Who knew about the rebellion at the time?
Most of the country knew about the Second Seminole War, at least as an Indian conflict, since it was widely reported in national newspapers from 1835-1842. The black portion of the conflict, however, was not widely known. It was occasionally reported in the national press, but rarely in any detail, and almost never in direct language. The southern press had long specialized in a form of euphemistic reference to servile insurrection, a sort of code that managed to alert slaveholding citizens to danger while avoiding statements that might inflame slaves to rebellion. Over this same period, southern historians were rallying around the notion that national history could be a weapon in the political conflict over sectional interests, principally slavery.[22] Overall, this created an atmosphere that stifled open information on the black dimensions of the war in Florida. The ruling class of the South saw no interest in circulating the fact that black rebels were successfully challenging their
