The Florida Historical Quarterly Volume Xlv October 1966 Number 2

O CTOBER 1966 Published by THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF FLORIDA, 1856 THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, successor, 1902 THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, incoporated, 1905 by GEORGE R. FAIRBANKS, FRANCIS P. FLEMING, GEORGE W. WILSON, CHARLES M. COOPER, JAMES P. TALIAFERRO, V. W. SHIELDS, WILLIAM A. BLOUNT, GEORGE P. RANEY. OFFICERS WILLIAM M. GOZA, president HERBERT J. DOHERTY, JR., 1st vice president JAMES C. CRAIG, 2nd vice president MRS. RALPH F. DAVID, recording secretary MARGARET L. CHAPMAN, executive secretary DIRECTORS CHARLES O. ANDREWS, JR. MILTON D. JONES EARLE BOWDEN FRANK J. LAUMER JAMES D. BRUTON, JR. WILLIAM WARREN ROGERS MRS. HENRY J. BURKHARDT CHARLTON W. TEBEAU FRANK H. ELMORE LEONARD A. USINA WALTER S. HARDIN JULIAN I. WEINKLE JOHN E. JOHNS JAMES R. KNOTT, ex-officio SAMUEL PROCTOR, ex-officio (and the officers) (All correspondence relating to Society business, memberships, and Quarterly subscriptions should be addressed to Miss Margaret Ch apman, University of South Florida Library, Tampa, Florida 33620. Articles for publication, books for review, and editorial correspondence should be addressed to the Quarterly, Box 14045, University Station, Gainesville, Florida, 32601.) * * * To explore the field of Florida history, to seek and gather up the ancient chronicles in which its annals are contained, to retain the legendary lore which may yet throw light upon the past, to trace its monuments and remains, to elucidate what has been written to disprove the false and support the true, to do justice to the men who have figured in the olden time, to keep and preserve all that is known in trust for those who are to come after us, to increase and extend the knowledge of our history, and to teach our children that first essential knowledge, the history of our State, are objects well worthy of our best efforts. To accomplish these ends, we have organized the Historical Society of Florida. GEORGE R. FAIRBANKS Saint Augustine, April, 1857. THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY VOLUME XLV OCTOBER 1966 NUMBER 2 CONTENTS BISHOP MICHAEL J. CURLEY AND ANTI-CATHOLIC NATIVISM IN FLORIDA ........................... David P. Page .... 101 HENRY BRADLEY PLANT AND FLORIDA Dudley S. Johnson ....... 118 EARLY HISTORY OF THE CROSS-FLORIDA BARGE CANAL .............................. Charles E. Bennett ...... 132 POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION IN FLORIDA Jerrell H. Shofner .... 145 BOOK REVIEWS ............................................................................. 171 HISTORICAL NEWS ............................................................................ 194 THE ANNUAL MEETING, MAY 5-7, 1966 ................................ 199 CONTRIBUTORS .............................................................................. 217 COPYRIGHT 1966 by the Florida Historical Society, Tampa, Florida. Second class postage paid at Tampa, Florida, and at additional mailing offices. Printed by Convention Press, Inc., Jacksonville, Florida. i BOOK REVIEWS Tebeau and Carson, Florida: From Indian Trail to Space Age, by J. E. Dovell .......................................................................... 171 Will, Okeechobee Boats and Skippers; and Okeechobee Catfishing, by Charlton W. Tebeau .............................................................. 172 Richardson, The Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, 1865-1877, by Joel Williamson .................................................................... 174 Cushman, A Goodly Heritage: The Episcopal Church in Florida, by Hamilton West ...................................................................... 175 Gipson, The Triumphant Empire: The Rumbling of the Coming Storm, 1766-1770; and The Triumphant Empire: Britain Sails into the Storm, by Don Higginbotham .............................. 176 Cobourn, The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution, by Michael G. Kammen ................................................................. 178 Abernethy, The Formative Period in Alabama, 1815-1828, by William Warren Rogers ............................................................ 180 Ford, John James Audubon, by E. Ashby Hammond ..................... 180 Beals, War Within a War: The Confederacy Against Itself, by William E. Baringer ................................................................ 182 Wilson, The Black Codes of the South, by Irwin Unger .............................................................................. 183 Mann, Atticus Greene Haygood, by Richard E. Blanchard ......... 185 Newby, Jim Crow’s Defense: Anti-Negro Thought in America, by Charles C. Alexander ........................................................ 186 Golden, A Little Girl is Dead, by Harry Simonhoff ......................... 189 Highsaw (ed.), The Deep South in Transformation, by E. Merton Coulter .................................................................. 190 Colberg, Human Capital in Southern Development, by Edgar S. Dunn, Jr. .................................................................. 192 ii BISHOP MICHAEL J. CURLEY 1879-1947 BISHOP MICHAEL J. CURLEY AND ANTI-CATHOLIC NATIVISM IN FLORIDA by DAVID P. PAGE HE FOUR-HUNDRED YEAR history of the Catholic Church in Florida, beginning with the Spanish settlements of the six- teenth century, and continuing through successive English, Span- ish, and United States occupations of the peninsula, has not been an entirely peaceful passage. It has been marked by periodic conflicts between Indians and missionaries, missionaries and Spanish officials, missionaries and English raiders, parish priests and gov- ernors, parishioners and United States officials, and, finally, during the first half of the nineteenth century, between parish trus- tees and pastors. In the years between the Civil War and World War I, the church in Florida enjoyed a consoling peace both within her household and without. A particularly amicable relation- ship was formed between the bishops of this period and the officials of the State of Florida. In the World War I years, however, a new conflict arose in the church’s life which threatened at one point to be as ruinous to Florida Catholicity as any of the earlier conflicts had threatened to be. An outbreak of anti-Catholic nativism in Florida during the years 1910-1917 seriously ruptured church-state relations, and ended in a confrontation between a remarkable young bishop, Michael J. Curley, and a mercurial and colorful anti-Catholic politician, Governor Sidney J. Catts. The hysteria that resulted from this wave of religious nativism became so intense that three Sisters of St. Joseph in the city of St. Augustine were imprisoned in their convent in 1916 on the charge of teaching Negroes in violation of state law. The same movement was a contributing, if not indeed the major, factor in that year’s election of Sidney J. Catts as governor of Florida (1917-1921). Numerous studies have been published on anti-Catholic nativism in the northern United States, but comparatively little has appeared on anti-Catholicism in the South. 1 The truth is that 1. For the best studies of nativism on the national level see Ray Billing- ton, The Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860 (New York, 1938); John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns in American Nativism, [ 101 ] 102 FLORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY the South, Florida included, was relatively unaffected by the waves of anti-Catholicism that swept intermittently during the nineteenth century over much of the eastern and midwestern regions of the nation. Unquestionably, the Catholic Church was generally viewed in an unfavorable light in the South, where distrust and suspicion of Rome were always present, but these sentiments did not give rise to any significant anti-Catholic movement in that area until the twentieth century. Thus, during the Know-Nothing movement of the 1850s, the bitter anti-Catholic campaign in the North had no counterpart in the South. Again, during the 1893-1894 period, when the American Protective Association was growing throughout the North and Midwest, Southerners were generally apathetic to the anti-Catholic bait and disdained the APA as a Republican tool. 2 The absence of a militant anti-Catholicism in the South throughout the nineteenth century was undoubtedly due to the small number of Catholics in that area. Yet, with no significant change in the content of southern population, the twentieth century scarcely reached its second decade before the South witnessed an anti-Catholic crusade, so widespread and so intense that its reverberations are still painfully audible in these recent, more ecumenical times. The sudden appearance of this anti-Catholic ferment is dif- ficult to explain. John Higham thinks that it was an outlet for the expectations that the progressivism of the early twentieth century had raised and then failed to fulfill. The progressive movement, moreover, gave further impetus to the American feeling that the pope was a “reactionary despot, hostile to liberty and progress alike.” 3 It may also be remarked that Protestantism and Orthodoxy, particularly in the South, felt threatened by the com- bined forces of the large city and the labor union, both of which smacked of foreign and Catholic influence. 4 Each of these influ- ences had a greater or lesser part to play in forming the back- ground for the 1910-1917 anti-Catholic campaign, but we have to look elsewhere for its immediate cause. 1860-1925 (New Brunswick, 1955). For a more recent study that

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