War in the Swamps

Seminole & Black Seminole Resistance in America's Longest and Costliest War Against Native People

von Jonathan Hayes

282 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

In 1835, the United States had the army, the policy and the money to drive the Seminoles from Florida. A small resistance turned the campaign into the longest and costliest war America ever fought against Native people.

No chief could sign away the country for every Seminole town. Washington took the signatures it could obtain, including marks made for absent leaders, and treated them as the consent of an entire people. Towns that rejected the bargain were ordered to leave anyway.

Beside their towns stood Black Seminole communities, built by people who had escaped slavery and others born in Florida. They farmed their own fields, raised cattle and carried arms. Slave claimants wanted men, women and children handed over as property. Removal threatened their homes, their families and their freedom.

On the Fort King road, warriors destroyed Major Dade's column. Seminole and Black Seminole fighters resisted the armies sent after them through swamps, rivers and tangled cover. American columns struggled to feed their men and find their enemies. Fever filled the hospitals. Troops burned towns and crops, and families moved deeper into the country.

American commanders encountered the same problem when they tried to end the war. Chiefs could agree to removal without being able to make the other towns follow. The men who signed could not surrender everyone still fighting.

General Thomas Jesup ordered the Seminole leader Osceola seized under a white flag. He also offered Black Seminoles freedom in return for surrender. Abraham, the Black Seminole interpreter who had carried American terms into the councils, demanded the promise in writing. For families boarding the transports, a general's word would have to survive the slave claims waiting in New Orleans.

Drawing on contemporary letters, military reports, treaties and later participant accounts, War in the Swamps is a vivid narrative history of the Second Seminole War, 1835-1842. The third book in Forgotten Wars of American Expansion, it is a complete, standalone account of forced removal, armed resistance and a struggle for freedom that continued beyond Florida and beyond the war.

Thousands were driven west. In 1842, the United States ended the war without a final peace treaty or a general surrender. The United States had manufactured the authority to take their country. It could not manufacture their surrender.

• Reihe: Independently published
• ISBN: 9798174472358
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 15.09.2026
• Größe: 229 x 152 mm
• Verlag: Independently published