The Civil War was the bloodiest conflict on American soil. Florida was deeply involved in every aspect of the conflict. Thousands of Floridians fought for both the Union and Confederate Armies and Navies. The primary catalyst for war was the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Many Floridians feared President Lincoln would abolish slavery, thus upsetting the social and economic system of the state. At the center of this large-scale conflict was the Civil War soldier. Of the thousands of Floridians that went off to war, many never returned.
Florida Historical Society
The Civil War official ended in April of 1865, yet the county had been torn apart both literally and figuratively. Much of the infrastructure and economy in the southern states were devastated. Tens of thousands of wounded soldiers struggled to return home and return to civilian life but the problem of readmitting the Confederate state back into the Union was complicated and fraught with difficulty. For years after the last shots were fired, many former Confederate states including Florida were under military rule.
As early as the 16th century when Europeans began coming to Florida’s shores, slaves have been an important component of the cultural and social dynamic of the state. By the time Florida became a United States territory in 1821, slavery had become an integral part of the Middle Florida plantation economy. The system of African slavery in Florida was more closely related to other southern states of the time leading up to the American Civil War however. Florida has become part of the great cotton belt which produced a large quantity of the country’s cotton from this slave labor system.