The History of Florida (58 page)

———. “Political Reconstruction in Florida.”
Florida
Historical
Quarterly
45, no. 2 (Octo-

ber 1966):145–70.

Wal ace, John.
Carpetbag
Rule
in
Florida:
The
Inside
Workings
of
the
Reconstruction
of
Civil
Government
in
Florida
after
the
Close
of
the
Civil
War.
1888. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1964.

16

The First Developers

Thomas Graham

In 1877, Florida ranked as the least populous and most thinly settled state

east of the Mississippi River, with only about 250,000 residents. However,

over the fol owing forty years Florida would grow at a rate approaching

twice the pace of the United States. Floridians could sense that change was

on the way. Both large developers and individual pioneers saw Florida as a

raw wilderness ripe for improvement.

Florida’s political leaders understood that the state needed to attract both

immigrants from the North and investment capital to build its economy. To

proof

encourage rich outsiders to invest in the state, they pursued policies of low

taxes and minimal government interference with businesses. The most im-

portant field of investment was railroad building. While steamboats could

serve in areas with navigable rivers, most regions of the state would remain

undeveloped until railroads could be built to connect them with the outside

world.

Before the Civil War, the state had been a Deep South cotton and slave

state much like its neighbors Georgia and Alabama. Most of Florida’s popu-

lation clustered along its northern border. As railroads extended down the

peninsula, the center of population moved southward. New enterprises such

as citrus growing, phosphate mining, and tourism moved Florida society

away from the cotton culture. In 1872 Henry Sanford, a former U.S. diplo-

mat, established a plantation on Lake Monroe in central Florida to grow

winter vegetables, and in 1876 Henry DeLand founded a town that he hoped

would prosper with the cultivation of oranges. Many people continued to

eke out a living as tenant farmers or sharecroppers, growing corn, cotton,

and tobacco or catching open-range cattle just as their fathers had, but the

future clearly lay along the path of the steel rails into the peninsula in what

was emerging as the Sunshine State.

· 276 ·

The First Developers · 277

The governor who took office in January 1877, George F. Drew, had been

selected by the Democrats to raise as little controversy as possible at a time

when Reconstruction was coming to an end. Drew had been born in New

Hampshire but had lived in Florida before the war. He operated a large saw-

mill at El aville on the Suwannee River and was a businessman, not a politi-

cian. Since he had been a Whig before the war and supported the Union

during the war, he could appeal to moderate white men and still be accept-

able to conservative Democrats. Black Floridians hoped that he would not

reverse the gains made by black citizens during Reconstruction.

Drew and the legislature focused their attention on putting the state’s

economic house in order. They embarked on a program of reducing govern-

ment spending that severely impacted support for public schools. A pro-

posal to establish a state college at Eau Gallie was dropped. The legislature

passed a law that provided for the leasing of state penitentiary inmates to

private businesses. The measure served to cut state expenses but raised se-

rious questions about the exploitation and abuse of prisoners by private

contractors. Often convict laborers were employed in arduous work that

free men could not be induced to undertake.

By 1880, the Democrats felt they no longer needed the compromise can-

didate Drew and nominated their champion, William D. Bloxham, a native-

proof

born Florida plantation owner and lawyer from Tal ahassee and a veteran of

the Confederate military. Though he had fought for the Old South, he now

envisioned a New South of modern businesses and industries. He stressed

the need for sound finances in state government. The previous legislature’s

enthusiasm for cutting taxes, combined with the nationwide economic re-

cession of the 1870s, had left the state with a large public debt.

The only major financial asset of the state, its public lands, had been used

as col ateral for bonds issued by various railroad ventures that subsequently

went bankrupt, leaving the state responsible for a $1 mil ion debt, which

constantly grew because of the accumulation of unpaid interest. When the

state continued to make deals to give away land in exchange for promises

to build railroads and drain swamps, one of the major bondholders, Fran-

cis Vose, a New York investor, filed suit in federal court, which placed the

state’s custodian of lands, the Internal Improvement Commission, into re-

ceivership and refused to allow any further alienation of state lands except

for hard cash or until the bonded debt was paid. This effectively blocked

the most promising way of encouraging investment in the state. Since the

governor served as head of the Internal Improvement Commission, respon-

sibility for resolving this impasse fell to him.

278 · Thomas Graham

Hamilton Disston’s dredges floated on barges that cut a pathway through wetlands

to excavate drainage canals. This photo was taken on the St. Cloud Canal south of Or-

lando. Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida,
Florida Memory
, http://floridamemory.

com/items/show/138343.proof

Bloxham traveled north and personal y negotiated an agreement with

Philadelphia industrialist Hamilton Disston to eliminate the Internal

Improvement Commission’s debt. The deal had two parts: for $1 mil ion

in cash, Disston purchased 4 mil ion acres of land outright, and he also

gained the option to drain an additional 9 mil ion acres of swampland at

his own expense, dividing the drained land equal y between himself and

the state. The land to be drained encompassed the Kissimmee River and

Lake Okeechobee water basins. Disston established real estate companies

in the North and in Europe to sell land to immigrants, making him one of

the largest promoters of Florida.

His dredges began digging south from the town of Kissimmee to

straighten the Kissimmee River so that it would carry water rapidly into

Lake Okeechobee. At the same time, another crew excavated a canal from

the mouth of the Caloosahatchee into Lake Okeechobee at Moore Haven

so that water from the lake would flow into the Gulf of Mexico. Disston

established a sugar plantation at St. Cloud south of Orlando on drained

land. After a few years it became clear that lowering the water table of Lake

Okeechobee would require dredging many more canals.

The First Developers · 279

The Disston land deals became a major issue in state politics. Critics

argued that Governor Bloxham had been too hasty in making a deal that

sold land for twenty-five cents per acre when the usual price for undevel-

oped government land was $1.25 per acre. Opponents also said that Disston

claimed land that he had not drained and that he had pushed pioneer squat-

ters off the land they had been living on. Moreover, many felt that it was

simply wrong for a handful of wealthy men to own so much of the state.

Another of Florida’s important developers, Henry Bradley Plant, helped

to connect the remote frontier state of Florida with the rest of the country

by modernizing the South’s railroads. Born in Connecticut, Plant rose in

the ranks of the Adams Express Company before the war to become super-

intendent of its shipping operations in the South. When war came, Plant

organized his own firm to serve the Confederacy. After the war, Plant pur-

chased a railroad he renamed the Savannah, Florida and Western, and in

1881 he extended its line directly to Jacksonville. Plant established his home

in New York City on Fifth Avenue to be near the financial markets and to

attract northern investors in his growing railroad system.

Reaching out from his foothold in Jacksonville, Plant purchased control-

ling interest in the South Florida Railroad in 1883 and extended its south-

ernmost terminus from Kissimmee to Tampa, a town of 700 souls. He began

proof

to turn Tampa into a major metropolis by building a deepwater port on

Tampa Bay from which his steamships could trade with Cuba and the Ca-

ribbean. In 1891 he opened the fantastic Tampa Bay Hotel as an attraction

for wealthy northern visitors during the winter months. Eventual y Plant

would own eight hotels in central Florida and along the Gulf coast. All the

while he continued either to purchase or to build additional railroad lines

until most of the western half of the peninsula as far south as Punta Gorda

seemed to be Plant’s domain.

One of Plant’s neighbors in New York City, living a block away on Fifth

Avenue, was Henry M. Flagler, a partner with John D. Rockefeller in Stan-

dard Oil Company. Flagler invested in Plant’s Southern railway ventures. He

came to Florida in 1878 with his first wife, Mary, and traveled to St. Augus-

tine in the hope that warm air and sunlight might improve her health. How-

ever, Flagler found the surroundings in America’s oldest city depressing. He

quickly returned north, where Mary soon died. Six years later, fol owing

Flagler’s remarriage to his second wife, Alice, he returned to St. Augustine

and was surprised to discover that the town was filled with healthy, prosper-

ous northerners who had come simply to enjoy themselves.1

Flagler saw that improvements in the South’s railroad connections made

280 · Thomas Graham

Henry Plant opened his Tampa Bay Hotel in 1891. Legend has it that when Henry Flagler

asked how to find Tampa, Plant replied, “Just follow the crowds.” Actually, the hotel was

not a commercial success, but it briefly became famous as headquarters for U.S. Army

proof

officers during the Spanish-American War. Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida,

Florida Memory
, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/31956.

it practical for the growing class of affluent people in northern states to

travel to Florida. Flagler realized he could profit from this significant de-

velopment in American transportation by opening fine winter resort hotels

in Florida and building a railroad to connect them with customers coming

down in search of sunshine and pleasure.

In 1885 he began construction of the elegant Hotel Ponce de Leon and its

companion, the Hotel Alcazar in St. Augustine. When they opened in 1888,

they were the first large buildings in America to be constructed of concrete.

Designed by architects Thomas Hastings and John Carrère, the hotels intro-

duced Spanish-style architecture to modern Florida.

To ensure convenient, reliable transportation to his hotels, Flagler pur-

chased the Jacksonvil e, St. Augustine & Halifax River Railroad in 1885.

The acquisition of this railroad, with charter rights to build all the way to

Daytona, gave Flagler an incentive to extend his range down the east coast.