Reminders of the Second Seminole War“The Dogs of War”.
By Geoff Dobson
On August 14, 1842 at Depot Key, General William J. Worth declared the Florida War, now known as the Second Seminole War, at an end. The war had lasted seven years.
The war had commenced with the killing of civilians at Fort King, present day Ocala, and the Massacre of Captain (Brevet Major) Francis L. Dade and his men at Wahoo Swamp sixty-five miles north of Fort Brooke on December 28, 1835.
It took several days for official word to be received by the army at Fort Brooke (present day Tampa). Unofficially, there was a realization that something had gone amiss when the dog of one of the three survivors of the massacre, Captain Charles Gardiner, reappeared, wounded, at the Fort. It was, perhaps, the only time when the military received word of a disaster in the field from a dog.
