Notices of Florida and the Campaigns

When the Secretary of War moved regulars into primitive Florida in response to trouble with the Seminole Indians in 1836, he called on the southern states for militia and volunteers. Myer M. Cohen, a lawyer and former schoolteacher in Charleston, South Carolina, anticipated adventure and volunteered. As a staff officer of General Abraham Eustis, Cohen was with the left wing of General Winfield Scott’s triple offensive against the Seminoles. After several months of service from St. Augustine to Fort Brooke (present-day Tampa), he returned to Charleston and wrote a book about the campaign. He used his recollections for the core of the manuscript but also included a summary history of Florida and accounts of other military actions in the Territory. Although he embellished his account and was flamboyant in style, he gives readers a personal and interesting report on the campaign, the first days of what would finally become the longest Indian war in American history.