Mike Pride - Storm Over Key West

Mike Pride grew up in Florida and graduated from the University of South Florida with a degree in American studies. After eight years as a journalist in the state, he moved to New Hampshire, where he ran the newsroom of the Concord Monitor from 1978 to 2008. He served nine years on the Pulitzer Prize Board and unretired to administer the prizes from 2014 to 2017. The author or coauthor of six previous books, Pride lives in Bow, New Hampshire, with his wife, Monique.

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Copyright 2020 Charles Michael Pride

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Names: Pride, Mike, 1946 author.

Title: Storm over Key West : the Civil War and the call of freedom / Mike Pride.

Description: Palm Beach, Florida : Pineapple Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: A few weeks after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, James Montgomery sailed into Key West Harbor looking for black men to draft into the Union army. Eager to oblige him, the military commander in town ordered every black man from fifteen to fifty to report to the courthouse, there to undergo a medical examination, preparatory to embarking for Hilton Head, S.C. Montgomery swept away 126 men. Storm over Key West is a little-known story woven of many threads, but its main theme is the denial to black people of the equality central to the American ideal. After the islands slaves flocked to freedom during the summer of 1862, the white majority began a century-long campaign to deny black residents civil rights, education, literacy, respect, and the vote. Key Wests harbor and two major federal forts were often referred to as Americas Gibraltar. This Gibraltar guarded the Florida Straits between Key West and Cuba and thus access to the Gulf of Mexico. When Union forces seized it before the war, the southernmost point of the Confederacy slipped out of Confederate hands. This led to a naval blockade based in Key West that devastated commerce in Florida and beyond Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020025848 (print) | LCCN 2020025849 (ebook) | ISBN 9781683340935 (cloth) | ISBN 9781683340942 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: African AmericansFloridaKey WestHistory19th century. | United StatesHistoryCivil War, 1861-1865African Americans. | Key West (Fla.)History19th century.

Classification: LCC F319.K4 P75 2020 (print) | LCC F319.K4 (ebook) | DDC 975.9/41dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025848

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025849

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Even the graves have given up their dead.

S tephen Mallory checked his instruments before heading home one night and knew a big storm was coming. As collector of customs in the port of Key West, he oversaw the lighthouses there and on nearby Sand Key, the buoys in local waters, and the lightship at the harbors northwest entrance. He had neither time nor means to secure any of these, but the storm called him back to work long before daylight. He paced the wharves at three oclock in the morning and felt the rising power of the wind and watched the churn and chop of the seas. He roved the shore for hours, returning to his office now and then to track his barometers alarming plunge. When he hurried home at last, his yard was underwater. Moments later, his kitchen caved in.

Captain George Dutton, supervisor of the building of Fort Zachary Taylor on the keys southern coast, also ventured out in the wee hours of October 11, 1846. He was as helpless as Mallory even though everything at the fort was in danger: equipment, building materials, and half-built structures. He wondered how destructive the storm would be. A few hours later, he had his answer: The town of Key West is now a heap of ruins.

The hurricane had been stalking the island for five days. Far to its west, a sailor on the Princeton tracked its northward course. Blowing heavy, he noted on October 10, the day it hit Cuba, ninety miles south of the Florida Keys. Very hazy at the E. During the night wind from N E. to N. E. by E., increasing to a fierce gale; ship hove to; the squalls heavy, quick in succession.... Sunday, 11th, gale continuing and increasing; sea very high; ship rolling heavy and uneasy.

Commodore John Drake Sloat had a closer view. A man in a hurry, he had reached Cuba three months after the crowning achievement of his naval career. His country was at war with Mexico, and after three of his ships sailed into Monterey Bay, Sloat claimed all California on behalf of the United States. Now he had stopped in Havana on his long journey to Washington to deliver his dispatches. Finding the naval vessel Perry in port for supplies, he ordered its captain to take him to Charleston. Morro Castle and its new lighthouse stood watch at the entrance to Havana Bay. From the moment the Perry passed the fortress and reached the Florida Straits, the storm steered its course. The roar silenced voices, forcing officers to use hand signals. The captain resorted to scudding under bare poles to slow the Perry and save its sails. He hoped the winds would guide his 105-foot brig to the Florida Keys. We lost all knowledge of our position, and were driven at the mercy of the winds and the waves, a crewman reported. Where we were going or where we might strike, no one could tell. The next day the men were shocked to see that the storm had driven them in a grand loop and now blew their ship toward the rocks beneath Morro Castle. They feared that unless the wind shifted, our gallant brig would be our coffin. They prayed and nature answered, turning the Perry away from the rocks and carrying it north again. Even then, Commodore Sloat observed, No one on board expected her to live from one moment to another. Forty miles east of Key West, the Perry bumped along the Florida Reef. A crash snapped off the rudder, and when the bottom stopped thumping, the crew jettisoned the mast in hopes of keeping the ship afloat.

As terrible as the hurricane was, a greater storm of national disunion was gathering, and Key West lay in its path too. The port Mallory oversaw and the fort Dutton was building near the southernmost point of the United States were transforming the island into a bastion for the nations defense. The fort guarded the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico and the route to the Mississippi River just as Gibraltar controlled access to the Mediterranean. The mission of this American Gibraltar was to thwart slave importation and other illicit trade during peacetime and to repel or destroy foreign invaders during wartime. Years after the great hurricane, when the words of Americas political leaders could no longer soothe sectional angers, Key West would stand with the South. To the chagrin of the citys white inhabitants, Union forces would seize the island and control it throughout the Civil War. Their presence would crack the door to freedom for Key Wests enslaved people months before the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. The harbor would become the hub of a blockading squadron to choke off Confederate trade. White residents would seethe under Union military occupation and brandish the Constitution in defense of their right to keep slaves. Eventually they would endure the outrage of black soldiers patrolling their streets. Even after the Souths defeat, people who had grudgingly pledged loyalty to the Union would do all in their power to muffle the burst of black pride, harass the black soldiers still in town, and resurrect the old regime.