During the Spring and Summer, both parties were in a state of preparation--of constant readiness for war. A few predatory excursions to the frontier settlements, marked the action of the Indians and Exiles, while the army, under General Gaines, often sent parties into the Indian country, without any important incident or effect. The first effective blow was struck in November. A boat was ascending the Appalachicola river, with supplies for Fort Scott, under the escort of a Lieutenant and forty men, in company with a number of women and children. Information of this fact was communicated to the Exiles and Indians resident at Mickasukie, and a band of warriors at once hastened to intercept them. They succeeded in drawing them into ambush, a few miles below the mouth of Flint River, and the Lieutenant, and all his men but six, and all the children, and all the women but one, were massacred on the spot. Six soldiers escaped, and one woman was spared and taken to Suwanee as a prisoner. Here she was kept by the Exiles through the winter, and treated with great kindness, residing in their families and sharing their hospitality. She had thus an opportunity of learning their condition, and the state of civilization to which they had attained, as well as their desire to be at peace with mankind, in order to enjoy their own rights and liberties. [Sidenote: 1818.] This massacre was regarded by the country as a most barbarous and wanton sacrifice of human life. The newspapers blazoned it forth as an exhibition of savage barbarity. The deep indignation of the people was invoked against the Seminoles, who were represented as alone responsible for the murder of Lieutenant Scott, and his men. Probably nine-tenths of the Editors, thus assailing the Seminoles, were not aware of the atrocious sacrifice of human life at "Blount's Fort," in July of the previous year. Even the President of the United States, in his Message (March 25), relating to these hostile movements of the Seminoles, during the previous year, declared "_The hostilities of this Tribe were unprovoked_," as though the record of the massacre at "Blount's Fort" had been erased from the records of the moral Universe. Notwithstanding our army had, in a time of profound peace, invaded the Spanish Territory, marched sixty miles into its interior, opened a cannonade upon "Blount's Fort," blown it up, with an unprecedented massacre, in which both Seminole Indians and negroes were slain, and two of their principal men given over to barbarous torture; yet, the President, in his Message, as if to falsify the history of current events, declared that "as almost the whole of this Tribe inhabit the country within the limits of Florida, Spain was bound, by the Treaty of 1795, to restrain them from committing depredations against the United States." Such were the efforts made to misrepresent facts, in relation to the first Seminole War. With its commencement, the people had nothing to do; they