The History of Florida (52 page)

joined many brave lower-ranking Floridians as the fighting grew in intensity

and cost from Tennessee to the fields of Virginia.

Organizing and equipping all these new Florida troops fell on the shoul-

ders of newly elected Governor John Milton. A Jackson County planter and

strong Confederate, Milton proved to be a hardworking and competent war

governor for Florida. He believed that the only realistic path to southern

The Civil War, 1861–1865 · 247

independence was cooperation with the government now located in Rich-

mond. Tragical y, his efforts ended with the failure of the rebel cause, and

depression drove him to take his own life in April 1865.

Governor Milton had a myriad of problems from the start of his admin-

istration. One looming large was how to defend a state the size and shape

of Florida with limited or no military resources. Things grew even worse

when, in the spring of 1862, the Confederate high command made the stra-

tegic decision to withdraw troops from areas they deemed of secondary

importance, like Florida. Most of the new Florida troops found themselves

serving in Virginia and Tennessee and not defending their home state. Con-

federate officials like General Robert E. Lee told Floridians at home that

they would have to look after their own defenses. Such words rang hollow

as time passed and the Yankee threat to Florida loomed larger each day.5

Even if Milton could somehow scare up enough manpower for state de-

fense, a tall order, deploying them would be crippled by a shortage of weap-

ons and military equipment. He grew frustrated and angry with Richmond

bureaucrats who seemed clueless about conditions outside Virginia. Sug-

gestions that weapons could be had if he simply filled out the right forms

and sent them through proper military channels drove him to distraction.

The governor knew the Federals would sooner or later move on a weak,

proof

exposed Florida, and wondered what was taking them so long to attack.

In the troubled days ahead, Florida would receive precious little help from

Richmond or any other part of the Confederate States.

Milton also had to keep in mind another problem with the potential to

sap Florida’s war effort. The people of Florida had never been completely

united behind secession and a war for independence. Defeats, shortages,

and sacrifices would only increase Unionist influence as the struggle went

on. A serious social fault line ran through Florida, and could potential y

bring the horrors of real civil war to the home front. And Milton could

never forget that Florida’s slave population might not stay complacent as

freedom beckoned in the form of the Union military.

Such pressures on Florida society began with the establishment of the

Union naval blockade. Apalachicola became Florida’s first port crippled

when the USS
Montgomery
appeared offshore on June 11, 1861. Pensacola

and Key West were already under Federal control, and by mid-1862 they

were joined by Fernandina, Saint Augustine, and Jacksonville (one of sev-

eral Union occupations of that city). These gains supported the U.S. Navy’s

presence in Florida waters, and created ready bases for strikes into the inte-

rior of the peninsula. In time, blockaders sealed off Tampa Bay, leaving only

248 · Robert A. Taylor

small ports like Punta Rassa and Saint Marks on the Gulf open. Smugglers

soon began using what was then called Mosquito Inlet near New Smyrna

to unload cargoes. Even with such advantages, the Union navy still had to

patrol some 1,300 miles of coastline without the aid of modern devices like

radar and aircraft.6

Soon blockade-runners used Florida waters as a destination for goods

needed by the South. Items like shoes, blankets, medical supplies, and rifles

came through, along with increasingly difficult-to-find civilian consumer

goods. The volume of smuggled supplies coming into the state did, however,

pale in comparison with that entering ports like Charleston or Mobile. The

primary reason for this was the fact that Florida’s primitive transportation

system made moving bulky shipments out almost impossible. There were

no good roads, and the major river, the Saint Johns, was soon fil ed with

Yankees gunboats. What little railroad mileage did exist in Florida in the

early 1860s offered little help as rail operations quickly ground to a halt. No

direct link to Georgia’s railroads existed until the spring of 1865. It simply

did not pay to try Florida as a major conduit for such supplies.

If that was the case, why did illicit traffic continue from the Bahamas and

Cuba toward Florida? By continuing even at low levels, blockade-runners

forced the Union navy to tie down dozens of warships on patrol off Flor-

proof

ida, ships that could have been used against major rebel ports sooner and

strangled needed imports. Also, the limited amount of goods moved into

Florida did contribute something to the Confederate war effort and helped

civilian morale. Despite the nagging problems of transportation, material

run into Florida did make its way northward and was available in markets

as far north as Atlanta.7

While the naval blockade was original y quite leaky, over time it tight-

ened up and helped to dry up sources of certain critical supplies. Com-

bined with the loss of productive areas due to advancing Federal armies, the

Confederate South increasingly was forced to rely on its own resources to

provide for both its armies and the home-front population. Florida quickly

grew into a major source for the Confederate government east of the Missis-

sippi River. Despite herculean efforts, time would show that Florida would

never be able to meet all the demands placed upon it. Rebel expectations of

what the state could provide proved overly optimistic.

Florida’s most important contribution to the Confederate war effort

was ordinary salt, which was absolutely essential for preserving meat and

for tanning leather. Before the war, southern salt came from salt mines in

the Upper South and from the Caribbean islands. The coming of civil war

The Civil War, 1861–1865 · 249

choked off both sources just as demand for salted meat for army rations

soared. By the spring of 1862, the South faced a salt famine with the poten-

tial to cripple military operations. The only real solution was to turn to do-

mestic resources behind Confederate lines. Boiling water from the Atlantic

and Gulf of Mexico for its saline had to be done, and many eyes looked to

the Florida peninsula as an inviting place to begin.

Saltworks soon sprang up on both Florida coast and ranged from large-

scale factories to single families using old sugar kettles. Eventual y every-

thing was pressed into service from used steam boilers to adapted metal

channel buoys to manufacture the precious mineral. Plentiful firewood for

the boiler fires was needed, as well as labor to tend those flames and harvest

the salt at the end of the process. Slaves often toiled at Florida coast salt-

works, and whites flocked to them as wel . Such men enjoyed an exemption

from the 1862 Confederate conscription law as well as a share in the consid-

erable profits saltworks generated.8

The heaviest concentration of Florida saltworks was on the Gulf coast in

an area ranging from Saint Marks to Saint Andrews Bay (the site of modern-

day Panama City). Salty marshes along Saint Andrews Bay offered protec-

tion from sudden attacks from Federal warships in the Gulf, and boasted

a number of trails into Georgia and Alabama that made transporting wag-

proof

onloads of salt fairly easy. The hot, smel y, but lucrative work kept men on

the bay, and investors from other states hoped for tidy profits from their

ventures. Newspapers like the
Macon (Ga.)
Daily
Telegraph
warned that far

too many people on the Florida coast were making salt for the monetary

gain and not a sense of Confederate patriotism.9

The Union military quickly learned how important Florida salt mak-

ing was to the rebels, and attacked it at every opportunity. Landing parties

of Yankee sailors and marines rowed ashore and wrecked salt plants from

Tampa Bay all the way to Saint Andrews Bay with a vengeance. But despite

countless raids from the blockading vessels, most saltworks rose phoenix-

like from the ashes and debris to resume production. In fact, some were re-

paired and boiling before the blue-clad enemy could return to their waiting

warships. Only a physical permanent occupation of the major salt locations

by Federal ground troops could stop its production. And as the Union high

command considered Florida a secondary theater of war at best, soldiers

would never be assigned in sufficient number to carry out this mission.

Florida would make salt for the Confederacy wel into 1865. It is esti-

mated that millions of dol ars were invested in what was indeed a war in-

dustry, and the salt produced had an impact on meeting the desperate need

250 · Robert A. Taylor

for salt during the conflict. Thousands of workers, free and unfree, toiled at

the works and manufactured enough to at least partial y ease shortages in

lower Alabama and Georgia. Without Florida’s contributions in this area, it

is difficult to see the Confederacy solving the salt problem.

Florida’s agricultural bounty would also be tapped more and more as

the Civil War dragged on. Its farms and plantations provided food for rebel

soldiers, civilians, and the animals they depended on to move their armies.

Such forces were literal y horse-powered, and needed mountains of fodder

to feed their cavalry and artillery horses daily. Such demand for all types of

food leaped upward with the 1863 fall of Vicksburg and the isolation of the

Confederate trans-Mississippi region. Southern newspapers glowingly re-

ferred to Florida as the “granary of the Confederacy” and the South’s garden

farm. Unfortunately, Florida was never able to live up to such unrealistic

expectations and often failed to meet demands placed on it.10

The peninsula state did manage in the face of poor transportation and

enemy disruptions to send agricultural products northward. Corn (some-

times distil ed into whisky for the Confederate Medical Department), citrus,

sugar, pork, and fish made its way to Georgia and South Carolina. Though

Florida never provided enough to ward off hunger in the ranks, Florida

food did free up local produce in those states for needy rebel regiments in

proof

other areas. In the spring of 1865, the government supply depot in Lake City

bulged with considerable stores of corn, sugar, and horse feed for the rebel

government, but, as the Confederacy col apsed, there was no one to whom

to ship it.11

Florida’s primary food contribution to the Confederacy ironical y walked

itself to supply depots. A large number of Florida beef cattle made the long

journey from the piney prairies of the southern half of the peninsula to rebel

forces north of Atlanta and to the besieged garrison of Charleston. As with

the rest of Florida agriculture, there were high hopes that its herds could

fill all food needs in short order. And the less than expected results turned

out to be the same for beef as all the other foodstuffs despite considerable

efforts.

Early in 1861 the new Confederate government began buying Florida

bovines for army rations. A contract was let to Jacob Summerlin, a legend-

ary cattleman, to deliver 25,000 head for eight to ten Confederate dol ars

per head. “Uncle Jake,” however, soon tired of running cattle all the way to

Charleston for rebel currency of dubious value. Soon he and Tampa’s James

McKay entered the far more profitable business of shipping cows to Cuba

in exchange for Spanish gold. This cattle “leakage” only made supplying

The Civil War, 1861–1865 · 251

beef more difficult as ranchers had to choose between supporting a distant

government in Richmond or protecting their economic futures in the form

of their herds.12

By mid-1863 it had become clear to even Confederate Commissary De-

partment bureaucrats at the Virginia capital that the war for their indepen-

dence would not be a quick or easy one, and that measures needed to be

taken at once to maximize supply sources east of the Mississippi. Without

drastic changes, the rebel armies might disband for lack of food. Richmond

announced a new program in April 1863 that divided the remaining Con-

federate states into districts commanded by a state chief commissary officer.

Such an arrangement, it was hoped, would make the collection of all sup-

plies more efficient and get food to the mouths of hungry of hungry soldiers.

Florida was cast as a leading player in this new effort.

Major Pleasant W. White, a Quincy lawyer, took the position of chief

commissary of Florida, and began the thankless job of convincing Florid-

ians to contribute their cattle and other products to the Confederate gov-

ernment. White drew five commissary district lines to ensure the widest