USA Acquires Florida

This series has three easy 5 minute installments. This first installment: Andrew Jackson Enters Florida.

Introduction
Through the acquisition of Florida, the United States territory was increased by about sixty-seven thousand square miles, and irritations of long standing, involving ill-feeling against Spain, were relieved. The Florida country, originally embracing a vastly larger area than that of the present State, was ceded by Spain, its discoverer, to Great Britain in 1763. In 1779-1781, while England was engaged in her disastrous American war, Spain reconquered the western part of Florida, and at the close of the Revolution the whole region known as ” the Two Floridas ” (Eastern and Western) was ceded by Great Britain to the Spanish Government.

The northern boundaries were not surveyed and disputes quickly arose between the United States and Spain as to their respective limits. At last (1813) the United States took possession of Western Florida, and a few years later, in Monroe’s administration, the First Seminole War broke out in the eastern part of the country. This led to the events told in this story by Mr. Hildreth.

This selection is from History of the United States of America by Richard Hildreth published in 1853. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Richard Hildreth (1807-1865) was an American journalist, author and historian, He is best known for writing his six-volume History of the United States of America covering 1497–1821.

Time: 1821
Place: Florida

Great complaints were made by the Georgia backwoods-men of depredations by the Seminoles residing south of the Flint River, and principally within the Spanish territory. Gaines, who commanded at Fort Scott, on the north bank of the Flint, demanded of the Indians, on the opposite bank, the surrender of certain alleged murderers, but they refused to give them up, on the ground that the Georgians had been the first aggressors. Under authority from the War Department to expel these Indians from the lately ceded Creek district north of the Florida line, the Indian village of Fowltown, a few miles below Fort Scott, was attacked in the night, and three or four of the inhabitants killed or taken, the rest escaping into the woods. A second attempt, to bring off the Indian corn and cattle, brought on a fresh skirmish, in which two or three were killed on both sides.

The Indians revenged these attacks by waylaying a boat ascending the Apalachicola with supplies for Fort Scott. Of forty men and a number of women and children on board, all were killed except six men and one woman. Gaines thereupon called out a body of Georgia militia, having received, meanwhile, orders to carry the war into Florida if necessary; with directions, however, if the Indians took refuge under any Spanish fort, not to attack it, but to report the fact. When news arrived at Washington of the disaster on the Apalachicola, orders were sent to Jackson, who commanded in the Southern Department, to take the field in person, with authority to call additional militia from Tennessee.

Jackson on receiving these orders had issued a call for two thousand Tennessee volunteers. While they were preparing to march, he had hastened to Hartford, on the Ocmulgee, there to organize a body of Georgia militia, making, with those from Tennessee, and about a thousand regulars at Fort Scott, a force as numerous, perhaps, as the entire nation of the Seminoles, women and children included. Nor was this the whole of the force employed. The Creeks had just gratified the Georgians by the cession of two considerable additional tracts of territory, one on the Upper Ocmulgee, the other south of the Altamaha —- for which the United States had undertaken to pay them twenty thousand dollars down, and an annuity of ten thousand dollars for ten years —- and they hastened, also, on the call of Gaines, which, however, he had no authority to make, to take the field under their chief, M’Intosh.

There was great difficulty, in that wild and not very fertile region, in finding the means to feed an army. Jackson was obliged to march with his Georgians from Hartford with nothing to eat but lean cattle, and corn at the rate of a pint a day for each man, and that only obtained by his indefatigable personal exertions. He was joined on his march by a part of the Creeks, and at Fort Scott he found the regulars. The difficulty of subsistence had delayed the arrival of the Tennesseeans. Fort Scott being bare of supplies, Jackson hastened forward to meet the provision-boats expected up the Apalachicola from New Orleans; and, as a depot for those supplies, on the site of the late negro fort he built a new one, called Fort Gadsden. The expected provisions having at length arrived, Jackson marched eastward against the Seminole villages in the vicinity of the present town of Tallahassee, being joined on the way by a fresh body of Creeks and by a part of the Tennessee volunteers. The Indians made but a slight resistance; their villages were burned, and a considerable spoil was obtained in corn and cattle.

It is evident, from Jackson’s dispatches, that he had resolved from the first to find some pretense for taking possession of the fort at St. Mark’s, the only Spanish post in this part of Florida. Under the allegation of some comfort or aid afforded to the Indians, he marched thither and demanded a surrender. The Spanish commandant hesitating a little, a detachment sent by Jackson entered the fort and took it by force, though without bloodshed.

One of the American armed vessels on the coast, having hoisted the British flag, enticed on board two refugee Red Stick Creek chiefs, one of whom, the prophet Francis, had lately visited England and had excited some sympathy there. Both these chiefs, by Jackson’s orders, were forthwith hanged without ceremony. He next marched, with very small supplies, and through a country half covered with water, against another town on the Suwanee, not far from its mouth, inhabited principally by run-away negroes; but, having received timely warning, they had conveyed away their women and cattle, and after two considerable skirmishes, the only resistance which Jackson encountered, they abandoned the town, which was burned.

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