The Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between the United States and groups of people collectively known as Seminoles, consisting of American Indians and Black Indians. It was part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars. The Second Seminole War, often referred to as the Seminole War, is regarded as "the longest and most costly of the Indian conflicts of the United States". After the Treaty of Payne's Landing in 1832 that called for the Seminole's removal from Florida, tensions rose until fierce hostilities occurred in the Dade battle in 1835. This conflict started the war. The Seminoles and the U.S. forces engaged in mostly small engagements for more than six years. By 1842, only a few hundred native peoples remained in Florida. Although no peace treaty was ever signed, the war was declared over on August 14, 1842.

On May 1, 1841, Lieutenant William Tecumseh Sherman was assigned to escort Coacoochee to a meeting at Fort Pierce. (The fort was named for Colonel Benjamin Kendrick Pierce, who oversaw its construction.) After washing and dressing in his best (which included a vest with a bullet hole and blood on it), Coacoochee asked Sherman to give him silver in exchange for a one-dollar bill from the Bank of Tallahassee. At the meeting Major Thomas Childs agreed to give Coacoochee thirty days to bring in his people for transportation west. Coacoochee's people came and went freely at the fort for the rest of the month, while Childs became convinced that Coachoochee would renege on his agreement. Childs asked for and received permission to seize Coacoochee. On June 4 he arrested Coachoochee and fifteen of his followers. Lieutenant Colonel William Gates ordered that Coacoochee and his men be shipped immediately to New Orleans. When Colonel Worth learned of this, he ordered the ship to return to Tampa Bay, as he intended to use Coacoochee to persuade the rest of the Seminoles to surrender.

Colonel Worth offered bribes worth about US$8,000 to Coacoochee. As Coacoochee had no real hope of escaping, he agreed to send out messengers urging the Seminoles to move west. The chiefs still active in the northern part of the Florida peninsula, Halleck Tustenuggee, Tiger Tail, Nethlockemathla, and Octiarche, met in council and agreed to kill any messengers from the whites. The southern chiefs seemed to have learned of this decision, and supported it. However, when one messenger appeared at a council of Holata Mico, Sam Jones, Otulkethlocko, Hospetarke, Fuse Hadjo and Passacka, he was made prisoner, but not killed.

A total of 211 Seminoles surrendered as a result of Coacoochee's messages, including most of his own band. Hospetarke was drawn into a meeting at Camp Ogden (near the mouth of the Peace River) in August and he and 127 of his band were captured. As the number of Seminoles in Florida decreased, it became easier for those left to stay hidden. In November the Third Artillery moved into the Big Cypress Swamp and burned a few villages. Some of the Seminoles in southern Florida gave up after that, and turned themselves in for transportation west.[96]

Seminoles were still scattered throughout most of Florida. One band that had been reduced to starvation surrendered in northern Florida near the Apalachicola River in 1842. Further east, however, bands led by Halpatter Tustenuggee, Halleck Tustenuggee and Chitto Harjo raided Mandarin and other settlements along the lower (i.e., northern) St. Johns River. On April 19, 1842, a column of 200 soldiers led by First Lieutenant George A. McCall found a group of Seminole warriors in the Pelchikaha Swamp, about thirty miles south of Fort King. There was a brief fire-fight and then the Seminoles disappeared into a hammock. Halleck Tustenuggee was held prisoner when he showed up at Fort King for a talk. Part of his band was caught when they visited the fort, and Lieutenant McCall captured the rest of Halleck's band in their camp.

The remaining Seminoles in Florida were allowed to stay on an informal reservation in southwest Florida at the end of the Second Seminole War in 1842.

Colonel Worth recommended early in 1842 that the remaining Seminoles be left in peace if they would stay in southern Florida. Worth eventually received authorization to leave the remaining Seminoles on an informal reservation in southwestern Florida, and to declare an end to the war on a date of his choosing. At this time there were still several diverse bands of Indians in Florida. Billy Bowlegs was the head of a large band of Seminoles living near Charlotte Harbor. Sam Jones led a band of Mikasukis that lived in the Everglades near Fort Lauderdale. North of Lake Okeechobee was a band of Muskogees led by Chipco. Another Muskogee band, led by Tiger Tail, lived near Tallahassee. Finally, in northern Florida there was a band of Creeks led by Octiarche which had fled from Georgia in 1836.

In August 1842, Congress passed the Armed Occupation Act, which provided free land to settlers who improved the land and were prepared to defend themselves from Indians. In many ways this act prefigured the Homestead Act of 1862. Heads of households could claim 160 acres of land south of a line running across the northern part of the peninsula. They had to 'prove' their claim by living on the land for five years and clearing 5 acres. However, they could not claim land within two miles of a military post. A total of 1,317 grants totaling 210,720acres were registered in 1842 and 1843.

In the last action of the war, General William Bailey and prominent planter Jack Bellamy led a posse of 52 men on a three-day pursuit of a small band of Tiger Tail's braves who had been attacking pioneers, surprising their swampy encampment and killing all 24. William Wesley Hankins, at sixteen the youngest of the posse, accounted for the last of the kills and was acknowledged as having fired the last shot of the Second Seminole War.

Also in August 1842, Worth met with the chiefs still in Florida. Each warrior was offered a rifle, money and one year's worth of rations if they moved west. Some accepted the offer, but most hoped to eventually move to the reservation in southwest Florida. Believing that the remaining Indians in Florida would either go west or move to the reservation, Worth declared the war to be at an end on August 14, 1842. Worth then went on ninety-days leave, leaving command to Colonel Josiah Vose. The Army in Florida consisted at this point of parts of three regiments, totaling 1,890 men. Attacks on white settlers continued even as far north as the area around Tallahassee. Otiarche and Tiger Tail had not indicated what they would do. Complaints from Florida caused the War Department to order Vose to take action against the bands still off the reservation, but Vose argued that breaking the pledges made to the Indians would have bad results, and the War Department accepted his arguments. In early October a major hurricane struck Cedar Key, where the Army headquarters had been located, and the Indians would no longer visit it.

Worth returned to Florida at the beginning of November 1842. He soon decided that Tiger Tail and Otiarche had taken too long to make up their minds on what to do, and ordered that they be brought in. Tiger Tail was so ill that he had to be carried on a litter, and he died in New Orleans waiting for transportation to the Indian territory. The other Indians in northern Florida were also captured and sent west. By April 1843, only one regiment, the Eighth Infantry, was still in Florida. In November 1843 Worth reported that the only Indians left in Florida were 42 Seminole warriors, 33 Mikasukis, 10 Creeks and 10 Tallahassees, with women and children bringing the total to about 300. Worth also stated that these Indians were all living on the reservation and were no longer a threat to the white population of Florida.