Finally most of the Seminoles were killed or surrendered for transfer to reservations in the West. A few were allowed to remain deep in the Everglades. There were probably less than 5,000 Indians in Florida at the outset, yet the war involved the enlistment of 20,000 men, an estimated cost of thirty million dollars, and 1,500 United States casualties.
St. Augustine somewhat reluctantly saw the war come to an end. The presence of officers and troops had enlivened its social life, and poured government funds into the city.
A Peaceful Interlude
The end of the Seminole War made Florida safe again for travelers. William Cullen Bryant, the popular poet and author, paid St. Augustine a visit in 1843 and wrote articles about the city that were widely read. He noted that gabled roofs were rapidly replacing the flat roofs of the first Spanish period, and that some “modern” wooden buildings had been constructed. More than half the inhabitants still spoke the Minorcan, or Mahonese language.
Another visitor of 1843 was Henry B. Whipple, later a prominent Episcopal Bishop. He found masquerading still a popular pastime in the city. Masking began during the Christmas holidays and continued until Lent. Small groups of people dressed in various disguises spent the evenings going from house to house, acting out their parts and furnishing their own music with guitar and violin. Whipple wrote that St. Augustine was still full of old ruins, and that “he liked to wander through the narrow streets and gaze upon these monitors of time, which whispered that the hands that built them were long since mouldering in the grave.”
St. George Street as it looked in the 1870’s.
In 1845 Florida became the twenty-seventh state admitted to the Union. Tallahassee had been selected as its territorial capital in 1824, being a compromise between St. Augustine and Pensacola, both of which were difficult to reach from most of the state.
General Edmund Kirby Smith.