peculiarly concerned at the proceedings of Colonel Nichols, because they appeared to be marked with unequivocal and extraordinary marks of hostility.

"Why,' said Lord Bathurst, 'to tell you the truth, Colonel Nichols is, I believe, a man of activity and spirit, but a very wild fellow. He did make and send over to me a treaty, offensive and defensive, with some Indians; and he is now come over here, and has brought over some of those Indians. I sent for answer that he had no authority whatever to make a treaty offensive or defensive with Indians, and that this government would make no such treaty. I have sent him word that I could not see him upon any such project. The Indians are here in great distress indeed; but we shall only furnish them with the means of returning home, and advise them to make their terms with the United States as well as they can.'

"Perceiving that I had particularly noticed this declaration that he had declined seeing Colonel Nichols, he said that he should, perhaps, see him upon the general subject of his transactions, but that he had declined seeing him in regard to his treaty with the Indians.

"In this conversation, Lord Bathurst's manner, like that of Lord Liverpool in the conference which I had about a month before with him, was altogether good humored and conciliatory. The conduct of all the officers and persons complained of was explicitly disavowed; and I understood at first the observation of Lord Bathurst, that he had declined seeing Colonel Nichols, as an intimation that it was intended to exhibit to that officer unequivocal marks of displeasure. But the subsequent explanation left me to conclude that, although the disapprobation of his proceedings was strongly expressed to me, the utmost extent of it that would be shown to him would be the refusal to ratify his treaty, offensive and defensive, with the Indians."*

The prophet Francis, however, was treated with much distinction by the British government. He was presented,

*State Papers, 2d Session 15th Congress, vol. iv., No. 65, p. 50.

in consideration of his past services, with the commission and uniform of a brigadier general, with a gold-mounted tomahawk, a diamond snuff-box, and a sum of money. He was also admitted to an interview with the Prince Regent, who received him with an imposing show of ceremony. A double flourish of trumpets, says a London journal of the time, announced the approach to the presence of the Regent of "the patriot Francis, who fought so gloriously in our cause in America. He was dressed in a most splendid suit of red and gold, and by his side he wore a tomahawk mounted in gold."

Francis and the other Indians returned home in 1816, bearing new exhortations from their friend Nichols to live in peace with the white man, and to punish rigorously any of their own nation who should commit outrages upon the Americans across the border.

CHAPTER XXXI.

A RED-HOT SHOT AT THE NEGRO FORT

To South Carolina and Georgia, the Spanish province of Florida was the Dismal Swamp of the early day; that is, a safe and tempting refuge for runaway slaves. Those States were the last to give up the African slave trade. As late as the year 1808, cargoes of African savages were landed at the Georgian ports and distributed among the Georgian planters.

Even the docile African is not reduced to submission in a day, or a year, or a generation. It is said to require three generations to produce a gentleman. We have heard, too, that the wild horse does not, until the third generation, become an always trustworthy nag; nor the wild buffalo a sedate and well-broken ox. Three generations, also, must pass before the savage from the African coast is subdued into an unresentful, submissive, and contented slave. And, as there are some white men, some horses, and some buffaloes,

of blood so fierce and temper so mettlesome, as never to be tamed, so there are some of the sons of Africa that can not, by any of the processes usually employed, be completely reduced to servitude. They sink under the treatment, or fly to some Dismal Swamp. We have before remarked that the early newspapers of Georgia teem with evidence that the planters had trouble enough with such untameable spirits— those African chieftains, fierce and sullen, who could not bend themselves to submit to the steady toil of the plantations.

The northern parts of Florida were full of fugitive slaves and the descendants of fugitive slaves at the time of which we are now writing. There were black men in Florida whose ancestors had lived there since 1750. A large number had maintained themselves there in freedom for many years, and reared families, and cultivated farms, and gathered herds of cattle. A few of the blacks had intermarried with the Indians, but, as a general rule, the two races remained distinct, and there was antipathy between them. The Indians sometimes assisted in the capture of runaway slaves, and, occasionally, even set on foot expeditions of their own accord, for the express purpose of taking runaways and delivering them to their masters-induced thereto sometimes by avarice, and sometimes by enmity. The number of negroes living in freedom in Florida about the year 1816, may be estimated at eight hundred, of whom about two hundred and fifty were men capable of bearing arms. They had chiefs and captains among them, the most famous of whom was one Garçon, brave, athletic, wary, and cruel.

After the departure of Colonel Nichols from Florida in 1815, the fort erected by him on the Appalachicola river became the stronghold of these negroes, whose farms and grazing lands, we are officially told, extended fifty miles along the fertile banks of that river, above and below the fort.*

*For all the documents relating to the Negro Fort, see State Papers, 2d Session, 15th Congress, Vol. IV. This chapter is compiled almost wholly from those papers.

By what means the Seminoles were dispossessed of the fort we can only conjecture. The Indian is not a creature disposed to live in an inclosure. The probability is, that the Indians left the fort to wander off into the forests and everglades, and the negroes, finding the fort untenanted, took possession; and thus, having nine points of the law on their side, chose to consider those nine points ten. With the negroes in the fort were a few Choctaw Indians, but no Seminoles. The Seminoles, however, still claimed the ownership of the fort and all its valuable contents, averring, and averring truly, that they had been given to them, and to them alone, by their father, Colonel Nichols. They resented the occupation of the fort by the negroes. But all the Indians in America could not have taken it, if defended with only ordinary vigilance and courage.

This stronghold was a grand acquisition for the negroes. It was situated on a lofty and picturesque height, long known by the name of Prospect Bluff. In the rear it was protected by impassable swamps, and it was too far from the river for its ramparts to be injured by any ordnance that could be fired from the small craft which alone could navigate the narrow, shallow, and crooked Appalachicola. The fort was well and strongly constructed. Among the ten or twelve pieces. of cannon mounted on the ramparts were one thirty-two pounder and three twenty-fours. Within the fortifications there had been stored away by Colonel Nichols, and left by him in the custody of the Indians, twenty-five hundred muskets, the same number of sets of accouterments, five hundred carbines, five hundred steel-scabbarded swords, four hundred pistols, three hundred quarter-casks of rifle powder, and seven hundred and sixty-three barrels of common powder. The arms were new and of excellent quality, and the greater part of them were still in the boxes and packing-cases in which they had been brought from England. For what purpose, by whose authority, Colonel Nichols had been thus lavish of the property of those in whose service he was, I cannot imagine. But thus lavish he was; and all these costly and

dangerous stores had fallen into the possession of the negroes who held the post, which was then known throughout the lower country as the Negro Fort. The fort, we must repeat, was about sixty miles below the Georgia line, and seventeen miles from the mouth of the Appalachicola.

Emboldened by the possession of this stronghold, the negroes, it was alleged, committed depredations alike upon the settlers on the frontiers of Georgia, upon the Spaniards of Florida, and even upon the Seminoles; driving off cattle, and sometimes firing upon boats ascending the river. The Negro Fort, in truth, was the strongest and most unassailable place in all the southeastern country, and was regarded in the light of a nuisance by the Spanish no less than by the American authorities. The mere existence of such a place, so near the borders of slave States, was looked upon as an evil of the first magnitude by the planters of the extreme south, whose slaves, in a few hours or days, could reach the negro settlements in the vicinity of the fort, and place themselves beyond pursuit.

General Jackson had scarcely returned home from his triumphal visit to Washington before he began to take measures for the suppression of this portentous and growing evil. His first step was to write a letter to the Governor of Pensacola on the subject. This letter, considering that it was addressed by Andrew Jackson to a Spanish governor, must be pronounced eminently civil and moderate. "I can not permit myself," concluded the General, "to indulge a belief that the Governor of Pensacola, or the military commander of that place, will hesitate a moment in giving orders for this banditti to be dispersed, and the property of the citizens of the United States forthwith restored to them, and our friendly Indians particularly, when I reflect that the conduct of this banditti is such as will not be tolerated by our government, and if not put down by Spanish authority, will compel us, in self-defense, to destroy them. This communication is intrusted to Captain Amelung, of the 1st regiment of United States infantry, who is charged to bring back such answer as