War having been declared in the name of the Florida Indians, a detachment of volunteers with some regulars, under General Duncan L. Clinch, moved to the Ouithlacoochee, the Indian encampment. Three days before the event which will be described as occurring at Ouithlacoochee, Major Francis Langhorne Dade, with a small command, had moved from Fort Brooke to relieve the post of Fort King. Major Dade and his command had marched sixty-five miles in five days, intrenching themselves each night in their encampment. On the sixth night they were attacked by Indians and negro allies, and out of one hundred and twelve all were slain except three. The officers killed were Major Francis Langhorne Dade, Captain George Washington Gardiner, Captain William Frazier, Lieutenants William E. Basinger, J.L. Keayes, Robert Richard Mudge, Richard Henderson, and Dr. John Slade Gatlin. Total killed, officers and men, one hundred and seven; escaped, three. A handsome monument has been erected to their memory at West Point. Returning to General Duncan L. Clinch's advance on Ouithlacoochee, here he was attacked by Assiola and his followers after he had crossed the river; but the general succeeded in repelling the attack and driving the Indians. While the battle resulting in the massacre of Major Dade and his command was being fought, the death of Thompson and others was effected within a few hundred yards of Fort King, on February 28th. All of the troops except Thomas W. Lendrum's company of the Third Artillery, about forty strong, had been withdrawn on the 26th, to re-enforce General Clinch at Lang Syne plantation, with a view to his striking a blow at the families of the Indians supposed to be concealed in the swamps and hammocks of the Ouithlacoochee River, with the hope of drawing the Indian warriors out and bringing on a general engagement. All those attached to the fort or agency were directed not to pass beyond the picketing. Thompson slept inside the defenses and passed the greater part of the day at the agency, about one hundred yards beyond the works. The sutler, Rogers, had moved his goods into the fort, but was in the habit of taking his meals at his residence, six hundred yards away in the skirt of a hammock to the southwest of the fort.