Digital Commons Network^™

Florida Black Codes, Joe M. Richardson

Florida Historical Quarterly

After Civil Governments had been reorganized under President Andrew Johnson, the southern states passed laws popularly called “black codes” which frankly differentiated between Negroes and whites. These laws were products of the “baneful heritage” of slavery which rooted in the southern mind false ideas of the Negro, including biological inferiority and innate criminality. The first and among the harshest codes, passed by Mississippi and South Carolina in late 1865, activated a storm of protest from the North. Numerous northern editors warned the South that the sentiment of the country was “firmly fixed” upon the necessity of securing complete protection for …

Graveyard For Britons, West Florida, 1763-1781, Robert R. Rea

Florida Historical Quarterly

Today it is known as the Miracle Strip, and every spring its long white beaches beckon to sun-starved multitudes who flock to that stretch of coast centering upon Pensacola to the east and Mobile to the west. There lie warmth, relaxation, recreation, and health. Few of today’s sun-worshipers remember that Pensacola was once the swampy, fever-infested capital of British West Florida, and that Mobile was known as a “graveyard for Britons.”

Lieutenant Levin M. Powell, U.S.N., Pioneer Of Riverine Warfare, George E. Buker

Florida Historical Quarterly

Geographically Vietnam is half a world away from Florida. Historically over a century and a quarter separates the present conflict in Southeast Asia from the Second Seminole War. In both of these engagements the United States Navy has conducted similar operations of maintaining combat coastal patrols against guerrilla operations. Today the amphibious river assault forces of the navy wend their passage among the tortuous waterways of the Mekong delta in riverine warfare. l The lineage of such naval operations go back to the Second Seminole War of 1835-1842 in Florida. The conflict erupted in December 1835, when the Indians took …

United States, France, And West Florida, 1803-1807, Clifford L. Egan

Florida Historical Quarterly

On April 30, 1803, in one of the great real estate transactions of history, France sold the United States the Louisiana Territory, an immense land with inexact boundaries. Seldom in history has one nation purchased so much for so little. With the signatures of Robert R. Livingston, James Monroe, and Francois de Marbois, America’s land area was almost doubled. At the same moment all differences between France and the United States seemingly were obliterated. Although President Jefferson had previously spoken of a British alliance since he feared Napoleon as a neighbor, he and his fellow Americans now looked to the …

The Annual Meeting, May 3-4, 1968, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Minutes of the Directors meeting

Postscript To John Bemrose's Reminiscences, John K. Mahon

Florida Historical Quarterly

Since John Bemrose's Reminiscences of the Second Seminole War was published, additional information about the author has been found. Inconsequential though the new data is, perhaps some of the fun of uncovering it can be communicated to the reader. From the date of publication it has troubled me that I did not know what became of Bemrose after he had returned to his native England. The opportunity to fill in the unknown factors came during the summer of 1967, when I was in Britain.

Fighting Men View The Western War, 1862-1864, George C. Bittle

Florida Historical Quarterly

The Florida units fighting the Confederate cause in the West made no major contribution to the overall war effort, yet many Florida officers and men did yeomen service in the South’s Army of Tennessee. The experiences of these soldiers certainly reflect those of many other Confederate fighting men in the same army. In this sense, the trials and tribulations of these Floridians may be used to illustrate the changing conditions among at least one segment of the southern troops on a very important front of the Civil War.

The Bourgeois Blues: Representations Of Race And Authenticity In The Songs Of Lead Belly, Jonathan Lower

Madison Historical Review

Abstract to come.

Explaining Reproductive Health Disparities: Violence In The “Colorblind” Institution Of Medicine, Chineze Osakwe

Honors Scholar Theses

Medical policies have resulted in violence that has a formal role in regulating the reproductive rights of women of African descent in the United States from the Jim Crow era (circa 1965) to present day (2021), resulting in significantly racialized reproductive health disparities regardless of social or economic influences. This thesis explores why reproductive violence against African-American women persists, regardless of women’s own class and educational background. I have focused on the potential impact of two structural components that I hypothesized contributed to the perpetuation of reproductive violence against Black women and persistent health disparities. The two factors explored in …

All About Flowers : James Vick's Nineteenth-Century Seed Company, Thomas J. Mickey

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

A nineteenth-century entrepreneur’s bold, innovative marketing helped transform flower gardens into one of America’s favorite hobbies.

“There is much that is hard and productive of sorrow in this sin-plagued world of ours; and, had we no flowers, I believe existence would be hard to be borne.” So states a customer’s 1881 letter—one of thousands James Vick regularly received. Vick’s business, selling flower seeds through the mail, wasn’t unique, but it was wildly successful because he understood better than his rivals how to engage customers’ emotions. He sold the love of flowers along with the flower seeds.

Vick was genuinely passionate …

Cross-Florida Barge Canal, 1927-1968, J. Richard Sewell

Florida Historical Quarterly

The early and later history of the Cross-Florida Barge Canal is said to be divided by the enactment of the River and Harbor Act, signed into law January 21, 1927 by President Calvin Coolidge. This act authorized the secretary of war to make a preliminary examination and survey of the “Waterway from Cumberland Sound, Georgia and Florida, to the Mississippi River,” and it had had the full support of President Harding, Coolidge’s predecessor, who declared himself in favor of the broadest development of the country’s inland waterways. Henry Holland Buckman, who has been called the “father confessor” of the present …

Migration Into Florida Of The Seminoles, 1700-1820, James W. Covington

Florida Historical Quarterly

The Seminole Indians were relatively late arrivals to the Florida peninsula; the Apalachees, Calusas, Timucuans, and smaller tribes had settled the area much earlier. The Seminole migrations into Florida came in three distinct phases: in the period between 1702-1750, they made raids against the Spainards and their Indian allies, and although the Seminoles acquired much knowledge of the Florida terrain, no significant settlements were made. In the period 1750-1812, six or more villages were established in the northern part of Florida, and small parties explored the entire peninsula in search of deer, bear, and other game, and to make contact …

A Florida Soldier In The Army Of Northern Virginia: The Hosford Letters, Knox Mellon, Jr.

Florida Historical Quarterly

A long neglected area of American Civil War history has been the thousands of unpublished letters and diaries still found gathering dust in hundreds of attics across the nation. The recent Civil War centennial brought out some material of this type, and the general public has grown more aware of the advantages to be gained from the publication of soldiers’ memoirs. Despite this fact, it is rare indeed to find as moving and articulate a series of letters as the ten written by a young Florida Confederate officer, Lieutenant John W. Hosford, to his sweetheart, Miss Laura Rich, between November …

Agriculture And Advertising: Florida State Bureau Of Immigration, 1923-1960, Martin M. Lagodna

Florida Historical Quarterly

The shades were drawn in the back office of the busy white frame country store. As was his habit, the little man with the greying hair and starched collar lay down to rest after dinner. Out front the hitching posts were being bound with leather as customers hurried into the general merchandise mart which also served as a postoffice. The store was humming and the man’s wife and his clerk-partner tended the people. After all, it was the largest supplier of its kind between Ocala and Dade City. Business was good but the man in the darkened back office was …

The Annual Meeting, May 5-7, 1967, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Minutes of the annual meeting of the board of directors

Trabue, Alias Punta Gorda, Vernon E. Peeples

Florida Historical Quarterly

The Florida Southern Railway in 1885-1886, constructed a line from Bartow Junction to Charlotte Harbor, and a new town, Punta Gorda, sprang up at the southern terminus of what was then the southernmost railroad in the United States. Punta Gorda’s beginning enbroiled its settlers and leading citizens in a controversy that raged for many years.

Illegal Importations: Enforcement Of The Slave Trade Laws Along The Florida Coast, 1810-1828, Frances J. Stafford

Florida Historical Quarterly

The above quotations, decrying the evils of the slave trade are from two widely disparate sources and periods. The first may be found in an anti-slave trade tract of the Society of Friends published in 1824, and the second is from the opinion in a federal case involving slave trading activities in 1860. Both are evidence of the futility of the hopes of the founding fathers in 1787, that slavery and its companion evil, the slave trade, were but temporary problems for the United States. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the cotton gin and the textile mills destroyed …

British And Indian Activities In Spanish West Florida During The War Of 1812, Frank L. Owsley, Jr.

Florida Historical Quarterly

When Britain lost control of Florida in 1783 to Spain, many English merchants and public officials, especially the governors of Jamaica and New Providence, did not consider the loss of Florida as permanent. They continued an extensive legal and illegal trade with the Indians in Florida and the southern United States. The mouth of the Apalachicola River and the area around it comprised one of the main seats of this commerce, especially the illegal part. In line with their objectives of regaining control of Florida, these various British officials and merchants sent such filibusterers as William Augustus Bowles, who plotted …

Lieutenant John T. Mclaughlin: Guilty Or Innocent?, Nell L. Weidenbach

Florida Historical Quarterly

The Florida Squadron, based on Key Biscayne and Indian Key during the Second Seminole War, was a small but highly effective naval group whose part in bringing hostilities to a close has remained in relative obscurity for over a century. Furthermore, the youthful and courageous commander of this squadron, Lieutenant John T. McLaughlin, has been relegated to the fine print of an occasional footnote. The sparse and very brief paragraphs allotted to him all too frequently concentrate on his fiscal extravagances and his drinking excesses, with dark intimations of corruption and cruelty. The paragraphs which follow are designed to bring …

Fort King: A Brief History, Eloise R. Ott

Florida Historical Quarterly

Within the eastern residential section of Ocala is the site of Fort King. Probably more has been written of this military outpost than of any Florida fortification of its time. Yet long overlooked in official files in Washington is the scarcely known story of its erection - letters which tell of its plan, its buildings, and of problems resulting from the frugality of a government insistent upon a stringent economy of expenditure.

Oldsmar For Health, Wealth, Happiness, Glenn A. Niemeyer

Florida Historical Quarterly

The Florida real estate boom of the mid-1920s brought unparalleled publicity to Florida. From Jacksonville to Key West city streets were clogged with cars and trucks bearing northern license plates. Swamps were drained and lots on “Venetian canals” were offered for public sale at fantastic prices. Elaborate advertising campaigns, boasting such names as William Jennings Bryan, attempted to lure the Northerner away from snow and ice and into the “Sunshine State.” According to Frederick Lewis Allen, it was “the most delirious fever of real-estate speculation which had attacked the United States in ninety years.”

The Free Negro In Florida Before The Civil War, Russell Garvin

Florida Historical Quarterly

Freedom for negroes in a society where race was the only qualification for slavery was at best an anomaly and at worst an illusion. In either case though, freedom survived alongside slavery. Florida first acquired free Negroes early in the seventeenth century. In 1704 the Spanish governor, Zuniga, opened the territory to fugitive slaves from British plantations to the North. Thus established, potential liberty across the border tempted Carolina blacks and tormented their white owners. It was hoped that the colonization of Georgia would serve as a buffer region to prevent the escape of slaves to Florida. Carolina benefited, but …

Historical News, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Notice of the Annual Meeting, Florida Conference of College Teachers of History, local historical societies

Billy Bowlegs (Holata Micco) In The Civil War (Part Ii), Kenneth W. Porter

Florida Historical Quarterly

Elias Rector as an ardent partisan of the Confederacy, must have particularly wished in subsequent years that his report of Billy Bowleg’s death had been more than just a rumor, for Bowlegs was one of the principal chiefs of the Five Civilized Tribes who supported the Union in the Civil War. Although a number of Seminole chiefs, along with representatives of all the other Civilized Tribes, were bullied or cajoled into signing a treaty with the Confederacy, before the war was over it was estimated that two-thirds of the Seminole Indians and practically all their Negroes were within the Union …

Federal Expedition Against Saint Marks Ends At Natural Bridge, Edwin C. Bearss

Florida Historical Quarterly

In the last year of the Civil War, the Union forces took advantage of their seapower to carry the conflict to sections of Florida that had heretofore escaped the ravages of war. Operating from bases which they had seized along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the state, Union columns would strike deep into the interior and fall back before the Confederates could rally a force strong enough to intervene. Raiding parties were likewise put ashore from transports. If they ran into serious opposition, the raiders would fall back to the beach, where they would be covered by the great …

Billy Bowlegs (Holata Micco) In The Seminole Wars (Part I), Kenneth W. Porter

Florida Historical Quarterly

If a group of informed Americans were asked to name a Seminole chief, it is likely that most of them would reply “Osceola.” If asked to recall a second Florida Indian, at least a majority of those responding would name “Billy Bowlegs.” The second choice would be more accurate, for Osceola was a Seminole only by adoption - being by birth a Red Stick Creek from Georgia or Alabama who came to Florida at about the age of ten. He was not a chief by hereditary right, whereas Billy Bowlegs, to use his common white-man’s nickname, was what an army …

Historical News, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Florida Historical Markers program, local historical societies

Early History Of The Cross-Florida Barge Canal, Charles E. Bennett

Florida Historical Quarterly

The dream of constructing an all-water route across the peninsula of Florida to carry freight and passengers has often been discussed and debated in the past history of this state. Many plans were projected and discarded, surveys were made, and work even began on a canal during the 1930s. However, only now is the Cross-Florida Barge Canal actually underway with completion scheduled for sometime after 1970.

Historical News, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Arthur W. Thompson Prize; Florida Library Association; local historical societies

An Episode In The Third Seminole War, James W. Covington

Florida Historical Quarterly

The Third Seminole War covers the period from December 1855 to the spring of 1858. Although this war brought to a complete standstill nearly all economic growth in central and southern Florida and involved a large expenditure of money and men by national and state forces, it has been virtually ignored by writers who have preferred to pay more attention to the much more famous conflict which lasted from 1835 to 1842. The Second Seminole War attained national attention because the Indians were not crushed and because such well-known figures as Thomas Jesup, Zachary Taylor, Winfield Scott, Richard K. Call, …