They allowed the members of the disbanded Corps of Colonial Marines, made up largely of fugitive slaves, and Creek tribesmen to occupy it after the British evacuated Florida in 1815, deliberately leaving their munitions behind.

The name parallels the Spanish one, Loma de Buena Vista,[13][14]: 8  literally "hill with a good view".

Spain's inability to police its borders or return fugitive slaves was central to Florida's transfer to the United States in 1821.

More recently, it had enabled raiding parties to go upriver into Georgia and the Mississippi Territory via the Chattahoochee and especially the Flint River.

Prospect Bluff was valuable militarily not only because of the elevation its name suggests, but because it was at a "strategic location",[13] a bend in the river, giving an important sight advantage over any boat.

Settlement at Prospect Bluff by maroons (escaped slaves and their descendants), Seminoles, and a few Europeans is documented at the end of the eighteenth century.

In January 1783 a conference was held in St. Augustine between the representatives of the British Crown—Governor Patrick Tonyn, Brigadier General Archibald McArthur, and Thomas Brown, the superintendent of Indian affairs—and the head men and principal warriors of the towns of the Upper and the Lower Creeks, who complained of the long distance they must travel to the stores from which they obtained their supplies.

The Indians offered protection to merchants who would move their stores to locations closer to their territory, and pointed out the Apalachicola River as a suitable place for a trading house.

The Creeks said it was not only more convenient for themselves, but also much nearer to the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee Indians, and requested that the house of Panton, Leslie & Company, who had been supplying them with goods, should be solicited to settle there for that purpose.

This store was attacked and looted by the adventurer William Augustus Bowles in 1792 and again in 1800, at which point it ceased operations.

It was "manned by Edmund Doyle with some assistance from William Hambly, an Indian trader with years of experience in the area.

It included a building for storing hides (what the Native Americans had to trade), quarters for negro slaves, and a cow pen for several hundred cattle that were raised nearby.

[24] The British launched an invasion of Pensacola during the War of 1812 and occupied it[25] until General Andrew Jackson took the town on November 7, 1814.

[26][27] The British forces, over 100 officers and men led by a Brevet Captain of the Royal Marines, George Woodbine,[20]: 42  made camp at the only community between Pensacola and St. Marks: the trading post of John Forbes and Company, surrounded by negro plantations.

Nicolls found the ex-slaves superior as soldiers, reporting that his black recruits had enlisted "with the strictest good faith and conduct, so much so, that out of 1,500 of them I never had occasion to punish one of them".

The larger one, which actually was built and was intended to be a supply depot for Nicolls' Outpost,[33]: 21, 47  did not have a name; it was referred to simply as the British Post.

The construction of the larger fort was described by Brigadier General Edmund P. Gaines in a letter of May 14, 1816 to Andrew Jackson, who had charged him with destroying the Fort:The ramparts and parapets built of hewn timber filled in with earth, mounting 9 to 12 pieces of Cannon, several of which are very large, with some mortars and Howitzers.

The work is nearly square and extends over near two acres [0.81 ha] of ground, has Comfortable barracks, and large stone houses inside.

remained, along with many of the trained soldiers of the disbanded Corps of Colonial Marines, which was a British Army regiment consisting of freed slaves.

The fort, located as it was near the border, was seen by the U.S. as "a beacon of light to restless and rebellious slaves,"[18] "a center of hostility and above all a threat to the security of their slaves,"[44] "a direct threat to the slave-holding interests rapidly flocking to the newly opened lands in what is today Mississippi and Alabama.

This is a state of things which cannot fail to produce much injury to the neighboring settlements and incite Irritations which may ultimately endanger the peace of the nation and interrupt that good understanding that so happily exists between our governments.He insisted on the "return to our citizens and the friendly Indians inhabiting our Territory those Negroes now in the said fort and which have been stolen and enticed from them."

The first step was the construction of Fort Scott, located at a key military point upriver, the west bank of the Flint River where it empties into the Apalachicola, in the southwestern corner of Georgia.

On July 27, 1816, a "hot shot" (a cannonball heated to a red glow in the gunboat's galley) from the American forces entered the opening to the fort's powder magazine, igniting an explosion that was heard more than 100 miles (160 km) away in Pensacola, and destroyed the fort, killing all but 30 of 300 occupants.

Some original timbers from the octagonal magazine were uncovered here by excavations.The trading post of John Forbes and Company, storekeeper Edward Doyle, was reestablished following the destruction of the fort.

[50]: 109 To secure the militarily significant Prospect Bluff, protect commerce on the river, prevent the recreation of a fugitive slave community—new fugitives were arriving—, and as a base for his further invasion of Florida, in 1818 General Jackson directed Lieutenant James Gadsden, of the Army Corps of Engineers, to rebuild the fort, which he did within the earthworks that had protected Negro Fort, as it was much smaller.

[53] However, an aide to General Andrew Jackson reported to his superior in August 1818 that Fort Gadsden was "a temporary work, hastily erected, and of perishable materials, without constant repair, it could not last more than four or five years.

[5]: 52 During the American Civil War, Confederate troops occupied the fort, using it to protect communications from plantations in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama with the port of Apalachicola.

The Fort Gadsden Historic Site was created in 1961,[4] when racial divisions may have led to downplaying the battle, although other causes such as population displacement may have contributed as well.