RAILROAD BARON, FIRE-EATER, AND THE “ALIEN JEW”: THE LIFE AND MEMORY OF DAVID LEVY YULEE By MAURICE I. WISEMAN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2011 1 © 2011 Maurice I. Wiseman 2 To my friends and family 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank my committee, and especially my dissertation advisor Jack Davis, for their valued suggestions and insights that directed this dissertation to completion. This project could not happen without their assistance. I also thank my parents and my muse for their enduring faith and support. Finally, I thank Lily, my dog, who wagged as she waited for me to finish this dissertation. Her inspirational patience and optimism I can only try to emulate: her wagger is still wagging. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 6 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 8 2 THE LIFE OF DAVID LEVY YULEE ....................................................................... 40 3 YULEE‟S JEWISH IDENTITY ................................................................................. 78 4 YULEE‟S SOUTHERN IDENTITY......................................................................... 129 5 MEMORIES OF DAVID LEVY YULEE.................................................................. 189 6 CONCLUSION: IDENTITIES AND MEMORIES OF DAVID LEVY YULEE ........... 262 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................................... 275 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 301 5 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy RAILROAD BARON, FIRE-EATER, AND THE “ALIEN JEW”: THE LIFE AND MEMORY OF DAVID LEVY YULEE By Maurice I. Wiseman December 2011 Chair: Jack Davis Major: History This dissertation explores the confluence of the constructed categories of race and whiteness through the figure of David Levy Yulee. As a two-term senator, a large- scale landowner, and the entrepreneur responsible for Florida‟s first major railroad, David Levy Yulee was a leader in nineteenth-century Florida‟s economic development and political history. He was also the nation‟s first Jewish senator, an irony as he did not practice the Jewish religion, maintain Jewish cultural practices, or associate with Jewish communities. Quite the opposite, Yulee engaged Christian society, married a Christian woman and occasionally attended church, and adhered to Christian religious dogma. Nevertheless, most people considered him to be a Jew because of his family and ancestry, links to Judaism often socially described as race. Many nineteenth- century Americans, including Yulee, considered these bonds to be permanently inscribed in his blood marking him as distinct from the widely perceived nineteenth- century archetype of the Christian Anglo-American. Although society ascribed Yulee with a racial Jewish identity, this designation did not limit his social or political success. Yulee manipulated this social label by aggrandizing some aspects of his racial background, but also by performing the role of 6 a Southern white gentleman, an archetype of white Southern manhood. Aside from aligning with Christianity, Yulee mingled with the elite of Southern Christian society. He also fiercely advocated the Southern political position of states‟ rights and the corresponding right to own slaves; indeed, he owned numerous slaves and large plantations. Yulee‟s projection of whiteness helped him earn admission into the ranks of upper-class Southern society and allowed him to achieve social, economic, and political success, but he remained racially bound to Judaism. Moreover, this dissertation illustrates the role of memory in constructing academic and usable, oftentimes fictitious, history and community identity. Since his death in 1886, different social communities have remembered Yulee as a railroad entrepreneur, a staunch supporter of the Old South, and as the nation‟s first Jewish senator. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Yulee‟s Jewish identity has served as an example in discussions about the extent of American inclusion and citizenship. Jews in south Florida, home to one of the nation‟s largest Jewish communities, use Yulee to illustrate the enduring and prominent Jewish role in the state‟s history. For much of the twentieth century, north Florida communities have often remembered Yulee in the context of the Old South, yet these memories have been waning in the last third of the twentieth century. In their place, Floridian‟s are increasingly applying memories of Yulee as a community builder and railroad entrepreneur to their own endeavors in creating community unity out of diverse social sectors. 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Early Sunday morning, October 10, 1886, David Levy Yulee, a former United States senator from the state of Florida, died at the Clarendon hotel in New York City. Newspapers reported that Yulee was returning to his home in Washington, D.C., from a vacation in Bar Harbor, Maine, when he stopped in New York on the first of October.1 His health began deteriorating soon after arriving in the city. As the situation gravened, doctors ushered Yulee‟s family to his bedside. They surrounded him when he passed away that autumn morning, pneumonia reportedly claiming his life. Yulee‟s family brought the former senator‟s remains to Washington, his home for the last several years of his life. There, the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church held memorial services for him before interring him beside his wife in Oak Hill cemetery near Georgetown. Yulee had many esteemed colleagues among the social and political elite of his time. Former United States President Chester Arthur was one of his many prominent dinner guests while his honorary pallbearers included former Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston.2 Public sites, such as the Court of General Term in Washington, D.C., adjourned early on the morning of October 12 out of respect to Yulee‟s memory.3 Nationwide, presses carried the news of his death, which made the front page in such widely read publications as the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Atlanta Constitution. 1 The most extensive accounts of Yulee‟s death are found in the Washington Post, October 11, 1886, and the New York Times, October 11, 1886, 5. 2 The American Israelite, October 22, 1886, 5. 3 The Washington Post, October 13, 1886, 2. 8 Newspapers around the nation began issuing obituaries, eulogies, and editorials in the days and weeks following Yulee‟s death. Some obituaries contained little more than a few sentences, but many more offered extensive memories of his life. Editors could choose from many aspects of Yulee‟s life as subject matter for these foundational memories of him. The ex-senator had endured a long and often turbulent political career in the Democratic Party, one that was pierced by the Civil War, the most divisive and violent domestic episode in American history. Yulee also became an extremely wealthy man by touting Florida‟s natural resources and commercial prospects, spurring internal improvements, and amassing a great fortune as a real estate speculator, planter, and railroad developer. Yulee‟s accomplishments seem even more remarkable since most people marked him as the first senator of Jewish descent in the history of the predominantly Christian United States. These first memories of Yulee at the time of his death outlined the different ways in which his political career, entrepreneurial activities, and religious heritage would be historically remembered. Obituaries in Florida‟s newspapers devoted considerable attention to Yulee‟s political and economic activities that affected Florida‟s material and political development. A leader in the drive for statehood, Florida‟s newspapers connected Yulee‟s political efforts with the state‟s demographic growth and material prosperity, and especially recalled his role in the development of Florida‟s interior. Florida obituaries mentioned Yulee‟s efforts towards improving the state‟s communication and transportation infrastructures by developing the state‟s ports and postal system. They lauded his efforts in advancing the state‟s railroads both before and after the Civil War. Some obituaries reminded their readers that Yulee‟s push for federal assistance against 9 the local Indians spurred the passing of the Armed Occupation law, which provided 160 acres of land to frontier settlers.4 Yulee‟s promotion of Florida‟s internal improvements benefited many people: the poor, the wealthy, and especially him. Conversely, most obituaries across the nation paid scant attention to Yulee‟s endeavors in Florida. Most newspapers depicted Yulee as a wealthy man, but they were unclear, for instance, whether he inherited his wealth, acquired it through his legal career or agricultural pursuits, or made it in railroad development and real estate speculation. Accounts often referred to Yulee‟s dual antebellum careers as a lawyer and planter. They also noted that