Читать книгу Last in Their Class - James Robbins - Страница 12

THE SEMINOLE WAR

NEAR THE ENTRANCE TO THE West Point cemetery, on an empty stretch of grass behind a tall hedge, stands a solitary monument of white Italian marble. Four upright cannon decorate the corners of an oblong square stone, supporting a platform adorned with stars, on which stands a wreathed fasces with an eagle perched on top. On the southward face of the stone are carved eight names. The inscription reads:

TO COMMEMORATE

THE BATTLE OF THE 28TH DEC

1835

BETWEEN A DETACHMENT OF

108 U.S. TROOPS

AND

THE SEMINOLE INDIANS

OF FLORIDA

IN WHICH

ALL OF THE DETACHMENT

SAVE THREE

FELL WITHOUT AN ATTEMPT

TO RETREAT

The monument was erected in 1845 and originally stood prominently on the banks of the Hudson, clearly visible from the Academy across the Plain and from any vessels passing on the river, a mute and graceful reminder of the opening shots of a seven-year conflict that today rarely makes the list of America’s forgotten wars.

Captain Ethan Allen Hitchcock was with the first column to arrive at the battlefield, weeks after the action had taken place. He described it as “one of the most appalling scenes that can be imagined.” Clusters of bodies, “mostly mere skeletons but with much of the clothing left on them,” lay at the ambush site, along the road, and in a nearby redoubt the men had fashioned for their last stand. They lay “in precisely the same position they must have occupied during the fight, their heads next to the logs over which they had delivered their fire, their bodies stretched, with striking regularity, parallel to each other.”¹ Hitchcock, like many others present, had friends among the dead, and the skin had dried hard and smooth like parchment, easing the process of identification. They buried their comrades in mass graves, marking that of the officers with an upturned cannon the Seminoles had thrown into a swamp.

The massacre stunned the nation. Two companies of soldiers, well armed, with artillery support, were cut off and annihilated by tribesmen whom most people considered half naked savages. The Army had never suffered so serious a defeat in any previous encounter with Indians. Memorial poems were written in honor of the fallen, and volunteer militia companies formed and moved south.² When news of the massacre reached New York in January, diarist and former New York City mayor Philip Hone noted that the Seminole victory would not have the effect that the Indians anticipated. “This very battle in which temporary success has been won by their savage arms will be the ultimate cause of their destruction,” he wrote. “Humanity may deplore the fate of the red men, philanthropists talk as they will about equal rights and the oppression of power, but it is inevitable. . . . After some hard service and destruction of the lives and properties of the whites, the Indians will be exterminated.”³

THE SECOND SEMINOLE WAR was the result of an attempt to move the Indians of Florida west to live alongside the Creeks and other eastern tribes, who were being resettled to the Oklahoma Territory. The resistance was led by chiefs and warlords such as Micanopy, Billy Bowlegs, Coacoochee, Alligator, Halleck Tustenuggee, and a dynamic young half-white named Billy Powell, whom the Indians called Osceola. He was not a chief, but his intelligence, charisma and resolve, not to mention hatred of the whites, made Osceola a natural leader. He was opposed on principle to the negotiations, and legend has it that at an 1834 council with General Wiley Thompson, the Indian agent for Florida, Osceola declared, “the only treaty I will execute is with this,” driving a knife through a copy of the treaty and leaving it sticking in the table.

Osceola was set on war, and according to Alligator, they had been planning the opening moves for over a year.⁴ Their first step was to send a message to the moderates that divisions within the tribe were not to be tolerated. They chose for their example Charley Emathla, a well-known and loved chief who was a proponent of emigration. Osceola and his band openly shot Charley down on November 26, 1835, as he was walking with his two young daughters. This bald act of savagery had its intended effect—none raised a hand against Osceola afterwards.⁵ The next stage was to demonstrate to the whites that the Seminoles were serious about remaining in Florida by undertaking a shocking major attack that would leave the Americans reeling. They planned a two-part strike, a coordinated blow led personally by Osceola to take place on December 28, 1835.

The first phase of the attack was targeted at General Thompson, who had recently put Osceola in chains for six days for protesting when the gunpowder supply was cut off. Osceola had won release by agreeing to be shipped west, but he had no such intention and bore a deep grudge. Early on December 28, Thompson and Lieutenant Constantine Smith were strolling and smoking cigars near Fort King when a sudden volley of musket fire from the bushes tore them apart. Osceola’s war party ran forward and scalped and mutilated the two officers. Sutler Erastus Rogers and his assistants, whose cabin was outside the walls, were also killed, and the Indians retreated into the wilderness, heading south.

Fifty miles away, Major Francis L. Dade led his column north towards Fort King, oblivious to the threat. His mission was to reinforce the isolated outpost, either to deter Indian attack or to defend against it. Dade was not an Academy graduate, but he knew West Point well, having been commander of the “bombardier” company for several years. He had with him eight officers and one hundred men, led by a local guide named Luis, a slave owned by a sutler named Antonio Pacheco.⁶ Luis spoke the local Indian dialects, as well as Spanish, French and English, and was acquainted with the route to the interior. Command of the column had originally fallen to Captain George W. Gardiner, former Commandant of the Academy, “the Little God of War” who had wrapped fire tongs around Cadet Pratt’s neck in a fit of jealousy over Eliza Kinsley. Gardiner had since married, and his wife, Frances, had accompanied him to Fort Brooke on Tampa Bay. When Frances fell ill, Dade volunteered to take Gardiner’s place so he could remain behind to attend to her. The column set off on Christmas Day, 1835. A short time after the troops had departed, Frances Gardiner was given an opportunity to accompany some friends to Key West and thence to New York, where she might get medical attention. George insisted she go, and after the ship left he mounted his horse and dashed after the column, followed by his dog.

The Seminoles, led by Micanopy, Jumper and Alligator, had planned their ambush well. They waited in concealed positions, in a crescent-shaped formation with interlocking fields of fire. They had taken other means to ensure success—unbeknownst to Dade, his guide, Luis, was working with the enemy.⁷ The original plan was to wait for Osceola to join them from Fort King before starting the attack, but as the column neared and Osceola had not arrived, Alligator overruled the older and more cautious Micanopy, and the attack went ahead.

Dade and half his men went down in the first volley. Gardiner, farther back in the column, quickly took command and began organizing a defense. He, Lieutenant W. E. Basinger, second in the Class of 1830, and Assistant Surgeon J. S. Gatlin were the only officers who had not been hit. Basinger and a crew unlimbered the sole artillery piece and fired grapeshot to keep the Seminoles at bay, but being dispersed they did not present a favorable target. Other troops under Gardiner’s direction fired their muskets, and during a lull, the thirty or so survivors fashioned a triangular breastwork with pine logs. They brought in as many wounded as they could, and Gatlin patched their wounds. Luis, meanwhile, had feigned death, then took refuge with the Seminoles. When the Indians returned, the soldiers mounted a fierce defense, repulsing at least one rush, Gardiner coolly coordinating the action from the center of the small redoubt. Alligator later described “a little man, a great brave, who shook his sword at the soldiers and said ‘God damn!’ No rifle ball could hit him.”⁸ Nevertheless, attrition took its toll on the desperate defenders, who soon found themselves kneeling in a pond of their comrades’ blood.

Gardiner eventually went down after taking five wounds. When the firing stopped, the Indians rushed the position and began killing the wounded. Basinger, the only officer left, attempted to surrender his sword, and the Seminoles paused a moment before one of them shot him down. The Indians took most of the scalps, but otherwise left the bodies unmolested.

The Seminoles were jubilant. Osceola’s plan had succeeded beyond their expectations. They had annihilated the American force and taken only a few losses. They held a wild celebration at their encampment in Great Wahoo Swamp, at which the scalps of the dead were mounted on poles and addressed as though their original owners were present. Osceola took particular pleasure in renegotiating the emigration treaty with pieces of General Thompson.

Three wounded enlisted men survived the carnage, and after the attackers left they tried to make it back to Fort Brooke. Two of them completed the journey, one of whom later succumbed to his wounds. The only other survivor of the doomed column to return to Tampa was Captain Gardiner’s dog.

FLORIDA WAS SOON ENGULFED in violence. By February 1, most of the territory south of St. Augustine was abandoned by settlers. The violence unleashed by the Seminoles was unprecedented in its scope and effectiveness, and it took the country completely by surprise. As one writer observed later in the war, “no nation or tribe, however insignificant, should be unnecessarily provoked to hostility, lest a power of vengeance be imparted to them beyond all foresight or calculation.”⁹

Reinforcements were sent to Florida, and volunteer militia units, particularly from Tennessee, rushed to the seat of war. General Winfield Scott was called in to be the field commander. He expected it to be a quick action, similar to one fought by Andrew Jackson twenty years earlier. He confidently laid out his terms—“unconditional surrender.” But Scott had poorly estimated the challenge he faced. Florida had some small cities on the periphery, but was largely unexplored in the interior. There were no good maps, which made campaign planning and coordination difficult. There were few roads and fewer bridges. The terrain was hostile: swampland with low hills called “hummocks,” lagoons, and pine forests in the higher elevations. Beyond the operational issues, there was no good intelligence on exactly how many Seminole warriors were in the field. President Jackson believed they numbered no more than 400. His secretary of war, Lewis Cass, felt the number to be closer to 750. Jackson’s estimate prevailed, not only because he was president, but also because he had fought and defeated these same Indians two decades prior, creating an assumption that he must know what he was talking about.¹⁰

The conflict quickly fell into a pattern. Columns would march into the wilderness in search of the enemy, without a good idea where they were going. They thus presented an ideal target for the Seminoles, who usually had set up ambushes. Fortunately for the soldiers, the Seminoles lacked training and discipline, and after the first volley they did not exploit their advantage. Seminoles also did not use enough powder per round (powder being a scarce commodity) and the balls that hit their mark did not always have the energy to kill or even wound severely. The Indians would hold their position for as long as they could, and if pressed would scatter. Because the Indians were unencumbered and could retreat in several directions at once, and Army columns were limited by their baggage trains and supply lines, there was no way to exploit a victory. This type of fighting did not result in many Indian deaths, nor did it gain ground, which there was no point in holding anyway.

“Look! There’s the Indian!”

AT THE TIME OF THE DADE MASSACRE, Lieutenant William W. Morris of the Fourth Artillery was helping escort emigrant Indians to the Trans-Mississippi. Morris was born in Ballston Springs, New York, in 1801. His grandfather, Lewis, was a member of the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His great-uncle Gouverneur Morris also served in the Continental Congress and later helped draft the U.S. Constitution. William Morris entered West Point in 1815 and graduated in 1820, the Goat of his class. He then served in a variety of posts, notably being promoted for bravery at a battle with Arikara Indians in August 1823, serving in garrison in Charleston Harbor during South Carolina’s nullification crisis, and most recently escorting emigrant Indians to the Trans-Mississippi. The duty was difficult and required moving bands numbering in some cases thousands of people over hundreds of miles on foot. Roads were poor, locals hostile, supplies uncertain, and the Indians totally unprepared for the trials they faced. Lieutenant John T. Sprague described the group he was taking west: “They were poor, wretchedly, and depravedly poor, many of them without a garment to cover their nakedness. . . . They left their country at a warm season of the year, thinly clad, and characteristically indifferent to their rapid approach to the rigors of a climate to which they were unaccustomed, they expended what little they had for intoxicating drinks or for some gaudy article of jewelry.”¹¹

In August of 1836, Morris joined the newly authorized regiment of Mounted Creek Volunteers, which was being formed at Fort Mitchell, at the rank of brevet major. The use of Indian troops was not only viewed as practical (the Seminole/Creek rivalry worked both ways), it had become necessary because white volunteers were growing scarce. The first wave of excitement following the Dade Massacre had come and gone. With most of the original militiamen back on their farms, 759 Creeks joined up for one year and were “to receive the pay and emoluments and equipment of soldiers in the Army of the U.S. and such plunder as they may take from the Seminoles.” The regiment was led by Regular Army officers, and even though it was an Indian unit, competition for the officer billets was intense. Service in the volunteer regiment would give the men a chance to assume higher rank than they might otherwise enjoy, and also the opportunity to prove themselves in combat, since it was assumed that this regiment was going straight into action. The coveted colonelcy was given to John F. Lane of Kentucky, a captain in the Second Dragoons.¹² Several other West Pointers joined the unit, as well as Navy Lieutenant William M. Piercy and Lieutenant Andrew Ross of the Marine Corps.

When Morris joined the regiment at Fort Mitchell, he saw a familiar face among the Creeks. It was David Moniac, the first Indian, first minority and first Alabaman graduate of the Military Academy. Moniac was appointed to West Point under the provisions of a 1791 treaty between the United States and the Creek Nation that provided for education for a limited number of Creek children at public expense.¹³ His father, half-Dutch Sam Manac, had been on the delegation that had met with George Washington and negotiated the treaty.¹⁴ A clerical error gave David the name “Moniac” when he entered West Point in September 1817 at age fifteen, and he kept it. He was a determined if not brilliant student (he had only recently learned to read when he arrived at the Academy), who repeated his plebe year at his own request. His name appears among the list of cadets who had complained to Congress about Sylvanus Thayer in 1819, when he stated that “my rank in class, as given by my professor, has been lowered arbitrarily and unjustly” by the Superintendent.¹⁵

Moniac’s disciplinary record showed no serious violations, mainly absences and visiting after hours. He served briefly as a cadet NCO in his cow year, but voluntarily returned to ranks as a firstie. Above all he was famous simply for being “the Indian at West Point.” When the Corps marched to Boston in the summer of 1821 and did a pass in review for former president John Adams, Moniac was a public sensation. The aged Founding Father was not the sole center of attention for the crowd in Quincy—all along the road, people said, “Look there! There’s the Indian!” Adams gave a brief address on the topic “What Is Glory?” after which Moniac was given the opportunity to be introduced to the former president. He demurred, staying instead among the Corps, and a sympathetic Major Worth explained that Moniac was too bashful.¹⁶

Moniac graduated next to last in the Class of 1822. He went on leave of absence in Alabama for six months, then resigned to tend to his father’s failing business. Moniac ran a farm in Baldwin County, planting cotton and raising thoroughbred racehorses. In 1828 he married Mary Powell, whose half-white cousin Billy was at the time yet to find fame as Osceola, and they had two children. In 1835, Moniac served in a regiment raised by Creek chief Opothleyahola to assist General Thomas S. Jesup in putting down resistance to the forced migration policy. Because of his background as a West Point graduate, he was made a captain in the Mounted Creek Volunteers, initially the only Indian officer.¹⁷

In September the Creek Volunteers steamed across the Gulf to Fort Brooke, and in October they proceeded into the wilderness. The Seminoles harassed the column a few times, but the regiment did not see major action, and it linked up with General Richard K. Call’s main force on October 19. Call, the territorial governor of Florida, had taken over command in the theater after a frustrated General Scott sought transfer. That night, Lieutenant Colonel Lane visited his friend Captain Galt in his tent, chatting away cheerily and toying with his saber. He mentioned something about the heat and Galt went out to raise the tent flap. Hearing a groan, he ducked back in to discover that Lane had driven his sword through his right eye into his brain, killing himself. It was unclear whether this was a ghastly accident or Lane had committed suicide, and if the latter, why.¹⁸ The official report termed it a “melancholy death,” meaning suicide, and explained that Lane had been suffering from fever and fatigue. Lieutenant Colonel Harvey Brown, sixth in the Class of 1818, took over command.

General Call’s approach to fighting the war was no more innovative than Scott’s. He knew there were Indian camps out in the wilderness, but did not really know where. So he sent columns into the brush with vague objectives on search-and-destroy missions, failing to find major concentrations of Indians but nevertheless scouting the terrain and at least knowing where they were not. He fought several small engagements that scattered the enemy in the usual way, and perhaps by accident began to close in on the major Seminole settlement in Wahoo Swamp. The Indians took a stand in a blocking position on the edge of dense woods, with a wide cleared field of fire. General Call set off to meet them on November 21, 1836, from a rendezvous point at Dade’s battlefield, an ominous locale but one of the few points of reference in the area. He deployed a mile-wide line of battle, with Tennessee militia on his right, regulars and Florida militia in the center. The Mounted Creek Volunteers, who had donned white turbans to distinguish themselves from the other Indians, took the left. The troops being disposed, and with no particular tactical plan other than moving forward, the line began to advance, led by Colonel B. K. Pierce.

“We marched through the open field,” Jo Guild of the Tennessee Volunteers later wrote. “The hostile Indians were seen coming out of the edge of a large hammock, half naked, jumping and turning about, accompanied with yelling and the war-whoop.”¹⁹ The line advanced to within fifty yards of the Indian position, opened fire and charged. The Indians fired a volley in response, then fell back. The attackers pushed forward through the trees and into another open field. As the troops advanced, the ground grew muddier and the long battle line became disorganized. The Seminoles quickly regrouped at a second position behind a ten-yard-wide stream of black water and began pouring fire into the disordered American troops.

David Moniac, who had been promoted to brevet major for bravery in a skirmish the week before, rallied the Creeks. He charged forward to try to ford the stream and outflank the Seminoles, his men following. As he entered the water, Moniac was drilled by a fusillade of musket balls. He dropped into the murky stream and sank, killed instantly. The Seminoles, seeing whom they believed to be the chief of the Creeks fall, whooped with delight. Morris and the other officers rallied the troops and a sharp contest continued at the stream bank, at point-blank range. Other forces came up some time later and the battle continued until mid-afternoon, when Seminole fire slackened. General Call chose to withdraw rather than attempt to force a crossing, since his men were tired and hungry, and darkness would come in a few hours. A party retrieved Major Moniac’s body from the dark water, and in so doing found that the stream was only three feet deep. Had the rest of the troops charged ahead after Moniac, they would have burst across into a lightly defended Seminole flank, no doubt broken through and descended on the Indian settlement they had been seeking.

The Battle of Wahoo Swamp ended inconclusively, as many other such battles had. Seven of the forty-nine graduates of the USMA Class of 1836 were at this battle, and in all there were about sixteen West Pointers on the field. Lieutenant Colonel Brown was brevetted for gallant conduct.²⁰ Morris would receive a brevet a few months later for Wahoo and other services. There were nineteen American casualties. Seven enlisted men were killed in action. David Moniac was the only officer to die on the field. Marine Lieutenant Ross, mortally wounded, died that evening. In his report to General Call, Colonel Pierce wrote, “I think it a brilliant day, redounding to the honor of our arms, and calculated to bring the war to a speedy termination.”²¹

IN THE FIRST YEAR OF THE Seminole conflict, the War Department claimed to have killed only 131 Indians and captured 15.²² Estimates of total enemy forces were still uncertain, but a field intelligence report from July 1837 calculated 1,513 Seminole warriors in the theater of conflict, double Secretary Cass’s high estimate at the outbreak of war and almost four times Jackson’s estimate.²³ Failure to pacify the territory incited further political squabbles in Washington. There were rivalries between generals and other officers, political interference and sniping at the president and the secretary of war, congressional hearings, debates in the press, and backroom deals with contractors seeking to benefit from the newly doubled War Department budget. In Florida, commander followed commander as battles were fought to inconsequential and expensive victories.

One bright spot in the conflict was the capture of Osceola in October 1837. He had been taken without bloodshed during a parlay, a controversial but effective subterfuge ordered by the new field commander, Major General Thomas S. Jesup. For security reasons, Osceola was removed to Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor, where he was treated as a celebrity. Portraitists flocked to the city to capture the image of the terror of the swamps. He graciously sat for them in full panoply: white smock, red bandanna over his cropped black hair, topped with a black-and-white feather. The portraits showed a strong face, stately and confident, in some pictures looking benevolent, but never warlike or fierce. He had expressive eyes and a Roman nose, and the paintings very much conveyed the image of an aboriginal sovereign that the romantics made of him.²⁴

Osceola would not long enjoy this renown. He had been suffering from an unknown sickness since the time of his capture, and at the end of January 1838 he died, surrounded by his family. By then Osceola was well on his way to becoming a folk hero, in part because of the idealization of his struggle, and also because the way he was captured was seen as unfair. Many outside of Florida condemned Jesup’s move. Lucy Hooper, a young poet who wrote a lengthy paean to Osceola, said that Jesup’s stratagem was “a transaction which should ever cover the officer’s name with lasting infamy.” Another poet, the Reverend John Pierpoint, said that Jesup had dishonored “a flag that [even] Tartar hordes respect.”²⁵ As late as 1858, Jesup was called upon publicly to defend his actions.²⁶ Meanwhile Osceola, in death, had become the epitome of the noble savage. Counties, towns and ships were named after him, poems and memorials written in his honor. The men he had killed and his role in planning the Dade Massacre and other atrocities were forgotten, but the war he had incited ground on.

LIEUTENANT RICHARD B. SCREVEN served in Florida with the Fourth Infantry. He had continued his studies at West Point after his reprieve in the Eggnog Mutiny and graduated last in the Class of 1829. Like William W. Morris he had been escorting Indians west when the war broke out; his unit moved south and got into the action within weeks. Screven had fought in several heavy skirmishes, and in December 1837 the Fourth Infantry moved into the interior for what he hoped would be the final battle.

Screven was part of a column of 1,350 troops, four-fifths of whom were regulars, heading south into the heart of the Seminole stronghold, led by Colonel Zachary Taylor. Over 400 Seminoles awaited Taylor’s force in a prepared position near Lake Okeechobee, led by Alligator, Coacoochee (also known as Wild Cat) and Halleck Tustenuggee, a six foot two inch Mickasukie warlord with a fanatical following. Their defensive bastion was in a broad hummock fronted by a half-mile-deep swampy glacis, with waist-deep water and five-foot saw grass. The Indians were deployed in three groups; they had fixed their fields of fire, cut corridors in the tall grass, and rested their rifles in notches cut into the cypress trees. Lake Okeechobee was to their rear, with escape routes to the right and left. They had planned to meet a frontal assault, and Taylor did not disappoint them.

Taylor deployed a regiment of Missouri Volunteers as a skirmish line, followed by the Fourth and Sixth Infantry regiments, with the First Infantry in reserve. The Missourians moved forward at 12:30 P.M. into the teeth of the Seminole fire, and their commander, Colonel Gentry, went down at once, mortally wounded. The militiamen ducked, seeking shelter, and the troops behind them opened up on the Indians. Some of the Missourians were wounded in the crossfire and many fell back. The Seminoles kept up their accurate fire, raking the two regular infantry regiments. Almost every officer and noncom was wounded. Colonel Alexander Ramsey Thompson, Class of 1812 and son of Mrs. Thompson whose rooms were so much in demand at West Point, was struck down leading the Sixth Infantry. He exhorted his men to “Remember the regiment to which you belong!” before succumbing.

After two and a half hours of bloody stalemate, Taylor attempted a flanking maneuver.²⁷ He sent the reserve force to hit the Indians on their right. The enemy flank buckled, and the main body of the Seminole force scattered back towards the lake. Screven and some elements of the Fourth gave chase until nightfall. Taylor was left holding the field, but there was no chance to exploit the victory, if it could be called that. The Indians took 25 casualties, 11 of them killed. Taylor’s force suffered 138 casualties, 26 killed. William H. T. Walker of the Sixth Infantry, a Georgian who had graduated from West Point that spring close to the bottom of the Class of 1837, was “literally shot to pieces” by one account, having four balls pass through his body and being grazed by several more. Remarkably, he survived.²⁸ Colonel Gentry, in his last minutes, made a final request to Taylor: “be as easy on [the Missouri militia] as you can in your report.”²⁹ But Taylor did not honor the request; his account as much as accused the Missourians of cowardice, leading to another political row in Washington. Despite angry calls for his resignation, Taylor was promoted to brigadier general.

Taylor took over command in Florida the next spring. Jesup, shot through the cheek leading troops at the Battle of Lockahatchee, had grown weary of the conflict. During his tenure in Florida, 2,400 enemy had been captured or killed, 700 of whom were warriors.³⁰ These numbers were greater than the initial estimates of total Seminole strength, and yet the conflict continued. In the spring of 1838, Jesup wrote to the War Department questioning the wisdom of continuing the costly war against such an elusive enemy, fighting over ground that white farmers would never settle even if it were secured. But his views were not shared by the secretary of war, and in May 1838 he was transferred.

Taylor too had been frustrated by the conduct of the war, and wrote his friend Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky that were he a member of Congress, he “would never vote to appropriate a dollar to carry it out under present circumstances.”³¹ Like Jesup, he believed that if the remaining few Seminoles were left confined to their wilderness refuges they would pose no particular threat, certainly not one worth the effort currently being undertaken. Taylor’s innovation was the system of “squares,” twenty miles on a side, that he mapped out in the spring of 1839. His idea was to establish a grid in the area of resistance, with a garrison in the middle of each square connected by roads. Each garrison commander would have the responsibility to send out regular mounted patrols and gradually take control of the whole area.

Lieutenant Nathaniel Wyche Hunter, commanding F Troop, Second Dragoons, was sent to establish a post on the bank of the St. Johns River, with few supplies, no guide, no map, and “wholly ignorant of the country in which I am expected to operate.”³² Wyche had been in Florida for several years and had not seen major action. At “Fort Hunter” he sent out periodic patrols but did not encounter any Seminoles. Most of the battles he fought were against the Quartermaster Corps, which would not provide him with lumber or other supplies he needed to establish his post. He poured out his scorn in his diary in pages of invective. “A dolt, dunce, dullard, anything could be a Q. Master now-a-days. . . . The first official act of the Q. Master is to make himself comfortable—the second more comfortable—the third most comfortable—the last to make everyone else as uncomfortable as the licenses of the services will permit. . . . ’Tis a villainous trade.”³³ His rudimentary defenses would be insufficient to ward off a Seminole assault, and he noted that he would be “extremely obliged if the Indians would give me a wide berth in their various excursions through the country.”³⁴ It was a sore point for Wyche, who had previously served at a post the Seminoles had infiltrated and burned. He was forced to overwork his troops, with whom he empathized because they reminded him of “some galley slave chained to the bench.”³⁵ Many fell sick, others “chop their feet or do something else (accidentally of course) to excuse them from duty.” By the end of his first month in the field, Wyche was finally sent some nails for construction, but unfortunately no hammers. He noted, “I’m most essentially disgusted.”³⁶

Despite Hunter’s assessment, the squares had some impact. Few Indians were apprehended, but the system of outposts began to corral the Seminoles, and more bands made peace and were moved west. So much progress had been made that General Macomb himself came to Fort King to parley with the Seminoles over ending the war. He reached an agreement with several of the remaining chiefs, represented by Halleck Tustenuggee, in which the Indians were to move south of Pease Creek and Lake Okeechobee, to live unmolested until other arrangements could be made. On May 20, 1839, with great ceremony, General Macomb declared the cessation of hostilities. “The Major General commanding in chief has the satisfaction of announcing to the Army in Florida, to the authorities of the Territory, and to the citizens generally, that he has this day terminated the war with the Seminole Indians.” The Indians withdrew south, Macomb returned to Washington, settlers began to return to the land, and politicians and the public focused on other matters.

One of the provisions of the peace agreement was that a trading post be established in the Seminole lands, and oversight of the task fell to Lieutenant Colonel William Selby Harney of the Second Dragoons. Harney was thirty-nine years old, six foot three, physically commanding, handsome, confident, and suspicious of the Seminoles. He was from a well-to-do Tennessee family, a neighbor and friend to Andrew Jackson, who employed Harney’s brother James as his personal lawyer. The site chosen for the trading post was Charlotte Harbor, a riverside pine barren twelve miles from the mouth of the Caloosahatchee. Twenty-six men, a storekeeper and clerks were building the post. The truce was holding, and Indians peacefully came and went, expressing satisfaction with the pact.

On the night of July 22, 1839, Harney sacked out half clothed after a boar hunt. At daylight the next morning, 160 Indians led by a chief named Chakaika mounted a surprise attack. Many of the attackers had been to the post many times and knew exactly where to strike. They had surrounded the large hospital tent being used as quarters for most of the men and tore into it simultaneously. Eighteen were killed, most of them in their beds, some pursued to the river and shot, others led to safety by supposedly friendly Indians and then struck down. Seminoles looted the stores, taking thousands in silver coins and materiel. Fourteen men escaped, including Harney, who ran to the river in his underwear and swam for it, then floated downstream in an Indian dugout. Other survivors were forced to hide for days, evading roving Indians and eating raw oysters and fiddler crabs.

The attack sundered the truce. A new wave of Indian violence followed, and public confidence plummeted. Secretary of War Joel Poinsett came under fire by the president’s political opponents for his conduct of the hostilities. He was accused of lying to the public and to Congress about the progress of the war and about its costs. The budget was a particularly sensitive issue. Martin Van Buren had inherited a growing economy and the only Treasury surplus in United States history.³⁷ However, he stepped immediately into a recession, the Panic of 1837, and the public account went back into debt. The economy failed to recover and the president was tagged with the nickname “Martin Van Ruin.” War expenses were so great that some critics argued it would be cheaper just to pay the Seminoles to behave. Northerners saw the war as a means of gathering slaves or guaranteeing Florida’s admission as a slave state. But the most celebrated dispute arose over bloodhounds.

On his own initiative Governor Call imported thirty-three bloodhounds from Havana, where they had been trained to track runaway slaves, to be used for locating Indians. Taylor, highly skeptical of the efficacy of the dogs, allowed two to be used on a test basis. The experiment was a failure; Wyche, who observed the use of the bloodhounds, wrote, “Dogs of no value whatever . . . the last hope of terminating the war has proved a chimera—a humbug—a hoax.”³⁸ In the Washington echo chamber, the bloodhounds became a national issue far out of proportion to their importance. Many believed the purpose of the dogs was to run down and maul the Indians. Petitions from all parts of the country were laid before Congress to protest this inhumane method of war. The War Department denied responsibility for the move and sent firm instructions to the field that the dogs be muzzled and kept on leashes to ensure that they could only track and did not actually bite the Seminoles. An editorial cartoon showed dogs receiving brevet promotions, and congressman and former president John Quincy Adams submitted a taunting resolution that “the Secretary of War be directed to report to this House the natural, political and martial history of the bloodhounds, showing the peculiar fitness of the class of warriors to be the associates of the gallant Army of the United States . . . and whether he deems it expedient to extend to the said bloodhounds and their posterity the benefits of the pension laws.”³⁹ The issue was a symptom of an administration that had lost its direction. The futile war that Van Buren had inherited from Andrew Jackson helped end his chances at reelection. He lost to William Henry Harrison, famous for defeating the Indians at Tippecanoe, who died after a month in office, leaving the war to President John Tyler.

War Without End

THE SEMINOLE WAR WAS HAVING a devastating effect on the Army. Morale was poor in both officer and enlisted ranks. Where enlisted men chose to escape by desertion, officers resorted to resignation. In the first year of the war, 117 Regular Army officers had resigned, with an average of thirty per year thereafter leaving the colors. Some were frustrated at their inability to find or engage the enemy, others by the seeming ineptitude of their commanders; still others were fed up with life in the Florida wilds. Above all, they were perturbed by a war that refused to come to a close. As an Army camp song put it,

Ever since creation,

The best calculation,

The Florida war has been raging;

And ’tis our expectation

That the last conflagration

Will find us the same contest waging.

There was some sympathy for the Indians, even among the soldiers, that echoed the thoughts of the admirers of Osceola. Captain Hitchcock stated that the Seminoles have “nobly defended their country against our attempt to enforce a fraudulent treaty.”⁴⁰ Lieutenant John T. Sprague wrote that “Their sin is patriotism, as true as ever burned in the hearts of the most civilized.”⁴¹ The Indians were compared to the Founding Fathers, fighting for “their homes, their property, their families, and their rights.”⁴² Wyche, upon receiving a “no prisoners” order from Colonel Taylor, wondered why he would issue such an inhumane directive and vowed to his diary that “No Indian prisoner while under my command shall suffer a premeditated death. I should be proud of an opportunity of showing my utter disrespect for such an order.”⁴³ His experiences in the war had convinced him that there was something fundamentally unjust about the conflict. “I’ve tried every argument to still my conscience,” he wrote, “but this restless imp will not be quiet. . . . Have God and justice no claims upon you prior and paramount to a government, that incites you to the commission of a crime? . . . Is not every act of the Indians sanctioned by the practices of civilized nations?”⁴⁴ The Army began to adapt to Indian warfare, developing guerilla-style units and tactics. Though these irregular methods were controversial, they were effective; but for every success against the Seminoles, there were cruel reminders that the war was not yet over.

Lieutenant Alexander Montgomery came to Florida in 1839. He was a classmate of Edgar Allan Poe’s and graduated the Goat of the Class of 1834. While stationed at Newport, Kentucky, he won the hand of Miss Sarah Taylor, a local belle and member of the wealthy Taylor family that founded the town, and distantly related to Zachary Taylor.⁴⁵ He convinced her to accompany him to Florida, and she soon found herself at Fort Wheelock, one of the interior posts, far from the comforts of the family home and with few of the diversions to which she was accustomed. In December 1840, a friend of hers, wife of Kentucky native Lieutenant Nevil Hopson, an Immortal of the Class of 1837, invited her to visit Fort King. Sarah Montgomery set off on a pleasant morning, dressed in a stylish riding habit, accompanied by Lieutenant Hopson, his classmate Lieutenant Walter Sherwood, Sergeant Major Carroll, and ten privates. Alexander Montgomery, who was not feeling well, stayed behind.

Three miles from the fort, at a creek crossing called Martin’s Point, a volley of fire from the bushes took down the mounted men in front of the wagon. The ambush party was led by Halleck Tustenuggee, who had fought Taylor at Okeechobee and had made peace with General Macomb in May of 1839. Lieutenant Sherwood dismounted, began organizing a defense, and ordered Mrs. Montgomery into a covered wagon for safety. He sent Hopson back to Fort Wheelock for reinforcements. Hopson raced back to the fort, preceded by Sarah’s horse, which reached the fort before he did, alerting the troops that something was wrong.

Meanwhile the defenders had formed around the wagon and were being picked off one by one. Sherwood went down, shot in the chest, but still living. Sergeant Major Carroll stood over him, defending the wounded officer until he was cut down in hand-to-hand struggle. As the defensive cordon collapsed, the driver and Sarah knew they had to make a break for it if they hoped to survive. They leapt from the wagon and dashed down the road. But Sarah tripped over her long riding dress. The driver tried to help her, and she stood, ran a few more steps, fell, rose, ran, and fell again. Meanwhile the Indians had spotted the pair and were pursuing, laughing as they came. The driver decided that discretion was the better part of valor and saved himself. Sarah, confused in her terror, rose and ran towards the Indians, who quickly killed her.⁴⁶ It was exactly five years to the day of the Dade Massacre.

The Martin’s Point incident intensified the lingering sense of futility. Taylor gave up command in 1841 and was replaced by Colonel William “Haughty Bill” Worth. The former USMA Commandant was handsome, a good fighter, yet rash and vain. Ordered to end the war, he settled on a strategy of vigorous military action coupled with negotiations and resettlement. His operations order was simple and straightforward: “Find the enemy, capture or exterminate.” A bounty of $100 was placed on every warrior killed or captured. Worth pressed a joint Army-Navy-Marine incursion into the Everglades, rooting out Seminole sanctuaries and isolated croplands on small islands, showing the Indians they had nowhere to hide.⁴⁷ Elsewhere he kept troops in motion, pushing them into the field even through the summer, forcing the Seminole bands to keep moving too. Some small indecisive actions were fought, but Worth was not seeking decisive engagement. His plan was to wear the enemy down through continual pressure. He brought emigrant chiefs such as Billy Bowlegs back to convince others that life in Oklahoma Territory was a better option than slow, inevitable destruction in Florida.

In the spring of 1841, Worth captured Coacoochee, a respected and eloquent leader who had commanded at Okeechobee, whose band numbered 189 men, women and children. Coacoochee had come to Worth with a small delegation, dressed in the costume of Hamlet he had taken from a theatrical troop his men had waylaid on the road a short time before.⁴⁸ Worth made an impassioned plea to the chief to have his people surrender (threatening to hang him if they did not). Eventually they all came in and the group emigrated.

During his captivity, Coacoochee made an enduring contribution to U.S. military culture. At a banquet, he noticed that the soldiers would raise their drinks and make brief toasts before drinking. Toasting was not a Seminole custom, and he asked the interpreter, Gopher John, what the soldiers were saying. Gopher John said that toasting was a form of greeting. Coacoochee, with great dignity, then raised his cup high and said to the assembled in a great deep voice, “Hoo-ah!”⁴⁹ The toast was echoed by the soldiers around the table, and was before long adopted across the Army, being immortalized in the chorus of a contemporary drinking song:

Hoo-ah! boys, hoo-ah—hoo-ah! boys, hoo-ah.

Let the soldiers’ toast be ever, Hoo-ah!⁵⁰

Years later, Coacoochee became an officer in the Mexican Army, fighting Comanches in New Mexico. One night he got into a drunken brawl with Gopher John, who caved in the old chief’s head with a whiskey bottle, killing him.

By February of 1842, Worth estimated that there were approximately 300 Indians left in Florida, including 112 warriors.⁵¹ Among the holdouts was Halleck Tustenuggee, who with his band of 114 followers resisted to the very end. He participated in the last significant action of the war in April and was taken captive with his band shortly thereafter. When he was finally shipped west on July 14, the bitter chief said, “I have been hunted like a wolf, and now I am sent away like a dog.”⁵² Worth declared the war over on August 14, 1842.

In the seven years of the Second Seminole War, the Army lost 1,446 dead, 328 of them killed in action, most of the rest to disease. With 10,169 soldiers serving in Florida, the death rate was 14 percent, making it by far the deadliest of any of America’s wars. The losses included 74 officers dead and 20 killed in action; 13 of the dead were Academy graduates. The conflict cost between $10 and $40 million, depending on who was doing the estimate.⁵³

In addition to the mortal and monetary costs, there were also the intangibles—the suffering, fear, and hollow sense of accomplishment. The Second Seminole War was a brutal, difficult pacification in which progress was measured by inches, and success by the gradual diminishing of Indian attacks. A period observer said it was “indeed, a most remarkable war, and will hereafter be regarded as one of the most successful struggles which history exhibits, of a barbarous, weak, and almost destitute people, with a civilized, strong, and abundantly provided nation.”⁵⁴ Of the Seminoles, 3,800 were shipped west, an unknown number killed or dying of wounds, starvation or disease in the trackless wilderness. For the troops who fought the Second Seminole War, even for those who later saw action in Mexico and the Civil War, it was universally regarded as the worst service they had ever known. Nathaniel Wyche Hunter likened the sight of the ship coming to take him from Florida to the vista of the Promised Land when the Children of Israel first gazed upon it.