Territorial Florida and The Seminole Wars
Andrew Jackson served as military governor of the newly acquired territory, but only for a brief period. On March 30, 1822, the United States merged East Florida and part of West Florida into the Florida Territory. William Pope Duval became the first official governor of the Florida Territory and soon afterward the capital was established at Tallahassee, but only after removing a Seminole tribe from the land.
The central conflict of Territorial Florida was the Seminole inhabitants. The federal government and most white settlers desired all Florida Indians to migrate to the West. On May 28, 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act requiring all native Americans to move west of the Mississippi River. The Act itself did not mean much to Florida, however it laid the framework for the Treaty of Paynes Landing which was signed by a council of Seminole chiefs on May 9, 1832. This treaty stated that all Seminole inhabitants of Florida should be relocated by 1835, giving them three years. It was at this meeting that the famous Osceola first voiced his decision to fight.
Beginning in late 1835 Osceola and the Seminole allies began a guerilla war against the U.S. forces. Numerous generals fought and failed, succumbing to the heat and disease as well as lack of knowledge of the land. It was not until General Thomas Jesup captured many of the key Seminole chiefs, including Osceola who died in captivity of illness, that the battles began to die down. The Seminoles were eventually forced to migrate and almost all were gone, except for a small group in the Everglades, by the time Florida joined the Union as the 27th state on March 3, 1845.
Read more about this topic: Florida Territory
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—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
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—Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989)
“In one notable instance, where the United States Army and a hundred years of persuasion failed, a highway has succeeded. The Seminole Indians surrendered to the Tamiami Trail. From the Everglades the remnants of this race emerged, soon after the trail was built, to set up their palm-thatched villages along the road and to hoist tribal flags as a lure to passing motorists.”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
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