"Home Guy" wrote in message ...
Robert Green wrote:

Seminole victory:

What exactly did they win?

I already posted it but you clipped it:

Date 1816 - 1858 Location Florida, United States Result Seminole victory,
Pensacola was taken by General Andrew Jackson, the U.S. Government *pays*
most of the warring Seminole to move to Indian Territory: grants one seat in
the House: one seat in the Senate of the State Legislature, and Florida was
ceded to the United States.

FWIW, this was a time when most other recalcitrant Indians got nothing more
than a bullet. The Seminoles appeared to have learned very early in the
game to renege on signed treaties faster than the US did, taking the bribes
offered them to move and buying ammunition with that money.

And was it because they had guns?

Again, the link I posted contains the answer:

As the men were loading the wagons and saddling their horses the next
morning (December 20, 1855), forty Seminoles led by Billy Bowlegs attacked
the camp. Several soldiers were shot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seminole_Wars#Aftermath_2

I assume to shoot the soldiers, they used guns. But just in case the above
statement isn't convincing enough, the same article goes on to say:

Thompson then 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."

Maybe they were using the gunpowder for poultices and the lead as fishing
weights . . . but I doubt it.

The Seminole Uprising is well-known among military historians and
logisticians because the Seminoles proved to be too tenacious to remove by
military means.

http://www.history.army.mil/books/AMH-V1/ch07.htm

says: Early in 1832, at the direction of Secretary Cass, the U.S. Indian
commissioner in Florida negotiated a treaty with the Seminoles, ratified in
1834, by which the Indians would relinquish their lands in Florida and move
to Arkansas. The deadline was eventually set at January 1, 1836. However,
many of the Indians were determined to resist what they viewed as the theft
of their lands. Long before the deadline, the Seminoles, led by a
charismatic half-Indian named Osceola, demonstrated that they would not go
peaceably. Numerous sugar plantations in north and central Florida were
raided and burned.

After all, we know from several hundred years of past experience
that an armed US citizenry was and is totally ineffective against
it's own gov't.

You could also say that an armed citizenry was pretty effective
at throwing off the Brits during the American Revolution.

That was before there was a "United States", and before there was a US
constitution.

You miss the point. It was precisely that conflict that gave rise to the
2nd Amendment - the right to bear arms. The Founding Fathers realized how
important individual gun ownership was in making the break from "the Crown."

Tell me how you think that would go down today.

We have more guns than people. It could be very, very ugly. Look at how
long the Chechens have been at war with White Russia:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/olliver...chens-so-angry

(I must have gotten most of the other stuff right, since you only chose
that part to quote me on)

If you need to flatter yourself, go right ahead. BTW, it's "its own
government" not "it's." (Just by way of letting you know I don't feel the
need to correct *every* error made in every post. Just the egregious ones.)

--
Bobby G.