Fort Pickens

• 1. Introduction

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  Fort Pickens had not housed a single soldier for nearly a decade when Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer arrived in January 1861. Named for Andrew Pickens, a hero of the American Revolutionary War, it stood at the western tip of Santa Rosa Island near Pensacola, Florida. Slemmer looked at the deteriorating walls and judged it the most defensible position in the area. The fort was in disrepair. He moved in anyway. That decision kept Fort Pickens in Union hands for the entire Civil War, while nearly every other Southern fortification fell or changed hands.

  How did this particular fort prove so defensible, when others fell? Why was it still in active military use more than a century after construction? The answers trace back to a surprising choice of designer and a construction effort measured in millions of bricks.

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• 2. Blueprint and Brick

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  Simon Bernard, a French military engineer, was brought to America to help improve the nation's coastal defenses after the War of 1812. He designed Fort Pickens as part of the Third System of Fortifications. This program aimed to replace the earthworks and simpler structures of earlier generations.

  Fort Pickens took a pentagonal shape. Bernard gave the fort broader walls on the western face, allowing a wider arc of fire over Pensacola Bay. On the eastern side alone, he placed a counterscarp to create a defensive moat. The westernmost bastions were fitted with mine chambers, intended to be detonated as a last resort if invaders breached the outer walls.

  Construction ran from 1829 to 1834, requiring more than 21.5 million bricks. Much of the labor was performed by enslaved workers. Colonel William H. Chase of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers supervised the project.

  On the night of the 20th of January 1858, a major fire broke out at Fort Pickens. The revenue cutter USCS Robert J. Walker was at Pensacola when the fire broke out. Its crew joined forces with the hydrographic team of the USCS Varina to fight the blaze. Captain John Newton of the Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged the Walker's crew in a letter the following day, praising their service.

  Chase, the fort's supervising engineer, would not remain loyal to the Union. When the Civil War arrived, he sided with the Confederacy and was appointed to command Florida's troops. The man who had built Fort Pickens was about to find himself on the other side of its walls.

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• 3. Slemmer's Stand

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  Around midnight on the 8th of January 1861, guards at Fort Barrancas stopped a group of civilians from seizing the post. Some historians consider that exchange the first shots of the Civil War. Lieutenant Slemmer treated it as a warning sign.

  On January 10, the same day Florida formally declared its secession from the Union, Slemmer acted. He destroyed more than 20,000 pounds of gunpowder stored at Fort McRee. He then spiked the guns at Fort Barrancas to render them useless. His force consisted of 51 soldiers and 30 sailors who had escaped the Confederate takeover of the nearby Navy Yard. Together, they crossed to Fort Pickens.

  Colonel William Henry Chase arrived on January 15 and demanded Slemmer surrender the fort. Slemmer refused. Chase returned on January 18 with the same demand. Slemmer refused again.

  An informal truce was then brokered between Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory and U.S. President James Buchanan. The terms were simple: the North would not reinforce the fort, and the South would not attack it. A Union ship, the U.S.S. Brooklyn, sat anchored nearby carrying a company of soldiers meant as reinforcements. The Navy had ordered its squadron commander not to land them unless the fort came under attack. In March, the Army sent new orders telling the soldiers to land at the first favorable moment. But the Navy had received no such update. The soldiers stayed on the ship.

  On April 12, Union troops were finally landed from the Navy ships. Slemmer was relieved by Colonel Harvey Brown. Colonel William Wilson arrived with elements of the 6th New York Infantry Regiment by late June 1861. The garrison at Fort Pickens was now substantially stronger than it had been at Slemmer's crossing.

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• 4. Under Siege

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  On the 9th of October 1861, a Confederate force of more than a thousand men landed on Santa Rosa Island. Their target was Fort Pickens. They came from the east, having put ashore four miles away and advanced overland. Artillery and gunfire from the fort's defenders turned them back. The Confederates retreated, leaving behind 90 casualties.

  Confederate forces had settled into positions at Fort McRee and Fort Barrancas across the bay. Union commanders decided to strike those positions from the water. On November 22, two warships, the Niagara and the Richmond, sailed into Pensacola Bay and opened fire. The bombardment lasted two days. Fort McRee was nearly destroyed. The town of Warrington and the Navy Yard were also destroyed.

  A second exchange followed on New Year's Day 1862. The Confederate commander of Fort Barrancas had fired on Santa Rosa Island while drunk. It was the last exchange of fire between Union troops and Braxton Bragg's army before the Confederates evacuated Pensacola in May 1862.

  The final act came on the 10th of May 1862. The last Confederates at Pensacola surrendered to the garrison at Fort Pickens. The Battle of Mobile Bay had drawn the remaining southern forces westward to Alabama to resist Admiral Farragut's invasion. Fort Pickens had outlasted every Confederate effort against it. Only three other Southern forts shared that distinction: Fort Taylor at Key West, Fort Jefferson at Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas, and Fort Monroe in Virginia.

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• 5. Geronimo at Fort Pickens

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  Geronimo, a noted Apache war chief, was held at Fort Pickens from October 1886 to May 1887, along with several of his warriors. His family was not permitted to join him there. While Geronimo and his warriors were confined at Fort Pickens, their relatives were held at Fort Marion in St. Augustine.

  Fort Pickens had become one of several East Coast facilities used to hold captives transported from the Indian Wars in the West. The Army would return to Fort Pickens with a new vision by 1898. That vision would alter the fort's physical structure beyond recognition.

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• 6. The Endicott Batteries

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  A committee convened in the mid-1880s under Secretary of War William C. Endicott rewrote the logic of American coastal defense. Rather than concentrating guns in thick-walled masonry, the Endicott Board proposed spreading individual batteries across a wide area. Each would be hidden behind concrete parapets flush with the surrounding terrain. Long-range, accurate weapons made the older concentration of guns unnecessary.

  In 1899, Battery Pensacola was built inside Fort Pickens's walls, armed with two 12-inch guns on disappearing carriages. Several more concrete batteries were built to the east and west as separate structures. Making room for the new guns required demolishing parts of the original fort. The parapet on the south wall was torn down, along with the officers' quarters beneath it. The barbette on the southeast wall was also removed, as were the casemate arches of the southernmost bastion. The goal was to clear a firing arc wide enough for Battery Pensacola's 12-inch guns to operate without obstruction.

  On the 20th of June 1899, disaster struck before the transformation was complete. A fire broke out in Bastion D and reached the magazine, which held 8,000 pounds of powder. The explosion killed one soldier and obliterated the entire bastion. Bricks from the bastion's walls were found across the bay at Fort Barrancas, more than 1.5 miles away. The damage cleared the foundations in a way that turned out to be useful. Fitting heavy mechanical equipment through the fort's Sally Port had posed a serious problem, and the explosion removed that obstacle.

  Battery Cooper's 6-inch M1905 guns on disappearing carriages were removed in 1917. A gun originally housed at West Point was relocated to Battery Cooper in 1976. Battery Langdon was completed in 1923 with 12-inch guns, intended to complement those already at Battery Pensacola. The guns at Battery Langdon were at first exposed to the elements, with only an internal embankment shielding the ammunition and command center. That exposure would not last.

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• 7. Final Preparations

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  German U-Boats were already operating in the Gulf of Mexico when the U.S. Navy reviewed Fort Pickens's defenses during World War II. The Navy determined that the existing installations needed strengthening against this specific threat.

  Battery 234 was built to function alongside Battery 233, located across the bay on Perdido Key. Both batteries shared a standard design used at installations across the country, replacing the role of older 3-inch guns. Each was equipped with two 6-inch M1905 guns housed in cast-steel casemates. The command center was buried beneath an artificial hill to protect it from air attack. The guns for Battery 234 were never fitted during the war. In 1976, the Smithsonian Institution donated a pair of guns to the battery, and they remain in place today.

  Battery Langdon was fully enclosed in 1943 against the threat of German dive bombers. The Army added 17 feet of concrete over the structure. The guns were kept in place, but a reinforced bunker now enclosed them. Sand and dirt were piled over the concrete to create an artificial hill for additional protection.

  Four 155mm GPF guns were placed around Battery Cooper in 1942, two positioned forward and one on each side. They were set into concrete positioning rings that still remain today. Planning for these installations had begun in 1937 as part of a wider Panama mount program. The guns themselves have since been removed. Fort Pickens remained an active military installation until 1947. The ruins of the Endicott batteries are preserved today alongside the original 1834 masonry walls, both part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore.

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