[1] On December 2, 1837, Colonel Zachary Taylor ordered the construction of Fort Gardiner during his Second Seminole War campaign as he marched his troops into the Lake Okeechobee region.

Colonel Taylor assigned Captain Monroe of the 4th Artillery in command of Fort Basinger and stationed one company of troops and approximately 85 sick men and some Indians at the fortification.

The remaining troops marched south from Fort Basinger and on December 25, 1837, they engaged in the Battle of Lake Okeechobee.

[5][6] Basinger obtained an appointment as a U.S. Army cadet at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.

On December 23, 1835, Brevet Major Francis Langhorne Dade led a detachment of eight officers, including Lt. Basinger, and 100 troops from Tampa to Fort King.

[6] During his burial ceremony Zachary Taylor said, “this day I bury an officer as dear to me as a son and by reason of his untimely death the United States has lost a soldier who would have become one of our great generals.

Zachary Taylor had Fort Basinger built in 1837, during the Seminole Wars, on the Kissimmee River 17 miles above its mouth.