CHAPTER XV.

FLORIDA.

COAST OF FLORIDA.-APPEAL OF SOUTH CAROLINA.-MASSIVE FORTIFICATIONS OF PENSACOLA HARBOR. ASSIGNED REASONS FOR SECESSION.-SEIZURE OF PENSACOLA.-LIEUT. SLEMMER. TRAITORS AND HEROES CONTRASTED.-HEROIC RE-ENFORCEMENT OF FORT PICKENS.-ExHAUSTING LABORS OF LIEUT. SLEMMER AND HIS COMMAND.-ENERGY OF COL. BROWN.DARING ADVENTURE OF LIEUT. SHEPLEY.-SURPRISE OF WILSON'S ZOUAVES BY A STRONG REBEL FORCE.-ITS RESULTS.-CRITICAL POSITION OF FORT PICKENS.-ENGAGEMENT OF REBEL BATTERIES.—EVACUATION OF PENSACOLA,—RECEPTION of our SOLDIERS.—AMELIA ISLAND.

FERNANDINA.

THE State Convention of Florida, called by the slaveholders to vote. that State out of the Union, met at Tallahassee, Jan. 3, 1861. There was but little diversity of sentiment among the delegates of that cotton growing community. They represented a population, according to the census of 1860, of 78,686 whites. There were also 61,753 slaves. Few doubted that Florida would be among the first to follow South Carolina in renouncing the authority of the National Government. The peninsula was purchased of Spain, by the United States, at the expense of several millions of dollars. A large portion of the territory consisted of a region of pine forests, dismal swamps and sandy plains, of little value for agriculture or commerce. There were, however, a few fine harbors on the coast, and some positions of great importance for the construction of forts to protect our rapidly growing commerce in the gulf. The South demanded the purchase of Florida, to promote the interests of slavery, by adding another Slave State to be represented in Congress. There was a small but heroic tribe of Seminole Indians occupying the everglades of this marshy, uninviting realm. Occasionally slaves, from the surrounding regions, would run away, and take shelter among these Indians, who ever received them kindly. The slaveholders demanded that these Indians should be driven from the lands where their fathers, for countless ages, had lived and died. The Government was under the control of the slaveholders, and of course obeyed their commands. War was waged against these unoffending natives. They fought heroically for their homes. Thirty-five millions of dollars were expended by the National Government, in expelling these Indians, and transporting them beyond the Mississippi. It was now necessary to erect forts for the protection of our National commerce. whole region was surveyed, commanding positions selected, and magnificent fortresses reared, at a cost to the National treasury of over six millions

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of dollars. Thus the National Government had expended upon Florida. nearly fifty millions of dollars.

And now the few white inhabitants of this State, amounting in all to less than 80,000, scattered over its vast solitudes, assumed the right of voting that Florida no longer belonged to the United States, but that, with all its millions of acres of unsold lands, all its harbors, and all its forts, it belonged to the few people who had chanced to settle in it, with the right to cede it back to Spain, or to sell it to England or France, or even to surrender it to a Congress of Confederate rebels. Was there ever before such a claim heard outside of a mad-house?

The business of the widely scattered population of Florida, most of them living a semi-civilized life, in log-houses, surrounded by their negroes, without churches or schools, was raising cotton and sugar. They were generally an exceedingly unintelligent people, led by a few ambitious demagogues, and consequently in sentiment radically pro-slavery. So far as the population of Florida was concerned, they had received nothing but favors from the Government, for which favors they had made, and could make, no return. It was essential to the nationality of the United States, that a promontory so important, jutting down almost to the West India Islands, should not be in the possession of any foreign power; and, therefore, the National Government secured it, at the above-mentioned vast expense, and would have done so, had Florida been but one solid rock, or an expanse of desert and verdureless sand. These people, fostered and pampered, were among the first to cry out against the tyranny of the National Government;-a tyranny which consisted simply in requiring that Florida, like all the other States, should respect the Constitution of the United States, as interpreted by the Supreme Court. The Government did not lift a finger to control a local interest in Florida. The State was left entirely untrammeled and unmeddled with, to manage its own State concerns. The Government did not ask for the change of a “jot or a tittle" in the Constitution. It asked for no modification whatever, in that admirably adjusted balance of State rights, and National sovereignty, which in less than a century had placed America among the leading nations on the globe. It simply said to the Floridians, manage your own local concerns precisely as you please, subject only to the Constitution of the United States. Does any one ask, How could such a people revolt? The answer, as we have before shown, is plain. They loved slavery better than the Union. And it was manifest to the leaders, that by the continuance of the Union, and the natural and legitimate operation of the Constitution of the United States, slavery must die.*

* The Governor of Florida, in his Message to the Legislature, Nov. 26, says: "I most decidedly declare that the proper action is secession from our faithless, perjured confederates. But some Southern men object to secession until some overt act of unconstitutional power shall have been committed by the General Government; that we ought not to secede, until the President and Congress unite in passing an act unequivocally hostile to our institutions, and fraught with immediate danger to our rights of property. But why wait for this overt act of the General Government ?" Here, then, is the admission, 1. That secession is to save slavery; 2. That the General Government has in no way interfered with State rights; and 3. It is denounced as faithless and perjured, with the confession that it had committed no "act of unconstitutional power.”

The address of South Carolina to the slaveholding States, urging their united secession, contains avowals, upon this point, worthy of historic record. This address was adopted by the South Carolina Convention, Dec. 24, 1860. The following are its prominent utterances:

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Responsibility follows power. If the people of the North have the power, by Congress, 'to promote the general welfare of the United States, by any means they deem expedient, why should they not assail and overthrow the institution of slavery in the South? They are responsible for its continuance or existence, in proportion to their power. The Union of the Constitution was a Union of slaveholding States. It rests on slavery, by prescribing a representation in Congress for three-fifths of our slaves. There is nothing in the proceedings of the Convention which framed the Constitution, to show that the Southern States would have formed any other Union; and still less that they would have formed a Union with more powerful non-slaveholding States, having a majority in both branches of the legislature of the Government. They were guilty of no such folly. Time and the progress of things have totally altered the relations between the Northern and Southern States, since the Union was first established. In spite of all disclaimers and professions, there can be but one end to the submission, by the South, to the rule of a sectional anti-slavery Government at Washington; and that end, directly or indirectly, must be the emancipation of the slaves of the South. The people of the non-slaveholding States are not, and can not be, safe associates of the slaveholding South, under a common Government. South Carolina, acting in her sovereign capacity, now thinks proper to secede from the Union. Citizens of the slaveholding States of the United States! circumstances beyond our control have placed us in the van of the great controversy, between the Northern and Southern States. Providence has cast our lot together, by extending over us an identity of pursuits, interests and institutions. South Carolina desires no destiny separate from yours. To be one of a great slaveholding Confederacy, stretching its arms over a territory larger than any power in Europe possesses, with a population four times greater than that of the whole United States when they achieved their independence of the British empire, with productions which make our existence more important to the world than that of any other people inhabiting it, with common institutions to defend, and common dangers to encounter, we ask your sympathy and confederation. We ask you to join us in forming a Confederacy of slaveholding States."

As was natural, the rebels turned their first attention to Pensacola. This was the largest and finest harbor on the Gulf of Mexico, and as such had been selected as the naval depot of the Gulf fleet. The Government had established here a navy yard, with all its costly appliances, a marine hospital, an arsenal, and a very valuable floating dry dock. The little hamlet of Pensacola was thus lifted into importance, and the town soon contained nearly 3,000 inhabitants, many of whom were employed upon governmental works. Opposite the town is the long, low, sandy island of Santa Rosa, which protects the harbor from the Gulf. At the western extremity of this island, commanding the entrance to the harbor, the

National Government had nearly completed a large bastioned fort, of the first class, called Fort Pickens. It was built of brick and of New York granite, with walls forty-five feet high, and twelve feet thick. It was embrasured for two tiers of guns, beneath bomb-proof casemates, and also it was armed with one tier en barbette. These guns radiated to every point in the horizon, with flank and enfilading fire. This national fort, still not quite finished, had been more than thirty years in process of construction, and had cost nearly a million of dollars. Its armament consisted of two hundred and ten guns, and a war garrison of 1,260 soldiers.

Directly opposite Fort Pickens, on the main land, also commanding the harbor, is Fort McRae. This was a bastioned fort, with brick walls, twelve feet in thickness. It was embrasured for two casemated tiers of guns, with one tier en barbette. Its armament consisted of one hundred and fifty of the heaviest guns, requiring a garrison of 650 men. Just below this fort, on the shore, there was reared, as its ally, a water battery of eight guns.

North of the harbor, and directly fronting its entrance, frowned in massive strength Fort Barancas. It retains the name and occupies the site of an old Spanish fort. It is very strong and heavy in its structure, mounting forty-nine guns of most formidable power, well bastioned, and requiring a garrison of 250 men. The fort was in perfect condition, with guns all in order, and a well appointed magazine. The fort was also supported in the rear by a strong redoubt, mounting 26 guns, and costing over one hundred thousand dollars.

Upon the assembling of the Florida Convention, resolutions were immediately offered, declaring the right of the State to secede from the National Government, and calling upon the people immediately to prepare for this act. To instigate the people to prompt action, which would commit them to the rebellion, that busy disseminator of treason, the Charleston (S. C.) Mercury, earnestly appealed to them to seize, without delay, and while there was an opportunity to do so, all the national forts, and other property within their reach. As the immense fortresses off the coast, at Key West and at the Tortugas, could only be reached by water, the rebels were urged immediately to take possession of Pensacola, and all its governmental works. It was argued that Georgia and Alabama had set the Floridians an example, and that, by seizing the forts while helpless, they could save themselves future trouble, and palsy the arm of the Government in Washington. The infamous cabinet of rebels, under President Buchanan, had carefully stored these forts with materials to carry on the warfare of treason, and left them in such a situation that they could be taken with scarcely any trouble.

In the appeal by the Charleston Mercury, it was truly stated that the forts at Pensacola commanded the trade of the Gulf; that if those forts remained in the hands of the National Government, that Government could blockade all those waters. But should Florida seize those stations, as could at that moment be easily done, then, in case of war, to use the very words of the Charleston Mercury, "the commerce of the North, in the Gulf, will fall an easy prey to our bold privateers, and California gold

will pay all such little expenses on our part." The people of Florida were thus openly urged to treason and rebellion by the prospect of the plunder of northern ships.

The ordinance of secession was adopted, by a vote of 62 to 7, on the 11th of January, with little delay or opposition. The convention in their ordinance declared, as the cause of their act, that "all hope of preserving the Union, upon terms consistent with the safety and honor of the slaveholding States, had been finally dissipated, by the recent indications of the strength of the anti-slavery sentiment of the free States." When, for thirty years, during which time the slaveholders had controlled the Government, might not any one of the free States have broken the sacred compact of Union, with a similar but ten-fold stronger plea ?*

The State of Florida was, by this instrument, declared to be a sovereign and independent nation-a nation of 80,000 white men, about one-tenth as large as the city of New York. This sovereign and independent nation, claiming all the property of the United States Government within its limits, was, of course, according to the newly invented doctrine of secessionism, at liberty to become an ally of England, France or Spain-to become a colony or an integral part of either of those powers. All the forts could be passed over to England, for instance, and Pensacola become a depot for the English fleet. The idea of a nation of 80,000 persons, for 'in Florida slaves are not persons but things, was a farce too ridiculous to be long contemplated. In less than a month the delegates of this nation were in the Montgomery Convention, offering all the United States forts and other property within their grasp to the rebels, and seeking incorporation with the great confederacy of traitors which was threatening to capture Washington and to extend slavery over this whole continent. There was but little love for the Union in Florida. The citizens generally gave their hearty approbation to the action of their delegates. The National banner was dragged down from every flag-staff with insult. The State flag, or the flag of the rebel Confederacy, everywhere took its place. Military companies were rapidly raised and organized, and vigorous preparations were made for war. The same enthusiasm, disorder, violence and

*Gov. Call, of Florida, admits that the National Government had not then committed any trespass upon the rights of the South. In his earnest appeal to the free States to settle the difficulty by adopting slavery as a national institution, and thus relieving the slaveholding States of any fear that slavery might hereafter lose the fostering care of the Government, he says, in his opening paragraph:

"A great nation has been dismembered. The bonds of the American Union, the work of Washington, of Franklin, of Madison, and other great sages and statesmen, of a glorious age, have been rent and snapped like cobwebs; and the greatest fabric of human government, without complaint of wrong or injustice, has been destroyed."

"There is,” he adds, “one disturbing, one dangerous cause-the angry controversy arising on the institution of African slavery; and unless this controversy can be amicably adjusted, there must be a perpetual end of the Union, an everlasting separation of the North from the South."

He then argues that the only remedy is the adoption of slavery into the Constitution as a national institution. His words are, slavery "should be considered, as it is, an institution interwoven and inseparably connected with our social and political system, as a domestic institution of the States, and a national institution created by the American people, and protected by the Constitution of the United States."-Letter of Gov. Call, of Florida, to J. S. Littell, of Pennsylvania, Feb. 12, 1861.