Seminole Indians watch from cover as a boatload of Marines passes by At age 38 Archibald Henderson was, and has remained, the youngest man ever to become Commandant of the Marines. Enlisting in 1806, the slim redhead had served with distinction during the recent war, indicated by the fact that he was brevetted Major for his heroism. The Virginia-born officer was organized, direct and forceful in his manner, characteristics that come through in a phase he once wrote: 'Take care to be right, and then they are powerless." The problems he would face put Henderson's axiom to a stern test, and would make him work extremely hard and long for his Commandant's modest pay and perquisites of $2636.16 a year. Long the objects of unremitting pressures to force them off their ancestral lands, the Creek Indians of Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles of Florida's Everglades joined in an uprising when attempts were begun to deport the to reservations west of the Mississippi River. On 23 May 1836, acting in his capacity as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, President Jackson detached all able-bodied Marines to service with the Army for the duration of the emergency. Commandant Henderson was quick to respond; he reduced all Marine detachments at Navy installations to sergeants's guards, and in ten days had assembled a two-battalion regiment consisting of 38 officers and 424 enlisted men, more than half the Corps of that time. Before he strode out of Marine Headquarters gripping his gold-headed walking stick, legend has it Henderson tacked this note to his office door: Gone to fight the Indians. Will be back when the war is over. A. Henderson Col.Comdt. By that summer's end the Creek uprising had been suppressed, and the Marines were moved south to Florida, arriving in September. When the Army commander, Major General T H Jesup, divided his forces into two brigades, Colonel Henderson was given command of one of them, a patchwork organization consisting of the Marine regiment, Creek Indian scouts, volunteers from Georgia, and infantry and artillary units from the Army. Henderson led his brigade in an action against the Seminoles, northeast of Fort Brooke-now Tampa-on 27 January 1837, and won a determined foe. For this, Henderson was brevetted brigadier general, making him the first general officer in the Corps's history. The government forces tried with little success to pursue the Seminoles through the Everglades Swamp, and in 1842 the war dwindled to a conclusion-no treaty ever was signed-under conditions favorable to the Indians.
