title: Galactosemia

text: In galactosemic patients, the accumulation of galactose becomes the substrate for enzymes that catalyze the polyol pathway of carbohydrate metabolism. The first reaction of this pathway is the reduction of aldoses, types of sugars including galactose, to sugar alcohols. Recent data suggests that aldose reductase is the enzyme responsible for the primary stage of this pathway. Therefore, aldose reductase reduces galactose to its sugar alcohol form, galactitol. Galactitol, however, is not a suitable substrate for the next enzyme in the polyol pathway, polyol dehydrogenase. Thus, galactitol accumulates in body tissues and is excreted in the urine of galactosemic patients. Accumulation of galactitol has been attributed to many of the negative effects of galactosemia, and high concentrations of galactitol have been found in people with classic galactosemia (GALT deficiency or Galactose-1-phosphate uridylyltransferase deficiency), galactokinase deficiency, and epimerase deficiency with glucose.


title: Galactosemia

text: Accumulated galactose can also undergo an alternative reaction: Oxidation to galactonate. The mechanism of galactonate formation is still unclear. However, recent studies suggest that galactose dehydrogenase is responsible for converting galactose to galactonolactone, which then spontaneously or enzymatically converts to galactonate. Once formed, galactonate may enter the pentose phosphate pathway. Thus, Oxidation to galactonate serves as an alternate pathway for metabolizing galactose. This oxidative pathway renders accumulated galactonate less harmful than accumulated galactitol.


title: Galactosemia

text: In many states throughout the world, infants routinely undergo newborn screening (NBS) for galactosemia. This allows a diagnosis to be made while the person is still an infant. Infants affected by galactosemia typically present with symptoms of lethargy, vomiting, diarrhea, failure to thrive, and jaundice. None of these symptoms are specific to galactosemia, often leading to diagnostic delays. If the family of the baby has a history of galactosemia, doctors can test prior to birth by taking a sample of fluid from around the fetus (amniocentesis) or from the placenta (chorionic villus sampling or CVS). Galactosemia is normally first detected through newborn screening which if available, is able to diagnose the majority of affected infants.


title: Galactosemia

text: A galactosemia test is a blood test (from the heel of the infant) or urine test that checks for three enzymes that are needed to change galactose sugar that is found in milk and milk products into glucose, a sugar that the human body uses for energy. A person with galactosemia doesn't have one of these enzymes. This causes high levels of galactose in the blood or urine.


title: Galactosemia

text: Affected children can have serious, irreversible effects or even die within days from birth. It is important that newborns be screened for metabolic disorders without delay. Galactosemia can even be detected through NBS before any ingestion of galactose-containing formula or breast milk.


title: Galactosemia

text: Detection of the disorder through NBS does not depend on protein or lactose ingestion, and, therefore, it should be identified on the first specimen unless the infant has been transfused. A specimen should be taken prior to transfusion. The enzyme is prone to damage if analysis of the sample is delayed or exposed to high temperatures. The routine NBS is accurate for detection of galactosemia. Two screening tests are used to screen infants affected with galactosemia—the Beutler's test and the Hill test. The Beutler's test screens for galactosemia by detecting the level of enzyme of the infant. Therefore, the ingestion of formula or breast milk does not affect the outcome of this part of the NBS, and the NBS is accurate for detecting galactosemia prior to any ingestion of galactose.


title: Galactosemia

text: Duarte galactosemia is a milder form of classical galactosemia and usually has no long term side effects.


title: Galactosemia

text: Galactose is converted into glucose by the action of three enzymes, known as the Leloir pathway. There are diseases associated with deficiencies of each of these three enzymes:


title: Galactosemia

text: The only treatment for classic galactosemia is eliminating lactose and galactose from the diet (e.g. exclusion of dairy products containing lactose).


title: Galactosemia

text: Lactose restricted diet is efficient in resolving acute complications, however, it is not sufficient to prevent long-term complications affecting the brain and female gonads. Some individuals may experience long-term complications such as speech difficulties, learning disabilities, neurological impairment (e.g. tremors, etc.), and ovarian failure.


title: Galactosemia

text: Symptoms that have not been associated with Duarte galactosemia, and many individuals with Duarte galactosemia do not need to restrict their diet at all. However, research corroborates a previously overlooked theory that Duarte galactosemia may lead to language developmental issues in children with no clinical symptoms. Infants with classic galactosemia cannot be breast-fed due to lactose in human breast milk which consists of both galactose and glucose and are usually fed a soy-based formula.


title: Galactosemia

text: Galactosemia is sometimes confused with lactose intolerance, but galactosemia is a more serious condition. Lactose intolerant individuals have an acquired or inherited shortage of the enzyme lactase, and experience abdominal pains after ingesting dairy products, but no long-term effects. In contrast, a galactosemic individual who consumes galactose can cause permanent damage to their bodies.


title: National Assembly (French Revolution)

text: During the French Revolution, the National Assembly (), which existed from 17 June 1789 to 29 September 1791, was a revolutionary assembly of the Kingdom of France formed by the representatives of the Third Estate (commoners) of the Estates-General. Thereafter (until replaced by the Legislative Assembly on 30 Sept 1791), it was known as the National Constituent Assembly (), although the shorter form was favored.


title: National Assembly (French Revolution)

text: The Estates-General had been called on 5 May 1789 to manage France's financial crisis, but promptly fell to squabbling over its own structure. Its members had been elected to represent the estates of the realm: the 1st Estate (the clergy), the 2nd Estate (the nobility) and the 3rd Estate (which, in theory, represented all of the commoners and, in practice, represented the bourgeoisie). The Third Estate had been granted "double representation"—that is, twice as many delegates as each of the other feudal estates—but at the opening session on 5 May 1789 was informed that all voting would be "by power" not "by head", so the double representation would be meaningless in terms of power. They refused this and proceeded to meet separately.


title: National Assembly (French Revolution)

text: Shuttle diplomacy among the estates continued without success until 27 May; on 28 May, the representatives of the 3rd Estate began to meet on their own, calling themselves the "Communes" ("Commons") and proceeding with their "verification of powers" independently of the other bodies; from 13 June to 17 June they were gradually joined by some of the nobles and the majority of the clergy as well as other people such as the peasants. On 17 June this group began to call itself the National Assembly.


title: National Assembly (French Revolution)

text: Jacques Necker, finance minister of Louis XVI, had earlier proposed that the king hold a "Séance Royale" (Royal Session) in an attempt to reconcile the divided Estates. The king agreed; but none of the three orders were formally notified of the decision to hold a Royal Session. All debates were to be put on hold until the "séance royale" took place.


title: National Assembly (French Revolution)

text: Events soon overtook Necker's complex scheme of giving in to the "Communes" on some points while holding firm on others. No longer interested in Necker's advice, Louis XVI, under the influence of the courtiers of his privy council, resolved to go in state to the Assembly, annul its decrees, command the separation of the orders, and dictate the reforms to be effected by the restored Estates-General. On 19 June he ordered the Salle des États, the hall where the National Assembly met, closed, and remained at Marly for several days while he prepared his address.


title: National Assembly (French Revolution)

text: Two days later, also deprived of use of the tennis court that they had been using as an improvised meeting place, the National Assembly met in the Church of Saint Louis, where the majority of the representatives of the clergy joined them: efforts to restore the old order had served only to accelerate events. When, on 23 June in accord with his plan, the king finally addressed the representatives of all three estates, he encountered a stony silence. He concluded by ordering all to disperse. The nobles and clergy obeyed; the deputies of the common people remained seated in a silence finally broken by Mirabeau, whose speech culminated, "A military force surrounds the assembly! Where are the enemies of the nation? Is Catiline at our gates? I demand, investing yourselves with your dignity, with your legislative power, you inclose yourselves within the religion of your oath. It does not permit you to separate till you have formed a constitution." The deputies stood firm.


title: National Assembly (French Revolution)

text: Necker, conspicuous by his absence from the royal party on that day, found himself in disgrace with Louis, but back in the good graces of the National Assembly. Those of the clergy who had joined the Assembly at the church of Saint Louis remained in the Assembly; forty-seven members of the nobility, including the Duke of Orléans, soon joined them; by 27 June the royal party had overtly given in, although the likelihood of a military counter-coup remained in the air. The French military began to arrive in large numbers around Paris and Versailles.


title: National Assembly (French Revolution)

text: In the "séance royale" of 23 June the King granted a "Charte octroyée", a constitution granted of the royal favour, which affirmed, subject to the traditional limitations, the right of separate deliberation for the three orders, which constitutionally formed three chambers. This move failed; soon that part of the deputies of the nobles who still stood apart, joined the National Assembly at the request of the king. The Estates-General had ceased to exist, having become the National Assembly (and after 9 July 1789, the National Constituent Assembly), though these bodies consisted of the same deputies elected by the separate orders.


title: National Assembly (French Revolution)

text: Messages of support poured into the Assembly from Paris and other French cities. On 9 July 1789, the Assembly, reconstituting itself as the National Constituent Assembly, addressed the king in polite but firm terms, requesting the removal of the troops (which now included foreign regiments, who showed far greater obedience to the king than did his French troops), but Louis declared that he alone could judge the need for troops, and assured them that the troops had deployed strictly as a precautionary measure. Louis "offered" to move the assembly to Noyon or Soissons: that is to say, to place it between two armies and deprive it of the support of the Parisian people. Public outrage over this troop presence precipitated the Storming of the Bastille, beginning the next phase of the Revolution.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1981 British romantic drama film directed by Karel Reisz, produced by Leon Clore, and adapted by the playwright Harold Pinter. It is based on "The French Lieutenant's Woman", a 1969 novel by John Fowles. The music score is by Carl Davis and the cinematography by Freddie Francis.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: The film stars Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. Other featured actors include Hilton McRae, Peter Vaughan, Colin Jeavons, Liz Smith, Patience Collier, Richard Griffiths, David Warner, Alun Armstrong, Penelope Wilton, and Leo McKern.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: The film received five Oscar nominations. Streep was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and Pinter for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: The film intercuts the stories of two romantic affairs. One is within a Victorian period drama involving a gentleman palaeontologist, Charles Smithson, and the complex and troubled Sarah Woodruff, known as "the French lieutenant's woman". The other affair is between the actors Mike and Anna, playing the lead roles in a modern filming of the story. In both segments, Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep play the lead roles.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: John Fowles's "The French Lieutenant's Woman" had multiple endings, and the two parallel stories in the movie have different outcomes. In the Victorian story, Charles enters into an intensely emotional relationship with Sarah, an enigmatic and self-imposed exile he meets just after becoming engaged to Ernestina (Lynsey Baxter), a rich merchant's daughter in Lyme Regis. Charles and Sarah meet secretly in the Lyme Regis Undercliff and eventually have sex in an Exeter hotel.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: This leads to Charles's breaking his engagement, but then Sarah disappears. In social disgrace after being sued for breach of promise by Ernestina, Charles searches for Sarah, fearing she has become a prostitute in London. After three years, Sarah, who has a job as a governess in the Lake District, contacts Charles to explain that she needed time to find herself. Despite Charles's initial anger, he forgives her, and the two are reconciled. They are finally seen boating on Windermere.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: In the modern story, the American actress Anna and the English actor Mike, both married, are shown as having an extended affair during the making of the Victorian film, in which Anna plays Sarah and Mike portrays Charles. As filming concludes, Mike wishes to continue the relationship, but Anna becomes increasingly cool about the affair and avoids Mike in favour of spending time with her French husband. During the film's wrap party, Anna leaves without saying goodbye to Mike. Mike calls to Anna, using her character's name Sarah, from an upstairs window on the set where Charles and Sarah reconciled, as she drives away.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: Harold Pinter and Karel Reisz worked on the script in 1979, with Leon Clore as producer, and with whom Reisz regularly worked in their company Film Contracts, formed many years earlier. Leon had produced Reisz' "". The film was shot in 1980 on location in Lyme Regis, Dartmouth, Exeter, London docks, and Lake Windermere. Studio sets were built at Twickenham Studios in London to Assheton Gorton's period-perfect designs. The opening shot in the film establishes the dual stories by having the assistant director mark the shot with a clapper board, and then run out of the shot to reveal the Victorian seaside front, with Charles and Ernestina taking the air.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: The audience is given alternating sequences of a rigid Victorian society, and the more relaxed modern life of a working film crew, revealing the great moral divide between past and present. "Prostitution, Considered in Its Moral, Social, and Sanitary Aspects", an 1857 book by William Acton, is referred to in the film when Streep's character mentions that in 1857 there were 80,000 prostitutes in the county of London and that one house in 60 functioned as a brothel.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: The book was published in 1969. Its transfer to the big screen was a protracted process, with film rights changing hands a number of times before a treatment, funds and cast were finalized. Originally, Malcolm Bradbury and Christopher Bigsby approached Fowles to suggest a television adaptation, to which Fowles was amenable, but the producer Saul Zaentz finally arranged for the film version to be made.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: A number of directors were attached to the film: Sidney Lumet, Robert Bolt, Fred Zinnemann and Miloš Forman. The script went through a number of treatments, including one by Dennis Potter in 1975 and by James Costigan in 1976, before Pinter's final draft.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: Actors considered for the role of Charles Smithson/Mike included Robert Redford and Richard Chamberlain, and Sarah/Anna included Francesca Annis, Charlotte Rampling, Gemma Jones and Fowles's choice Helen Mirren.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: The award-winning music was composed by Carl Davis and performed by an unidentified orchestra and viola soloist Kenneth Essex.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it "a beautiful film to look at, and remarkably well-acted". Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" called it "an astonishingly beautiful film, acted to the elegant hilt by Meryl Streep as the ultimately unreliable Sarah; Jeremy Irons, who looks a lot like the young Laurence Olivier of "Wuthering Heights", as Charles Smithson, and by a cast of splendid supporting actors of the sort that only England seems to possess." "Variety" wrote, "The effect of the two interwoven stories is at time irritating and confusing, but ultimately most affecting. This is due in large part to the strong performances of Meryl Streep as Sara Woodruff/Anna and Jeremy Irons as Charles Smithson/Mike."


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film four stars out of four and called it "a beautifully made film, evoking the past and the present quite well. Both Streep and Irons live up to the extraordinary advance billing they have received." He ranked the film #10 on his year-end list of the best films of 1981. Sheila Benson of the "Los Angeles Times", "The physical trappings that surround the Charles-Sarah story are as detailed and knowledgeable as the book's, yet the film avoids a cozy-corner Victoriana that would have been easy to fall into." She also praised "Meryl Streep's luminous performance" and Assheton Gorton's production design as "nothing short of brilliant".


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: A mixed review by Pauline Kael of The New Yorker described the novel as "a meditation on the romantic mystery women and sensual madwomen of Victorian fiction", explaining that "We never really get into the movie, because, as Sarah, Meryl Streep gives an immaculate, technically accomplished performance, but she isn't mysterious." Gary Arnold of "The Washington Post" wrote, "An unfailing pictorial treat, "The French Lieutenant's Woman" rivals last year's "Tess" as a handsome and evocative period production."


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: As of January 2022, "The French Lieutenant's Woman" held a rating of 82% on "Rotten Tomatoes" based on 28 reviews.


title: The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)

text: The film was the second highest-grossing British film for the year with theatrical rentals of £1,244,152, behind "Chariots of Fire".


title: Second Seminole War

text: The Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between the United States and groups collectively known as Seminoles, consisting of Native Americans and Black Indians. It was part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars. The Second Seminole War, often referred to as "the" Seminole War, is regarded as "the longest and most costly of the Indian conflicts of the United States". After the Treaty of Payne's Landing in 1832 that called for the Seminole's removal from Florida, tensions rose until open hostilities started with Dade battle. For the next four years, the Seminole and the U.S. forces engaged in small engagements and by 1842 only a few hundred native peoples remained in Florida. The war was declared over on August 14, 1842.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Bands from various tribes in the southeastern United States had moved into the unoccupied lands in Florida in the 18th century. These included Alabamas, Choctaw, Yamasees, Yuchis and Creek people. The Creeks were the largest group, and included Lower Creeks and Upper Creeks, and both Hitchiti and Muscogee speakers. One group of Hitchiti speakers, the Mikasuki, settled around what is now Lake Miccosukee near Tallahassee. Another group of Hitchiti speakers settled around the Alachua Prairie in what is now Alachua County. The Spanish in St. Augustine began calling the Alachua Creeks "cimarrones", which roughly meant "wild ones" or "runaways", and which is the probable origin of "Seminole". This name was eventually also applied to the other groups in Florida, although the Native Americans still regarded themselves as members of different tribes. Other groups in Florida at the time of the Seminole Wars included "Spanish Indians", so called because it was believed that they were descended from Calusas, and "rancho Indians", persons of Native American ancestry, possibly both Calusa and Creek, and mixed Native American/Spanish ancestry, living at Spanish/Cuban fishing camps on the Florida coast.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The United States and Spain were at odds over Florida after the Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolutionary War and returned East and West Florida to Spanish control. The United States disputed the boundaries of West Florida. They accused the Spanish authorities of harboring fugitive slaves and of failing to restrain the Native Americans living in Florida from raiding into the United States. Starting in 1810, the United States occupied and annexed parts of West Florida. In 1818 Andrew Jackson led an invasion of the Floridas, leading to the First Seminole War.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The United States acquired Florida from Spain through the Adams–Onís Treaty in 1819 and took possession of the territory in 1821. Now that Florida belonged to the United States, settlers pressured the government to remove the Seminoles. In 1823 the government negotiated the Treaty of Moultrie Creek with the Seminoles, establishing a reservation for them in the middle of the territory. Six chiefs, however, were allowed to keep their villages along the Apalachicola River.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The Seminoles gave up their lands in the panhandle and slowly settled into the reservation, although they had isolated clashes with European Americans. Colonel (later General) Duncan Lamont Clinch was placed in charge of the Army units in Florida. Fort King was built near the reservation agency, at the site of present-day Ocala, Florida.


title: Second Seminole War

text: By early 1827 the Army reported that the Seminoles were on the reservation and Florida was peaceful. This peace lasted for five years, during which time there were repeated calls for the Seminoles to be sent west of the Mississippi. The Seminoles were opposed to the move, and especially to the suggestion that they should be placed on the Creek reservation. Most European Americans regarded the Seminoles as simply Creeks who had recently moved to Florida, while the Seminoles claimed Florida as their home and denied that they had any connection with the Creeks.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The status of runaway slaves was a continuing irritation between Seminoles and European Americans. "The major problem was not with them [Seminoles] but with the Indian-Negros." General Taylor would not, being a "slave holder" himself, deny "the Seminoles of their Negros", and "in practice", handed his captives over to Lt. J. G. Reynolds, U.S. Marine Corps, "in charge of immigration." Spain had given freedom to slaves who escaped to Florida under their rule, although the US did not recognize it. Over the years, those who became known as Black or Negro Seminoles established communities separate from the Seminole villages, and the two peoples had close alliances although they maintained separate cultures. "Negroes among the Seminoles constituted a threat to the institution of slavery north of the Spanish border. Slave holders in Mississippi and other border areas were aware of this and "constantly accused the Indians of stealing their "Negroes." However, this "accusation" was often reversed; whites were raiding Florida and forcibly stealing the red men's slaves.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Worried about the possibility of an Indian uprising and/or an armed slave rebellion, Governor DuVal requested additional Federal troops for Florida. Instead, Fort King was closed in 1828. The Seminoles, short of food and finding the hunting becoming poorer on the reservation, were wandering off of it more often. Also in 1828, Andrew Jackson, the old enemy of the Seminoles, was elected President of the United States. In 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act. They wanted to solve the problems with the Seminoles by moving them to west of the Mississippi River.


title: Second Seminole War

text: In the spring of 1832 the Seminoles on the reservation were called to a meeting at Payne's Landing on the Oklawaha River. The treaty negotiated there called for the Seminoles to move west, if the land was found to be suitable. They were to be settled on the Creek reservation and become part of the Creek tribe. The delegation of seven chiefs who were to inspect the new reservation did not leave Florida until October 1832. After the chiefs had toured the area for several months and had conferred with the Creeks who had already been settled there, on March 28, 1833 the federal government produced a treaty with the chiefs' signatures.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Upon their return to Florida, however, most of the chiefs renounced the statement, claiming that they had not signed it, or that they had been forced to sign it. They said they did not have the power to decide for all the tribes and bands that resided on the reservation. Even some U.S. Army officers claimed that the chiefs had been "wheedled and bullied into signing." Others noted "there is evidence of trickery by the whites in the way the treaty is phrased." The members of the villages in the area of the Apalachicola River were more easily persuaded, however, as they suffered more encroachment from European Americans; they went west in 1834.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The United States Senate finally ratified the Treaty of Payne's Landing in April 1834. The treaty had given the Seminoles three years to move west of the Mississippi. The government interpreted the three years as starting 1832, and expected the Seminoles to move in 1835. Fort King was reopened in 1834. A new Seminole agent, Wiley Thompson, had been appointed in 1834, and the task of persuading the Seminoles to move fell to him. He called the chiefs together at Fort King in October 1834 to talk to them about the removal to the west. The Seminoles informed Thompson that they had no intention of moving, and that they did not feel bound by the Treaty of Payne's Landing. Thompson requested reinforcements for Fort King and Fort Brooke, reporting that, "the Indians after they had received the Annuity, purchased an unusually large quantity of Powder & Lead." General Clinch also warned Washington that the Seminoles did not intend to move, and that more troops would be needed to force them to move. In March 1835 Thompson called the chiefs together to read a letter from President Andrew Jackson to them. In his letter, Jackson said, "Should you ... refuse to move, I have then directed the Commanding officer to remove you by force." The chiefs asked for thirty days to respond. A month later the Seminole chiefs told Thompson that they would not move west. Thompson and the chiefs began arguing, and General Clinch had to intervene to prevent bloodshed. Eventually, eight of the chiefs agreed to move west, but asked to delay the move until the end of the year, and Thompson and Clinch agreed.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Five of the most important Seminole chiefs, including Micanopy of the Alachua Seminoles, had not agreed to the move. In retaliation, Thompson declared that those chiefs were removed from their positions. As relations with the Seminoles deteriorated, Thompson forbade the sale of guns and ammunition to them. Osceola, a young warrior beginning to be noticed by the European Americans, was particularly upset by the ban, feeling that it equated Seminoles with slaves and said, "The white man shall not make me black. I will make the white man red with blood; and then blacken him in the sun and rain ... and the buzzard live upon his flesh." In spite of this, Thompson considered Osceola to be a friend, and gave him a rifle. Later, though, when Osceola was causing trouble, Thompson had him locked up at Fort King for a night. The next day, in order to secure his release, Osceola agreed to abide by the Treaty of Payne's Landing and to bring his followers in.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The situation grew worse. A group of European Americans assaulted some Indians sitting around a campfire. Two more Indians came up during the assault and opened fire on the European Americans. Three European Americans were wounded, and one Indian was killed and one wounded. In August 1835, Private Kinsley Dalton (for whom Dalton, Georgia is named) was killed by Seminoles as he was carrying the mail from Fort Brooke to Fort King. In November, Chief Charley Emathla, wanting no part of a war, led his people to Fort Brooke, where they were to board ships to go west. This was considered a betrayal by other Seminoles. Osceola met Charley Emathla on the trail and killed him.


title: Second Seminole War

text: As the realization that the Seminoles would resist relocation sank in, Florida began preparing for war. The St. Augustine Militia asked the War Department for the loan of 500 muskets. Five hundred volunteers were mobilized under Brig. Gen. Richard K. Call. Indian war parties raided farms and settlements, and families fled to forts, large towns, or out of the territory altogether. A war party led by Osceola captured a Florida militia supply train, killing eight of its guards and wounding six others. Most of the goods taken were recovered by the militia in another fight a few days later. Sugar plantations along the Atlantic coast south of St. Augustine were destroyed, with many of the slaves on the plantations joining the Seminoles.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The U.S. Army had 11 companies, about 550 soldiers, stationed in Florida. Fort King had only one company of soldiers, and it was feared that they might be overrun by the Seminoles. There were three companies at Fort Brooke, with another two expected momentarily, so it was decided to send two companies to Fort King. On December 23, 1835 the two companies, totaling 110 men, left Fort Brooke under the command of Maj. Francis L. Dade. Seminoles shadowed the marching soldiers for five days. On December 28 the Seminoles ambushed the soldiers, and killed all but three of the command, which became known as the Dade Massacre. Only three white men survived the battle. Pvt Edwin DeCourcey was hunted down and killed by a Seminole the next day. The other two survivors, Pvt Ransom Clarke and Pvt Joseph Sprague, returned to Fort Brooke. Only Clarke, who ultimately succumbed to his wounds 5 years later, dying on November 18, 1840 at the age of 28, left any account of the battle from the Army's perspective, entitled ""The Surprising Adventures of Ransom Clark, Among the Indians in Florida"" published in 1839 by J. Orlando Orton and "printed by Johnson and Marble in Binghamton, New York." Joseph Sprague suffered a "shattered arm", served in the army until March 1843, and lived out his days near White Springs, Florida until possibly 1848. No written material from Sprague's personal military experience's has ever surfaced. The Seminoles lost three men killed, with five wounded. On the same day as the Dade Massacre, Osceola and his followers shot and killed Wiley Thompson and six others outside of Fort King.


title: Second Seminole War

text: In February, Major Ethan Allen Hitchcock was among those who found the remains of the Dade party. In his journal he wrote about the discovery and vented his bitter discontent with the conflict:


title: Second Seminole War

text: The government is in the wrong, and this is the chief cause of the persevering opposition of the Indians, who have nobly defended their country against our attempt to enforce a fraudulent treaty. The natives used every means to avoid a war, but were forced into it by the tyranny of our government.


title: Second Seminole War

text: On December 29 General Clinch left Fort Drane (recently established on Clinch's plantation, about twenty miles (32 km) northwest of Fort King) with 750 soldiers, including 500 volunteers on an enlistment due to end January 1, 1836. They were going to a Seminole stronghold called the Cove of the Withlacoochee, an area of many lakes on the southwest side of the Withlacoochee River. When they reached the river, they could not find the ford, and Clinch had his regular troops ferried across the river in a single canoe they had found. Once they were across and had relaxed, the Seminoles attacked. The troops survived only by fixing bayonets and charging the Seminoles, at the cost of four dead and 59 wounded. The militia provided cover as the Army troops withdrew across the river.


title: Second Seminole War

text: On January 6, 1836 a band of Seminoles attacked the coontie plantation of William Cooley on the New River (in present-day Fort Lauderdale, Florida), killing his wife and children and the children's tutor. The other residents of the New River area and of the Biscayne Bay country to the south fled to Key West. On January 17, volunteers and Seminoles met south of St. Augustine at the Battle of Dunlawton. The volunteers lost four men, with thirteen wounded. On January 19, 1836 the Navy sloop-of-war was dispatched to Tampa Bay from Pensacola. On the same day 57 U.S. Marines were dispatched from Key West to help man Fort Brooke.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The regular American army was very small at the time, with fewer than 7,500 men manning a total of 53 posts. It was spread thin, with the Canada–US border to guard, coastal fortifications to man, and especially, Indians to move west and then watch and keep separated from white settlers. Temporary needs for additional troops were filled by state and territory militias, and by self-organized volunteer units. As news and rumors of the fighting spread, action was taken on many levels. Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott was placed in charge of the war. Congress appropriated US$620,000 for the war. Volunteer companies began forming in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. General Gaines put together a force of 1,100 regulars and volunteers in New Orleans and sailed with them to Fort Brooke.


title: Second Seminole War

text: When Gaines reached Fort Brooke, he found it low on supplies. Believing that General Scott had sent supplies to Fort King, Gaines led his men on to Fort King. Along the road they found the site of the Dade Massacre, and buried the bodies in three mass graves. The force reached Fort King after nine days, only to find it was very short on supplies. After receiving seven days' worth of rations from General Clinch at Fort Drane, Gaines headed back for Fort Brooke. Hoping to accomplish something for his efforts, Gaines took his men on a different route back to Fort Brooke, intending to engage the Seminoles in their stronghold in the Cove of the Withlacoochee River. Due to a lack of knowledge of the country, the Gaines party reached the same point on the Withlacoochee where Clinch had met the Seminoles one-and-a-half months earlier, and it took another day to find the ford while the two sides exchanged gunfire across the river.


title: Second Seminole War

text: When a crossing was attempted at the ford of the Withlacoochee, Lt. James Izard was wounded (and later died). General Gaines was stuck. He could not cross the river, and if he returned to Fort King his men would be out of rations. Gaines had his men construct a fortification, called Camp Izard, and sent word to General Clinch. Gaines hoped that the Seminoles would concentrate around Camp Izard, and that Clinch's forces could then hit the Seminoles in their flank, crushing them between the two forces. General Scott, however, who was in charge of the war, ordered Clinch to stay at Fort Drane. Gaines's men were soon reduced to eating their horses and mules, and an occasional dog, while a battle went on for eight days. Still at Fort Drane, Clinch requested that General Scott change his orders and allow him to go to Gaines' aid. Clinch finally decided to disobey Scott and left to join Gaines just one day before Scott's permission to do so arrived at Fort Drane. Clinch and his men reached Camp Izard on March 6, chasing away the Seminoles.


title: Second Seminole War

text: General Scott had begun assembling men and supplies for a grand campaign against the Seminoles. Three columns, totaling 5,000 men, were to converge on the Cove of the Withlacoochee, trapping the Seminoles with a force large enough to defeat them. Scott would accompany one column, under the command of General Clinch, moving south from Fort Drane. A second column, under Brig. Gen. Abraham Eustis, would travel southwest from Volusia, a town on the St. Johns River. The third wing, under the command of Col. William Lindsay, would move north from Fort Brooke. The plan was for the three columns to arrive at the Cove simultaneously so as to prevent the Seminoles from escaping. Eustis and Lindsay were supposed to be in place on March 25, so that Clinch's column could drive the Seminoles into them.


title: Second Seminole War

text: On the way from St. Augustine to Volusia to take up his starting position, Gen. Eustis found Pilaklikaha, or Palatlakaha (Palatka, Florida), also known as Abraham's Town. Abraham had been a member of the Corps of Colonial Marines and was present at, and taken into custody, at the Battle of Negro Fort In custody only a short time, he was a Black Seminole leader, and interpreter for the Seminoles, who played a critical role during the Second Seminole War.Eustis burned the town before moving on to Volusia.


title: Second Seminole War

text: All three columns were delayed. Eustis was two days late departing Volusia because of an attack by the Seminoles. Clinch's and Lindsay's columns only reached their positions on March 28. Because of problems crossing through uncharted territory, Eustis's column did not arrive until March 30. Clinch crossed the Withlacoochee on March 29 to attack the Seminoles in the Cove, but found the villages deserted. Eustis's column did fight a skirmish with some Seminoles before reaching its assigned position, but the whole action had killed or captured only a few Seminoles. On March 31 all three commanders, running low on supplies, headed for Fort Brooke. The failure of the expedition to effectively engage the Seminoles was seen as a defeat, and was blamed on insufficient time for planning and an inhospitable climate.


title: Second Seminole War

text: April 1836 did not go well for the Army. Seminoles attacked a number of forts, including Camp Cooper in the Cove, Fort Alabama on the Hillsborough River north of Fort Brooke, Fort Barnwell near Volusia, and Fort Drane itself. The Seminoles also burned the sugar works on Clinch's plantation. After that, Clinch resigned his commission and left the territory. Fort Alabama was abandoned in late April. In late May, Fort King was also abandoned. In June the soldiers in a blockhouse on the Withlacoochee were rescued after being besieged by the Seminoles for 48 days. On July 23, 1836, Seminoles attacked the Cape Florida lighthouse, severely wounding the assistant keeper in charge, killing his assistant, and burning the lighthouse. The lighthouse was not repaired until 1846. Fort Drane was abandoned in July because of illness, with five out of seven officers and 140 men on the sick list. The Army was suffering terribly from illness; at the time summer in Florida was called the "sickly season". By the end of August, Fort Defiance, on the edge of the Alachua Prairie, was also abandoned. Seeing that the war promised to be long and expensive, Congress appropriated another US$1.5 million, and allowed volunteers to enlist for up to a year.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Richard Keith Call, who had led the Florida volunteers as a Brig. Gen. when Clinch marched on the Cove of the Withlacoochee in December, had been appointed Governor of the Territory of Florida on March 16, 1836. Governor Call proposed a summer campaign using militias and volunteers instead of regular Army troops. The War Department agreed to this proposal, but delays in preparations meant the campaign did not start until the end of September. Call also intended to attack the Cove of the Withlacoochee. He sent most of his supplies down the west coast of the peninsula and up the Withlacoochee to set up a supply base. With the main body of his men he marched to the now abandoned Fort Drane, and then on to the Withlacoochee, which they reached on October 13. The Withlacoochee was flooding and could not be forded. The army could not make rafts for a crossing because they had not brought any axes with them. In addition, Seminoles on the other side of the river were shooting at any soldier who showed himself along the river. Call then turned west along the north bank of the river to reach the supply depot. However, the steamer bringing the supplies had sunk in the lower part of the river, and the supply depot was far downstream from where Call was expecting it. Out of food, Call led his men back to Fort Drane, another failed expedition against the Cove.


title: Second Seminole War

text: In mid-November Call tried again. His forces made it across the Withlacoochee this time, but found the Cove abandoned. Call divided his forces, and proceeded up the river (south) on both sides. On November 17 Seminoles were routed from a large camp. There was another battle the next day, and the Seminoles were assumed to be headed for the Wahoo Swamp. Call waited to bring the other column across the river, then entered the Wahoo Swamp on November 21. The Seminoles resisted the advance in the Battle of Wahoo Swamp, as their families were close by, but had to retreat across a stream. Major David Moniac, a mix-blooded Creek who was the first Native American to graduate from West Point, tried to determine how deep the stream was, but was shot and killed by the Seminoles.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Faced with trying to cross a stream of unknown depth under hostile fire, and with supplies again running short, Call withdrew and led his men to Volusia. On December 9 Call was relieved of command and replaced by Maj. Gen. Thomas Jesup, who took the troops back to Fort Brooke. The enlistments of the volunteers were up at the end of December and they went home.


title: Second Seminole War

text: In 1836 the United States Army had just four Major Generals. Alexander Macomb, Jr. was the commanding general of the Army. Edmund Gaines and Winfield Scott had each taken to the field and failed to defeat the Seminoles. Thomas Jesup was the last Major General available. Jesup had just suppressed an uprising of the Creeks of western Georgia and eastern Alabama (the Creek War of 1836), upstaging Winfield Scott in the process. Jesup brought a new approach to the war. Instead of sending large columns out to try to force the Seminoles into a set-piece battle, he concentrated on wearing the Seminoles down. This required a large military presence in Florida, and Jesup eventually had a force of more than 9,000 men under his command. About half of the force were volunteers and militia. It also included a brigade of Marines, and Navy and United States Revenue Cutter Service (AKA: Revenue Marine) personnel patrolling the coast and inland rivers and streams. In all the Revenue Marine committed 8 Cutters to operations in Florida during the war.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The Navy and the Revenue Marine both worked with the Army from the beginning of the war. Navy ships and revenue cutters ferried men and supplies to Army posts. They patrolled the Florida coast to gather information on and intercept Seminoles, and to block smuggling of arms and supplies to the Seminoles. Sailors and Marines helped man Army forts that were short of manpower. Sailors, Marines and the Cuttermen of the Revenue Marine participated in expeditions into the interior of Florida, both by boat and on land. Against those numbers the Seminoles had started the war with between 900 and 1,400 warriors, and with no means of replacing their losses.


title: Second Seminole War

text: January 1837 saw a change in the war. In various actions a number of Seminoles and Black Seminoles were killed or captured. At the "Battle of Hatchee-Lustee", the Marine brigade,"succeeded in capturing the horses and baggage of the enemy, with twenty-five Indians and negroes, principally women and children." At the end of January some Seminole chiefs sent messengers to Jesup, and a truce was arranged. Fighting did not stop right away, and a meeting between Jesup and the chiefs did not occur until near the end of February. In March a 'Capitulation' was signed by a number of chiefs, including Micanopy, stipulating that the Seminoles could be accompanied by their allies and "their negroes, their 'bona fide' property" in their relocation to the West.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Even as Seminoles began to come into the Army camps to await transportation west, slave catchers were claiming blacks living with the Seminoles. As the Seminoles had no written records of ownership, they generally lost in disputes over ownership. Other whites were trying to have Seminoles arrested for alleged crimes or debts. All of this made the Seminoles suspicious of promises made by Jesup. On the other hand, it was noted that many of the warriors coming into the transportation camps had not brought their families, and seemed mainly to be interested in collecting supplies. By the end of May, many chiefs, including Micanopy, had surrendered. Two important leaders, Osceola and Sam Jones, had not surrendered, however, and were known to be vehemently opposed to relocation. On June 2 these two leaders with about 200 followers entered the poorly guarded holding camp at Fort Brooke and led away the 700 Seminoles there who had surrendered.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The war did not immediately resume on a large scale. General Jesup had thought that the surrender of so many Seminoles meant the war was ending, and had not planned a long campaign. Many of the soldiers had been assigned elsewhere, or, in the case of militias and volunteers, released from duty. It was also getting into summer, the 'sickly season', and the Army did not fight aggressively in Florida during the summer. The Panic of 1837 was reducing government revenues, but Congress appropriated another US$1.6 million for the war. In August the Army stopped supplying rations to civilians who had taken refuge at its forts.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Jesup did keep pressure on the Seminoles by sending small units into the field. Many of the blacks with the Seminoles began turning themselves in. After a couple of swings in policy on dealing with fugitive slaves, Jesup ended up sending most of them west to join the Seminoles that were already in Indian territory. On September 10, 1837 the Army and militias captured a band of Mikasukis including King Phillip, one of the most important chiefs in Florida. The next night the same command captured a band of Yuchis, including their leader, Uchee Billy.


title: Second Seminole War

text: General Jesup had King Phillip send a message to his son Coacoochee (Wild Cat) to arrange a meeting with Jesup. When Coacoochee arrived under a flag of truce, Jesup arrested him. In October Osceola and Coa Hadjo, another chief, requested a parley with Jesup. A meeting was arranged south of St. Augustine. When Osceola and Coa Hadjo arrived for the meeting, also under a white flag, they were arrested. Osceola was dead within three months of his capture, in prison at Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina. Not all of the Seminoles captured by the Army stayed captured. While Osceola was still held at Fort Marion (Castillo de San Marcos) in St. Augustine, twenty Seminoles held in the same cell with him and King Phillip escaped through a narrow window. The escapees included Coacoochee and John Horse, a Black Seminole leader. "Undoubtedly the general violated the rules of civilized warfare...[and] he was still writing justifications of it twenty-one years later" for an act that "hardly seems worthwhile to try to grace the capture with any other label than treachery."


title: Second Seminole War

text: A delegation of Cherokees was sent to Florida to try to talk the Seminoles into moving west. When Micanopy and others came in to meet the Cherokees, General Jesup had the Seminoles held. John Ross, the head of the Cherokee delegation, protested, but to no avail. Jesup replied that he had told the Cherokees that no Seminole who came in would be allowed to return home.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Jesup now had a large army assembled, including volunteers from as far away as Missouri and Pennsylvania—so many men, in fact, that he had trouble feeding all of them. Jesup's plan was to sweep down the peninsula with multiple columns, pushing the Seminoles further south. General Joseph Marion Hernández led a column down the east coast. General Eustis took his column up the St. Johns River (southward). Colonel Zachary Taylor led a column from Fort Brooke into the middle of the state, and then southward between the Kissimmee River and the Peace River. Other commands cleared out the areas between the St. Johns and the Oklawaha River, between the Oklawaha and the Withlacoochee River, and along the Caloosahatchee River. A joint Army-Navy unit patrolled the lower east coast of Florida. Other troops patrolled the northern part of the territory to protect against Seminole raids.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Colonel Taylor saw the first major action of the campaign. Leaving Fort Gardiner on the upper Kissimmee with 1,000 men on December 19, Taylor headed towards Lake Okeechobee. In the first two days out ninety Seminoles surrendered. On the third day Taylor stopped to build Fort Basinger, where he left his sick and enough men to guard the Seminoles that had surrendered. Three days later, on Christmas Day, 1837, Taylor's column caught up with the main body of the Seminoles on the north shore of Lake Okeechobee.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The Seminoles led by Alligator, Sam Jones, and the recently escaped Coacoochee, were well positioned in a hammock surrounded by sawgrass. The ground was thick mud, and sawgrass easily cuts and burns the skin. Taylor had about 800 men, while the Seminoles numbered less than 400. Taylor sent the Missouri volunteers in first. Colonel Richard Gentry, three other officers and more than twenty enlisted men were killed before the volunteers retreated. Next in were 200 soldiers of the 6th Infantry, who lost four officers and suffered nearly 40% casualties before they withdrew. Then it was the turn of the 4th Infantry, 160 men augmented by remnants of the 6th Infantry and the Missouri volunteers. This time the troops were able to drive the Seminoles from the hammock and towards the lake. Taylor then attacked their flank with his reserves, but the Seminoles were able to escape across the lake. Only about a dozen Seminoles had been killed in the battle. Nevertheless, the Battle of Lake Okeechobee was hailed as a great victory for Taylor and the Army.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Taylor now joined the other columns sweeping down the peninsula to pass on the east side of Lake Okeechobee, under the overall command of General Jesup. The troops along the Caloosahatchee River blocked any passage north on the west side of the lake. Still patrolling the east coast of Florida was the combined Army-Navy force under Navy Lt. Levin Powell. On January 15 Powell, in the Battle of Jupiter Inlet, led eighty men towards a Seminole camp only to find themselves outnumbered by the Seminoles. A charge against the Seminoles was unsuccessful, but the troops made it back to their boats after losing four dead and twenty-two wounded. (The party's retreat was covered by Army Lt. Joseph E. Johnston.) At the end of January Jesup's troops caught up with a large body of Seminoles to the east of Lake Okeechobee. The Seminoles were originally positioned in a hammock, but cannon and rocket fire drove them back across a wide stream (the Loxahatchee River), where they made another stand. The Seminoles eventually just faded away, having caused more casualties than they received, and the Battle of Loxahatchee was over.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The fighting now died down. In February 1838 Seminole chiefs Tuskegee and Halleck Hadjo approached Jesup with the proposition that they would stop fighting if they were allowed to stay south of Lake Okeechobee. Jesup favored the idea, foreseeing a long struggle to capture the remaining Seminoles in the Everglades, and calculating that the Seminoles would be easier to round up later when the land was actually needed by white settlers. However, Jesup had to write to Washington for approval. The chiefs and their followers camped near the Army while awaiting the reply, and there was considerable fraternizing between the two camps. Secretary of War Joel Roberts Poinsett rejected the arrangement, however, and instructed Jesup to continue his campaign. Upon receiving Poinsett's response, Jesup summoned the chiefs to his camp, but they refused his invitation. Unwilling to let 500 Seminoles return to the swamps, Jesup sent a force to detain them. The Seminoles offered very little resistance, perhaps seeing little reason to continue fighting.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Loxahatchee River Battlefield Park preserves an area of the fighting. Memorials are also located in Jonathan Dickinson State Park.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Jesup asked to be relieved of his command. As summer approached in 1838 the number of troops in Florida dwindled to about 2,300. In April Jesup was informed that he should return to his position as Quartermaster General of the Army. In May Zachary Taylor, now a General, assumed command of the Army forces in Florida. With reduced forces in Florida, Taylor concentrated on keeping the Seminole out of northern Florida, so that settlers could return to their homes. The Seminole were still capable of reaching far north. In July they were thought responsible for the deaths of a family on the Santa Fe River, another near Tallahassee, as well as two families in Georgia. The fighting died down during the summer, as the soldiers were pulled back to the coasts. The Seminole concentrated on growing their crops and gathering supplies for fall and winter.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Taylor's plan was to build small posts at frequent intervals across northern Florida, connected by wagon roads, and to use larger units to search designated areas. This was expensive, but Congress continued to appropriate the necessary funds. In October 1838, Taylor relocated the last of the Seminole living along the Apalachicola River to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. Killings in the Tallahassee area caused Taylor to pull troops out of southern Florida to provide more protection in the north. The winter season was fairly quiet. The Army killed only a few Seminole and transported fewer than 200 to the West. Nine U.S. troops were killed by the Seminole. Taylor reported in the Spring of 1839 that his men had constructed 53 new posts and cut of wagon roads.


title: Second Seminole War

text: In Washington and around the country in 1839, support for the war was eroding. The size of the Army had been increased because of the demands for manpower in the Florida war. Many people were beginning to think that the Seminole had earned a right to stay in Florida. The cost and time required to get all the Seminole out of Florida were looming larger. Congress appropriated US$5,000 to negotiate a settlement with the Seminole people in order to end the outlay of resources. President Martin Van Buren sent the Commanding General of the Army, Alexander Macomb, to negotiate a new treaty with the Seminole. Remembering the broken treaties and promises of the past, they were slow to respond to the new overtures. Finally, Sam Jones sent his chosen successor, Chitto Tustenuggee, to meet with Macomb. On May 19, 1839, Macomb announced reaching agreement with the Seminole. They would stop fighting in exchange for a reservation in southern Florida.


title: Second Seminole War

text: As the summer passed, the agreement seemed to be holding. There were few killings. A trading post was established on the north shore of the Caloosahatchee River, and the Seminole who came to the trading post seemed to be friendly. A detachment of 23 soldiers was stationed at the Caloosahatchee trading post under the command of Colonel William S. Harney. On July 23, 1839 some 150 Indians attacked the trading post and guard. Some of the soldiers, including Colonel Harney, were able to reach the river and find boats to escape in, but most of the soldiers, as well as a number of civilians in the trading post, were killed. The war was on again.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The Americans did not know which band of Indians had attacked the trading post. Many blamed the 'Spanish' Indians, led by Chakaika. Some suspected Sam Jones, whose band of Mikasuki had come to agreement with Macomb. Jones promised to turn the men responsible for the attack over to Harney in 33 days. In the meantime, the Mikasuki in Sam Jones' camp near Fort Lauderdale remained on friendly terms with the local soldiers. On July 27 they invited the officers at the fort to a dance at the Mikasuki camp. The officers declined but sent two soldiers and a Black Seminole interpreter with a keg of whiskey. The Mikasuki killed the soldiers, but the Black Seminole escaped. He reported at the fort that Sam Jones and Chitto Tustenuggee were involved in the attack. In August 1839, Seminole raiding parties operated as far north as Fort White.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The Army decided to use bloodhounds to track the Seminole. (General Taylor had requested and received permission to buy bloodhounds in 1838) "Taylor accepted two of them for trial...the hounds failed their tests. They were trained to track Negros...and could not be induced to nose out Indians."In early 1840, the Florida territorial government purchased bloodhounds from Cuba and hired Cuban handlers. Initial trials of the hounds had mixed results, and a public outcry arose against the use of the dogs, based on fears that they would be set on the Seminole in physical attacks, including against women and children. The Secretary of War ordered the dogs to be muzzled and kept on leashes while tracking. Bloodhounds could not track through water, however "tracks of Indians were found, but the dogs finding the scent far different from that of a negro, refused to follow [them]."


title: Second Seminole War

text: In the north of Florida, Taylor's blockhouse and patrol system kept the Seminole on the move, but the Army could not clear them from the area. Ambushes of travelers were common. On February 13, 1840 the mail stage between St. Augustine and Jacksonville was ambushed. In May Seminole attacked a theatrical troupe near St. Augustine, killing a total of six people. In the same month, a group of four soldiers traveling between forts in Alachua County was attacked, with one killed and two others never seen again. A party of eighteen men pursued the Indians, but six were killed.


title: Second Seminole War

text: In May 1840 Zachary Taylor, having served longer than any preceding commander in the Florida war, was granted his request for a transfer. He was replaced by Brig. Gen. Walker Keith Armistead, who had earlier served in Florida as second in command to General Jesup. Armistead began an offensive, sending out 100 soldiers at a time to search for the Seminole and their camps. For the first time, the Army campaigned in Florida during the summer, taking captives and destroying crops and buildings. The Seminole also were active in warfare, killing fourteen soldiers during July. The Army worked to find the Seminole camps, burn their fields and stores of food, and drive off their livestock, including their horses.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Armistead planned to turn over the defense of Florida north of Fort King to the militia and volunteers. He wanted to use Army regulars to confine the Seminole to south of Fort King, and pursue them within that territory. The Army destroyed camps and fields across central Florida, a total of of Seminole crops by the middle of the summer. General Armistead became estranged from the territorial government, although he needed 1,500 militiamen from the Territory to defend the area north of Fort King. To bolster the effort south of Fort King, the Army sent the Eighth Infantry Regiment to Florida. The Army in Florida now included ten companies of the Second Dragoon, nine companies of the Third Artillery, and the First, Second, Third, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Infantry Regiments.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Changes were also being made in southern Florida. At Fort Bankhead on Key Biscayne, Col. Harney instituted an intensive training program in swamp and jungle warfare for his men. The Navy took a larger role in the war, sending manned boats with sailors and marines up rivers and streams, and into the Everglades.


title: Second Seminole War

text: In the early years of the war Navy Lt. Levin Powell had commanded a joint Army-Navy force along with 8 Revenue Cutters of some 200 plus men that operated along the coast. In late 1839 Navy Lt. John T. McLaughlin was given command of a joint Army-Navy force with support of Revenue Marine an amphibious force was to operate in Florida. This included schooners and cutters off the shores, barges close to the mainland to intercept Cuban and Bahamian traders bringing arms and other supplies to the Seminoles, and smaller boats, down to canoes, for patrolling up rivers and into the Everglades. McLaughlin established his base at Tea Table Key in the upper Florida Keys.


title: Second Seminole War

text: An attempt to cross the Everglades from west to east was launched in April 1840, but the sailors and marines were engaged by Seminoles at the rendezvous point on Cape Sable. Although there were no known fatalities (the Seminoles carried off their dead and wounded), many of the naval personnel became ill, and the expedition was called off and the sick were taken to Pensacola. For the next few months the men of Lt. McLaughlin's force explored the inlets and rivers of southern Florida. McLaughlin did lead a force across the Everglades later. Traveling from December 1840 to the middle of January 1841, McLaughlin's force crossed the Everglades from east to west in dugout canoes, the first groups of whites to complete a crossing.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Indian Key is a small island in the upper Florida Keys which had developed into a base for wreckers. In 1836 it became the county seat of the newly created Dade County and a port of entry. Despite fears of attack and sightings of Indians in the area, the inhabitants of Indian Key stayed to protect their property, and to be close to any wrecks in the upper Keys. The islanders had six cannons and their own small militia company for their defense, and the Navy had established a base on nearby Tea Table Key.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Early in the morning of August 7, 1840, a large party of 'Spanish' Indians snuck onto Indian Key. By chance, one man was up and raised the alarm after spotting the Indians. Of about fifty people living on the island, forty were able to escape. The dead included Dr. Henry Perrine, former United States Consul in Campeche, Mexico, who was waiting at Indian Key until it was safe to take up a grant on the mainland that Congress had awarded to him.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The naval base on Tea Table Key had been stripped of personnel for an operation on the southwest coast of the mainland, leaving only a physician, his patients, and five sailors under a midshipman to look after them. This small contingent mounted a couple of cannons on barges and tried to attack the Indians on Indian Key. The Indians fired back at the sailors with musket balls loaded in one of the cannons on shore. The recoil of the cannons on the barges broke them loose, sending them into the water, and the sailors had to retreat. The Indians burned the buildings on Indian Key after thoroughly looting it.


title: Second Seminole War

text: In December 1840, Colonel Harney led ninety men into the Everglades from Fort Dallas on the Miami River, traveling in canoes borrowed from the Marines. They were guided by a black man named John who had been in Seminole captivity for some time. The column encountered some Indians in canoes and gave chase, catching some of them and promptly hanging the men. When John was having trouble finding the way, Harney tried to force the captured Seminole women to lead the way to the camp, reportedly by threatening to hang their children. However, John got his bearings again and the Harney party found the camp of Chakaika and the 'Spanish Indians'. Dressed as Indians, the soldiers approached the camp early in the morning, achieving surprise. Chakaika was outside the camp when the attack started. He started to run and then stopped and turned to face the soldiers, offering his hand, but one of the soldiers shot and killed him. There was a brief fight during which some of the Indians escaped. Harney had two of the captured warriors hanged, and had Chakaika's body hung beside them. Harney and his men returned to Fort Dallas after twelve days in the Everglades. Harney had lost one soldier killed. His command had killed four Indians in action and hanged five more. The Legislative Council of Florida presented Harney with a commendation and a sword, and Harney was soon given command of the Second Dragoons.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Armistead had US$55,000 ($ in dollars) to use for bribing chiefs to surrender. In November 1840, General Armistead met at Fort King with Thlocklo Tustenuggee, a Muskogee speaker known as "Tiger Tail", and Halleck Tustenuggee, a Mikasuki speaker. Armistead was authorized by Washington to offer each leader $5,000 ($115,023) to bring their followers in for transportation west, and to concede land in the south of Florida to those remaining. However, Colonel Ethan A. Hitchcock recorded in his diary, with considerable frustration, that the General instead pocketed these proposals and insisted the chiefs agree to the terms of the Payne's Landing treaty. Moreover, while talking peace, he secretly sent a force threatening Halleck's people at his home. After several days as guests of the Army both chiefs fled in the middle of the night on November 14, 1840. Echo Emathla, a Tallahassee chief, surrendered, but most of the Tallahassee, under Tiger Tail, did not. The Mikasukis, led by Coosa Tustenuggee and Halleck Tustenuggee, continued to operate in the northern part of the Florida peninsula. Coosa Tustenuggee finally accepted $5,000 for bringing in his sixty people. Lesser chiefs received $200 ($4,601), and every warrior $30 ($690) and a rifle. Coacoochee took advantage of Armistead's willingness to negotiate. In March 1841 he agreed to bring in his followers in two or three months. During that time he appeared at several forts, presenting the pass given to him by Armistead, and demanding food and liquor. On one visit to Fort Pierce, Coacoochee demanded a horse to ride to Fort Brooke. The fort commander gave him one, along with five and one-half gallons of whiskey.


title: Second Seminole War

text: By the spring of 1841, Armistead had sent 450 Seminoles west. Another 236 were at Fort Brooke awaiting transportation. Armistead estimated that 120 warriors had been shipped west during his tenure, and that there were no more than 300 warriors left in Florida. In May 1841, Halleck Tustenuggee sent word that he would be bringing his band in to surrender.


title: Second Seminole War

text: In May 1841 Armistead was replaced by Col. William Jenkins Worth as commander of Army forces in Florida. Due to the unpopularity of the war in the nation and in Congress, Worth had to cut back. The war was costing US$93,300 per month in addition to the pay of the regular soldiers. John T. Sprague, Worth's aide, believed that some civilians were trying to deliberately prolong the war in order to stay on the government payroll. Nearly 1,000 civilian employees of the Army were released, and smaller commands were consolidated. Worth then ordered his men out on what would now be called 'search and destroy' missions during the summer. These efforts effectively drove the Seminoles out of their old stronghold in the Cove of the Withlacoochee. Much of the rest of northern Florida was also cleared by these methods.


title: Second Seminole War

text: On May 1, 1841 Lieutenant William Tecumseh Sherman was assigned to escort Coacoochee to a meeting at Fort Pierce. (The fort was named for Colonel Benjamin Kendrick Pierce, who oversaw its construction.) After washing and dressing in his best (which included a vest with a bullet hole and blood on it), Coacoochee asked Sherman to give him silver in exchange for a one-dollar bill from the Bank of Tallahassee. At the meeting Major Thomas Childs agreed to give Coacoochee thirty days to bring in his people for transportation west. Coacoochee's people came and went freely at the fort for the rest of the month, while Childs became convinced that Coachoochee would renege on his agreement. Childs asked for and received permission to seize Coacoochee. On June 4 he arrested Coachoochee and fifteen of his followers. Lieutenant Colonel William Gates ordered that Coacoochee and his men be shipped immediately to New Orleans. When Colonel Worth learned of this, he ordered the ship to return to Tampa Bay, as he intended to use Coacoochee to persuade the rest of the Seminoles to surrender.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Colonel Worth offered bribes worth about US$8,000 to Coacoochee. As Coacoochee had no real hope of escaping, he agreed to send out messengers urging the Seminoles to move west. The chiefs still active in the northern part of the Florida peninsula, Halleck Tustenuggee, Tiger Tail, Nethlockemathla, and Octiarche, met in council and agreed to kill any messengers from the whites. The southern chiefs seemed to have learned of this decision, and supported it. However, when one messenger appeared at a council of Holata Mico, Sam Jones, Otulkethlocko, Hospetarke, Fuse Hadjo and Passacka, he was made prisoner, but not killed.


title: Second Seminole War

text: A total of 211 Seminoles surrendered as a result of Coacoochee's messages, including most of his own band. Hospetarke was drawn into a meeting at Camp Ogden (near the mouth of the Peace River) in August and he and 127 of his band were captured. As the number of Seminoles in Florida decreased, it became easier for those left to stay hidden. In November the Third Artillery moved into the Big Cypress Swamp and burned a few villages. Some of the Seminoles in southern Florida gave up after that, and turned themselves in for transportation west.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Seminoles were still scattered throughout most of Florida. One band that had been reduced to starvation surrendered in northern Florida near the Apalachicola River in 1842. Further east, however, bands led by Halpatter Tustenuggee, Halleck Tustenuggee and Chitto Harjo raided Mandarin and other settlements along the lower (i.e., northern) St. Johns River. On April 19, 1842, a column of 200 soldiers led by First Lieutenant George A. McCall found a group of Seminole warriors in the Pelchikaha Swamp, about thirty miles south of Fort King. There was a brief fire-fight and then the Seminoles disappeared into a hammock. Halleck Tustenuggee was held prisoner when he showed up at Fort King for a talk. Part of his band was caught when they visited the fort, and Lieutenant McCall captured the rest of Halleck's band in their camp.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Colonel Worth recommended early in 1842 that the remaining Seminoles be left in peace if they would stay in southern Florida. Worth eventually received authorization to leave the remaining Seminoles on an informal reservation in southwestern Florida, and to declare an end to the war on a date of his choosing. At this time there were still several diverse bands of Indians in Florida. Billy Bowlegs was the head of a large band of Seminoles living near Charlotte Harbor. Sam Jones led a band of Mikasukis that lived in the Everglades near Fort Lauderdale. North of Lake Okeechobee was a band of Muskogees led by Chipco. Another Muskogee band, led by Tiger Tail, lived near Tallahassee. Finally, in northern Florida there was a band of Creeks led by Octiarche which had fled from Georgia in 1836.


title: Second Seminole War

text: In August 1842 Congress passed the Armed Occupation Act, which provided free land to settlers who improved the land and were prepared to defend themselves from Indians. In many ways this act prefigured the Homestead Act of 1862. Heads of households could claim of land south of a line running across the northern part of the peninsula. They had to 'prove' their claim by living on the land for five years and clearing . However, they could not claim land within two miles (3 km) of a military post. A total of 1,317 grants totaling were registered in 1842 and 1843.


title: Second Seminole War

text: In the last action of the war, General William Bailey and prominent planter Jack Bellamy led a posse of 52 men on a three-day pursuit of a small band of Tiger Tail's braves who had been attacking pioneers, surprising their swampy encampment and killing all 24. William Wesley Hankins, at sixteen the youngest of the posse, accounted for the last of the kills and was acknowledged as having fired the last shot of the Second Seminole War.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Also in August 1842 Worth met with the chiefs still in Florida. Each warrior was offered a rifle, money and one year's worth of rations if they moved west. Some accepted the offer, but most hoped to eventually move to the reservation in southwest Florida. Believing that the remaining Indians in Florida would either go west or move to the reservation, Worth declared the war to be at an end on August 14, 1842. Worth then went on ninety-days leave, leaving command to Colonel Josiah Vose. The Army in Florida consisted at this point of parts of three regiments, totaling 1,890 men. Attacks on white settlers continued even as far north as the area around Tallahassee. Otiarche and Tiger Tail had not indicated what they would do. Complaints from Florida caused the War Department to order Vose to take action against the bands still off the reservation, but Vose argued that breaking the pledges made to the Indians would have bad results, and the War Department accepted his arguments. In early October a major hurricane struck Cedar Key, where the Army headquarters had been located, and the Indians would no longer visit it.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Worth returned to Florida at the beginning of November 1842. He soon decided that Tiger Tail and Otiarche had taken too long to make up their minds on what to do, and ordered that they be brought in. Tiger Tail was so ill that he had to be carried on a litter, and he died in New Orleans waiting for transportation to the Indian territory. The other Indians in northern Florida were also captured and sent west. By April 1843 only one regiment, the Eighth Infantry, was still in Florida. In November 1843 Worth reported that the only Indians left in Florida were 42 Seminole warriors, 33 Mikasukis, 10 Creeks and 10 Tallahassees, with women and children bringing the total to about 300. Worth also stated that these Indians were all living on the reservation and were no longer a threat to the white population of Florida.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Mahon cites estimates of US$30,000,000 to $40,000,000 as the cost of the Second Seminole War, but knew of no analysis of the actual cost. Congress appropriated funds for the 'suppression of Indian hostilities', but the costs of the Creek War of 1836 are included in that. An inquiry in extravagance in naval operations found that the Navy had spent about US$511,000 on the war. The investigation did find questionable expenditures. Among other things, while the Army had bought dugout canoes for $10 to $15 apiece, the Navy spent an average of $226 per canoe. The number of Army, Navy and Marine regulars who served in Florida is given as 10,169. About 30,000 militiamen and volunteers also served in the war.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Sources agree that the U.S. Army officially recorded 1,466 deaths in the Second Seminole War, mostly from disease. The number killed in action is less clear. Mahon reports 328 regular Army killed in action, while Missall reports that Seminoles killed 269 officers and men. Almost half of those deaths occurred in the Dade Massacre, Battle of Lake Okeechobee and Harney Massacre. Similarly, Mahon reports 69 deaths for the Navy while Missal reports 41 for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, but adds others may have died after being sent out of Florida as "incurable". Mahon and the Florida Board of State Institutions agree that 55 volunteer officers and men were killed by the Seminoles, while Missall says the number is unknown. There is no figure for how many militiamen and volunteers died of disease or accident, however.


title: Second Seminole War

text: The number of white civilians, Seminoles and Black Seminoles killed is uncertain. A northern newspaper carried a report that more than 80 civilians were killed by Indians in Florida in 1839. Nobody was keeping a cumulative account of the number of Indians and Black Seminoles killed, or the number who died of starvation or other privations caused by the war. The people shipped west did not fare well, either. By the end of 1843, 3,824 Indians (including 800 Black Seminoles) had been shipped from Florida to what became the Indian Territory. They were initially settled on the Creek Reservation, which created tensions. The next year, the Florida people numbered 3,136. As of 1962, their numbers had dropped to 2,343 Seminoles in the Indian Territory and perhaps some 1,500 in Florida.


title: Second Seminole War

text: Peace had come to Florida for a while. The Natives were mostly staying on the reservation, but there were minor clashes. The Florida authorities continued to press for removal of all Natives from Florida. The Natives for their part tried to limit their contacts with whites as much as possible. As time went on there were more serious incidents. The government resolved once more to remove all Indians from Florida, and applied increasing pressure on the Seminoles until they struck back, starting the Third Seminole War of 1855–1858.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: Presbyterian (or presbyteral) polity is a method of church governance ("ecclesiastical polity") typified by the rule of assemblies of presbyters, or elders. Each local church is governed by a body of elected elders usually called the session or "consistory", though other terms, such as "church board", may apply. Groups of local churches are governed by a higher assembly of elders known as the presbytery or classis; presbyteries can be grouped into a synod, and presbyteries and synods nationwide often join together in a general assembly. Responsibility for conduct of church services is reserved to an ordained minister or pastor known as a "teaching elder", or a "minister of the word and sacrament."


title: Presbyterian polity

text: Presbyterian polity was developed as a rejection of governance by hierarchies of single bishops (episcopal polity), but also differs from the congregationalist polity in which each congregation is independent. In contrast to the other two forms, authority in the presbyterian polity flows both from the top down (as higher assemblies exercise limited but important authority over individual congregations, e.g., only the presbytery can ordain ministers, install pastors, and start up, close, and approve relocating a congregation) and from the bottom up (e.g., the moderator and officers are not appointed from above but are rather elected by and from among the members of the assembly). This theory of governance developed in Geneva under John Calvin and was introduced to Scotland by John Knox after his period of exile in Geneva. It is strongly associated with French, Dutch, Swiss and Scottish Reformation movements, and the Reformed and Presbyterian churches.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: Among the early church fathers, it was noted that the offices of elder and bishop were identical, and were not differentiated until later, and that plurality of elders was the norm for church government. St. Jerome (347–420) "In Epistle Titus", vol. iv, said, "Elder is identical with bishop; and before the urging of the devil gave rise to factionalism in religion, so much that it was being said among the people, 'I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I of Cephas', the churches were governed by a joint council of elders. After it was... decreed throughout the world that one chosen from among the presbyters should be placed over the others." This observation was also made by Chrysostom (349–407) in "Homilia i, in Phil. i, 1" and Theodoret (393–457) in "Interpret ad. Phil. iii", 445.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: Presbyterianism was first described in detail by Martin Bucer of Strasbourg, who believed that the early Christian church implemented presbyterian polity. The first modern implementation was by the Geneva church under the leadership of John Calvin in 1541.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: In the early days of the Scottish Reformation there were Superintendents. There were also Tulchan Bishops and Archbishops. Much of the history of the Church of Scotland and the nation itself is bound up with the relation between Episcopalianism, which the Protestant monarchs favoured, and the Presbyterianism of the reformers. In the Hungarian Reformed Church there remain bishops who have a superintending role.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: Presbyterian polity is constructed on specific assumptions about the form of the government intended by the Bible:


title: Presbyterian polity

text: Presbyterianism uses a conciliar method of church government (that is, leadership by the group or council). Thus, the ministers and "elders" govern together as a group, and at all times the office is for the service of the congregation, to pray for them and to encourage them in the faith. The elders together exercise oversight (episcopacy) over the local congregation, with superior groups of elders gathered on a regional basis exercising wider oversight.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: Presbyterians typically have viewed this method of government as approximating that of the New Testament and earliest churches.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: Presbyterianism is also distinct from congregationalism, in that individual congregations are not independent, but are answerable to the wider church, through its governing bodies (presbyteries, synods and assemblies). Moreover, the ordained ministry possesses a distinct responsibility for preaching and sacraments. Congregational churches are sometimes called "Presbyterian" if they are governed by a council of elders; but the difference is that every local congregation is independent, and its elders are accountable to its members, and congregationalism's wider assemblies are not ordinarily empowered to enforce discipline. Thus, these are ruled by elders only at the level of the congregations, which are united with one another by covenants of trust.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: There are two types of elder; the "teaching elder" (see "The Minister" below) and the "ruling elder".


title: Presbyterian polity

text: Depending upon the specific denomination, teaching elders may also be referred to with terms such as "Minister of Word and Sacrament".


title: Presbyterian polity

text: The elders are persons chosen from among the congregation and ordained for this service. Beyond that, practices vary: sometimes elders are elected by the congregation, sometimes appointed by the session, in some denominations elders serve for life, others have fixed terms, and some churches appoint elders on a rotation from among willing members in good standing in the church. However, in many churches, ruling elders retain their ordination for life, even though they serve fixed terms. Even after the end of their terms, they may be active in presbyteries or other bodies, and may serve communion.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: In addition to sitting on the session and other church courts, ruling elders have duties as individuals. Again, Miller (1831) explains,


title: Presbyterian polity

text: In some denominations they are called "Ministers of Word and Sacrament", and in others they are called "Teaching Elders". Ministers called to a particular congregation are called "pastors", and serve a function analogous to clergy in other denominations. (Because ruling elders are often ordained in a fashion nearly identical to teaching elders, the distinction between lay and clergy is not as clear under the Presbyterian system as in others). The terms 'lay' and 'clergy' are not properly used in presbyterian polity.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: Ministers may be considered equal in status with the other elders, but they have a distinct ordination and distinct function. They are the primary preachers and teachers, celebrants of sacraments. There are sometimes further distinctions between the minister and the other elders. Some Presbyterian denominations enroll ministers as members of their respective congregations, while others enroll the minister as a member of the regional presbytery. The presbyteries are responsible for the ordination of the ministers.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: Until the 20th century, only men had been eligible for ordination as elders or ministers of the word and sacrament.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: This is widely not the case any longer, although it is usually considered a demarcation issue, distinguishing "liberal" from "conservative" Presbyterian denominations. In North America, the Reformed Church in America, Christian Reformed Church in North America (both of Dutch Reformed heritage), Cumberland Presbyterian Church, ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians, Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Presbyterian Church in Canada, and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are denominations with presbyterian polity which allow for the ordination of women.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: The general assembly of a denomination often decides on what grounds a person may be ordained, but the ordination of ministers is the right of the presbytery or classis, and the right to extend a call to a minister is the privilege of the members of the parish or congregation.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: The office of deacon has different meanings among different presbyterian churches. In some churches, deacons exercise responsibility for practical matters of finance and fabric, either separately or together with the elders.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: In some cases deacons administer the welfare matters of the congregation, while a separate board of management or trustees administers the other material business (temporalities) of the congregation, such as its endowments, salaries and buildings.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: Elders make decisions for the local parish through an elected council called the "Session" (Latin. "sessio" from "sedere" "to sit"), sometimes the "Kirk session", "church session," or (in Continental Reformed usage) "consistory". The members of the session are the pastor(s) of that congregation (sometimes referred to as a teaching elder) and the installed ruling or canon elders ("ruling" or "canon" because they are responsible for "measuring" the spiritual life and work of a congregation). In some Continental Reformed churches, deacons are members of the consistory; others, such as the Christian Reformed Church in North America, distinguish between the consistory, comprising the pastor and elders, and the council, which comprises the pastor(s), the elders, and the deacons.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: In most denominations the pastor serves as Moderator and presides over the session (primus inter pares), in which all elders have an equal vote. In some denominations, the pastor is not given a vote; however, in a sitting body of an even number or with a quorum of the session counted they can break a tie by a casting vote.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: In the Polity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the pastor and associate pastor(s) have votes as members of the session on any and all matters; however, often they refrain from voting except in tie situations. The Pastor is not a voting member of the congregation.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: With the Session there is one person, usually an elder but not always, who will be given the title, "Clerk of Session." This person is more or less the secretary for Session. They take notes on each meeting and are responsible for records of the congregation. In addition they find a wide area of responsibility, including responsibility for conduct of worship should a minister suddenly not be available.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: Although it is the responsibility of the Moderator (minister), Session Clerks often have the ability to assist in keeping meetings on track due to skills which are received from experience and the Holy Spirit.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: In presbyterianism, congregations are united in accountability to a regional body called the "presbytery, "or, in Continental Reformed terminology, the "classis", which comes from the Latin word for "fleet." Presbyteries are made up of the minister and an elder 'commissioned' from each parish, as well as other clergy, such as theological college professors, chaplains, and retired ministers. When there is a larger number of ordained ministers than ruling elders, additional ruling elders are appointed to redress the imbalance. The commissioners of the presbytery are expected to exercise their own judgement and are not required to represent the majority view of their congregations. In some Dutch Reformed bodies, a classis serves as a delegated body, which ceases to exist in between meetings, whereas a presbytery exists perpetually.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: The officers of a presbytery are a moderator and a stated or principal clerk. The moderator acts as chair of presbytery meetings and has a casting, but not deliberative, vote. As with the moderators of synods and assemblies, the moderatorship is a primus inter pares position appointed by the presbytery itself. The moderator is addressed as "moderator" during meetings, but their position has no bearing outside of the presbytery meeting and affords him/her no special place in other courts, although typically the moderator (especially if a member of the clergy) will conduct worship and oversee ordinations and installations of ministers as a "liturgical" bishop, and other ordinances which are seen as acts of the presbytery.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: The stated or principal clerk takes minutes and deals with the correspondence of the presbytery, and is often appointed for an indefinite term. Presbytery Clerks are the ecclesiastical administrators and generally regarded as substantially influential due to their greater experience of the governance of the church and their ordering of the business of the presbytery. They are thus very much more than secretaries and often in fact are the lynch pin of the organisation.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: In denominations too large for all the work of the denomination to be done by a single presbytery, the parishes may be divided into several presbyteries under "synods" and "general assemblies", the synod being the lower court of the two. In the United Church of Canada, this is referred to as "conferences" and "General Council." However, the United Church of Canada does not bear the formal ecclesiastical structure of classic Presbyterianism.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: Often all members of the constituent presbyteries are members of the synod. Like the commissioners to presbyteries, the commissioners to synods do not act on instruction from their congregations or presbyteries, but exercise their own judgement. A synod also has a moderator and clerk, and generally meet less often than the presbytery.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: Some presbyterian churches, like the Church of Scotland, Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Presbyterian Church in America have no intermediate court between the presbytery and the general assembly.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: The "general assembly" (or general synod) is the highest court of presbyterian polity. Each presbytery selects a number of its members to be commissioners to the general assembly. The general assembly is chaired by its own moderator, who is usually elected to a single term. He or she is addressed as moderator during meetings, but like the other moderators, their position has no bearing outside of the assembly meeting and affords him/her no special place in other courts. He or she presides over meetings of the assembly, and may be called on in a representative function for the remainder of the year.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: The stated clerk and deputy clerk of the general assembly administer the minutes, correspondence, and business of the assembly. In some cases a separate business convenor is appointed to deal with the agenda. General assemblies meet less regularly than their subordinate courts, often annually, or in the case of the Presbyterian Church (USA), every other year.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: The General Assembly also has members serve as Advisory Delegates. There are four different types of advisory delegates, each with a focus on a different area in the Presbyterian Church like young adult, theological student, missionary and ecumenical. The role of an advisory delegate is to speak about issues or topics that commissioners would usually not worry about or care to speak about during a General Assembly meeting. Advisory Delegates may not present motions or vote in meetings of the General Assembly.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: The powers of the general assembly are usually wide-ranging. However, they may be limited by some form of external review. For example, the rules of the Church of Scotland include the Barrier Act, which requires that certain major changes to the polity of the church be referred to the presbyteries, before being enacted by the general assembly.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: There may be issues arising between annual General Assemblies which require urgent attention. In these cases some presbyterian churches have a 'commission of assembly' who will deal with the issue and refer it to the next General Assembly for homologation.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: The word "Presbyterianism", when capitalized, often refers specifically to churches founded on principles of presbyterian polity in the British Isles and their derivatives in other countries.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: In France, presbyterianism was represented by the Église réformée de France. There are also Lutherans and Evangelicals. The logo is a Huguenot Cross ("Croix huguenote") with the burning bush.


title: Presbyterian polity

text: The origins of the Waldensian Evangelical Church lie in the medieval Waldensian movement for religious reform. The Waldensians adopted Calvinist theology during the Reformation and became the Italian branch of the Reformed churches. In 1975 the Waldensian Church joined with the Italian Methodist Church to form the Union of Waldensian and Methodist Churches, which is a member of the World Council of Churches, the World Communion of Reformed Churches, and the World Methodist Council.


title: C-sharp minor

text: C-sharp minor is a minor scale based on C, with the pitches C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. Its key signature consists of four sharps.


title: C-sharp minor

text: Changes needed for the melodic and harmonic versions of the scale are written in with accidentals as necessary. The C-sharp harmonic minor and melodic minor scales are:


title: C-sharp minor

text: Its relative major is E major. Its parallel major, C-sharp major, is usually written instead as the enharmonic key of D-flat major, since C-sharp major’s key signature with seven sharps is not normally used. Its enharmonic equivalent, D-flat minor, having eight flats including the B, has a similar problem. Therefore, C-sharp minor is often used as the parallel minor for D-flat major. (The same enharmonic situation occurs with the keys of A-flat major and G-sharp minor.)


title: C-sharp minor

text: There are only two known symphonies in the 18th century written in this key. One of them is by Joseph Martin Kraus, who appears to have found the key difficult since he later rewrote it in C minor. In the following two centuries, C-sharp minor symphonies remained rare. Notable examples are the second movement Adagio of Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 7, the first movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5 and Prokofiev's Symphony No. 7.