The History of Florida (50 page)

U.S. Territory and State · 237

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David Levy Yulee, U.S. senator from Florida, born at Charlotte Amalie on the Island of

St. Thomas, the son of Moses Levy, a Jewish merchant from Morocco who acquired a

huge estate in Florida. David Levy Yulee became an attorney at St. Augustine and the

Territory of Florida’s leading advocate for statehood. He was twice elected to the U.S.

Senate, the first Jew to serve in that body, and a radical supporter of secession from

the Union. Yulee was the founder and president of the Florida Railroad. Courtesy of the

State Archives of Florida,
Florida Memory
, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/174.

implicit and unrestricted right to own slave property and to move slaves into

the western territories. Defense of property rights came to mean protection

of slave property from abolitionists.

From Florida’s inception as a territory, slave labor was considered essen-

tial to economic development. During Florida’s British years, and during the

Spanish period that followed, large-scale importation of enslaved Africans

was considered essential for development and economic prosperity. In 1830,

slaves comprised 47 percent and free blacks 5 percent of the total population

of three northeast Florida counties: St. Johns, Duval, and Nassau. Nearly

238 · Daniel L. Schafer

every owner of six or more slaves had been a Spanish colonial. By 1860, the

Spanish holdovers were deceased and the ratio of slaves to total popula-

tion had dropped to 30 percent, but slaves were still considered vital to the

economy.

In Alachua, in Middle Florida, along the Gulf coast south of Tal ahassee,

and in south Florida there were no holdover planters. Native American pop-

ulations concentrated in several locations inhibited expansion of American

plantations until 1842, yet as early as 1830 enslaved persons comprised 41

percent of Gadsden County’s 4,894 residents. By 1860, the total population

had nearly doubled and the slave population had increased to 58 percent.

Jefferson County’s slave ratios increased from 48 to 65 percent in the same

period. By 1860, Leon County’s population of 12,243 was 74 percent en-

slaved. Free blacks were rarely seen in the Middle Florida counties. Migrant

planters brought with them the slave codes and the two-caste racial system,

with strong biases against emancipation and the presence of free black in

the general population that had prevailed in their states of origination.

Slaves in the populous Middle Florida counties produced and trans-

ported cotton crops, ran sawmil s, made brick, and were masons, carpen-

ters, blacksmiths, and even overseers. The Jefferson County cotton crop of

11,000 bales ranked second in Florida in 1860, its value estimated at $1.3

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mil ion. As historian Larry Rivers has shown, slaves were the most valu-

able property in Florida, and slave owning was the preferred route to status

and power. Middle Florida’s slave owners included judges, legislators, at-

torneys, merchants, medical doctors, single and married women, and even

preachers.

In East Florida, the Spanish three-caste system of race relations (white

owners, free blacks, and black slaves) was operative when the United States

took possession in 1821. The territorial government quickly implemented a

two-caste system. Blaming free blacks for creating discontent among slaves,

the Legislative Council passed restrictive laws aimed at eliminating eman-

cipation and free black status. Discriminatory laws against free blacks, and

harsh punishments for those found guilty of minor infractions, prompted

more than 150 free blacks from Pensacola to flee to Mexico in the 1850s. Free

blacks from St. Augustine and Pensacola emigrated to Cuba and the free

black Republic of Haiti. In 1837, Zephaniah Kingsley moved his mixed-race

family from Duval County to a 36,000-acre settlement in Haiti that he es-

tablished for free persons of color. He liberated fifty slaves from his Florida

plantations and moved them to Haiti under indentured labor contracts for

his son’s estate near Puerto Plata in today’s Dominican Republic.

U.S. Territory and State · 239

Cotton cultivation, U.S. South, 1875. Black men and women covering cotton seed while

a noise-maker contraption is installed to prevent birds from picking out the seed. Al-

though the image depicts a postwar event, it is reminiscent of the labor of thousands

of black men and women in Florida’s cotton fields prior to 1865. Source:
Harper’s
Week-

ly,
April 24, 1875. Courtesy of www.slaveryimages.org, compiled by Jerome Handler

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and Michael Tuite, and sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and

the University of Virginia Library.

On 12 July 1851, the editor of St. Augustine’s
Ancient
City
castigated free

blacks as “useless” troublemakers and “hopeless, degraded, wretched, and

forbidden outcasts.” This was not the last deliberate misreading of the his-

torical record. St. Augustine had long been home to educated free blacks

who owned property, held responsible jobs, and led productive lives. With a

single exception during the Second Seminole War, free blacks had not acted

to overthrow slavery. In fact, some were slave owners. The newspaper edi-

tor was reacting to the racial hysteria and heightened attachment to white

supremacy that escalated in the 1850s.

Cotton prices were at record highs in the 1850s. Slave prices doubled,

leading some politicians to suggest that the African slave trade should be

reopened. Lumber mil s boomed from Pensacola to Jacksonville, and sub-

sidiary industries were being established. At the end of the decade, the Flor-

ida Railroad, under direction of David Yulee and spurred on by generous

grants of land by the federal and state governments, was under construction

240 · Daniel L. Schafer

between Fernandina on the Atlantic and Cedar Keys on the Gulf. South

Florida cattlemen were furious that the western terminus would not be

at nearby Tampa Bay, but Yulee proceeded to link the two towns where

he had acquired title to a majority of the property. The Florida, Atlantic

and Gulf Central Railroad ran from Jacksonville to Lake City; from there

the Pensacola and Georgia Railroad extended to Tal ahassee. It was an era

of unparalleled expansion, with the population increasing from 87,000 to

140,000 during the 1850s. White workingmen from northern and southern

states were migrating to Florida’s growing towns, and yet there were labor

shortages that prompted employers to advertise for black or white laborers.

By mid-decade, Irish immigrants could be found on local work crews.

Fear of slave rebellions became common after the Nat Turner rebellion

in Virginia in 1831, and was intensified in Florida by the black warriors who

fought alongside the Seminole from 1835 to 1842. The
Jacksonville
News

printed accounts of runaway attempts in May 1852 that led angry citizens

of Jacksonvil e to meet and denounce “abolitionists and their tools” who

were allegedly attempting to entice our slave population to abscond.” Citi-

zens demanded new laws to impose more rigid restrictions on the town’s

free blacks and slaves. White workingmen supported hefty license fees for

free blacks and prohibitions on slaves arranging their own employment and

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living apart from their owners. Despite a rapid influx of northern and for-

eign-born workers, the flourishing urban labor force was still mostly black,

prompting white fears of insurrection unless blacks were restrained.

National political passions of the 1850s added to racial tensions in Flor-

ida. At town meetings in 1850, speakers angry about debates in Congress

over the admission of California to the Union and the resultant Compro-

mise of 1850 denounced northern-born residents of Florida as abolitionists.

They cal ed on fel ow citizens to defend southern rights and secede from

the Union rather than compromise away the rights of slaveholders to carry

human property into the western territories. Firebrand speakers warned

that further compromises would encourage northern abolitionists to place

chains of slavery around the necks of white Floridians. Democrats in Flor-

ida overwhelmingly opposed the Compromise of 1850, calling it abolitionist

inspired.

In early 1860, Florida’s Democrats joined with Democrats in other south-

ern states to block Stephen Douglas as the party’s nominee for president.

Events in Kansas had convinced them that the Douglas policy of popular

sovereignty jeopardized the cause of extending slavery into the western ter-

ritories. When northern delegates insisted on a Douglas candidacy at the

U.S. Territory and State · 241

Charleston convention in April, southern delegates withdrew and backed

John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky as the candidate for the southern branch

of the Democratic Party. The Republican Party chose Abraham Lincoln, and

the remnants of the southern Whigs hoped for a miracle behind John Bell

of Tennessee, the candidate for the Constitutional Union Party.

Lincoln was not on the bal ot in the 7 November elections in Florida,

and Douglas received only 367 votes. John Bell polled 5,437 votes, running

strong in east coast cities, while the southern Democrats and Breckenridge

tal ied 8,543 votes to lead the field. Breckenridge had been supported by

eighteen of the state’s twenty-four newspapers.

In the race for governor, Democrat John Milton tal ied 6,994 votes to

Constitutional Union candidate Edward Hopkins’s 5,248 votes. Although

Democrats swept the statewide races and control ed both legislative and

congressional delegations, it was clear from the votes for Bell and the Con-

stitutional Union Party that many Floridians were stil hoping to find a com-

promise and remain in the Union.

Lincoln’s victory triggered mob ral ies, newspaper denunciations, and

cal s for immediate secession. On 10 November, a story in the
Tal ahassee

Floridian
and
Journal
read: “Lincoln is elected. There is a beginning of the

end. Sectionalism has triumphed. What is to be done? We say resist.” Regu-

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lators and other vigilantes increased their activities, and the ranks of militia

companies swelled.

Newspapers throughout the state demanded that the General Assembly

authorize a convention to consider secession. On 26 November, Governor

Perry told the General Assembly to either consider secession or to prepare

for slave insurrection. He announced that an election would be held on 22

December to elect delegates to attend a 3 January 1861 convention.

While candidates campaigned, a South Carolina convention voted to

sever ties with the Union, inciting extremists in Florida to make increas-

ingly shrill demands for secession. In some counties, Duval and Clay, for

example, delegates elected to the convention had campaigned on platforms

embracing moderation and Union. Others planned to delay secession and

insist that the final document be submitted to the voters for approval.

The Florida convention opened in an atmosphere of secessionist eu-

phoria. John C. McGehee of Madison County was elected president. With

leading secessionists from South Carolina and Alabama in the galleries, the

delegates prepared an ordinance of secession by 9 January. Efforts by Jack-

son Morton and George T. Ward to submit the ordinance to the voters in a

referendum were defeated. Secession fever had spread too rapidly.

242 · Daniel L. Schafer

On 10 January 1861 the delegates voted sixty-two to seven in favor of se-

cession. By 4 February, Florida representatives were in Montgomery for the

formation of the Confederate States of America. It was time to change the

flags again, write another constitution, and hold new elections, all under the

shadow of a looming war.

The parades, speeches and toasts, and the jubilation that greeted the news

of secession occurred in every hamlet in Florida. Crowds filled the hotels in

Pensacola, Tal ahassee, and Jacksonville, and revelers danced in the streets