"This ... narrative explores the impact of the Civil War on Florida's St. John's River region. Moving chronologically through the war years, Thunder on the river brings to light the story of the city of Jacksonville, including the surrounding countryside and its residents, be they white or black, supporters of the Confederacy or of the Union ... Based on a thorough review of a broad selection of primary sources, Thunder on the river touches on such important themes as secession, contested places, occupation, emancipation, invasions, hard war, and reconstruction. It presents local history in a national context and offers a comprehensive telling of the story of Florida's Civil War experiences from the Missouri Compromise to Reconstruction -- of Confederates and Unionists, of soldiers and civilians, of enlisted men and officers, of die-hards and deserters, of slaves and plantation owners, of ordinary men and women caught up in extraordinary events"--Jacket.

Highlights the diverse experiences of Florida's population in the US Civil War. Whether Confederate or Unionist, free or slave, male or female, no Floridian could escape the war's impact. A concise narrative of life on the home front, this book explores how Floridians endured the war. Women, slaves, and Unionists are considered in detail, as well as how various areas of the state reacted to Federal incursions.

Documents in words and pictures the triumphs and tragedies faced by Florida and Floridians during the Civil War.

A few weeks after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, James Montgomery sailed into Key West Harbor looking for black men to draft into the Union army. Eager to oblige him, the military commander in town ordered every black man from fifteen to fifty to report to the courthouse, “there to undergo a medical examination, preparatory to embarking for Hilton Head, S.C.” Montgomery swept away 126 men. Storm over Key West is a little-known story woven of many threads, but its main theme is the denial to black people of the equality central to the American ideal. After the island’s slaves flocked to freedom during the summer of 1862, the white majority began a century-long campaign to deny black residents civil rights, education, literacy, respect, and the vote. Key West’s harbor and two major federal forts were often referred to as “America’s Gibraltar.” This Gibraltar guarded the Florida Straits between Key West and Cuba and thus access to the Gulf of Mexico. When Union forces seized it before the war, the southernmost point of the Confederacy slipped out of Confederate hands. This led to a naval blockade based in Key West that devastated commerce in Florida and beyond.This book is the widest-ranging narrative history to date of the military bastion in the Florida Keys.

Set on the antebellum southern frontier, this book uses the history of two counties in Florida's panhandle to tell the story of the migrations, disruptions, and settlements that made the plantation South. Soon after the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1821, migrants from older southern states began settling the land that became Jackson and Leon Counties. Slaves, torn from family and community, were forced to carve plantations from the woods of Middle Florida, while planters and less wealthy white men battled over the social, political, and economic institutions of their new society. Conflict between white men became full-scale crisis in the 1840s, but when sectional conflict seemed to threaten slavery, the whites of Middle Florida found common ground. In politics and everyday encounters, they enshrined the ideal of white male equality--and black inequality. To mask their painful memories of crisis, the planter elite told themselves that their society had been transplanted from older states without conflict. But this myth of an "Old," changeless South only papered over the struggles that transformed slave society in the course of its expansion. In fact, that myth continues to shroud from our view the plantation frontier, the very engine of conflict that had led to the myth's creation.

Florida's premier lighthouse historian sets the record straight in this fascinating account of wartime activities at each of the State's 21 Civil War lighthouses. Both sides fought for possession of the towers and their valuable lenses and lamp oil. In the end, 14 Florida lights were damaged and it took more than six years after the war's end before all the lights were restored. Through meticulous research, Neil Hurley has uncovered little-known facts about each lighthouse, including the great care taken by Confederate authorities to protect the lighthouses, lenses and oil. This book is lavishly illustrated with over 200 color ad black & white drawings, photographs and maps.

A comprehensive study of the Florida Brigade, which served under Robert E. Lee in the famed Army of Northern Virginia.

Amid the rubble of a city blasted by a civil war that many fear will cross borders and engulf Europe, the Hotel Florida on Madrid's chic Gran Via has become a haven for foreign journalists and writers. It is here that six people meet and find their lives changed forever. Ernest Hemingway, his career stalled, his marriage sour, hopes that this war will give him fresh material and a new romance; Martha Gellhorn, an ambitious young journalist hungry for love and experience, thinks she will find both with Hemingway in Spain. Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, idealistic and ground-breaking young photographers based in Paris, want to capture history in the making and are inventing moder photojournalism in the process. And Arturo Barea, chief of the Republican government's foreign press office, and Ilsa Kulcsar, his Austrian deputy, are struggling to balance truth-telling with their loyalty to their sometimes-compromised cause - a struggle that places both of their lives at risk. Hotel Florida traces the tangled wartime destinies of these three couples - and a host of supporting characters - living as intensely as they had ever done, against the backdrop of a critical moment in history. It is a narrative of love and reinvention that is, finally, a story about truth, finding it, telling it - and living it, whatever the cost.

Explains why citizens of Jackson County, Florida, slaughtered close to one hundred of their neighbors during the Reconstruction period following the end of the Civil War; focusing on the Freedman's Bureau, the development of African-American political leadership, and the emergence of white "Regulators."

Brings to light an overlooked aspect of Florida's importance to the Confederacy. Florida's role in the Civil War has long been overlooked or discounted by students of the conflict. Despite its isolation and the lack of important land battles, the state made a contribution to the Confederate war effort far out of proportion to its small population. After seceding from the Union in 1861, Florida joined the Confederacy with a reputation, born in the 1850s, as an area of great agricultural potential for the newly created country. Rebel leaders quickly came to regard Florida as an abundant source of foodstuffs. The state became a major supplier of salt, beef, pork, and corn both for the rebel forces and for many civilians. Cattle in particular were driven northward in large numbers, providing rations for Confederate troops from Chattanooga to Charleston. Unfortunately, however, senior officials in the field and in Richmond often held unrealistic expectations about the volume of supplies Floridians could actually deliver. These same authorities for the most part also failed adequately to defend this crucial food source, a factor that may have accelerated the Confederacy's ultimate disintegration.