When we left off last week, “Negro Fort” in Apalachicola was destroyed after a cannonball hit the fort’s powder magazine, killing over 270 people, including women and children. While many inhabitants had retreated before the American takeover, the survivors joined another maroon community on the Suwannee River. This new settlement, led by members of the Seminole Nation, soon faced threats from the U.S. government.
Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3, by clicking the links.
In 1818, a battle now considered the first of the First Seminole War occurred when Andrew Jackson and his Native American allies attacked the fort. Over 300 Black and Maroon warriors fought against Jackson, holding back the attack long enough for their families to escape. According to Sherry Svekis of Reflections of Manatee in her presentation “Manatee County, Angola and the Underground Railroad,” this event marked a significant moment in the struggle for freedom.
“The first beacon of freedom in Florida had been Fort Mose. That avenue closed in 1763. Then it had been Prospect Bluff. That too had been destroyed. Now it was Angola, deep south on the peninsula and far from American power,” Svekis wrote.
Historians are uncertain when the first Freedom Seekers arrived on the south side of the Manatee River, in present-day East Bradenton. The area offered fertile soil, abundant marine resources, nearby hunting grounds, and a wide river extending 50 miles inland. The southern bank provided a defensible position. By 1812, it was a permanent settlement of a Maroon community known as “Angola.”
Military records indicate that eight black soldiers were taken to Angola after the battle at Negro Fort in 1816, suggesting their families were waiting there and it was already an established community. Unlike the fortified encampments they were used to, Angola adapted more of a Seminole lifestyle, where families maintained their own space and crops.
Despite their freedom, they remained threatened. In late 1818, Andrew Jackson asked Secretary of War John Calhoun for permission to occupy Tampa Bay by spring 1819 specifically to destroy Angola. Meanwhile, the Angolans sought support from the British and Spanish. By the end of 1818, they received ammunition and provisions for their resistance, but by 1819, Spain decided it could no longer defend Florida.
Before Jackson could act, the Adams-Onis Treaty offered some protections to settlements such as Angola, but only briefly. Later that year, the Charleston City Gazette reported that in April, allies of Andrew Jackson sought to capture slaves for profit. With 200 Coweta Indians, they were ordered to capture all people of color along Florida's western coast. Led by Charles Miller, they arrived at Manatee/Sarasota and captured about 300 people, plundered and nd burned their houses. By June 17, they reached Punta Rassa Key, plundering Spanish fishermen when they found fewer slaves than expected. This raid spread terror, breaking up Native American settlements and causing great consternation.
Some 250-300 people were captured, but some escaped across Florida to meet abolitionists at Cape Florida or Tavernier, who took them to Andros Island in the Bahamas, where a descendant community now exists at Red Base. Other escapees joined the Seminoles along the Peace River in Manati.
After Angola's destruction, the land lay deserted until John Lee Williams visited the lower Gulf Coast in 1827 and found the settlement's remains. So began the era of white settlers in Manatee County.
