LIVING HISTORY
16
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cal commentary about her husband being an idiot. Jesup tried
to resign, but newly elected President Van Buren wouldn’t let
him quit.
That’s when the general decided the only way to win
quickly, as the War Department and angry newspaper editors
demanded, was to Àght ugly. The net time 6eminole
chiefs and warriors came in under a white flag to barter for
more supplies, he would snooker them. 6ure, a white flag
means truce sometimes, but it also means surrender. Right?
The chiefs who stiͿed him had surrendered already, fair
and square. So they were like escaped prisoners now. Why
couldn’t he just arrest them? That’s how Jesup saw it.
Soon, Jesup nabbed every chief and warrior he could get
his hands on, including the public’s darling: Osceola. But the
national press cried foul. So did some members of Congress,
plus most historians ever afterward. 1evermind that he
was trying to end the war without anymore soldiers — or
,ndians ³ getting killed. +e cheated, his detractors decried.
,t didn·t help when 2sceola suddenly died in captivity of a
serious case of tonsilitis a few months afterward. The public
was rightfully enthralled to learn the valiant Seminole leader
chose to meet death with his war paint on. His portrait became
a hot commodity. But poor Jesup’s treachery made him
a national villain.
Capturing the Seminoles’ biggest chiefs should have
ended the war, but it slugged on for four more years. Wildcat
(also known as Coacoochee) was as bold and dangerous as
2sceola, but never Tuite as famous. After Wildcat was tricked
into giving up, he made an incredible escape from a dungeon
in 6t. Augustine. +e and a bunch of his warriors slipped
through a tiny air hole in Fort Marion (aka Castillo de San
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