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Environment As Enemy in the Second Seminole War

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Environment As Enemy in the Second Seminole War University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020- 2020 Death in the Land of Flowers: Environment as Enemy in the Second Seminole War Nicholas Brown University of Central Florida Part of the United States History Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd2020 University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020- by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Brown, Nicholas, "Death in the Land of Flowers: Environment as Enemy in the Second Seminole War" (2020). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-. 333. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd2020/333 DEATH IN THE LAND OF FLOWERS: ENVIRONMENT AS ENEMY IN THE SECOND SEMINOLE WAR by NICHOLAS T. BROWN B.A. Florida State University, 2002 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of History in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Fall Term 2020 Major Professor: John Sacher ABSTRACT This thesis argues that Florida’s natural environment was one of the United States Army’s most formidable enemies during the Second Seminole War (1835–42), and that environmental factors, more than hostilities from Native peoples themselves, led the United States to abandon the War. Many White soldiers from the North were unprepared to cope with the environmental challenges posed by Florida. In order to build a foundation for this argument, the thesis examines how previous newcomers to Florida dealt with the environment, from the original First Peoples who arrived several thousand years ago, to European explorer/colonizers, to White Americans in the decades preceding the Seminole conflicts. After establishing some basic history and context for the War, the thesis then turns to examples of naïve Romantic illusions that some soldiers carried into the War, which made them even more mentally unprepared. This Romantic outlook amplified the disillusionment, dread, and loss of morale among soldiers from the ground up. By examining letters, speeches, reports, and editorials from various Senators, Congressmen, Presidents, Generals, and journalists, the thesis demonstrates that the natural environment, including its inherent diseases, caused far more damage to the Army than the Seminoles did. Conversely, the very same obstacles of heat and water that plagued the Army were used advantageously by the Seminoles. Using new data that has been compiled by researchers in the Veterans Legacy Program, this thesis shows the true depth and consequences of the environmental challenges of the War in ways that have eluded previous historians. Data previously obtainable only through meticulous reading can now be absorbed visually, allowing researchers to juxtapose ideas in new ways. This data allows scholars to “see” the true scope of the environmental impact upon the troops, ii including the impacts of disease. Though some historians, most notably John T. Mahon and C.S. Monaco, have mentioned Florida’s natural environment as a factor in the Seminole Wars, no prominent historian has submitted a lengthy, extended analysis of this idea. That is what I hope to add to the conversation. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the following people for help with this project: first of all, my Thesis Advisor, Dr. John Sacher, and my committee members Dr. Scot French and Dr. Connie Lester. I would also like to thank Drs. Amelia Lyons, Duncan Hardy, Ezekiel Walker, Caroline Cheong, and Edward Dandrow for helping me learn the skills necessary to undertake such a project. Also many thanks to my classmates Nick Bobertz, Kyle Kern, Marie Oury, Matt Patsis, and Sharon Rodriguez for their help and support. A special thank-you goes out to my fellow researchers Walter Napier, Maria Julia Cabail, and Mia Tignor for their diligent work with primary source compilations and visualizations. Finally, I would like to thank the National Cemetery Administration, which helped fund some of the Veterans Legacy Program projects upon which my research is based. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER TWO: FIRST CONTACT: OUTSIDERS WHO ARRIVED IN FLORIDA . 6 CHAPTER THREE: BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE SECOND SEMINOLE WAR ...... 17 CHAPTER FOUR: ROMANTICISM AND DISILLUSIONMENT ............................... 27 CHAPTER FIVE: CONDITIONS ON THE GROUND .................................................. 36 CHAPTER SIX: SEMINOLE ADVANTAGES .............................................................. 62 CHAPTER SEVEN: COMMAND DECISIONS AND PUBLIC DISCOURSE ............. 76 CHAPTER EIGHT: CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................. 82 LIST OF REFERENCES: ................................................................................................. 84 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1Map of the Florida peninsula showing some of the pre-Seminole tribes and their respective territories .......................................................................................................... 10 Figure 2 Map of the Florida peninsula showing the boundaries of the Moultrie Creek Treaty of 1823 ................................................................................................................... 19 Figure 3 Visual representation of Second Seminole War casualties (causes) .................. 46 Figure 4 Visual representation of Second Seminole War casualties (amount/year) ......... 48 vi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Florida’s natural environment has long plagued Europeans, from the original conquistadors to today’s incredulous tourists who emerge from hermetically-sealed airplanes into Orlando’s unfathomable humidity. For those who are unprepared, Florida’s climate can be shockingly hellish. Not only the temperature, but the insects, wild animals, and frequent storms combine to make living in Florida a challenge even today. Before the late nineteenth century, no one in Florida had electricity, let alone air-conditioning.1 Yet the place contained an undeniable natural beauty. It was a unique mixture of the miserable and the sublime. It was also the setting of the United States’ longest and most costly Native American conflict, the Second Seminole War, which lasted from 1835 to 1842.2 This thesis will argue that Florida’s natural environment played a major role in the outcome of the Second Seminole War. In fact, the environment might have been a bigger threat to U.S. soldiers than actual combat with the Natives. Many Seminole War historians have mentioned environmental factors, sometimes at length—especially the Seminoles’ strategic use of the Everglades toward the War’s end—but no prominent historian has explicitly attributed the war’s outcome to the environment. My thesis contends that the United States ended the war largely because of environmental factors. Using digital data unavailable to previous historians, this thesis differs from other studies in the field, not 1 Raymond Arsenault, “The End of the Long Hot Summer: The Air Conditioner and Southern Culture,” The Journal of Southern History , Nov., 1984, Vol. 50, No. 4, 597-628. 2 Many Seminoles do not recognize the distinctions between the three official U.S. Seminole Wars, and instead view the conflicts as one continuous war of removal that lasted throughout the century. For more on Seminole perspectives, see Susan Miller’s Coacoochee’s Bones; as well as the official Seminole tribal website, www.semtribe.com. 1 only in its utilization of such data, but in the way it juxtaposes this information alongside the seemingly unrelated topic of Romanticism to make new connections regarding the mindset of troops during the Second Seminole War. The second chapter of the thesis will set the stage for an examination of human interaction with Florida’s environment. It will discuss the original Native American inhabitants and their relationship to the land, as well as the reactions of Europeans who arrived later, such as the members of the disastrous Narvaez expedition. By the eighteenth century, the original inhabitants—Timucuan and other pre-Seminole tribes— had vanished, leaving a polyethnic mixture populating the peninsula. This population was comprised of scattered remnants of other tribes who had resisted relocation, as well as fugitive slaves. In the early nineteenth century, white settlers also began to cultivate the outer fringes of the peninsula and to develop immunities to the diseases that would later plague white soldiers who came from elsewhere to fight in the Seminole Wars. Of course the natural landscape also had begun to change: parts of it that had grown back to wilderness after the original inhabitants were displaced, were cleared once again for agriculture. This chapter will culminate in a discussion of botanist William Bartram’s effusive praise of Florida—praise which would later influence a generation of young soldiers in the Seminole Wars. The third chapter will provide a brief overview of the Second Seminole War, including an introduction to many of the major players, themes, and locales of the war. This chapter should provide context
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