During the Civil War, Florida was not ravaged as several
other southern states were. Indeed, no decisive battles
were fought on Florida soil. While Union forces occupied
many coastal towns and forts, the interior of the state
remained in Confederate hands.
Florida provided an estimated 15,000 troops and significant
amounts of supplies including salt, beef, pork, and cottonto
the Confederacy, but more than 2,000 Floridians, both African
American and white, joined the Union army. Confederate
and foreign merchant ships slipped through the Union navy
blockade along the coast, bringing in needed supplies from
overseas ports. Tallahassee was the only southern capital
east of the Mississippi River to avoid capture during the
war, spared by southern victories at Olustee (1864) and
Natural Bridge (1865). Ultimately, the South was defeated,
and federal troops occupied Tallahassee on May 10, 1865.
Before the Civil War, Florida had been well on its way
to becoming another of the southern cotton states. Afterward,
the lives of many residents changed. The ports of Jacksonville
and Pensacola again flourished due to the demand for lumber
and forest products to rebuild the nation's cities. Those
who had been slaves were declared free. Plantation owners
tried to regain prewar levels of production by hiring former
slaves to raise and pick cotton. However, such programs
did not work well, and much of the land came under cultivation
by tenant farmers and sharecroppers, both African American
and white.
Text from: A Short History of Florida
Used with the permission of Florida's Division of Historical
Resources |
