Florida Historical Quarterly

COVER The East Florida Seminary, the oldest parent of the University of Florida, was established in Ocala, January 1853. It was transferred to Gainesville in 1866, merging with a small local school. It was a coeducational institution, and college degrees began to be conferred in 1882. The seminary operated as a semi-military school, at least for its male students. They wore uniforms, drilled regularly, referred to their dormitory as a barracks, and were awakened each morning by a bugle call. This is a copy of a photograph taken in the 1890s showing the cadets’ weekly dress parade in front of the barracks. Townspeople are seated on the piazzas. The two-story brick building to the left still stands; it is the Epworth Hall of the First Methodist Church on Northeast First Street. The parade ground is presently a city park. The THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY Volume LI, Number 2 October 1972 THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY SAMUEL PROCTOR, Editor PETER D. KLINGMAN, Editorial Assistant THOMAS S. GRAHAM, Editorial Assistant EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD LUIS R. ARANA Castillo de San Marcos, St. Augustine HERBERT J. DOHERTY, JR. University of Florida JOHN K. MAHON University of Florida WILLIAM W. ROGERS Florida State University JERRELL H. SHOFNER Florida Technological University CHARLTON W. TEBEAU University of Miami Correspondence concerning contributions, books for review, and all editorial matters should be addressed to the Editor, Florida Historical Quarterly, Box 14045, University Station, Gainesville, Florida 32601. The Quarterly is interested in articles and documents pertaining to the history of Florida. Sources, style, footnote form, original- ity of material and interpretation, clarity of thought, and interest of readers are considered. All copy, including footnotes, should be double-spaced. Footnotes should be numbered consecutively in the text and assembled at the end. Particular attention should be given to following the footnote style of the Quarterly. The author should submit an original and retain a carbon for security. The Florida Historical Society and editor of the Florida Historical Quarterly accept no responsibility for statements made by contributors. Table of Contents BLACK SLAVES, RED MASTERS, WHITE MIDDLEMEN: A CONGRESSIONAL DEBATE OF 1852 James E. Sefton 113 FLORIDA LIVE OAK FARM OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS William R. Adams 129 FLORIDA PREPARES FOR WAR 1860-1861 George C. Bittle 143 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS: FLORIDA’S IMAGE IN JUVENILE FICTION, 1909-1914 Peter A. Soderbergh 153 FLORENCIA INVESTIGATION OF SPANISH TIMUCUA Fred Lamar Pearson, Jr. 166 BOOK REVIEWS ................ 177 BOOK NOTES ................. 198 HISTORY NEWS ................ 203 SEVENTIETH ANNUAL MEETING ........... 211 COPYRIGHT 1972 by the Florida Historical Society, Tampa, Florida. Second class postage paid at Tampa, Florida. Printed by E. O. Painter Printing Co., DeLeon Springs, Florida. iii BOOK REVIEWS No FURTHER RETREAT: THE FIGHT TO SAVE FLORIDA, by Raymond F. Dasmann reviewed by Charlton W. Tebeau ON PRESERVING TROPICAL FLORIDA, by John C. Gifford reviewed by Polly Redford ST. PETERSBURG AND ITS PEOPLE, by Walter Fuller reviewed by Milton D. Jones HISTORY OF SANTA ROSA COUNTY: A KING’S COUNTRY, by M. Luther King reviewed by E. W. Carswell JAMES BLAIR OF VIRGINIA, by Parke Rouse, Jr. reviewed by Jack P. Greene THE LETTERBOOK OF ELIZA LUCAS PINCKNEY, 1739-1762, edited by Elise Pinckney reviewed by Hugh Lefler THE ANATOMY OF THE CONFEDERATE CONGRESS, by Thomas B. Alexander and Richard E. Beringer reviewed by Richard L. Hume BRIERFIELD: PLANTATION HOME OF JEFFERSON DAVIS, by Frank E. Everett reviewed by Samuel Wilson, Jr. FREE AT LAST: THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, by Arna Bontemps reviewed by Peter D. Klingman ROOSEVELT’S ROUGH RIDERS, by Virgil Carrington Jones reviewed by Thomas J. Gilliam ATTACK ON TERROR: THE FBI AGAINST THE KU KLUX KLAN IN MISSISSIPPI, by Don Whitehead reviewed by James W. Silver WHITE SECTS AND BLACK MEN IN THE RECENT SOUTH, by David E. Harrell, Jr. reviewed by Wayne Flynt THE NOT SO SOLID SOUTH: ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES IN A REGIONAL SUB- CULTURE, edited by J. Kenneth Morland reviewed by Solon T. Kimball THE MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL: THE HISTORY OF A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER, by Thomas H. Baker reviewed by Charles W. Crawford STILL REBELS, STILL YANKEES AND OTHER ESSAYS, by Donald Davidson reviewed by Gloria Jahoda BLACK SLAVES, RED MASTERS, WHITE MIDDLEMEN: A CONGRESSIONAL DEBATE OF 1852 by JAMES E. SEFTON* list of the most noteworthy congressional debates over slav- A ery would include those on the Compromises of 1820 and 1850, the Gag Rule, the slave trade, and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, among others. Sometimes, however, debate on a compara- tively minor episode of a large issue can be highly illuminating. In the spring of 1852, the House of Representatives devoted perhaps ten hours to a bill which brought to a close a bizzare story that had begun sixteen years earlier during federal efforts to remove the Seminole Indians from Florida. Ever since the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1819, white resi- dents had clamored for removal of the Indians. Desultory guerrilla warfare increased, reaching a climax between 1835 and 1842 in the Second Seminole War.1 General Thomas S. Jesup, who commanded the United States troops in Florida from 1835 until 1838, saw that the long-standing hostility between the Seminoles and their parent tribe, the Creeks, might be turned to his military advantage. In August 1836 he recruited a regiment of Creeks for federal service. The enlistment contract stipulated that the Creeks were “to receive the pay and emolu- ments and equipments of soldiers in the Army of the United States, and such plunder as they may take from the Seminoles.“2 While in federal service the Creeks captured or received the surrender of more than 100 Negroes who had been living with the Seminoles and whom the Indians considered their allies. Most of these were slaves of various Seminole chiefs; some were runaways from white plantations in Florida and Georgia; a * Mr. Sefton is associate professor of history at California State College, Northridge. 1. John K. Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War, 1835-1842 (Gainesville, 1967). 2. Congressional Globe, 32nd Cong., 1st sess., 611. [113] 114 FLORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY small number claimed to have been born free. Those who could be identified as runaways were restored to their white owners by General Jesup, who paid the Creeks $20.00 each for them. The remainder were kept in federal military custody and transferred to Fort Pike, Louisiana, for safekeeping.3 Jesup, mean- while, hoping to hasten the final surrender of the Seminoles, realized that one of the major stumbling blocks was the Indians’ fear that upon surrendering they would lose their remaining Negroes. On March 6, 1837, certain chiefs signed a document of capitulation at Camp Dade, in which Jesup agreed “that the Seminoles and their allies, who come in, and emigrate to the West, shall be secure in their lives and property; that their negroes, their bona-fide property, shall accompany them to the West; and that their cattle and ponies shall be paid for by the United States, at a fair valuation.“4 Troubles soon multiplied. The Camp Dade cease-fire agreement shortly broke down, due in part to the displeasure of whites with Jesup’s apparent policy on Negroes. He did not want planters searching for their runaways (nor slave-catchers looking for any salable black man) to raid Indian settlements, thus jeopardizing the removal project. Nor did he want to expose his troops to danger in the process of aiding the planters, an attitude which to the whites seemed inconsistent with the spirit of the fugitive slave law. But the general came under pressure from many sources. As a result, his policy on Negroes between April and September 1837, was a crazy-quilt of orders and statements which attempted to do the impossible: sort the Negroes into several categories according to individual histories. Those who ran away from white owners were to be returned; those whom the Seminoles captured from whites might or might not have to be returned depending on the date of capture; those whom the Seminoles purchased and still possessed, or who had surrendered, could go west with the Indians in accordance with the Camp Dade agreement; those captured by the Creeks were their property; the few who insisted they were free were men- tioned least and left in a kind of limbo.5 3. House Executive Documents, 25th Cong, 3rd sess., no. 225, 4-5. 4. Ibid., 52. 5. Ibid., 2-5, 8-22, 51-57; Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War, 201-06. A CONGRESSIONAL DEBATE OF 1852 115 Even if the elaborate documentation needed for such a policy had been available, nobody would have been satisfied. Planters, press, and territorial legislatures nagged; slave traders defied, and then demanded protection; Creeks pestered for possession of the ones they had captured; Seminoles distrusted, Negroes feared to come into the lines lest they be captured by Creeks. Finally, on September 6, Jesup announced that all captured Negroes would be held at Fort Pike pending orders from the secretary of war.6 Three days later Jesup ordered that the Creek regiment be mustered out of service, thus precluding further captures under the 1836 enlistment contract. Negroes now surrendered in greater numbers, and since they seemed to possess a strange influence over the Indians, admittedly not common to a slave- master relationship, the Seminoles too came in more speedily.7 By the spring of 1838 the Negroes were no longer an impediment to the Indians’ removal from Florida, but they were still an impediment to peaceful relocation in Oklahoma. During 1837 General Jesup had been sending Negroes not the property of whites to Fort Pike in groups to get them out of the general theatre of war.

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