The Battle of Withlacoochee took place during the Second Seminole War on December 31, 1835, along the Withlacoochee River in modern Citrus County, Florida.
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 resulted in conflict between the Seminole, Mikasuki, Creek and other allied tribes and the U.S. Army in the Territory of Florida. This conflict culminated with the Dade battle, which many consider the start to the Second Seminole War. Unaware of what had happened to Major Dade and his column only a few days prior, a U.S. force was dispatched to destroy a Seminole band who were residing at what was called "the Cove," on the southwest side of the Withlacoochee River.
On December 31, 1835, the column of soldiers with Gen. Duncan L. Clinch, leading regular U.S. troops, and Richard K. Call, leading militia, came to the Withlacoochee River. Most of the volunteer militia men had only been signed on for three weeks, the U.S. military commanders believing that it would take only that amount of time to crush the Seminole resistance.
At the time, Clinch and the rest of his command were still unaware of the U.S. defeat during the Dade battle, which had occurred only 3 days prior.
The regular troops began to cross the river first but they only had a single canoe so the crossing was slow. Some of the militia began to cross by swimming their horses across but had to leave their clothes and weapons on the bank before crossing. The river was also higher than expected.
When roughly 225 of the U.S. soldiers had crossed, the Seminole who were laying in ambush opened fire. General Call, having made a footbridge of logs, was trying to get his men across as fast as possible when the attack began. He now left them with orders to cross as rapidly as they could, and crossed in the canoe himself while the fight was at the worst. As many of the volunteers as could do so crossed during the fight, thus preventing the Indians from getting between the regular troops and the river, and so cutting them off. Officer Leigh Read, who was eventually appointed brigadier general of the Florida militia during the war, was wounded during the action.
The early republic period saw the United States move from the weak Articles of Confederation to the federal Constitution ratified in 1788, with the Bill of Rights added in 1791. George Washington served two terms as president (1789–1797), establishing precedents for executive authority, and the federal capital moved permanently to Washington D.C. in 1800. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) doubled the nation's territory for roughly $15 million, opening vast trans-Mississippi lands to American expansion. The War of 1812 against Britain ended inconclusively but produced a surge of American national identity and eliminated most British support for Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi. The Northwest Indian Wars (1785–1795) and the Creek War (1813–1814) broke Indigenous confederacies that had resisted US expansion. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 temporarily balanced slave and free states as the nation expanded westward, but embedded the contradiction of slavery in every subsequent territorial debate.
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