Rebel (55 page)

1492

Christopher Columbus discovers the New World.

1513

Florida discovered by Ponce de Leon.

Juan Ponce de Leon sights Florida from his ship on March 27, steps on shore near present-day St. Augustine in early April

1539

Hernando de Soto lands on west coast of the peninsula, near present-day Tampa.

1564

The French arrive and establish Fort Caroline on the St. Johns River. Immediately following the establishment of the French fort, Spain dispatches Pedro de Menendez to get rid of the French invaders, “pirates and perturbers of the public peace.” Menendez dutifully captures the French stronghold and slays or enslaves the inhabitants.

1565

Pedro de Menendez founds St. Augustine, the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States.

1586

Sir Francis Drake attacks St. Augustine, burning and plundering the settlement.

1698

Pensacola is founded.

1740

British General James Oglethorpe invades

Florida from Georgia.

1763

At the end of the Seven Years’ War, or the French and Indian War, both the East and West Florida territories are ceded to Britain.

1763-1783

British rule in East and West Florida.

1774

The “shot heard ’round the world” is fired in Concord.

1776

The War of Independence begins; many British Loyalists flee to Florida.

1783

By the Treaty of Paris, Florida is returned to the Spanish.

1812-1815

The War of 1812.

1813-1814

The Creek Wars. “Red-Stick” land is decimated. Numerous Indians seek new lands south with the “Seminoles.”

1814

General Andrew Jackson captures Pensacola.

1815

The Battle of New Orleans.

1817-1818

The First Seminole War. Americans accuse the Spanish of aiding the Indians in their raids across the border. Hungry for more territory, settlers seek to force Spain into ceding the Floridas to the United States by their claims against the Spanish government for its inability to properly handle the situation within the territories.

1819

Don Luis de Onis, Spanish minister to the United States, and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams sign a treaty by which the Floridas will become part of the United States.

1821

The Onis-Adams Treaty is ratified. An act of Congress makes the two Floridas one territory. Jackson becomes the military governor, but relinquishes the post after a few months.

1822

The first legislative council meets at Pensacola. Members from St. Augustine travel fifty-nine days by water to attend.

1823

The second legislative council meets at St. Augustine: the western delegates are shipwrecked and barely escape death.

The Treaty of Moultrie Creek is ratified by major Seminole chiefs and the federal government. The ink is barely dry before Indians are complaining that the lands are too small and white settlers are petitioning the government for a policy of Indian removal.

1824

The third session meets at Tallahassee, a
halfway point selected as a main order of business and approved at the second session. Tallahassee becomes the first territorial capital.

1832

Payne’s Landing. Numerous chiefs sign a treaty agreeing to move west to Arkansas as long as seven of their number are able to see and approve the lands. The treaty is ratified at Fort Gibson, Arkansas. Numerous chiefs also protest the agreement.

1835

Summer. Wiley Thompson claims that Osceola has repeatedly reviled him in his own office with foul language and orders his arrest. Osceola is handcuffed and incarcerated.

November. Charlie Emathla, after agreeing to removal to the west, is murdered. Most scholars agree Osceola led the party which carried out the execution. Some consider the murder personal vengeance, others believe it was prescribed by numerous chiefs, since an Indian who would leave his people to aid the whites should forfeit his own life. December 28. Major Francis Dade and his troops are massacred as they travel from Fort Brooke to Fort King. Wiley Thompson and a companion are killed outside the walls of Fort King. The sutler Erastus Rogers and his two clerks are also murdered by members of the same raiding party, led by Osceola. December 21. The First Battle of the Withlacoochee—Osceola leads the Seminoles.

1836

January. Major General Winfield Scott is ordered by the Secretary of War to take command in Florida.

February 4. Dade County established in

south Florida in memory of Francis Lang-

horne Dade.

March 16. The Senate confirms Richard

Keith Call governor of the Florida

Territory.

June 21. Call, a civilian governor, is given
command of the Florida forces after the failure of Scott’s strategies and the military disputes between Scott and General Gaines. Call attempts a “summer campaign,” and is as frustrated in his efforts as his predecessor.

1837

June 2. Osceola and Sam Jones release or “abduct” nearly 700 Indians awaiting deportation to the west from Tampa. October 27. Osceola is taken under a white flag of truce; Major Sidney Jesup is denounced by whites and Indians alike for the action.

November 29. Coacoochee, Cowaya, sixteen warriors, and two women escape Ft. Marion.

Christmas Day. Jesup has the largest fighting force assembled in Florida during the conflict, nearly 9,000 men. Under his command, Colonel Zachary Taylor leads the Battle of Okeechobee. The Seminoles choose to stand their ground and fight, inflicting greater losses to whites despite the fact they are severely outnumbered.

1838

January 31. Osceola dies at Ft. Marion, South Carolina. (A strange side note to a sad tale: Dr. Wheedon, presiding white physician for Osceola, cut off and preserved Osceola’s head. Wheedon’s heirs reported that the good doctor would hang the head on the bedstead of one of his three children should they misbehave. The head passed on to his son-in-law, Dr. Daniel Whitehurst, who gave it to Dr. Valentine Mott. Dr. Mott had a medical and pathological museum, and it is believed that the head was lost when the museum burned in 1866.)

May. Zachary Taylor takes command when Jesup’s plea to be relieved is answered at last on April 29. The Florida legislature debates statehood.

1839

December. Because of his arguments with
federal authorities regarding the Seminole War, Richard Keith Call is removed as governor. Robert Raymond Reid is appointed in his stead.

1840

April 24. Zachary Taylor is given permission to leave command of what is considered to be the harshest military position in the country. Walker Keith Armistead takes command.

September. William Henry Harrison is elected president of the United States; the Florida War is considered to have cost Martin Van Buren reelection. December 1840-January 1841. John T. MacLaughlin leads a flotilla of men in dugouts across the Everglades from east to west; his party becomes the first white men to do so.

John Bell replaces Joel Poinsett as secretary of war. Robert Reid is ousted as territorial governor, and Richard Keith Call is reinstated.

1841

April 4. President William Henry Harrison dies in office: John Tyler becomes president of the U.S.

May 1. Coacoochee determines to turn himself in. He is escorted by a man who will later become extremely well known— Lieutenant William Tecumseh Sherman. (Sherman writes to his future wife that the Florida war is a good one for a soldier; he will get to know the Indian who may become the “chief enemy” in time.) May 31. Walker Keith Armistead is relieved. Colonel William Jenkins Worth takes command.

1842

May 10. Winfield Scott is informed that the administration has decided there must be an end to hostilities as soon as possible. August 14. Aware that he cannot end hostilities and send all Indians west, Colonel Worth makes offers to the remaining Indians to leave or accept boundaries. The
war, he declares, is over. It has cost a fledgling nation thirty to forty million dollars, and the lives of seventy-four commissioned officers. The Seminoles have been reduced from tens of thousands to hundreds scattered about in pockets. The Seminoles (inclusive here, as they were seen during the war, as all Florida Indians) have, however, kept their place in the peninsula; those remaining are the undefeated. The army, too, has learned new tactics, mostly regarding partisan and guerilla warfare. Men who will soon take part in the greatest conflict to tear apart the nation have practiced the art of battle here: William T. Sherman, Braxton Bragg, George Gordon Meade, Joseph E. Johnston, and more, as well as soon-to-be president Zachary Taylor.

1845

March 3. President John Tyler signs the bill that makes Florida the 27th state of the United States of America.

1855-58

The conflict known as the Third Seminole War takes place with a similiar outcome to the earlier confrontations—money spent, lives lost, and the Indians entrenched more deeply in the Everglades.

1859

Robert E. Lee is sent in to arrest John Brown after his attempt to initiate a slave rebellion with an assault on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (later West Virginia). The incident escalates ill-will between the North and the South. Brown is executed Dec 2nd.

1860

The first Florida cross-state railroad goes into service.

November 6th: Abraham Lincoln is elected to the presidency and many of Southern states begin to call for special legislative sessions. Although there are many passionate Unionists in the state, most Florida politicians are ardent in lobbying for secession. Town, cities, and
counties rush to form or enlarge militia companies. Even before the state is able to meet for its special session, civil and military leaders plan to demand the turnover of Federal military installations.

1861

January 10th: Florida votes to secede from the Union, the third Southern state to do so.

February: Florida joins the Confederate States of America. Through late winter and early spring, the Confederacy struggles to form a government and organize the armed forces while the states recruit fighting men. Jefferson Davis is president of the newly formed country. Stephen Mallory of Florida, becomes C.S.A. Secretary of the Navy.

April 12th-14th: Confederate forces fire on Ft. Sumter, S.C., and the first blood is shed when an accidental explosion kills Private Hough, who then has the distinction of being the first Federal soldier killed. Federal forces fear a similiar action at Pensacola Bay, Florida. Three forts guarded the bay, McRee and Barrancas on the land side, and Pickens on the tip of forty-mile long Santa Rosa Island. Federal Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer spiked the guns at Barrancas, blew up the ammunition at McRee, and moved his meager troops to Pickens, where he was eventually reinforced by 500 men. Though Florida troops took the navy yard, retention of the fort by the Federals nullified -the usefulness to the Rebs of what was considered the most important navy yard south of Norfolk.

July 18th: First Manassas, or the First Battle of Bull Run, Virginia—both sides get their first real taste of battle. Southern troops are drawn from throughout the states, including Florida. Already, the state which had been so eager to secede
sees her sons being shipped northward to fight, and her coast being left to is own defenses by a government with different priorities.

November: Robert E. Lee inspects coastal defenses as far south as Fernandina and decides the major ports of Charleston, Savannah, and Brunswick are to be defended, adding later that the small force posted at St. Augustine was an invitation to attack.

1862

February: Florida’s Governor Milton publicly states his despair for Florida citizens as more of the state’s troops are ordered north after Grant captures two major Confederate strongholds in Tennessee. February 28th: A fleet of 26 Federal ships sets sail to occupy Fernandina, Jacksonville, and St. Augustine.

March 8th: St. Augustine surrenders, and though Jacksonville and other points north and south along the coast will change hands several times during the war, St. Augustine will remain in Union hands. The St. Johns River becomes a ribbon of guerilla troop movement for both sides. Many Floridians begin to despair of “East Florida,” fearing that the fickle populace has all turned Unionist.

April 6th-8th: Union and Confederate forces engage in the battle of Shiloh. Both claim victories. Both suffer horrible losses with over twenty thousand killed, wounded or missing.

April 25th: New Orleans falls, and the Federal grip on the South becomes more of a vise.

Spring: The Federal blockade begins to tighten and much of the state becomes a no-man’s land. Because of the rugged terrain, the length of the peninsula, and the difficulty of logistics, blockade runners dare Florida waterways because the Union
can’t possibly guard the extensive coastline. Florida’s contribution becomes more and more that of a breadbasket as she strips herself and provides sait, beef, smuggled supplies, and manpower to the Confederacy.