"I received, yesterday, your letter of the eighteenth, with a list of the slaves which you claim. Ansel is the only one of the three who has been taken. I have him employed, at one of the interior posts, as an interpreter. _The negroes generally have taken the alarm_, and but few of them come in; and those who remain out, prevent the Indians from coming. But for the premature attempts of some citizens of Florida to obtain possession of their slaves, a majority of those taken by the Indians during the war, as well as those who absconded previous to it, would have been secured before this time. More than thirty negro men were in and near my camp, when some of the citizens, who had lost negroes, came to demand them. The Indian-negroes immediately disappeared, and have not been heard of since." It is believed that, in the conducting of this second Seminole war, no act of any public officer will hereafter appear more inexplicable than the conduct of General Jessup, in regard to this stipulation in favor of the Exiles. No person can suppose there was any doubt in regard to the original design of this stipulation. He at first appears determined to carry it out in good faith; this was before he learned the complaint of the slaveholders of Florida, made to the Secretary of War. He next expressed his intention to make an arrangement with the chiefs to surrender negroes captured during the war--as though the chiefs were authorized to consign "their allies" to slavery. He next says he had made such an arrangement, but fails to say with whom. At length it comes out, in the future history, that he alleges it to have been made with Co-Hadjo, an obscure chief, in no way a party to the capitulation, or connected with it. And finally, in this letter to Judge Smith, he intimates that he would have _betrayed_ many of those allies to slavery, if the people of the Territory had been quiet. Our present duty, however, is to record facts, without asking attention to the intended treachery or fraud of individuals; but this avowed intention of entrapping the negroes by inducing them to come in under the expectation of emigrating West with their Seminole friends, and then consign them to bondage, must attract the attention and excite the wonder of Christian men. This wonder is increased by the fact, that language is constantly used by slaveholders apparently intended to mislead the Northern reader. For instance, General Jessup speaks of slaves "_captured during the war_," as though the Indians made prisoners of slaves. This is believed to be entirely without foundation. Slaves being regarded by Southern men as _property_, incapable of thought, whenever they fled from their masters and sought an asylum with the Indians, the masters spoke of them as _captured_.