Nassau County in The Revolutionary War

Photo by Peter Hill.

By Peter Hill

Anyone who has lived along the Florida-Georgia Line for long is familiar with the cross-border skirmishes and out-right battles that can result when partisans from either state venture across their borders. However, the iconic Florida-Georgia game held in Jacksonville each autumn has far deadlier antecedents than mere college football. Those who watched Ken Burn’s series on PBS about the American Revolution can be excused for thinking our part of Florida had no role in the world changing events of 1775-1783. However, Northeast Florida, indeed, has an interesting Revolutionary War history. In the winter months of 1775-1776 the Continental Army was reeling from a failed invasion of British Canada. Newly appointed Commander in Chief, George Washington, was looking for softer targets to capture than frosty, British fortified Quebec City. Looking south, Washington ordered the capture of balmy St. Augustine! Success would cut off Florida’s connections with other British colonies. Privateers there could interdict Britain’s Caribbean trade, particularly its lucrative, if loathsome, trade in rum.

Rum was a high value commodity in the pre-war Triangular Trade between the American Colonies, West Africa and the Caribbean. A byproduct of sugarcane, molasses was shipped to the Colonies and made into rum, particularly in Providence, Rhode Island where over twenty distilleries lined its waterfront. Rum shipped to West Africa was traded for African slaves. Slaves were brought to British Caribbean Islands and forced to cultivate sugarcane under brutal conditions, white sugar from Black suffering.

Britain acquired Florida from Spain 1763 in exchange for returning Cuba that it had captured during its triumph over Spain & France in the Seven Years War. In America this war is known as the French and Indian War started in 1754 when then little-known Major George Washington and his Virginia militia attacked a French force probing east from the Ohio River Country. France claimed the Ohio as part of their North American empire of New France. In the end, a defeated France conceded all of Canada to Britain.

For administrative purposes Britain divided Florida into two Colonies and granted large tracts of land to new settlers from South Carolina, Georgia, Bermuda and British officers of the French and Indian War to replace the Spanish who left Florida rather than renounce their Catholic faith. When the American Continental Congress invited East and West Florida to Philadelphia in 1774 to discuss grievances against Parliament’s new tax schemes and general heavy handedness, they refused. The new British settlers in Florida did not have the long, sometimes antagonist, history that people in the northern colonies had with the Mother Country. Most New Englanders traced their American roots to Puritans from the 1630s who left England to escape British King Charles I’s attempts to impose Anglican High Church formality and doctrine on them. Half of the graduates of Boston’s Harvard University had travelled back to England to fight for Parliament against Charles in the English Civil War which Charles lost along with his head in 1649. The short-lived, Republican Commonwealth of Britain ended in 1660 with the restoration of the British Monarchy under Charles II. The restoration was generally unpopular in New England. Given their long history of disagreement with British authorities, especially royal tax collectors, there is little wonder the Sons of Liberty from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts became the instigators of the American Revolution in 1775.

One of the first orders of business for the British after 1763 was to extend the road from Georgia down to St. Augustine. A dozen years after being built, the King’s Road (U.S. Route 1 which runs through present day Nassau County) became the main invasion route for American forces headed south, and for British forces headed north during the Revolution.

Photo by Peter Hill.

In August of 1776, a force of 2500 Continental troops set out for Florida from Savannah. However, poor planning, lack of hard currency and supplies caused mass desertion, and the expedition fell apart before reaching Florida.

In May of 1777, an ambitious, two-pronged, American invasion of Florida was launched. To avoid ocean-going British warships, 400 Continental soldiers were to sail down the intercoastal waterway in row galleys to Black Hammond Island on the Nassau River above present day Jacksonville. There they were to rendezvous with 200 mounted militia from Georgia coming down the King’s Road lead by Colonel John Baker. Once combined, the Patriots were to march on St. Augustine. Baker’s militia reached the rendezvous point, but the Continental flotilla did not appear on time. Fearing British forces were massing against his small force, Baker withdrew to Thomas Creek south of present-day Callahan to place his men closer to King’s Road and retreat if needed. There his encampment was discovered on the night of May 16-17 by loyalists lead by Thomas Brown, British regulars lead by Major Mark Prevost, and their Muscogee allies. Brown was not the kind of man Patriots wanted to meet in the Florida swamps or anywhere else. A Torie from Georgia, Brown, had been scalped, tarred and feathered by Patriots! Escaping to Florida, he organized the East Florida Rangers, likeminded Tories who soon perpetrated devastating raids back into Georgia. Brown’s Rangers set an ambush for Baker’s men while Prevost’s British regulars and the Muscogee warriors worked their way around behind the sleeping militia. When the Rangers opened fire on the morning of May 17th, the shocked Georgians fled up the road into the waiting fire of the British and Muscogee. Eight were killed outright, nine wounded, and over thirty captured. To save themselves, Georgians plunged into the swamp where several more perished. The British forces reported no casualties. Many of the captives were subsequently executed in cold blood by the Muscogee for perceived affronts to the tribe. These were the heaviest Patriot losses in Florida during the Revolution. Historians have variously designated the fighting at Thomas Creek a skirmish, a massacre and The Southernmost Battle of the American Revolution! Whatever one labels it, May 17th ,1777, was a dark day for American arms, and much Patriot blood flowed along the King’s Road.

Photo by Peter Hill.

The other half of the American invasion of May 1777 by Colonel Samual Elbert’s Continental soldiers fared little better. The galleys had encountered adverse winds and landed, not on Black Hammond Island as planned, rather on the northern end of Amelia Island and a day after the debacle at Thomas Creek! A Patriot patrol soon skirmished with the British on the south end of Amelia. American Lieutenant Robert Ward was killed and two of his men were wounded. As was typical in the war, Elbert had the houses burned and the cattle destroyed before also retreating to Georgia. Elbert’s fighting galleys captured three small, becalmed British warships in a battle on Frederica River in April of the following year that temporarily boosted Patriot morale.

Colonel Samuel Elbert Image Courtesy of Amelia Island Museum of History.

Through most of 1777 the American cause seemed all but lost. The British had captured New York City “the Seat of Empire”-George Washington, and the American Capital, Philadelphia. Triple sevens in the date grimly suggested gallows awaited the rebels. However, the shocking defeat and surrender of an entire British army at Saratoga, New York in October cheered Patriot morale and soon brought a resentful and reinvigorated France into the war on the American side. Spain eventually declared war against Britain also, as did the Dutch Republic in 1780. Faced with defending its many territories all around the world, Britain abandoned its efforts to pacify the northern American Colonies and instead adopted a Southern Strategy in hopes of retaining Georgia and the Carolinas believed to be more loyal to the Crown. This strategy tacitly acknowledged independent American States would emerge after the Revolution, which states being the only question as the main fighting shifted to the South where it devolved into a brutal civil war. As Britain’s King George III had darkly predicted at the beginning of hostilities “Blows must decide.”

In June of 1778, a second invasion of Florida faltered when Patriot cavalry lead by General James Screven was turned back north of Alligator Creek near Callahan by numerically superior forces under Thomas Brown and Mark Prevost with the loss of nine American and five British lives.

Prevost’s older brother, Augustine, was the overall British commander in Florida. Augustine was born in Switzerland and sent to a military school in England at the tender age of 13. He was called Old Bullet Head by his troops because of a visible scar to his forehead acquired in the French and Indian War. In St. Augustine he organized the many Tori refugees there into the Royal American Regiment, the Royal North Carolina Regiment, and the South Carolina Royalists, units that would perform well in the coming campaigns. After the skirmish at Alligator Creek there would be no further American attempts to invade East Florida. General Prevost marched 3,000 soldiers up King’s Road in the winter of 1778-1789 to occupy Savannah. Britain’s next target, Charleston, would fall in 1780. With over 5,000 Patriot soldiers captured, this was a calamity equal to the British defeat at Saratoga. Britain’s Southern Strategy seemed to be working.

Augustine Prevost “Old Bullet Head” Photo Courtesy the Savannah History Museum.