Key Actors

The volunteer ranks were another matter. Especially at the outset, the volunteers were mainly romantic young men who descended on Florida with illusions of glory. After Dade's massacre, they rushed to defend the white citizens of the frontier from savage Indians and Negroes. As John Mahon, author of the definitive history on the war, has pointed out, they also rushed numerous memoirs into print celebrating their valorous deeds. In the exuberant words of one memoirist,

"Never did Rome or Greece in days of yore -- nor France, nor England in modern times -- pour forth a nobler soldiery than the Volunteers from Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina."