Territorial Florida has never been central to most discussions of Manifest Destiny. Indeed, as historian Laurel Clark Shire admits in The Threshold of Manifest Destiny, the former Spanish colony has generally resided on the periphery of American history, with most scholarly attention being awarded to westward expansionism. It is thus quite unusual for any historian not only to place this long-marginalized region within the rubric and context of Manifest Destiny, but also to focus on pioneer women as vital components of this mythic enterprise. Salient features more typically associated with the settlement of the West, such as land grants and other forms of government assistance, were indeed initially carried out in Florida, specifically in reaction to the deprivations suffered by the relatively small settler community during the Second Seminole War (1835–42). These programs proved successful, Shire insists, and were thus essential to the success of this southernmost colonial endeavor. America's lengthiest and most costly Indian war exemplified the degree to which the nation was committed to settler colonialism. As a result, according to this book's thesis, the Florida frontier functioned as a pivotal “threshold” upon which the United States entered a new phase of national expansion, with women playing a key role.

Missouri Senator Thomas H. Benton's efforts on behalf of the Armed Occupation Act (1842), which awarded 160 acres of Florida land to any man willing to build a homestead, farm, and defend their property from the remaining Seminoles, was certainly one of the war's leading events and is extensively covered in chapter 5. Shire considers that this assistance, as well as the availability of other cheap land (some bought directly by women), not only contributed to “winning the Second U.S. Seminole War” but also served as “a blueprint for the 1850 Land Donation Act (Oregon) and the 1862 Homestead Exemption Act” (192). In chapter 4, Shire elucidates on the conceptual importance and precedence of providing food rations to the “Suffering Inhabitants of Florida” – in effect America's first organized social welfare program – whereby women and children were especially singled out for compassionate relief. The author's discussions of the role of the newspaper media, especially regarding the presumed slaughter of innocent widows and orphans by Native people, is presumed to have turned the tide of public opinion, a topic extensively discussed in the book's opening chapters.

Some sections of this book will undoubtedly be useful to historians who choose to delve into this period, particularly the author's study of women's roles amid the wilderness frontier. But Shire's central notions regarding Florida are fraught with difficulty, including the absence of comparative analysis. Far from being a prototype of successful colonization, it is quite clear that endemic malaria – a subject that is never broached – barred the nascent territory (and subsequent state) from ever reaching its full potential during the nineteenth century and significantly deterred settlement. Census data reveal that the region surpassed all others in the US in per-capita deaths from malaria. Such pertinent details, however, are overlooked, as is the essential fact that Florida remained the least populated southern state until the 1950s, when malaria finally ceased being a public health hazard (a result of the application of the pesticide DDT, as well as of decades of draining wetlands and other preventive measures). Moreover, despite the offers of free land, no mention is made of the fact that in spite of expectations of an influx of 10,000 pioneers, only a fraction – between 2,000 and 2,500 (including large extended families) – risked venturing into this land. For those who did make the trip, many perished from the raging fevers that took a harsh toll on newcomers who lacked resistance to local diseases.

Newspaper reports that presented Seminoles as bloodthirsty slayers of women and children were indeed employed by the Democratic Party. Again, however, Shire omits crucial details. The heroic Indian motif was simultaneously employed by Whig journalists during this same period. The ennobled figure of the warrior Osceola, a romanticized invention of political operatives who strove to portray Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy as an abject moral failure, became one of the most successful media strategies of the era. The skill with which the Whigs manipulated public opinion through the Romantic genre (via effusive articles, poetry, and other paeans to the fallen “Children of the Forest”) countered the Red Devil cliché most effectively. The shift in public attention, from the suffering white inhabitants of Florida to the intrinsic injustice of Indian removal, certainly contradicts the author's claim of settler primacy in the media and presents a far more complex reality.

Despite the author's assertions, Territorial Florida never served as a threshold of American expansionism. Rather, when viewed within the context of settler colonialism, the east Florida peninsula proved to be a particularly disheartening cul-de-sac. The lengthy and militarily disastrous Seminole war devolved into a quagmire and struck a major blow to Jacksonian expansionism. Surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, and possessing vast wetlands as well as the highest humidity in the country, this semitropical environment served as a natural sanctuary for mosquito-borne illnesses that hindered both the war and the settlers that were expected to follow. A full decade after the war a St. Augustine newspaper lamented that Florida continued to be “shunned by settlers in search of a home.”Footnote ¹ Only 98,000 people, nearly half of whom were slaves, inhabited an immense territory of 38 million acres. Offers of free land and the dubious claims of politicians and speculators who celebrated Florida as a promised land failed to convince outsiders to commit their futures to the region.