THE GULLAH WARS!!!

The Civil War did not free us...WE FREED US!! The Black Seminoles are a small offshoot of the Gullah who escaped from the rice plantations in South Carolina and Georgia. They built their own settlements on the Florida frontier, fought a series of wars to preserve their freedom, and were scattered across North America. The Gullahs were establishing their own free settlements in the Florida wilderness by at least the late 1700s. They built separate villages of thatched-roof houses surrounded by fields of corn and swamp rice, and they maintained friendly relations with the mixed population of refugee Indians. In time, the two groups came to view themselves as parts of the same loosely organized tribe, in which blacks held important positions of leadership. General Jackson (later President) referred to this First Seminole War as an "Indian and Negro War." In 1835, the Second Seminole War broke out, and this full-scale guerrilla war would last for six years and claim the lives of 1,500 American soldiers. The Black Seminoles waged the fiercest resistance, as they feared that capture or surrender meant death or return to slavery—and they were more adept at living and fighting in the jungles than their Indian comrades.

BOOKS TO READ:

The Invisible War: The Invisible War attempts to redress a fundamental misconception lodged in the heart of American historiography: the notion that there was no significant collective resistance to or struggle against slavery by captured Africans who had been forcibly immigrated to the United States from the mother continent. Such a lacuna may stem from the extent to which then-contemporary records sought to disguise the true nature of what are presently called the Seminole Wars––as just another set of Indian wars, rather than a struggle of African resistance to slavery, conducted in alliance with Indian resistance to ongoing colonial encroachment.While academic and public understanding celebrate the heroes of the Underground Railroad for facilitating the movement of Africans towards freedom in the north, there is virtual silence surrounding the more logical, more sizeable, and more politically significant movement of self-liberated Africans southward to free territories in what is now Georgia and Florida.

https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-War-Anti-Slavery-Resistance-Rebellion/dp/0932863507

Florida's Negro War: Black Seminoles and the Second Seminole War: From 1817 to 1858, the United States government engaged in a bitter conflict with the Seminole Nation. This conflict would result in three distinct wars. The Second Seminole War (1835-1842) was conducted under the Indian Removal Policy of the 1830’s. This war was a result of the American plantation societies’ relentless efforts to enslave the Black Seminole population. The United States government’s objective became to return as many Black Seminoles, if not all, to slavery. Evidence proves that the efforts of the U.S. military to place Blacks in bondage were not only a major underlying theme throughout the War, but at various points, the primary goal. It is clear that from the onset of the war, the United States government, military, and state militias grossly underestimated both the determination and the willingness of the Black Seminole to resist at all cost. Thus, this book will not only make the argument that the Second Seminole War was indeed a slave rebellion, but perhaps the most successful one in United States’ history.

https://www.amazon.com/Floridas-Negro-War-Seminoles-1835-1842/dp/0692024964

The Unconquered: This book is an historical novel about the 1715 Yamassee War and the first of three successful Gullah-Geechee Wars that were fought and won by the Yamassee people and Gullah-Geechee men and women held captive in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries. It is a riveting but entertaining period-piece based on factual historical documents and accounts dealing with the fearless men and women who fled their oppressors and captors in South Carolina, fought back, outwitted and defeated their former enslavers, and thrived in the autonomous settlements they built in Florida.

https://www.amazon.com/Unconquered-Yamassee-Gullah-Geechee-Wars/dp/0971869014