| Fort Gadsen | 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,[1]: 22 by means of which they could “free all these Southern Countries [states] from the Yoke of the Americans”.[1]: 40 Built on a militarily significant site overlooking the Apalachicola River, it was the largest structure between St. Augustine and Pensacola.[1]: 47 Trading posts of Panton, Leslie and Company and then John Forbes and Company, loyalists hostile to the United States, had existed since the late eighteenth century there and at the San Marcos fort, serving local Native Americans and fugitive slaves. The latter, having been enslaved on plantations in the American South, used their knowledge of farming and animal husbandry to set up farms stretching for miles along the river. |