Cool Zone Media.
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, the show where you don't get to be the one who decides what's cool. Instead, I the host, Margaret Kiljoy decide what's cool, which is a strange irony, but there's no way around it because no one can start podcasts because it's illegal and the law and morality are identical. Our guest today is Jamie Loftus.
Hi, Jamie Hi, Margaret, dude to my status is starting a podcast.
I am currently considered a fugitive.
That's true, but I think but I think it's actually I think it's it's worth it to get my little ideas out into the world.
When podcasts are outlawed, only outlaws of podcast.
Me and Dex Shepherd against the world.
That's right. That's why we're all going to get the vests. But we're not going to tell you what I mean by that. Instead, I'm going to introduce the producer, Sophie. That's me, Matron of Crime. I'll take it okay and are well now. I just feel bad saying the names of everyone involved because they're all doing crime. But Ian is our audio engineer, and everyone is to say Hi, Ian, Hi, Ian, Yeah.
Hi, Ian, sorry about your recent breaking the law by participating in this evil empire.
Oh Jamie, you know you're my partner in crime and that you're the mastermind.
What are you talking about?
It's true?
What are you jeer?
Behind them?
Yeah, behind all producers. Yes, the theme music was written for us by someone who will not be named lest unwoman get in trouble.
And it worked.
Thanks proud of that one. Today is part two of a two parter, which is the first time that's ever happened, not the ninety eighth time that's ever happened in part one. Okay, this time we're talking about Negro for it, which was a really amazing maroon community in Florida when it was Spanish Florida that the US went and fucked up. In part one, I talked about how a ton of indigenous
folks were real mad at the Americans. Right now I want to talk about what had beens just stolen from them, which is to say, I get to talk about everyone's favorite person, Andrew Jackson. Yeah. If you ever meet someone who thinks that Andrew Jackson is a good person, then you have met a bad person, or at best, a terribly badly informed person.
Yeah, I would say, don't waste your time trying to fix them unless I.
Know, you know, you've only we've only got so much time.
Yeah, it's and if it's like your best friend, no, if it's your dad, I don't know whatever. Andrew Jackson before the War of eighteen twelve, no one really knew him outside of Tennessee. He grew up a backwoods guy. He wasn't actually poor. He later inherited two hundred acres, but he grew up backwoods along the North and South Carolina border shortly before the Revolutionary War, and he grew
up hating Indigenous people and British people. And this was like his main thing, and like stop clock on the British thing. But you know whatever. The Revolutionary War had killed his mother, his only parent, and two of his brothers, so he was really into hating the British. He also hated Indigenous people because he was a racist piece of shit dick. He quickly left the backwoods and became a Southern gentleman, which of course meant buying and selling people.
Right come the War of eighteen twelve, he was like, let's go kill the Brittain Indians, capture Florida wooo, and that was that was his war crime. In eighteen thirteen, the Muskogee had what was called the Creek Civil War because they were mostly called the Creek. On one side, you have the Americanized folks who were, you know, had just been like they've been like doing the more settled thing. They're starting to grow, build plantations, They're really into the
chattel slavery thing. On the other side, you had the Red Sticks who were like, yeah, fuck all that, and they would attack forts and kill everyone there except the enslaved people who were freed who then joined them. So Andrew Jackson just went just like went around and burned down every Musgogie village that he could find.
Which like a like a gentleman would, Yeah, exactly.
People tend to conveniently forget that usually everyone on all sides of any given war of colonization kills civilians every single chance they can get. It's like a hard conversation to have, so we all try to not have it.
Yeah, and all the history books that we get in American public schools do not reflect it because it just complicates things too much.
Yeah, you pick one side to decide that they kill civilians and the other side that is the way.
To civilian life, the ultimate complicating factor.
Yeah, totally. But you know, I think that there's a difference between colonial and anti colonial violence, and you know, not to just whatever. Anyway, now I'm accidentally getting into the modern shit. Most of the Red Sticks died in battle against Jackson. They were out number two to one
at Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. Maybe all die so bravely. Basically, Andrew Jackson was promoted to major general for massacring all these people who outnumbered and then immediately got the Allied Muscogee people to sign away twenty three million acres of their territory, basically stole it from them. Basically, it was like, yeah, now you're just gonna give us all the shit because we want it. Yeah, any idea how big twenty three million acres is. It's like one of those numbers that's
a meaningless number. No, right, I can tell you it was like a county, and I could tell you it was like the Eastern seaboards.
Right at Florida.
It's about half modern floor.
Okay, twenty three million only half. I mean Florida's big though, I mean.
Yeah, that's a big fucking state. You ever like drive through Florida and you're like, this is no way. This is going to feel like driving through Texas that takes years, but then it does. No it especially be like driving to Miami.
It's it's it's gigantic, and also like there's a lot of I don't know, it's such a large state that I think, like Texas, there's also like regional specificity that gets kind of totally.
So everyone's mad, right, because he just took so much fucking land. This terrible loss is why the Brits had so much luck recruiting indigenous people in the area, because even those who had been allied with the US had just been fucked And so it was up to Andrew Jackson. Everyone decided, probably including Andrew Jackson, that was up to him to smash the pesky interracial Army, which to be clear, absolutely was planning to go fuck up the US South
and free from American government. That was absolutely their goal. Nichols, the Irishman, gave speeches about how they would quote unrivet the chains of every person still held in slavery. So they attacked the cool interracial army right their first at the Colonial Marines or whatever I said their name, like eight times. You think i'd remember the core of colonial Marines. The first attack on Alabama did not go well for the British, and grape shot took out Nichols right eye
and he'll never see out of it again. It will not stop him from continuing to fight in battles where he gets bayoneted and doesn't stop. So they were treated and they got back to recruiting people. They were like, okay, well we need more people, and so they helped more and more people escape slavery. At least they end up taking over Pensacola for a minute because it's not really under American control e there, so it's sort of easy.
At least two thirds of Pensacola's and slave population was recruited during this time, and all the slave owners would like go and be like, come on, Britz, give us back our people. And the Brits just laughed and we're like, nah, we have guns and shit, you're gonna fuck off now. Okay, So they're being cool. They're up to some cool stuff. November eighteen fourteen, Andrew Jackson invaded Pensacola and outnumbered the
British Florida one. So the multiracial army fled and they blew up their fortifications as they went and went back to the British post, which is the fort that they had built along the Apalogic Cola River. They grow there to a force of about fifteen hundred as more and more indigenous warriors show up. There's like numbers that go all over the place, all the different like estimates where they're like, oh, they got three thousand, they got fifteen hundred,
they got one thousand, there's three hundred of them. It's like all over the fucking place, the numbers.
God, okay, And how many like different sources is it coming from?
Is it just depends.
It just depends. A lot of it is that it was very variable by time. And then also a lot of history doesn't necessarily like stay perfectly linear in how they describe these things. You know, I think that it's like at its largest. Also, a lot of the sources, like Americans kept exaggerating the size of this force because they were like this is the this is armageddon, you know, and so like there's like ones that are like there's fifteen thousand of them, but that's like a pro slavery
American newspaper giving that number. For example, more and more indigenous warriors starts showing up, and then they start paying indigenous slave owners for the freedom of their slaves at about a I want to say about thirty dollars ahead, which is like way less than market rate. It's sort of a like we'll pay you to free slaves, but we won't pay like white people to free slaves in America.
Those were just going to go capture, you know. On December twenty fourth, eighteen fourteen, the War of eighteen twelve was officially over by the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, but they didn't have cell phones, so the war raged on until news came months and months later that it had already ended in a draw because it didn't go well for either side. Basically both sides just fucked each other up.
And it also, yeah, it also didn't just go in eighteen twelve. But that's that's that's the most that's the saddest thing in the world to me.
I mean, there's.
In like a casualty of war sense where you like, if someone you loved was killed after the war had been resolved, and you found that out later.
I simply don't know what I would do.
There's like World War One had that a lot, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fucking it, is it? It would on either side like that would kind of fuck me up, you know, yeah, because then it was like a like, for example, the Americans are about to pull out their greatest victory in the War of eighteen twelve, after the war is over, the Battle of New Orleans, made famous by a song that I don't remember who sings and don't listen too much.
I don't know.
On January eighth, eighteen fifteen, British soldiers attacked New Orleans, and Nichols's army was like, yeah, we're gonna lead. We volunteer to like lead the landing. We're going to go fuck these fucking slavers up. But they were told that they couldn't join. They were basically too valuable to risk, like they had, you know, the British and other military
plans for them. The Battle of New Orleans was like not a huge deal from the British point of view, and the British army got wrecked, like two thousand dead to fourteen dead on the American side is what I read. God, it's like enough that I'm like, that's fucked.
You know.
That is because they tried to march through a swamp at an entrenched position, and they were all so arrogant. They were like, we are the most civilized and advanced army.
In the world.
Of course we're going to wreck this like Motley Force, you know, right. And Andrew Jackson was in charge of defending New Orleans. This is a big This is like where is like fame like fucking comes from at the time. Now he's mostly famous as a butcher. He did the unthinkable when he defended New Orleans. He armed enslaved people. He promised people their freedom if they fought for the Americans.
Then after the battle he did the thinkable, which was he said not just fucking kidding, your fucking property, not people giving back the guns.
Often joke that isn't the most Andrew Jackson thing in the fucking world to do? Is yeah, yeah, promise advancement to read nag on it later.
Yeah. One of the most annoying things about reading the nineteenth century like pro and anti slavery shit, is watching all of the people on all sides argue about whether or not black people would be any good in a fight, and like people refer to Andrew Jackson as like practically anti racist in that he like he was like he respected that black people knew how to fight for whatever. I hate him and I hate everything about him one man.
Yeah, I can't can't hand it to him for that.
No, absolutely, exactly, absolutely not. And the fact that that is a thing that is like constantly brought up, and it is a thing that like even like a lot of the British are doing during this point, they're like, whoa, Like, I didn't know that you all were like not racially inferior, you know, right.
Right, Yeah, it's like we didn't know. We assumed that you were not competent in like it's what a treat, What a treat to be told that.
Yeah. So one man who was promised his freedom was this guy named James Roberts. During the battle, he killed six British soldiers in hand to hand combat, losing a finger and taking a sword across the face and the process, and he survived. After the battle, the Americans disarmed him, stripped him, sent him to prison, and then sent him
to the plantation where he'd come from. He later said quote, had there been less bravery with us, and he means the armed enslaved people, the British would have gained the victory, and in that event they would have set the slaves free. So that I see now how we in that war contributed to fasten our own chains tighter. What about fucking heartbreaking?
Yeah?
Like anyway, no, I mean no, yeah, yeah, I mean I feel like it just speaks to the the helplessness of the situation and just that they're like, are ultimately no, I don't know, there's no good imperial.
Force to ally with. If he can believe it, in this case, there's a better one.
Everyone who fought for the British not only were they freed, but so were their families. Oh wow, Okay, and Andrew Jackson after they like after the folks who fight and then they flee whatever, Andrew Jackson figures that he can now show up. He's like, he just crushed the British, right, So he's like, I'm just gonna show up and be like, yo,
give us back our property. And the British were like, now we're good, and once again all the like slave owners go and they're like they're like, same deal as always you can come and not by force ask people to return to you. And so all these like slave owners like showed up and we're like, oh, of course they're going to come back. We're gonna like ask nicely. Right.
A few people in this case did end up going back. Basically, I think that they thought that they might get abandoned and killed, and they just were looking to their options. Almost everyone was like, no chance in fucking hell will we do that. One newly freed wagon driver told us form master, you may carry my head along with you, but as to my body, it will remain here, like it's just the time of metal quotes.
Basically, yeah, I was like, there's really some bangers in this story, like one after the other.
Yeah, And they still don't know the war's over. So Nichol's army is now thirty five hundred strong and they get ready to invade and they're gonna just fucking go fuck up the American South.
The war's over.
But they're like, let they don't know what s goo. Girls, Well, they don't know it, right, right, right?
Do we know how exactly how long after this is, we're still only like a month or so later.
I don't remember the well, okay, So, like the treaty was signed, Battle of New Orleans is January eighth, and so then like pretty immediately afterwards, right, it's like a week or two later or something. They're like, we're getting ready to go do this thing, but then news of the truth comes before they get chance to do it. And so Nichols's army basically it's like never really put to the test. And you know, so then Spain's like, all right, great, the war's over. Can we have our
enslaved people back? And Nichols was like nah. And then and Spade was like, but there's no legal basis for that, and Nicholas is like, I don't really care, nick, Nick. Yeah, it was hilarious because the deal was that under the Spanish territorial law it was okay for slaves escaping the US to be freed, but not Spanish slaves, like anyone escaping a Spanish owner.
Right, okay.
And so there's all these slaves with Hispanic last names who only spoke Spanish, and Nichols is like, nah, that guy's American, you know, and they'd be like, no, I swear that that's our guy. Nicholas just be like no, it's not you got Oh also I have a lot of guns.
Yeah, gigantic bluff. I love it.
Yeah. In the end, Nichols presented each person who had fought or was there a certificate of freedom, saying that their service in the military meant that they were free, and that the basically that the Spanish delegates could eat it. The Spanish delegates are like there when he's passing out these certificates.
Sure.
And he also gave the soldiers all of their wages for the entire time, which is the whole thing. And like even the Army of the North and during the Civil War like decades later, was like real bad at paying black soldiers, you know. So he's like, here's all your money. You can keep the uniform and you are
officially discharged from service because the war is over. And these certificates that he gave them kept a bunch of people free down the line because there's like all this shit where like because Nichols rules in Britain sucks, you know, and so like later a lot of these freed people like go to other British colonies and people are like, no, you're not free, and they have to be like, ah, I'm going to take it to court and I have this document and shit, you know, so he made a
fucking paper trail. He based it on nothing. He based it on I want these people to be free. Here's a document.
God, that fucking rocks.
Yeah, totally another A win for the Irish, a win for fighting Nichols. Yeah, just having an army, a bunch of guns and a big old lie and actually being on the right side of history. And the war ended a month ago.
Secretly, great, great, great, great great.
Yeah. And so he tried one less thing, but the British government didn't go for it. Basically, he was like, we will absolutely keep this war going if you don't give the Muscogee back the land that Andrew Jackson stole, those twenty three million acres, we will absolutely go to war for it. And then Britain was like, no, no, no, not so much. We're not going to do that. But they did stand by the emancipation of five thousand enslaved
people who had escaped to British territory. In April eighteen fifteen, Nichols and the rest of the white British unit left. They this gets like a little blurry. They had this intention to return in six months or maybe a year, and maybe it was to like help transport everyone away. But then other people were like, no, he was never planning on coming back, and people like chose to stay there because they wanted to just live there and keep the fort and shit. And the reason I want I
want to like Nichols. And two the other reason I kind of trust him about this. He leaves this fort intact fully armed with hundreds of guns, like eight cannon powder keg after powder keg, like this is a fully he doesn't take any of the food like he as far as I can tell, he just right by the people. The one thing he fucked up is he left a white guy in charge. Oh he's gonna fuck off soon, don't worry, Okay.
I mean I just based on what you just I'm tempted to want to give a good faith reading of that because other than just like fucking off in the middle of the night and like, you know, completely like it sounds like there was the intent of some longevity there.
Yeah, And when he leaves, it transports a ton of the formally enslaved people with them when they leave, but a lot of people stick around, but they leave this white guy named Hambly around and they're like, all right, this guy's in charge. And he was like he had been he was local to the area, and he had been like an important part of a lot of the conversations with indigenous leaders and stuff, and he had worked for the trading post that was what used to be
there before the fort. So Nichols leaves. He goes on to continue his life, to go fuck up slave ships in Atlantic. A bunch of black soldiers leave with him, and they go off to live in Bermuda and shit. About three hundred black families remain at the fort, which is fully stocked and armed by the British. Before their departure, bish post becomes Negro Negro Fort, and the Spanish authorities couldn't do shit about it because it was fully stocked and armed fort. So what the fuck are they going
to do about it? Because one thing that history teaches you is that often the law doesn't matter if you have enough guns.
And this can go a lot of ways.
Oh, absolutely, it goes bad and good, yes, constantly, yeah, yes, but generally true. Yeah, some of the black families and soldiers they actually had come with the British in the first place from Virginia or the Caribbean and decided to stick around because they were like, actually, if we stay here, there's this amazing community of resistance that's being built. It's basically like being built as a maroon community right away.
And so a bunch of people who came from elsewhere, who were just British soldiers were like, nas where we're not gonna be. Yeah, Indigenous fighters stuck around as well, or they lived in the area immediately around it. But one thing that they didn't have that you and I have is access to Actually, I'm sure there were ads. There are probably a ton of ads, but our ads are more developed, but not.
With the weird little music beds that not the little beet boop beat boops that you get on a podcast ad. There's a unique kind of gorgeous, annoying musical cadence to a podcast add there really is.
Yeah, and here they are and we're back. So how do you think that America took the fact that when the British left, they left a armed maroon community in a fort that was incredibly defensible.
Oh, I think in the way America always takes things calmly, reasonably and wanting to be include and extend that American dream to everybody.
Is that correct?
Yes, it's close, and they were you know, they probably were like, well, that's not America. Why is it any of our business? Mm hmm. But unfortunately everything is America's business. Jamie loftus and the existence of the sport scared the shit out of white people, just fucking kept people up at night. This was going to destroy everything they loved about America. There's newspapers all over the country screaming and
yelling about this happening. Those black people, who weren't even in the fuck United States, fucking United States, were like coming for baseball and apple pie and by that I mean chattel slavery only. Okay, it be clear. It would be entirely fine if they I would love them if they were off to go do that. They weren't. The war was over. They were not planning some great raid on the US. They were just trying to fucking live free.
Quote the author Matthew C. Clayven from the best book about this that I'm aware of the Battle of negro Fort. Quote negro Fort's denizens were not slave revolutionaries out to destroy the nefarious institution that sought to keep them in bondage. Nor were they determined to restore or recreate a traditional way of life recalled from their youth or inherited from
their African ancestors. Instead, like other Maroons who struggled to survive in the Southern United States or adjacent territories, their actions show that self determination, self reliance, and self rule were their key objectives, and so they were just trying to fucking live.
Yeah, that was like, that's a long way of saying, just living with dignity and independence.
Yeah. Yeah.
That white guy Hambley, he was a chicken shit loser. He ran off right away and he went to the US and he was like, please destroy that place. I'll help you negotiate with indigenous leaders to attack it.
Oh yeah, okay, leader real flame out. Okay, you'll flame that use it. Yeah, he will know he had millennial burnout.
Margaret, right, totally. That's what I mean.
You have burnout at work.
Yeah, what do you think that they had, Like, like, I don't know the names of generations before the greatest generation. You know, it's like greatest old boomers, young boomers, which is a millennial silent?
Is it silent before greatest.
Oh, yeah is the greatest, and then silent. But but what the fuck did they call?
Oh?
I hate asking questions like this because people are going to answer me, and the when people answer me correctly, it's interesting. And when people just a year from now listen to this and then message me with no context, I'll have no idea.
They're like Margaret, Margaret Pep. Generally it was the Pep generation. Yeah, cool, I that is all. That is Like one of the beautiful parts of parasociality is someone answering a question you asked six years ago, yeah, and being presented as urgent or I don't know, just like stuff like, hey, do you remember when you said this in twenty eighteen. I'm like, guaranteed, no, let's assume I was wrong.
I don't know.
I don't know. I don't remember by the time you're hearing this, even if you listen when it first came out, I'm not gonna remember make this sentence. I only remember about the four Yeah. The weird side conversations not part of my memory, nor should it be. Yeah, anyway, before we talk shit on the people who are listen to our s eh okay.
Oh no, no, no, it's just an interesting it's an interesting and like usually.
Funny side effect of the job.
Yeah, and I do it to like I do it to Jamie. I listened to something Jamie did, Like I do it to Robert. I do it to Yeah, I do it to cool Zone media. People like it. It is a human instinct to be like, I know a thing about that. Like Robert Evans said, the people listen to the view Nation are old. I'm sure Robert Evans doesn't remember saying that, But when I listen to the v Nation in my basement when I'm working out, I think, yeah, no, I'm kind of old. This is a really interesting aside.
People are very glad we did it.
I love Yeah, I love talking to five year old MP three files.
It's my passion.
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, so negro Fort Sadly, the whole point of this episode is about how cool this place was the reason that we didn't get to it until now is because we don't know that much about it. We know a lot about what happened when there were white people around, and we know very little when they weren't. It was fucking cool. We know that Nichols is great, but it's annoying that he gets all the screen time
and we know more about him. We know that Maroon communities require security culture order to stay alive, and that's part of why we know so little about Maroon communities. We also know that in this community there were Spanish speaking, French speaking, English speaking, and people born in Africa all living there side by side. And we know that's because mostly of their names, Like one person would be like Congo Tom because he was born in Africa, and another person will have like a French.
Name or whatever, right m.
And we actually know a lot about like because they're fucking listed as property. We know a lot of their names, and we know a lot of their job descriptions, you know, because people are like reporting their missing property. We also know that they had eight cannons and that's part of why they managed to fucking stay missing property, which fucking rules. Yeah,
they were skilled artisans. They had eight cannons, a howitzer which is like halfway between a cannon and a mortar, so it's like not quite as long distance or whatever. And they had hundreds of muskets.
Mm hmm.
Yeah, we saw howitzer was just a brand name of a gun. And then I started reading.
Yeah, I mean think xerox or a Zamboni situation.
Interesting. Okay, it's his own thing.
It might be Oh god, I've talked about a military Okay. Anyway, we know that they started off with food stores, but soon they were growing their own and they seemed to live lives of plenty. They herded cattle in the swampy forest. They grew corn and melons, and they cultivated land. They set up like several they're described as plantations, but that just means like how they plant things, not how it was structured. They hunted turkey and alligator and deer, and
they fished. They traded extensively with their indigenous allies in the surrounding area. New fugitives arrived every day. They just kept growing, and they were all considered bandits. And to be clear, I think they did some piracy they like built boats and shit, but mostly they were bandits because they had stolen valuable property. Do you want to guess what the valuable property they stole was. No, it's themselves. No,
that's what makes them bandits. They are bandits because they stole property.
I think their own human bodies.
Yes, they stole from slave owners and for once they are black lead. We know about three of the commanders. There's Cyrus, there's Prince, who was actually a lieutenant in the Colonial Marines. And the most famous of the three, Garson, was a thirty six year old carpenter who'd been a sergeant major. Why was he the most famous because his name was French.
Oh my god, I was about to say, because he had a cute little name.
And that was the reason.
It is the reason, because this the single scariest thing that has happened to white Southerners and human history was the Haitian Revolution.
Okay.
And during the Haitian Revolution, which had only ended, it ended in eighteen oh four, and you know, so not that long before this, black and slave people rose up and freed themselves. And the guy who had led that, to Saint Luvatour, whose French name I am not good at French, was a black guy with a French name. So here's Garson, He's French and black. The end is nigh, god like, all over the papers, all over the papers,
they're like the Haitian Revolution's coming. Which, don't get me wrong, there were many people trying to make the Haitian Revolution come to North America for sure.
But I'm just at every turn, just a nation of fucking weird babies.
It's just absolutely and who will save this nation of weird babies? But a hero, a hero will merge. Mm hmmm, it's Andrew Jackson.
Again. I had a feeling it was Andrew Jackson.
Yeah.
I mean, if anyone was well equipped to capture the mind of violent babies, I suppose it was Andrew Jackson.
Yep. Which is an awkward place to start an ad pivot, but that's where it is. It's right here, right now. Here's an ad pivot, and.
We're back, and we pivoted right on back. It feels I think that would perfectly.
Yeah, absolutely good my job. So basically, Andrew Jackson was like, dear mister the President, can I invade a sovereign country to put down a ford in their territory because I think that they make Basically, it was like the existence of this place will incite people to flee, right, Okay, that was like their main argument, which is true, the existence of that place incited people to flee, which is good, just not he presents it as bad because he's a
backwards man who walks backwards and talks. It's opposite day for him, every day exactly. Yeah, he's the opposite moratl guy yea. And so he writes, dear mister President, can I invade the sovereign country to put down a fort in their territory? And the President's like, oh, I don't know when he's like thinking about it. And then Andrew Jackson's like, you know what, I'm not waiting for a response.
I don't care.
Wow, And just in classic white supremacist for him, he's like, fuck the law, I do things my way.
Yeah.
No, he's he's a classic example of uh asked, you know, apologizing instead of asking for permission.
Yeah. Yeah. And he also did the same thing to the Spanish. He wrote and was like, if you all don't take down that place, I will. But before the Spanish have a chance to think about it, America is already on its way to a legally cross into Spain and fuck it, thinks up, it's time to go burn indigenous villages, including our recent allies, blow up the fort all in someone else's country. It is entirely illegal, even by US standards. That has never stopped anyone with power,
let alone Andrew Jackson. But Andrew Jackson didn't lead it himself. He just illegally authorized his subordinate general Gains to do it for him, because Jackson wanted to be president and so he wanted to do some plausible deniability shit where what he said was go take care of it however you think is best. But we we have his correspondence where he's openly like and by that I mean like he'll everyone and blow shit up and get back all this enslaved people and shit, I don't care through Violet.
I feel like that there is just like a kind of commonly held like presidents were not caught saying openly inflammatory, violent shit before Watergate, and you're like, no, they've been doing it.
Yeah, he is absolutely gonna end up president at the end of this story.
Yeah. Yeah.
And there's and then the paper trail collectively everyone decided didn't matter.
Yeah, totally, that's for historians.
Yeah.
So Gaines's plan was simple. He was going to hire the local indigenous people to do all the fighting and dying by promising them fifty dollars ahead for recaptured slaves, which is about four times the going rate, and also that they could loot the place of anything but cannons, and they could also keep any people who for whom owners couldn't be found. They would be supported by some US gunboats, and at least the book Battle of Negro Fort represents it as the first ever large scale slave
hunting expedition by the US. The first battle of it went really badly for the US, which is fun. A small boat of white soldiers like went up the river looking for fresh water, and they were ambushed by twenty black and twenty indigenous fighters, each under their own commander. Garsan was leading the black forces and an unknown unnamed chief to let the indigenous fighters, and they killed some of the white people and they drove the rest off
somewhere along the way. Aware of the coming attack, hundreds of maroons and fugitives slipped out of the fort, while a few hundreds stayed behind to defend it. The fugitives took refuge in various indigenous communities, especially among the Seminole. We'll talk a little bit more about soon. The fort was besieged indigenous warriors of the I mean it's literally
Musgogi fighters on both sides of this. So it's just like the indigenous warriors in the woods were shooting at the fort while the white people hid in boats behind the bluff. Their stated plan was to stay out of it so that no white people got hurt. And this lasted six days, this siege, and there were sorties fought between the two forces that forced the soldiers of negro Fort back behind their walls. And about half of the soldiers in negro Fort are black and the other half
were indigenous. They flew the union jack and above it they flew a solid red flag, which was a flag that meant they would offer no quarter and not accept any quarter. They were all going to fight to the death rather than go back into trains. Once again, very metal.
A very yeah. There nothing if not consistently metal. Yeah.
The battle ended quickly. I spent the episode talking about metaphorical powder kegs, but this one's not metaphorical. At the center of the fort was this massive stone edifice named the Citadel that stored all the powder for all those cannons and muskets. One of the besieging gunboats was doing something called hot shot, where they would put the cannonballs in like a furnace, like a makeshift furnace that they built on the boat before shooting them out of the cannons.
One cannon ball found its way into the citadel. The resulting explosion was heard for miles in every direction, and almost every defender died in the blast. About two hundred and fifty people died in About fifty people survived, most of whom later succumbed to their wounds. Okay Garson and an unnamed Choctaw war chief survived the blast. They were captured. They immediately and proudly took credit for killing the American soldiers, and they were scalped and shot. Almost none of the
Maroons were returned to slavery. Almost every single one of them died free, which was their plan. Wow, And like I feel like that doesn't like it gets talked about like this great loss and it was right, Like they didn't win, but they were really clear about their intentions. And they also provided enough time for way more people who stayed to get out and get away, you know.
Yeah, I mean, and I think that there should and often is has to be some area for well, what does winning versus losing look like in a situation like this? And I think that, yeah, like characterizing it as a total loss would would not be true because you know, dilied free.
Yeah. In the end, like I think maybe two people were returned to slavery successfully. During all of this, the refugees from negro Fort went deeper into the wilderness and they formed two communities. There was a black one called Nero's Town, which had a leader named Nero, and an indigenous one called bow Leg's Town, which had a leader named bow Leg.
Okay, I was waiting for a twist.
Yeah, no, no twist. More fugitives began to join them. So the Maroon community continues and the two communities, they're like military societies and including at like negro Fort was like a military institution. It considered itself British military unit and so like it was like it gets presented as a military dictatorship or whatever. I'm like, yeah, it was. It was a military society. You know that it was around in the middle of basically an active war. I'm
not fucking coming at them for their authoritarianism, you know. Yeah, And Nero's Town in bow Legs Town are presented in very similar ways where they were still a lot of them are still wearing uniforms. A lot of them are like, no, this is just where we're continuing the fight in ok
and Nero's town. Nero was a black man who had himself run away from slavery twenty plus years earlier to live with the seminole before showing up to negro Fort, and in Nero's town, they would dance the Red Stick dance, which was a way like part of the culture of the Red Sticks, so they consider themselves part of the
Red Sticks. Shortly after the destruction of negro Fort, hundreds of Seminal Warriors and Red Sticks captured that asshole Hambly, you know, the like the dude who had fucking been left in charge.
Wow, they found.
The flop, which is like the most movie part of it, right, he'd be like the Disney villain who like you know, runs away and like gets but yeah he gets.
I'm so glad he got gotten. That's thrilling.
And then so Seminal Warriors capture him, transport him and some other folks who were responsible for the destruction one hundred and fifty miles to Nero's town, and there were sentenced to torture by a tribunal, with the implication being tortured at death. But Nero intervened for some unknown reason and had them transported in turnover to Spanish authorities. I'd be so I'd be so pissed if I was one of the people who had just transported this guy one hundred and fifty miles, you know.
Yeah, with with the sweet promise.
Yeah yeah, not to be like, actually we've decided to go to a different direction.
Fuck you, Yeah, we got this far. Yeah yeah.
Well I still think that's I mean, that is yeah, that is a movie style return.
I thought I thought.
That he he got off scott free.
Yeah, no, and did not get off Scott free.
Excellent, great news.
And then in the US, basically weird, annoying political machinations of cover up started immediately because what they had done was flagrantly illegal. Right. The other thing that started right away was the hunt for all the fugitives who'd escaped, which was basically another illegal intrusion into Spanish Florida by Andrew Jackson, this time him personally, and they went around in massacred places. They massacred Nero's town at least I
don't know about bow Legstown. Jackson personally enslaved a black fighter who still wore his red coat.
Jesus an inexhaustibly evil person.
I know, just fucking terminators style, like more than four Even after this, more than four hundred and thirty negro Fort refugees continued to live in Florida free, mostly with the Seminoles. The Seminoles didn't take kindly. All this massacring happening, and you get the first Seminole War, which is a story for another week, but the shortish versions of it. Eventually, the Seminole War led Spain to be like, fine, fuck it, take Florida. We kind of hate it anyhow, and the
US got one of its most cursed states. The Seminoles went so hard that there's more than one Seminole War in which negro Fort veterans fought and got to see some revenge on the empire that enslaved them. Like literally the fifteen twenty year later wore some of the same veterans were like, Yeah, we're going to go fuck up some fucking like colonial Americans. Absolutely, mm hmm.
God, I would love to hear a cool people on the Seminole wars.
That is, it's absolutely in the plans. I've been. Yeah, I've like done some of the research into it. It's going to get into some messy and interesting shit and some like yeah wild escapades. In eighteen twenty nine, famed racist crusader Andrew Jackson became the seventeenth President of the United States and the first Democratic president back when Democrat meant the pro slavery guys. He signed the Indian Removal Act and was just like one of the worst people
ever born. The Seminal Wars were Indian wars, but they were also wars over slavery. The North was like, what the fuck are we doing? And the abolitionist movement adopted negro Fort as a symbol and the US attack on it as evidence of the US being won't referred. They started referring to the US accurately enough as a slaveocracy, like ruled by slavers, and their evidence was the US
keeps doing shit for slavers. That has nothing to do with our economic interest nothing to do with our military interests. It's just for slavery, right. Negro Fort was on John Brown's tongue when he declared need for a violent liberation of enslaved people and wrote a long piece about it. Three months after he wrote that he led his assault
on Harper's Ferry. That as we've talked about before, was at least a crucial domino, if not the spark itself that started the Civil War and ended legal chattel slavery in the United States. So here's to Garson and the hundreds of other unnamed Indigenous and Black people who lived free, died free, and helped spark one of the greatest movements for human liberty and history against one of the most vile empires that has ever existed on this earth.
That is so, I mean, it stands straight, but it's really cool to hear that that Negro for it became such a huge.
Inspiration for the movement moving forward, and.
Also makes it, I mean all the more frustrating that it is not taught oh yeah to anyway. But I feel like any any armed resistance is especially by indigenous or black people of the US, is just not no, not.
We don't talk.
About it, absolutely not, and especially yeah, I don't like telling stories where the British are the good guys, right like, and so I think that's even part of it too. I mean, it's mostly this. We didn't talk about violent resistance,
especially any violent resistance that could be justified. You know, we're always like, h sure, the evil, savage people being whatever, you know, but right, yeah, no, it was a completely justified thing that even in the and then the other thing is that people are like, oh, we're so smart now, and in the nineteenth century they're all idiots, and I'm like, no, in the eighteen thirties and forties, people were like, wait, what we did? What are you fucking kidding me?
Well, then, and then the inevitability.
Of of everyone involved acting so heroically and genuinely having a net win not only in a number of people living and dying free, but in inspiring them, inspiring further action. And contrasting that with and Andrew Jackson becomes president anyways, and I know, you know, never sees a consequence in his entire fucking life and just accruse more and more and more power.
Yeah.
And it's funny too, Like if you read about Andrew Jackson's legacy, it's like Andrew Jackson was incredibly popular, and then it's like, by the second half of the twentieth century some people were starting to think he was not a good person, you know that.
Two hundred years yeah, Like, but and also at the same time, it's like people are like, oh, product of their time, and it's like one Andrew Jackson was worse than everyone and everyone knew it.
He was.
He was the worst guy then.
Yeah, like he was more racist than the racist founding fathers, you know. And like also everyone at the time was like fuck that. Not everyone, most people liked him, but a ton of people were like fuck this guy. Well, and again also I hate and we're like, oh, all white all people in the nineteenth century were racist, and you're like, do you mean all white people?
Like?
Right?
Anyway, that's the story.
That's this, that's the story. Wow, thank you so much for uh for telling me.
I truly knew, I mean, and I knew a little bit about this, about.
The Seminole Wars, but I did not know, uh what preceded it. Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you.
I hope that I really, I mean, not that I have, you know, much hope in this way, but I hope that that this is like.
Talked about more. It's really starting and still could and should be inspiring. Now.
Yeah, absolutely, Well what else should be talked about now is your plugs?
Yay, yay, Okay, you can uh, I uh just began producing a relaunch of Do You Wonder Show? We The End Housed, hosted by Theo Henderson on iHeartRadio. It is a show about the unhoused experience from an unhoused lens. We have episodes that release every other Tuesday, and we just relaunched, So get in on the ground floor of the show. And there's also a great backlog. And yeah, it's holiday times. You should get my book Raw Dog. It's about hot dogs and also about the evils of capitalism.
So if you're a fan of this show and not a fan of hot dogs, there's still something for you in it.
I secretly love all of the reviews of people who got really upset when they thought it was just gonna be about hot dogs, but didn't realize that the manufacture of a commodity ties in the economic system that creates it and might be critical of that economic system.
Or that I would want to even mention manufacturing. They're like, what the heck? This was supposed to be about the one my dad makes? Yeah, why is it just about mustard?
Yeah? No, although I'm sure that if I had had more real.
Estate page wise, we could have we could have found a mustard bastard easily.
Yeah, now I'm just imagining a sort of a cartoon, not a cartoon character, like a mascot, a villain with a in a mustard suit.
I don't know why a torly mustache peeking out of a mustard suit.
Yeah. Now, I'm like, I'm gonna go eat dumplanes and I'm like, I wonder if i can put mustard on them. I think I'm gonna stick with soy sauce. But okay, I'm clearly distracted by the fact that I'm hungry.
Uh.
You can follow me on Instagram. My Instagram is at Margaret Kiljoy. You can follow me on substack. My substack is you Google Margaret Kiljoy substack. I don't know anyone who actually types in any URL in that particular situation. I post new essays every week. Half of them are public, half of them are private. If you want to know more about my hikes with my dog, then you have to be a paid subscriber. If you want to know more about the stuff. That's actually the kind of thing
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That's wrong.
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