The Paper Prospectus: An Easy Three-Paragraph Guide

Patriotism Derailed: John Milton, David Yulee, and the Florida Railroad in 1863

General Topic: Confederate Nationalism

Research Questions: How did the Confederacy build a strongsense of nationalism when it was founded on an ideology of states rights?How did the political culture of states’ rights affect national identity? Weremarginal states like Florida, for example, fully integrated into the Confederatenation?

Tentative Thesis: Florida’s political conflicts during the Civil War illustrates the difficulty of building a strong sense of the Confederate nation, even in areas in which that nation was not directly threatened by force of arms.

The First Paragraph•Introduces the Subject•Provides the Basic Research Questions•Should Set Up the Historical “Problem”

There are many theories as to why the Confederacy failed to secure its independence. In his book, The Confederate Republic, historian George Rable argues that a poorly defined sense of nationalism hindered the war effort. The refusal to sacrifice individual or states rights to a national government was, after all, one of the founding principles of the Confederacy. So how could this new political entity develop a strong sense of nationalism? One could see how national morale would fade in areas that saw heavy fighting such as Virginia or Georgia, but what about the relatively remote areas of the Confederacy? More specifically, how could a state like Florida, which saw relatively little military action and remained a theatre of minor significance throughout the war, identify with the Confederacy? Was the conflict over Confederate nationalism important there as well?

The Second Paragraph•Provide the Narrative•Introduce the Thesis of Your Paper

This paper focuses on a battle between Florida’s fiercely patriotic governor, John Milton, and the state’s leading entrepreneur, David Yulee, over the nature of Confederate nationalism in Florida. In the summer of 1863, Governor Milton struggled to organize Florida’s defenses and send beef, salt, and other foodstuffs north to supply the main Confederate armies. Since the state had no rail connection with the rest of the Confederacy and ports remained subject to the crippling Union blockade, Florida Governor Milton planned to end his state’s isolation by tearing up the rails of the Florida Railroad and using them to build a connection to Georgia. Governor Milton found himself in conflict with David Yulee, the president of the Florida Railroad, who considered himself a strong southern patriot, but he did not want to sacrifice his railroad for the cause. Yulee got Florida’s courts to bar the removal of the iron and argued that although the Confederate cause was important, it did not trump the rights of private property. In Florida, then, the conflict between Governor Milton and Senator Yulee suggests that the battle over Confederate nationalism raged just as fiercely in states that did not see much military action. The Florida case demonstrates, moreover, the difficulty of building a strong sense of the Confederate nation, even in areas in which that nation was not directly threatened by force of arms.

The Third Paragraph•Introduce the evidence•Talk about secondary and primary sources•Talk about types of sources, with a few examples

This paper will draw upon a range of secondary and primary sources to explore this battle between Governor Milton and Senator Yulee over Confederate nationalism. Historians such as George Rable, Emory Thomas, and Gary Gallagher have all written about the nature of Confederate nationalism. The literature on Florida is smaller, with Robert Taylor’s Rebel Storehouse serving as an important study of the Civil War economy in that state. Primary sources will include government documents from 1863, such as session laws and the Florida House and Senate journals, newspapers like the St. Augustine Examiner and Tallahassee’s The Floridian and Journal, as well as the Official Records of the War of Rebellion. I will also consult archival sources such as the minutes, correspondence, and annual reports of the Internal Improvement Fund at the Florida State Archives in Tallahassee, archival collections such as the the David Levy Yulee Papers at the University of Florida and the John Milton Letterbook at the Florida Historical Society in Cocoa.