Siege of Fort Mose

Last updated
Battle of Fort Mose
Part of the War of Jenkins' Ear
St Aug Fort Mose01.jpg
Site of the old fort
Date14 June 1740
Location 29°55′40.01″N81°19′31.01″W / 29.9277806°N 81.3252806°W / 29.9277806; -81.3252806
Result Spanish victory
Belligerents
Union flag 1606 (Kings Colors).svg  Great Britain Bandera de Espana 1701-1748.svg Spain
Commanders and leaders
Col. John Palmer  Cap. Antonio Salgado
Francisco Menéndez
Strength
170 regulars and Indians [1] 300 regulars
some militia
Indian auxiliaries
free black auxiliaries [1] [2]
Casualties and losses
68 [3] –75 killed [4]
34 captured [3]
10 killed
20 wounded [5] [6]
USA Florida relief location map.jpg
Red pog.svg
Location within Florida
North America laea relief location map with borders.jpg
Red pog.svg
Siege of Fort Mose (North America)

The Battle of Fort Mose (often called Bloody Mose, or Bloody Moosa) was a significant action of the War of Jenkins' Ear that took place on June 14, 1740, in Spanish Florida. [7] Captain Antonio Salgado commanded a Spanish column of 300 regular troops, backed by the free black militia under Francisco Menéndez and allied Seminole warriors consisting of Indian auxiliaries. They stormed Fort Mose, a strategically crucial position newly held by 170 British soldiers under Colonel John Palmer. [8] Palmer and his garrison had taken the fort from the Spanish as part of James Oglethorpe's offensive to capture St. Augustine.

Contents

Taken by surprise, the British garrison was virtually annihilated. [8] Colonel Palmer, three captains and three lieutenants were among the British troops killed in action. [6] The battle destroyed the fort. The Spanish did not rebuild it until 1752. [9] [10]

Background

Located two miles north of St. Augustine, Fort Mose was established in 1738 by the Spanish as a refuge for fugitive slaves escaping from the colonies of Georgia and South Carolina. Forty-five years earlier, in 1693, King Charles II had ordered his Florida colonists to give all runaway slaves from the Virginia Colony freedom and protection if they converted to Catholicism and agreed to serve Spain. [11]

The fort consisted of a church, a wall of timber with some towers, and some twenty houses inhabited by a hundred people. [12] The maroons were commissioned as Spanish militia by Governor Manuel de Montiano and put under the command of Captain Francisco Menéndez, a mulatto or creole of African-Spanish descent, who had escaped from slavery in the colony South Carolina. [11]

The fort, to the Spanish, served as both a colony of freedmen and as Spanish Florida's front-line of defense against possible incursions from the Southern colonies. Word of the free black settlement reached the Province of South Carolina; it is believed to have helped inspire the Stono Rebellion in September 1739. During the slave revolt, several dozen blacks headed for Spanish Florida, and were recruited into the colonial militia. [12] [13] [14]

At the outbreak of the War of Jenkins’ Ear in 1739, General James Oglethorpe, governor of Georgia, encouraged by some successful raids made by the British and their Indian allies in the frontier, decided to raise a significant expedition to capture St. Augustine, capital of Spanish Florida. [15] As part of the campaign, he realized his forces had to capture and hold Fort Mose.[ citation needed ]

Oglethorpe launched his campaign. Regular troops from South Carolina and Georgia, militia volunteers, about 600 allied Indian Creek and Uchise allies, and about 800 blacks as auxiliaries made up the expedition, which was supported at sea by seven ships of the Royal Navy. [15] Montiano, who had 600 regulars including reinforcements recently arrived from Cuba, began to entrench his position. On several occasions he attempted to unsuccessfully attack the British lines by taking them by surprise. [2]

Battle

Approaching St. Augustine, a British party under Colonel John Palmer, composed of 170 men belonging to the Georgia colonial militia, the Highland Independent Company of Darien, and auxiliary native allies, rapidly occupied Fort Mose, strategically sited on a vital travel route. [8] The British forces suffered from conflicts in command and control. The Highlanders were primarily Gaelic speaking and were unimpressed with Colonel Palmer's leadership. For his part, Colonel Palmer was likewise distrustful of the Highlanders' abilities as disciplined soldiers.

Manuel de Montiano had ordered the fort abandoned after some of its inhabitants had been killed by Indian allies of the British. The free black residents moved to St. Augustine.[ citation needed ]

While the Oglethorpe expedition laid siege to St. Augustine, Montiano considered his options. Knowing the strategic importance of Fort Mose, and realizing its vulnerabilities, Montiano decided to undertake a counter-offensive operation. At dawn on June 14, Captain Antonio Salgado commanded Spanish regulars, and Francisco Menéndez led the maroon militia and Seminole Indian auxiliaries, in a surprise attack on Mose. [2] [4] The attack was initiated two hours before the British soldiers awoke so that they could not prepare their arms for defense. [16] About 75 of the British troops were killed and 34 were captured in bloody hand-to-hand combat with swords, muskets, and clubs. [4]

Aftermath

The Spanish victory at Fort Mose demoralized the badly divided British forces and was a significant factor in Oglethorpe's withdrawal to Savannah. [4] In late June St. Augustine was relieved by Spanish forces from Havana, and the Royal Navy's warships abandoned the land forces. [4] Governor Montiano commended the maroons for their bravery. [16] Although Fort Mose had been destroyed during the siege, its former residents were resettled in St. Augustine for the next decade as free and equal Spanish colonial citizens. [16]

When the Spanish rebuilt the fort in 1752, free blacks returned there. After the British victory against the French in the Seven Years' War, it took over East Florida in a related trade with Spain. Most of the residents and military evacuated to Cuba, and Francisco Menéndez and most of the free blacks went with them. [17] [18]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 Wasserman p. 61
  2. 1 2 3 Martínez Láinez/Canales p. 239
  3. 1 2 Quesada p. 49
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Landers p. 37
  5. Marley p. 254
  6. 1 2 Gómez
  7. Fischer, David Hackett (2022). African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals. Simon and Schuster. p. 684. ISBN   978-1-9821-4511-8.
  8. 1 2 3 Burnett p. 167
  9. Jones p. 13
  10. Henderson p. 94
  11. 1 2 Patrick Riordan (Summer 1996). "Finding Freedom in Florida: Native Peoples, African Americans, and Colonists, 1670–1816". The Florida Historical Quarterly. 75 (1). Florida Historical Society: 30.
  12. 1 2 Martínez Láinez/Canales p. 236
  13. Linebaugh, p. 250
  14. Peter Linebaugh; Marcus Rediker (2000). The Many-headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Beacon Press. p. 205. ISBN   978-0-8070-5007-1.
  15. 1 2 Landers p. 35
  16. 1 2 3 Wasserman p. 96
  17. Jane Landers (1990). "Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose: A Free Black Town in Spanish Colonial Florida". The American Historical Review. 95 (1). Oxford University Press: 29. doi:10.2307/2162952. ISSN   0002-8762. JSTOR   2162952.
  18. Kathleen A. Deagan; Darcie A. MacMahon (1995). Fort Mose: Colonial America's Black Fortress of Freedom. University Press of Florida. p. 17. ISBN   978-0-8130-1352-7.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seminole Wars</span> Conflicts in Florida between the US govt. and Seminole Nation (1816–58)

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 American General Andrew Jackson led an incursion into the territory over Spanish objections. Jackson's forces destroyed several Seminole and Black Seminole towns, as well as the 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">St. Augustine, Florida</span> City in Florida, United States

St. Augustine is a city in and the county seat of St. Johns County located 40 miles south of downtown Jacksonville. The city is on the Atlantic coast of northeastern Florida. Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorers, it is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in what is now the contiguous United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Darien, Georgia</span> City in Georgia, United States

Darien is a city in and the county seat of McIntosh County, Georgia, United States. It lies on Georgia's coast at the mouth of the Altamaha River, approximately 50 miles south of Savannah, and is part of the Brunswick, Georgia metropolitan statistical area. It is the second-oldest planned city in Georgia and was originally called New Inverness. The population of Darien was 1,460 at the 2020 census, down from 1,975 in 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pedro Menéndez de Avilés</span> Spanish Navy officer, explorer and colonial administrator (1519–1574)

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was a Spanish admiral, explorer and conquistador from Avilés, Asturias. He is notable for planning the first Spanish treasure fleet and founding St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565. This was the first successful European settlement in Spanish Florida and the most significant city in the region for nearly three centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Castillo de San Marcos</span> United States historic place

The Castillo de San Marcos is the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States; it is located on the western shore of Matanzas Bay in St. Augustine, Florida.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Bloody Marsh</span> Battle during the War of Jenkins Ear

The Battle of Bloody Marsh took place on 7 July 1742 between Spanish and British forces on St. Simons Island, part of the Province of Georgia, resulting in a victory for the British. Part of the War of Jenkins' Ear, the battle was for the British fortifications of Fort Frederica and Fort St. Simons, with the strategic goal the sea routes and inland waters they controlled. With the victory, the Province of Georgia established undisputed claim to the island. The British also won the Battle of Gully Hole Creek, which took place on the island the same day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spanish Florida</span> Former Spanish possession in North America

Spanish Florida was the first major European land-claim and attempted settlement-area in northern America during the European Age of Discovery. La Florida formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and the Spanish Empire during Spanish colonization of the Americas. While its boundaries were never clearly or formally defined, the territory was initially much larger than the present-day state of Florida, extending over much of what is now the southeastern United States, including all of present-day Florida plus portions of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and the Florida Parishes of Louisiana. Spain based its claim to this vast area on several wide-ranging expeditions mounted during the 16th century. A number of missions, settlements, and small forts existed in the 16th and to a lesser extent in the 17th century; they were eventually abandoned due to pressure from the expanding English and French colonial settlements, the collapse of the native populations, and the general difficulty in becoming agriculturally or economically self-sufficient. By the 18th century, Spain's control over La Florida did not extend much beyond a handful of forts near St. Augustine, St. Marks, and Pensacola, all within the boundaries of present-day Florida.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fort Mose</span> United States historic place

Fort Mose is a former Spanish fort in St. Augustine, Florida. In 1738, the governor of Spanish Florida, Manuel de Montiano, had the fort established as a free black settlement, the first to be legally sanctioned in what would become the territory of the United States. It was designated a US National Historic Landmark on October 12, 1994.

Francisco Menéndez was a notable free Black militiaman who served the Spanish Empire in Florida during the 18th-century. He was a leader of Fort Mose, the first free Black settlement in North America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siege of St. Augustine (1740)</span> Battle during the War of Jenkins Ear

The siege of St. Augustine was a military engagement that took place during June–July 1740. It involved a British attack on the city of St. Augustine in Spanish Florida and was a part of the much larger conflict known as the War of Jenkins' Ear.

Manuel Joaquín de Montiano y Sopelana was a Spanish General and colonial administrator who served as Royal Governor of La Florida during Florida's First Spanish Period and as Royal Governor of Panama. He defended Florida from an attack by British forces in 1740 and launched his own unsuccessful Invasion of Georgia during the War of Jenkins' Ear.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Invasion of Georgia (1742)</span> Campaign during the War of Jenkins Ear

In the 1742 Invasion of Georgia, Spanish forces based in Florida attempted to seize and occupy disputed territory held by the British colony of Georgia. The campaign was part of a larger conflict which became known as the War of Jenkins' Ear. Local British forces under the command of the Governor James Oglethorpe rallied and defeated the Spaniards at the Battle of Bloody Marsh and the Battle of Gully Hole Creek, forcing them to withdraw. Britain's ownership of Georgia was formally recognized by Spain in the subsequent Treaty of Madrid.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonio de Benavides</span>

Antonio Benavides Bazán y Molina was a Lieutenant General in the Spanish Army who held administrative positions in the Americas as Royal Governor of Spanish Florida (1718–1734), Governor of Veracruz (1734–1745), Governor and Captain General of Yucatán province, as well as Governor of Manila in the Philippines. Before his successive appointments to these various positions, he served with distinction in several campaigns of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1710, and perhaps saved the life of Philip V, the first Bourbon King of Spain, at Guadalajara.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Negro Fort</span> Fort built by the British in 1814 in Spanish Florida, US

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".

Fulgencio García de Solís was the acting Governor of Florida from 1752 to 1755, and Governor of Honduras from 1757 to 1759.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of slavery in Florida</span>

Slavery in Florida occurred among indigenous tribes and during Spanish rule. Florida's purchase by the United States from Spain in 1819 was primarily a measure to strengthen the system of slavery on Southern plantations, by denying potential runaways the formerly safe haven of Florida. Florida became a slave state, seceded, and passed laws to exile or enslave free blacks. Even after abolition, forced labor continued.

St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in the continental United States, was founded in 1565 by Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. The Spanish Crown issued an asiento to Menéndez, signed by King Philip II on March 20, 1565, granting him various titles, including that of adelantado of Florida, and expansive privileges to exploit the lands in the vast territory of Spanish Florida, called La Florida by the Spaniards. This contract directed Menéndez to explore the region's Atlantic coast and report on its features, with the object of finding a suitable location to establish a permanent colony from which the Spanish treasure fleet could be defended and Spain's claimed territories in North America protected against incursions by other European powers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fort San Francisco de Pupo</span> 18th-century Spanish fort in Florida, United States

Fort San Francisco de Pupo was an 18th-century Spanish fort on the west bank of the St. Johns River in Florida, about eighteen miles from St. Augustine, the capital of Spanish Florida. Lying on the old trail to the Spanish province of Apalachee in western Florida, Fort Pupo and its sister outpost, Fort Picolata on the opposite shore of the river, controlled all traffic on the ferry crossing. The remains of Fort Pupo are situated about three miles south of Green Cove Springs in Clay County, near the end of Bayard Point opposite Picolata. The surrounding area is a hammock of southern live oak, southern magnolia, pignut hickory and other typical trees native to the region.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fort Picolata</span>

Fort Picolata was an 18th-century Spanish fort on the east bank of the St. Johns River, about eighteen miles from St. Augustine, the capital of Spanish Florida. Lying on the old trail to the Spanish province of Apalachee in western Florida, Fort Picolata and its sister outpost, Fort San Francisco de Pupo, controlled all traffic at the ferry crossing where the river narrows considerably, a natural pass called "Salamatoto" by the Indians. The first defense works at the site, built soon after 1700 as an outpost of the military defensive network of St. Augustine, were little more than a sentry box surrounded by a palisade.

Jane Gilmer Landers is an historian of colonial Latin America and the Atlantic World who specializes in the history of Africans and their descendants. She is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, director of the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies, and former associate dean of the college of arts & science.

References