Triumph (60 page)

She smiled. “Maybe I’ll see it and maybe it will all come more quickly than you imagine, maybe we’ll all see it.”

“Maybe, and if I don’t, well ...”

“Father—”

He shushed her. “I’ve lived to see peace. I’ve lived to see my family grow, and my children and nephews and nieces become thoughtful, intelligent, and caring adults. I know that whatever the future brings, you will soar along with it, bringing dignity to men and women of different races and colors and creeds.”

“Thank you,” she told him, smiling at him. She smoothed back a stray strand of dark hair. “The state is booming, Father. But it isn’t all peace, yet. Real peace may take many more decades.”

“It may. But we’re entering a new era. Of invention, of posterity.” Another screech rose from the lawn. “Oh, Lord! An era of McKenzies!” he said with a groan.

“You love it all, and you don’t even pretend to be an old grouch well!” she teased. “Shall we have cake?” Tia asked.

Jarrett looked at his daughter, and at the lawn of Cimarron, where his family played.

He glanced at his father’s grave.

If you could only see this wild land of yours now, Father! Peopled with those who will love it, who will see it into the future ...

“Father?” Tia said, as he still hesitated.

“I was just thinking that my father would be very proud,” he said. Then he drew her arm through his and started down the lawn.

“I hope so,” Tia said as they walked. “He really believed in people. I think he might be proudest of Sydney. You know, she’s working very hard toward women getting the vote.”

“What?” he demanded, stopping.

“Father! You know that women are equally intelligent and—”

She broke off, aware that he was laughing. She flushed.

“Well, it’s probably a long way off.”

“Well, the future waits for no man,” he said. “Come, let’s go have cake with the children.”

“How many of them are there how?”

“You can’t count my grandchildren?”

“Well, there are nephews and nieces down there, too—”

“And another one with us now, I think.”

He stopped, arching a brow. “Tia ...”

“Father, it was a very romantic trip down the Nile.”

“But ... six? I had thought there was a time when you didn’t want children.”

She smiled. “I didn’t want death, war, or pain. We’re at peace.”

“Death and pain still come.”

“I know. But we’ve met so much together ... I’m not afraid anymore, maybe that’s it.” She hesitated, glancing to the lawn, smiling at her father again. “I share all that’s good with a very special man; he’ll stand behind me whatever pain or sorrow we meet in life as well.”

“You have everything,” Jarrett told her.

“And six little people to share it all with!” she laughed.

He cradled her chin gently. “Your husband must be very happy.”

“He is.”

“
My
wife and my children have been everything in life,” he told her. “Everything. And it’s my greatest happiness that you have known the same. But, you’re right. Let’s head down for cake before those children eat it all, eh?”

And so they did.

War and peace.

Time ...

Time always went on.

And so it would.

(And Events Which Influenced Her People)

1492

Christopher Columbus discovers the “New World.”

1513

Florida discovered by Ponce de Leon. Juan Ponce de Leon sights Florida from his ship on March 27th, steps on shore near present day St. Augustine in early April.

1539

Hernando de Soto lands on west coast of the peninsula, near present day Tampa.

1564

The French arrive and establish Fort Caroline on the St. Johns River. Immediately following the establishment of the French fort, Spain dispatches Pedro de Menendez to get rid of the French invaders, “pirates and perturbers of the public peace.” Menendez dutifully captures the French stronghold and slays or enslaves the inhabitants,

1565

Pedro de Menendez founds St. Augustine, the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States.

1586

Sir Francis Drake attacks St. Augustine, burning and plundering the settlement.

1698

Pensacola is founded.

1740

British General James Oglethorpe invades Florida from Georgia.

1763

At the end of the Seven Year’s War, or the French and Indian War, both the East and West Florida Territories are ceded to Britain.

1762-1783

British Rule in East and West Florida.

1774

The “shot heard round the world” is fired in Concord, Massachusetts Colony.

1776

The War of Independence begins; many of the British Loyalists flee to Florida.

1783

By the Treaty of Paris, Florida is returned to the Spanish.

1812-1815

The War of 1812.

1813-1814

The Creek Wars (“Red-Stick” land is decimated. Numerous Indians seek new lands, south with the “Seminoles.”).

1814

General Andrew Jackson captures Pensacola.

1815

The Battle of New Orleans.

1817-1818

The First Seminole War—Americans accuse the Spanish of aiding the Indians in their raids across the border. Hungry for more territory, settlers seek to force Spain into ceding the Floridas to the United States by their claims against the Spanish government for its inability to properly handle the situation within the territories.

1819

Don Luis de Onis, Spanish minister to the United States, and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams sign a treaty by which the Floridas will become part of the United States.

1821

The Onis-Adams Treaty is ratified. An act of congress makes the two Floridas one territory. Jackson becomes the military governor, but relinquishes the post after a few months.

1822

The first legislative council meets at Pensacola. Members from St. Augustine travel fifty-nine days by water to attend.

1823

The second legislative council meets at St. Augustine: the western delegates are shipwrecked and barely escape death.

1834

The third session meets at Tallahassee, a halfway point selected as a main order of business and approved at the second session. Tallahassee becomes the first territorial capital.

1823

The Treaty of Moultrie Creek is ratified by major Seminole chiefs and the federal government. The ink is barely dry before Indians are complaining that the lands are too small and white settlers are petitioning the government for a policy of Indian removal.

1832

Payne’s Landing: Numerous chiefs sign a treaty agreeing to move west to Arkansas as long as seven of their number are able to see and approve the lands. The treaty is ratified at Fort Gibson, Arkansas. Many chiefs also protest the agreement.

1835

Summer: Wiley Thompson claims that Osceola has repeatedly reviled him in his own office with foul language and orders his arrest. Osceola is handcuffed and incarcerated.

1835

November: Charlie Emathla, after agreeing to removal to the west, is murdered. Most scholars agree Osceola led the party that carried out the execution. Some consider the murder a personal vengeance, others believe it was ordered by numerous chiefs since an Indian who would leave his people to aid the whites should forfeit his own life.

1835

December 28th: Major Francis Dade and his troops are massacred as they travel from Fort Brooke to Fort King.

Also on December 28th—Wiley Thompson and a companion are killed outside the walls of Fort King. The sutler Erastus Rogers and his two clerks are also murdered by members of the same raiding party, led by Osceola.

1835

December 31st: The First Battle of the Withlacoochee—Osceola leads the Seminoles.

1836

January: Major General Winfield Scott is ordered by the secretary of war to take command in Florida.

February 4th: Dade County established in South Florida in memory of Francis Langhorne Dade.

March 16th: The senate confirms Richard Keith Call governor of the Florida Territory.

June 21st: Call, a civilian governor, is given command of the Florida forces after the failure of Scott’s strategies and the military disputes between Scott and General Gaines. Call attempts a “summer campaign,” and is as frustrated in his efforts as his predecessor.

December 9th: Major Sidney Jesup takes charge.

1837

June 2nd: Osceola and Sam Jones release or “abduct” nearly 700 Indians awaiting deportation to the west from Tampa.

October 27th: Osceola is taken under a white flag of truce; Jesup is denounced by whites and Indians alike for the action.

November 29th: Coacoochee, Cowaya, sixteen warriors and two women escape Ft.Marion.

Christmas Day: Jesup has the largest fighting force assembled in Florida during the conflict, nearly 9,000 men. Under his command, Colonel Zachary Taylor leads the Battle of Okeechobee. The Seminoles choose to stand their ground and fight, inflicting greater losses to whites despite the fact that they were severely outnumbered.

1838

January 31st: Osceola dies at Ft. Marion, South Carolina—A strange side note to a sad tale: Dr. Wheedon, presiding white physician for Osceola, cut off and preserved Osceola’s head. Wheedon’s heirs reported that the good doctor would hang the head on the bedstead of one of his three children should they misbehave. The head passed to his son-in-law, Dr. Daniel Whitehurst, who gave it to Dr. Valentine Mott. Dr. Mott had a medical and pathological museum, and it is believed that the head was lost when his museum burned in 1866.

May: Zachary Taylor takes command when Jesup’s plea to be relieved is answered at last on April 29th. The Florida legislature debates statehood.

1839

December: Because of his arguments with federal authorities regarding the Seminole War, Richard Keith Call is removed as governor.Robert Raymond Reid is appointed in his stead.

1840

April 24th: Zachary Taylor is given permission to leave command of what is considered to be the harshest military position in the country. Walker Keith Armistead takes command.

December 1840-January 1841: John T. MacLaughlin leads a flotilla of men in dugouts across the Everglades from east to west; his party become the first white men to do so.

September: William Henry Harrison is elected president of the United States; the Florida War is considered to have cost Martin Van Buren reelection.

John Bell replaces Joel Poinsett as secretary of war. Robert Reid is ousted as territorial governor, and Richard Keith Call is reinstated.

1841

April 4th: President William Henry Harrison dies in office: John Tyler becomes president of the U.S.

May 1st: Coacoochee determines to turn himself in. He is escorted by a man who will later become extremely well known—Lieutenant William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman writes to his future wife that the Florida war is a good one for a soldier; he will get to know the Indian who may become the “chief enemy” in time.

May 31st: Walker Keith Armistead is relieved. Colonel William Jenkins Worth takes command.

1842

May 10th: Winfield Scott is informed that the administration has decided there must be an end to hostilities as soon as possible.

August 14th: Aware that he cannot end hostilities and send all the Indians West, Colonel Worth makes offers to the remaining Indians to leave, or accept boundaries. The war, he declares, is over. It has cost a fledgling nation thirty to forty million dollars and the lives of seventy-four commissioned officers. The Seminoles have been reduced from tens of thousands to hundreds scattered about in pockets. The Seminoles (inclusive here, as they were seen during the war, as all Florida Indians) have, however, kept their place in the peninsula; those remaining are the undefeated. The army, too, has learned new tactics, mostly regarding partisan and guerilla warfare. Men who will soon take part in the greatest conflict to tear apart the nation have practiced the art of battle here: William T. Sherman, Braxton Bragg, George Gordon Meade, Joseph E. Johnston, and more, including soon-to-be President Zachary Taylor.

1845

March 3rd: President John Tyler signs the bill that makes Florida the 27th state of the United States of America.

1855-58

The conflict known as the Third Seminole War takes place with a similar outcome to the earlier confrontations—money spent, lives lost, and the Indians entrenched more deeply into the Everglades.

1859

Robert E. Lee is sent in to arrest John Brown after his attempt to initiate a slave rebellion with an assault on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (later West Virginia). The incident escalates ill will between the North and the South. Brown is executed on December 2nd.

1860

The first Florida cross-state railroad goes into service.

November 6th: Abraham Lincoln is elected to the presidency and many Southern states begin to call for special legislative sessions. Although there are many passionate Unionists in the state, most Florida politicians are ardent in lobbying for secession. Towns, cities, and counties rush to form or enlarge militia companies. Even before the state is able to meet for its special session, civil and military leaders plan to demand the turnover of federal, military installations.

1861

January 10th: Florida votes to secede from the Union, the third Southern state to do so.

February: Florida joins the Confederate States of America.

Through late winter and early spring, the Confederacy struggles to form a government and organize the armed forces while the states recruit fighting men. Jefferson Davis is president of the newly formed country. Stephan Mallory, of Florida, becomes C.S.A. secretary of the navy.

April 12th-14th: Confederate forces fire on Ft. Sumter, S.C., and the first blood is shed when an accidental explosion kills Private Hough, who then has the distinction of being the first federal casualty.