The Exiles of Florida / or, The crimes committed by our government against the Maroons, who fled from South Carolina and other slave states, seeking protection under Spanish laws.

by Joshua R. Giddings

With what particular chiefs this arrangement was made, or what were the terms of the arrangement, the Author has not learned; yet, as we shall see hereafter, he represented it to have been made at “Fort King” with Co-Hadjo, an unimportant chief, and then attempted to hold the Seminole Nation responsible for Co-Hadjo’s promise. But under these circumstances, the reader will ask what consideration was paid Co-Hadjo to bribe him to enter into such a contract? That chief and General Jessup and General Cass, Secretary of War, must have known he possessed no power to bind the Seminole Nation, nor to surrender those persons to slavery. It will long remain a subject of inquiry. Why did the War Department sanction this violation of the solemn articles of capitulation, which these officers termed a treaty, and which certainly possessed all the solemnity and binding force of a treaty?

There is also an inexplicable obscurity attending this subject. General Jessup wrote Colonel Harney, on the eighth of April, that he had that day made the arrangement, etc.; while the Secretary of War states that he had learned of this arrangement by General Jessup’s two letters, dated the first and fifteenth of April. One of these letters appears to bear date seven days before, and the other seven days after, the day on which he declares the arrangement was made. The withholding of such fact seven days from the War Department would be as incompatible with military duty as the giving it seven days before its existence, is irreconcilable with the common perceptions of mankind.

In several instances, General Jessup had foretold that a renewal of the war would follow any attempt to deliver up negroes to the claimants in Florida, and it would appear that he must have expected that result; but he communicated to the commandants of nearly all the different posts, that he had made arrangements with the chiefs for returning slaves captured during the war. But, up to the twenty-sixth of April, he steadily insisted that no obligation rested upon the Indians to bring in runaway negroes who had fled to them before the war.

On the twenty-sixth, he wrote Colonel Brown, of St. Augustine, saying:—“I have made arrangements with the Indians for the delivery of the negroes captured during the war. They are to be delivered, if they can be taken without delaying the Indians in their movements, at the posts on the St. John’s. The Indians are not bound to surrender runaway negroes. They must, and shall, give up those taken during the war: at all events, they shall not take them out of the country. Further than that, I shall not interfere.”

But while relating facts on this subject, we should be unfaithful to the truth of history were we to omit the letter which this officer wrote, on the following day, to Hon. J. L. Smith, a citizen of Florida. This letter, bearing date at Tampa Bay on the twenty-seventh of April, 1837, says:

“I received, yesterday, your letter of the eighteenth, with a list of the slaves which you claim. Ansel is the only one of the three who has been taken. I have him employed, at one of the interior posts, as an interpreter. The negroes generally have taken the alarm, and but few of them come in; and those who remain out, prevent the Indians from coming. But for the premature attempts of some citizens of Florida to obtain possession of their slaves, a majority of those taken by the Indians during the war, as well as those who absconded previous to it, would have been secured before this time. More than thirty negro men were in and near my camp, when some of the citizens, who had lost negroes, came to demand them. The Indian-negroes immediately disappeared, and have not been heard of since.”

It is believed that, in the conducting of this second Seminole war, no act of any public officer will hereafter appear more inexplicable than the conduct of General Jessup, in regard to this stipulation in favor of the Exiles. No person can suppose there was any doubt in regard to the original design of this stipulation. He at first appears determined to carry it out in good faith; this was before he learned the complaint of the slaveholders of Florida, made to the Secretary of War. He next expressed his intention to make an arrangement with the chiefs to surrender negroes captured during the war—as though the chiefs were authorized to consign “their allies” to slavery. He next says he had made such an arrangement, but fails to say with whom. At length it comes out, in the future history, that he alleges it to have been made with Co-Hadjo, an obscure chief, in no way a party to the capitulation, or connected with it. And finally, in this letter to Judge Smith, he intimates that he would have betrayed many of those allies to slavery, if the people of the Territory had been quiet.

Our present duty, however, is to record facts, without asking attention to the intended treachery or fraud of individuals; but this avowed intention of entrapping the negroes by inducing them to come in under the expectation of emigrating West with their Seminole friends, and then consign them to bondage, must attract the attention and excite the wonder of Christian men. This wonder is increased by the fact, that language is constantly used by slaveholders apparently intended to mislead the Northern reader. For instance, General Jessup speaks of slaves “captured during the war,” as though the Indians made prisoners of slaves. This is believed to be entirely without foundation. Slaves being regarded by Southern men as property, incapable of thought, whenever they fled from their masters and sought an asylum with the Indians, the masters spoke of them as captured.

Soon us it was known that slaves were to be seized and returned, claims were preferred from all quarters. The correspondence on this subject, now in the Department of War, would of itself form a volume, if quoted at length. Spaniards sent in claims for slaves lost while the Territory was in possession of Spain, in 1802 and 1803. Claims from South Carolina, from Georgia, Alabama and Florida, and from Creek Indians, were presented to the commandants of different posts. Slaveholders evidently felt that they were to be permitted to seize such colored prisoners as they could lay their hands upon, and enslave them. They no longer waited for black prisoners to be brought to the St. John’s, or other posts, but like wolves greedy for their prey, they hurried into the Indian Country, and risked their lives in order to secure victims for the slave-markets.

The Legislative Council of Florida became affected with this general mania, and in the most formal manner declared the right of masters to regain possession of their slaves, without regard to the Federal Government or its officers.