Florida Founder William P. DuVal: Frontier Bon Vivant by James M. Denham (review)

This work is the most comprehensive book-length study of the life and political career of William Pope DuVal, the man who served as the territorial governor of Florida, for which he named his youngest daughter. Today, a county and streets of several cities in the Sunshine State are named in his honor. DuVal was impressive on the stump and at social events alike, and he was an inspiration for Washington Irving’s “Ralph Ringwood” tales. Hence it is no wonder that James M. Denham claims that because of DuVal’s reputation as a bon vivant the governor has been remembered in history mainly as a storyteller, as a popular storehouse of anecdotes, and as a passionate orator and singer, rather than as someone acclaimed in the world of politics and the law. Even so, through this well-balanced and clearly organized historical narrative, Denham succeeds in establishing DuVal as a significant political figure of the antebellum period whose career was embedded in national politics.

DuVal was born in Virginia into a French Huguenot family, whose wealth was largely based on Kentucky land grants for veterans of the War of Independence. At the age of fifteen, young DuVal moved to Kentucky to patent his father’s lands and read law. Soon becoming involved in state politics, DuVal was elected to Congress as a representative in 1812 as one of the War Hawks, even fighting Native Americans in the Wabash River area. Following the War of 1812, he took office in Florida in the early 1820s as judge of the Eastern Judicial District, and from 1822 to 1834 he served as governor of the territory.

DuVal’s duties as territorial governor included managing Native American affairs. He was instrumental in pacifying Florida’s Indian tribes (through the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, signed in 1823) and setting up the legislative council for the territory, as well as in the founding of the capital city of Tallahassee. As is clear from Denham’s narrative, national politics immensely affected DuVal’s personal political career: factional strife in Florida mirrored political dynamics and tensions at the national level. Even so, DuVal skillfully secured reappointments by John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson and defended himself against charges of overspending federal money on Native Americans, even winning a suit against the U.S. government. As a member of the Jacksonian “Nucleus” faction, he nevertheless faced a dilemma when the nullification crisis caused a split between Old Hickory and John C. Calhoun, DuVal’s mentor (p. 135). Furthermore, DuVal’s support for the territorial banking system alienated him from the Democratic Party, but he returned to its ranks after a brief interlude with the Whig Party in the late 1830s and early 1840s.

After this period, DuVal took various lesser political responsibilities in Kentucky, Florida, and Texas. He also unsuccessfully tried to practice law in Tallahassee, having difficulty making ends meet. Having lost his wife to yellow fever in 1841 and a son killed in the Texas Revolutionary War, he remained an avid spectator of national politics, taking interest in the annexation of Texas, as well as in the U.S. war with Mexico. Concerned about keeping the West open to slavery, DuVal became a supporter of states’ rights and the peculiar institution until his death in 1854.

Relying on a variety of sources extending well beyond DuVal’s papers, Denham’s work provides an intriguing account of a southerner immersed in the dynamics of politics at both the local and the national levels. This study will be a definitive must for any student of antebellum regional and national history.