Florida Becomes a United States Territory 6th grade · age 11

The Judgment Lab asks: What do we think about that? When we work on the Judgment Lab, our ultimate goal is to articulate our own principles and values in a thoughtful and respectful way.

As you learned in the reading, by the early 1800s Spain could barely hold onto Florida. Very few Spanish settlers lived there, and Spain had sent only a handful of soldiers and officials to govern the territory. Meanwhile, the Seminole Indians had built a life in northern Florida — farming, hunting, and trading. They also welcomed runaway enslaved people from American plantations, which made American settlers along the Georgia-Florida border angry. Raids and fights broke out on both sides of the border, and by 1817 the violence had grown into the First Seminole War.

In 1818, General Andrew Jackson was sent to stop the raids, but he went much further than that. Jackson marched about 3,000 soldiers deep into Spanish Florida, burned Seminole villages along the Suwannee River, and destroyed homes and food supplies. He then captured the Spanish forts at St. Marks and Pensacola. The Spanish governor fled to Cuba rather than face Jackson's army. For the Seminoles, the destruction was terrible — they lost their towns, their crops, and the communities they had built over decades. Yet they never surrendered and never signed a treaty.

Jackson's invasion did have big results for the United States. It proved that Spain could not defend or control Florida. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams used that fact to pressure Spain into signing the Adams-Onís Treaty in 1819, which handed all of Florida over to the United States. But the invasion also brought real harm to the Seminoles and took away the freedom they had carved out for themselves under Spain's weak rule. The Judgment Lab asks you to decide: Was Jackson right to go beyond his orders and invade Spanish Florida?

The Judgment Lab asks you to think about when it is right for a person to go beyond what their leaders told them to do. Going beyond your orders means doing more than you were asked or allowed to do — making big decisions on your own instead of following the instructions you were given. In Jackson's case, he was told to stop raids along the border, but he chose on his own to invade another country's territory, destroy Seminole towns, and seize Spanish forts. The general question asks you to think about whether there are times when acting beyond what your leaders authorized is the right thing to do, or whether people should stick to the instructions they were given.

Was Andrew Jackson right to go beyond his orders — marching deep into Spanish Florida, burning Seminole villages, and seizing Spanish forts — even though he was only told to stop raids along the Georgia-Florida border?

Follow the steps below to complete this Judgment Lab. By the end of the lab, you will have decided whether you think Jackson was right to go beyond his orders and invade Spanish Florida. You will also articulate and test your principles about when it is right for a person to go beyond what their leaders told them to do.