Fire on the Frontier

In 1818, Andrew Jackson led an American army into Spanish Florida without a declaration of war, seized two colonial capitals, executed two British subjects, and destroyed dozens of Seminole villages — all without explicit legal authority. Congress was outraged. Britain protested. Spain demanded answers. And yet Jackson's campaign achieved exactly what the Monroe administration wanted: Florida.Fire on the Frontier is a comprehensive narrative history of the First Seminole War, tracing the deep roots of the conflict through Spanish colonial decline, Creek displacement, the rise of Seminole society, and the explosive borderland violence of the 1810s. It follows the campaign in full — the burning of the Negro Fort, the battle on the Suwannee, the fall of Pensacola — and examines the lives of everyone caught in its path: Seminole leaders, Black Seminoles fighting for their freedom, Spanish officials, British traders, and the American politicians who had to explain what Jackson had done. A war without a formal declaration, it set precedents for executive power and territorial expansion that echoed for generations.