Battle of Bloody Mose

On June 14, 1740, Spanish Florida became the setting for one of the sharper clashes of the War of Jenkins' Ear, remembered as the Battle of Bloody Mose (also known as the Battle of Fort Mose, or Bloody Moosa). Captain Antonio Salgado led a force of 300 Spanish regulars into action that day, joined by Francisco Menéndez's free black militia and a body of Seminole warriors serving as Indian auxiliaries. Their target was Fort Mose, a position of real strategic weight that had only recently fallen into British hands, garrisoned by 170 men under Colonel John Palmer. That capture had come as part of James Oglethorpe's larger campaign aimed at seizing St. Augustine.

The assault caught Palmer's garrison completely off guard, and the British defenders were nearly wiped out in the fighting that followed. Among the dead were Palmer himself, along with three captains and three lieutenants. Fort Mose did not survive the engagement intact; it lay in ruins afterward, and the Spanish would not rebuild it for another twelve years, finally restoring it in 1752.

Background

Two miles north of St. Augustine, the Spanish founded Fort Mose in 1738 as a haven for slaves who had fled bondage in Georgia and South Carolina. This followed an earlier royal decree: in 1693, King Charles II had commanded his Florida colonists to grant freedom and protection to any runaway slave from Virginia Colony, provided the person embraced Catholicism and pledged service to Spain.

The settlement itself was modest in scale, featuring a church, a timber wall reinforced with towers, and roughly twenty dwellings housing about a hundred residents. Governor Manuel de Montiano commissioned these former slaves, known as maroons, into the Spanish militia, placing them under Captain Francisco Menéndez, a man of mixed African and Spanish descent who had himself broken free from enslavement in South Carolina.

For the Spanish, the outpost carried dual significance, functioning simultaneously as a haven for liberated people and as a defensive outpost guarding Florida against threats from the northern colonies. News of this free black community eventually traveled to South Carolina, where historians believe it played a role in sparking the Stono Rebellion of September 1739. During that uprising, dozens of enslaved people fled toward Spanish territory and were subsequently absorbed into the colonial militia there.

When the War of Jenkins' Ear erupted in 1739, Georgia's governor, General James Oglethorpe, buoyed by successful border raids conducted with Indian allies, resolved to mount a major offensive against St. Augustine, the seat of Spanish Florida's government. Central to this strategy was his recognition that seizing and holding Fort Mose was essential to the campaign's success.

Once underway, Oglethorpe's expedition drew together regular soldiers from both Carolina and Georgia, volunteer militiamen, roughly 600 Creek and Uchise allies, and about 800 black auxiliaries, with naval support provided by seven Royal Navy vessels. Facing this force, Montiano commanded 600 regular troops, bolstered by reinforcements newly arrived from Cuba, and set about fortifying his position through entrenchment. He repeatedly attempted surprise assaults against the British lines, though none of these efforts succeeded.

Aftermath

The triumph Spanish forces achieved at Fort Mose broke the spirit of an already fractured British force and played a major role in pushing Oglethorpe back toward Savannah. Toward the end of June, reinforcements from Havana lifted the pressure on St. Augustine, while the Royal Navy's ships pulled away and left the land troops on their own. Governor Montiano praised the maroons for the courage they had shown. Fort Mose itself lay in ruins from the fighting, yet for the following ten years its onetime inhabitants lived on in St. Augustine, holding status as free and equal citizens of the Spanish colony.

Free blacks made their way back to the site once the Spanish reconstructed the fort in 1752. Later, after defeating the French in the Seven Years' War, the British acquired East Florida through an exchange arranged with Spain. Nearly all the inhabitants and soldiers then withdrew to Cuba, Francisco Menéndez and the great majority of the free black population among them.