Abstract
America’s Hundred Years’ War is an intriguing collection of essays that seeks to recast the United States’ three wars with the Seminole Indians in terms of a protracted and lengthy effort to expand into the Gulf Coast region. The various authors collectively contend that focusing only on the three periods of overt military conflict, 1817–18, 1835–42, and 1855–8, inhibits a proper understanding of the struggle between the two peoples. They see the three Seminole Wars as only highpoints in a contest that lasted from 1763 to 1858.
The first essay, written by Susan Richbourg Parker, explores how the British government relied on a policy of appeasement and gift-giving to the Florida Indians after Britain acquired the colony at the end of the Seven Years War. Britain made considerable efforts to keep its colonists in check to maintain the status quo between the colonies of Georgia and Florida. With the retrocession of Florida to Spain, and the successful rebellion by many of Britain’s North American colonies in 1783, the Georgia–Florida border became an international boundary that created numerous opportunities for Anglo-Americans to pressure and attack the Seminole peoples.
James Cusick picks up where Parker leaves off, by looking at the efforts of the Seminole Indians to stay out of the conflicts that occurred between the United States, the Creek, and Spain from 1783 to 1812. The United States’ efforts to expand into the Gulf region stood in direct opposition to the policy of Spain and the well-being of the Creek, and all parties attempted to enlist or motivate the Seminole to join their faction in the contest. Eventually the alliance between Spain and Britain, as well as the start of the War of 1812, forced the Seminole to choose sides, as open hostilities broke out all around them.
Other important chapters illustrate the extent to which the slave-holding South’s need to maintain the security of its enslaved populace motivated the United States’ prosecution of the Seminole Wars. Mathew Clavin clearly demonstrates that Southerners feared the possibility of a slave insurrection originating in Seminole villages that regularly provided succour to escaped African slaves from the United States. William S. Belko takes this argument one step further by contending that what the US perceived as weak Spanish control over Florida also fuelled American Anglophobic fears that Britain would, at the least, supply the runaway slaves and Indians with weapons and ammunition, and, at worst, directly intervene on behalf of the disaffected North American populaces of the Gulf Coast. This fear meant that not only was most of the American population accepting of Andrew Jackson’s illegal 1818 invasion of Florida, but many Americans openly supported Old Hickory’s actions.
Two chapters, one by David S. and Jeanne T. Heidler, one by James M. Denham and Canter Brown Jr, explore the domestic ramifications of the Seminole Wars more closely. The Heidlers examine the political fallout of Jackson’s invasion and its corresponding effects on the careers of James Monroe, James C. Calhoun, Martin Van Buren, and Jackson himself. Denham and Brown concern themselves more with how the Nullifier politicians of the 1830s used the Federal government’s feeble efforts to prosecute the Second Seminole War as political ammunition for their cause.
Chapters by Brian Rucker and Samuel Watson round out the variety of topics the book features. Rucker concerns himself with how an often forgotten second war against the Creek Indians in the 1830s and 1840s affected the nature of the larger American conflict against the Seminoles. Watson’s essay focuses on the military aspects of the Second Seminole War. Specifically, he looks at how the US Army’s institutional focus on training its officer corps to fight European-style conflicts directly impeded the organization’s ability to prosecute an unconventional war in rough terrain.
When all the essays are combined, they make a compelling argument for a re- examination of the Gulf region’s complex history. America’s Hundred Years’ War does an excellent job of pointing out the myriad of political, racial, and cultural influences that shaped the era’s development in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The gravest complaint one can make about the book is that some of essays’ connections to the ‘fate of the Seminole’ seem strained at times, and that by recasting the scope of the work the authors could have made an even more compelling argument.
America’s Hundred Years’ War would be appropriate for any library in the region or with a collection that covers the Old Southwest. The high price of the book, though, would probably preclude its use in most undergraduate courses. Once it is released in paperback, however, many of its essays would make effective readings for upper- division courses. Any graduate-level course on the topic would benefit from these authors’ work.