America is one country that has been built through conquests and wars due to its rich geography and lands which attracted many powerful nations like Britain and Spain. One of these conquests took place in the nineteenth century where an American general took siege of Florida, a Spanish territory by then. Andrew Jackson was the man whose mission was to seize Florida in the year 1818 after agitations from the various attacks that were carried out by the Seminoles to the American people, the latest being the Fort Scott attack on November 21, 1817 1 . These events and the siege is tackled in the film documentary “Andrew Jackson: Conqueror of Florida” produced by Margaret Haddad in 2003.
The story in this film begins with the narrative of who Andrew Jackson was and the American desire he had for expansion and conquests. The video focuses on the life of Jackson as a warlord and commander of an army and how his relevance increased. Jackson started to hear about the Seminole Indians in Florida assaulting American settlements and utilizing the Spanish domain there for protection. Criminal slaves were likewise escaping to the region and after that starting strikes on adjacent American plantations. By 1817, the issue turned out to be more serious as pioneers kept on flooding the region. A foreigner, Alexander Arbuthnot, exacerbated the circumstance by giving arms to the Seminoles and encouraging them to battle the Americans for their property. This did not augur well with Andrew Jackson, and as the narrator states, anyone who sided with an enemy was considered an enemy.
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Upon learning that the Seminoles seized property outside Fowltown, President Monroe made their fate sealed by calling Jackson to march into the area. This call came after the president tried much he could to end the cross-border wars between Spain and America through signing a treaty. However, there was a third force which instigated the attacks on the American settlements, and that was British government. This made it difficult for the diplomatic strategies to succeed, and America had another strategy which was to seize the Spanish territory. The government knew of only one person who was capable of carrying out such attacks, and that was Andrew Jackson due to his victories over the British in the Battle of New Orleans in 1812. He was a successful warrior who defeated both the British in different places including Georgia and the present day Alabama and these earned him several nicknames such as Old Hickory, sharp knife, and fearless Indian fighter. The general seemed to be immortal as he lived his life with a bullet lodged in his chest from a close-range shooting 2 . The bullet was too deeply embedded to be removed surgically.
According to the narrator, the defeated Indians merged with other tribes to form what he refers to like the Seminoles, and they vowed to continue fighting Jackson until he is defeated 3 . President Monroe gave Andrew Jackson a vague order, and it was so ambiguous that it left the general a chance for his interpretation. What he came up with was an assault on Florida, and could justify himself through the call of the president which stated, “You have to go down there, and when you are there you may find that there are other objectives for you to accomplish for your country.” The president later refuted the claims that he ordered the siege of Florida and said he was misinterpreted. Nevertheless, the general would not be stopped as that was the perfect opportunity to take on the Spanish settlement in the Americas as he always hated both British and Spanish in that order 4 . At some point, he referred to the settlement as a scourge on earth which needed to be dealt with.
On his fifty-first birthday, March 15, 1818, Jackson ordered the rebuilding of Negro Fort, which he had written to the Spanish government to destroy before. The fort was rebuilt and renamed Fort Gadsden, the name of the engineering officer in charge of the reconstruction. The army used this as the United States fort for preparations on the bigger attack. The preparation saw Jackson lead a two thousand troops into Florida, and first seizing the St. Marks town. The troops employed a tool known as the Springfield musket, which was the standard military arm able to fire a 69-calibre solid lead ball in a range of about a hundred yard depending on the conditions of the atmosphere. The problem with this rifle is that it took a lot of time for the soldier to load the ball and ram the powder. The time it took a soldier to prepare the arm to shoot is enough for an Indian to shoot ten arrows. Thus this arm could be the disadvantage to the soldiers, and most could die before firing the first shot. So they made another strategy to employ a bayonet in the arm.
The army at St. Marks was lightly armed and thus forced to surrender to the general, which he considered self-defense. Andrew Jackson sent letters to the commander in charge of the troop that they should work together to eliminate the renegades. When he found that the Indians were not in St. Marks, Jackson thought that someone had tipped them and they went into hiding. He captured Alexander Arbuthnot a Bahamas resident, whom he said was aiding the Indians carry out attacks on the Americans by trading with them guns for food. On April 16, 1818, Jackson led his troops to Bowlegs town where they torched the villages and returned to St. Marks. Through these raids, he tried to crash the Indian attacks and cut the foreign aid to them, mainly British and Spanish. On April 26, 1818, the general ordered the prosecution of Ambrister and Arbuthnot, and when found guilty, they are executed 5 .
Ambrister was known to tell the Indians that the only way they could protect their property was to go to war with America, while Arbuthnot chose to warn them of the ensuing attack from the American troops, thus making them flee. Both were sentenced to death after they were found guilty of conspiring and helping the Indians carry out attacks on American settlements. On hearing this, the British condemned the acts as horrible but lied low as they did not want to pick a battle with America. They knew the violent nature of Jackson and the will to crash anyone who crossed his path 6 . This included executions of Indians and British nationals as he considered them the biggest enemies of America. Jackson’s hatred for British started when he was a little boy as his family was killed in their hands 7 .
In Fort Barrancas, the Spanish refused to surrender and Jackson employed a nine pounder to crash through the fortification at night. Seeing that he was outnumbered, the Spaniard general surrendered and Pensacola became American property. All these actions Jackson justified on self-defense and captured the governor of Florida and declared himself the new leader. That marked the end of the Seminole War and Jackson returned home called the “Napoleon of the Wood.” Afterwards, the Monroe administration denied that they ordered Jackson to seize Florida by stating that he had overstepped his bounds. The president later signed a treaty with the Spanish to buy back Florida amid debates on Jackson’s censure, others claiming the country is in the hands of a military personnel who is trying to be a dictator.
Instead of this controversy ruining his repute, his fame skyrocketed and eventually elected the president of the US serving two terms from 1828 to 1836. His fame made him considered the best general in America and while in office, he referred to be addressed as “General Jackson” instead of “Mister President.” In conclusion, the vision of the general for American expansion became realized as he gained the mantle of power.
Bibliography
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