Rhea letter

Conjectural illustration depicting the capture of Homathlemico and Francis the Prophet by Jackson's troops during the First Seminole War; Jackson painted by Rembrandt Peale during the Congressional investigation into his conduct; anti-Jackson literature criticizing the Florida invasion; map of Jackson's movements during the war; Seminole beadwork; self-portrait of Hillis Hadjo

The "Rhea letter" was an early 19th-century political controversy of the United States stemming from the First Seminole War and the contingent annexation of what is now the U.S. state of Florida. The controversy involves four (or rather three) key documents:

the "Jackson January letter" sent by U.S. Army general Andrew Jackson to President James Monroe on January 6, 1818, with its later annotation that the "Rhea letter" had been burned
the presumably fictitious "Rhea letter" purportedly sent to Andrew Jackson by Tennessee congressman John Rhea at the behest of James Monroe in February 1818.
the vaguely threatening letter sent to former U.S. president James Monroe on his deathbed in June 1831 by John Rhea at the behest of Andrew Jackson
the "Denunciation of the Insinuations of John Rhea" written by James Monroe as the last document he ever signed

This chain of evidence relates to Andrew Jackson's after-the-fact rationalization and defense of his unauthorized invasion of Florida in 1818, a campaign that now goes by the name First Seminole War. This conspiracy and the extended controversy over Jackson's 1818 Florida campaign played out against the background of the dispossession and expulsion of Indigenous people from their lands in what is now the southeastern United States, the politics of the 1824, 1828, and 1832 U.S. presidential campaigns, and the Jackson–William H. Crawford–John C. Calhoun hate triangle that emerged after the last Founding Father president left office. The controversy surrounding the 1818 invasion, and the Monroe administration's response, resurfaced a dozen years later and played a central role in the Jackson administration backbiting in 1831 that led to Calhoun's departure from the vice presidency in 1832.

Since the late 19th century historians have broadly agreed that Andrew Jackson lied that he had been secretly granted secret special permission by James Monroe to invade Florida, when in fact he had been only copied on orders granting permission to pacify Seminoles, but specifically prohibiting engagement with the Spanish forts in Florida, and that he then conspired to create false evidence that such an order had been given. Jackson wanted Florida, so he took Florida, and both the Monroe administration and the 15th Congress ultimately shrugged at the illegality of the popular 60-day war, but there was, however, just enough heat to the charges that Jackson scrambled to excuse himself through a combination of obfuscation and outright falsehood. Both John Quincy Adams and historian Richard Stenberg described Jackson's "Rhea letter" scheme as "depraved." The notion of the first "Rhea letter" can fairly be put in scare quotes, as historians have variously described it as a hoax, a total fabrication, and a brazen lie, or in the best possible reading, cover for a shambolic imperial blitzkrieg "steeped in an air of guilty complicity". The current editor of The Papers of Andrew Jackson stated in 2010 that "the judgment of most historians" on the "Rhea letter" question is that "not only did [it] not exist, but could not have existed." From Jackson's "self-righteously justified in a rhetorically rigid but flexibly pragmatic" perspective, honesty and honor were foolish notions and quite beside the point. In the words of United States Military Academy history professor Stephen J. Watson, "Old Hickory was determined to secure the southern borderlands for American landholders, of whom he was characteristic, by whatever means he considered necessary, and his iron will drove this bellicose approach to defense and the aggrandizement of American interests from the War of 1812 until his death."