SW036 Major Dade’s Column Battles Seminole Ambush on Fort King Military Road 185 Years Ago

[Editor's Note: This is the eighth in a series of podcasts promoting the Seminole Wars Foundation's self-paced virtual challenge, The Major Dade Memorial March to Fort King. We launched Dec. 22. Registration to join Laumer's Legion is still open. Visit www.seminolewars.us for details.]

Dade Battle by Ken Hughes 1974 Miami History Center

Over several episodes, we have alluded to or briefly described the Dade Battle of late December 1835. The time has come to take a deep dive. The Dade Battle, also known as the Dade Massacre, arguably served as the opening shots to the Second Seminole War. Other shots were being fired throughout Florida in that December as well as in the months leading up to this engagement. But this was the Big Battle that seized everyone’s attention and that informed the U.S. Government that the Seminole would not go quietly into Oklahoma exile.

With us today to set the scene and describe the Dade Battle is Ross Lamoreaux. Ross is a military re-enactor, a museum exhibitor at the Tampa Bay History Center, the newly elected president of the Dade Battlefield Society, and someone who has actually walked the path of Dade’s march from Tampa toward turmoil in present-day Bushnell.

Post return Dec. 28, 1835, list of casualties from "Engagement on the Withlacoochee" 

Host Patrick Swan is a board member with the Seminole Wars Foundation. He is a combat veteran and of the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Kosovo, and at the Pentagon after 9/11. A military historian, he holds masters degrees in Public History, Communication, and Homeland Security, and is a graduate of the US Army War College with an advanced degree in strategic studies. This podcast is recorded at the homestead of the Seminole Wars Foundation in Bushnell, Florida. 

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