Question

How many African American slaves lived on the Negro Fort? a. 500 c. 40 b. 1,000 d. 100

Answer 1

The most comprehensive analysis of shipping records over the course of the slave trade is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, edited by professors David Eltis and David Richardson. (While the editors are careful to say that all of their figures are estimates, I believe that they are the best estimates that we have, the proverbial “gold standard” in the field of the study of the slave trade.) Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America.

And how many of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to North America? Only about 388,000. That’s right: a tiny percentage.

Answer 2

Negro Fort was a fort built by the British in 1814, during the War of 1812, on the Apalachicola River, in a remote part of Spanish Florida. It is part of the Prospect Bluff Historic Sites, in the Apalachicola National Forest, Franklin County, Florida.

The fort was called Negro Fort only after the British left in 1815, its later residents and staff were primarily blacks (free Negroes or fugitive slaves), together with some Choctaws. There were a significant number of maroons already in the area before the fort was built[citation needed] and beginning in 1804 there was for several years a store (trading post) there. The blacks, having worked on plantations, knew how to plant and care for crops, and also to care for domesticated animals, mostly cattle.

B(: