Major Themes in American History

Theme One:  Manifest Destiny, the Westward Movement, the Frontier, and the Indian Wars are concepts usually associated with the land beyond the Mississippi River.  Florida’s colonial history differed from that of the Thirteen Colonies, and the area had few settlers when the United States acquired the territory from Spain in 1821.  The Seminole Wars belong in the story of the conflict between natives and intruders that began in the Colonial Era.  As settlers moved into newly acquired lands, the indigenous peoples resisted.  By the Second Seminole War, America had a phrase to define the forceful movement of the frontier, the line of development, to the west:  Manifest Destiny.  Most people in American believed God had ordained that they would control all the land “from sea to shining sea,” and maybe South America as well.  Between the Second and Third Seminole Wars, America fought the Mexican War, 1846-48, resulting in acquisition of the southwestern quadrant of the United States. 

Most of the natives pushed out of the southeast to Oklahoma belonged to the “Five Civilized Tribes,” the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole.  The Seminoles were in turn made up of people from this diverse collection of tribes.

Theme Two:  Slavery.  The British had created the colony of Georgia in 1733 to “protect” South Carolina from Spanish incursion – and to stop slaves in the lower South from running away to the more tolerant Spanish and Indian societies in Florida.  When settlers poured into Georgia after the Revolutionary War, they brought their slaves, who repeated the pattern of generations before and escaped to Florida.  One reason presented in speeches and the press for acquiring Florida was to stop the runaways, and that complaint was heard again as the tension grew between the natives and settlers.

The Americans did not want the Native Americans as neighbors, even when the natives adopted American culture.  The Cherokee had made conscientious efforts to “Americanize” by developing an alphabet and written language, a Constitution, a newspaper, and American-style housing and dress.  Their cultural efforts failed to protect their claims to their land because of American attitudes toward any groups with dark skin.

Politics:  The Wars are significant in the careers of three presidents:  Andrew Jackson (1828-1836), Martin Van Buren (1836-1840) and Zachary Taylor (1848-1850). 

Andrew Jackson, the recent hero of the War of 1812, almost single-handedly fought the first Seminole War.  Following a massacre of over 250 settlers in Alabama, Jackson was ordered to pursue the Creeks who themselves were retaliating for US incursions.  He followed them eastward from Alabama, crossing into Spanish Florida, where he destroyed a fort, burned a village and skirmished twice with Miccosukee-Seminole warriors near present-day Tallahassee.  As president, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which resulted in the Trail of Tears and the Second Seminole War.

Martin Van Buren was Vice President under Jackson and succeeded him in the White House in 1836.  He carried out Jackson’s Indian Removal policy and the Trail of Tears happened during his presidency.  As Commander-in-Chief, he was responsible for the U.S. Army operation to empty the southeast of native presence, resulting in over 4,000 deaths, most of them Cherokee.  Van Buren lost the election of 1840.