Fort Jackson, located just 3 miles from downtown Savannah, began construction in 1808 as part of President Jefferson’s Second Coastal Defense System plan. The fort was built on an old revolutionary battery that was identified as a strategic location during the founding of Savannah.
Named after the British-born Georgian politician James Jackson, the fort was originally conceived to protect the city from attacks from the water. The fort was completed with slave labor shortly before the War of 1812, but was never attacked. Over the next 15 years, the fort was largely abandoned while Fort Pulaski was built downriver. Efforts to revive the abandoned fort, begun in the 1850s during the Third Coastal Defense System, added an additional powder magazine, new barracks, a moat, and a drawbridge.
By the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, all of Georgia’s federal coastal forts had been captured by the Confederacy. Unlike Fort Pulaski, which quickly fell to Union troops, Fort Jackson managed to defend itself upriver with torpedoes and river obstacles that kept Union gunboats east of the city. This also effectively cut off Savannah from any maritime traffic, and the Union was able to starve the city until William Sherman finally took the fort by land on December 21, 1864, at the end of his march to the sea.
Like many historical sites, the fort was abandoned after the war. It was decommissioned by the U.S. Army in 1905, and for the next 60 years the fort was owned by the City of Savannah, the American Cyanamid Company, and the Georgia Historical Commission, which operated the fort as a maritime museum until the Coastal Heritage Society took over in 1976. In 2000, the fort was designated a National Historic Landmark.
It’s no wonder why many period pieces have chosen Fort Jackson for their films. Fort Jackson is the oldest surviving brick fort in the state of Georgia and one of the few remaining Second System fortifications in the United States. Fortunately, improvements made in the mid-19th century did not drastically alter the original structure and helped preserve its historic design. The fort’s semi-bastion design creates an irregularly shaped fortification with hexagonal ramparts facing the Savannah River and crenellated walls to the south. Beneath the ramparts is a casemate with concentric arched vaults that appear on film as early prison cells. Fort Jackson was immortalized on screen as Harper’s Ferry in the 2020 movie The Emperor.