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 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 in 1817, when General Andrew Jackson led an incursion into the territory over Spanish objections. Jackson's forces destroyed several Seminole and Black Seminole towns 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 Native Americans and Black Indians. 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 Seminole's removal from Florida, tensions rose until fierce hostilities occurred in the Dade battle in 1835. This conflict started the war. 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.
Prospect Bluff Historic Sites is located in Franklin County, Florida, on the Apalachicola River, 6 miles (9.7 km) SW of Sumatra, Florida. The site contains the ruins of two forts.
Andrew Atkinson Humphreys, was a career United States Army officer, civil engineer, and a Union General in the American Civil War. He served in senior positions in the Army of the Potomac, including division command, chief of staff, and corps command, and was Chief Engineer of the U.S. Army.
The Black Seminoles, or Afro-Seminoles, are an ethnic group of mixed Native American and African origin associated with the Seminole people in Florida and Oklahoma. They are mostly blood descendants of the Seminole people, free Africans, and escaped former slaves, who allied with Seminole groups in Spanish Florida. Many have Seminole lineage, but due to the stigma of having mixed origin, they have all been categorized as slaves or freedmen in the past.
Duncan Lamont Clinch was a slave-plantation owner and an American army officer 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 Treaty of Payne's Landing was an agreement signed on 9 May 1832 between the government of the United States and several chiefs of the Seminole Indians in the Territory of Florida, before it acquired statehood.
The Dunlawton Plantation and Sugar Mill, a 19th-century cane sugar plantation in north-central Florida, was destroyed by the Seminoles at the beginning of the Second Seminole War. The ruins are located at 950 Old Sugar Mill Road, Port Orange, Florida. On August 28, 1973, the site was added to the United States National Register of Historic Places under the title of Dunlawton Plantation-Sugar Mill Ruins.
The Dade battle was an 1835 military defeat for the United States Army. The U.S. was attempting to force the Seminoles to move away from their land in Florida and relocate to Indian Territory. Amidst a war between the Government of the United States and the Seminole two U.S. Army companies numbering 103 men under the command of Major Francis L. Dade were ambushed by approximately 180 Seminole warriors as they marched from Fort Brooke on Tampa Bay to reinforce Fort King in Ocala. Only three U.S. soldiers survived the attack, and one died of his wounds the following day.
The Battle of Withlacoochee, otherwise known as the Battle of Ouithlacoochie, was a battle in the Second Seminole War, fought on December 31, 1835, along the Withlacoochee River in modern Citrus County, Florida.
Negro Fort was a short-lived fortification built by the British in 1814, during the War of 1812, in a remote part of what was at the time Spanish Florida. It was intended to support a never-realized British attack on the U.S. via its southwest border, by means of which they could "free all these Southern Countries [states] from the Yoke of the Americans."
David Moniac, an American military officer, was the first Native American graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York in 1822. A Creek with some Scots ancestry, who was related to major Creek leaders on both sides of his family, Moniac was the first cadet to enter West Point from the new state of Alabama. Moniac resigned his commission in 1822 to manage his clan's property in Alabama, where he developed a cotton plantation.
Slavery in Florida is more central to Florida's history than it is to almost any other state. Florida's purchase by the United States from Spain in 1819 was primarily a measure to strengthen the system of slavery on Southern plantations, by denying potential runaways the formerly safe haven of Florida.
Addison Blockhouse Historic State Park is a state park located in Volusia County, Florida. It features the Addison Blockhouse, a small coquina rock ruin that was on a 19th-century plantation and served as a kitchen as well as a fort.
Fort Hanson was a blockhouse fortification built in 1838 by the United States Army as one of a chain of military outposts created during the Second Seminole War. These fortifications were located near vital road and waterway routes, or were built within a day’s journey of one another. Fort Hanson was primarily built for the protection of the St. Augustine area in the Florida Territory. St. Augustine had become refuge for many white settlers and their slaves that had fled from nearby settlements and plantations for safety in the city. In addition to St. Augustine being an important shipping port and supply center for the war effort the additional civilians made the city a key stronghold requiring a substantial military presence for its defense. The fort originally stood about thirteen miles southwest of St. Augustine.
Fort Basinger's original site is located approximately 35 miles (56 km) west of Fort Pierce, Florida, along U. S. Highway 98 in Highlands County, Florida. It was a stockaded fortification with two blockhouses that was built in 1837 by the United States Army. It was one of the military outposts created during the Second Seminole War to assist Colonel Zachary Taylor's troops to confront and capture Seminole Indians and their allies in the central part of the Florida Territory in the Lake Okeechobee region. The Seminole Indians and their allies were resisting forced removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River as directed by the Indian Removal Act.
Luis Fatio Pacheco was an Afro-Spanish enslaved person who became known in 19th century Spanish Florida for his connection to the Black Seminole community.
John Houston McIntosh, also sometimes spelled John Houstoun McIntosh, (1773-1836) was a wealthy planter in Georgia who helped lead a rebel group during the Patriot War in Florida.
Louis (Luis) Fatio Pacheco was an Afro-Spanish enslaved person who became known in 19th century Spanish Florida for his connection to the Black Seminole community.
