Blockaders, Refugees, and Contrabands

Blockaders, Refugees, and Contrabands PDF

Author: George E. Buker

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2004-06-21

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 081731296X

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Blockaders, Refugees, and Contrabands chronicles the role of the East Gulf Blockading Squadron in creating civil strife and warfare along the west coast of Florida during the Civil War. This history illuminates the Squadron's impact on Florida - the Confederate state most susceptible to actions by the U.S. Navy - and the far-reaching effects of its activities on the outcome of the War.

Storm Over Key West

Storm Over Key West PDF

Author: Mike Pride

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-12-01

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1683340949

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A few weeks after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, James Montgomery sailed into Key West Harbor looking for black men to draft into the Union army. Eager to oblige him, the military commander in town ordered every black man from fifteen to fifty to report to the courthouse, “there to undergo a medical examination, preparatory to embarking for Hilton Head, S.C.” Montgomery swept away 126 men. Storm over Key West is a little-known story woven of many threads, but its main theme is the denial to black people of the equality central to the American ideal. After the island’s slaves flocked to freedom during the summer of 1862, the white majority began a century-long campaign to deny black residents civil rights, education, literacy, respect, and the vote. Key West’s harbor and two major federal forts were often referred to as “America’s Gibraltar.” This Gibraltar guarded the Florida Straits between Key West and Cuba and thus access to the Gulf of Mexico. When Union forces seized it before the war, the southernmost point of the Confederacy slipped out of Confederate hands. This led to a naval blockade based in Key West that devastated commerce in Florida and beyond.This book is the widest-ranging narrative history to date of the military bastion in the Florida Keys.

A Forgotten Front

A Forgotten Front PDF

Author: Seth A. Weitz

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2018-06-12

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 0817319824

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An examination of the understudied, yet significant role of Florida and its populace during the Civil War. In many respects Florida remains the forgotten state of the Confederacy. Journalist Horace Greeley once referred to Florida in the Civil War as the “smallest tadpole in the dirty pool of secession.” Although it was the third state to secede, Florida’s small population and meager industrial resources made the state of little strategic importance. Because it was the site of only one major battle, it has, with a few exceptions, been overlooked within the field of Civil War studies. During the Civil War, more than fifteen thousand Floridians served the Confederacy, a third of which were lost to combat and disease. The Union also drew the service of another twelve hundred white Floridians and more than a thousand free blacks and escaped slaves. Florida had more than eight thousand miles of coastline to defend, and eventually found itself with Confederates holding the interior and Federals occupying the coasts—a tenuous state of affairs for all. Florida’s substantial Hispanic and Catholic populations shaped wartime history in ways unique from many other states. Florida also served as a valuable supplier of cattle, salt, cotton, and other items to the blockaded South. A Forgotten Front: Florida during the Civil War Era provides a much-needed overview of the Civil War in Florida. Editors Seth A. Weitz and Jonathan C. Sheppard provide insight into a commonly neglected area of Civil War historiography. The essays in this volume examine the most significant military engagements and the guerrilla warfare necessitated by the occupied coastline. Contributors look at the politics of war, beginning with the decade prior to the outbreak of the war through secession and wartime leadership and examine the period through the lenses of race, slavery, women, religion, ethnicity, and historical memory.

Loyalty and Loss

Loyalty and Loss PDF

Author: Margaret M. Storey

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2004-09-01

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780807130223

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Though slavery was widespread and antislavery sentiment rare in Alabama, there emerged a small loyalist population, mostly in the northern counties, that persisted in the face of overwhelming odds against their cause. Margaret M. Storey’s welcome study uncovers and explores those Alabamians who maintained allegiance to the Union when their state seceded in 1861—and beyond. Storey’s extensive, groundbreaking research discloses a socioeconomically diverse group that included slaveholders and nonslaveholders, business people, professionals, farmers, and blacks. By considering the years 1861–1874 as a whole, she clearly connects loyalists’ sometimes brutal wartime treatment with their postwar behavior.

Florida Civil War Blockades

Florida Civil War Blockades PDF

Author: Nick Wynne

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2014-02-18

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1614233918

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Florida was the third Southern state to secede from the United States in 1860-61. With its small population of 140,000 and no manufacturing, few Confederate resources were allocated to protect the state. Some 15,000 Floridians served in the Union and Confederate armies (the highest population percentage of any southern state), but perhaps Florida's greatest contributions came from its production of salt (an essential need for preserving meat and manufacturing gunpowder), its large herds of cattle (which fed two southern armies), and its 1500 mile shoreline (which allowed smugglers to bring critical supplies from Europe and the Carribean). Florida in the Civil War: Blockaders will focus on the men and ships that fought this prolonged battle at sea, along the long and largely vacant coasts of the Sunshine State and on Florida soil. The information will be drawn from official sources, newspaper articles and private accounts. Approximately fifty (50) period photographs and drawings will be incorporated into the text.

Warrior at Heart

Warrior at Heart PDF

Author: John Adams

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2015-09-11

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 1460267850

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John Milton—a true son of the South— endeavored to find ways in which to keep Florida relevant to the Confederate cause. Under Milton, Florida was a key contributor of supplies for the Confederate Army. supplies. By pledging men, beef, and salt among other supplies, Milton gave credence to Florida’s war effort. However, poor strategizing, blockades, and lack of military might led to several failed attempts to overcome the Union armies infiltrating the Florida coast. Left to defend themselves from the enemy with little help from their Confederate compatriots, Floridians grew increasingly disenchanted with their government’s dismissive attitude. Over the course of the war, they were caught between survival and secession. With little resources remaining, survival was the only way for the state to maintain itself. Left disillusioned, the embattled Milton took matters into his own hands, refusing to submit to the impending surrender secession and the ignominy of defeat. Warrior at Heart is an in-depth study of Florida’s Southern history during the Civil War. Historian John Adams gives detailed analyses of not only the economic dynamics reasons for the South to wage war, but also the events that shaped John Milton’s role in the war effort. www.warrioratheartbooks.com

Slavery in Florida

Slavery in Florida PDF

Author: Larry Eugene Rivers

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2009-03-15

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 0813059267

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This important illustrated social history of slavery tells what life was like for bond servants in Florida from 1821 to 1865, offering new insights from the perspective of both slave and master. Starting with an overview of the institution as it evolved during the Spanish and English periods, Larry E. Rivers looks in detail and in depth at the slave experience, noting the characteristics of slavery in the Middle Florida plantation belt (the more traditional slave-based, cotton-growing economy and society) as distinct from East and West Florida (which maintained some attitudes and traditions of Spain). He examines the slave family, religion, resistance activity, slaves’ participation in the Civil War, and their social interactions with whites, Indians, other slaves, and masters. Rivers also provides a dramatic account of the hundreds of armed free blacks and runaways among the Seminole, Creek, and Mikasuki Indians on the peninsula, whose presence created tensions leading to the great slave rebellion, the Second Seminole War (1835-42). Slavery in Florida is built upon painstaking research into virtually every source available on the subject--a wealth of historic documents, personal papers, slave testimonies, and census and newspaper reports. This serious critical work strikes a balance between the factual and the interpretive. It will be significant to all readers interested in slavery, the Civil War, the African American experience, and Florida and southern U.S. history, and it could serve as a comprehensive resource for secondary school teachers and students.

The History of Black Business in America

The History of Black Business in America PDF

Author: Juliet E. K. Walker

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0807832413

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In this wide-ranging study Stephen Foster explores Puritanism in England and America from its roots in the Elizabethan era to the end of the seventeenth century. Focusing on Puritanism as a cultural and political phenomenon as well as a religious movement, Foster addresses parallel developments on both sides of the Atlantic and firmly embeds New England Puritanism within its English context. He provides not only an elaborate critque of current interpretations of Puritan ideology but also an original and insightful portrayal of its dynamism. According to Foster, Puritanism represented a loose and incomplete alliance of progressive Protestants, lay and clerical, aristocratic and humble, who never decided whether they were the vanguard or the remnant. Indeed, in Foster's analysis, changes in New England Puritanism after the first decades of settlement did not indicate secularization and decline but instead were part of a pattern of change, conflict, and accomodation that had begun in England. He views the Puritans' own claims of declension as partisan propositions in an internal controversy as old as the Puritan movement itself. The result of these stresses and adaptations, he argues, was continued vitality in American Puritanism during the second half of the seventeenth century. Foster draws insights from a broad range of souces in England and America, including sermons, diaries, spiritual autobiographies, and colony, town, and court records. Moreover, his presentation of the history of the English and American Puritan movements in tandem brings out the fatal flaws of the former as well as the modest but essential strengths of the latter.

Navigating Liberty

Navigating Liberty PDF

Author: John Cimprich

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2022-11-02

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0807178780

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When thousands of African Americans freed themselves from slavery during the American Civil War and launched the larger process of emancipation, hundreds of northern antislavery reformers traveled to the federally occupied South to assist them. The two groups brought views and practices from their backgrounds that both helped and hampered the transition out of slavery. While enslaved, many Blacks assumed a certain guarded demeanor when dealing with whites. In freedom, they resented northerners’ paternalistic attitudes and preconceptions about race, leading some to oppose aid programs—included those related to education, vocational training, and religious and social activities—initiated by whites. Some interactions resulted in constructive cooperation and adjustments to curriculum, but the frequent disputes more often compelled Blacks to seek additional autonomy. In an exhaustive analysis of the relationship between the formerly enslaved and northern reformers, John Cimprich shows how the unusual circumstances of emancipation in wartime presented new opportunities and spawned social movements for change yet produced intractable challenges and limited results. Navigating Liberty serves as the first comprehensive study of the two groups’ collaboration and conflict, adding an essential chapter to the history of slavery’s end in the United States.