Next Wednesday, July 27, will mark the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Navy's destruction of the Negro Fort on the Apalachicola River on Saturday, July 27, 1816.
 This event would begin a series of violent confrontations which would finally result in the FIRST SEMINOLE WAR in 1818 and the U.S. acquisition of Florida in 1819(few realize that regardless of the U.S. conquest of Mobile in 1813, neither Great Britain nor Spain recognized ANY U.S. sovereignty over Dauphin Island until after 1819's Adams-Onis Treaty. American claims for reparations for slaves taken by the British from Dauphin Island in 1815 were completely IGNORED because Great Britain considered Dauphin Island to be Spanish and never recognized the April, 1813 U.S. conquest of Mobile Bay.).

Events involving Dauphin Island and the mouth of Mobile Bay would be central to the story of all this conflict from 1816 until 1818 and this blog post will be the first of at least four posts which will deal with these critical events so important in the formative years of the United States on the Gulf Coast. http://dauphinislandhistory.blogspot.com