General Taylor and his surviving officers were now left to ascertain their loss, and contemplate the expense of subduing even a savage people, fighting for their homes, their firesides, their liberties. And we are led to think if those Northern statesmen who, for many years subsequent to that date, were accustomed to inquire, What has the nation to do with slavery? had been present and propounded that question to General Taylor or his officers, they would have been silently pointed to twenty-six dead bodies of their deceased comrades, then lifeless upon the ground, and to one hundred and twelve wounded officers and soldiers, who were prostrated in that swamp and hommock, suffering all the pangs which mortals are capable of enduring; but the language of their gallant commander better expresses his feelings than any which we can command.
In his official report, General Taylor says: “We suffered much, having twenty-six killed and one hundred and twelve wounded, among whom are some of our most valuable officers. * * Soon as the enemy were completely broken, I turned my attention to taking care of the wounded, to facilitate their removal to my baggage, where I had ordered an encampment to be formed. * * And here I trust I may be permitted to say, that I experienced one of the most trying scenes of my life; and he who could have looked on it with indifference, his nerves must have been very differently organized from my own. Besides the killed, among whom were some of my personal friends, there lay one hundred and twelve officers and soldiers, who had accompanied me one hundred and forty-five miles, through an unexplored wilderness, without guides; who had so gallantly beaten the enemy, under my orders, in his strongest positions; and who had to be conveyed back, through swamps and hommocks, from whence we set out, without any apparent means of doing so.”
The next day was occupied in burying the dead, making litters for the transportation of the wounded, and preparing for their return to Withlacoochee. One hundred and thirty-eight men had fallen in this single conflict, victims to the policy of our Government, in attempting to restore to a state of slavery men who abhorred and had fled from it. The allies had also suffered severely. General Taylor reported that ten of their dead and wounded were left on the field.[106] But no prisoners were taken, no slaves were captured; and those Indians who had come from Arkansas to Florida, for the purpose of sharing in slave-catching forays, found it a far more dangerous employment, and one of more difficulty, than they had expected.
On the morning of the twenty-sixth, General Taylor, with his sick and wounded, left his encampment, and, after encountering great difficulties, reached Withlacoochee on the thirty-first of December; having been absent twelve days. He made a brief official report of this expedition, and of the severe battle he had fought. This report was quietly filed away in the War Department, and but few, even of our public men, appeared to be fully conscious that he had performed meritorious service in the Florida war.[107]
But while General Taylor was thus quietly engaged in the most hazardous service, General Jessup was active in securing negroes, and employing the military power of the nation, so far as able, to seize and return fugitives to their owners. It would exceed the limits of our present work, were we to notice the efforts of various individuals claiming to have lost slaves. The Indian Bureau at Washington was engaged in this service, and applications were constantly made for slaves to the commanding officer. These applications were usually referred to some quarter-master, or pay-master, for decision; and if such inferior officer belonged to the militia, the person claimed was usually delivered over to bondage, whether the claimant had ever seen him previously or not. It is a matter of astonishment that our National Administration, guided by a Northern President (Mr. Van Buren), should have permitted a pay-master or quarter-master of militia, to sit in grave examination of the right of their fellow-men to liberty; to act as judge, jury and counselor, in cases involving the rights with which the God of Nature had endowed them.
But to the honor of our army, it was said that both officers and men of the regular service, generally held the work of catching slaves in supreme contempt. More than three hundred heavy documentary pages were communicated to Congress on this subject, nearly all of which are filled with extracts of letters, reports, orders, opinions and directions concerning slaves, connected with this Florida war.[108]
Great difficulty arose among the Indians in consequence of the reënslavement of their friends, the Exiles. They felt the outrage with as much apparent keenness as though it had been perpetrated upon themselves. To prevent these difficulties, General Jessup separated the Exiles from their Indian allies, whenever they surrendered or were taken prisoners.[109]
In pursuance of this plan, he sent Osceola and the other Indians seized at Fort Peyton; and Micanopy, and others who had come into his own camp for the purpose of negotiating a treaty, to Charleston, South Carolina; while the Exiles were sent, some to Tampa Bay and other places, to be subjected to the inspection of men who professed to have been their previous owners.
General Jessup, in the very elaborate defense of his proceedings, dated July, 1838, justifies this policy of separating the Indians and Exiles by saying, that he learned the year previous, from prisoners captured, that the Indians through the Seminole negroes had entered into arrangements with their slaves that so soon as hostilities should commence, the latter were to join their masters, and take up arms against the whites. This information, representing the Indians as entering into negotiation with their own slaves through the “Seminole negroes” (Exiles), bears the character of fiction; yet it is gravely set forth in an official report, and we are bound to treat it respectfully.[110]
Under this arrangement—separating the Indians and Exiles—all the relations of domestic life were disregarded. The Indian husband was separated from the wife he had selected among the daughters of the Exiles; and the Indian wife was separated from her more sable husband. The darker colored prisoners were hurried to Tampa Bay, and the red men and women were sent to Charleston for safe keeping.