THE COAST ARTILLERY JOURNAL - Air Defense Artillery

COLONIAL FORTS 251
the ships sunk. Disheartened, the British command returned to Pensacola.
Determined to counteract the British occupation of Pensa~a, Jackson
marched against that city in November with a force of five thousand Tennessee
volunteers and a large body of Indians. In addition to the forts.,...thecity was
at that time protected by several batteries and by seven vessels of war which
were in the harbor. Jackson advanced in a direct assault and the town was
soon captured. Colonel Nichols, hard pressed by the Americans, blew up Fort
Barrancas and escaped with his troops and his Indian allies to the vessels,
which at once put to sea. General Jackson held the town but two days. Destroying
the fortifications, he withdrew to New Orleans, while the Spanish Governor
immediately commenced rebuilding the defenses of Pensacola.
During the Battle of New Orleans and the events preliminary to it, the
British fleet was in action on the Mississippi. Some vessels bombarded Fort
St. Philip, below New Orleans, on the 11th of January, 1815, and continued the
attack for eight days without success. This failure, combined with the American
victory on land, forced the British to withdraw from the Mississippi. Turning
their attention to Mobile, they assembled a large naval force off Fort
Bowyer and landed five thousand men in the vicinity. Twenty-five vessels anchored
in a semi-circular position five miles in front of the fort, and thirteen
ships-of-the-line took station two miles in rear of it. The Americans decided that
the attacking force was overwhelming and, in February, surrendered Fort
Bowyer to the British, who retained possession only until the first of April.
During the war with the Seminole Indians in 1817, it was ascertained that
the Indians were incited to hostilities by British subjects, protected by the
Spanish authorities in Florida. General Gaines, in March, 1818, invaded
Florida, took possession of the weak Spanish post of St. Mark's, at the head of
Apalachee Bay, and sent the civil authorities and troops to Pensacola. Jackson
soon afterward marched on Pensacola. Upon his arrival, the Spanish governor
fled on horseback to Fort Barrancas, at the entrance to Pensacola Bay. Here,
when threatened by the American troops, he made some slight show of resistance
and then surrendered. The United States were now in a position to make terms
with Spain, and early in 1819, that nation ceded Florida to the United States.
The treaty, which was ratified in 1821, confirmed the possession of the United
States to most of the Gulf Coast, and set the Sabine River as the boundary line
between the United States and Texas.
This latter province, largely unsettled along its uninviting shores, had never
possessed coast forts of any consequence. Galveston Bay had been discovered
by the colony of La Salle in 1686, but for many years it had remained deserted.
It then became a stronghold for free-booters and smugglers. These were driven
from the town, which then became a center for revolutionists. In 1819 a detaclunent
of the Republican Army under General Long took possession of
B~livar point and there erected a fort which was known as Fort Bolivar.
In 1831 two other forts had been built in the vicinity. When the Mexican
government established custom houses in Texas and undertook to collect duties,
the collector of the "port of Galveston" lived near the mouth of the Trinity