Black Seminoles - Seminole Wars

Seminole Wars

From the time of the Revolution, the armed black communities in Florida was a major concern for American slave owners. Slaveholders sought the return of Florida's black fugitives under the Treaty of New York (1790), the first treaty ratified after the adoption of the United States Constitution. General Andrew Jackson wanted to disrupt Florida's maroon communities in 1816 and attacked the Negro Fort, which had become a Black Seminole stronghold after the British left Florida. Breaking up the maroon communities was one of Jackson's major objectives in the First Seminole War (1817–18).

The Second Seminole War (1835–42) marked the height of tension between the U.S. and the Black Seminoles, and also the historical peak of the African-Seminole alliance. Under the policy of Indian removal, the US wanted to relocate to the western Indian Territory Florida's 4,000 Seminole people and a portion of their 800 Black Seminole allies. During the year before the war, prominent white citizens captured and claimed at least 100 Black Seminoles as runaway slaves.

Anticipating attempts to re-enslave more members of their community, Black Seminoles opposed relocation. In councils before the war, they threw their support behind the most militant Seminole faction, led by Osceola. After war broke out, individual black leaders, such as John Caesar, Abraham, and John Horse, played key roles. In addition to aiding the Indians in their fight, Black Seminoles recruited plantation slaves to rebellion at the start of the war. The slaves joined Indians and maroons in the destruction of 21 sugar plantations from December 25, 1835, through the summer of 1836. Historians do not agree on whether these events should be considered a separate slave rebellion; generally they view the attacks on the sugar plantations as part of the Seminole War.

By 1838, U.S. General Thomas Sydney Jesup tried to divide the black and Seminole warriors by offering promises of freedom to the blacks if they surrendered and agreed to removal to Indian Territory. John Horse was among the black warriors who surrendered under this condition. Due to Seminole opposition, however, the Army did not fully follow through on its offer. The status of Black Seminoles and fugitive slaves was largely still unsettled after they reached Indian Territory. The issue was compounded by the government's initially putting the Seminole and blacks under the administration of the Creek Nation, whose people were slaveholders. They tried to re-enslave some of the fugitive black slaves.