In 1795, a cannon battery constructed on the Point Peter peninsula became the southernmost fortification in the First System of U.S. coastal defenses. Vacated in 1802, it was reoccupied and strengthened in 1808 to support enforcement of the Embargo Act and the prohibition of the international slave trade. In 1812, former Georgia governor George Matthews led the unsanctioned Patriot invasion of Spanish Florida from Point Peter. On January 13, 1815, during the War of 1812, a British force overwhelmed 116 U.S. regulars there and destroyed the fort and barracks. After the U.S. acquired Florida in 1819, the post was abandoned.