The History of Florida (59 page)

In 1890, Flagler built a steel railroad bridge across the St. Johns River in

The First Developers · 281

downtown Jacksonville, making it possible for travelers to reach St. Augus-

tine from New York in just thirty-one hours without changing trains. They

rode in plush Pullman cars on trains with names such as the “Florida Spe-

cial.” The way had been opened for development of one of Florida’s now

primary industries: Tourism.

Flagler extended his empire southward, reaching Palm Beach in 1894

where he built, first, the Hotel Royal Poinciana overlooking Lake Worth and

then the Breakers on the shore of the Atlantic. Flagler’s St. Augustine ho-

tels had attracted the elite of northern high society (and some noted politi-

cians, including President Grover Cleveland), and now Palm Beach became

known as a premier winter resort for the country’s millionaires.2

Julia Tuttle had been imploring both Plant and Flagler to build their rail-

roads to her pioneer settlement of Miami when, in December 1894 and Feb-

ruary 1895, two kil er freezes struck, devastating Florida’s citrus industry.

Tuttle may have (as a story has it) sent Flagler a sprig of orange blossoms

to show him that the frost had not reached Miami, but, in any case, Tuttle

and Biscayne Bay’s other pioneer, William Brickel , made an agreement to

donate half of their large land holdings to Flagler if he would build his rail-

road to Miami. Flagler’s railroad, now named the Florida East Coast Rail-

way, reached Miami in April 1896. There he built the Hotel Royal Palm and

proof

Henry Flagler’s Hotel Ponce de Leon opened in January 1888 as the most luxurious

winter resort in the country. Today Flagler College coeds live in rooms once occupied

by millionaires. Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida,
Florida Memory
, http://flori-

damemory.com/items/show/24086.

282 · Thomas Graham

dredged a channel across shallow Biscayne Bay so that his steamships could

carry passengers to his Hotel Colonial in Nassau.

Unfortunately, Flagler’s private life was struck by tragedy when his sec-

ond wife, Alice, became incurably insane. In 1901, Flagler lobbied the state

legislature to change state law to include insanity as grounds for divorce,

and, shortly after passage of the law, he married his third wife, Mary Lily Ke-

nan, and built a palatial home for her, Whitehal , in Palm Beach. Afterward,

what came to be called the “Flagler divorce law” emerged as a political issue

since it was charged that Flagler had bribed the legislature to secure passage

of a bill tailor-made to fit his personal needs. It seemed to be a blatant ex-

ample of how rich special interests control ed the state government. Flagler’s

railroad building would terminate with his overseas extension to Key West

in 1912.

The Panhandle region of the state benefited from its own foremost devel-

oper, William D. Chipley. Born in Georgia but raised in Kentucky, Chipley

had fought for the Confederate army. After the war he became involved

in constructing railroads in Georgia, and then settled in Pensacola, from

which he expanded his road-building efforts. Plant merged his railroads

with the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. Then he obtained a charter from

the State of Florida in 1881 for the Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad to build

proof

a railroad linking Pensacola with the rest of the state. To encourage this ef-

fort, the state granted the P & A more than 2 million acres of land. By 1883,

Chipley’s road had bridged the Apalachicola River and linked with lines in

Georgia and the rest of Florida. Plant also built docks and warehouses in

Pensacola to make it an important seaport.

Unlike Plant and Flagler, Chipley inserted himself personal y into Flor-

ida politics. He was elected mayor of Pensacola and later became a state

senator. In 1891, he failed to unseat U.S. Senator Wilkinson Call in a contest

that pitted a railroad man against an anticorporation politician. Six years

later, while serving in the Florida Senate, Chipley again contested Call for

his U.S. Senate seat. He was able to block Cal ’s reelection, and Stephen R.

Mallory II won as a compromise candidate. Shortly thereafter Chipley died

unexpectedly.

The Civil War and Reconstruction had forced al white Floridians to unite

within the Democratic Party in common cause against the Republicans.

However, forced unity in the Democratic Party pushed politicians of widely

varying philosophies and interests into an artificial alliance. As the Repub-

lican Party’s influence in Florida began to wane, fractures appeared among

the Democrats, leading in the early 1880s to an “Independent” movement.

The First Developers · 283

The Independents claimed to speak for the common people and voiced their

opposition to railroads, banks, corporations, and the politicians who sup-

ported these “special interests.” The Disston land deals became an additional

issue highlighting supposed favoritism for the rich. Another question was

the constitution of 1868, which gave the governor power to appoint county

officials. Independents declared that this led to domination of the whole

state by a “Tal ahassee Ring.”

In June, a convention of disaffected Democrats met in Live Oak and

nominated Frank Pope, a young former mayor of Madison, for governor.

The Independents’ only hope for victory in the election lay in an alliance

with the Republicans, but this raised the race issue because most Republican

voters were black. The Republicans realized they were in a predicament.

If they nominated their own slate of candidates, they would split the anti-

Democratic vote. If they nominated the same ticket as the Independents,

they would brand Pope as the “black man’s candidate.” Thus the Republicans

fielded no separate ticket and only “endorsed” the Independent nominee.

The Democrats held their convention in Pensacola just days after the

Independents. Realizing that the Independent-Republican al iance posed

a serious threat, they passed over controversial Governor Bloxham and

nominated General Edward A. Perry of Pensacola, who had commanded

proof

the Florida Brigade during the Civil War. He ran as a war hero rather than

as a politician.

The election was hard fought, but the Democrats prevailed. The black

vote diminished from previous contests and did not go completely to the

Independents, probably because of intimidation by Democrats at the pol s.

Also, the Democrats partly defused the question of a new constitution by

vowing that, if elected, they too would call a constitutional convention. Af-

ter their defeat, the Independent politicians moved back into the ranks of

the Democrats, but the issues that put the “common folk” and the special

interests at odds did not go away.

In June 1885, delegates elected from the various counties met in Tal a-

hassee to draft a new constitution. Only 20 of the 108 delegates were Re-

publicans, and only 7 were black. Conservative Democrats dominated the

proceedings. Considering the controversial atmosphere in the state at the

time, the delegates did their work well and the constitution they drafted and

that the voters ratified stayed in effect until 1968.

In an overreaction to the control the governor had wielded under the

1868 constitution, the powers of the executive office were curtailed in several

ways. The governor was limited to a single term in office. An elected cabinet

284 · Thomas Graham

would share decision making with the governor, making cabinet officers,

who could be reelected indefinitely, very powerful. The office of lieutenant

governor was abolished. On the legislative side, the practice of the state

legislature meeting only every other year was written into the constitution.

The most controversial measures dealt with restoring home rule. The

power to appoint county officers had been given to the governor in 1868

to prevent “Negro rule” in the old plantation-belt counties that had large

populations of black residents. Restoring the right to elect county officers

would mean the election of some black officeholders unless some way could

be devised to minimize the black vote. The solution was a poll tax. Although

the tax would not be high, it would discourage black men from registering

to vote, especial y if they knew that other pressures would be brought upon

them to keep them away from the pol s. In the ratification election, black

voters strongly opposed the new constitution. After the poll tax was imple-

mented by law, black voting dropped off precipitously. In some areas, such

as the city of Jacksonville, black citizens continued to vote, but over the next

decade white Floridians made a concerted effort to eliminate black voting

once and for al . By the turn of the twentieth century, black voting had been

reduced to just a few citizens, and black officeholding on both the state and

local level ended.

proof

When the pol tax was proposed, some lower-income white men pro-

tested that the tax would also discourage white voting. While black voter

turnout dropped between the elections of 1888 and 1892 from 62 percent to

11 percent, white voting also fell from 86 percent to 59 percent.3 Segregation

of the races had always been the norm, but the color line was drawn more

severely in the late nineteenth century. In 1887, the legislature passed an

ordinance requiring separate cars for white and black passengers in railroad

trains.

Florida’s economy received a stimulus in the mid-1880s when deposits

of phosphate were found along the Peace River in the central part of the

state. Phosphate comes from the bones and shells of ancient animals so

that the prospectors who rushed into the area found the bones of ancient

beasts such as mastodons along with the phosphate. They dubbed the area

“Bone Valley.” Phosphate could be used in fertilizers and as an ingredient in

a wide variety of products. Soon large companies using huge steam shovels

to scoop out the mineral-rich earth replaced the early independent prospec-

tors. Towns such as Arcadia and Dunnellon boomed, and the port of Tampa

enjoyed profits from exporting phosphate to the world.

Some traditional enterprises continued to flourish. The cattle population

The First Developers · 285

thrived in the pine barrens and prairies west of Lake Okeechobee. Florida

remained “open range,” meaning cattle owners did not have to fence in their

stock. Most of Florida’s beef was exported on the hoof to the Cuban market.

Lumbering entered a period of extensive activity.4 The advent of railroads

made it easier to ship lumber out of Florida to more northerly states, and

timber companies sent many temporary spur railroads snaking into remote

areas to haul out logs. Some of the most valuable trees cut were cypress,

but most of the lumber was yel ow pine, often cal ed heart pine. The de-

struction of Jacksonville by fire in 1901, to cite just one of many examples,

resulted from the prevalence of buildings constructed with pine lumber. By

the twentieth century, the cutting of the old-growth forests had become so

rampant that concerns were raised about destruction of the environment.

The first national forest east of the Mississippi River, the Ocala Forest, was

created by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908.

Naval stores had a long history in Florida. For centuries pine trees had

been tapped for their resin to be turned into tar for use on wooden ships.

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, many more applications were

found for the pine sap. Workers would be sent into the woods with sharp

blades to hack “cat faces” into the trunks of pine. The sap would run down

the scarred face of the trunk into clay cups and then would be taken back to

proof

a camp to be distilled into turpentine. Turpentine camps became notorious

for their abysmal living conditions.

The making of tobacco products, especial y cigars, ranked as the largest

manufacturing industry in Florida.5 With the outbreak of the first war of

Cuban independence in 1868, some Cuban cigar manufacturers had moved