Battle for Olustee

Greetings, this week we will continue exploring race relations and black labor during Florida's reconstruction period, the use of convict labor in southern states, and segregation.  The attitudes of Southerners would be a determining factor in a successful relationship between white men and freedmen (Day 2004, 3). Ultimately, the end of slavery caused numerous problems both for former confederates, as well as freedmen and abolitionists. Initially, the maintenance of status was of key importance to race relations in Florida: the dominant class did not want to relinquish control over resources, of which one was slavery (Ibid, 8).  In Florida, white businesses and landowners sought to maintain the pre-War status quo and were the dominant enactors of legislation. Dr. Christopher Day describes this as the "Holy Trinity" of race relations: political control, labor [and] property control, and violence (Ibid, 9).  The legalization of race relations may have been a result of fear-...

The goal of the Republican party after the Civil War was to ensure political stability and maintain Reconstruction laws in Southern states.  Florida was one of several formerly Confederate states to be occupied by Union forces well after the end of the Civil War. Southern White attitudes about Black Freedman were not positive. Wealthy and influential Democrats often sought to prevent Freedman from owning land or establishing themselves permanently.  Northern policy initially encouraged Unionism among the southern population. At the time, Republicans believed that reintegrating rebellious states into the Union would be easy. Union loyalists were installed in Florida to support sectional reintegration. Military rule was supposed to end July 4, 1868 but then-Governor Harrison Reed requested Union troops to stay fearing intense White resentment. The presidential election of 1876 marked the end of Reconstruction. Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina disputed the election between D...

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Greetings, this week we examine the Federal government's role in Reconstruction, how embittered Southerners resisted, and the implications of "ending" Reconstruction.   By April of 1865, many remaining Confederate forces under the direction of General. Robert E. Lee surrendered at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia; although occasional cells of white rebels would continue to resist Union occupation, the Confederacy had essentially exhausted its wartime capabilities. General Lee's surrender staunched the hemorrhaging of raw materials and men from the South. Nonetheless, those disgruntled Confederate veterans survived and returned home. Frequently these officers and veterans became statesmen, lawyers, plantation owners, and farmers after returning home.  Before the Civil War, Florida was on a trajectory to have booming cotton, lumber, and meat markets; all supported with the use of slaves as laborers. Union efforts to recruit Africans and sympathetic Whites were only...

Greetings, this week we examine Florida's role in the Confederacy, its limited battlefield memory, and Olustee during Reconstruction. Florida's support of the Confederacy is often an overlooked aspect of the Civil War. As part of the original secessionist troupe, Florida joined Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas as part of the first wave of secession from the Union. While the State legislature and a majority of the White Male population of Florida supported secession, some 2,000 people (both White and African) fled to join the Union. Aside from four regular contingents of men and two cavalries, Florida mostly supplied the Confederacy with salt, beef, and timber throughout the war. Salt was the best way to preserve the meat harvested from the vast cattle farms in the state. Enslaved Africans and other workers extracted this precious mineral from Florida's coastal waters with large metal boilers right on the beach. After evaporating all of the...