Canter Brown - Ossian Bingley Hart, Floridas Loyalist Reconstruction Governor

SOUTHERN BIOGRAPHY SERIES

Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Editor

Ossian Bindley Hart

Floridas Loyalist Reconstruction Governor

Canter Brown, Jr.

Louisiana State University Press
Baton Rouge and London

Copyright 1997 by Louisiana State University Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing

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Designer: Barbara Werden
Typeface: Adobe Caslon
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Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc.

The author is grateful to the Florida Historical Quarterly for permission to use materials from his essay Carpetbagger Intrigues, Black Leadership, and a Southern Loyalist Triumph: Floridas Gubernatorial Election of 1872, Florida Historical Quarterly, LXXII (January, 1994), 275301. The author also wishes to thank the P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History for permission to use excerpts from the following unpublished material: Dena E. Snodgrass Collection, Miscellaneous Manuscript Collection, William R. Hackley Diary, Ambrose B. Hart Letters, James B. Mason Letters, Joseph D. Mitchell Diary, Calvin L. Robinson Memoirs, St. Augustine Land Office Letterbooks, Samuel A. Swann Papers, Union Republican Club of Jacksonville Constitution and Proceedings, and David Levy Yulee Papers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brown, Canter.
Ossian Bingley Hart: Floridas loyalist reconstruction governor/
Canter Brown, Jr.
p. cm.(Southern biography series)
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 0-8071-2137-1 (alk. paper)
1. Hart, Ossian Bingley, d. 1874. 2. GovernorsFlorida
Biography. 3. FloridaPolitics and government1865-1950.
4. Reconstruction. I. Series.
F316.H34B76 1997
975.9'06'092dc21
[B]

97-16763
CIP

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

Frontispiece: Ossian Bingley Hart. Courtesy of the Supreme Court of Florida

Ossian Bingley Hart

Map of Florida during Ossian Bingley Harts time

FEW individuals alive today have heard of Ossian Bingley Hart. He died in March, 1874, and within two decades the flame of his memory flickered dimly even in his home state. Yet, Hart when alive had numbered among the regions leading men, contributing to it as a frontier settler, legislator, prosecutor, civic leader, entrepreneur, jurist, and politician. He lived as a member of one of Floridas most influential families and capped his career by serving successfully from January, 1873, until his death as the states first native-born governor.

Shadows have obscured Harts memory for discernible reasons. He was an outspoken Unionist in a Confederate state, an early proponent of equal rights for blacks, and a founder of Floridas Republican party. Those facts alone might not have consigned him to historys dustbin, but two others combined to create a quandary for his opponents and a need for him to be forgotten. First, Hart was a southern-born Loyalist known for his honesty and integrity. Second, he enjoyed extensive personal popularity, social relationships, and business connections. When combined with his political skills and governmental experience, these assets permitted him substantive and widely recognized accomplishments despite his relatively brief tenure of office.

Beyond refreshing memories of a good and productive man, Harts story provides a vehicle by which numerous important, yet neglected or misunderstood, facets of Florida history may be explored. They include the circumstances under which the tide of American settlement on the peninsular frontier grew and advanced, as well as the largely unexplored stories of Armed Occupation Act pioneers on the lower southeast coast, cosmopolitan life at Key West during the 1840s and 1850s, and Civil War on the southwest prairies, rivers, and Gulf coast. It offers an opportunity, as well, to expand our understanding of the factors that influenced the states political institutions during the antebellum era. Sidney Walter Martin, Dorothy Dodd, and Herbert J. Doherty have argued that the principal influences in that evolutionary process were economic. This study suggests that geography, race, and fear of race war were equally important.

Coupled with the issue of how Floridas political institutions developed is the significant question of how southern society and patterns of social interaction evolved. Numerous historians have attempted to identify the fundamental influences at work upon that society. Wilbur Cash, for example, argued the importance of frontier individualism; Eugene Genovese has offered paternalism within a Marxist perspective; James Oakes has countered with a more complex paternalism; and Bertram Wyatt-Brown has posited the influence of southern honor. Harts life contains illustrations of each of these factors at play, butmore importantlyit suggests how very numerous, complicated, and interrelated were the critical influences that affected the maturation of this son of a southern planter and, by extension, the lives of many of his contemporaries. Among them were varied and changing racial customs; traditions of political opposition and divergence; population diversity, particularly where northern influences were present; the clash of religious orthodoxy with disdain for religion; the quality and relative harmony of family life; educational experience; travel; and the trauma of arbitrary violence. Although Harts life may not have been a typical one, it argues for the need to examine individuals, events, and circumstances in depth for insight and significance, rather than to rely upon generalized influences, simple explanations, and historical imperatives as the keys to understanding.

In addition to its relevance for discussions of antebellum Florida history and the evolution of antebellum society, Harts life remains of interest because he was a southern Loyalist and scalawag. Current literature on the subject is extremely limited. On the regional level, Carl Degler touched on the topic in his