The Historical Context of Anti-Black Violence in Antebellum Florida: A Comparison of
Middle and Peninsular Florida
A Thesis
Presented to
The Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences
Florida Gulf Coast University
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirement for the Degree of
Master of Arts
By
Michael A. Sanchez
2015
APPROVAL SHEET
This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
_____________________________________
Michael A. Sanchez
Approved: May 2015
_____________________________________
Irvin D. S. Winsboro, Ph.D.
Committee Chair/Advisor
_____________________________________
Nicola Foote, Ph.D.
Committee Member
_____________________________________
Eric Strahorn, Ph.D.
Committee Member
The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both
the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the
above mentioned discipline.
Copyright © 2015 by Michael A. Sanchez
All rights reserved
iv
The Historical Context of Anti-Black Violence in Antebellum Florida:
A Comparison of Middle and Peninsular Florida
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ...........................................................................................................v
Preface............................................................................................................................. vi
Introduction .......................................................................................................................1
Literature Review: A Fertile Field ....................................................................................9
Chapter 1: Race, Class and Demographics in the Antebellum Era: The Foundations of the
Data Analysis ..................................................................................................................22
Chapter 2: Data Analysis in Historical Perspective ........................................................46
An Analysis of Middle Florida Slave and Land Records ...................................64
An Analysis of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Burial Records .............................71
An Analysis of Escambia County Court Records ...............................................74
Chapter 3: Conclusion: The Complex History of Florida ...............................................78
Appendix A: Border Peninsular Section .........................................................................83
Appendix B: Southern Frontier Section ..........................................................................85
Appendix C: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Burial List ....................................................87
Appendix D: Judicial District Maps ...............................................................................99
Bibliography .................................................................................................................103
v
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Professor James Denham for his assistance in interpreting his data
compilations, and Dr. James Cusick and Dr. Joe Knetsch for their assistance and advice
on gathering information at the Florida State Library and the University of Florida’s
Smathers Libraries. Dr. Michael Cole and William Mack, M.A., of Florida Gulf Coast
University, provided advice on research data and this document’s structure. Dr. Paul
Ortiz of the University of Florida provided historiographical connections necessary to
properly ground the work in the antebellum period. Dr. Erik Carlson and Dr. Patrick
Bottiger gave prompts and ideas to narrow the thesis’s scope and breadth. Florida Gulf
Coast University librarian Rachel Cooke assisted in procuring books and interlibrary loan
materials. Monroe County historian Tom Hambright and his assistant allowed me access
to original documents, including the St. Paul’s Episcopal Church burial records. Dr.
Nicola Foote and Dr. Eric Strahorn provided me with valuable content and copy-editing
suggestions, and Dr. Strahorn and Carey Fells of FGCU acted quickly to send me an
edited draft through the mail, sparing me hours of driving across the state. I also wish to
thank Dr. Irvin D. S. Winsboro, my thesis supervisor, for his patience and guidance
throughout this process, and for providing numerous primary source materials. Lastly, I
would like to thank my parents for imparting to me the joy of learning for learning’s
sake.
vi
Preface
The choice to study the historical period under review herein happened by
accident. It was a question about one historical period applied to another historical
period. In the book review for a book on violence against blacks during the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the American South, the reviewer wondered
what the causes of violence against blacks were in general and in Florida in particular. I
had developed an interest in the American Civil War from seeing an Antietam battle
reenactment during the 1990s, and over time had cultivated an interest in the antebellum
social and political conditions as well. An opportunity presented itself to conduct
research on a territory and state from the same period and investigate how the
experiences of those living within contributed to the overall picture. It was not a great
leap to apply the reviewer’s question to a period only slightly removed in time, but vastly
different in character.
Early in the research process, I learned that many Florida libraries, churches and
courthouses had suffered a series of fires early in the twentieth century, destroying many
period records. For this reason, I began to pursue statistical extrapolations so as to
construct models on population, violence and settlement. The question of anti-black
violence in the Territory, and later the State of Florida in 1845, arose from the common
knowledge of slavery’s inherent cruelty – but was the practice uniformly cruel? Did
blacks suffer the same fate no matter where they lived and travelled in the Territory or
State? The evidence uncovered, from sources as diverse as former slave interviews to the
aforementioned statistical models derived from the data that survived the period, speak
clearly to a diverse range of experiences – some horrific, such as Charlotte Martin’s
vii
recollection of her brother being whipped to death by their cruel owner, Judge Wilkerson,
to others that seemed almost serene, such as the blacks who lived among the Seminole
tribes, and who were encouraged to build their own houses, raise their children in their
own way, hunt and fish when it suited them, and generally come and go as they desired,
to the heroic, such as the blacks living in Key West, then a federal naval outpost, who
captured slaving ships, freeing their occupants. Clearly, the evidence bears out the idea of
varying experiences – slavery and other associated forms of violence were neither
uniformly cruel in their regional appearance nor in their causes.
This study puts forth qualitative and quantitative answers to a question that could
be seen from either direction – did blacks suffer more or less violence on the frontier of
southern Florida than they did on the plantations of Middle Florida? Constructing an
analysis brings a number of caveats – while there are appreciable amounts of data from
this period, they are often fragmentary, and what I found interesting is that some sources
regarded these data with an appropriate skepticism, while others, knowing they were,
indeed, fragmentary, used it anyway to advance radical theories, trying to overturn longheld theories. A successful analysis of this kind requires, as my undergraduate thesis
advisor was fond of saying, the act of “teasing out the truth.” Many oral and written
accounts from this period have been irretrievably lost. It is important, as this study does
at times, to admit there is indeed sometimes no pattern among the information, and
therefore no conclusions to draw except to address the significance the information has to
the overall picture. This study balances the quantitative with the qualitative, and in so
doing it attempts to illuminate a significant aspect of the historical record.
1
Introduction
The “Land of Flowers” in the years immediately prior to the Civil War was not a
pleasant place as violent crime occurred everywhere in Florida, and even after 1845 when
Florida gained statehood, the various county and federal courts often proved ineffective
in applying justice to their respective jurisdictions. Stories abound of people escaping
prison repeatedly, brawling over trivialities, and meting out vigilante “justice,” often to
the innocent. The Second and Third Seminole Wars were also fought during this period,
which pushed the Seminoles from eastern Florida to the southern area of the peninsula
into what are now Collier and Miami-Dade Counties. An economic depression, caused in
part by citrus crop and bank failures, also detracted from people’s fortunes. Although
myriad reasons exist for that violence and disorder, the most important was the courts’
and law enforcement officers’ inability to effectuate law enforcement, thereby creating a
vacuum filled by different groups vying for control of both the frontier and the towns.
Prior to this period, the peninsula had been host to multiple flags and peoples.
European contact occurred with the Spaniards in the early 1500s, with the city of St.
Augustine, today the oldest continually inhabited city on the continent, first established in
1565. The first period of Spanish rule would last until 1763, when most of the peninsula
was ceded to Great Britain with the Treaty of Paris. Spain would reacquire the same
territory in 1784 as a result of another Treaty of Paris. Spain would lose the peninsula
again with the Adams-Onís Treaty, first drafted in 1819, with the territory being officially
ceded on July 10, 1821.1 The Seminoles had existed on the peninsula since at least 1740,
1
Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1999), 1-2, 246.
2
when they participated with James Oglethorpe, founder of the British and later American
colony of Georgia, in an invasion of Spanish Florida in that same year. The term
Seminole is a corruption in pronunciation of the Spanish word cimmarón, meaning
runaway.2 By 1821, when Spanish Florida became the American Territory of Florida,
white settlers had already moved in and brought with them the racial attitudes of their
home states. As is documented repeatedly in the literature, those racial attitudes were not
copied identically wherever the whites settled, and in some cases they met fierce
resistance from preexisting cultural groups, such as the Spanish descendants in East
Florida. In 1845, Florida acceded to the Union.
All of the various groups – poor and wealthy whites, enslaved and free blacks,
Seminoles, and the various descendants of the European powers which once called the
peninsula home – were scattered across the land in a large number of small towns and
only several large cities, as well as the swamps and hammocks at the southern end of the
peninsula. Within this social structure, most blacks were slaves and thus subject to the
violence of their owners. Free blacks, despite being recognized as such by the national
and state censuses taken during the period and by the Territorial and State legal systems,
were also subjected to violence, not only from slave-owners but by kidnappers, thieves
and other criminals who preyed upon those travelling the long, unpatrolled roads between
the cities.
The racial cultural structure seen in states traditionally associated with the “Old
South,” with black slaves at the bottom, free blacks and Native Americans above them,
poor whites in the middle and the wealthy white planter elite at the top, was to an extent
2
Jane Landers, Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2010), 179.
3
copied in Florida during the period, as planters from the “Old South” colonized the
Florida Territory and subsequent state. The racial cultural structure, combined with a
class-based dislike that poor whites might have had for their wealthier neighbors,
combined in turn with the knowledge that in many cases violence went unpunished, made
for a place rife with violence, crime and suffering. This coupled with the frontier
character of Florida made the territory and state a place often characterized by local
violence, especially against the least powerful group there, blacks.
The Territory of Florida, and later the State of Florida after 1845, was divided into
western, eastern, middle and southern judicial districts, with district boundaries drawn
following physical boundaries, usually rivers. Within each judicial district there was a
series of counties, and each county had its own courts. Within the judicial districts there
existed markedly different cultures. For example, the Middle Florida district was
inhabited mainly by wealthy white planters and their slaves, and so culture closely
followed those cultures found in the states of the old “Old South,” such as Georgia,
Mississippi and so forth. The Eastern Florida district was inhabited by descendants of
Spaniards and their children, many of whom were the offspring of a white father and
black mother, or vice versa. Some blacks in this district owned property and owing to the
Spanish Crown’s liberal religious underpinnings, which never completely dissipated even
in the face of American expansion, blacks were seen as markedly less unequal in the eyes
of the law as compared to the their legal status in the white planter-driven regions. Still,
as the quantitative data shows, violence occurred everywhere, even in this somewhat
more enlightened region of the state.
4
Despite the lack of law enforcement and the vigilantism that appeared in absence
of the state, Floridians were not constantly victimized by violence. Life in cities could
often be lived in relative peace, and even slaves and free blacks could enjoy at times a
small measure of peace. Newspapers of the period were quick to repeat and
sensationalize crime stories in an effort to increase readership and sales, thus also
amplifying the perceived crime rate over the actual frequency of occurrences. The
practice of slave bondage was not entirely uniform across the state. Slaves were afforded
more freedom on some plantations than they were others, and those blacks who escaped
to join the Seminoles became their property only in name, often being able to grow their
own food, carry firearms, and live in their own houses. Key West, made a U.S.
government port in the 1820s, and home to the state’s largest population of free blacks
during the antebellum period, provided work in the island’s shipping, dredging and
wrecking industries. Those same blacks played a role in fighting the slave trade in the rest
of the state by intercepting slave ships bound for points farther up the Florida coast.
This model of life in Florida also provides quantitative data – the number of
people judged in the courts, the number found guilty and the number set free, in addition
to the numbers of those mentioned in newspapers and other contemporaneous records.
This study focuses on quantitative analysis between Middle and Peninsular Florida on
violence against blacks from which we can draw inferences and conclusions. It is
necessary to combine both approaches into one study because either perspective apart
makes for an unbalanced approach. While there is no shortage of compelling books and
articles on this period, many of them take either an entirely qualitative or quantitative
survey of the events herein, and make a well-presented yet incomplete picture for the
5
reader. It can also be suggested that a quantitative analysis is warranted simply because
reputable sources of quantitative data exist.
Middle Florida refers to Florida’s densely populated cotton belt, home to most of
the wealthy planters and most slaves. Peninsular Florida refers to the frontier, which in
the antebellum period this time was most of the peninsula of Florida. What few cities and
towns existed were separated by many miles of forests, swamps and grasslands. The
roads marked on period maps were not always safe for travel, even for armed travelers.
Whereas Middle Florida might be considered “urban,” for the time, Peninsular Florida
was not. It was mostly unsettled through the 1850s, containing Tampa and Key West as
the only urban areas, with the rest of the peninsula composed predominantly of swamps
and grasslands. The northeastern portion of the state would remain unsettled until the late
nineteenth century.
The question which underlies this study is whether or not the frontier nature of
Florida promoted violence against blacks. Denham asked this same question in his review
of Tolnay and Becks’ A Festival of Violence, which examined the lynching of blacks
between 1882 and 1930.3 The book explained that black lynching increased when cotton
prices dropped and contact between whites and blacks increased. Lynching was a method
of domestic terrorism – instead of lynching blacks because of guilt determined through
legal processes, they were lynched to warn other blacks to keep within their prescribed
social and economic boundaries. In his review of Tolnay and Beck’s work, Denham asks,
“was lynching the result of mixing extreme poverty, racism, political demagoguery, and
3
James Denham, review of A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern
Lynchings, 1882-1930, by Stewart E. Tolnay, E. M. Beck, Atlanta History 41, no. 1
(Spring 1997): 60.
6
above all, the grisly heritage of southern violence?”4 This is a question that usually
receives a qualitative answer, but this study will approach the problem of violence as a
whole, including lynching and other forms, from both quantitative and qualitative
perspectives. In his book review, Denham answers his question by saying more study is
needed.
Antebellum Florida is a reasonable setting to answer this question because of the
changes that occurred there over time. Originally a Spanish possession, the peninsula
would trade hands among the Spanish, English and French before American annexation
in 1821, when Florida became a U.S. territory. It would enter statehood in 1845, secede
from the Union in 1861, and return in 1865. This study puts forth a quantitative answer of
whether or not the frontier nature of Florida promoted violence against blacks in the
decade prior to the Civil War, as these years mark the boundaries between statehood and
secession.5
This work uses period newspapers, a number of period books and journal articles.
Personal research at the Monroe County Public Library in Key West also provided burial
records for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church which sheds light on the lives in Key West
during the period in question. Collectively, these works have provided a historical
database from which sketches of life and violence against blacks could be extrapolated,
interpreted, and presented in this study.
4
Ibid.
Irvin D. S. Winsboro, ed., Florida’s Freedom Struggle: The Black Experience
from Colonial Times to the New Millennium (Cocoa: Florida Historical Society Press,
2010), v-7, 41-43.
5
7
The data in this study are analyzed using only simple statistical methods, such as
ratios and the simple counting of results, to connect different forms of data describing the
same area. For example, the number of homicides in a particular county, paired with the
number of square acres in that same county, gives two separate dimensions of data which
can be compared. Given that data is often times missing from the historical record, only
basic models and ratios are used to determine patterns or relations, if any, between data
sets. There are times when the models and ratios are applied recursively. To apply
recursively means to apply the same method of analysis to a result gained from that same
method of analysis repeatedly, in order to determine the presence of patterns. The author
cautions the reader that correlation never equals causation, but only proves that said data
sets can be related. For quantitative data on violence in this period, this study mines the
information presented in Prof. James Denham’s work, A Rogue's Paradise: Crime and
Punishment in Antebellum Florida, 1821-1861, the Ohio State University Criminal
Justice Research Center’s Historical Violence Database, the University of Virginia
Census Browser database and the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social
Research’s data sets from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.
The appendices at the end of this study provide the information on which the data
analysis is performed. Appendices A and B present the groupings of counties in their
respective judicial districts in two ways to provide for both definitions of the “Plantation
Belt” and the “frontier.” Appendix C presents a list of deaths and the reasons thereof
transcribed from original documents formerly housed at the St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
(which still stands today), now housed in the Monroe County library in Key West.
Appendix D presents scanned copies of judicial district maps from Professor James
8
Denham’s book to allow the reader geophysical context when reading on the events
described herein.
9
Literature Review: A Fertile Field
The literature reviewed here is mostly quantitative in nature, however the
historical and scholarly works surveyed here serve to balance that information with
qualitative descriptions. While all the works surveyed discuss the state of blacks and the
violence visited upon them, along with the political and social climates in which they
lived, and some of them carry out impressive feats of statistical analysis, none of them
analyze any data in a comparative manner between different regions of the state in any
time period. In only one source is the data statistically analyzed in any way – the rest of
the works which offer data only proffer simple tabulations – little is done with data to
show patterns or correlations. It is important to note a caveat – as with any data set, there
is a risk of the analyst seeing patterns or correlations which in truth do not exist, but by
balancing the data with coexisting qualitative evidence – court records, newspaper
articles, laws proposed and passed and so forth – this problem is avoided. As stated
before, much information both qualitative and quantitative which would be of enormous
value to this study and numerous others has been lost to time, so gaps do exist, and they
are accounted for. The main purpose of the sources surveyed is to provide the data in a
raw form so that it can be analyzed, and to explain anomalies or lacunas with the
accompanying qualitative evidence. Both forms are necessary, and one is useless without
the other.
William Watson Davis’s The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida, despite
first being published in 1913, remains a mainstay of the literature of the period, although
it reflects the scholarly racism of the Dunning School of American historiography. The
book is vast in its comprehensive sweep of history and repeated reliance on primary
10
sources, including Congressional legislation, and of particular interest to this study are
the sections on the immediate pre-secession environment, and the reasons Davis
attributes to the chaotic atmosphere of the day. Davis stated what was then the forwardthinking thesis that slavery was the direct cause of Florida’s secession, rather than the
infringement on state’s rights, and that racism itself formed a core part of Florida planter
society. He stated, “The most significant phenomena of these ten years preceding the
great war [the Civil War] were the steady development of a militant pro-slavery
sentiment…those who…controlled the government were slave-holders. The majority of
whites were non-slaveholders. They belonged to this class not from principle but because
they were too poor to belong to another.”1 Despite these statements, Davis’s other
analyses, particularly with regard to plantation life for blacks and blacks as soldiers,
suffers from systemic pro-Southern, “Lost Cause” bias. Paul Ortiz in his chapter, “The
Not So Strange Career of William Watson Davis’s The Civil War and Reconstruction in
Florida” proves as such by pointing out unsupported claims in Davis’s work in this
manner. One such unsupported claim is that slaves were “semi-barbarous people held in
watchful and firm restraint, and well treated.” If this were so, as Ortiz surmises, why
would over one-thousand blacks flee plantations to join the Union Army?2
George Rawick’s Florida Narratives was a collection of interviews of former
slaves sponsored by the Federal Writer’s Project of the Works Progress Administration
1
William Watson Davis, The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida (New
York, 1913), 32, accessed May 14, 2015,
https://archive.org/details/civilwarreconstr00davi/.
2
Paul Ortiz, “The Not So Strange Career of William Watson Davis’s The Civil
War and Reconstruction in Florida,” in The Dunning School: Historians, Race, and the
Meaning of Reconstruction, eds. John David Smith and J. Vincent Lowery (University
Press of Kentucky, 2013), 21-22.
11
during the 1930s. The former slaves interviewed worked on plantations both inside and
outside Florida, and for this study the accounts of those who worked in Florida are used.
The interviewees themselves were at this point quite old – most in their eighties and
nineties, and at least one over 100 years old. What is conspicuous by its absence is most
of those interviewed could not recall their birthdays, making an exact age calculation
impossible. More importantly, it is unlikely that even in advanced age one would
probably not forget their own birthday, so it is possible that the former slaves had this
information withheld from them, either from their former owners or from their families.
It would appear, barring simple memory loss from age, that often times neither the slave
owners nor the former slave families considered exact birthdays very important. Most the
interviewees who worked on the Florida plantations did not relate much in terms of direct
violence – all related hard work in some form, but few related violence against
themselves. Several explanations are possible – one is that the aging process had by the
time the interviews had taken place destroyed memories, although this is unlikely, given
how vivid the few recollections of torture were. A more likely explanation is that
violence on plantations was so commonplace that the interviewee didn’t bother to recall
it, or assumed that the interviewer knew it already. The practice of historical
whitewashing may have played a role as well – the interviewer might not have asked the
question because it did not appear on the survey form, or the interviewer didn’t think
violence occurred at all. It appears, then, that slaves had as hazard of their work a certain
constant level of violence, or the threat thereof.
Julia Floyd Smith’s work Slavery and Plantation Growth in Antebellum Florida:
1821-1860, takes a mostly quantitative approach to the questions of slavery and violence.
12
Entire chapters are dedicated to the numerical listings of plantation production, the
number of slaves having escaped, the number of cotton bales sold at market, and so forth.
The numeric analysis sets it apart from other works, because it allows, with some
extrapolation, some insight into the economic decisions of planters, and how it influenced
their interactions with slaves and with each other. The prices for slaves varied widely,
and even when prices were high there was no guarantee good treatment for slaves –
instead, a wide variance of treatments is seen.
Smith breaks from her analytical descriptions to make a claim that she does not
substantiate in her book that slave-owners refrained from punishment and provided
religious instruction, not so much out of compassion, but to promote docility and lessen
the temptation of escape, and even to deceive them.3 Smith writes, “Perhaps the slave
received emotional satisfaction through religious expression while the owner salved his
conscience by reaffirming through the Scriptures his right to ownership of black
brothers.”4
Like Smith’s book, Fogel and Engerman’s Time on the Cross: The Economics of
American Negro Slavery relies heavily on numbers, but unlike Smith’s book the authors
construct statistical models on their assorted data sets, models which they admit are based
on a number of assumptions, and then said models are used as evidence to dispel longheld views on slave and plantation life. The book dos not focus on Florida but rather the
American South as a whole from before, during, and after the Civil War. One such
example which relates tangentially to the topics in this study is the book’s statistical basis
3
Julia Floyd Smith, Slavery and Plantation Growth in Antebellum Florida, 18211860 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1973), 48.
4
Ibid., 95.
13
for the chart on life expectancy for American slave and free populations from 1830
through 1920.5 The life expectancy chart, along with the accompanying statistical basis
for it in Fogel and Engerman’s supplemental volume, is easy enough to understand, but
with the numerous caveats the authors make as to the data’s veracity, along with making
irrelevant connections with what were then more recent data sets (such as the National
Health Survey for 1968), makes the information almost useless.6 Their work strains
credulity, and stands as a hallmark for future scholars of what not to do with regard to
mathematical and statistical analyses. Herbert G. Gutman’s Slavery and the Numbers
Game: A Critique of Time on the Cross points out a large number of problems with Fogel
and Engermna’s work, but the overarching problem is that they apply static models to
dynamic, changing situations. Gutman rhetorically questions the point Fogel and
Engerman make on the average age of slave women marrying being twenty years old:
exactly why did slave women marry at twenty? According to Gutman, Fogel and
Engerman do not answer this question, and this repeated refusal to answer the why behind
the what is the principal problem with their work as a whole.7
While all of the works surveyed make mention of slaves escaping, none analyze
them in the same manner as Donorena Harris’s master’s thesis Abolitionist Sentiment in
Florida, 1821-1860. The majority of Harris’s work concentrates on military operations
during the Second Seminole War, but also includes a portion to a basic analysis of slave
5
Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The
Economics of American Negro Slavery (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1974),
125.
6
Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: Evidence
and Methods – A Supplement (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1974), 100,
101.
7
Herbert G. Gutman, Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of Time on the
Cross (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 7.
14
escapees during the period. Finding over 650 separate advertisements for escaped slaves
between 1821 and 1860, Harris concludes that fewer than ten percent were successfully
captured, but further states that the low capture rate was such because most planters did
not advertise their runaways in the papers, and the real number of runaways was probably
higher than the number of advertisements suggests.8 The number of runaways was
probably higher because of the violence visited on plantation slaves. Three-quarters of
the runaways were male; the average age at escape was twenty-seven, with on average
two escapes per person. Most of these escapes occurred, predictably, in the heavily
populated plantation belt of Middle Florida.9
James Denham’s A Rogue’s Paradise: Crime and Punishment in Antebellum
Florida, 1821-1861, along with Denham and Randolph Roth’s Florida Historical
Quarterly article “Why Was Antebellum Florida Murderous? A Quantitative Analysis of
Homicide in Florida, 1821-1861,” provide the quantitative foundation for this study. A
Rogue’s Paradise is partially a collection of the surviving antebellum Florida county
records concerning crimes, which are tabulated with charts, along with period
newspapers and letters.
While both present qualitative and quantitative evidence that antebellum Florida
was exceptionally violent, the work is contradictory – in his book, Denham states that
people during the period were united into a territory, and later a state, partially through
the selfless professionalism of their appointed law enforcement officers. He then
describes the multiple, sometimes pathetic, failures of law enforcement officers to
Donorena Harris, “Abolitionist Sentiment in Florida, 1821-1860” (master’s
thesis, Florida State University, 1989), 99.
9
Ibid., 104.
8
15
contain prisoners and control persons in jails. There are chapters in Denham’s book
describing numerous examples of the rise of regulator groups and vigilance committees,
self-styled vigilantes which formed in the law enforcement vacuum on the frontier.
Persons fled prisons multiple times, state and federal law enforcement officials quarreled
with one another over jurisdiction, and the state’s vast, forested interior provided ample
space for escaping the law. In Denham’s article “Why was Antebellum Florida
Murderous?,” he cites four reasons for a “peaceful” society on Florida frontier – due to
their breadth, these might be applicable anywhere: first, a stable government that can
enforce laws, second, the government must be recognized by most people as legitimate,
third, an idea and feeling of unity must take root with a solidarity or patriotism which
envelopes the whole of the society, and fourth, a legitimate social hierarchy.10 As
Denham concludes, none of the conditions were met in antebellum Florida, especially the
peninsular region, and thus violence was a near-constant problem.
Denham and William Warren Roger’s Florida Sheriffs: A History 1821-1945,
complements A Rogue’s Paradise with a qualitative and quantitative analysis of law
enforcement operations. Unlike A Rogue’s Paradise, it does not attempt to explain why
there was such chaos in Florida for so long; rather, the focus is on the sheriffs themselves
and painting a picture of daily living for those employed as such. It was not until after the
Civil War that sheriffs had any professional training or predictable salaries. The state did
not have a formal penitentiary until after the war, either – indeed, the only requirements
for the job of sheriff were reliability, good character, and the courage to apprehend
James Denham and Randolph Roth, “Why Was Antebellum Florida
Murderous? A Quantitative Analysis of Homicide in Florida, 1821-1861.” Florida
Historical Quarterly 86, no. 2 (2007): 231.
10
16
dangerous criminals.11 Some sheriffs also owned slaves, and if the sheriff did not pay poll
taxes mandated by the territorial or state legislature, his slaves might be seized, making
the work even less desirable.12 The ninth section of the fifth article for the 1838 Florida
Constitution stated that sheriffs were appointed, not elected. The 1838 Florida
Constitution would remain in force until the 1861 Florida Constitution was passed, which
provided for secession to the Confederacy.13 The reluctance of many persons to take on
what was most likely a dangerous, thankless, and low-paying job did not help stabilize
the law enforcement apparatus in the region, and thus in its own way contributed to the
violence on the frontier.
Larry Eugene Rivers’s Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days to Emancipation more
closely addresses the central question of violence against blacks by studying plantation
life and the movements between them, and does so in balancing both quantitative and
qualitative descriptions. Like A Rogue’s Paradise, Rivers’s work has collections of
statistics and supports them with written accounts from the period. Unlike A Rogue’s
Paradise, the book analyzes actions towards, and by, blacks in particular, and while
whites are discussed in their roles as slave-owners and catchers, the emphasis remains on
blacks with their experiences of the “peculiar institution.”
One of the most important points of the book is its argument that slavery was not
uniformly cruel; rather, slave experiences ran the gamut between what might have been
outright sadism to something almost resembling freedom. Rivers relates the behavior of
11
William Warren Rogers and James M. Denham, Florida Sheriffs: A History,
1821-1945 (Tallahassee: Sentry Press, 2001), 33.
12
Ibid.
13
The Florida State University’s Florida Constitution Revision Commission,
“Florida Constitution of 1838,” http://archive.law.fsu.edu/crc/conhist/1838con.html
(accessed May 14, 2015).
17
Middle Florida planter Henry Wirt, who according to slave accounts, beat his slaves for
no reason, and elsewhere relates how East Florida planter Winston Stevens never
whipped his slaves, but instead furnished them with firearms so they might acquire food
off plantation grounds.14
Rivers also contends, along with other historians, that the Second Seminole War
was the largest slave revolt in American history, with anywhere between 750 and 1,000
slaves participating in the hostilities. Curiously, Rivers does not directly prove this point,
but provides tangential evidence by describing how the Seminole Wars, particularly the
Second and Third, were characterized by tenuous alliances among whites, blacks, and
Seminoles, with blacks and Seminoles in particular shifting rapidly between depending
on one another and turning in the other side to slave catchers or Federal soldiers, as the
case warranted, when it suited them.15 Rivers also points out correctly that while Julia
Floyd Smith’s book Slavery and Plantation Growth still has reference value, it does not
examine the social aspects of daily living, such as religion or family ties, and her book
does not examine black perspectives as overseers or slave drivers during the period at all.
Rivers does not mean this as a criticism, but rather that the vacuum of social analysis
provided the impetus for his work Slavery in Florida.16
Edward E. Baptist echoes the same idea of unstable, rapidly shifting alliances
between blacks and Seminoles, and against blacks in particular, in Creating an Old
South: Middle Florida’s Plantation Frontier Before the Civil War. Unlike A Rogue’s
Paradise or Slavery in Florida, Baptist states that violence against blacks stems partially
14
Larry E. Rivers, Slavery in Florida Territorial Days to Emancipation
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 73, 140.
15
Ibid., 206, 208.
16
Ibid., xiii.
18
from nineteenth-century Southern white ideas of masculinity and femininity – that is, the
violent control of slaves was seen as a part of being male itself, and to make matters
worse, this idea would bleed into other areas of life. Baptist makes clear that readers
should not, in his words, “romanticize” the relationship between blacks and Seminoles;
Seminoles would sell blacks to slavers, blacks would tell Federal soldiers the locations of
Seminole swamp hideouts, and on several occasions the Seminoles simply killed blacks
outright on suspicion alone.17 This more realistic view of black and Seminole relations
stands in contrast to earlier views of the relations being almost idyllic. Kenneth Porter’s
article, “Negroes and Seminole War, 1835-1842,” repeats an account by a Seminole
agent named Gad Humphreys in 1827, who stated that the blacks were slaves to
Seminoles, “but in name;” and blacks worked “only when it suits their inclination.”18
While Porter’s description of Seminole and black relations might be too
optimistic, and Baptist’s description too pessimistic, perhaps Klos’s and Winsboro’s
analysis of the debate might be the most objective. Klos writes, “Seminole society had
blacks of every status whether they were born free, the descendants of fugitives, or
perhaps fugitives themselves. Some were interpreters and advisors of importance; others
were warriors and hunters or field hands. Intermarriage with Indians further complicated
black status. But even a black of low status among the Seminoles felt it was an
improvement over Anglo-American chattel slavery.”19 Winsboro points out that Klos
does not describe the blacks’ status as slaves to the Seminoles, so with this revision it
17
Edward E. Baptist, Creating an Old South Middle Florida's Plantation Frontier
before the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 205.
18
Kenneth Wiggins Porter, “Negroes and the Seminole War, 1835-1842,” The
Journal of Southern History 30, no. 4 (November, 1964): 428.
19
George Klos, “Blacks and the Seminole Removal Debate, 1821-1835,” Florida
Historical Quarterly 68, no. 1 (1989): 59.
19
would seem that blacks fleeing plantations to Seminole lands traded one form of slavery
for another, a point which has yet to be fully explored and discussed in the literature.20
Jane Landers’s Black Society in Spanish Florida and Atlantic Creoles in the Age
of Revolutions both discuss the roles of free and enslaved blacks during the British,
Spanish, and American periods of the Florida peninsula. What makes the books valuable
is that both describe the contexts for black, Seminole, Spaniard, British and American
interrelations prior to the events documented here, and thus goes to some lengths in
explaining the cultural and political conditions of the peninsula, particularly in eastern
Florida in and around St. Augustine. Of particular interest is Landers’s focus on free
blacks and women during the two Spanish periods, who, as she documents, owned
property and could draft and enforce contracts through the Spanish-inspired court
systems then in place, ideas which more general surveys of the period often overlook.21
In both works Landers also describes violence against blacks, but unlike the blacks
unfortunate enough to live in Middle Florida, the blacks living in eastern Florida had
additional legal protections, which despite the second and final Spanish cession of the
peninsula in 1821, continued to exist as the descendants of the Spaniards influenced the
Territorial and State legislatures.
It is important to mention data sets, such as Denham’s data set on violence
committed against blacks from the Ohio State Criminal Justice Research Center. Denham
compiled this data set from contemporaneous newspapers and letters from the period.
U.S. government censuses for Florida were gathered from the Interuniversity Consortium
Irvin D. S. Winsboro, ed., Florida’s Freedom Struggle: The Black Experience
from Colonial Times to the New Millennium (Cocoa: Florida Historical Society Press,
2010), 64.
21
Landers, Age of Revolutions, 183.
20
20
for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). The national census data is taken from the
University of Virginia’s Historical Census Browser and the University of Michigan’s
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.22
For violence data, surviving records on homicides are used. While records exist
for crimes committed against blacks and others, homicide records in particular are
focused on because they are more plentiful and more complete. For the homicide data,
Denham has created a list of murders during the period, and this is housed at the Ohio
State University Criminal Justice Research Center. The list entries are derived from
county record books, newspapers, and record groups of the U.S. National Archives and
Records Administration. When possible, Denham has cross-referenced the records to
eliminate duplicate entries.23
“Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.” ICPSR.
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu (accessed May 14, 2015). The U.S. Government’s federal
census data in digital form may be found and manipulated in several ways. The
University of Virginia’s Historical Census Browser provides an intuitive tool, commonly
referred to as a ‘front-end’ resource, for researchers to select and list census data on a
very granular level, however the raw data tables from which the Historical Census
Browser tool is built, commonly referred to as a ‘back-end’ resource, are provided by the
University of Michigan’s Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
(ICPSR). Both methods are free to access for students and other scholars, however the
data tables from the ICPSR require database manipulate programs which become
progressively less trivial to use as the analysis level deepens. It should be noted that the
knowledge of using such programs comes with the benefit of conducting more complex
analyses than the Historical Census Browser tool affords. For casual users, the Historical
Census Browser is probably sufficient. For the Historical Census Browser, see
“Historical Census Browser.” University of Virginia Library,
http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/state.php (accessed May 14, 2015).
23
James Denham, “Homicide in Florida, 1821-1861 | Criminal Justice Research
Center,” The Ohio State University Criminal Justice Research Center,
https://cjrc.osu.edu/research/interdisciplinary/hvd/united-states/florida (accessed May 14,
2015). Like the databases provided by the Universities of Virginia and Michigan, the data
Denham has compiled is available as a spreadsheet which allows further record
manipulation.
22
21
Florida: Atlas of Historical County Boundaries constitutes another separate
collection of data sets, and gives step-by-step histories of how counties were created,
absorbed, and broken up over time, and helps to form the county-to-population
comparisons in the data analysis portions.24 These data enabled the comparison between
populations of counties and districts against the crimes reported there, and for making
additional inferences based upon said data. Period newspapers for the qualitative analysis
portions were consulted from the University of Florida Digital Collections. Although
these sources and data bases provide only a glimpse of the vast materials on the subject of
this study, they do respond collectively as reliable sub-sets of historical literature and
documents from which analysis and conclusions of violence against blacks in Florida’s
antebellum period can be extrapolated.
24
John Hamilton Long and Peggy Tuck Sinko, Florida: Atlas of Historical
County Boundaries (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1997).
22
Race, Class and Demographics in the Antebellum Era:
The Foundations of the Data Analysis
By 1845, when Florida joined the Union, the peninsula had seen flags change
several times among several empires; by that time, the peninsula had Europeans living on
it for almost 300 years, and it was the descendants of these colonizing powers, along with
the Native Americans (themselves also colonizers to a certain degree) that had settled in
their various parts of the state, and had contributed to local cultures for good and for ill.
Blacks had existed as both slaves and free people on the peninsula for just as long, and
had along with the Europeans, Seminoles and later the Americans had contributed just as
much to the cultural, social and political climates of this region.
The State of Florida in 1845 inherited to a great extent the preexisting Territorial
legislature and bureaucracy, as well as a partially functioning judicial system, which had
years prior to Florida’s accession divided the state into judicial districts. Ech judicial
district inherited the culture of those persons living there. During the period covered by
this study, there were four districts – one for the western portion, one for the eastern
portion, one for middle portion that sat between the western and eastern portions, and a
southern judicial district which had under its jurisdiction most of the southern peninsula,
including the chain of islands ending in Key West. The idea that most of the land was
unpopulated was reinforced when one sees the enormous size of the districts themselves
– all of them had many miles within their borders, as only a few cities existed during this
period, with Key West as the largest. Each judicial district had its own culture as a
product of its own history, which differed sharply from one district to the next.
23
On the largest scale, the whole state was subject to a Federal law passed in 1808
which forbid the international importation of slaves.1 Stafford mentions that the U.S.
government didn’t engage in any international treaty barring the practice of slavery
during this period, despite having passed national laws to the contrary. Those slave
owners who followed the law could not purchase slaves from overseas, but instead
encouraged their slaves to reproduce with one another and also reproduced with their
slaves themselves, thus doing away with the need to purchase additional slaves. Despite
Federal prohibition, slaving ships were common along the southern coasts during this
time. There were heroic efforts on some parts to enforce the 1808 law – this explains the
rise of Key West as a haven for free blacks and as the peninsula’s largest city. It was an
initial piracy raid which prompted the Federal navy to have an outpost there, thus
protecting under Federal (and somewhat by extension abolitionist) legal policies those
who lived within. The key would serve as a base from which sailors could hunt and
capture slaving ships.
While American sailors did not work directly in conjunction with them, British
ships would also interdict American slaving ships, claiming that the captures of those
slaving ships in international waters was not a violation of American law. Escaping
slaves who made the voyage from Florida to the Bahamas benefitted from the same
interpretation of British law, and thus could avail themselves of three escape routes – to
the northern states beyond the Mason-Dixon surveying line, Key West, or the Caribbean.2
Frances Stafford, “Illegal Importations: Enforcement of the Slave Trade Laws
Along the Florida Coast, 1810-1828,” Florida Historical Quarterly 46, no. 2 (1967): 124.
2
Irvin D. S. Winsboro, “Florida Slaves, the “Saltwater Railroad” to the Bahamas
and Anglo-American Diplomacy,” Journal of Southern History 79, no. 1 (February
2003): 57.
1
24
Life in Florida was not a constant parade of horrors that people visited upon each
other, even on the frontier. Living life with routine was still possible. Public awareness of
deaths, either crime-related or from natural causes, were communicated either in
newspapers or talk. A typical announcement of death comes from the Columbia
Democrat (a period newspaper serving Columbia County, Florida) describing someone
named Mr. R. S. Bandy as having “registered his name as from Florida,” who was found
dead in his hotel room later that day. No mention of the cause of death given, and “no one
in Wilmington knew anything of him.” This death announcement was reprinted from
another paper, the Charleston Tri-Weekly Standard. Below this reprint is a section from
the Columbia Democrat itself which describes Bandy as “well-known” and a “very
modest retiring young man.”3
In addition to the court system doing a largely ineffective job at controlling the
people’s impulses, a series of groups came into existence to fill the void left by said
courts. In vast tracts of the state, court enforcement was nonexistent, thus regulators,
vigilance committees, and lynch mobs filled the void. These three groups began with
very different goals in mind. The lynch mobs, as the name suggests, were groups of
people intent on extrajudicial murder. These groups perceived somewhat autonomous
blacks as a threat to the overarching social order. In this time period, many were taught
that blacks were inferior beings, and whites were their natural and predestined overlords
– blacks were seen as trainable savages, a hybrid of man and beast capable of thinking
only enough to complete menial work. To their credit, not everyone followed this
“The Columbia Democrat, February 11, 1858, in the University of Florida
Digital Collections, http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00048743/00001/2x?vo=13 (accessed May 14,
2015).
3
25
example, and some endeavored to teach blacks to read, write, and count in violation of
admittedly bad laws.4 The lynch mobs were known to give those they caught something
resembling a kangaroo court hearing at which point they almost always hung whomever
they targeted.
Regulators and vigilance committee groups are somewhat interchangeable,
particularly towards the end of the antebellum period, as by that point they had
degenerated into squabbling political factions.5 However, in the beginning of this period,
and indeed before the time frame covered in this thesis, regulators and vigilance
committee groups were different. Both were formed to combat the failures of the state
courts, and sometimes even afforded those they caught with on-the-spot hearings, where
they took statements and attempted to reach some impartial conclusion with those
involved in whatever grievance was being dealt with.
Vigilance committee groups combined elements of lynch mobs and regulator
“courts.”6 These three forms of groups acted to correct problems they saw with the
lacking state court system, and it should be noted that non-aligned citizens and the press
were themselves also adjudicators, albeit indirectly. In one example, a mayor ordered the
whipping of a man accused of a crime before a jury trial had begun, leading to an outcry
in the press and locals alike decrying the mayor’s actions.7 Orders to arrest criminals
were printed in newspapers, thus allowing these extrajudicial groups to fill the gap left by
the courts’ failures at apprehension. One example appears in the March 27, 1858 issue of
William Rogers, “A Great Stirring in the Land: Tallahassee and Leon County in
1860,” Florida Historical Quarterly 64, no. 2 (1985): 148-160.
5
Denham, A Rogue’s Paradise, 204.
6
Ibid., 198.
7
Ibid., 153.
4
26
the Columbia Democrat, in which a reward of $100 was placed for the apprehension of
Willis Conner for the murder of Wm. [possibly William] Deas; it was approved by
Florida governor Madison Perry.8 Judicial summonses were printed as well. In but one
example defendant Alonzo B. Cox, who apparently was sued by plaintiff James R. Dyall
for $500 in “damages,” – Cox’s acts to incur said suit are unknown – was commanded to
appear in the Eastern Circuit court within sixty days or face a default judgment.9
In 1821, the Spanish ceded the peninsula to the U.S. government, and the threecaste system, along with the freedoms enjoyed therein, was almost immediately replaced
with the two-caste system seen in much of the rest of the South, although this was
undermined. The early territorial councils passed laws to curtail the rights of free slaves;
these included a law in 1827 that barred free blacks from entering the region, a law in
1828 forbidding them from giving “seditious” speeches, sell alcohol to slaves, or
participate economically on Sundays. The right to carry firearms was limited in 1825,
again in1828 and outlawed completely in 1833. However, the practice of slave-owners
allowing slaves to carry firearms to provide them with food may have undermined this
ruling.
Free blacks also were barred from juries and not allowed to testify against whites
in court proceedings; interracial marriage was outlawed and “fornicating with a slave”
was a crime punishable by a $1,000 fine and a loss of civil and political rights. In but one
example in Jacksonville, free blacks could be temporarily enslaved on manual labor jobs,
8
The Columbia Democrat, March 27, 1858, in the University of Florida Digital
Collections, http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00048743/00005/3x?vo=13 (accessed May 14, 2015).
9
The Jacksonville Standard, February 24, 1859, in the University of Florida
Digital Collections, http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00050172/00002/1x (accessed May 14, 2015).
27
whipped for misdemeanors, and had to pay fees to register with their ‘guardians.’10 The
laws grew from a common fear of blacks, a need to control them to prevent the seemingly
always-imminent slave rebellion, a need to make sure that other blacks knew their ‘place’
and would not seek redress, and the creation of a servile class.
In his article, “Race Relations in Territorial Florida, 1821-1845,” Canter Brown
Jr., like Larry Rivers and to a lesser extent Julia Floyd Smith, claims that the sets of harsh
race-related laws, designed primarily to prevent a hypothetical black or Seminole
insurrection, were passed with the overwhelming support of the members of the
Territorial Legislature and the general public. Nevertheless daily realities of running
plantations and conducting other business made the laws at times unenforceable.
To say that planters from the “Old South” states moved to Territorial Florida and
recreated the race codes is correct, but it was not borne from any long-term plan to clone
the “Old South” in Florida.11 Rather, it was rooted in fears those same planters, and the
less-wealthy persons living around them, had of slave revolt. While irrational because of
the inherent race-hatred necessary to quell revolts of particular races of people to begin
with, the fear was nevertheless not entirely unfounded. Indeed, Larry Rivers describes,
and Brown, Jr. echoes the idea that the Second Seminole War, waged only recently in the
Territory’s past, was not so much a war pitting Federal soldiers against Seminoles, but
Daniel L. Schafer, “‘A Class of People Neither Freemen Nor Slaves:’ from
Spanish to American Race Relations in Florida, 1821-1861.” Journal of Social History
26, no. 3 (1993): 588, 590, 591.
11
Canter Brown, Jr., "Race Relations in Territorial Florida, 1821-1845," Florida
Historical Quarterly 73, no. 3 (January 1995): 288. On the question of Old South Florida,
see Irvin D. S. Winsboro, ed. , Old South, New South, or Down South?: Florida and the
Modern Civil Rights Movement (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2009), 123.
10
28
instead blacks fleeing plantations to align and fight with the Seminoles.12 When the
Second Seminole War’s hostilities broke out in late 1835 and early 1836, a large number
of slaves joined the Seminoles in fighting; while the number is not precise, and may
never be truly known, estimates range from the “hundreds” to “over 1,000.” The
momentum with which people carried out their lives in defiance of the laws was such that
even after open warfare had occurred, and in response the Territorial Legislature enacted
even more harsh laws, the people complained openly, and the congress was forced to
admit its mistake.13
Daily living forced people to flout the laws, but to be more specific, economic
and social realities forced people to flout the laws. It should be pointed out that wealthy
planters, while sitting in the Territorial Legislature, did not typically run their vast
plantations in person – such plantations in some cases covered thousands of acres,
making personal surveillance impossible. The work of overseeing slaves was handed out,
as the name implies, to overseers, usually less wealthy whites who perhaps might live
their dream of owning slaves vicariously through the more wealthy planters. Because the
wealthy planters were not only politicians but also part of a Floridian “gentlemen’s
class,” they could easily pass restrictive, almost absurdly draconian laws, such as
disallowing various types of firearms to free blacks on at least two occasions, and not
suffer from the repercussions should they run afoul.14
In the Middle Florida judicial district, there were the most densely populated
plantations as well as the largest plantations in the state. This Middle judicial district was
12
Ibid., 304.
Ibid. For greater detail on the origins and effects of the Seminole Wars, see Joe
Knetsch, Florida's Seminole Wars, 1817-1858 (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2003).
14
Ibid., 294, 303.
13
29
home to counties whose persons who had emigrated there from other, more classically
“Southern” states and those planters sought to replicate the morals, mores and customs of
the regions they had come from.15 George Rawick’s Florida Narratives provide firsthand
accounts of living in Middle Florida during this period. Louis Napoleon was owned by
Arthur Randolph, and lived in Ft. Louis, a town near Tallahassee. According to him,
Randolph was very kind and never whipped his slaves; furthermore, if a slave was
whipped by an overseer, the slave told Randolph himself, and the overseer was
dismissed.16 Similar conditions were echoed by Douglas Parrish and Acie Thomas.
Parrish, born in Monticello, Florida recounted being athletically gifted, and used as a
‘runner,’ where he competed in races against other slaves from other plantations
throughout the county, which his and other slave-owners would bet on, and described
daily living as ‘not all bad.’17 Plantations could also be well-insulated from the rest of the
world. Thomas tells of an almost-pleasant life on his plantation in Jefferson County. Born
in 1857, he was owned by the Folsom bothers, who never whipped their slaves, always
provided their slaves with ‘plenty of everything’ to eat, and supposedly competed with
other slave owners in the region to see who could throw the most luxurious parties for
their bondsmen. The threat alone of being sold off to less wealthy “white trash” slaveowners was enough to compel obedience, more even than whippings.18
Other ex-slaves told harrowing stories of physical abuse and, at times, blatant
torture. Margrett Nickerson, estimated to be either eighty-nine or ninety years old during
Christopher Linsin, “Skilled Slave Labor in Florida: 1850-1860,” Florida
Historical Quarterly 75, no. 2 (1996): 183.
16
Federal Writer’s Project Florida, Florida Narratives, ed. George P. Rawick
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Co., 1972), 242-244.
17
Ibid., 259.
18
Ibid., 327-328.
15
30
her interview, was born on the Carr plantation near Jackson County. Slaves were beaten
if they left their shoes in the field, and slaves caught escaping were forced to wear a cagelike device made of iron bars – one iron bar around the waist, another wrapped around
the neck, and with these two connected by other iron bars, with bells attached to them, so
the slave could not move without making noise.19 Shack Thomas, born in 1834, reported
that his owner hired cruel overseers, who would punish slaves by gagging them, tying
them into a squatting position for hours at a time, and hanging them by their thumbs.20
Charlotte Martin recalled her brother being whipped to death by their owner Judge
Wilkerson on their Sixteen, Florida plantation.21
The Eastern judicial district was distinct from both the Western and Middle
judicial districts in that while it too held plantations, it held more than the Western district
and far less than the Middle district. This distinction is important in this analysis of how
the frontier nature affected violence against blacks, and also serves to justify the different
categorizations what is considered “frontier” and what is considered part of the Plantation
Belt. What sets the Eastern district apart is the culture clash of how the plantations were
run. Whereas the Middle district imported a severe regimented system the Eastern district
employed the task system, in which slaves were not necessarily forced to work from
sunup to sundown, but rather in discrete assignments. Although still slavery, this kind of
system incentivized completion – a slave was told to clear brush and then allowed to stop
and rest, for example, rather than being told to work for an indeterminate time or else
face negative consequences. This completion-based work system also incentivized the
19
Ibid., 250-255.
Ibid., 336-337.
21
Ibid., 166. The city of Sixteen, Florida no longer exists.
20
31
development of skills such as woodcutting, masonry, metalwork, and so on. The more
skills a slave had, the more valuable he was to his owner and more the owner would be
inclined to both trust and profit from his work. Notable slave owner Zephaniah Kingsley,
who had a plantation in the eastern judicial district, employed the task system with great
success; while he may have exaggerated his claims, he wrote in his diary that he no
longer had to discipline his slaves at all.22
The Eastern Florida judicial district also contains St. Augustine, the oldest
continuously occupied European city in the United States, established as such in 1565 by
Spanish colonist Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. The treatment of slaves in and around St.
Augustine was initially rooted in Catholic Church teachings and Spanish court decisions.
Blacks were considered to have souls and “moral personalities,” and were not always
permanently trapped in bondage. The court system afforded them the rights of owning
property and in some cases suing their owners. The Spanish Crown also encouraged
people to free their slaves via a moral command, and marriage between blacks and whites
was not discouraged. The resultant children were acknowledged and educated by their
white fathers, and were accepted into the Church. Slaves were also allowed to own
property, and were also allowed to purchase their own freedom under the legal concept of
coartación, and could appeal to the courts if their owners refused.23 The only entirely free
black town in Florida, Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, was established in what
would become eastern Florida in 1738, and despite being abandoned long before the
Larry E. Rivers, “A Troublesome Property: Master-Slave Relations in Florida,
1821-1865,” in The African-American Heritage of Florida, eds. David R. Colburn and
Jane L. Landers (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995), 112.
23
Schafer, “‘A Class of People,’” 587-588.
22
32
Spaniards ceded Florida to the United States, it nevertheless formed a part of a much
more progressive tradition for the Spanish culture in that region of the state.24
Under this system, there were three tiers: the caste of whites, then free blacks, and
lastly enslaved blacks, although legal protections most enjoyed made the caste system
very weak. Blacks serving in city militias were also effective in repelling invasions, one
of which was from Georgia whites in a conflict known as the Patriot Rebellion in 1814.
Under such a system blacks, even enslaved blacks, could enjoy much greater freedom
than they could in most other places.
Despite the passage of increasingly draconian laws, enforcement was haphazard,
particularly since the descendants of Spaniards still lived in an around St. Augustine, and
were neither capable nor willing to change their attitudes towards blacks based at the will
of legislators, and to their credit a group both of whites and blacks vigorously protested
the new laws. The Spaniards’ descendants at the time of the bills’ passage owned prime
land around the major rivers in the area, and had employed large numbers of both slaves
and free blacks. They repeatedly flouted the laws, including the 1829 law barring
interracial marriage and the white planters lived openly with their black spouses. They
could do this as they held important positions within the legal structure; that of local
sheriffs, clerks, judges and delegates to the territorial legislature.
Indeed, throughout the 1830s, 1840s, and into the 1850s, the laws were barely
enforced, but as the country stepped closer to civil war, the various racial tensions
appeared again, and the laws were enforced more severely. By the late 1840s, the prices
of slaves rose sharply, and the process of manumission was increasingly challenged in
24
Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 29, 59.
33
court. It was common for children of slave-owners to contest the manumitting will of said
slave-owner in order to re-enslave their human property and gain some profit; by 1859,
manumission was outlawed entirely.25
The Florida State legislature forced free blacks to register (with a fee) with the
probate judge in their county of residence, and re-register (with the same fee, again) if
they moved to another county. Every semi-free black person over twelve years old had to
have a guardian whom they could pick for themselves, and said guardian could be sued
for whatever grievance. The blacks under guardians were immune from lawsuits, but in
gaining this legal protection, they were forced into both a de jure and de facto state of
slavery again.26 The increase of enforcement of these laws can be traced to the native
white population; up to the middle of the nineteenth century, white population in the
Eastern Florida judicial district increased, and this along with the gradual die-off of
Spanish planters, harder race codes set in. Over time, the Eastern district began to mirror
the rest of the “Old South,” with the rigid dividing lines between blacks and whites, the
repressive laws, and general, pervasive fear. Such attitudes were not calmed by the
increasing calls for secession, which Florida eventually acquiesced to in 1861, and the
concomitant need to suppress the slave rebellion always on the horizon. As for violence
against blacks, it is undoubtedly true that such rigid laws along with an increasingly
effective enforcement drove violence against them – especially if the cultural climate is
so poor that one is tempted to enslave oneself to escape violence.
The Eastern Florida judicial district is unusual in that only in a few decades the
overall attitude changed so quickly and so profoundly. The question remains of whether
25
26
Ibid., 592, 593, 594, 597.
Smith, Slavery and Plantation Growth, 121.
34
the Eastern judicial district belongs to the Plantation Belt or the frontier region; in a way,
the Eastern Florida judicial district covers both – outside of St. Augustine and
Jacksonville, the frontier lay between the cities and the Georgia border, as well as the
nearest cities to the west and the vast open areas of the southern peninsula. Schafer
attributes the bad social and legal climate to a combination of xenophobia, racial hysteria,
and class conflicts throughout the 1850s, culminating in a Florida Supreme Court Justice
writing that the superiority of the white race should be demonstrated by creating and
exacting ever more degrading forms of punishment on blacks convicted of crimes.27 In
1858, the editor of the Columbia Democrat wrote in support of the “Negro Exemption
Law” under consideration at the time in the Mississippi legislature and denounced an
earlier editorialist for opposing the law, saying that because under the law one slave per
owner was exempted from seizure for paying debts, it would encourage everyone to
purchase at least one slave, which would “generalize, strengthen and extend this great
and peculiar institution.”28 That newspaper’s editor, E. M. Graham, went so far as to
openly admit his – and by extension, the paper’s – political bias, such that the paper was
above “partisan rule” but nevertheless “feeling an abiding interest in East Florida” and
supporting any measure to “promote the common weal of our citizens.”29 In 1859, an
editorial in the Jacksonville Standard praised the Ohio Supreme Court for upholding the
Fugitive Slave Law, noting in particular that Black Republican judges upheld the law.30
Schafer, “‘A Class of People,’” 602.
The Columbia Democrat, March 4, 1858, in the University of Florida Digital
Collections, http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00048743/00002/2x?vo=13 (accessed May 14, 2015).
29
The Columbia Democrat, May 15, 1858, in the University of Florida Digital
Collections, http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00048743/00009/3x?vo=13 (accessed May 14, 2015).
30
The Jacksonville Standard, May 12, 1859, in the University of Florida Digital
Collections, http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00050172/00009/2x?vo=12 (accessed May 14, 2015).
27
28
35
Key West provides a contrast to the rest of the Florida peninsula because of the
conditions there afforded to blacks both free and slave. The island’s strategic importance
to the Federal navy, as well as the unchecked lawlessness, were the main reasons for
establishing the Southern Florida judicial district in 1828, and throughout this period until
the end of the Civil War it served as a “thorn in the side” of Floridian (and later
Confederate) pro-slavery forces.31 While soldiers and sailors appeared eager, or at least
willing, to serve in Key West, there are conflicting accounts of those Union soldiers
serving in the rest of the peninsula. Denham states that often Federal soldiers would
resign than serve in areas outside of Key West, due to the various period conflicts.32
Taylor describes the Union troop experience as often times “serene,” and claims that
most of the “raids” conducted by Federal soldiers, who he describes as “armed tourists,”
were not to attack Confederate rebels at all but to steal citrus fruits, slaughter cattle, burn
cotton and liberate slaves.33 Prior to Federal navy involvement, Key West served as a
stopping point for ships bound for the Bahamas, Cuba and the other Caribbean islands,
and in so doing was a piracy site. By 1835, despite Federal officials’ involvement,
residents still complained of “grogshops,” coffeehouses and billiard rooms operating on
Sundays.34
By 1852, Key West had become the state’s largest city, home to some three
thousand residents, more or less, with active ship dredging, salvage and wrecking
The term Black Republican is a metaphor for abolitionists. Judge Joseph Rockwell Swan,
who wrote the majority opinion in Ex Parte Bushnell, was white. See:
http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/SCO/formerjustices/bios/swanJR.asp.
31
Denham, A Rogue’s Paradise, 56.
32
Ibid., 54.
33
Robert A. Taylor, “The Civil War, 1861-1865,” in The History of Florida, ed.
Michael Gannon (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013), 254.
34
Denham, A Rogue’s Paradise, 57.
36
operations.35 By 1860, Key West held the Southern Florida judicial district’s highest
number of free blacks, one-ninth of the total state population at the time.36 Like other
cities in Florida during the period, Key West suffered from a lack of funding for its
criminal justice system, forcing local leaders to resort to unusual means of housing
criminals to await trial which in many cases proved ineffective. Even as late as 1841,
criminals were often not housed in a jail per se, but were sometimes housed in what was
described as a halfway house. Until 1855, criminals arrested in Key West were
sometimes transported to neighboring counties for incarceration.37 Other options included
keeping prisoners in private houses guarded by public police, the military garrison, or
even allowing criminals to grant themselves bail, removing the need for housing them at
all. The one jail that was constructed in 1828 proved almost useless to hold prisoners;
anyone with sufficient strength could break through the walls, contraband including
alcohol was smuggled in, and those who did stay risked their lives with extreme heat,
dampness and moldy cells. To top off this sorry state, Federal soldiers often clashed with
the city police over who had jurisdiction.38
For the victims of the criminal justice system and for blacks in particular, Key
West offered a freedom unrealized almost anywhere else. Slavery did exist in Key West,
however, this was not due to overarching legal policies. Free blacks arriving in Key West
could retain their freedom and hire themselves out for work, earning their own money.
What slaves did work there were hired out to the Federal soldiers for doing manual labor,
35
Ibid.
Irvin D. Solomon and Grace Erhart, “Race and Civil War in South Florida,”
Florida Historical Quarterly 77, no. 3 (1999): 321.
37
Denham, A Rogue’s Paradise, 168.
38
Ibid., 156, 170, 174-175.
36
37
while the Federal government paid for housing and meals.39 With the exception perhaps
of living with the Seminoles, blacks in Key West enjoyed a level of autonomy not seen
anywhere else in the peninsula – even more so than free blacks living in Pensacola, who
unlike the blacks in Key West always ran the risk of being sold again into slavery by
either a terrible mistake or deliberate criminality. It should be pointed out that free blacks
were relatively safe on the key itself despite slave ships patrolling the coasts. In fact,
blacks serving in the Union Army had the unusual opportunity to make dents in the slave
trade; in 1860, two slave ships were captured and in turn greatly increased the black
population.40 The island also played host to the conflicts in the Seminole Wars; as late as
1857, the West-Florida Times printed a message from Key West regarding Federal
troops’ efforts to make peace with the Seminoles by posting white truce flags, flags
which the “savages” had taken down and in doing so refused to attend peace talks.41
Key West stands as a contrast to the rest of the Florida peninsula, a literal island
of semi-freedom next to a landmass of near-universal iniquity. Politically, Key West was
an extension of the Northern federal control in a state squarely in pro-slavery (and later,
Confederate) hands, so it is apt to include Key West as part of this study as it is
connected by the rest of the state both geographically and by a common history.
In the bigger picture, the relationship between those living in Key West and the
rest of the Florida was a power struggle mirrored on the larger stage of the nation itself;
as the country lurched towards civil war at the end of the 1850s, Key West grew larger in
importance as a destination for runaway slaves, and for the slaves that worked there
Solomon and Erhart, “Race and Civil War,” 324.
Ibid., 327, 329.
41
The West-Florida Times, January 6, 1857, in the University of Florida Digital
Collections. http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00048634/00001/2x (accessed May 14, 2015).
39
40
38
already, conditions were hard, but certainly no harder than anywhere else the might be
treated as slaves. In 1861, U.S. Congress passed the first of two confiscation acts, which
forced slave-owners to forfeit their human property should they be found aiding the
southern states. This act, combined with the second confiscation act and the
Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 proved practically useless but politically very
valuable, as the “states in rebellion” considered themselves a separate nation, at least
until 1865, and as such they believed the laws of a foreign government did not apply to
them. Still, the laws were politically valuable, and were undoubtedly seen as a rationale
for blacks to join the United States Colored Troops to fight against the Confederacy – this
became especially important after January 10th, 1861, as this was when Florida split from
the Union, becoming the third state to do so – freeing slaves in the process and fighting as
professionally trained soldiers.42
The social atmosphere on the island was not entirely for freedom either. In the
July 14, 1860 issue of the Key West newspaper Key of the Gulf, there is praise for
President Buchanan’s veto of the Homestead Bill. The newspaper, without an
accompanying author, describes the Homestead Bill as a “free-dirt, vote-yourself-a-farm
measure,” designed and argued for by Black Republicans for “electioneering” purposes. 43
The Homestead bill was designed to give family heads up to 160 acres of land for
a fixed value. Southern states had feared that a migration of persons, blacks in particular,
Solomon and Erhart, “Race and Civil War,” 338-339. While Black Union
troops fought with professionalism and tenacity in conflicts in Florida and elsewhere,
their role has been underemphasized. For more information on the roles of Black Union
troops in Florida during the Civil War, see Irvin D. S. Winsboro, “Give Them Their Due:
A Reassessment of African Americans and Union Military Service in Florida During the
Civil War,” The Journal of African American History 92, no. 3 (Summer 2007).
43
Key of the Gulf, July 14, 1860, in the University of Florida Digital Collections,
http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00048587/00003/2j (accessed May 14, 2015).
42
39
out of state would exhaust their own labor force and give rise to anti-slavery farmers and
more legislative weight in Congress.44 By describing the bill as giving land for free, when
in reality (had the bill passed) the land would be sold, the Key of the Gulf newspaper
makes its opinion known.
All throughout this period, Floridians both directly involved and not involved in
the Seminole Wars also contended with their effects. These conflicts provided a backdrop
to, and additional violence intermixed with daily living. There are three Seminole Wars
lasting from 1817 to 1858, respectively, with peace gaps in between. The Second and
Third Seminole Wars as well as the interim peace provides the best context in which to
study the violence towards blacks, particularly because blacks and Seminoles joined
together to fight the soldiers pushing farther into their domain.
The name of “Seminole” given to the conflict implies that the federal soldiers saw
the Seminoles as their enemy – this is not entirely the case, as the wars were fought in
part to reclaim runaways. Major General Jesup, the commander of the army in Florida,
stated that “it was a negro, not an Indian war.”45 Major General Jesup believed that his
actions were preventing a slave insurrection, caused by runaway slaves. The blacks
escaped their plantations to join the Seminoles and have a far greater degree of freedom,
and were willing to fight for it. Porter recounts that while the Seminoles purchased slaves
in the same manner that whites did, they had no concept or intention of human
US National Archives and Records Administration, “The Homestead Act of
1862,” http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/homestead-act/ (accessed May 14,
2015).
45
Kenneth Wiggins Porter, “Negroes and the Seminole War, 1835-1842,” The
Journal of Southern History 30, no. 4 (November, 1964): 427. For a more detailed
account of Major General Jesup’s role in the causes and conditions surrounding the
Seminole Wars, see Joe Knetsch, Florida's Seminole Wars, 1817-1858 (Charleston:
Arcadia Publishing, 2003).
44
40
ownership, and even allowed the blacks to live in their own houses, grow food and
cotton, herd and own livestock, provided the blacks gave them a ‘tribute’ of meat and
vegetables around the harvest time. These accounts, as well as the conditions of slaves in
the East Florida judicial district, who at the outset were seen to carry firearms on their
own to hunt for their owners’ food, fed the fears of a slave insurrection. The Seminole’s
refusal to part with their black “property” was the impetus for the Seminole Wars, which
occurred mainly in East Florida. The Seminoles had knowledge of bondage on
plantations, and because blacks were content to go about their own lives without
harassing their Seminole “owners” and provide them with food, the Seminoles did not
want to part with their allies. This, combined with the blacks’ refusal to return to their
plantations for fear of retribution, provided the impetus for the Federal soldiers to war
against the Seminoles. The Seminoles did not live in the path of white settlement, so
blacks chose to live with them. The blacks who fled plantations to live with the
Seminoles were, in the eyes of white planters, property that had gone missing and had to
be repossessed; slaves could not be imported from outside the country due to a series of
federal laws, and even if they could have, the blacks would continue to live with the
Seminoles and represent a threat. It is, as Porter states, a very likely rationale that the
Seminole Wars were fought to repossess slaves, not to exterminate or remove the
Seminoles themselves, although most of the Seminoles were eventually removed.
The fears of a slave rebellion were not entirely unfounded. Seminoles and their
black allies attacked a number of sugar cane plantations in the St. John’s valley in the
Eastern Florida judicial district towards the end of 1835, hoping to convince other slaves
working there to join them and drive the federal soldiers out. Initially they were
41
successful, with Seminoles and former slaves gaining more fighters from the plantations
in their drive towards St. Augustine. During this period, the Florida territorial legislature
passed a bill ordering that any black person found aiding the Seminoles would be sold
into slavery. Later in 1836, a group both of free and formerly enslaved blacks led by John
Caesar, a black Seminole, almost mounted a raid on St. Augustine itself, but the group
was trailed to its location and disrupted before the raid took place. It was two miles away
from the city, it was found the group had purchased items from local shops. It was
decided that such raids could not be allowed to continue, lest the whites were driven out
altogether along with property losses. This raid, along with other incidents during the
period, led to pressure on Federal soldiers to forcibly deport the Seminoles to areas west
of the Mississippi River, to split them from their black allies and to then return the blacks
to their plantation owners. As Porter writes, the blacks had found freedom among the
Seminoles, and were initially willing to fight with them against the whites. As time
passed, it became evident that the Federal government was set on Seminole removal
without allowing blacks to move with them, and it eventually was prudent to surrender on
the promise that both black and Seminole freedom were respected. While Jesup intended
to follow through with this promise in good faith, it was overridden, with the Seminoles
deported west and blacks being returned in large numbers to their former owners.46
By August of 1842, the Second Seminole War was over and what fighting
remained was reduced to small skirmishes, with the hardiest Seminoles left in the
swamps and hammocks far outside the white settlements. A peace period existed between
the whites and Seminoles until the Third Seminole War in 1855. Along the peninsula’s
46
Ibid., 427, 428, 431, 434, 435, 450.
42
frontier, the boundaries of which were constantly changing due to spreading white
settlement and surveying teams during the period, the area was ripe for violence. The
Seminoles were forced onto large reservations, however both whites and settlers crossed
the boundaries for personal gain.47 On the eve of the Third Seminole War, there were
several groups vying for control at the same time – white settlers, local militia members,
federal soldiers and the Seminoles, who wanted to keep inside their reservations. Joe
Knetsch believes the white settlers sent surveyors and soldiers into the Seminole
reservations to deliberately stir up trouble and thereby provoke a war, which eventually
came.
The Third Seminole War took place in southwest Florida, after the Seminoles had
moved away from the northeast corner, inside what is now the Everglades National Park
and Big Cypress Swamp.48 The Third Seminole War had no major battles but instead
roughly three years of wearing down the Seminoles’ resolve by forcing them to run from
Federal troops and white surveyors, with a modicum of response by the Seminoles for the
extent of their warring was sending occasional Seminole raiding parties into white
settlements. It began when Lieutenant George L. Hartsuff and his men attacked and
destroyed a banana grove used by Billy Bowlegs, the leader of the Seminole and black
allied forces in December 1855. The Battle of Peace River began on June 14, 1856 when
Seminoles attacked the Tillis household inside the Peace River Valley, and ended five
days later when the whites in the surrounding areas failed to find the Seminoles who
47
Joe Knetsch, Florida's Seminole Wars, 1817-1858 (Charleston: Arcadia
Publishing, 2003), 147.
48
Ibid., 151.
43
mounted the attack. 49 Whether these raiding parties were to acquire food, intimidate the
settlers or both is an open question.50
On May 7, 1858, the third and last Seminole War was over, with whites failing to
completely remove the Seminoles from their reservations, and with Billy Bowlegs
agreeing to leave the state. The rest of the Seminoles and black allies who evaded capture
fled to the Everglades, where some remain to this day. The string of conflicts started as a
black repatriation into slavery, but when blacks were returned to their overseers, the wars
then targeted the Seminoles for removal, due to political pressures to save face.51 This
three-way conflict between whites, blacks and the few remaining Seminoles created an
exceptionally violent frontier region. The fighting in the Second and particularly the
Third Seminole War took place very far away from the northern plantation belt. The
presence of Seminoles on the frontier allowed blacks to live a life almost of freedom,
which made the frontier less forbidding than it might otherwise had been. However, with
the Seminoles killed and driven out, these havens no longer afforded refuge, and the
frontier returned to its more violent state.
While the Third Seminole War was occurring, the nation lurched toward civil
war. As stated previously, the late 1850s saw both an increase in economic output and an
uptick in violence, particularly against blacks. According to William Watson Davis, the
Florida state Democratic Party’s campaign slogan for 1860 was: “Oppose the North,
which seeks the control of the national government to exclude slavery from the territories
49
Canter Brown, Jr., Florida's Peace River Frontier (Orlando: University of
Central Florida Press, 1991), 107, 114-115.
50
Knetsch, Florida's Seminole Wars, 151.
51
Ibid., 150-151.
44
and destroy it in the South [author’s emphasis].”52 This is a telling slogan when squared
with the historical record. Abraham Lincoln was elected as the sixteenth president in
1860, and had made clear in previous debates with Stephen Douglas that while he had
personal reservations against the practice (and never owned slaves himself), he would
allow slavery to exist provided the allowance would help avoid disunion. For Lincoln, at
least in his first term, the preservation of the Union from political and economic
destruction was the primary goal. He later issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863,
which disallowed slavery in the states in rebellion (with the effect of allowing slavery to
continue in states not overtly hostile to the Union, which included the so-called ‘border
states’). The Emancipation Proclamation was seen then as now as a political move,
because the Confederate states to which the Proclamation was directed considered
themselves a separate nation, and thus not subject to Union laws. Nevertheless, Lincoln’s
goal by 1863 had changed: rather than preserving the Union with slavery, he instead at
least claimed to want to destroy slavery in the South and everywhere else. This was to
bolster his 1864 reelection bid. A New York Times article published originally on
November 9, 1863, echoed the public sentiment that the war was “not a war for the
Union, but a war for the nigger.”53
It is telling that prior to any of these events coming to pass and prior to Lincoln’s
election or saying anything contrary, that Florida State Democratic Party members
believed slavery was under attack both in Florida and in the western territories. Davis
correctly sees the late 1850s Democratic Florida State legislature and the Democratic
52
Davis, The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida, 38.
“The Adminitration and the War [sic],” The New York Times, November 9,
1863, http://www.nytimes.com/1863/11/09/news/the-adminitration-and-the-war.html
(accessed May 14, 2015).
53
45
governor antagonizing one another, which in turn antagonized the general public.54
Although he offers no citations, Davis claims that vigilant committees were formed, by
their own statements, to keep law and order in the towns they visited, but instead carried
out extra-legal violence against those not supporting a Southern secessionist mindset. He
relates the story in July of 1860 where a father and son known for expressing more
moderate views were fired upon in their own home, with the father badly wounded. No
end of that story is given.55 As the state moved closer towards the Civil War, even the
long-standing progressive mindset of Spanish Floridians began to give way to harsher
laws and general paranoia – moderate voices, including those who wanted Florida to
remain in the Union, were sometimes violently retaliated against, and blacks, who had
always occupied the lowest of the social ladder’s rungs in most places, were the targets of
that violence more than most.
54
55
Davis, The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida, 38.
Ibid., 43.
46
Data Analysis in Historical Perspective
The introduction in this study posited the question of whether or not the frontier
of antebellum Florida nature contributed to violence against blacks. Part of answering
this question relies on numeric analyses, specifically the surviving records on said
violence. Several things must be borne in mind: many records did not survive the march
of time, and records pertaining to antebellum Florida are particularly susceptible to this
truth. During the early twentieth century, there was a series of fires consuming county
buildings and libraries where official records were kept, destroying a number of records
this study and others would find useful. The picture is obscured further when, as Harris
states in her master’s thesis, slave owners during the period sought to suppress news of
slave escapes and other violence-related situations so as not to project weakness, or a lack
of control over their human property. Errors and lacunas in the original documents,
whether due to carelessness or deliberate obfuscation, exemplified in the Seminole
practice of disallowing white surveyors to count the blacks within Seminole territories,
also exist.56
Despite these handicaps, it is still possible to analyze the surviving information in
a number of ways and reach reasonable conclusions. The data itself is drawn from a
number of sources. The U.S. federal government, as per its constitutional obligations,
conducted the census once every ten years. The national censuses were and are, by their
nature, the most thorough enumeration of persons during the period, and for this study the
census data for 1840, 1850 and 1860 are used. The State of Florida conducted its own
censuses starting in 1845, its first statehood year. This study will use the census years
56
Klos, “Blacks and the Seminole Removal Debate, 1821-1835,” 56.
47
from 1845 and 1855. Prof. Denham’s list of homicides, found at the Ohio State
University Criminal Justice and Research Center, provides the main data base on which
the study rests.
Despite the aforementioned state of surviving records, the homicide database
contains over 400 different cases of violence, spanning the nineteenth century from
around the peninsula and “panhandle” region, bridging the time between the peninsula as
territory and state. The population and homicide data are in the following analyses
grouped by county. Counties themselves were repeatedly absorbed and broken into
smaller counties, becoming more numerous as time passed. Cases in point are Dade and
Monroe Counties – once encompassing most of the lower half of the peninsula in the
nineteenth century, they now covers smaller portions, sharing the land they once covered
with Lee, Collier and Hendry Counties today. The full list of homicides Prof. Denham
has prepared contains listings that lie outside the time range for this study, and are
therefore excluded. Many of the listings do not have a definite race of victim, so those
listings are also excluded. Only the listings which have a definite race of the victim as
black that lie inside the time range are counted.
This forms the list of homicides under consideration in this study. This list of
homicides is also analyzed in conjunction with the amount of land inside each county
itself – the one database of homicides is compared against the database of county land
areas to create ratios providing a contrast between the number of deaths and the amount
of land in each county. Some clarifying remarks are in order before the models are
presented so as to prevent a misinterpretation of the mathematical and statistical analyses.
As mentioned before, correlation never equals causation – no matter how tempting it
48
might be to believe that one variable has any influence on another simply because it is
presented in the same model, this temptation must be avoided. In his Antifragile: Things
that Gain from Disorder, statistician Nassim Taleb states it is best to frankly admit the
unknown when it comes to data sets, and goes even further in stating that one of the
better uses for mathematics, and by extension statistics, is to explain the unknown
portions of data. He also states that it is unnecessary to provide a theory for correlations,
particularly with ratios and other comparative types of measurements, although there is
nothing wrong in making intelligent guesses. Most importantly, however, is that one
cannot mistake the unknown for the nonexistent.57 Court records are a prime example for
avoiding this trap – many dates the courts were in session are missing, so the activities
that took place on those days are unknown, but we cannot assume that no activity took
place at all. Alas, we can use what is known to infer the likelihood of what could have
occurred during the periods devoid of data as I have attempted to do herein.
One of the hurdles in interpreting these data is determining which counties
comprise the frontier and which comprise the plantation belt. Because this determination
is to a degree subjective, several county groupings are considered. Counties are arranged
in different ways to allow for differing definitions of the frontier and plantation belt. Each
county belonged to a judicial district during the period, of which there were the Western,
Middle, Eastern and Southern judicial districts. In Denham’s A Rogue’s Paradise and
other sources these regions are sometimes referred to as West Florida, Middle Florida,
Eastern and Southern Florida, but the meaning is the same. These judicial districts were
formed usually around geophysical boundaries such as rivers. The Western Florida
57
Nassim Taleb, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder (New York:
Random House, 2012), 23, 372.
49
judicial district was bound by the Perdido River to the west and the Apalachicola River to
the east. The Middle Florida judicial district was bound by the Apalachicola River to the
west and the Suwanee River to the east. The Eastern Florida judicial district was bound
by the Suwanee River to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and by the southern
borders of Sumter and Orange Counties to the south. The Southern Florida judicial
district contains the rest of the peninsula, terminating in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf
of Mexico. County sizes are also taken into account, and are compared against county
populations and homicide records to determine correlations, if any.
The first analysis is called the “Border Peninsular” analysis: that is, the Western,
Eastern and Southern judicial districts will be considered the “frontier,” and the
remaining district is the Plantation Belt. In this analysis, Western, Eastern and Southern
judicial districts bundled into the “frontier.” The panhandle is significant because most
large plantations are located in the Middle Florida judicial district. In the other districts,
while there are plantations, they are much smaller, have fewer slaves, and are not as
densely placed together than in Middle Florida. This would be a more likely of the two
analysis scenarios to see where the “frontier” begins. The following table is of the
“Border Peninsular” analysis.
50
Region
Decade
Frontier
Frontier
Frontier
Plantation
Plantation
Plantation
1840
1850
1860
1840
1850
1860
Border Peninsular Analysis
Total
Total
Percentage of Black Homicides to Total
Black
Blacks
Black Population by Region
Homicides
20
10,275
0.19%
56
39,596
0.14%
52
52,838
0.10%
12
16,038
0.07%
20
45,278
0.04%
4
29,538
0.01%
The above table contains the frontier region (defined as the Western, Eastern and
Southern judicial district counties) and the Plantation Belt (defined as the Middle Florida
judicial district counties.) For each region type, there are three rows, each for one census
year. The census years 1840, 1850 and 1860 were the closest chosen to the timeframe.
The column showing “Total Black Homicides” is derived from Denham’s data. It is
important to note that from Denham’s data only the crimes for which the victim’s race
was known were taken into account – most of the records from his data set listed the race
of the victim as unknown – and for each referenced census year, only the crimes for
which the victim was definitely known between that year and one year before the next
census was taken is in the chart. For example, in the first row for the frontier region, the
census year is 1840 – the column for Total Black Homicides only lists black victims
between 1840 and 1849. No other information is counted in this column.
For the column “Total Blacks,” numbers are computed from the referenced census
year by adding up both the free and enslaved blacks per the census records on the
Historical Census website. The percentage of black homicides in the final column is
computed by dividing the value of the third column into the value of the fourth column.
From the table, the number of black homicides relative to the total black populations is
51
low in all rows. However, in this particularly defined “frontier” region, the violence
against blacks in both absolute terms and percentages is higher in all three instances.
Without the large number of planters owning large numbers of slaves, slaves found it
more difficult to seek “refuge” in sparse, smaller plantations. It should also be noted that
slaves were given more relative autonomy in the Western, Eastern and Southern districts
– some were afforded firearms for road travel, however, in travelling those remote roads
they were subjected to banditry and attacks all the same. One will notice a significant
drop in the number of blacks listed in the defined Plantation Belt for 1860; this is due to a
migration of blacks to other regions, most notable of which is to the Frontier Regions in
1860, as explained by Linsin.58
The next analysis is of the “Southern Frontier” region. The homicide and census
data are identical, however, only the Southern judicial district is considered the
“frontier,” while the three others are considered the “Plantation Belt.”
Region
Decade
Southern Frontier Analysis
Total Black Total Blacks
Homicides
Frontier
Plantation
Plantation
Plantation
1860
1840
1850
1860
8
32
76
48
1,455
26,313
84,874
80,921
Percentage of Black
Homicides to Total District
Black Population
0.55%
0.12%
0.09%
0.06%
This table displays lower absolute numbers for black homicides for the defined
“frontier” but a higher percentage, relative to the total number of blacks. In the defined
“Plantation Belt” there is an appreciable spike in homicides in 1850, after which there is a
decline in 1860. In all three “Plantation Belt” decade periods, the percentage of black
58
Linsin, “Skilled Slave Labor in Florida,” 188.
52
homicides is far lower than the “frontier” region. One contention is that because the
absolute number of homicides for the “frontier” is lower, this proves at least in this
instance that the frontier is less violent than the plantation belt. Two points are in order: it
must be stated that in the “Southern Frontier” analysis, only the Southern judicial district
is counted as the frontier, and in the data Denham provides there are no homicides against
blacks in any Southern judicial district county prior to 1860. This does not mean that no
homicides occurred; it only means there are no records.
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, particularly in light of
antebellum Florida’s poor surviving records collection. Denham and Roth stated in their
analysis that one must make “strong assumptions” mathematically with regard to data
extrapolation to determine what, if any, trends exist.59 The methods of analyses herein do
not rely on assumption, and only compute homicides for which the victim’s race is
known. It should be clarified that even in these records there is some chance that the
victim’s race is improperly recorded, although the chance of this is minimal given the
low number relative to the whole list.
The “Border Peninsular” and “Southern frontier” analysis tables are compared
together. In all of the rows in both tables, the black population rises each year, with the
exception of what is considered the frontier in the “Southern frontier” analysis. This drop
in population may be explained by the migration of blacks to other parts of the state. In
both tables, deaths of blacks as a percentage of the total black population are lower in the
defined Plantation belt region, although the numbers as absolute values are higher.
James Denham and Randolph Roth, “Why Was Antebellum Florida
Murderous? A Quantitative Analysis of Homicide in Florida, 1821-1861.” Florida
Historical Quarterly 86, no. 2 (2007): 218.
59
53
There is yet another way to analyze the homicide data. Denham’s data have the
homicides categorized by county, and as such tables can be constructed on said data.
What follows is a table on black homicides by county in the “Border Peninsular” mode.
Border Peninsular Analysis - Black Homicide Victims by Region, District, County
Region
Judicial District
County
Homicides
Frontier
Eastern
Alachua
3
Columbia
1
DuVal
3
Marion
4
Nassau
4
Orange
2
St. Johns
1
Southern
Monroe
1
Hernando
1
Hillsborough
1
Western
Calhoun
1
Escambia
4
Jackson
7
Santa Rosa
1
Plantation Belt
Middle
Gadsden
1
Jefferson
4
Leon
6
Madison
2
Wakulla
1
Several things are apparent in this table. First, the absolute number of black
victims is higher in the delineated “frontier” region. The highest absolute number of all
lies in Jackson County in the Western judicial district. The highest number in the Middle
Florida judicial district lies in Leon County. All of the Southern judicial district counties
tie with one another for black homicide victims, with one each. It bears repeating, as
Denham does in A Rogue’s Paradise, that these data are obtained from the records left,
and it is plausible to assert that more deaths actually occurred than are stated in the
records.
54
Several counties are worth scrutinizing further, beginning with Jackson County.
The county, while not the seat of slavery as were the counties in the Middle Florida
Plantation Belt, nevertheless had the most fertile grounds in the circuit, and was therefore
home to many slaves. Marianna, the largest city in the county, was described by locals as
a violent place infested with drunks and brawlers at least until 1841, when most people
found religion of some sort.60 In addition, at least one judge was seen by observers as
lacking in his willingness to prosecute crimes. The only other major city in this district
was Pensacola with a scattering of small settlements around them. It is plausible to say
that Jackson County would be, more or less, on the “border” between the plantation belt
and the frontier region of Florida, between the more settled Middle Circuit and the rest of
the panhandle. As in the southern judicial circuit, the large towns were separated by large
tracts of wilderness and swamps, making crime easy and tracking criminals difficult.
The second highest black victim rate was in Leon County, in the Middle Florida
judicial circuit. This is not surprising, because Leon County was not only the agricultural
center of the Middle Florida’s plantation belt – and therefore had the highest number of
slaves in the state, at least on the eve of the Civil War – but was also described, like many
localities in the state, as being wracked by violence and mayhem. The violence and
associated criminality were so rampant it prompted a visiting preacher in 1841 to
pronounce a recently visited plague as a blessing, because so many scofflaws had died.61
With a higher number of blacks in the county, they were often seen as targets. Although
the slaves enjoyed some protection as a property asset of their owners, the owner could
not protect them at all times in all places and as before although there is a higher absolute
60
61
Denham, A Rogue’s Paradise, 41.
Ibid., 41, 154.
55
number of deaths, percentage wise it is lower. A simple sum of the deaths in the frontier
region in this mode is also higher than the sum of the deaths in the plantation belt region.
This next table shows the “Southern Frontier” analysis mode, this time broken
down by county:
Southern Frontier Analysis – Black Homicide Victims by Region, District, County
Region
Judicial District
County
Homicides
Frontier
Southern
Monroe
1
Hernando
1
Hillsborough
1
Plantation Belt
Eastern
Alachua
3
Columbia
1
DuVal
3
Marion
4
Nassau
4
Orange
2
St. Johns
1
Middle
Gadsden
1
Jefferson
4
Leon
6
Madison
2
Wakulla
1
Western
Calhoun
1
Escambia
4
Jackson
7
Santa Rosa
1
The absolute number of deaths is lowest in the Southern judicial districts, all tied
for one death per county. All of the other counties, grouped here in the Plantation Belt,
have at least one, but typically more deaths. It is tempting to say that because more blacks
were killed in this Plantation Belt that this would refute the idea that the frontier was
more hostile to blacks during this period, but this is not the case: as before, a higher
absolute number of blacks were killed in the Middle Florida judicial district, but the
Southern Frontier analysis only treats the Southern judicial district as the “frontier,” and
this setting is a weak grouping – much weaker than the “Border Peninsular” analysis,
56
because the Western and Eastern judicial districts themselves were transition zones
between the Middle Florida judicial district and the real frontier. In either analysis, a
higher percentage of blacks were killed in the frontier region, so whether the frontier is
defined as a grouping of arbitrarily drawn districts, or as real geography, blacks faced
more violence on the open frontier than being in the plantation belt. Both environs were
dangerous, and in both environs blacks faced racially-motivated killings – save for the
few who endeavored to teach them reading, writing, etc., at risk to their own selves, or
allow them to escape.
Mode
Border Peninsular
Comparison: Border Peninsular vs Southern Frontier
Region
Race
Deaths
Frontier Region
Black
34
White
146
Plantation Belt
Black
14
White
80
Frontier Region
Black
3
White
28
Plantation Belt
Black
45
White
198
In the above table, the Border Peninsular and Southern Frontier analyses are
compared directly. In all cases, regardless of district or defined region, white deaths are
higher than black deaths. This might be explained by the gross underreporting of antiblack crimes. In the frontier region people were scattered across a large landscape, and
there more whites than blacks in the southern frontier region (in contrast to Leon County,
where blacks outnumbered whites). In picking targets to fight, either because a specific
person caused a specific grievance, or because someone just happened to be present to be
assaulted, there was a higher probability that the target will be white simply because there
are more whites to be found.
57
Another reason for this is that in the Southern judicial district, the blacks were
concentrated either in Key West (under Federal naval control by 1828) or Pensacola, and
so whites living anywhere had fewer blacks to target. And even if whites were living in
those towns, it was probable that either the black person was working under government
protection of a sort, or the physical property of another, the owner would exact swift
justice for damaging their chattel. In the “Border Peninsular” mode, which is closer to the
physical reality of what might be considered the “frontier” and Plantation Belt, violence
against whites and blacks alike was higher in the frontier region, because in this region
sparse settlement allowed for lax enforcement of laws, although enforcement could also
be lax in the plantation belt as well.
58
Generalized Count of Executions (Death Sentences) by County - Blacks and Whites
County
Race
Executions
Monroe
Black
0
White
3
Alachua
Black
0
White
9
DuVal
Black
0
White
9
Escambia
Black
3
White
18
Franklin
Black
0
White
6
Gadsden
Black
0
White
3
Jefferson
Black
0
White
3
Liberty
Black
0
White
1
Madison
Black
0
White
9
Wakulla
Black
0
White
4
The above table is a simple count of the executions (sentences of death) imposed
by state-recognized courts. The black deaths in Escambia can be explained because the
records in Escambia County during this time are remarkably complete, and also because
Escambia County is home to Pensacola, a city with free blacks, second only to Key West.
The far end of the Western judicial district can also be described as a partial frontier
region. The white deaths can also be described in much the same way, in particular with
Pensacola being a large trading city, and thus a crossroads of different businesses and
people producing additional opportunities for contact and violence.
59
Assailants by Race by County as a Percentage of Total Slaves Where Victim was Black
County
Race
Percentage
Alachua
Black
0.128
White
0.256
Columbia
Black
1.003
White
0.000
DuVal
Black
0.014
White
0.007
Escambia
Black
0.024
White
0.040
Franklin
Black
0.174
White
0.174
Gadsden
Black
0.000
White
0.167
Jefferson
Black
0.250
White
0.000
Liberty
Black
1.000
White
0.000
Madison
Black
0.225
White
0.112
Monroe
Black
0.000
White
0.019
Wakulla
Black
0.000
White
0.003
The above table displays wrongdoers grouped by race by their respective
counties. Columbia and Liberty counties each have one percent of the total slave
population as a black criminal. Columbia County is in the Eastern judicial district,
whereas Liberty County is in the Middle Florida judicial district. Both counties only had
one major town; Columbia had the town of Alligator (now renamed Lake City) and
Liberty County had the town of Ricoes Bluff.62 Liberty County had the largest and most
The University of South Florida’s Center for Instructional Technology, “Florida
maps - county,” http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/maps/galleries/county/index.htm (accessed May
14, 2015). This web page has high-resolution color scans of earlier maps of Florida
counties, including those which no longer exist due to county boundary revisions.
62
60
notorious group of regulators, who travelled the state engaging in all kinds of crimes, but
regulator groups were composed of whites, not blacks. The presence of regulators does
not explain the spike in black-on-black crime in this county. Liberty County has the same
dearth of information; nothing in this county would explain the increase of black-onblack crime, with the exception that blacks in these cases were targeted not because of
institutionalized racism, but rather because of personal grievances.
Assailants by Race by County as a Percentage of Free Whites Where Victim was Black
County
Race
Percentage
Alachua
Black
0.002
White
0.003
Columbia
Black
0.002
White
0.000
DuVal
Black
0.003
White
0.002
Escambia
Black
0.004
White
0.006
Franklin
Black
0.003
White
0.003
Gadsden
Black
0.000
White
0.001
Jefferson
Black
0.001
White
0.000
Liberty
Black
0.002
White
0.000
Madison
Black
0.003
White
0.002
Monroe
Black
0.000
White
0.003
Wakulla
Black
0.000
White
0.002
The above table shows the number of black victims as a percentage of the free white
population, broken down into black and white assailants. In other words, this table like
the previous one shows both white-on-black and black-on-black crime. Each county with
61
the highest percentage of black victims is in a different judicial district; however, both
have coastal cities – Escambia County with Pensacola and Franklin County with
Apalachicola. With the exception of their two largest cities, both counties were sparsely
populated.
Assailants by Race by County as a Percentage of Total Population For Black Victims
County
Race
Percentage
Alachua
Black
0.001
White
0.002
Columbia
Black
0.001
White
0.000
DuVal
Black
0.001
White
0.001
Escambia
Black
0.002
White
0.003
Franklin
Black
0.002
White
0.002
Gadsden
Black
0.000
White
0.000
Jefferson
Black
0.000
White
0.000
Liberty
Black
0.001
White
0.000
Madison
Black
0.001
White
0.001
Monroe
Black
0.000
White
0.002
Wakulla
Black
0.000
White
0.001
The above table is a sum of the two previous tables; that is, the race of the
criminals is broken down by county in which the victim was black. Admittedly, the
percentages in the preceding three tables are low, but black populations, especially in
Middle Florida are relatively large. There is no pattern among the data presented;
however as before Escambia and Franklin counties lead the list in violence. There are
62
also counties, such as Gadsden County, in which no blacks reportedly committed crimes
against blacks, and Liberty County where the opposite is true, there were no reported
white assailants. Although there are no discernible patterns in these data otherwise, the
tables do demonstrate that the counties most associated with the frontier – or those
straddling the line between plantation belt and frontier – witnessed the most violence
against blacks.
Rather than using geographical boundaries, one may also analyze the data based
on actual plantation settlement. In Julia Floyd Smith’s Slavery and Plantation Growth in
Antebellum Florida, 1821-1860, a map is provided showing plantations plotted against
county lines.63 As before, the “plantation belt” may be defined as the area between the
Suwanee and Apalachicola Rivers, and while this is correct, it is also an ambiguous local
point on the landscape. Plotting plantation sites against county lines reveal a plantation
belt that consumed all of Jackson, Gadsden, Leon, Madison, Hamilton and Suwanee
Counties, and portions of Jefferson, Alachua, and Marion Counties. According to this
map, large planters halted their advance southward below Marion County, only
populating the northern half of that county.
The same halfway northernmost population also holds true for Jefferson County.
Referring again to Denham’s homicide data, the number of black victims between 1845
and 1861 for all counties in Smith’s delineation of the plantation belt is nineteen. The
total number of black homicide victims for all other counties in the same time period is
seventeen. It is worth remembering that Denham’s data must be paired with the fact of
less than perfect recording, sensationalized reporting, and simple human error. Even so,
63
Smith, Slavery and Plantation Growth, 13.
63
as the analyses here suggest, certain conclusions about anti-black violence in the
antebellum regions of Florida are attainable through comparative data analyses. Although
the historical record is incomplete on this subject, it is partially extant and it is partially
suggestive of violence of the era under study here.
64
An Analysis of Middle Florida Slave and Land Records
In Julia Floyd Smith’s Slavery and Plantation Growth in Antebellum Florida,
1821-1860, there is an Appendix B which lists the planters she found owning thirty or
more slaves for the Middle Florida counties of Alachua, Gadsden, Hamilton, Jackson,
Jefferson, Lafayette, Leon, Liberty, Madison and Marion Counties from the mid-1850s to
the early 1860s. While the information is interesting in itself to those looking for numeric
data on wealthy planters, it becomes especially useful when paired with county land area
estimates and population figures. Smith reports that she found the information on planters
from period county tax rolls, the county land area estimates come from the
aforementioned Florida: Atlas of Historical County Boundaries and the population
numbers come from the University of Michigan’s Interuniversity Consortium for Political
and Social Research (ICPSR) database. The county tax rolls have the planter’s names as
well as the number of acres and slaves they owned. Because Smith only selected for her
book the planters who owned more than thirty slaves, and apparently did not select
planters based on other criteria, there were certainly others listed in the tax rolls who
owned fewer numbers of slaves or smaller plantations. However, owning thirty or more
slaves and managing in some cases thousands of acres of plantation land was by no
means inexpensive, so Smith has provided a list of wealthy planters not planters in
general. Certainly there were poorer whites who owned a smaller number of slaves or
none at all, but the census and planter owner records suggest a system reminiscent of
feudal Europe, where most of the serfs were in allegiance with a small number of wealthy
landowners. In this way, the slave-to-planter population is pyramid-shaped – a small
number of wealthy planters owned most of the district’s slaves.
65
The analysis functions as follows: the planters were sorted by county, and within
each county the number of slaves and acres were totaled. The Alachua County of 1860,
for example, had 2,430 slaves working on a total of 79,514 acres. Dividing the number of
slaves into the number of acres yields the proportion of slaves to acres. Dividing 79,514
by 2,430 yields 3.06 percent. In other words, each slave worked on average 3.06 percent
of the land in Alachua County, although the obvious must be restated in saying that the
number of slaves differed per plantation – they were not divided equally. The next step is
to find the percentage of county land area worked by slaves – to do this, the total number
of acres owned by planters is divided into the total county land area. For Alachua County,
the 79,514 acres owned by planters in Smith’s list is divided into the 883,200 acres
indicated as the county size as per the county land atlas to yield roughly nine percent that is, planters owned roughly nine percent of the total land inside the county. The step
after that is to find the ratio of the number of slaves to the total land area inside the
county, including both the land owned and not owned by said planters. For Alachua
County, this means dividing the 2,430 slaves by 883,200 acres to yield 0.28 percent.
In other words in an equal distribution of land per slave, each slave would work
on average 0.28 percent of the total land area. The step after that is to find the ratio of the
total population to the total land area within the county. For Alachua County, this means
dividing 8,232 persons (the total, including whites, slaves and all others as per the ICPSR
database) by the 883,200 acres to yield 0.93 percent - that is, is the land was divided
equally for each person, he or she would have 0.93 percent of the total land to
themselves. One finding is that the ratio of slaves to land and the percentage of county
land worked by slaves vary proportionally to one another – that is, as the number of
66
slaves increases on all the plantations, so too does it increase in the county as a whole. It
would not make sense otherwise.
These simple arithmetic exercises are built into ratios of ratios, giving a metaanalysis. Some results appear, with the most striking results appearing in Leon County.
By taking the previously computed ratio of the total county population and total county
land area and dividing it into the previously computed ratio of the total county slaves and
total county land area, a new ratio of total population to total slaves is derived. The two
previous ratios share a common trait of total county land area, and just as with arithmetic,
when one divides fractions with common denominators, the common denominators
cancel out, leaving only the different terms.
For Leon County’s case, the new ratio of total population to slaves is roughly
2.46. In other words, there were roughly 2.46 total persons to every one slave. As a
hypothetical situation, if the total number of persons equaled the total number of slaves,
with no other persons existing inside the county, then the ratio would be one person to
one slave. Leon County has one of the smallest factors of total populations to slaves in all
the Middle Florida district counties surveyed. What makes this remarkable is that it also
has by far the highest percentage of county land worked by slaves – that is, the highest
percentage expressed by the total number of owned acres divided by the total county land
area, at roughly 31.29 percent. Leon County planters owned 31.29 percent of the total
435,200 acres within the county lines. The other surveyed counties have the same
inverses of factors, but with smaller differences. A chart with all the counties surveyed
follows.
67
County
Plantation
Acres
Slaves
Slaves to
Acres Ratio
County
Land Area
Percentage
of County
Land
Worked by
Slaves
Slave to
County
Land Ratio
Total
Population
(via
ICPSR)
Population
to County
Land Ratio
Alachua
79,514
2,430
3.06%
883,200
9.00%
0.28%
8,232
0.93%
Gadsden
74,464
1,994
2.68%
339,200
21.95%
0.59%
9,396
2.77%
Hamilton
12,790
407
3.18%
332,800
3.84%
0.12%
4,154
1.25%
Jackson
77,028
2,445
3.17%
608,000
12.67%
0.40%
10,209
1.68%
Jefferson
106,728
3,441
3.22%
396,800
26.90%
0.87%
9,876
2.49%
Lafayette
5,162
297
5.75%
819,200
0.63%
0.04%
2,068
0.25%
136,165
5,022
3.69%
435,200
31.29%
1.15%
12,343
2.84%
Liberty
10,160
137
1.35%
544,000
1.87%
0.03%
1,457
0.27%
Madison
51,445
1,713
3.33%
454,400
11.32%
0.38%
7,779
1.71%
27,133
1,017
3.75%
1,132,800
2.40%
0.09%
8,609
0.76%
Leon
Marion
One final way remains to analyze Smith’s data. In the previous method, ratios of
ratios were constructed to create a meta-analysis. This methodology is continued with the
same data but with the additional step of building a new ratio of total county land area
versus homicides, and planter-owner plantation acreage versus homicides – in effect
determining the number of murders for which blacks are victims per unit of space in
private and public hands. This may seem to be a strange way of analyzing the data:
modern news broadcasts, for example, do not typically state the number of murders per
neighborhood per acre. However, this new ratio yields a number of separate conclusions.
To continue as before with Alachua County, there are three homicides for which
the race of the victim has been verified as black from Denham’s homicide list. As
repeated before, the list Denham has prepared has hundreds of entries, most of which do
not list the race of victim or perpetrator – meaning that many more victims might be
black – but there are three verifiably black homicide victims. Private planters owned
79,514 acres at the time surveyed in the tax rolls, so by diving the number of acres by the
number of homicides – dividing 79,514 by three – the result is roughly 26,504.7. In other
68
words, there is one homicide where the victim is verifiably black per 26,504.7 acres of
planter lands. The operation for Jackson County, as another example, is repeated – there
are seven homicide victims whose race if definitely black, which when divided into the
77,028 acres held by planters, gives 11,004. In other words, there is one murder for which
the victim is definitely black for every 11,004 acres. In Jackson County during this
period, murders were more common per unit of area than Alachua, making Jackson
County a statistically more dangerous place than other counties to live for blacks.
This same exercise is repeated by dividing the number of verifiably black
homicide victims into the number of total acres within a county, which includes both
private and public lands. For Alachua County, the three black homicide victims are
divided into the 883,200 acres of total land, giving 294,400. In other words, in Alachua
County one black person was murdered for every 294,400 acres. For Jackson County, the
seven black homicides are divided into the 608,000 acres, giving roughly 86,857.1. In
other words, one black person was murdered for 86,857 acres. Here again, statistically
speaking, Jackson County is a more dangerous place for blacks to live than in bordering
counties.
In the Border Peninsular analysis mode, where all counties in the Eastern,
Southern and Western judicial districts are considered the ‘frontier,’ and only the Middle
Florida judicial district is considered the Plantation Belt, the finding is again confirmed.
The table for this analysis mode follows.
69
County
Plantation
Acres
Slave
Tally
County
Land
Area
2,445
Slave
to
Acres
Ratio
3.17%
Total
Pop.
from
ICPSR
10,209
Murders
for Black
Victims
608,000
Slave
to Co.
Land
Ratio
0.40%
Jackson
77,028
Marion
27,133
1,017
Alachua
79,514
Madison
Liberty
7
Frontier
Region
11,004.00
86,857.14
3.75%
1,132,800
0.09%
8,609
4
Frontier
Region
6,783.25
283,200.00
2,430
3.06%
883,200
0.28%
8,232
3
Frontier
Region
26,504.67
294,400.00
51,445
1,713
3.33%
454,400
0.38%
7,779
2
Plantation
Belt
25,722.50
227,200.00
10,160
137
1.35%
544,000
0.03%
1,457
136,165
5,022
3.69%
435,200
1.15%
12,343
22,694.17
72,533.33
Lafayette
5,162
297
5.75%
819,200
0.04%
2,068
Jefferson
106,728
3,441
3.22%
396,800
0.87%
9,876
26,682.00
99,200.00
Hamilton
12,790
407
3.18%
332,800
0.12%
4,154
Gadsden
74,464
1,994
2.68%
339,200
0.59%
9,396
74,464.00
339,200.00
Leon
Region
Plantation
Acres Per
Homicide
All County
Land Per
Homicide
Plantation
Belt
6
Plantation
Belt
Plantation
Belt
4
Plantation
Belt
Plantation
Belt
1
Plantation
Belt
Some counties do not have homicide counts, nor do they have ratios for plantation or
public land holdings per homicide. This is because some of the counties Smith surveyed
in her tax rolls do not have verifiably black homicide victim data available as per
Denham’s list.
The next subject of analysis is the Southern Frontier mode. This produces an
anomalous result: due to the previously described methods of categorizing districts as the
Plantation Belt or the frontier, as it happens, all the counties surveyed by Smith under the
Southern Frontier mode fall into the plantation belt. Thus, one cannot compare to any
70
other counties which are in the frontier because no frontier counties exist. The chart is
included for completeness’ sake.
County
Plant’n.
Acres
Slave
Tally
Jackson
77,028
2,445
Slave
to
Acres
Ratio
3.17%
Madison
51,445
1,713
Liberty
10,160
Total
Pop.
(ICPSR)
Murders
for Black
Victims
608,000
Slave
to Co.
Land
Ratio
0.40%
10,209
7
Plantation
Belt
11,004.00
86,857.14
3.33%
454,400
0.38%
7,779
2
Plantation
Belt
25,722.50
227,200.00
137
1.35%
544,000
0.03%
1,457
136,165
5,022
3.69%
435,200
1.15%
12,343
22,694.17
72,533.33
Lafayette
5,162
297
5.75%
819,200
0.04%
2,068
Jefferson
106,728
3,441
3.22%
396,800
0.87%
9,876
26,682.00
99,200.00
Hamilton
12,790
407
3.18%
332,800
0.12%
4,154
Gadsden
74,464
1,994
2.68%
339,200
0.59%
9,396
1
Plantation
Belt
74,464.00
339,200.00
Marion
27,133
1,017
3.75%
1,132,800
0.09%
8,609
4
Plantation
Belt
6,783.25
283,200.00
Alachua
79,514
2,430
3.06%
883,200
0.28%
8,232
3
Plantation
Belt
26,504.67
294,400.00
Leon
County
Land
Area
Region
Plantation
Acres Per
Homicide
All County
Land Per
Homicide
Plantation
Belt
6
Plantation
Belt
Plantation
Belt
4
Plantation
Belt
Plantation
Belt
71
An Analysis of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Burial Records
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church has an interesting history that comes to us from
Works Progress Administration surveys conducted in 1940. Within this institution remain
the few surviving primary sources of information to be had from Key West during the
period. The church was established, at least in spirit, in 1831 when the first mass of
Episcopal congregants celebrated Christmas Day in the Monroe County courthouse.
Although non-denomination religious services were held since Americans first settled
there, it was only in 1831 that it became the first formal church established on Key
West.64 The first church buildings were constructed in 1839, destroyed in 1846 by a
hurricane, destroyed a second time in 1886 by a large fire that consumed “practically
half of Key West,” and destroyed a third time by another hurricane in 1909. The church
was built again in 1914.65
The reason this church history and burial data are included in the study is that it
was most likely the first formal church established in Key West, and has existed in some
form or another and kept detailed records of locals from the early 1830s until the present
day, encompassing the whole period under study. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church burial
records contained in the Monroe County Library vault indicate that there were 229 deaths
from 1840 to 1861. As with other data of this era, and despite efforts scrutinizing the
original documents while in the Monroe County public library vault in Key West, some
The University of South Florida’s Center for Instructional Technology,
“Exploring Florida Documents: Key West: Episcopal Church,”
http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/docs/k/keys05.htm (accessed May 14, 2015). This page contains
excerpts of Jefferson B. Browne’s book Key West: The Old and the New, published in
1912.
65
Florida Department of State Division of Library and Information Services,
“Florida Memory – Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church,”
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/250006?id=1 (accessed May 14, 2015).
64
72
data points are incomplete while a few entries have to be somewhat guessed at. Though
not all of the deaths are of blacks, the records give both the race and the cause of death.
Of the 229 death records, thirteen are of blacks. This does not mean that none of
the remaining 229 people were non-blacks, for in many cases race was not noted. It is
unclear if race by omission meant that the person was not black, or it simply meant that
no one took the time to make mention. Of the thirteen blacks that are noted in the death
record, only one died of unnatural causes that can be attributed to violence. Namely, this
black person’s stated cause of death was “murder.” Of the remaining twelve blacks, all
either died of natural causes (e.g., dysentery) or the cause of death was unknown.
Known blacks comprise 5.7 percent of the entries. Of these blacks, one, or 7.7
percent died as a victim of violence. It is unclear if the homicide was racially motivated
or not. Furthermore, since there were other deaths in Key West during this time period
that was not recorded at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, it is unclear if the percentage of
blacks is representative of the entire population of Key West. Comparatively speaking,
5.7 percent of the Key West population being black is appreciably lower than the 11.8%
black population as noted in the Florida homicide data used to contrast the violence
against blacks in the two regions of Florida as denoted herein.
It is counterintuitive that Key West, being a haven for blacks given the practical
protection from the U.S. Navy garrison and northern laws, that the violence against
blacks therein is so much greater than in the slave-holding areas of the state. Unlike other
cities where free blacks could be found in large numbers, such as Pensacola, they did not
benefit from Federal naval protection. Key West, therefore, represents a useful, but
complex, case study of anti-black violence in Florida’s antebellum era. Even so, the
73
records at St. Paul’s suggest that Key West perhaps reflected other racially fomented
violence in the geographically diverse State of Florida. It is possible that the key island
offered a conducive climate for violence of all sorts against both races.
74
An Analysis of Escambia County Court Records
Escambia County merits analysis on its own because, as mentioned previously,
county superior and circuit court minutes are available without any gaps for the
antebellum period.66 No other county has such a complete record collection. Situated at
the far western edge of the state, bordering Alabama to the east and north, Escambia
County existed in the Western Judicial district during the period under review. Like other
counties, Escambia County was, indeed, violent, but because a complete picture exists of
criminal court records, statistical extrapolations, at least for the county alone, are no
longer necessary. In fact, the presence of all the court records, as well as newspapers,
bulletins, and so forth, further underscores the tragicomedy that was law enforcement in
antebellum Florida. Another noteworthy point is that at least in the 1840 and 1850
national censuses, Escambia had the second highest numbers of free blacks in the
Territory and State, surpassed only by Monroe County (specifically Key West) in 1860.
According to the Historical Census Browser, in 1840 Escambia County had 307, in 1850
it had 375, and in 1860 it had 153, surpassed only by Monroe County at 160. The largest
and only city during the period in the county was Pensacola. It was one of only a few
large notable on the peninsula. In his article Crime and Punishment in Antebellum
Pensacola, Denham describes the overall state of law enforcement and justice as
“haphazard, underfunded, inefficient, uneven and reflective of an honor-bound frontierlike society.”67
James M. Denham, “Crime and Punishment in Antebellum Pensacola,” Florida
Historical Quarterly 90, no. 1 (Summer 2011): 14.
67
Ibid., 33.
66
75
For a general picture between 1822 and 1866, records show that 309 persons were
indicted for crime violent crime – thirty-six for murder, 231 for assault and battery, and
thirty-nine for assault with intent to kill. Of those charged, only 126 were convicted.68
Denham also points out those convictions in Escambia County, like other places, ebbed
and flowed with the wishes and whims of sheriffs and prosecuting attorneys. In total, the
county indicted 292 whites for crimes against public order and morality with only
seventy-eight convicted, with seventy-two found not guilty, and 142 simply disappeared
from the docket.69 Of the 745 total cases 340 did not reach a verdict.70 While Denham
does not specify why there were docket disappearances, it could be that some cases were
simply dropped due to an overworked court system and the practice at the time was to
simply not list the parties once the case was dropped.
With regard to violence against blacks, they suffered violence not only from
bandits and slave-owners, but also from the court system. Like everywhere, blacks were
sometimes murdered, but due to entrenched racial attitudes, blacks found assaulting each
other would face a lesser penalty than if a black person assaulted a white person. The
penalty in the latter scenario was death, but instead of that blacks could have their ears
nailed to a post for one hour or receive thirty-nine lashes if the court thought it prudent.71
It does not appear that the person in question had any choice over their punishment.
68
Ibid., 22.
Ibid., 33.
70
Ibid., 33. Note that all crimes from Escambia County reported herein come
from the Escambia County Court Minute Books, and are also contained in chart form in
Denham’s A Rogue’s Paradise: Crime and Punishment in Antebellum Florida 18211861, 233-236.
71
Ibid., 25.
69
76
County court records show that four blacks were indicted for murder, three for assault
and battery, and three were charged in rapes.72
Escambia County residents might have found humor in their violent
circumstances. In 1839, Pensacola had built its own city jail, but like the others in the
state it was inadequate in holding anyone captive for long. Julius Cowles and his
accomplice simply named Dickinson escaped via using false keys. In 1845, accused
murdered John Branch escaped using an auger to cut away the part of the door holding
the lock.73 An auger is a device, normally used in woodworking, to drill holes. It usually
has a metal drilling portion and a handle on one end to allow rotation, thus drilling the
hole. The Pensacola Democrat on January 30, 1846 reported that Branch’s drilling with
the auger took place over several hours and was very loud, but apparently no one was
close enough to hear it or notice the prolonged drilling, so Branch was not apprehended.74
Perhaps because the seemingly arbitrary wins and losses players faced when
gambling mirrored their capricious existences in daily life, gambling proved enormously
popular both for persons betting and persons prosecuting. Gambling was considered a
crime against public order in this period both in Escambia County and elsewhere,
however, gamblers risked little in terms of fines and other punishments when plying their
games, only somewhat less so for gambling house proprietors. Throughout the whole
period, there were only sixteen convictions both for gambling and keeping a gambling
establishment.75 While the article does not describe the races of either gamblers or
gambling house proprietors, it is a safe assumption that proprietors were probably white,
72
Ibid., 26.
Ibid., 29.
74
Denham, “Antebellum Pensacola,” 21.
75
Ibid., 31.
73
77
given the difficulty blacks faced while participating in the economy. Escambia County,
like every other place in Florida, was host to violence crimes against blacks and others,
but stands out because it was host to the one of the larger settlements of Pensacola, which
along with Key West had a large number of blacks both enslaved and free, and because
the records of Escambia County, unlike every other county during this time period, are
complete – there are no gaps in the so-called paper trail, but persons nevertheless go
missing. This allows for an exceptionally clear lens through which to analyze the causes
and outcomes of violence against blacks in a frontier county and works as part of the state
history form an overall picture of life during this period.
78
Conclusion: The Complex History of Florida
Homicides against blacks as a percentage of verified anti-black crimes were
higher in the defined “frontier” regions, and they all were on the decline until the onset of
the Civil War, with the exception of the 1860 census year for the southern frontier
analysis portion. As concluded earlier in this study, this was due to mass emigration
patterns. While violence could be found in all corners of the state, it was more probable
that blacks would be killed on the open frontier. This is a reasonable conclusion as on the
frontier, there were wider, open spaces and thus more places for criminals to hide and
avoid capture as a consequence in part of poor law enforcement and mob violence.
Another point is that as time moved on, the averages also fall, indicating a general
decline in violence. What caused this trend is unclear – it may have to do with an
increasingly effective justice system – by the outbreak of Civil War, funding for jails and
courts had increased substantially. In all cases, the frontier region had higher numbers of
black victims.
This study has attempted to answer questions by providing several modes of
analyses, one qualitative (the historical occurrences) the other quantitative (the data
analyses), and while both the Plantation Belt and the frontier regions visited violence on
blacks, it was the frontier with its unregulated wide open spaces, long desolate roads, and
vast tracts of wilderness that likely made crime worse than in Middle Florida. None of
this is to say that Middle Florida, or the other districts were bastions of freedom – on the
contrary, slavery was reminiscent (and deliberately modeled after) the large plantations of
the “Old South.” However, is statistically valid to say that a slave could expect to live a
less violent life inside the plantations than on the peninsula.
79
Aside from the numeric analyses, it is important to attempt to explain why the
Florida peninsula was so violent from a psychological perspective. We revisit Prof.
Denham’s question he posited in his book review of A Festival of Violence: was lynching
the result of mixing extreme poverty, racism, political demagoguery, and above all, the
grisly heritage of southern violence? We could expand this question beyond lynching and
include all other forms of violence as well, and the answer would still be complex.
Denham offers a theory for the general lack of civility on the frontier; he finds
four conditions on which law and order are preserved: a government able to impose said
law and order, this government is recognized as legitimate, there is societal solidarity and
there is a legitimate social hierarchy.1 Certainly, Denham proves that until the early
twentieth century the Florida government was all but useless in creating or maintaining a
peaceful environment; this was instead left to personal luck and tenacity. This severely
impacted the second condition – a government unable to keep the peace was ignored in
other matters as well – this would explain the flouting of laws in Eastern Florida,
notwithstanding the political connections the wealthy planters had. The condition of
societal solidarity is difficult to answer, and it is tempting to write this off as a negative as
well, because of the envy the poor whites had of the wealthier whites, and hatred the
slaves had for everyone else, including to a lesser extent free blacks.
However, the perverse economic opportunities created by such a system for both
whites and blacks would prompt them to defend such a system and make it work, despite
the high human toll. If “legitimate” is defined as anchored in morals, there was no
legitimate social hierarchy: the social hierarchy was predicated upon predation and terror;
1
Denham and Roth, Why was Antebellum Florida Murderous, 231.
80
even in such bastions of near-freedom such as Key West or quasi-freedom when living
with the Seminoles, there was always the peripheral fear of invasions, robberies, and the
like from the sundry miscreants on the peninsula. The frontier was more dangerous
because of the various intersecting social, political and economic forces at work, causing
the horrors visited upon people during this period under study.
For every white slave owner that whipped his slave, there was a planter who gave
cash as gifts and allowed his slaves to worship where they pleased. The most important
task for a slave owner, other than turning a profit, was to make sure slaves did not escape.
This was often not the case, and the Gambles of Florida in particular wondered in
writing, in episodes of perverse paternalism, to what extent to give their slaves freedom
versus punishment.2 It was necessary to make it obvious to the slaves one owned, and to
other whites around the estate that one was good at caring for slaves so that they were
judged in the best way possible.
The frontier was a violent place, more so than the plantations, because of a variety
of groups coming together to rectify what they saw as social and societal ills, with the
added impetus of restoring honor. On the plantations, the racism that lay at the root of
such places was tempered by cold economics; violence was tempered in some cases with
the urge to protect human “investments.” In the middle of the mayhem were blacks who
were either on sanctioned travel, escaping from their owners, fighting for the Seminoles
or the Union armies, or out hunting for food, it has been shown that the frontier was a
vast and dangerous place, one that by simply eking out a living was exceptionally
dangerous. Life for blacks was never ideal in any place, and if complete freedom is not an
2
Rivers, Slavery in Florida, 43, 92, 147.
81
option as it was not for most until after the end of the Civil War, it would be better by an
appreciable margin to live inside the plantation belt, for one might expect the planters in
some instances to protect their property.
Other questions remain. Irvin D. S. Winsboro points out that more work needs to
be done to illuminate the relationship between blacks and Seminoles in Territorial and
State Florida, particularly with regard to political and familial links.3 Additional analysis,
both numeric and qualitative, is necessary for the war records for African American
Union soldiers in Florida.4 More numerical data could exist yet undiscovered, bringing
the period into a sharper focus. As William Mack indicates in his master’s thesis, a study
focusing on Civil War era Key West remains to be written.5 Indeed, Key West is only
given scant attention in the literature, usually to point out its status as a population center
and bastion of freedom. Baptist and Harris do great work analyzing nineteenth century
newspapers from a numeric standpoint, but such a collection might be mined for
information on social and political institutions of the time. This study suggests that
antebellum Florida was a violent place – crime and predation were facts of life in that
time. But what has also been shown is that despite the “peculiar institution’s” inherent
immorality and cruelty, despite the slave-owner’s mercurial personalities, despite the
rumors and real accounts of plantation torture, a black person could expect to live longer
on a plantation than on the frontier.
Irvin D. S. Winsboro, ed., Florida’s Freedom Struggle: The Black Experience
from Colonial Times to the New Millennium (Cocoa: Florida Historical Society Press,
2010), 65.
4
Irvin D. S. Winsboro, “Give Them Their Due: A Reassessment of African
Americans and Union Military Service in Florida During the Civil War,” The Journal of
African American History 92, no. 3 (Summer 2007): 328.
5
William Mack, “Desperado Coast: Florida’s Civil War Along the Lower Gulf
Coast, 1861-1865” (master’s thesis, Florida Gulf Coast University, 2010), xi.
3
82
And yet slaves escaped – countless times. They chose the frontier wilds and the
dangers therein, knowing full well that they might be robbed, murdered or sold back into
slavery to face terrible punishments thereafter. It would seem that blacks equated their
bondage with a living death – life without that which makes life worth living – and would
risk all to escape. But, as the data analysis in this study indicate, frontier Florida and
Peninsular Florida could at once in the antebellum period be places of personal promise
and, predictably, great violence.
It is hoped that this study brings the nature of this phenomenon in Florida’s past
into greater detail, and provides a springboard for future studies based on the
methodology here and the examination of new historical sources on this subject.
83
Appendix A: Border Peninsular Section
Author’s Constructed Data
Border Peninsular Table
District
Region
Eastern Frontier Region
Middle Plantation Belt
Southern Frontier Region
Western Frontier Region
Border Peninsular Categorization
Region
County
District
Frontier Region ALACHUA
Eastern
Frontier Region BRADFORD/NEW RIVE Eastern
Frontier Region BREVARD/ST LUCIE Southern
Frontier Region CALHOUN
Western
Frontier Region CLAY
Eastern
Frontier Region COLUMBIA
Eastern
Frontier Region DADE
Southern
Frontier Region DUVAL
Eastern
Frontier Region ESCAMBIA
Western
Plantation Belt FRANKLIN
Middle
Plantation Belt GADSDEN
Middle
Plantation Belt HAMILTON
Middle
Frontier Region HERNANDO/BENTON Southern
Frontier Region HILLSBOROUGH
Southern
Frontier Region HOLMES
Western
Frontier Region JACKSON
Western
Plantation Belt JEFFERSON
Middle
Plantation Belt LAFAYETTE
Middle
Plantation Belt LEON
Middle
Frontier Region LEVY
Eastern
Plantation Belt LIBERTY
Middle
Plantation Belt MADISON
Middle
Frontier Region MANATEE
Southern
Frontier Region MARION
Eastern
84
Border Peninsular Categorization
Region
County
District
Frontier Region MONROE
Southern
Frontier Region MONROE-DADE
Southern
Frontier Region NASSAU
Eastern
Frontier Region ORANGE/MOSQUITO Eastern
Frontier Region PUTNAM
Eastern
Frontier Region SANTA ROSA
Western
Frontier Region ST JOHNS
Eastern
Frontier Region SUMTER
Eastern
Frontier Region SUWANNEE
Eastern
Plantation Belt TAYLOR
Middle
Frontier Region VOLUSIA
Eastern
Plantation Belt WAKULLA
Middle
Frontier Region WALTON
Western
Frontier Region WASHINGTON
Western
85
Appendix B: Southern Frontier Section
Author’s Constructed Data
Southern Frontier
District
Region
Eastern Plantation Belt
Middle Plantation Belt
Southern Frontier Region
Western Plantation Belt
Southern Frontier Categorization
Region
County
District
Plantation Belt ALACHUA
Eastern
Plantation Belt BRADFORD/NEW RIVE Eastern
Frontier Region BREVARD/ST LUCIE Southern
Plantation Belt CALHOUN
Western
Plantation Belt CLAY
Eastern
Plantation Belt COLUMBIA
Eastern
Frontier Region DADE
Southern
Plantation Belt DUVAL
Eastern
Plantation Belt ESCAMBIA
Western
Plantation Belt FRANKLIN
Middle
Plantation Belt GADSDEN
Middle
Plantation Belt HAMILTON
Middle
Frontier Region HERNANDO/BENTON Southern
Frontier Region HILLSBOROUGH
Southern
Plantation Belt HOLMES
Western
Plantation Belt JACKSON
Western
Plantation Belt JEFFERSON
Middle
Plantation Belt LAFAYETTE
Middle
Plantation Belt LEON
Middle
Plantation Belt LEVY
Eastern
Plantation Belt LIBERTY
Middle
Plantation Belt MADISON
Middle
Frontier Region MANATEE
Southern
Plantation Belt MARION
Eastern
86
Southern Frontier Categorization
Region
County
District
Frontier Region MONROE
Southern
Frontier Region MONROE-DADE
Southern
Plantation Belt NASSAU
Eastern
Plantation Belt ORANGE/MOSQUITO Eastern
Plantation Belt PUTNAM
Eastern
Plantation Belt SANTA ROSA
Western
Plantation Belt ST JOHNS
Eastern
Plantation Belt SUMTER
Eastern
Plantation Belt SUWANNEE
Eastern
Plantation Belt TAYLOR
Middle
Plantation Belt VOLUSIA
Eastern
Plantation Belt WAKULLA
Middle
Plantation Belt WALTON
Western
Plantation Belt WASHINGTON
Western
87
Appendix C: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Burial List
Name
Age
Date of Death
5 Feb 1850
Burial
Location
Public Ground
Cause of
Death
Consumption
Baltimore
Records show
in Barracks
Cemetery
Somerville
Passed
Midahipman
25y
Filor Inmagina
Filer Fredrick
19months/old
18months
2 May 1845
26 Feb 1853
Public Ground
Maloney Mary
E.
Cash Francis S.
Low Eliza
38y
1 Feb 1855
Public Ground
teething key
West
Dropsy Nassau
15 months
30y
1 Feb 1860
1 July 1848
Cemetery
Public Ground
Doyle
3y
1 June 1849
Barracks III fr
Birth N.Y.
Child of Sargt.
Doyle
Schueltz
Emanuel
24y
1 June 1854
Gover Mr.
50y
1 May 1854
Public Ground
Low Mary
Eliza
Adams Wm. V.
2y
1 Oct 1858
Cemetery
27y
10 Aug 1848
Huff Richard
21y
10 Aug 1849
Public Group
Childbed N.H.
Barracks
Schmencker
C.H.
Sentas Bartolo
40y
10 Jan 1860
Cemetery
48y
10 June 1853
Public Ground
Tift Soloma
Holford John
75y
37y
10 June 1860
10 May 1854
Public Ground
Unk
Childbed
Bahamas Is
Yellow Fever
Switz. Hospital
Steward
Yellow Fever
England Sail
maker
Yellow Fever
Unk
Accessed Liver
Canada Soldier
Dysentery
Contacted in
Mexico
Unk
Unknown
Mahon Grocer
Death Reported
Yellow Fever
Germany
Seaman's Hotel
88
Smith Ada
Louise
Silvina Angela
Gooch Mr
13months
10 Sept 1860
1y
45y
10 Sept. 1849
11 April 1853
Cemetery
36y
11 April 1858
11 Feb 1845
2y
11 Feb 1853
Public Ground
Low? Augustus
24y
11 Jan 1857
Cemetery
Ellen
15y
11 July 1858
Cemetery
Palmer Jerrold
45y
11 Mar 1854
Public Ground
Barker mr
40y
11 May 1854
Public ground
Abrune Harry
11 May 1856
Public
Cemetery
Knapp Emily L. 4y
11 Sept 1848
Public Ground
Low Peter
6months
11 Sept 1848
Public Ground
4 days
12 April 1845
12 Dec 1856
Cemetery
Clarke Emily
Florence
Ben
1y
12 Feb 1851
Cemetery
25y
12 Feb 1858
Cemetery
Page Edwin
Lowe
Euphemia
Mitchel John
Alex(Black)
Thomson
Crawford
46y
3y
12 Feb 1861
12 Jan 1858
Cemetery
Cemetery
17months
12 Mar 1854
Public Ground
36y
12 Mar 1856
Public
Cemetery
Child
12 Mar 1861
12 May 1856
Cemetery
Cemetery
Brown Fort
Williamson
J.H.Dr.
Baker
Brace Peter
Frajim? E.
Tomey Joseph
Porter Frances
Mr Geiger's
yard
Church Yard
South Beach
Unk
Dysentery
Consumption
England
Seaman
Unk
Unknown Key
West Dau. Of
Wm. Baker
Consumption
Phila. Seaman
Unk Servant
A. Patterson
Intemperance
Conn. Seaman
Yellow Fever
R.I. Seaman
Consumption
Unknown from
the North
Worms
Tallahassee
Puny fr Birth
Key West
Unknown Key
West Black
Dysentery
England
Accident Unk
Servant of Jas.
Filor
Unk
Fever Key
West
Convulsions
Key West
Drowned
England Found
Drowned
Congestion of
89
Saylor
Johnson Tyrell
25y
12 Nov 1848
Public ground
Jaffery Wm.
John
Noyes
Dennison
Lumley Ada
Ann
Mary Jane
29y
12 Sept 1848
Public Ground
33y
13 Dec 1859
Cemetery
Infant
13 Mar 1851
Methodist Yard
Infant
13 Nov 1849
Public Ground
Jones Leorende
Unknown
43y
30y
14 April 1859
14 July 1852
Cemetery
Public Ground
Fernando Wn.
9months
14 July 1860
Cemetery
Rivers John
31y
14 Mar 1854
Public Ground
Thomson
Crawford Mrs.
Tift Morris
Wheeler
Lowe Priscilla
Ann
Hough S.J.
40y
14 May 1849
Public Ground
Infant
14 May 1854
Public Ground
2y
14 Nov 1858
Cemetery
22y
15 Dec 1856
Cemetery
Adams Samuel
2y
15 Dec 1857
James W.
Pugh Thos. F.
30y
15 Jan 1857
15 Mar 1854
Fever Key
West
Cemetery
Ala.
Tehre
16y
15 May 1854
Public Ground
Adams Mary
Stow Amos
8months
40y
15 May 1858
15 Sept 1858
Cemetery
Cemetery
Lung Unknown
Accessed Liver
Penn. Seaman
Brought down
reef to Hospital
Rupture of the
Heart England
Yellow Fever
Unk
Dysentery Key
West
Dysentery
Jacksonville
Black
Unk
Charges Fever
New York
Engineer came
in sick on
Philadelphia
Unk Servant of
Mr Boyle
Dysentery
Georgia
Methodist
Preacher
Dropsy N.Y.
Yellow Fever
Key West
Unk Key
Yellow Fever
York Pa. Coast
Survey Dept.
Consumption
Consumption
Ala. Physician
Yellow Fever
Germany
Seaman's Hotel
Unk
Yellow Fever
90
16 Dec 1856
Cemetery
16 July 1852
Public Ground
Unknown
16 July 1852
Public Ground
Chan B.B.
16 Jun 1858
Cemetery
36y
16 June 1854
Public Ground
Bron Alexander
Lucy
13y
16 May 1858
16 May 1859
Cemetery
Cemetery
Russell
Benjamin Mrs.
Whitcher
Maguret
Mears Richard
W.
Cameron Ellen
Ann
Sanderson
Samuel
Neais Majdron
Leora
Clapp Theodore
Greenwood
Fragot George
30y
17 April 1854
Public Ground
36y
17 April 1858
Cemetery
Boston
Childbirth
Bahamas
Fever Came in
sick from
Steamer
Philadelphia
Fever: Came in
sick from
Philadelphia
Consumption
Unk N.Y.Pilot
Yellow fever
Ireland Soldier
Wife
Ink
Unk Servant of
Mr s Fontane
Childbed
Bahamas
Unk
15months
17 Aug 1848
Public Ground
Key West
Apoplexy N.C.
Mariner
Teething Key
West
Teething Mas.
Canfield
Hennrietta
Unknown
Murphy Jane
21y
17 Feb 1845
62y
17 Feb 1848
8months
17 Feb 1858
Methodist
Ground
Cemetery
15 months
17 Feb. 1853
Sent North
28y
17 May 1851
U.S. Barracks
Kelly Victor
Wellington
How Charles
Mrs.
William Geo.T.
3y
17 May 1854
Public Ground
45y
17 Nov 1853
Public Ground
10months
17 Oct 1848
Near Hospital
Casso
40y
17 Oct 1851
Salt Pond
Dropsy
Virginia Slave
from Ala.
Dysentery
Yorkshire
Soldier &
Englishman
Yellow Fever
Key West
Yellow Fever
Conn.
Dysentery Key
West
91
Ferguson John
25y
17 Oct 1852
Public Ground
Folker Edwin
A.
Greeen Emma
28y
18 April 1852
Salt Ponds
2y
18 Aug 1852
Public Ground
Low Matthew
80y
18 Feb 1855
Public Ground
Wood
Chas.Bentley
Catherine
2y
18 July 1848
Public Ground
18 Jun 1859
Cemetery
18 nov 1856
Cemetery
Bennot James
Fever Unknown
From Mail boat
Bound to Cuba
Consumption
S.C. Merchant
Fever Key
West Servant
Old Age
Bahamas
Dysentery
Miami
Unk Servant of
Mrs. Hichs
Drowned
Mystic Cn
Seaman
Dysentery
&Consum.
Georgia Black
Disease
Brought fr
Jacksonville
Unk
Agustina
35y
18 Sept. 1849
Public Ground
Lowe George
Arlen
Tift Cora Nelly
13months
19 Dec 1859
Cemetery
2y
19 May 1854
Public Ground
Johnson Henry
32y
19 Nov 1848
Public Ground
Richardson
Geo.
5y
19 Oct 1848
Public ground
Marvin Sarah
70y
2 April 1848
Roberts John
40y
2 Dec 1850
Removed to
N.Y.
Public Ground
Bethel Susan
Mary
25y
2 Dec 1853
Seely Sarah D.
33y
2 Feb 1857
Mr Bs" Yard
Liver
Complaint Key
West
Cemetery
Pent James
Edscard
Richardson
1y
2 July 1858
Cemetery
Consumption
Ohio Wife of
Dr. Seely
Unk
2 July 1861
U.S. Barracks
Unk Co D 2nd
Yellow Fever
Key West
Intemperance
N. J. Carpenter
Drowned Key
West Said to be
Its Child
Drowned KW
Dysentery N.Y.
Cancer of Face
Nassau Black
92
Robt.
Happy Jack
Johnson Joseph
Clarence
Browne
Fielding
U.S.C.I.
Unk
Unk
60y
15 days
2 May 1858
2 May 1858
Cemetery
Cemetery
60y
2 Nov 1851
Church Yard
Hatch
50y
2 Sept 1858
Cemetery
Swyer
Charlotte Jane
Child of Grace
9months
2 Sept 1858
Cemetery
Infant
20 Aug 1850
Public Ground
Forbes Mr alias
Toilson
25y
20 Aug 1850
Public Ground
SmithHeso
18y
20 Dec 1856
Saunders Perry
1y
20 Jan 1851
Public ground
Ogden George
Henry
Russell Ann
Eliza
Tift Ann
8days
20 Jan 1859
Cemetery
4y
20 Mar 1854
Public Ground
20y
20 May 1854
Public Ground
Amanda
20 Oct 1061
South Beach
Ogden Sophie
Mrs.
Porter Mary
Ann Mrs.
Unknown
21 Aug 1860
Cemetery
Fever& Worms
Key West
Yellow Fever
S.C. Wife of
A.F. Tift
Unk Servant of
Wm. C. Dennis
Unk
33y
21 Aug 1860
Cemetery
Unk
8 days
21 Feb 1857
Cemetery
16months
21 July 1851
Public Ground
20y
21 Mar 1848
Public Ground
Convulsion
Key West
Infant of
Servant of H.
Benner
Teething Key
West
Fever & Conj.
Brain. S.C.
Preston Wm
Tracker
Folker Sarah
Ann
Inflammation
Bladder
Virginia
Merchant
Yellow Fever
Unk
Unk
Unknown Key
West Black
fever Ile of
Man came
wounded with
Cuban
Expedition
Yellow Fever
Unknown
Soldier
Teething
Bahamas
Unk
93
Filer Fredrick
Lowe John
Alexander
George Infant
Smith Maria
Christina
Abigale
McNamara
Mary
Euphemias
Clapp Britton
5y
75y
21 May 1859
21 Nov 1858
21 Oct 1849
Cemetery
Cemetery
Public Ground
Unk
Unk
Dysentery
Jacksonil Black
Bowel
Complaint Key
West
Unk Servant of
Mrs. Hichs
Unk Key West
Son of J.Filor
Unk Servant of
Mrs. Whalton
Unk
22 Feb 1845
32day
22 Mar 1856
Public
Cemetery
4y
22 mar 1858
Mass.
Filor William
1day
22 Mar 1860
Cemetery
Faustina
3y
23 Jan 1859
Cemetery
Smith James
William
Scarrit J.M.
Capt.
2months
23 Jan 1860
Cemetery
37y
23 June 1853
Barracks
Wagner Sargt.
26y
23 May 1852
Ramon
2months
23 Oct 1851
Public Ground
Wallace
William
25y
23 Sept 1852
South Beach
Grover James
30y
234 Nov 1853
Public Ground
Child Unnamed
Swyer
Benjamin
Stillborn
52y
24 Aug 1848
24 Dec 1856
Public Ground
Cemetery
24 Dec 1858
Cemetery
Johnson J. A.
Dr..
Denman Alex
infant
24 June 1852
Church Yard
Hopkins L.A.
32y
24 Mar 1848
Methodist
Ground
Yellow Fever
N.H. USA
Army
Drowned
Georgia U.S.
Army
Unknown Key
West Spanish
Child
Yellow Fever
Dublin Brought
down from the
Reef
Yellow Fever
England Sail
maker
Key West
Delirious
Tremens
Mystic Cn
Unk
Teething
Tallahassee
Consumption
Nashua N.H
Landlord
94
Corris John
Brenigton John
J.
Fashold?
Adam(Black)
Johnson
Andrew
Nichols
Richie James F.
36y
24 Mar 1861
Cemetery
Consumption
Unknown From
the North
Unk
23y
25 Dec 1856
Cemetery
Murder Fl.
2y
25 Dec 1859
Cemetery
Unk
50y
25 Feb 1859
Cemetery
Motley Kate
Howard
Ranger Ann
10days
25 Feb. 1860
Cemetery
Unk New
Orleans
Unk
30y
25 Jan 1855
Public Ground
Rosalee
2y
25 July 1860
Cemetery
6weeks
25 Mar 1845
25 Nov 1858
Of Nassau
Cemetery
29y
25 Nov 1858
Cemetery
96y
26 April 1854
Public Ground
Guptill Thos.
Capt.
38y
26 Aug 1852
Chloe
5 days
26 Dec 1858
Cemetery
Jane Elizabeth
Infant
26 Feb 1851
Public Ground
Russell William 1months
26 Jan 1855
Public ground
Ximinez Fannie 14y
27 Dec 1854
Public Ground
Lightbourne
Euphemia C.
Knowles
17months
27 Oct 1858
Cemetery
Yellow fever
Unk
Dysentery
Bahamas
Seaman
Yellow Fever
Maine Came in
Sick
from?/Mariner
Unk Key West
Servant of Mrs.
Porter
Convulsions
Key West
Elizabeth
Servant of Mrs.
Morris
Spasm Key
West
Heart Disease
Key West
Servant
Unk
10months
28 April 1854
Public Ground
Unknown Key
Edwards Lydia
Albury
Catherine
Livintons
Cornelius
Knowles Mr
24 Mar 1856
Public
Cemetery
Typhoid Fever
Bahamas
Unk Servant of
Mr Shaw
Unk
95
Joseph Alex
Mc Intyre
Donald
Lloyd Mary
Ann Mrs.
Westcott
George Clinton
Cameron
William
Shannon John
West Black
35y
28 Feb 1845
30y
28 Feb 1859
Cemetery
Unk
6months
28 Feb 1859
Cemetery
Unk Son of Lt
Westcott USN
Apoplexy
Mass. Seaman
Unk
Drowned Unk
Spanish Consul
28 Jan 1845
55y
28 Jan 1855
Public Ground
Nichols Warren
Salas Y
Qumoja Jose
Mani
Needham
James
34y
28 Jan 1861
28 July 1858
Cemetery
Cemetery
15y
28 Jun 1848
Public Ground
Seville
Maria(Black)
L"Engle Anna
Infant
28 Mar 1854
Public Ground
1day
28 Mar 1855
Public Ground
Porter Mr
22y
28 May 1854
Public Ground
Farrar? Joseph
Infant
28 May 1857
Cemetery
Fontane Philip
J.
Adams Thomas
Guy Charles
Edward
Marshall
Charles
Lawrence
Horce
Low Edwin
Caroline
50y
29 Aug 1858
Cemetery
4months
29 Aug 1860
29 Dec 1856
Cemetery
Cemetery
25y
29 Jan 1860
Cemetery
39y
29 Sept 1851
Barracks
19months
37y
3 Dec 1857
3 Feb 1860
Cemetery
Cemetery
Albury Geo.
Albert
Clarke Silas
2y
3 Jan 1858
Cemetery
44y
3 Nov 1849
Yellow Fever
Ireland Sailor
Brought in
Vessel
Unknown Key
West
Prem. Birth
Key West
Yellow Fever
N.Y. Teacher
of the Public
School
Unk West
Infant of Mr
Farrar
Unk
Unk
Unknown Key
West Black
Unk
Apoplexy
N.Y.Clerk
Liver Key West
Unk Servant of
A. Patterson
Fever Key
West
Maine Fever
96
Cant.
57y
70y
3 Nov 1858
3 Oct 1848
Cemetery
Public Ground
Sweetin George 68y
3 Oct 1851
Public Ground
Stables Henry F 32y
3 Oct 1858
Cemetery
Doyle Mrs.
45y
3 Sept 1849
Barracks
Manley
28y
30 April 1850
Beach
Albury William
Edgar
Smith Charles
10months
30 June 1852
Public Ground
62y
30 June 1852
South Beach
Smith Mary
Jane
Roberts Sarah
Ann
Skelton John
9months
30 June 1860
Cemetery
Congestive
Maine Body
Removed toME
Unk
Inflame. Of
Bladder
Baltimore
Dysentery
Bristol Sailor
Yellow Fever
Unk Died on
Schr. At Sea
Dysentery
Washington
Camp Woman
Consumption
E. Indies
Teething Key
West
Old Age New
york Seaman
Unk
12y
4 April 1858
Cemetery
Unk
66y
4 Feb 1857
Cemetery
Green Franklin
V.
Manuel
5y
4 Feb 1858
Cemetery
Hernia
Bahamas
Unk Key West
50y
4 June 1848
Public Ground
Evans Peter
65y
4 June 1851
South Beach
Haurew Capt.
50y
4 June 1851
Public Ground
Schonliever
Charles
McKay Peter
Ball Sarah
22y
4 Nov 1858
U.S. Barracks
Russell Mary
Ellen
29y
Arnou James
Tate Thomas
about50y
4 Nov 1860
70 5 Aug 1851
5 Jan 1860
Marine hospital
Public Ground
Cemetery
Internal Injuries
Portugal
Mulatto &
Laborer
Old Age
Scotland Sailor
Casualty
England
Mariner
Yellow fever
Unk
Unk
Old Age
Virginia
Widow
Unk
97
Bethel Mr.
85y
5 Nov 1848
Public Ground
Regan Jeremiah 28y
Osborn Samuel 41y
5 Nov 1860
5 Sept 1858
U.S. Barracks
Cemetery
Bethel
Cornelius
Fourment
Baldwin Sarah
5y
14 July 1854
Public Ground
60y
6 April 1848
Public Ground
Tehre Mrs.
45y
6 April 1854
Public Grounds
Benner Fanny
46y
6 Jan 1853
Boston
Roberts Emily
Eliza
Egan Mrs.
16y
6 July 1857
Cemetery
80y
6 July1853
Public Ground
Watlington
Mrs.
Harris Eliza
Low Lucinda
68y
6 Mar 1848
16y
17y
6 Mar 1850
6 May 1857
Methodist
Ground
Public Ground
Cemetery
William
Unknown
1week
6 Oct 1849
7 April 1854
Public Ground
Public Ground
McDonald
Constance
19y
7 April 1857
Cemetery
Cesar Joseph
2y
7 Aug 1849
Public Ground
Fletcher James
Walton
12y
7 Dec 1850
Public ground
Wells Charles
Moore
Thomson Mary
58y
7 Feb 1857
Cemetery
44y
7 Jan 1860
Cemetery
Dysentery
Bahamas
Wrecker
Unk
Unk N.Y. Died
Suddenly al Sea
Abcess in the
Jaw Key West
Old Age
Halifax NS
Yellow Fever
Germany
Samos on
Island
Paralysis Maine
Strange Boston
Childbirth Key
West
Dropsy & Old
Age N. C.
Old Age St
Croix
Fever Bahamas
Unk Daughter
of Gideon Low
Lock Jaw Black
Yellow fever
England
Seaman form
Steamer Isabel
Tumor Unk
Wife of
McDonald
Convulsions
Key West
Black
Poison Berries
Key West
Poisoned by
Berries of the
Island
Consumption
Phila.Pa.
Unk
98
Ann
Curry Benjamin 73y
Saunders
Elizabeth
Olford Alfred
1y
7 Mar 1861
7 May 1858
Cemetery
Cemetery
Unk
Unk
7 Nov 1852
Public Ground
Goddard Mary
Ann
Randolph Julia
39y
7 Nov 1853
Public Ground
2y
7 Nov 1856
Cemetery
Pent Clara
Rebecca
Diane
1y
7 Sept 1858
Cemetery
8 Jan 1859
Cemetery
Smith Josua B.
24y
8 June 1854
Public Ground
Farrar joseph
Browne
Fielding
Armors
Knowles Mary
Elizabeth
Kemp
40y
8 June 1859
8 Mar 1845
Cemetery
Unknown Key
West
Yellow Fever
Milton Eng.
Congestion of
Brain Unknown
Daughter of Lt.
Randolph
Yellow Fever
Unk
Unk Servant of
Winner Bethel
Yellow Fever
Conn.
Carpenter
Unk
4y
8 May 1858
Cemetery
Unk
15months
8 Sept 1851
Hubbard E.H.
28y
8 Sept 1854
Mr Kemps
Garden
U.S. Barracks
Baibers Frank
25y
9 April 1854
Public Ground
Douglas
Thomas Brown
Ranger Chas
Edward
Leicester
Charles
1y
9 Dec 1852
Tallahassee
10months
9 Feb 1855
Public Ground
2y
9 June 1854
Public Ground
Pitcher
Filor Laura
Infant
Jan 1861
Cemetery
Dysentery Key
West
Yellow Fever
Mass. Soldier
Yellow Fever
Ala. Physician
Dysentery
Tallahassee
Teething Key
West
Convulsions
Key West Died
at Tortugas
Unk
99
Appendix D: Judicial District Maps
N.B.: This appendix contains scanned copies of the judicial district maps from Professor
James Denham’s book A Rogue's Paradise: Crime and Punishment in Antebellum
Florida, 1821-1861. They are used with permission from the University of Alabama
Press. These maps are found on pages thirty-nine, forty-four, forty-nine, and fifty-five,
respectively.
This picture represents the Western Judicial District, circa 1850-1860.
100
This picture represents the Middle Judicial District, circa 1850-1860.
101
This picture represents the Eastern Judicial District, circa 1850-1860.
102
This picture represents the Southern Judicial District, circa 1850-1860.
103
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the majority of the homicide records Dr. James Denham has prepared and given to the
Ohio State University Criminal Justice and Research Center.
Newspapers
Apalachicola Commercial Advertiser
Cedar Keys Telegraph
Fernandina East Florida Herald
Florida Herald
Florida News
Florida Sentinel
Florida Whig
Floridian & Journal
Frontier Republican (Jacksonville)
Jacksonville Florida News
Jacksonville Florida Times-Union
Jacksonville News
Jacksonville Standard
Key West Enquirer
Key West Gazette
Marianna Florida Whig
New York Times
New York Tribune
Newnansville Dispatch (Alachua)
Newport Gazette
Newport Wakilla Times
Niles National Register
Ocala Florida Home Companion
Palatka Whig Banner
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Pensacola West Florida Times
Quincy Sentinel
Savannah Daily Republican
St. Augustine Ancient City
104
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Tallahassee Florida Watchman
Tallahassee Floridian & Journal
Tallahassee Floridian
Tallahassee Southern Journal
Tampa Florida Peninsular
The Columbia Democrat
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Alachua and Levy County Minutes of the Circuit Court
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