Florida

D

3

Statehood

A state constitution was drafted in 1838, and Florida was admitted to the Union on March 3, 1845. William D. Moseley, a planter from Jefferson County, was elected first governor of the state of Florida.

Between 1845 and 1860 the number of inhabitants in the state increased from about 70,000 to more than 140,000. Most of the people lived in the northern part of the state, and vast areas of southern Florida remained uninhabited. Cotton, which was the chief cash crop, was produced by slave labor on plantations in middle Florida, between the Apalachicola and Suwannee rivers. Cattle were raised along the Peace and Saint Johns rivers. Some lumber, turpentine, leather, coarse cotton cloth, and salt were produced in the state. By 1861 the chief cities in northern Florida were linked by railroads.

D

4

Civil War

Slavery was one of the most divisive political issues in the Congress of the United States in the early 19th century. Many Congress members from the Northern states pressed to end slavery, both because it was considered immoral and because white labor could not compete with unpaid black labor. Members from Florida and the other Deep South states believed that slavery was essential to their cotton-based agricultural system and that the North was trying to dominate the national economy.

By the 1850s, Southerners saw their power slipping in Congress, the clamor by Northern abolitionists—those who wanted an immediate and total end to slavery—was at a high pitch, and many white Floridians came to believe that secession from the Union was the only way to protect “Southern rights,” including the right to own slaves.

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After South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860, Florida’s proslavery Democratic Party demanded the state’s immediate secession from the Union, and in January 1861 Florida officially seceded. The next month, after seven states had seceded, they organized as the Confederate States of America and began mobilizing for war. The American Civil War began officially on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery bombarded a federal fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

During the Civil War, Union troops captured Jacksonville, Saint Augustine, Fernandina, Pensacola, and other coastal towns. Repeated Union attempts to gain control of the interior of the state failed, and Tallahassee was the only Confederate capital east of the Mississippi to escape Union occupation during the war. Inland routes were used to transport large quantities of beef, bacon, and salt supplied by Florida to the Confederate armies farther north. Confederate ships, operating out of sheltered inlets along the Florida coast, carried cotton, tobacco, and turpentine to the West Indies, where these commodities were traded for arms, ammunition, and medical supplies. Only one major battle was fought on Florida soil, on February 20, 1864, when Confederate troops defeated Union forces at Olustee.

D

5

Reconstruction

After the Confederate surrender in 1865, President Andrew Johnson, as part of his plan of restoration, or Reconstruction, of the Union, appointed Provisional Governor William Marvin to reorganize the state government. A new state constitution was drawn up, formally abolishing slavery. The new government, however, was dominated by former Confederates. It enacted the so-called Black Code, similar to codes passed in other ex-Confederate states, which significantly denied blacks freedom of movement and of occupation.

Partly because of these acts by the Southern legislatures, the Radical wing of the Republican Party in Congress wrested control of Reconstruction from President Johnson and imposed the harsher regime called Radical Reconstruction. In March 1867 Congress put all the ex-Confederate states except Tennessee under military rule. Their readmission to the Union was made conditional on their adoption of new constitutions acceptable to Congress. When Florida ratified such a constitution in 1868 and accepted the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, guaranteeing civil rights for blacks, it was readmitted to the Union. Moderate Republicans, many of them from the North (called carpetbaggers by their enemies), drafted the constitution and held most of the offices until 1877. Assisting them were white Southerners who were willing to cooperate (called scalawags). During this period a number of blacks held political office, and blacks generally made modest gains as citizens.

However, many whites refused to accept the situation. Blacks were intimidated by terrorist organizations that engaged in such tactics as burning of homes and flogging or lynching of blacks they labeled as “dangerous.” Partly as a result of such terrorism, the Democrats were returned to power in the 1876 elections. Because the Southern Democrats were committed to white supremacy, blacks were relegated to an inferior position, in which they were forced to remain for nearly a century.

To keep blacks in an inferior position, whites restricted their voting rights using various methods. In the late 1880s Florida adopted a poll tax—a tax on voting—that eliminated the poorest voters, most of whom were black. Fraud and intimidation against black voters were constant factors in keeping the Democrats in power.

In the last part of the 19th century, Florida, like other Southern states, established racial segregation through laws providing separate public facilities for whites and blacks. Segregation became a basic rule in Southern society, helping to ensure that blacks would not present a serious challenge to the social order.

D

6

Agricultural Distress and Populism

Farmers’ incomes declined sharply after the Civil War, while their living and operating costs rose. Growers of cotton, then Florida’s chief cash crop, were especially hard hit because the price of cotton fell and stayed low until the turn of the 20th century. In the 1870s and 1880s American farmers formed cooperative groups called farmers’ alliances, which were part of a movement of agrarian unrest and protest called populism. Among the causes of unrest were the interest rates charged by banks and the discriminatory freight rates charged by railroads. The alliances soon realized that their grievances had to be addressed with political action. At its 1890 national convention in Ocala, Florida, the National Farmers Alliance adopted its Ocala Platform calling for a “subtreasury” system to replace national banks and make low-interest loans to farmers; an increase in the money supply; free and unlimited coinage of silver; government control of transportation; and an income tax. This platform led to creation of a third party, the People’s Party, to challenge the Democrats and Republicans.

In Florida, however, third-party sentiment was stalled by a powerful Florida Alliance faction that preferred to work within the Democratic Party. The Florida Democrats did endorse the Ocala Platform in 1891, but it was not implemented. Dissatisfied Alliance members put the People’s Party on the ballot in 1892, but because most black farmers—who were a substantial part of Alliance supporters—could not vote, it was defeated and withered away. The Democrats ruled without serious challenge for many years afterward.

D

7

Growth of Commerce

Although agriculture was depressed, Florida’s economy began its first major period of rapid growth in the 1880s. Hamilton Disston, a Northern industrialist, bought 1,600,000 hectares (4 million acres) of Florida land in 1881 and became one of the state’s first real estate developers. Two Northern financiers, Henry M. Flagler and Henry B. Plant, encouraged the development of Florida as a resort area by building railroads, hotels, and tourist facilities. Exploitation was begun of the state’s phosphate deposits, which were discovered in 1884, and new lands were opened for agriculture in southern Florida. During the 1890s a series of comparatively severe winters damaged the citrus fruit crops of northern Florida. Citrus fruit growers moved southward on the peninsula in order to lessen the risk of frost. Florida’s resort business expanded during World War I (1914-1918), when foreign travel was restricted.

E

The 20th Century

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