Fort Gaines, Georgia: A Military History

Fort Gaines was a United States military post built on the Georgia frontier in 1816. It served to stifle Native American resistance to the Treaty of Fort Jackson, which seized 22 million acres of land from the Muscogee or Creek people in present-day Georgia and Alabama. The fort played a key role in both the Prospect Bluff or Negro Fort campaign of 1816 and the First Seminole War of 1817-1818. It was a vital outpost on the front lines of the internal conflict between the traditional leaders of the Creek Nation and the Red Stick prophets, chiefs, and warriors who retreated into the borderlands of Spanish Florida following the Creek War of 1813-1814. Historian and author Dale Cox - noted for The Fort at Prospect Bluff and Fowltown - joins with Rachael Conrad to explore the three lives of Fort Gaines in amazing detail. From the fort’s earliest days as an outpost far in advance of the frontier to its final moments as a Confederate battery and last line of defense on the Chattahoochee River, they give life to a story that other historians have all but forgotten. Parts of the book read so much like an adventure that only the incredible number of citations serve as a reminder that the story is real and at times heartbreaking.

This book is a perfect companion for the other volumes in Cox’s expanding series on the War of 1812 on the Gulf Coast, the Creek War of 1813-1814, and the Seminole Wars.