Florida in the American Civil War
participated in the American Civil War as a member of the Confederate States of America. It had been admitted to the United States as a slave state in 1845. In January 1861, Florida became the third Southern state to secede from the Union after the November 1860 presidential election victory of Abraham Lincoln. It was one of the initial seven slave states which formed the Confederacy on February 8, 1861, in advance of the American Civil War.
Florida had by far the smallest population of the Confederate states with about 140,000 residents, nearly half of them enslaved people. Florida sent around 15,000 troops to the Confederate army, the vast majority of which were deployed elsewhere during the war. The state's chief importance was as a source of cattle and other food supplies for the Confederacy, and as an entry and exit location for blockade-runners who used its many bays and small inlets to evade the Union Navy. A total of 1,044 African Americans from Florida served in the Union Army.
At the outbreak of war, the Confederate government seized many United States facilities in the state, though the Union retained control of Key West, Fort Jefferson, and Fort Pickens for the duration of the conflict. The Confederate strategy was to defend the vital farms in the interior of Florida at the expense of coastal areas. As the war progressed and southern resources dwindled, forts and towns along the coast were increasingly left undefended, allowing Union forces to occupy them with little or no resistance. Fighting in Florida was largely limited to small skirmishes with the exception of the Battle of Olustee, fought near Lake City in February 1864, when a Confederate army of over 5,000 repelled a Union attempt to disrupt Florida's food-producing region. Wartime conditions made it easier for enslaved people to escape, and many became useful informants to Union commanders. Deserters from both sides took refuge in the Florida wilderness, often attacking Confederate units and looting farms.
The war ended in April 1865. By the following month, United States control of Florida had been re-established, slavery had been abolished, and Florida's Confederate governor John Milton had committed suicide by gunshot. Florida was formally readmitted to the United States in 1868.
Women and civilians
Women in Florida contributed to the war effort by sewing uniforms, preparing supplies, assisting improvised hospitals, and managing households amid widespread shortages caused by the Union blockade. Their daily responsibilities expanded significantly during the conflict, and civilian experiences varied depending on location, access to resources, and proximity to military activity.Background
Unionist resistance in northeast Florida
Unionist communities in parts of northeast Florida, including Duval and Nassau counties, maintained loyalty to the Union throughout the war. Residents provided intelligence, supplies, and support to Federal troops operating around Jacksonville and resisted Confederate authority in the region. Their activities demonstrate that political allegiance within Florida was more divided than often assumed.Florida had been a Spanish territory for 300 years before being transferred to the United States in 1821. The population at the time was quite small, with most residents concentrated in the towns of St. Augustine on the Atlantic coast and Pensacola on the western end of the panhandle. The interior of the Florida Territory was home to the Seminoles and Black Seminoles along with scattered pioneers. Steamboat navigation was well established on the Apalachicola River and St. Johns River and railroads were planned, but transportation through the interior remained very difficult and growth was slow. A series of wars to forcibly remove the Seminoles from their lands raged off and on from the 1830s until the 1850s, further slowing development.
By 1840, the English-speaking population of Florida outnumbered those of Spanish colonial descent. The overall population had reached 54,477 people, with African slaves making up almost one-half.
Florida was admitted to the union as the 27th state on March 3, 1845, when it had a population of 66,500, including about 30,000 people held in slavery. By 1861, Florida's population had increased to about 140,000, of which about 63,000 were enslaved persons. Their forced labor accounted for 85 percent of the state's cotton production, with most large slave-holding plantations concentrated in middle Florida, a swath of fertile farmland stretching across the northern panhandle approximately centered on the state capital at Tallahassee.
1860 U.S. presidential election
walked out of the 1860 Democratic National Convention, and later nominated U.S. Vice President John C. Breckinridge to run for their party. While Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 U.S. presidential election, Breckinridge won in Florida. Within days of the election, a large gathering of Marion County pioneers was held in Ocala to demand secession. Its motions were brought to the attention of the Florida House of Representatives by Rep. Daniel A. Vogt.Secession and confederation
Although the Compromise of 1850 was unpopular in Florida, the secession movement in 1851 and 1852 did not gain much traction. A series of events in subsequent years exacerbated divisions. By January 1860, talk of conflict had progressed to the point that Senators Stephen Mallory and David Levy Yulee jointly requested from the War Department a statement of munitions and equipment in Florida forts.Following the election of Lincoln, a special secession convention formally known as the "Convention of the People of Florida" was called by Governor Madison S. Perry to discuss secession from the Union. Delegates were selected in a statewide election, and met in Tallahassee on January 3, 1861. Virginia planter and firebrand Edmund Ruffin came to the convention to advocate for secession. Fifty-one of the 69 convention members held slaves in 1860. Just seven of the delegates were born in Florida.
Florida gave its reasons for leaving the Union in its Declaration of Causes for Seceding. "Each complaint related to slavery: the North's disregard for the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act; John Brown’s 1859 failed slave uprising; and William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator and Frederick Douglass’ The North Star tried to 'excite insurrection and servile war.'" The final reason was Lincoln's election.
On January 5, McQueen McIntosh introduced a series of resolutions defining the purpose of the convention and the constitutionality of secession. John C. McGehee, who was involved in drafting Florida's original constitution and became a judge, was elected the convention president. Leonidas W. Spratt of South Carolina gave an impassioned speech for secession. Edward Bullock of Alabama also spoke to conventioneers. William S. Harris was the convention's secretary. On January 7, the vote was overwhelmingly in favor of immediate secession, delegates voting sixty-two to seven to withdraw Florida from the Union.
The group with the most sway that opposed secession in Florida was the Constitutional Union Party, which had several supporting newspapers including Tallahassee's Florida Sentinel. The party held its convention in June 1860 and had nominated the editor of the Sentinel, Benjamin F. Allen, for Congress. Despite being against secession, the party was composed mostly of slave-owning planters and conservative democrats.
Individuals who opposed secession included Conservative plantation owner and former Seminole War military commander Richard Keith Call, who advocated for restraint and judiciousness. His daughter Ellen Call Long wrote that upon being told of the vote outcome by its supporters, Call raised his cane above his head and told the delegates who came to his house, "And what have you done? You have opened the gates of hell, from which shall flow the curses of the damned, which shall sink you to perdition." In response, Call, and others against secession, were called names like "submissionists" and "Union Shriekers." Pro-unionists in Florida not only faced public ridicule, some could be attacked and even killed. One example was the case of William Hollingsworth who was shot at and seriously wounded by a group of secessionists who called themselves regulators.
A formal Ordinance of Secession was introduced for debate on January 8. The primary topic of debate was whether Florida should immediately secede or wait until other southern states such as Alabama officially chose to secede. Outspoken supporters of secession at the conference included Governor Perry and Governor-elect John Milton. Jackson Morton and George Taliaferro Ward attempted to have the ordinance amended so that Florida would not secede before Georgia and Alabama, but their proposal was voted down. When Ward signed the Ordinance he stated "When I die, I want it inscribed upon my tombstone that I was the last man to give up the ship."
On January 10, 1861, the delegates formally adopted the Ordinance of Secession, which declared that the "nation of Florida" had withdrawn from the "American union." Florida was the third state to secede, following South Carolina and Mississippi. By the following month, six states had seceded; These six had the largest population of enslaved people among the Southern states.
Secession was declared and a public ceremony held on the east steps of the Florida capitol the following day; an Ordinance of Secession was signed by 69 people. The public in Tallahassee celebrated the announcement of secession with fireworks and a large parade. The secession ordinance of Florida simply declared its severing of ties with the federal Union, without stating any causes. According to historian William C. Davis, "protection of slavery" was "the explicit reason" for Florida's secession, as well as for the creation of the Confederacy itself. Supporters of secession included the St. Augustine Examiner. The governors of Georgia and Mississippi sent telegrams affirming support for immediate secession.
During the secession convention, president John McGehee stated: "At the South and with our people, of course, slavery is the element of all value, and a destruction of that destroys all that is property. This party, now soon to take possession of the powers of government, is sectional, irresponsible to us, and, driven on by an infuriated, fanatical madness that defies all opposition, must inevitably destroy every vestige of right growing out of property in slaves.”
The delegates adopted a new state constitution and within a month the state joined other southern states to form the Confederate States of America. Florida's Senator Mallory was selected to be Secretary of the Navy in the first Confederate cabinet under president Jefferson Davis. The convention had further meetings in 1861 and into 1862. There was a Unionist minority in the state, an element that grew as the war progressed.
In a message to the state legislature on November 27, 1860, Governor Perry requested $100,000 in funding for the state military as well as a new militia law. The legislature approved the funding but did not enact any new militia laws. Perry took the funds to buy arms in South Carolina.
Florida sent a three-man delegation to the 1861-62 Provisional Confederate Congress, which first met in Montgomery, Alabama, and then in the new capital of Richmond, Virginia. The delegation consisted of Jackson Morton, James Byeram Owens, and James Patton Anderson, who resigned April 8, 1861, and was replaced by G. T. Ward. Ward served from May 1861 until February 1862, when he resigned and was replaced by John Pease Sanderson.
In June 1861, the Confederate government split Florida up into military districts led by Confederate commanders who were given the power to requisition soldiers from the governor, more specifically from the state's militia. By March 1862, the state convention had abolished the state militia in an effort to create a more unified Confederate military organization.