At this time the enslavement of the descendants of early marriages between Africans and Seminoles became particularly cruel. Osceola, a young and handsome chief, had married the daughter of another chief whose wife was an exile. The young couple went together to Fort King to effect some purchases. While there the wife was seized by slave-dealers, torn from her husband-lover and carried away in withes to perpetual bondage. Osceola, frantic with grief, was cast into a dungeon for some days; but finally escaping, rallied his companions for revenge. Several weeks later he caught the Indian agent Thompson and several army officers walking outside the fort, and fired upon them with unerring effect. Thompson was pierced by fourteen bullets.

We may now employ verbatim quotations from Giddings and Wilson in narrating one of the most thrilling chapters in our history. No citizen of the Republic can devote his attention for half an hour to anything more suggestive and instructive:

In November General Clinch ordered Major Dade, then near Tampa Bay, to prepare for a march to Fort King, about 130 miles distant. As his march would be through an unsettled forest, with swamp and lake and hommock, he obtained for a guide Lewis, slave of Antonio Pacheco, who spoke and wrote with facility the English, French and Spanish languages, and also the Indian dialect. Knowing the persecutions and outrages inflicted upon his race, he determined to embrace this opportunity to avenge their wrongs. He communicated to the Indians and exiles the information that Major Dade was to go to Fort King, that he was to act as guide, and that he would conduct them near the great Wahoo Swamp. Hostilities had commenced, and the Indians and exiles had gathered near the designated place.

The memories of past wrongs and the fear of impending evils gave them a purpose and courage to strike a blow for safety and revenge. Entering the defile into which he and his 110 men had been lured, Major Dade was fired upon; and himself and more than half of his command were killed at the first discharge. Only two soldiers escaped. The murder of the Indian agent and the massacre of Dade's command, both on the 28th of December, 1835, inaugurated

a war, which proved to be costly in both blood and treasure. But the Indians and exiles had been forced into it by the sordid and all-grasping avarice, the hatred and contempt of the slave-hunters of Florida and the adjacent States.

On the 25th of May General Jessup wrote to Colonel Harvey: "If you see Osceola again, I wish you to tell him that I intend to send exploring parties into any part of the country during the summer, and I shall send out and take all the Negroes that belong to the white people, and he must not allow Indians and Indian Negroes to mingle with them. Tell him I am sending t› Cuba1 for blood-hounds to trail them, and I intend to hang every one that don't come in." Blacks who had come in fled, though ninety of them, confined within the pickets of Tampa Bay, were immediately, on the 2d of June, sent to New Orleans.

This act so alarmed the Indians, who had come in for the purpose of emigrating, that they fled into the interior, resolved to defend themselves.

Hostilities were renewed. The guilt and dishonor rest on General Jessup. At least he was the instrument, though slavery was the inspiration. He had promised the Creeks the "plunder," understood by both parties to mean the slaves they might capture. He now held out the same kind of inducement to the Florida militia. In a letter to Colonel Warren he promised that the Negroes of the Indians should belong to the corps that captured them. Field officers were to have three shares, company officers two shares, and privates one share each. Documents published by the XXVth Congress reveal the dishonorable fact that the war, which had been renewed, was to be stimulated by the hopes of sharing the profits or spoils of forays in the Indian country, including the capture of Negroes.

Even the Indians west of the Mississippi were thus appealed to, and the same disgraceful motives held out, and some of the Choctaws and Delawares actually entered the service of this great and magnanimous Christian nation, for the purpose of harrying and distressing this handful of Indians and Negroes, with the pledge that Negroes taken, instead of being held as prisoners of war, might be sold as their reward or the price of their service.

It is not generally remembered, probably, that the frightful cruelties of chasing slaves with blood-hounds date back to the trouble with the Seminoles, during which these ferocious beasts were imported for that purpose. It was formerly common for the Southerners to boast vociferously of their superior civilization. Hunting fellow beings with blood-hounds was one of the prominent features of it. These beasts were brought from Cuba for that purpose during Madison's administration.

And to make the thing more disgraceful still, at their expressing some discontent at the amount of pay realized, General Jessup sought to pacify them with an additional offer, though admitting he had transcended his authority and the law in what he had already "stipulated." He, however, promised that he would pay them $50 for every Negro captured.

The war went on and General Jessup continued to employ the military power of the nation in seizing and returning fugitives. While the officers and soldiers of the United States army regarded this as odious and degrading, the Florida volunteers were adepts.

After General Taylor, however, took the command, there was a great improvement. Discarding his predecessor's policy, the army was no longer employed to chase down and seize women and children, to be delivered into slavery. He denied the right of any citizens to inspect those captured or to meddle with his prisoners. He no longer separated the Indians from the Negroes, but treated both as prisoners of war. Under his more humane and dignified policy many came in and were sent to their homes in the West.

In the spring of 1839 General McComb went to Florida. After consulting with the Indians, he issued an order setting apart a portion of this territory for their future residence, at the same time forbidding any white persons to enter upon it without permission. The people of Florida, understanding that in the war with the Indians the Negroes were to be given up to them, protested for this reason against the peace.

The war had continued for nearly eight years. During that time several hundred persons had been seized and enslaved, nearly $40,000,000 had been expended, and hundreds of lives had been lost. The exiles who had been sent west, fearful that they would be reduced to slavery by the Creeks, remained in the Cherokee country, hoping that there would be assigned to them a territory as stipulated in the "additional treaty."

The Cherokees, too, were dissatisfied with the refusal of the government to set apart territory for the Seminoles and exiles. But the President adhered to his policy of having the Seminoles removed to the jurisdiction of the Creeks; while the Creeks held firmly to their purpose to re-enslave the exiles whenever they should come under their jurisdiction.

In 1845 a treaty was made with the Creeks and Seminoles, in which it was agreed that all contests between the tribes in

regard to rights of property should be subject to the decision of the President. The Creeks agreed that the Seminoles should settle as a body or separately in their country, and no discrimination should be made between the two tribes; and the Seminoles agreed to move to the Creek reservation.

But a slave-dealer, who appears by documents in the War Department to have been previously engaged in kidnapping, went among the Creeks and offered them $100 for any exile taken and delivered to him, he assuming all risk of titles.

Two hundred Creeks assembled, entered the Negro villages and seized several of the exiles. Those, however, who had arms offering resistance, the Creeks retired with their captives, delivered them to the slave-dealer, and received the stipulated price. The Indian agent obtained a warrant from the nearest judge in Arkansas, and the captured exiles were brought before him. He urged in their behalf the promises of General Jessup, the opinion of the Attorney-General, and the action of the President, as evidence that they were free. But the judge decided that the Creeks had obtained a title to them by their contract; that their title was good; and, having sold them to the claimant, his title was also good. By this strange and wicked decision these manacled victims were thus suddenly and hopelessly bereft of freedom, taken to the. New Orleans market, and sold into perpetual bondage.

Thoroughly alarmed, and having lost all confidence in the government, all but about 200 of the blacks abandoned their country and fled to Mexico. Those remaining behind were supposed to be so thoroughly intermarried with or descended from intermarriage with the Seminoles as to be comparatively safe.

Stimulated by offers from the slave-dealers the Creeks organized, armed, and pursued the fugitives to Mexico. Overtaking them, a spirited battle was fought, but the exiles, desperate and determined to the last degree, rallied under the leadership of Wild Cat and drove back the Creeks with great slaughter. The dead slave-catchers were left unburied on the field.

Pursuing their course south-easterly, the exiles discovered a rich valley in the Mexican province, where they found homes,

liberty, peace and protection-all of which had been wantonly and wickedly denied them in the land of their fathers.

This, one of the black and revolting chapters in the history of civilized nations, was one of the early and powerful factors in giving birth and direction to that sentiment whi ch ultimately crystalized into the great Republican party.

Florida, having cost the federal government an abundance of blood, treasure, inhumanity and cupidity, became a slave State in 1845, and made an early attempt, in 1861, to destroy the Union.

CHAPTER V.

RIGHT OF PETITION DENIED-THE MAILS RIFLED.

James H. Hammond and the Impropriety" of Free Speech-John Adams Censured-His Petition from Slave Women-Raving Southerners-Lewis Falls into an Exasperating Blunder-The Circulators of Abolition Documents Should be Punished-Barbarism of Rev. Woods-The Charleston Postoffice Rifled-Amos Kendall's Remarkable Position-Jackson's Message and John C. Calhoun's Bill Relating to use of the mails by Abolitionists-Wm. Lloyd Garrison Indicted in North Carolina-Brazen Demand of Gov. Gayle, of Alabama-Anti-Slavery Sentiment Thriving upon Persecution.

We have examined briefly the misbehavior of the proslavery party only in connection with their schemes and conspiracies to acquire more slave territory. We shall now give some notice to crimes and barbarities of a different character, which, oft-repeated and long-continued, drove the people at last to organize the Republican party in self defense.

In 1834-5 the Democrats, having a steadfast majority in Congress, refused to receive the petitions of thousands of citizens sent up from various portions of the United States asking for the abolition of slavery in the District of Colum