The Civil War

1861-1865

Part One

The Union Dissolved 

In the 1850s, Florida politics were just about identical to the national politics at the time, as slavery was the main topic, with issues such as the Kansas/Nebraska Act and the Fugitive Slave Act. After the Mexican-American War ended in 1848, southern slave states and northern free states argued in Congress whether or not slavery would be allowed to spread into the newly acquired territories in, the west. States such as South Carolina began to speak of secession, but the Compromise of 1850 was able to delay such an act. The provisions of the bill were as follows: Texas surrendered its claim to New Mexico, California was admitted into the Union as a free state, the slave trade was banned in Washington D.C., and a new Fugitive Slave Law was established.

Daniel Ladd

           

Governor Madison Starke Perry

In 1860, most Floridians lived in the northern and central part of the state, and the heavily settled lands around Tallahassee, including Wakulla County, represented the core of Florida’s plantations. In Tallahassee, after Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States, Governor Madison Starke Perry called for a state convention to consider secession, and on December 22, 1860 he authorized a special election for the counties to choose delegates to a secession convention. Dominated by planters and their allies, the Florida Legislature placed the decision on secession squarely in the hands of the Convention delegates. As one of the most influential men in Wakulla County, Daniel Ladd of Newport was often turned to for advice and leadership. Wakulla elected Ladd, and fellow Unionist David Lewis, to represent them in Tallahassee at the secession convention. During the convention, pro-secessionists elected John C. McGehee president of the convention, and pro-unionists rallied around Leon County’s George T. Ward.

Ward, hoping that the people of Florida would reject leaving the Union, proposed immediate secession, but only after a popular vote, or a vote from the people. This proposal was denied because the delegates at the convention had the authority to act on behalf of the people because they were elected representatives of the people. The pro-Union, anti-secession delegates failed to muster enough votes to force the Convention to submit its decision to a popular vote.[1] Ladd and Lewis voted repeatedly for delay, and over and over again the votes were for secession, 39-30. Eventually, when it seemed secession was inevitable, Ladd and Lewis gave in and voted to leave the Union, which did pass 62-7.

Even as the delegates debated in the capitol, Governor Perry learned that Federal troops were on their way to reinforce critical forts along Florida’s coast, and destroy federal arsenals in the state. Perry sent state militia units to seize these installations before they could be emptied and destroyed. The Quincy Guards seized control of the Chattahoochee Arsenal on January 5. Local volunteers took Fort Marion (formerly known as Castillo de San Marcos) in St. Augustine on January 7, and Fort Clinch on Amelia Island on January 8. In Pensacola, Lieutenant Adam Slemmer of the U.S. First Artillery, and chief officer of the forts in Pensacola, initiated his measures to reject the seizure of any Federal forts to the rebels. Slemmer only had 81 men at his command and he figured the best way to maintain control of Pensacola was to move all his troops to Fort Pickens, which sat on Santa Rosa Island surveilling the mouth of Pensacola Bay. On the night of January 10, the same day that Florida seceded from the United States, Slemmer completed his move to Fort Pickens and the U.S. would hold it throughout the entire upcoming war.

On January 10, 1861, Florida adopted the Ordinance of Secession, and when the announcement was made, celebration erupted in the streets of Tallahassee. Florida was now its own independent state, but only for a short time. While Ladd was consistently voting against joining the Confederate States of America, he was also part of a committee on seacoast defenses and helped draw up a plan to defend St. Marks and other ports. Ladd, and seven other men, voted against sending delegates to a “convention of slave-holding states” in Montgomery, Alabama. But, they were outnumbered by forty votes, and within a few months Florida joined a new union, the Confederate States of America.

Florida's Ordinance of Secession

            Daniel Ladd then returned to Newport, but like every man in his position of wealth and importance, he was expected to help the new Confederate government any way he could. Ladd was not really pro-Confederate as much as he was anti-imprisonment. That is to say, perhaps he went along with it because he did not want to get arrested for treason, as his younger brother did. In 1861, Daniel Ladd’s younger brother, Alfred W. Ladd, who grew up in Newport, traveled from New York to Wakulla for a visit. Upon his arrival he was arrested for treason and forced to serve in the Confederate Army, which he deserted a year later. Daniel Ladd did not want to do anything to jeopardize what he had built in Wakulla County, so he went along with the Confederate government. The Sequestration Act of September 1861, made it lawful to confiscate enemy property within the Confederacy, and anybody who refused to purchase Confederate bonds, or help in any way, were considered an enemy and arrested. “Whatever his reasons, Ladd used his considerable resources in behalf of that government and watched his economic empire disintegrate in the smoking ruins of the little river town he helped build.”[2]

Sources Used:

Shofner, J. H. (1978). Daniel Ladd: Merchant Prince of Frontier Florida. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida

Wynne, L. N., & Taylor, R. (2002). Florida in the Civil War. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing.

---

[1] Wynne & Taylor, Florida in the Civil War, p.9

[2] Shofner,p.122