Dade Battlefield Historic State Park is a state park located on County Road 603 between Interstate 75 (Exit 314) and U.S. Route 301 in Sumter County, Florida. The 80-acre (32 ha) park includes 40 acres (160,000 m2) of pine flatwoods and a live oak hammock. Also called the Dade Massacre site, it preserves the Second Seminole War battlefield where tribal Seminole warriors and Black Seminole allies fought soldiers under the command of Major Francis L. Dade on December 28, 1835. Each year, on the weekend after Christmas (as close to the original date as possible), the Dade Battlefield Society sponsors a reenactment of the battle that started the Second Seminole War.
Under the title of Dade Battlefield Historic Memorial, it is also a United States National Historic Landmark (designated as such on April 14, 1972).
The United States government negotiated the Treaty of Moultrie Creek in 1824, placing the Seminoles on a reservation that included the site of the future battle. A combination of white settlers moving onto public land in violation of the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, slave hunters trespassing onto the reservation to capture maroons without proof of ownership, and the government's implementation of the Indian Removal Act and the Treaty of Payne's Landing to move the Seminoles over the protests of Seminole chiefs infuriated the Seminoles.
At around 8:00 AM on the morning of December 28, 1835, around 130 Seminoles, led by Chief Micanopy, ambushed Major Dade and over 100 men along a segment of the Fort King Road as they marched to reinforce the troops stationed at Fort King (present-day Ocala, Florida). Dade, another commanding officer, and the entire left flank, consisting of one-half of the troops, were killed in the first volley. Over the next six hours, Dade's remaining troops and the Seminoles exchanged gunfire; the gunfire ceased as all but three of Dade's men and their guide Louis Pacheco were killed. Privates Joseph Sprague and Ransom Clarke returned to Fort Brooke (present-day Tampa, Florida); Sprague later served until the end of the Second Seminole War, and Clarke died from his injuries five years later. The Dade battle began the Second Seminole War.
In 1836, General Thomas Sidney Jesup ordered a regiment of Tennessee militiamen led by Major Robert Armstrong to build a supply depot at the site of the Dade battle named Fort Armstrong. From Fort Armstrong, Brigadier General Richard Keith Call led an attack on the Seminoles living in the Wahoo Swamp a few days after the fort's construction ended. Later in 1837, Major Thomas Childs took over command of the post. During his tenure, one "Colonel Dill", claiming that he was seeking escaped slaves, was detained and was ordered to return to his residence. General Jesup ordered that all government employees and express riders were barred from passing through Fort Armstrong for the purpose of looking for runaway slaves. This was to allow black Seminoles to enter the fort and to be eventually deported to reservations west of the Mississippi River. In 1984, after several years' work, the Sumter County Historical Society would place a marker at the site of Fort Armstrong.
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.
This page covers Dade Massacre (Second Seminole War). A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
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