Litchfield enquirer., 1838-02-08
THE FLORIDA WAR.
Rron Mr. UadsrVOOd,s Eef Ksn'uaEyj 'a'e sp''ch |"


 CoRgrsss.
 invite your attention, Mir. Chairman, in the next place, to the War Department; and what, I ask, do we behold here! The larger portion of the Army proper concentrated m Florida; and mutinous German recruits ana wild savages enlisted in the Northwest, gone or going to cooperate with our regular troops in the suppression of Seminole hostilities How did those hostilities originate! What caused them! To this day, we have not, 10 my recollection, had any Executive report detailing the causes which had involved us in war with these people, and to wh oh we might refer our constituents for the facts of the case. The first recollect to have heard, except from newspapers and runor, was ti" report of Q bill from the Committee of Ways and Means, early in the first session l was honored with a seat here, appropriating $l2O,OOO for "rcpressing hostilities com menced by the Seminole Indians" as declar- ed by the title of the bill. The sum was small, and voted the money with alacrity, as the avowed object was to stop the further effusion of blood. The President approved the act we passed on the 14th of January, l636 From this little beginning we have gone on, making appropriation after appropria. tion, for the same avowed object, until the riyulet has arisen to mighty torrent, threat ening to bear the whole contents of your Treasury into this gulf, this money sinking ocean-the Florida war. Fifteen days after the first appropriation we granted $5O0,O00 more. On the first of April, 1886, $5OO,OOO more were appropriated. This act was the only one approved on Foot s-day of that year. On the 29th of the same month, as if fatigued by the repeated calls for hundreds of thou- sands, we passed bill voting a mllion.- Not satisfied with all this, WE were called on just before the adjournment for $2,400,OO0. and we gave it on the 2d July, 1886. So much for the action of Congress during the first session after the commencement of these hostilities. During the next session, we voted $4.0OO.OOO, and during the late extra session \although we were no: assembled for that purpose) we granted the additional sum of $l,6OO,O00. Thus, in less than two years, wehave appropriated $1O, O,l20.O00 to carry on the war against the Seminole Indians, and how much more this administration will re- quire to bring it to close no man can tell. MT. Chairman, should like to know who we have been fighting, and what we have been Sighting, at so great cost of money, and at the sacrifice of more lives by the climate, believe, sir, than by the rife or tomahawk of the enemy.
 find in the American Almanack for 1888, Ca publication which gives the facts from of- ficial documents with much accuracy) that according to the report of MT. Harris, the head of our Indian Bureau, the entire popu- lation of the Seminole nation was estimated at2,6OO souls. live deduct half for females, we shall have but 1900 males; and if we di. vide these and allow moiety for old men and boys, who may be chased as non-com- batants, it will leave for the entire efficient military force of the Seminole nation $50 men. Hence we have already appropriated more than $l5,OOO to capture each warrior of the nation, and they are yet running at large in their forests. Why, sir. the British Government only offers Gl,OOO for the scalp of Papineau, and we have already given a. bout four times as much for that of the mean est subaltern savage that skulks in Florida hammock! Verify. it would have been a good thing if the Government had acceded 70 the, said to ne~e beeH Pre'P0sed by . fOr'n- CT colleague of mine, and put up the Florida war between the Tenncsseeans and Kentuck- ians to the lowest bidder.
 But what have we been fighting the Sem- inoles for? For no other purpose than to re- move them from the land where they were born, and where the bones of their ancestors are buried, and to place them where they will be strangers in strange land where they must give up old habits and learn new ones; where the evergreen foliage of their perpetual summers will disappear, and the frosts and snows of pinching winters must be endured where their arts as fishermen will be-. useless, and where they must confine themselves to the pursuits of the chase and the tillage of the earth for subsistence. Did we want their lands for cultivation? No, SIT; our population was not pressing upon tnelr borders Tn dense masses. We were not overf1owing in that direction. We did not even knOW whnfh0R fhpsn l~- rable for agricultural and planting purposes. Your citizens, your typographical corps had never explored it. One of the great obsta- cles in the way of our armies has been igno- rance of the face of the country. The war has been conducted by our Generals in a country which they knew not and hence one great cause of their failure. You were under no obligations to procure the Florida territory, and remove the Indians for the ben- eht of a State, as was the case with Georgia and the Cherokees. Why, then, prosecute war tor the sole purpose of removing hand- fut of unwilling savages from Florida, and to plant them. with their hostile feelings, where you have already accumulated formidable body Of different Indian tribes, upon an ex- posed frontier? There was no sufficient mo. tive to justify statesmen in doing 1t. am in. formed, and do not doubt the fact, that it mas been within the power of the administra. uon. at any moment, to secure peace, by al- lowing these Indians to spend their exister ce, and to dwindle into nothing, in the land where God placed them. It ought to have been done; and then the white race, destined to exterminate the rcd, could have acquired the territory inch by inch, as 1t was wanted But this obvious policy has been disregarded The late and present President have deter. mined that the Indians shall remove, and gc net ntk n. "A Al