Combat· Second Seminole War
Col Lindsay's Withlacoochee Expedition
An early operation of the Second Seminole War in which Marines first took the field in Florida.
Colonel William Lindsay of the Army left Fort Brooke on 22 March 1836 with a column that included Lieutenant Waldron's Marines, pushing toward the Withlacoochee River, the difficult swamp country that became the focus of so much of the war's early fighting. The expedition suffered the usual hardships of the Florida campaign, exhausting marches through hostile terrain, but it produced no major engagement. McClellan's account, drawing on the reports of the period, records that there was "little loss on either side, none on the part of the Marines" during Lindsay's operation, with Lieutenant Ross accompanying the expedition as a volunteer. The Marines were noted as active and useful, and the expedition served mainly as their introduction to the conditions that would define seven years of frustrating war.
Podcast episodes on Second Seminole War
Record no. 25