Second Seminole War in the context of "Winfield Scott"

The Seminole Wars (also known as the Florida Wars) were a series of three military conflicts between the United States and the Seminoles that took place in Florida between about 1816 and 1858. The Seminoles are a Native American nation which coalesced in northern Florida during the early 1700s, when the territory was still a Spanish colonial possession. Tensions grew between the Seminoles and American settlers in the newly independent United States in the early 1800s, mainly because enslaved people regularly fled from Georgia into Spanish Florida, prompting slaveowners to conduct slave raids across the border. What began as small cross-border skirmishes became the First Seminole War, as Andrew Jackson led U.S. forces into Florida—despite Spanish objections—to pursue the Seminoles. Jackson's forces destroyed several Seminole, Mikasuki and Black Seminole towns, as well as captured Fort San Marcos and briefly occupied Pensacola before withdrawing in 1818. In 1819 the U.S. and Spain agreed to transfer Florida in the Adams–Onís Treaty; in return, the United States renounced its claims to Texas and fixed the boundary at the Sabine River.

The United States gained possession of Florida in 1821 and coerced the Seminoles into leaving their lands in the Florida panhandle for a large Indian reservation in the center of the peninsula per the Treaty of Moultrie Creek. In 1832 by the Treaty of Payne's Landing, however, the federal government under United States President Andrew Jackson demanded that they leave Florida altogether and relocate to Indian Territory (modern day Oklahoma) as per the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Those who refused to move resisted violently, leading to the Second Seminole War (1835–1842), which was by far the longest and most wide-ranging of the three conflicts. Initially, less than 2,000 Seminole warriors employed hit-and-run guerilla warfare tactics and knowledge of the land to evade and frustrate a combined U.S. Army and Marine force that grew to over 30,000. Instead of continuing to pursue these small bands, American commanders eventually changed their strategy and focused on seeking out and destroying hidden Seminole villages and crops, putting increasing pressure on resisters to surrender or starve with their families.

Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 – July 9, 1850) was an American military officer and politician who was the 12th president of the United States, serving from 1849 until his death in 1850. Taylor was a career officer in the United States Army, rising to the rank of major general and becoming a national hero for his victories in the Mexican–American War. As a result, he won election to the White House despite his vague political beliefs. His top priority as president was to preserve the Union. He died 16 months into his term from a stomach disease. Taylor had the third-shortest presidential term in U.S. history.

Taylor was born into a prominent family of plantation owners who moved westward from Virginia to Louisville, Kentucky, in his youth. He was the last president born before the Constitution of the United States was adopted. He was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army in 1808 and made a name for himself as a captain in the War of 1812. He climbed the ranks of the military, establishing military forts along the Mississippi River and entering the Black Hawk War as a colonel in 1832. His success in the Second Seminole War attracted national attention and earned him the nickname "Old Rough and Ready".

George Gordon Meade (December 31, 1815 – November 6, 1872) was an American military officer who served in the United States Army and the Union army as a major general in command of the Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War from 1863 to 1865. He fought in many of the key battles of the eastern theater and defeated the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia led by General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg.

He was born in Cádiz, Spain, to a wealthy Philadelphia merchant family and graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1835. He fought in the Second Seminole War and the Mexican–American War. He served in the United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers and directed construction of lighthouses in Florida and New Jersey from 1851 to 1856 and the United States Lake Survey from 1857 to 1861.

Fort Lauderdale (/ˈlɔːdərdeɪl/ LAW-dər-dayl) is a coastal city located in the U.S. state of Florida, 30 miles (48 km) north of Miami along the Atlantic Ocean. It is the seat of government of and most populous city in Broward County with a population of 182,760 at the 2020 census, making it the tenth-most populous city in Florida. After Miami and Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale is the third-most populous city in the Miami Metro Area, which had a population of 6,166,488 in 2019.

Built in 1838 and first incorporated in 1911, Fort Lauderdale is named after a series of forts built by the United States during the Second Seminole War. The forts took their name from Major William Lauderdale (1782–1838), younger brother of Lieutenant Colonel James Lauderdale. Development of the city did not begin until 50 years after the forts were abandoned at the end of the conflict. Three forts named "Fort Lauderdale" were constructed including the first at the fork of the New River, the second at Tarpon Bend on the New River between the present-day Colee Hammock and Rio Vista neighborhoods, and the third near the site of the Bahia Mar Marina.

The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is a federally recognized Native American tribe based in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It is the largest of the three federally recognized Seminole governments, which include the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. Its citizens are descendants of the approximately 3,000 Seminoles who were forcibly removed from Florida to Indian Territory, along with 800 Black Seminoles, after the Second Seminole War. The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is headquartered in Wewoka within Seminole County, Oklahoma. Of 18,800 enrolled tribal citizens, 13,533 live in Oklahoma. The tribe began to revive its government in 1936 under the Indian Reorganization Act. While its reservation was originally larger, today the tribal reservation and jurisdictional area covers Seminole County, Oklahoma, within which it has a variety of properties.

The few hundred Seminoles remaining in Florida fought against US forces in the Third Seminole war, and peace was made without their defeat. Today, descendants of those people have formed two federally recognized tribes. Together, the three tribes and unorganized Traditionals in Florida were awarded a land claims settlement valued in total at $16 million in 1976, for nearly 24 million acres of lands seized by the United States government in Florida in 1823; amounting to roughly $0.67 an acre.

The Treaty of Moultrie Creek, also known as the Treaty with the Florida Tribes of Indians, was an agreement signed in 1823 between the government of the United States and the chiefs of several groups and bands of Native Americans living in the present-day state of Florida. The treaty established a reservation in the center of the Florida peninsula, to which most of the Native Americans in Florida were to move, although several bands in western Florida were given small reservations around their settlements. The treaty allowed the Native Americans to remain in Florida for twenty years, and specified support to be given by the United States government to the reservation resident. The government waited less than ten years before forcing the Treaty of Payne's Landing on the Native Americans in Florida, requiring them to move west of the Mississippi River. Many of the Native Americans resisted removal from Florida, leading to the Second Seminole War.

Fort Brooke was a historical military post established at the mouth of the Hillsborough River in present-day Tampa, Florida, in 1824. Its original purpose was to serve as a check on and trading post for the native Seminoles, who had been confined to an interior reservation by the Treaty of Moultrie Creek (1823), and it served as a military headquarters and port during the Second Seminole War (1835–1842). The village of Tampa developed just north of the fort during this period, and the area was the site of a minor raid and skirmish during the American Civil War. The obsolete outpost was sparsely garrisoned after the war, and it was decommissioned in 1883, just before Tampa began a period of rapid growth, opening the land for development.

Fort Brooke was located on what is now the southern end of downtown Tampa along eastern bank of the river and the Garrison Channel. Most of the fort's structures were situated at the current site of the Tampa Convention Center, with the military reserve stretching from the current location of the Tampa Bay History Center to the southeast to Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park to the northwest, with many modern buildings and public spaces (including Benchmark International Arena and much of the Tampa Riverwalk now located in its former footprint. Several unmapped army and Seminole cemeteries along with many artifacts were discovered during various construction projects. The soldiers' remains were reinterred at the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell, the native remains were transferred to the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and the artifacts were given to the Tampa Bay History Center and other institutions for research and preservation.

Braxton Bragg (March 22, 1817 – September 27, 1876) was an American military officer during the Second Seminole War and Mexican–American War. He later served as a Confederate general in the American Civil War, seeing action in the Western Theater. His most important role was the commander of the Army of Mississippi, later renamed the Army of Tennessee, from June 1862 until December 1863.

Bragg, a native of Warrenton, North Carolina, was educated at West Point and became an artillery officer. He served in Florida and then received three brevet promotions for distinguished service in the Mexican–American War, most notably the Battle of Buena Vista. He resigned from the U.S. Army in 1856 to become a sugar plantation owner in Louisiana. At the start of the Civil War, Bragg trained soldiers in the Gulf Coast region. He was a corps commander at the Battle of Shiloh, where he launched several costly and unsuccessful frontal assaults but nonetheless was commended for his conduct and bravery.