The battle continued an hour and twenty minutes. During this time, the regular troops under Colonel Clinch were subjected to a brisk fire, and their loss was severe. Eight men were killed and forty wounded, of whom about one-third died of their wounds. Several officers were also wounded. The militia consulted their own safety by refusing to expose themselves to the fire of the enemy; while the regular troops lost, in killed and wounded, nearly one-fourth of their number. The allies drew off, leaving Colonel Clinch in possession of the field; but the victory had been won at great expense of blood; and the determined coolness and gallantry of the veteran officer who commanded our forces, saved them from a total defeat.

The blows thus far had fallen most heavily upon our own troops. It became evident, that the carrying out of General Jackson’s policy, of removing the Exiles and Indians from Florida, in order to encourage and sustain slavery, was to be attended with great sacrifice of blood and treasure. But while the Government and people were looking at these unexpected exhibitions of firmness and love of liberty, on the part of the allied forces, other scenes were presented to their view. The fugitive slaves who had recently left their masters in Florida and joined the Exiles, were stimulated with that hatred which slavery alone can engender in the human breast. They thirsted for revenge upon those who had held them in bondage; who had scourged and tortured them. They were acquainted with the location of the small settlements throughout the Territory. Uniting with the more daring spirits among the Indians and Exiles, they proceeded rapidly and stealthily from plantation to plantation, burning buildings, destroying property, and scattering devastation throughout the border settlements; at times murdering whole families, killing and scalping such individuals as fell in their way.

Men who had urged on the war with the hope of seizing and enslaving the maroons of the interior, now saw their own plantations laid waste, and in frequent instances mourned the loss of wives and children, instead of rejoicing over captured slaves, whom they had intended to acquire by piratical force. Farms, and the smaller villages on the frontier, were abandoned to the enemy; and the inhabitants fled to the larger villages, where they banded together for mutual defense. The citizens of Florida who had petitioned General Jackson for the forcible removal of the Indians, because they failed to capture and return slaves, were now compelled to flee, with their families, before the infuriated servants who had left them subsequently to the signing of that petition. Driven from their homes—their property destroyed, their servants fled—many families, who but a few months previously had been regarded as wealthy, were now suffering from the want of bread.[84]

The whole scene was calculated to impress statesmen and people with that religious philosophy which teaches, that every violation of justice or of moral principle, is, by the immutable law of the Creator, inseparably connected with an appropriate penalty. All that the Exiles or Indians had ever asked or desired of the American Government, was to leave them to themselves; to permit them to remain as they were, as they had been for many generations.

The war on our part had not been commenced for the attainment of any high or noble purpose. No desire to elevate mankind, or confer benefits upon our race, had guided our national policy in commencing the war. Our national influence and military power had been put forth to reënslave our fellow men; to transform immortal beings into chattels, and make them the property of slaveholders; to oppose the rights of human nature; and the legitimate fruits of this policy were gathered in a plentiful harvest of crime, bloodshed and individual suffering.

The great body of the people were ignorant as to the real causes of the war. General Jackson had been popular as a military officer, and was not less so as President of the United States. With his political friends his will was law. The opposing political party were comparatively few in numbers. They feared his power; and no member of either Senate or House of Representatives appeared willing to expose the great moral crimes which the Government was committing against humanity. Hence Congress granted whatever supplies were demanded for carrying on this piratical war, and enabling the President to slay those who refused to be enslaved.

1836.

General Cass, a statesman with whose character the present generation is familiar, was Secretary of War. On him devolved the duty of controlling the movements of the army. Unfortunately for him and for mankind, he appears to have regarded moral and political duties as separate and distinct in their character. He evidently believed that no moral turpitude was attached to movements of the army, and the outrages committed upon the Indians and Exiles, in order to compel them to emigrate to the western country. He ordered Major General Scott to the field, as Commanding General of the army in Florida (Jan. 20), with authority to call on the Governors of South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama for such troops as he should deem necessary. General Eustis, commanding at Charleston, South Carolina, was directed to repair at once to Florida with such forces as were stationed in that city and Savannah, and to accept the services of such number of volunteers as he might deem necessary under the circumstances.

Major General Gaines, commanding the western military department, holding his head quarters at New Orleans, hearing of the sad fate of Major Dade and his regiment, embarked at once with a brigade of eleven hundred men, and reached “Fort Brooke” on the tenth of January. On the thirteenth, he took up his line of march for “Fort King,” and on the nineteenth, encamped upon the same ground which Major Dade had occupied on the night of the twenty-seventh of December. The next day they took possession of the field of massacre, and buried the bodies of those who had fallen in that unfortunate conflict. He then proceeded to Fort King, where he arrived on the twenty-second. Leaving Fort King on the twenty-fifth, he took a more westerly route back toward Fort Brooke.

On the twenty-seventh, as he was seeking a place at which to cross the Withlacoochee, the allied forces opened a fire upon his advanced guard from the opposite bank. The firing increased as other forces were brought into action, and continued for more than two hours, ceasing with the nightfall.