a minister, Aaron Booge, established a church and school at Fort Montgomery.[21]
After the First Seminole War began, Red Stick warriors continued to gather near Pensacola. In a letter to Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, Jackson reported settlers near Fort Montgomery had been fortifying their homes after receiving news of attacks by Red Sticks on citizens near Fort Claiborne and the Sepulga River.[27] The warriors were supplied by British weapons obtained in Pensacola, as the Spanish had allowed the British to land there. Jackson felt the Spanish authorities did not have proper control over these "hostiles", so he planned to capture Pensacola and establish American rule over the city to prevent further attacks by Red Sticks.[28] In preparation for an assault on Pensacola, Jackson ordered artillery secretly moved to Fort Montgomery under a Colonel Sands. The artillery from Fort Montgomery and soldiers from Fort Crawford met Jackson at a rendezvous point near the Escambia River. This combined force then marched on Pensacola and occupied it on May 24 without resistance after the Spanish surrendered Fort San Carlos de Barrancas.[27] Adjutant General Robert Butler commanded Tennessee Volunteers back to Fort Montgomery, taking with them arms and weapons captured in Pensacola.[29] After the occupation of Pensacola, Jackson moved his headquarters to Fort Montgomery.[30]
Further military use
John Melish's 1818 map showing Fort Montgomery (located in the center) and other contemporary forts.
In July 1818, Alabama Territory settlers captured and killed five Red Stick warriors who were being transported on the Federal Road from Fort Claiborne to Fort Montgomery. This attack caused other Creeks who remained in the area to flee their homes.[6]
The headquarters of the 8th Military District remained at Fort Montgomery until 1818, after which they were moved two miles northeast on the Federal Road to Cantonment Montpelier.[6]
In addition to United States Army soldiers, the 3rd and 4th Regiment of East Tennessee Militia, 2nd Regiment West Tennessee Militia, East Tennessee Mounted Gunmen, Separate Battalion of Volunteer Mounted Gunmen, and Separate Battalion of West Tennessee Militia were all stationed at Fort Montgomery at various times.[31]
A community known as Montgomery or Montgomery Hill developed around the site of Fort Montgomery.[8] A post office operated under the name Fort Montgomery from 1816 to 1818.[33]
Nothing remains at the site of Fort Montgomery today. Relic hunters have destroyed some of the contemporary site.[34] Archaeological investigations have been led by Jefferson Davis Community College with funding by the Alabama Historical Commission. No definitive identification of fort walls has been made, but multiple military artifacts have been recovered. A large number of buttons were discovered during the investigation, likely due to the reorganization of Army units in March 1815. [35]
Related Research Articles
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 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 in 1817, when General Andrew Jackson led an incursion into the territory over Spanish objections. Jackson's forces destroyed several Seminole and Black Seminole towns 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 Creek War, was a regional conflict between opposing Native American factions, European powers, and the United States during the early 19th century. The Creek War began as a conflict within the tribes of the Muscogee, but the United States quickly became involved. British traders and Spanish colonial officials in Florida supplied the Red Sticks with weapons and equipment due to their shared interest in preventing the expansion of the United States into regions under their control.
John Williams was an American lawyer, soldier, and statesman, operating primarily out of Knoxville, Tennessee, in the first part of the 19th century. He represented Tennessee in the United States Senate from 1815 to 1823, when he lost reelection to Andrew Jackson. Williams also served as colonel of the 39th U.S. Infantry Regiment during the Creek Wars, and played a key role in Jackson's victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814.
Red Sticks —the name deriving from the red-painted war clubs of some Native American Creek—refers to an early 19th century traditionalist faction of Muscogee Creek people in the Southeastern United States. Made up mostly of Creek of the Upper Towns that supported traditional leadership and culture, as well as the preservation of communal land for cultivation and hunting, the Red Sticks arose at a time of increasing pressure on Creek territory by European American settlers. Creek of the Lower Towns were closer to the settlers, had more mixed-race families, and had already been forced to make land cessions to the Americans. In this context, the Red Sticks led a resistance movement against European American encroachment and assimilation, tensions that culminated in the outbreak of the Creek War in 1813. Initially a civil war among the Creek, the conflict drew in United States state forces while the nation was already engaged in the War of 1812 against the British.
The Battle of Burnt Corn, also known as the Battle of Burnt Corn Creek, was an encounter between United States armed forces and Creek Indians that took place July 27, 1813 in present-day southern Alabama. The battle was part of the Creek War.
The Fort Mims massacre took place on August 30, 1813, during the Creek War, when a force of Creek Indians belonging to the Red Sticks faction, under the command of head warriors Peter McQueen and William Weatherford, stormed the fort and defeated the militia garrison. Afterward, a massacre ensued and almost all of the remaining mixed Creek, white settlers, and militia at Fort Mims were killed. The fort was a stockade with a blockhouse surrounding the house and outbuildings of the settler Samuel Mims, located about 35 miles directly north of present-day Mobile, Alabama.
James Lauderdale (1768–1814) was an American militia officer who fought in the Creek War and The Battle of New Orleans. In 1813, he joined a unit of cavalry militia under General John Coffee, commissioned as a Lieutenant-Colonel of Volunteers in the Tennessee Militia.
Fort Strother was a stockade fort at Ten Islands in the Mississippi Territory, in what is today St. Clair County, Alabama. It was located on a bluff of the Coosa River, near the modern Neely Henry Dam in Ragland, Alabama. The fort was built by General Andrew Jackson and several thousand militiamen in November 1813, during the Creek War and was named for Captain John Strother, Jackson's chief cartographer.
Fort Claiborne was a stockade fort built in 1813 in present-day Monroe County, Alabama during the Creek War.
Mateo González Manrique was a soldier who served as governor of West Florida between 1813 and 1815. During his administration he helped the British in their fight against the Americans in the War of 1812, providing them with troops and slaves, and allowed them to garrison British troops in the fortifications at Pensacola, capital of West Florida. He thereby earned the enmity of Andrew Jackson, who invaded the city in 1814, although he returned it to Manrique after the British fled.
Fort Bainbridge was an earthen fort located along the Federal Road on what is today the county line between Macon and Russell counties in Alabama. Fort Bainbridge was located twenty-five miles west of Fort Mitchell.
Fort Decatur was an earthen fort established in March 1814 on the banks of the Tallapoosa River as part of the Creek War and the larger War of 1812. The fort was located on the east bank of the Tallapoosa River, near the modern community of Milstead. Fort Decatur was also located near the Creek town of Tukabatchee. It was most likely named for Stephen Decatur.
Fort Armstrong was a stockade fort built in present-day Cherokee County, Alabama during the Creek War. The fort was built to protect the surrounding area from attacks by Red Stick warriors but was also used as a staging area and supply depot in preparation for further military action against the Red Sticks.
Fort Dale was a stockade fort built in present-day Butler County, Alabama by Alabama Territory settlers. The fort was constructed in response to Creek Indian attacks on settlers in the surrounding area.
Fort Hull was an earthen fort built in present-day Macon County, Alabama in 1814 during the Creek War. After the start of hostilities, the United States decided to mount an attack on Creek territory from three directions. The column advancing west from Georgia built Fort Mitchell and then clashed with the Creeks. After a pause in operations, the column from Georgia continued its march and built Fort Hull. The fort was used as a supply point and was soon abandoned after the end of the Creek War.
Fort Leslie was a stockade fort built in present-day Talladega County, Alabama, in 1813 during the Creek War. After the Creek War began, protective stockades were built by settlers and Creeks who were allied with the United States to protect themselves from hostile Creek attacks. Fort Leslie was the focal point of the Battle of Talladega but was soon abandoned after the end of the Creek War.
Fort Madison was a stockade fort built in August 1813 in present-day Clarke 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. The fort shared many similarities to surrounding stockade forts in its construction but possessed a number of differences in its defenses. The fort housed members of the United States Army and settlers from the surrounding area, and it was used as a staging area for raids on Creek forces and supply point on further military expeditions. Fort Madison was subsequently abandoned at the conclusion of the Creek War and only a historical marker exists at the site today.
Fort Pierce, was two separate stockade forts built in 1813 in present-day Baldwin County, Alabama, during the Creek War, which was part of the larger War of 1812. The fort was originally built by settlers in the Mississippi Territory to protect themselves from attacks by Creek warriors. A new fort of the same name was then built by the United States military in preparation for further action in the War of 1812, but the fort was essentially abandoned within a few years. Nothing exists at the site today.
Brannon, Peter A. (1924). "Montgomery Hill". Arrow Points: Monthly Bulletin of the Alabama Anthropological Society. 8 (5).
Braund, Kathryn; Waselkov, Gregory; Christopher, Raven (2019). The Old Federal Road in Alabama. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. ISBN978-0-8173-5930-0.
Pickett, Albert James (1878). History of Alabama, and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest Period. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Willo Publishing Company. ISBN978-1-363-31084-5.
Waselkov, Gregory; Christopher, Raven (2012). Archaeological Survey of the Old Federal Road in Alabama (Technical report). Montgomery, Alabama: Alabama Department of Transportation. Submitted by the Center for Archaeological Studies University of South Alabama.
Waselkov, Gregory (2012). "Chapter 8: Fort Jackson and the Aftermath". In Braund, Kathryn E. Holland (ed.). Tohopeka: Rethinking the Creek War & the War of 1812. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. ISBN978-0-8173-5711-5.
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