Southern Prohibitionexamines political culture and reform through the evolving temperance and prohibition movements in Middle Florida. Scholars have long held that liquor reform was largely a ...northern and mid-Atlantic phenomenon before the Civil War. Lee L. Willis takes a close look at the Florida plantation belt to reveal that the campaign against alcohol had a dramatic impact on public life in this portion of the South as early as the 1840s.
Race, class, and gender mores shaped and were shaped by the temperance movement. White racial fears inspired prohibition for slaves and free blacks. Stringent licensing shut down grog shops that were the haunts of common and poor whites, which accelerated gentrification and stratified public drinking along class lines. Restricting blacks' access to alcohol was a theme that ran through temperance and prohibition campaigns in Florida, but more affluent African Americans also supported prohibition, indicating that the issue was not driven solely by white desires for social control. Women in the plantation belt played a marginal role in comparison to other locales and were denied greater political influence as a result.
Beyond alcohol, Willis also takes a broader look at psychoactive substances to show the veritable pharmacopeia available to Floridians in the nineteenth century. Unlike the campaign against alcohol, however, the tightening regulations on narcotics and cocaine in the early twentieth century elicited little public discussion or concern-a quiet beginning to the state's war on drugs
Just after the Civil War, two states prominently laid claim to being America's paradise destinations. Private companies, state agencies, and journalists all lent a hand in creating a seductive, ...expansionist imagery that promoted semitropical California and Florida and helped "sell" Americans on the idea of an attainable paradise within the United States.
In Tropic of Hopes, Henry Knight examines the promotion of California and Florida from the end of the Civil War to the eve of the Great Depression, a period when both states were transformed from remote, sparsely populated locales into two of the most publicized and dreamed-about destinations in America. Using the discussion of climate, geography, race, and environment to link agricultural, tourist, and urban development in these regions, Knight provides a highly original and informative account.
Heaven's Soldiers chronicles the history of a community of free people of African descent who lived and thrived, while resisting the constraints of legal bondage, in East Florida in the four decades ...leading up to the Civil War.Historians have long attributed the relatively flexible system of race relations in pre-Civil War East Florida to the area's Spanish heritage. While acknowledging the importance of that heritage, this book gives more than the usual emphasis to the role of African American agency in exploiting the limited opportunities that such a heritage permitted. Spanish rule presented institutions and customs that talented, ambitious, and fortunate individuals might, and did, exploit. Although racial prejudice was never absent, persons of color aspired to lives of dignity, security, and prosperity. Frank Marotti's subjects are the free people of African descent in the broad sense of the term "free," that is, not just those who were legally free, but all those who resisted the constraints of legal bondage and otherwise asserted varying degrees of control over themselves and their circumstances. Collectively, this population was indispensable to the evolution of the existing social order. In Heaven's Soldiers, Marotti studies four pillars of black liberty that emerged during Spain's rule and continued through the United States' acquisition of Florida in 1821: family ties to the white community, manumission, military service, and land ownership. The slaveowning culture of the United States eroded a number of these pillars, though black freedom and agency abided in ways unparalleled anywhere else in the pre-Civil War United States. Indeed, a strong black martial tradition arguably helped to topple Florida's slave-holding regime, leading up to the start of the Civil War. Marotti surveys black opportunities and liabilities under the Spaniards; successful defenses of black rights in the 1820s as well as chilling statutory assaults on those rights; the black community's complex involvement in the Patriot War and the Second Seminole War; black migration in the two decades leading up to the US Civil War; and African American efforts to preserve marriage and emancipation customs, and black land ownership.
The Winter Sailor Lewis, Carolyn Frances Baker
2004, 2010-03-16
eBook
A unique guide to Florida's frontier history along Indian River. The Winter Sailor is a historical adventure that details the yearly winter travels of Francis R. Stebbins to Florida's Indian River. ...Stebbins, a writer from Michigan, visited Florida in March of 1878 and became entranced by its pristine beauty. Subsequently, Stebbins and his traveling companions made annual visits to Indian River—until 1888 when tragedy struck and ended Stebbins' yearly journeys. Being an observant traveler, Stebbins began a series of descriptive articles for his hometown newspaper that chronicled his journeys to the Indian River area. Stebbins's articles tell of his own personal experiences during his leisurely visits, which included such activities as hunting and fishing, studying the natural surroundings, and excavating Indian mounds. What Stebbins enjoyed most was sailing down the river interviewing townspeople and examining local attractions as he went. His articles also detail the lifestyle of the region, food, fashion, industry, history, environment, and changes that occurred over time. Stebbins's articles not only entertained and informed but also became a travelogue for his readers. He inspired northern travelers to go south and visit Florida, which contributed to the beginnings of large-scale tourism in the region. The Winter Sailor combines Stebbins's 49 articles along with three by his companions, to provide an enjoyable, historical guide. Unique among 19th-century travelogues, this fascinating look into Florida's past documents a decade of change to the Indian River wilderness and becomes Stebbins's gift to the present.  
Nathaniel Millett examines how the Prospect Bluff maroons constructed their freedom, shedding light on the extent to which they could fight physically and intellectually to claim their rights. ...Millett considers the legacy of the Haitian Revolution, the growing influence of abolitionism, and the period’s changing interpretations of race, freedom, and citizenship among whites, blacks, and Native Americans.
•Evaluation of impact of filled precipitation data on long-term trend analysis of extremes.•Trend analysis using filled and unfilled precipitation data and confirmation of biases.•Assessment using ...three WMO-based extreme precipitation indices.•Changes to distributions of filled data and under estimation of extremes are evident.•Variability of precipitation extremes in different phases of AMO with filled data.
This study focuses on the assessment of biases from infilling missing precipitation data on the detection of long-term change using parametric and non-parametric statistical techniques. Long-term historical precipitation data available for almost 100years at 53 rain gages in south Florida, USA, with gages having varying lengths of missing data are used for the study. Precipitation data with gaps and time series with spatial interpolated data are analyzed. Chronologically complete datasets are often used in climate variability studies by analyzing data in multiple temporal windows. The temporal windows selected in this work coincide with Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation (AMO) cool and warm phases that strongly influence precipitation extremes and characteristics in the study region. Selection of these windows has helped in evaluating the extremes derived based on infilled and unfilled data. The frequency of occurrence of precipitation extremes over a pre-specified threshold is also analyzed. Results indicate that infilled precipitation data introduce large biases in the statistical trends and over and under-estimate low and high extremes respectively. Evaluation of three extreme precipitation indices (i.e. Rx1day, R25mm and R50mm) indicates that bias increases with increase in amount of missing data. Nonparametric hypothesis tests indicate that statistical distributions of data of infilled and unfilled data are different when the data infilled is more than 5% of the entire data. Infilled data also introduced high variability in precipitation extremes in AMO cool and warm phases along with the changes in the frequency of occurrence of extreme events over a threshold.
We Come for Good Backhouse, Paul N; Weisman, Brent R; Rosebrough, Mary B
03/2017
eBook
“Offers a unique perspective on tribal approaches to managing historic preservation and addresses the multiplicity of issues common to all tribal historic preservation groups."—Joe Watkins, director, ...Tribal Relations and American Cultures Program, National Park Service “A concise, detailed account regarding the enormity of the task THPOs face in successfully navigating the two worlds of federal historic preservation laws and statutes and tribal cultural beliefs, knowledge, and traditions."—James Quinn, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut “An important book that highlights the complicated, confusing, and often contradictory world navigated by the intrepid personnel of the Seminole Tribe of Florida’s Tribal Historic Preservation Office."—Ryan Wheeler, director, Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology As indigenous populations are invited to participate in cultural heritage identification, research, interpretation, management, and preservation, they are faced with a variety of challenges, questions that are difficult to answer, and demands that must be carefully navigated. We Come for Good describes the development and operations of the Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) of the Seminole Tribe of Florida as an example of how tribes can successfully manage and retain authority over the heritage of their respective cultures. With Native voices front and center, this book demonstrates ways THPOs can work within federal and tribal governments to build capacity and uphold tribal values—core principles of a strong tribal historic preservation program. The authors also offer readers one of the first attempts to document Native perspectives on the archaeology of native populations.“Offers a unique perspective on tribal approaches to managing historic preservation and addresses the multiplicity of issues common to all tribal historic preservation groups."—Joe Watkins, director, Tribal Relations and American Cultures Program, National Park Service “A concise, detailed account regarding the enormity of the task THPOs face in successfully navigating the two worlds of federal historic preservation laws and statutes and tribal cultural beliefs, knowledge, and traditions."—James Quinn, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut “An important book that highlights the complicated, confusing, and often contradictory world navigated by the intrepid personnel of the Seminole Tribe of Florida’s Tribal Historic Preservation Office."—Ryan Wheeler, director, Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology As indigenous populations are invited to participate in cultural heritage identification, research, interpretation, management, and preservation, they are faced with a variety of challenges, questions that are difficult to answer, and demands that must be carefully navigated. We Come for Good describes the development and operations of the Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) of the Seminole Tribe of Florida as an example of how tribes can successfully manage and retain authority over the heritage of their respective cultures. With Native voices front and center, this book demonstrates ways THPOs can work within federal and tribal governments to build capacity and uphold tribal values—core principles of a strong tribal historic preservation program. The authors also offer readers one of the first attempts to document Native perspectives on the archaeology of native populations.
The first biography of Henry Bradley Plant, the entrepreneur and business magnate considered the father of modern Florida
In this landmark biography, Canter Brown Jr. makes evident the extent of ...Henry Bradley Plant’s influences throughout North, Central, and South America as well as his role in the emergence of integrated transportation and a national tourism system. One of the preeminent historians of Florida, Brown brings this important but understudied figure in American history to the foreground.
Henry Bradley Plant: Gilded Age Dreams for Florida and a New South carefully examines the complicated years of adventure and activity that marked Plant’s existence, from his birth in Connecticut in 1819 to his somewhat mysterious death in New York City in 1899. Brown illuminates Plant’s vision and perspectives for the state of Florida and the country as a whole and traces many of his influences back to events from his childhood and early adulthood. The book also elaborates on Plant’s controversial Civil War relationships and his utilization of wartime earnings in the postwar era to invest in the bankrupt Southern rail lines. With the success of his businesses such as the Southern Express Company and the Tampa Bay Hotel, Plant transformed Florida into a hub for trade and tourism—traits we still recognize in the Florida of today.
This thoroughly researched biography fills important gaps in Florida’s social and economic history and sheds light on a historical figure to an extent never previously undertaken or sufficiently appreciated. Both informative and innovative, Brown’s volume will be a valuable resource for scholars and general readers interested in Southern history, business history, Civil War–era history, and transportation history.
Mammoths and mastodons are common in Pleistocene deposits, yet these proboscideans and many other animals disappeared suddenly ≈10,000 years ago. In this study, we reconstruct the diets of ...proboscideans and associated mammals through isotopic analysis of carbonate in tooth enamel apatite in order to test nutritional hypotheses for late Pleistocene extinction. We analyzed specimens from six sites in Florida, ranging from full glacial (>21,000 BP) to late glacial (14,750 to 10,000 BP) age. The oxygen isotope composition of mammalian apatite covaries with meteoric water composition, which in turn varies with climate. Consequently, oxygen isotope analysis can be used to assess the potential for time-averaging or mixing of specimens from different geographic regions within fossil assemblages. The carbon isotope composition of an herbivore is controlled by the isotopic composition of the plants that it ingests. Carbon isotope analysis reveals that mastodons ate chiefly C
3 plants, presumably trees, shrubs and herbs, whereas mammoths consumed chiefly C
4 grass. Several nutritional hypotheses for late Pleistocene extinction entail the assumption that extinct taxa had specialized diets. The resource partitioning and focused feeding preferences of Florida's proboscideans corroborate this assumption, but they do not, in themselves, prove that nutritional stress was the cause of the late Pleistocene extinction.
In 1979, Florida Seminoles opened the first tribally operated high-stakes bingo hall in North America. At the time, their annual budget stood at less than $2 million. By 2006, net income from gaming ...had surpassed $600 million. This dramatic shift from poverty to relative economic security has created tangible benefits for tribal citizens, including employment, universal health insurance, and social services. Renewed political self-governance and economic strength have reversed decades of U.S. settler-state control. At the same time, gaming has brought new dilemmas to reservation communities and triggered outside accusations that Seminoles are sacrificing their culture by embracing capitalism. In High Stakes, Jessica R. Cattelino tells the story of Seminoles' complex efforts to maintain politically and culturally distinct values in a time of new prosperity. Cattelino presents a vivid ethnographic account of the history and consequences of Seminole gaming. Drawing on research conducted with tribal permission, she describes casino operations, chronicles the everyday life and history of the Seminole Tribe, and shares the insights of individual Seminoles. At the same time, she unravels the complex connections among cultural difference, economic power, and political rights. Through analyses of Seminole housing, museum and language programs, legal disputes, and everyday activities, she shows how Seminoles use gaming revenue to enact their sovereignty. They do so in part, she argues, through relations of interdependency with others. High Stakes compels rethinking of the conditions of indigeneity, the power of money, and the meaning of sovereignty.
