War Erupts

Florida's relatively weak militia could not hold the St. Johns region. Within weeks, whites abandoned the entire eastern seaboard south of St. Augustine. Residents of the Mosquito County plantations crowded into the city, where they could see smoke drifting from smoldering plantations thirty miles to the south. On January 13, 1836, the St. Augustine Florida Herald cited a military report from the plantations noting, "There is also reason to apprehend a union of a more alarming nature, and one that may render our position deeply interesting to the southern States generally." This "alarming" union was the alliance of plantation slaves with the Black Seminole maroons and Indians, who were jointly laying waste to the St. John's district plantations.