The History of Florida (51 page)

amidst torchlight parades and fireworks. Bonfires and the sounds of church

bel s and cannon firings were common. Militia units paraded, while Union-

ists became cautious and silent.

John Darling of Tampa would later claim that his advocacy of secession

had not been motivated by thoughts of war but rather by the “conviction

that it was a rightful and proper remedy to break down the policy of Negro

emancipation believed to be intended by the Republican Administration

then about to come into office.” Confederate Congressman John Sanderson,

a Vermont-born attorney and planter in Duval County, said that he had

not voted for secession with the expectation that war would follow. Rather,

Sanderson said, he had acted on behalf of those “states interested in the

institution of slavery” expecting to “secure permanent guarantees for the

proof

interests and institutions of the South.”

Whig Unionist Richard Cal had no such il usions as the gal eries erupted

in applause when the secession vote was counted on 10 January. He rose to

condemn the delegates and shout loudly: “You have opened the gates of

Hel , from which shall flow the curses of the damned which shall sink you

to perdition.”3 Strong words, but, by late 1863, many Florida secessionists

would come to agree with him.

Notes

1. Remini,
The
Life
of
Andrew
Jackson
, 134.

2. Mathews,
Edge
of
Wilderness
, 137.

3. Doherty,
Richard
Keith
Call:
Southern
Unionist
, 158.

Bibliography

Brown, Canter, Jr.
Florida’s
Peace
River
Frontier
. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1991.

———.
Ossian
Bingley
Hart,
Florida’s
Loyalist
Reconstruction
Governor
. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997.

U.S. Territory and State · 243

Buker, George E. “The Americanization of St. Augustine, 1821–1865.” In
The
Oldest
City:

St.
Augustine,
Saga
of
Survival
, edited by Jean Parker Waterbury, 151–80. St. Augustine: St. Augustine Historical Society, 1983.

Coker, Edward Caleb, and Daniel L. Schafer. “A New Englander on the Indian River

Frontier: Caleb Lyndon Brayton and the View from Brayton’s Bluff.”
Florida
Historical

Quarterly
70, no. 3 (January 1992):305–32.

Covington, James W.
The
Seminoles
of
Florida
. Gainesvil e: University Press of Florida,

1993.

Dodd, Dorothy.
Florida
Becomes
a
State
. Tal ahassee: Florida Centennial Commission,

1945.

Doherty, Herbert J.
Richard
Keith
Call,
Southern
Unionist
. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1961.

———.
The
Whigs
of
Florida,
1845–1854
. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1959.

Dovel , Junius E.
Florida:
Historic,
Dramatic,
Contemporary
. Vol. 1. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1952.

El sworth, Linda, and Lucius El sworth,
Pensacola:
The
Deep
Water
City
. Tulsa: Continental Heritage Press, 1982.

Hoffman, Paul E.
Florida’s
Frontiers
. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.

Mahon, John K.
History
of
the
Second
Seminole
War,
1835–1842
. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1967.

Mahon, John K., and Brent R. Weisman. “Florida’s Seminole and Miccosukee Peoples.” In

The
New
History
of
Florida
, edited by Michael Gannon, 183–206. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996.

Mathews, Janet Snyder.
Edge
of
Wilderness:
A
Settlement
History
of
Manatee
River
and
proof

Sarasota
Bay,
1528–1885
. Tulsa: Caprine Press, 1983.

Monaco, C. S.
Moses
Levy
of
Florida:
Jewish
Utopian
and
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. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005.

Paisley, Clifton.
The
Red
Hil s
of
Florida,
1528–1865
. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989.

Reiger, John F. “Secession of Florida from the Union—A Minority Decision?”
Florida

Historical
Quarterly
46, no. 4 (April 1968):358–68.

Remini, Robert V.
The
Life
of
Andrew
Jackson
. New York: Harper and Row, 1988.

Rivers, Larry.
Slavery
in
Florida:
Territorial
Days
to
Emancipation
. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000.

Schafer, Daniel L. “‘A class of people neither free men nor slaves’: From Spanish to

American Relations in Florida, 1821–1861.”
Journal
of
Social
History
26, no. 3 (Spring

1993):587–609.

———.
Thunder
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Florida
. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010.

Thompson, Arthur W.
Jacksonian
Democracy
on
the
Florida
Frontier
. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1961.

14

The Civil War, 1861–1865

Robert A. Taylor

Florida’s road to civil war began with a disputed presidential election. The

year 1860 saw a dividing nation select a new chief executive from four pos-

sible candidates of whom one, the new Republican Party’s Abraham Lin-

coln, did not appear on state bal ots. Florida voters were very unlikely to

support a “black Republican” in any case that year. John C. Breckinridge, the

sitting vice president of the United States, gained Florida’s electoral votes by

a comfortable margin. But when the final tal y was made, Lincoln won the

White House without the vote of a single southern state. The stage was now

proof

set for the ultimate national crisis.

The vast majority of Floridians along with their neighbors to the north re-

fused to accept the idea of a Republican president who they believed would

move against the South’s “peculiar institution” of slavery with all his consti-

tutional powers. Seemingly the only option was secession from the Union

and perhaps joining some sort of new slave-state-based republic. Those cal -

ing for immediate secession, even before Lincoln took office, dominated

the political climate in Tal ahassee. Governor Madison S. Perry completely

agreed with such sentiments. Despite this very vocal bloc, there were other

Florida leaders who took a more cautious approach, as they feared the con-

sequences of being the first state to secede and test the resolve of the federal

government.

All eyes were on the capital in Tal ahassee in January 1861 as a convention

of Floridians met to debate the question of Florida remaining a part of the

United States. Hard-core “fire-eating” secessionists failed to gain control of

the meeting. Most of the delegates tended toward cooperation with other

slave states or waiting for some overt act from the Lincoln administration.

The secession convention also sat members who did not support what they

considered drastic and unnecessary action. Pockets of such Union sympathy

· 244 ·

The Civil War, 1861–1865 · 245

existed around the state and would later loom large in Florida’s war experi-

ence. Argument raged between the factions, with some calling for secession

even before it was clear that Georgia and Alabama would act in the same

fashion. In the end, the radicals won the day, and an ordinance of secession

was approved on January 9, 1861, by a sixty-two to seven vote. Joyous crowds

fil ed the streets of Tal ahassee and other Florida towns to celebrate the birth

of an independent Florida republic. Unionist ex-governor Richard Keith

Call dared to publicly speak out against what he considered the madness of

this course of action, but he was ignored.1

Why did leaders like Call fail to stop Florida from seceding? There is no

simple answer to such a complicated question, but some points do stand

out. First, large numbers of Floridians had moved to the peninsula from

South Carolina to make their futures with fresh, new lands. Political and

emotional ties to the Palmetto State, and its radicalism, remained strong.

Second, many feared that an isolated Florida, cut off from the Lower South’s

economy, might not be able to survive. Third, Floridians in large numbers

were convinced that Lincoln and his abolitionist supporters would unleash

a reign of terror with assaults on the slave system that would result in racial

warfare. As Florida had only been a state since 1845, being apart from the

United States seemed something less than terrifying.

proof

Events moved even while the secessionist solons debated in Tal ahassee.

Local militia forces promptly moved to seize important federal instal ations

around the state. Eager troops took control of the arsenal at Chattahoochee,

Fernandina’s Fort Clinch, and even the formidable old Spanish fortress, then

called Fort Marion, in Saint Augustine. Other bases in the state seemed ripe

for the taking in the face of little to no Union resistance. This failure to react

confirmed in many minds that the North, as predicted, would acquiesce to

southern independence without an armed conflict. Floridians worked to

convince themselves that should war break out, it would be short, easy, and

glorious for southern arms.

Florida would exist as an independent country for only a matter of weeks

in 1861. By February delegates from the peninsula journeyed to Montgom-

ery, Alabama, to meet with other seceded states to form a new nation, the

Confederate States of America. In short order this convention produced a

new constitution, selected Jefferson Davis to be its provisional president,

and laid plans to create an army and navy. Former U.S. senator Stephen R.

Mallory, of Key West, joined the Davis administration as the Confederacy’s

first (and only) secretary of the navy. He would prove to be an able leader

for the Confederate Navy Department, though his tenure did not lack for

246 · Robert A. Taylor

controversy as the naval arm failed in the end to defeat the more powerful

Union fleets.2

America’s bloodiest war could have easily started in Florida. In January

1861, a smal force under Union Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer abandoned

fortifications he could not hold around Pensacola and concentrated his men

in Fort Pickens at the entrance to Pensacola Bay. This lonely fort on Santa

Rosa Island effectively blocked the new Confederacy’s largest harbor, and

rebel forces flocked there in hopes of taking it by force of arms. A very un-

easy truce held as the Lincoln administration groped in its early days to for-

mulate a strategy and get reinforcements to Slemmer. Before the inevitable

clash occurred, South Carolinians opened fire on Fort Sumter on April 12,

thus unleashing civil war.3

The attack on Sumter resulted in President Lincoln cal ing for 75,000

volunteers to put down what he considered to be a rebellion in the southern

states, as well as a naval blockade of the new Confederacy including Florida.

Under the laws of nations, a blockade is an act of war against another coun-

try. The result of al this was the secession of four more slave states and

the threat of others opting for the Confederate States of America. Peaceful

separation would not be a possibility, as Floridians were soon to find out.

Male Floridians of military age, and many who were not, flocked to join

proof

local companies quickly growing into regiments. These moved out of Flor-

ida to join the growing rebel armies soon to be committed to battle. Amaz-

ingly, between 14,000 and 15,000 men from Florida served in the ranks for

the Confederate army and navy out of the state’s roughly 140,000 inhabit-

ants. This proved to be the highest percentage of fighting men in any of the

Confederate states. The troops exhibited their valor on the many battlefields

seen by the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of Tennessee. Their

numbers thinned as the war progressed from combat deaths, wounds, and

il nesses, but they truly made their mark from Gettysburg to Chickamauga.4

Florida provided leaders as wel as private soldiers to the Confederate

cause. General officers like Edmund Kirby Smith, William W. Loring, and

Joseph Finegan represented Florida well as general officers in the Confeder-

ate army and shared its victories as well as its setbacks and final defeat. They