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

Lieutenant Hanson, commanding at Fort Mellon, on receiving the order which we have quoted, seized some thirty Indians at that time visiting Fort Mellon, and sent them immediately to Charleston, South Carolina; whence they were embarked for the Indian Country, west of Arkansas, where they joined their brethren, who still resided upon the Cherokee Territory.

In these transactions, the Exiles who remained in Florida appear to have taken no part, at least so far as we are informed. They labored to obtain the treaty of peace; but such was the treachery with which they had been treated, that they would not subject themselves to the power of the white people, and were not of course present at the treaty; nor were they recognized by General McComb as a party to the treaty, or in any way interested in its provisions. Indeed, we are led to believe that General McComb adopted the policy on which General Taylor usually practiced, of recognizing no distinctions among prisoners or enemies.

The Administration appeared to be paralyzed under this new demonstration of the power and madness of the Seminoles. At the commencement of the war, some officers had estimated the whole number of Seminoles at fifteen hundred, and the negroes as low as four hundred. They had now sent some two thousand Indians and negroes to the Western Country; and yet those left in Florida, renewed the war with all the savage barbarity which had characterized the Seminoles in the days of their greatest power. Indeed, they exhibited no signs of humiliation.

The Secretary of War, Mr. Poinsett, a South Carolinian, probably exerted more influence with the President in regard to this war than any other officer of Government. His predecessor, General Cass, had treated the Exiles as mere chattels, having “no rights.” He had advised the employment of Creek Indians, giving them such negroes as they might capture; he had officially approved the contract made with them by General Jessup. After he left the office, his successor, Mr. Poinsett, approved the order purchasing some ninety of them on account of Government. He had advised Watson to purchase them; had done all in his power to consign them to slavery in Georgia. He was, however, constrained to make an official report upon the state of this war, at the opening of the first session of the Twenty-sixth Congress, which assembled on the first Monday of December, 1839.

That report, when considered in connection with the events which gave character to the Florida War, constitutes a most extraordinary paper. Notwithstanding all the difficulties which he had encountered in his efforts to enslave the Exiles, to prevent at least ninety of them from going West, and the complaints of the Seminoles who had emigrated to the Western Country, at finding themselves destitute of homes and of territory on which to settle, he made no allusion to their troubles; nor did he give any intimation of the difficulties arising on account of the Exiles; nor did he even intimate that such a class of people existed in Florida.

1840.

He declared the result of General McComb’s negotiation had been the loss of many valuable lives. “Our people (said he) fell a sacrifice to their confidence in the good faith and promises of the Indians, and were entrapped and murdered with all the circumstances of cruelty and treachery which distinguish Indian warfare. * * * The experience of the last summer brings with it the painful conviction, that the war must be prosecuted until Florida is freed from these ruthless savages. Their late, cruel and treacherous conduct is too well known to require a repetition of the revolting recital; it has been such as is calculated to deprive them of the sympathy of the humane, and convince ‘the most peaceable of the necessity of subduing them by force.”

It appeared necessary to raise the cry of treachery and cruelty against the Indians and Exiles. They had no friend who was acquainted with the facts, that could call attention of the nation to the treachery which had been practiced on them by the order, and with the approval, of the Secretary of War. No man was able to say how many fathers and mothers and children were, by the influence of that officer, consigned to a fate far more cruel than that which awaited the men, under Colonel Harney, at Coloosahatchee.

In his report the Secretary most truly remarked: “If the Indians of Florida had a country to retire to, they would have been driven out of the Territory long ago; but they are hemmed in by the sea, and must defend themselves to the uttermost, or surrender to be transported beyond it.” And he might well have added: When they shall be thus transported, they will have no country—no home. Indeed, the whole report shows that he relied on physical force to effect an extermination of the Indians and their allies; he looked not to justice, nor to the power of truth, for carrying out the designs of the Executive.

Men in power appear to forget that justice sits enthroned above all human greatness; that it is omnipotent, and will execute its appropriate work upon mankind. Thus, while the people of Florida and Georgia had provoked the war, by kidnapping and enslaving colored men and women, to whom they had no more claim than they had to the people of England; while they had sent their petition to General Jackson, asking him to compel the Indians to seize and bring in their negroes, and had protested against the peace negotiated by General Jessup, in 1837;—Mr. Reid, Governor of Florida, in an official Message to the Territorial Legislature, in December, 1839, used language so characteristic of those who supported the Florida War, that we feel it just to him and his coadjutors to give the following extract: