| "Battle of Withlacoochee" | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Second Seminole War | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 United States | Seminole Indians | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Duncan L. Clinch Richard K. Call | Osceola | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 750 | 250 | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 4 killed 59 wounded | Unknown | ||||||
The Battle of Withlacoochee took place during the Second Seminole War on December 31, 1835, along the Withlacoochee River in modern Citrus County, Florida.
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 resulted in increasing pressure and conflict between the native Florida Seminoles and encroaching white settlers. This conflict culminated with the Dade battle, which many consider the start to the Second Seminole War. Unaware of what had happened to Dade and his column only a few days prior, a U.S. force was dispatched to destroy a Seminole band who were residing at what was called "the Cove," on the southwest side of the Withlacoochee River. [1]
On December 31, 1835, the column of soldiers with Gen. Duncan L. Clinch, leading regular U.S. troops, and Richard K. Call, leading militia, came to the Withlacoochee River. Most of the volunteer militia men had only been signed on for three weeks, the U.S. military commanders believing that it would take only that amount of time to crush the Seminole resistance.
At the time, Clinch and the rest of his command were still unaware of the U.S. defeat during the Dade battle, which had occurred only 3 days prior. [2]
The regular troops began to cross the river first but they only had a single canoe so the crossing was slow. Some of the militia began to cross by swimming their horses across but had to leave their clothes and weapons on the bank before crossing. [3] The river was also higher than expected. [4]
When roughly 225 of the U.S. soldiers had crossed, the Seminole who were laying in ambush opened fire. General Call, having made a footbridge of logs, was trying to get his men across as fast as possible when the attack began. He now left them with orders to cross as rapidly as they could, and crossed in the canoe himself while the fight was at the worst. As many of the volunteers as could do so crossed during the fight, thus preventing the Indians from getting between the regular troops and the river, and so cutting them off.[ citation needed ] Officer Leigh Read, who was eventually appointed brigadier general of the Florida militia during the war, was wounded during the action. [5]
The Seminole Wars were a series of three military conflicts between the United States and the Seminoles that took place in Florida between about 1816 and 1858. The Seminoles are a Native American nation which coalesced in northern Florida during the early 1700s, when the territory was still a Spanish colonial possession. Tensions grew between the Seminoles and American settlers in the newly independent United States in the early 1800s, mainly because enslaved people regularly fled from Georgia into Spanish Florida, prompting slaveowners to conduct slave raids across the border. A series of cross-border skirmishes escalated into the First Seminole War, when American General Andrew Jackson led an incursion into the territory over Spanish objections. Jackson's forces destroyed several Seminole, Mikasuki and Black Seminole towns, as well as captured Fort San Marcos and briefly occupied Pensacola before withdrawing in 1818. The U.S. and Spain soon negotiated the transfer of the territory with the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819.
The Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between the United States and groups of people collectively known as Seminoles, consisting of Creek and Black Seminoles as well as other allied tribes. It was part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars. The Second Seminole War, often referred to as the Seminole War, is regarded as "the longest and most costly of the Indian conflicts of the United States". After the Treaty of Payne's Landing in 1832 that called for the Seminoles' removal from Florida, tensions rose until fierce hostilities occurred in Dade's massacre in 1835. This engagement officially started the war although there were a series of incidents leading up to the Dade battle. The Seminoles and the U.S. forces engaged in mostly small engagements for more than six years. By 1842, only a few hundred native peoples remained in Florida. Although no peace treaty was ever signed, the war was declared over on August 14, 1842 by Colonel William Jenkins Worth.
The American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars, was a conflict initially fought by European colonial empires, the United States, and briefly the Confederate States of America and Republic of Texas against various American Indian tribes in North America. These conflicts occurred from the time of the earliest colonial settlements in the 17th century until the end of the 19th century. The various wars resulted from a wide variety of factors, the most common being the desire of settlers and governments for Indian tribes' lands. The European powers and their colonies enlisted allied Indian tribes to help them conduct warfare against each other's colonial settlements. After the American Revolution, many conflicts were local to specific states or regions and frequently involved disputes over land use; some entailed cycles of violent reprisal.
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Duncan Lamont Clinch (April 6, 1787 – December 4, 1849 was an American army officer and slave-plantation owner who served as a commander during the War of 1812, and First and Second Seminole Wars. In 1816, he led an attack on Negro Fort, the first battle of the Seminole Wars. Clinch later served in the United States House of Representatives, representing Georgia.
The Withlacoochee River or Crooked River is a river in central Florida, in the United States. It originates in the Green Swamp, east of Polk City, flowing west, then north, then northwest and finally west again before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico near Yankeetown. The river is 141 miles (227 km) long and has a drainage basin of 1,170 square miles (3,000 km2).
The Dade battle was an 1835 military defeat for the United States Army.
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