Author: Canter Brown, Jr.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807168602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 484
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Book Description
In this exceptional biography, Canter Brown, Jr., removes Ossian Bingley Hart (1821–1874)—a Unionist, the principal founder of the Republican Party in Florida, and a Reconstruction-era governor of the state—from the shadows of history. Through an examination of Hart’s life and career, Brown offers new insight into the political problems of the day—the role of Unionism in Deep South politics in particular—and enriches our understanding of the complexities of Reconstruction. Brown traces Hart’s life from his privileged childhood in the newly founded port town of Jacksonville through his service as a volunteer soldier in the Second Seminole War, his education in South Carolina, and the dawn of his legal and political career on Florida’s Atlantic frontier to his election as governor in 1872 and his premature death sixteen months later. Brown’s multifaceted biography offers a rare glimpse at the persistence of Loyalism in the post-Civil War South and clearly illustrates the pivotal role played by both Loyalists and African Americans in southern politics of that era and how these two groups merged to resist carpetbag rule.
Author: Special Assistant and Counsel to the President Canter Brown, Jr
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807141717
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
In this exceptional biography, Canter Brown, Jr., removes Ossian Bingley Hart (1821-1874), a Unionist who was the principal founder of the Republican Party in Florida and a Reconstruction-era governor of the state, from the shadows of history. Through an examination of Hart's life and career, Brown offers new insight into the political problems of the day - the role of Unionism in Deep South politics in particular - and enriches our understanding of the complexities of Reconstruction. Few people have heard of Ossian Bingley Hart. Within two decades after his death, the flame of his memory flickered dimly even in his own state. Yet Hart had numbered among the region's leading men of his time, contributing to it as a frontier settler, legislator, prosecutor, civic leader, entrepreneur, jurist, and politician. In an engaging narrative style, Brown portrays the complex circumstances by which Hart, a son of one of Florida's largest slaveholders, emerged from the Civil War as an ardent advocate of civil rights for freedmen and later successfully served as the Republican governor of that Deep South state. Brown traces Hart's life from his privileged childhood in the newly founded port town of Jacksonville, through his service as a volunteer soldier in the Second Seminole War, his education in South Carolina, and the dawn of his legal and political career on Florida's Atlantic frontier, to his election as governor in 1872 and his premature death sixteen months later. As he tells Hart's story, Brown explores numerous previously neglected facets of Florida history, including the advancement of settlement on the peninsular frontier, the experience of Armed Occupation Act pioneers on the lower Southeast coast, cosmopolitan life at Key West during the 1840s and 1850s, and the impact of the Civil War on Florida's southwest prairies, rivers, and Gulf Coast. Brown's multifaceted biography offers a rare glimpse at the persistence of Loyalism in the post-Civil War South. It also clearly illustrates the pivotal role played by both Loyalists and African Americans in southern politics of that era and how these two groups merged to resist carpetbag rule.
Author: Canter Brown, Jr.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807168599
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
In this exceptional biography, Canter Brown, Jr., removes Ossian Bingley Hart (1821–1874)—a Unionist, the principal founder of the Republican Party in Florida, and a Reconstruction-era governor of the state—from the shadows of history. Through an examination of Hart’s life and career, Brown offers new insight into the political problems of the day—the role of Unionism in Deep South politics in particular—and enriches our understanding of the complexities of Reconstruction. Brown traces Hart’s life from his privileged childhood in the newly founded port town of Jacksonville through his service as a volunteer soldier in the Second Seminole War, his education in South Carolina, and the dawn of his legal and political career on Florida’s Atlantic frontier to his election as governor in 1872 and his premature death sixteen months later. Brown’s multifaceted biography offers a rare glimpse at the persistence of Loyalism in the post-Civil War South and clearly illustrates the pivotal role played by both Loyalists and African Americans in southern politics of that era and how these two groups merged to resist carpetbag rule.
Author: Canter Brown (Jr.)
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 9780817309152
Category : African American leadership
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
A ground-breaking study revealing the magnitude and impact of African American leadership in Florida during the post-Civil War era. This work also includes an extensive biographical directory of more than 600 officeholders, an appendix of officials by political subdivision, and more.
Author: James M. Denham
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1643364294
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
Wild and wooly recollections from the Florida frontier Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives brings together the reminiscences of two pioneers who came of age in antebellum Florida's Columbia County and the nearby Suwannee River Valley. Though they held markedly different positions in society, they shared the adventure, thrill, hardship, and tragedy that characterized Florida's pioneer era. With sensitivity, poignancy, and humor, George Gillett Keen and Sarah Pamela Williams record anecdotes and memories that touch upon important themes of frontier life and reveal the remarkable diversity of Florida's settlers. Keen's story typifies that of many "Cracker" families. Born in Georgia, he moved with his parents to the Florida Territory in 1830 in search of a better life. He grew up in a dangerous yet exciting setting, and as an old man at the turn of the twentieth century recorded his colorful memories with a verve and vernacular reminiscent of the Georgia humorist, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet. Keen writes about subsistence farming, cattle grazing, the Seminole wars, marriage customs, medical practices, politics, the abundance of wildlife, and the paucity of educational opportunities. Admittedly not a Cracker, Sarah Pamela Williams was the daughter of a nationally recognized man of letters. In 1847 she moved to Columbia County's seat of Alligator (Lake City) and later married into one of northeast Florida's prominent planter families. She recorder her recollections of a life brightened by social functions, travel, and cultural endeavors. Offering a rare glimpse into Florida's Civil War homefront, Williams tells of making clothes of homespun, tithing crops to the Confederacy, fearing hostilities just thirteen miles from her home, and surviving as a widow in the lean postwar era. Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives features biographical sketches of more than 280 persons mentioned by Keen and Williams in their writings, many of whom subsequently pioneered settlement in the Florida peninsula.
Author: T. D. Allman
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802193730
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 514
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Book Description
A National Book Award Nominee and a Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year. Over the centuries, Florida has been many things: an unconquered realm protected by geography, a wilderness that ruined Spanish conquistadors, “God’s waiting room,” and a place to start over. Depopulated after the extermination of its original native population, today it’s home to nineteen million. The site of vicious racial violence, including massacres, slavery, and the roll-back of Reconstruction, Florida is now one of our most diverse states, a dynamic multicultural place with an essential role in twenty-first-century America. In Finding Florida, T. D. Allman reclaims the remarkable history of Florida from the state’s mythologizers, apologists, and boosters. Allman traces the discovery, exploration, and settlement of Florida, its transformation from a swamp to “paradise.” Palm Beach, Key West, Miami, Tampa, and Orlando boomed, fortunes were won and lost, land was stolen and flipped, and millions arrived. The product of a decade of research and writing, Finding Florida is the first modern comprehensive history of this fascinating place. “A take-no-prisoners account . . . Extremely timely and relevant.” —The New York Times Book Review “The Seminole Wars, the Civil War, various massacres, Reconstruction, a second Reconstruction, Disney World, the Marielitos, voter suppression—it’s all here, and even Carl Hiaasen couldn’t make it up.” —Booklist, starred review
Author: Philip B. Lyons
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 073918508X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
Besides massive race prejudice and the perceived vindictiveness of the radical Republicans, another factor that contributed strongly to the derailment of reconstruction after the Civil War was the conflicting decisions taken by the political leaders. Lincoln warned against differences between the friends of freedom, and to overcome these, took charge of the reconstruction of Louisiana and showed how it should be done by pitting benefits of enlightened free government against the prejudices of the populace. Unfortunately, his example was lost on his successor, Andrew Johnson, whose encouragement of Southern resistance to the North’s terms aggravated factionalism within the Republican party. The moderates dominated in the drafting of the Fourteenth Amendment, where they incorporated the statesmanlike principle of a benefit, self-government in exchange for Southerners protecting the rights of all their citizens, black and white. However, this statesmanlike bargain was practically abandoned in Congress’s response to the Southern states’ rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Congressional Reconstructions Act. The fears of the moderates that the new state governments would not protect rights led them to propose universal suffrage, while the fears of the radicals that disloyal men would rule led them to provide for the disfranchisement of many ex-rebels and to hold any governments established, provisional only, subject to congressional change at will. As result the incentive for native white Southerners to participate in the new state governments in exchange for rights protection was drastically weakened. The consequences of this legislative "straight jacket" made it extremely difficult for Republicans in the defeated states to establish permanent political footholds. Some tried to hold onto power without attempting to cultivate native white support and lost their states for the Republicans. Three other leaders’ efforts to strike a balance between radicals and Democrats fell flat. Imprudent decisions of the Grant Administration shattered the attempts of three more states to establish a common ground with moderate Democrats. On the positive side, there was a leader in Virginia who figured out the kind of political arrangement necessary for Republicans to survive, and in Florida, a moderate Republican Governor, Ossian Bingley Hart, exercised real statesmanship to lead the most successful of all reconstruction governments. Statesmanship in reconstruction could have spared the South some severe hardships. Despite the vast change in public opinion on race relations over the last nearly 150 years, there are still lessons drawn from this study that can be applied to present day Civil Rights Policy.
Author: Kevin Boyle
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1429900164
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
An electrifying story of the sensational murder trial that divided a city and ignited the civil rights struggle In 1925, Detroit was a smoky swirl of jazz and speakeasies, assembly lines and fistfights. The advent of automobiles had brought workers from around the globe to compete for manufacturing jobs, and tensions often flared with the KKK in ascendance and violence rising. Ossian Sweet, a proud Negro doctor-grandson of a slave-had made the long climb from the ghetto to a home of his own in a previously all-white neighborhood. Yet just after his arrival, a mob gathered outside his house; suddenly, shots rang out: Sweet, or one of his defenders, had accidentally killed one of the whites threatening their lives and homes. And so it began-a chain of events that brought America's greatest attorney, Clarence Darrow, into the fray and transformed Sweet into a controversial symbol of equality. Historian Kevin Boyle weaves the police investigation and courtroom drama of Sweet's murder trial into an unforgettable tapestry of narrative history that documents the volatile America of the 1920s and movingly re-creates the Sweet family's journey from slavery through the Great Migration to the middle class. Ossian Sweet's story, so richly and poignantly captured here, is an epic tale of one man trapped by the battles of his era's changing times. Arc of Justice is the winner of the 2004 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Author: Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813938732
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
The Risen Phoenix charts the changing landscape of black politics and political culture in the postwar South by focusing on the careers of six black congressmen who served between the Civil War and the turn of the nineteenth century: John Mercer Langston of Virginia, James Thomas Rapier of Alabama, Robert Smalls of South Carolina, John Roy Lynch of Mississippi, Josiah Thomas Walls of Florida, and George Henry White of North Carolina. Drawing on a rich combination of traditional political history, gender and black history, and the history of U.S. foreign relations, the book argues that African American congressmen effectively served their constituents’ interests while also navigating their way through a tumultuous post–Civil War Southern political environment. Black congressmen represented their constituents by advancing a policy agenda encompassing strong civil rights protections, economic modernization, and expanded access to education. Local developments such as antiblack aggression and violent electoral contests shaped the policies supported by newly elected black congressmen, including the tactical decision to support amnesty for ex-Confederates. Yet black congressmen ultimately embraced their role as national leaders and as spokesmen not only for their congressional districts and states but for all African Americans throughout the South. As these black leaders searched for effective ways to respond to white supremacy, disenfranchisement, segregation, and lynching, they challenged the barriers of prejudice, paving the way for future black struggles for equality in the twentieth century.
Author: Larry Eugene Rivers
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421440318
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
This first-of-its-kind biography tells the story of Rev. James Page, who rose from slavery in the nineteenth century to become a religious and political leader among African Americans as well as an international spokesperson for the cause of racial equality. Winner of the Rembert Patrick Award by The Florida Historical Society, Florida Non-Fiction Book Award by the Florida Book Awards, Harry T. and Harrietter V. Moore Award by the Florida Historical Society James Page spent the majority of his life enslaved—during which time he experienced the death of his free father, witnessed his mother and brother being sold on the auction block, and was forcibly moved 700 miles south from Richmond, VA, to Tallahassee, FL, by his enslaver, John Parkhill. Page would go on to become Parkhill's chief aide on his plantation and, unusually, a religious leader who was widely respected by enslaved men and women as well as by white clergy, educators, and politicians. Rare for enslaved people at the time, Page was literate—and left behind ten letters that focused on his philosophy as an enslaved preacher and, later, as a free minister, educator, politician, and social justice advocate. In Father James Page, Larry Eugene Rivers presents Page as a complex, conflicted man: neither a nonthreatening, accommodationist mouthpiece for white supremacy nor a calculating schemer fomenting rebellion. Rivers emphasizes Page's agency in pursuing a religious vocation, in seeking to exhibit "manliness" in the face of chattel slavery, and in pushing back against the overwhelming power of his enslaver. Post-emancipation, Page continued to preach and to advocate for black self-determination and independence through black land ownership, political participation, and business ownership. The church he founded—Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Tallahassee—would go on to be a major political force not only during Reconstruction but through today. Based upon numerous archival sources and personal papers, as well as an in-depth interview of James Page and a reflection on his life by a contemporary, this deeply researched book brings to light a fascinating life filled with contradictions concerning gender, education, and the social interaction between the races. Rivers' biography of Page is an important addition, and corrective, to our understanding of black spirituality and religion, political organizing, and civic engagement.
