The Exiles of Florida

Among the subjects made prominent before the country, was that of the extravagant expenditures in prosecuting the “Florida War.” Speeches were made in Congress exposing the various practices by which the people’s money was squandered in that unfortunate conflict; the policy of attempting to compel the Indians to emigrate, and the cruelty practiced towards them, were commented on with severity. These speeches were printed in pamphlet form, and sent to the people in vast numbers: but the real cause of the war, the deep depravity of that policy which sought the enslavement of the Exiles, was not mentioned; nor does it appear that any member of Congress was conscious, even, that such a people as the Exiles was living in Florida.126 But, nevertheless, it is quite certain that this war proved one of the principal causes of Mr. Van Buren’s defeat; and, during the pendency of the election, these complaints paralyzed the action of the Executive.

Another cause operated to call public attention to the war. Hon. William Jay, of New York, published a small book upon the action of our Government in regard to slavery. It was a work of much merit, and, coming from the pen of one so intimately associated with the best interests of the country, it exerted an influence upon the public mind. It had been published some two or three years; but at the time of which we are writing, it attracted attention in most of the free States, and gave public men to understand that their official acts were to be made known to coming generations.

The intimate relation which this war bore to slavery, rendered every movement in regard to it dangerous to the Executive character, and caused our army to be almost inactive for several months; but the allies, driven to desperation, prepared to wreak their vengeance on every white person who should venture within their reach. A small band, composed of Spanish negroes and Indians, among whom were said to be some maroons from Cuba, resided far down in the Peninsula of Florida. They were called Spanish Indians, and had remained neutral up to the period of which we are speaking; but finding their brethren driven from their own possessions, and compelled to encroach upon the territory so long occupied by themselves, they took up arms against the United States. Every vessel that happened to be wrecked upon their coast was plundered, and the crews massacred.

On the morning of the seventh of August, a number of these people, said to have been led on by Spanish maroons, crossed over to a small island called “Indian Key,” situated at some twenty miles distant from the main land, and attacked the dwellings, burned the storehouses, and destroyed most of the property belonging to the inhabitants. There were but four or five families resident on the island. Of these, Dr. Perrine, a man of some distinction, was murdered in his own house; but, by his valor, he enabled the other members of his family to escape, amid the darkness of night. The allies obtained much plunder, but found no powder, which was said to have been the principal object of the foray.

During the summer and autumn, our troops in Florida were inactive. The season was sickly, and the officers and men lay supinely in their encampments. The enemy felt secure in their strong-holds – sallying forth in occasional forays, murdering the people, and plundering the settlements with impunity. The Administration appeared astonished at the audacity with which a few Indians and negroes hurled defiance at our army and the nation. The expedient of employing savages to assist in the war had failed; the more questionable policy of employing blood-hounds, had not only failed, but was supposed by many to reflect discredit upon the army and nation. Nearly five thousand troops were kept in Florida, maintained at vast expense; but they could neither conquer the Indians, nor even protect the white people. Under these circumstances, the Executive saw but one resource; of that he availed himself. By his direction, twelve Seminole and Mickasukie Indians, who had emigrated West, were induced by sufficient pecuniary considerations to leave their families in the Western Country and return to Florida, for the purpose of persuading the Indians and Exiles to emigrate. Thus, after four years of war and constant expenditure of blood and treasure, the President discovered that moral power is greater and stronger than physical violence.

But this discovery came too late. He could no longer do justice to those fathers and mothers and children who had been slain, nor to those who had been enslaved; who had been taken far into the interior, sold and transferred from hand to hand like brutes. They had passed from Executive control. The crime now stained our national escutcheon, and no effort could wash it out. The very means which he adopted to close the war, operated to prolong it. These Seminoles and Mickasukies informed their brethren of their own condition, of the manner in which they were treated, and the violations of faith on the part of our Government in not giving them a territory for their separate use, as stipulated in the treaty, and constantly represented to them by our officers; that they were without a home and without a country, residing on Cherokee lands, under Cherokee protection, to prevent the Creeks from enslaving their friends, the Exiles. Many officers at the time doubted their desire to induce the emigration of their brethren.127

They, however, obtained an interview between the Commanding General and two Seminole chiefs at Fort King. The chiefs were attended by some forty warriors, who remained in that vicinity four or five days, receiving food and articles of clothing from the United States; but they suddenly disappeared, and it was believed they originally came with hostile, rather than pacific, intentions. When it was found they had left clandestinely, the troops attempted to follow them, but were unable to find any traces of their flight.

While these things were transpiring, the army lay idle in their quarters; neither the Executive, nor the Secretary of War, nor the Commanding General, knowing what to do.

The Exiles learned from the Seminoles and Mickasukies, who visited them from the West, that many of their brethren who surrendered under the articles of capitulation, had been reënslaved, in violation of our plighted faith; and they refused to hold further intercourse with the agents of our Government. To them there appeared but one alternative – victory or death; and they greatly preferred the latter to slavery. Taking their families far into the interior, they hastened to renew the war with vigor and energy.

A party of some thirty Indians and Exiles were lurking about Micanopy, when, on the twenty-eighth of December, Lieutenant Sherwood, Lieutenant Hopson, Sergeant Major Carrol, and ten privates of the 7th Infantry, left Micanopy for the purpose of escorting Mrs. Montgomery, wife of a Lieutenant of that regiment, through the forest to Watkahoota, eight miles distant. The lady was on horseback, while others of the party rode in a wagon drawn by mules, and some marched on foot. The enemy having observed their movements, preceded them to a hommock, about four miles from Micanopy, where they secreted themselves, and awaited the approach of Mrs. Montgomery and party. When they were fairly within the hommock, through which the road passed, they were fired upon, and two privates fell dead. The war-whoop was raised, and the little party found themselves confronted by savages. Lieutenant Sherwood is said to have rallied his escort with promptness. Mrs. Montgomery, attempting to get into the wagon, was shot dead. Sherwood very discreetly retreated to the open forest, and dispatched Lieutenant Hopson to Micanopy for a reinforcement. Knowing the impossibility of retreating from Indians, and conscious that they gave no quarter, he bravely determined to defend himself or die on the field. But his assailants numbered three times as many warriors as he had. They out-flanked and surrounded his ill-fated party, all of whom with himself fell victims to that policy which had brought this war, with all its crimes, upon our nation.

We cannot withhold our sympathy from those patriotic men who enter the public service expecting to act in an honorable sphere in favor of just measures; but who are often made the instruments of injustice, and their lives sacrificed to the spirit and policy of oppression. Our officers and soldiers, serving in this Florida War, were duly conscious of the dishonorable employment in which they were engaged; that they were daily subjected to dangers and death for the purpose of enabling the people of Florida to seize men and women, and sell them into interminable bondage. Officers and men who would cheerfully meet danger and death upon the field of honorable warfare in defense of freedom, were compelled to meet death in all its various and revolting forms in Florida to uphold oppression, to sustain an institution which they abhorred; nor can we wonder that the consciousness of these facts should have created a feeling of hostility between our regular troops and the slaveholders of Florida, who were constantly charging them with inefficiency and want of energy in the capture of negroes. This feeling ran so high that the white men of Florida were charged with disguising themselves as Indians, and actually committing murders and robberies upon mail carriers and express riders, in order to continue hostilities and keep up the war.128 This feeling greatly increased the embarrassment of the Executive.

A chief named “Cora Tustenuggee,” after due consultation with the interpreters sent to induce him to emigrate, concluded to surrender, and go West. He collected his band, numbering about one hundred in all. Among them were some half breeds, descendants of the pioneer Exiles. They had intermarried with Indians of this band, and were treated as Indians. While on their way to one of our posts, near Palaklikaha Lake, they were fired upon by a party at dragoons who were said to have been conscious of the intentions of the Indians. This supposed violation of faith was greatly aggravated by the subsequent wanton murder of the chief, after he and his band had quietly submitted as prisoners. These people were immediately sent to Tampa Bay, and then embarked for the Western Country, where they joined their brethren, still resident on the Cherokee lands, and under Cherokee protection.

The Presidential election being past, the Executive felt more untrammeled; and Mr. Poinsett, Secretary of War, resisting the instruction which he might have drawn from four years of unfortunate experience, appears to have determined to leave this Florida War in as unpromising condition as he found it. He sent instructions to the Commanding General to renew the war with whatever force he could bring into the field.

It is a somewhat singular fact, that when the Secretary understood, and the country was fully informed, that he would leave the Department on the fourth of March, he wrote the commanding officer on the eighteenth of February, thirteen days prior to his own political dissolution, saying, “The Department entertains the well-grounded hope that you will be able to bring the war to a close upon the terms required by the treaty of Payne’s Landing, and by the interests and feelings of the people of Florida.”

The reader must be aware that the feelings and interests of the people of Florida required the capture and enslavement of the Exiles; for which the Secretary of War had so long labored, and which appeared to be his ruling passion – “strong in the hour of his political death.”

To effect this object, recourse was had to the bribery of certain chiefs. Money was now offered certain influential men of the Seminoles and Exiles to induce them to exert their influence with their friends to emigrate. It was reported that slaves who had but a few years since left their masters, and intermarried with the Seminoles, dare not surrender, knowing that slavery awaited such act. Without them, their relatives and connexions would not remove. It was therefore proposed that Congress should make an appropriation for the purpose of purchasing such Exiles; yet the bill making it was general in its provisions, granting a hundred thousand dollars to be expended by the Secretary of War for the subsistence and benefit of certain chiefs and warriors of the Seminole Indians who wished to emigrate. The subsistence of such emigrants was provided for in other bills; but the benefits for which this money was to be expended was to purchase the pretended interest of certain white men to individual Exiles whom they claimed as property.

By thus disguising the real intention and object of the bill, it was evidently expected it would pass without scrutiny, under the rules which prohibited the discussion of all questions involving the subject of slavery. The better to carry out this design, Hon. Waddy Thompson of South Carolina, a Whig member of the House of Representatives, but fully sympathizing with the Executive in his policy of conducting the war in the manner “required by the interests and feelings of the people of Florida,” was regarded as the proper agent to introduce the bill and superintend its passage.

The information found in the public documents had awakened previous investigation; and when this bill came up for action (Feb. 9), the policy of this war, with the causes which led to its commencement, were exposed. Every effort was made by slaveholding members to prevent the public discussion of this subject. They insisted that the gag-rules, as they were called, prohibiting the discussion of slavery, forbid this exposure; but the presiding officer (Mr. Clifford of Maine) adhering to the parliamentary law, decided that an examination of the causes which led to the war was legitimate, and the discussion proceeded.

This discussion was published and widely circulated among the people; and is supposed to have given to the public the first information touching the real causes of the war.129

The bill passed by a large majority; and the report of the Secretary of War the next year, showing the expenditures of his department, exhibited the manner in which the money appropriated and entrusted to his care was expended. Another bill, however, making an appropriation of more than a million of dollars for suppressing Indian hostilities in Florida was passed, giving to the War Department all the powers desired for bribery, and tempting Indian chiefs to emigrate to the Western Country.

By reference to the map of Florida, it will be perceived that the great swamps, extensive everglades, hommocks, ponds and lakes, which spread over that Territory, must present great difficulties in the progress of troops embodied in military force; while a small party, following the footsteps of their leader, would pass over, around or through them with facility. The Great Okefenoka Swamp, lying on the south line of Georgia and the northern portion of Florida, afforded a retreat for small parties of Indians and Exiles, from which they sallied forth and committed depredations upon the people of southern Georgia, murdering families, burning buildings and devastating plantations. The swamps bordering on the Withlacoochee, the Great Wahoo Swamp, and other fastnesses on the western portion of the Peninsula, gave shelter to other bands, who, in like manner, wreaked their vengeance upon the inhabitants of that portion of the Territory. So also the Big Cypress Swamp, lying farther south, afforded shelter for others, who laid waste the settlements along the St. John’s River, and in the vicinity of the Atlantic Coast. From these, and numerous other strong-holds, the Indians and their allies came forth in small bands, spreading devastation and death throughout the Territory and the southern portion of Georgia.

The people of Florida who had sought this war, and protested against peace except on such terms as would secure them in the exercise of that oppression which they deemed so necessary to their happiness, now felt the full force of that appropriate penalty which some philosophers believe attaches to every violation of the law of righteousness. Some died by the hands of the very individuals whom they had oppressed, and whom they again sought to enslave; others were again driven from their homes, unable even to obtain food; their wives and children receiving rations from the public stores, and subsisting by the charity of the United States.

But this condition of things superinduced another most extraordinary feature of this war. Our officers, and the Executive, naturally feeling some degree of sympathy for a people thus driven from their homes, on whom the evils of war fell with so much force, extended to them every aid in their power. Some were employed in the Commissary’s Department; some as contractors for transporting provisions; and others as attendants upon the army in all the various departments of service, so numerous in a time of war. Even the slaves who remained in the service of their masters were employed by the officers as guides, interpreters and employees at high wages. In this manner they earned for their owners far more than they could by labor upon plantations. This system was carried so far, that the war actually afforded to many greater profits than they could acquire in any other way; and consequently it became a matter of interest with such men to prolong hostilities, and they were said to exert all their influence to effect that object.