Eye for an Eye: The Role of Armed Resistance ... - Freedom Archives

the maroons of Fort Moussa was thought to be a factor in the Stono (South Caro-
lina) rebellion of 1739 . In 1763, the community was overrun by the military
conflict between European powers (England, Spain and France) competing for
wealth and terrain . The British would control Florida for twenty years, finally
ceding the colony back to Spain in 1783, after its (Britain's) defeat to its settlers
in North America ."
African maroons were armed and employed by the British along with
renegade elements of the Creek nation (known as the Red Sticks), again in north
Florida, during the War of 1812 . Taking advantage of the large community of
thousands of maroons in north Florida, particularly along the Apalachicola River
and militant Creeks, who fled Georgia after the defeat of the Creeks by Americans
in 1814, the British armed the rebel communities to fight a common enemy, the
United States ofAmerica. The British and their African and indigenous allies
established a fort at Prospect Bluff, on the Apalachicola River. After the British
troops abandoned north Florida in 1815, African and Creek rebels remained
fighting for freedom or death at the fort, which has been commonly called "the
Negro Fort ." The Negro Fort served as a base for guerilla raids on plantations in
southern Alabama and Georgia to free enslaved Africans and expropriate supplies .
Led by an African maroon, Garson, and a native chief from the Choctaw nation,
the African and indigenous rebels of the Negro Fort became a threat to the slave-
owning class and their allies in the deep South, who called for the fort's destruc-
tion . In July of 1816, the commander of the southwestern military district of the
United States, Andrew Jackson, dispatched American troops and their Creek
allies, backed by Naval gunboats, to destroy the fort and return the African ma-