DADE’S COLUMN AMBUSHED IN FLORIDA

Dade’s column ambushed in Florida

On December 28th, 1835, a column of United States soldiers under Major Francis Dade marched through the pine woods of Florida on what officers believed was a relatively routine movement between forts. Seminole warriors, determined to resist forced removal from their lands, watched the column for days and chose a stretch of road where the soldiers were exposed and poorly covered. Their ambush devastated Dade’s command, killing most of the roughly one hundred men in intense and bewildering fighting. Only a handful of survivors made it back to tell the story. The attack, soon known among Americans as the Dade Massacre, became one of the opening shocks of the Second Seminole War, a long and brutal conflict in the swamps and hammocks of Florida. For the United States Army, the battle was a sobering reminder of the challenges of fighting in unfamiliar terrain against determined Indigenous opponents who knew the ground and the stakes far better than most soldiers marching through it.