Rebel Storehouse: Florida in the Confederate Economy (review)

I58CIVIL WAR HISTORY principles. Stearns himself invested in a plantation near Murfreesboro, Tennessee . To promote a radical reconstruction of the South, Stearns joined in the founding of the Nation (1865) as the largest single investor. When it became clear that the journal's editor, E. L. Godkin, opposed radical reform, Stearns launched the Right Way to challenge him. By then, however, failing health and declining financial fortunes soon brought his reform career to an end. Heller's biography is thorough, competent, and welcome. However, the author does little to connect his subject with the substantial body of secondary literature on antebellum reform and emancipation. Readers are left on their own to locate Stearns in the larger antislavery cause. Louis S. Gerteis University of Missouri-St. Louis Rebel Storehouse: Florida in the Confederate Economy. By Robert A. Taylor. (Tuscaloosa: University ofAlabama Press, 1955, Pp. 232. $29.95.) Few battles of significance were fought in Florida, and Tallahassee, the capital, was so remote that it was the only southerly capital not to fall to Union forces. Even so, the state was crucial as a place ofConfederate supply. As armies clashed elsewhere, important efforts in Florida were underway on behalf of the South. Those activities are the subject of this generally sound study. The author maintains that the production and export of salt represents Florida 's greatest economic contribution to the Southern cause. Accounts of its production and distribution provide arguably the strongest chapter in the book. So much salt was shipped out that Florida residents had difficulty keeping the item. Across the South, patriotic-minded (and neither were they blind to profits) citizens provided what the Confederacy required to prosecute the war. It was no different in Florida, where opportunity and patriotism meshed conveniently. Most of the salt works were located along the Florida Gulf Coast at places such as Saint Andrews Bay and Cape San Bias (a map is badly needed to chart the places identified as salt centers). Salt manufacture became crucial even as the Confederacy was forming. At least in Florida, at the time of its demise, production remained a fact. As elsewhere in the South, Florida farmers were urged to plant less cotton and cultivate more grain crops. Taylor establishes that corn was grown in significant quantities, and if some did not resist the profits of raising cotton after prices rose, Florida-grown corn added significantly to the Confederate bounty. Those who raised oranges and citrus also found a customer in the Richmond government. Neither were supplies of sugar and molasses unimportant . By 1 865 much of the Confederate bureaucracy had broken down due to inflation, a lack of funds, and deterioration of the Southern infrastructure. Yet, quartermaster officials in Florida continued to "assemble substantial amounts of provisions for man and beast" (88). BOOK REVIEWS159 Cattle had grazed in Florida since the Spanish period and well-heeled ranchers were in place by the time of the war. As a removed and presumably safe outpost, the state was a natural source of beef. The export of cattle rivaled in importance that of salt. The Army of Tennessee was a major beneficiary. Yet, with beef, as with much else in the "rebel storehouse," expectations were unfulfilled . Some ranchers balked at selling beeves to the Confederate government, and commissary officials were sometines inefficient. In the meantime, as other army of Confederate beef acquisitions were shut off by advancing Federal armies, Florida beeves took on increased importance. Union troops targeted cattle just as surely as they did salt works, and fewer and leaner cattle was the reality by 1864. "As in the past," Taylor writes, "too much was expected from the Florida peninsula when plans were being formulated to provision the faltering South and its gray warriors" (126). Admittedly, the activities ofcommissary and quartermaster officials does not promise inherent drama and riveting reading. Even so, some might hope for a more lively account ofthe subject, and a greaterfocus on individuals as providers would help.The vignette ofJacob Summerlin, a colorful cattleman who furnished beeves to the Confederacy, is fleshed out well. But that is the exception.A more human dimension could only add flavor and readability. A variety of sources have been...