Nearly everyone in North East Florida is familiar with David
Levy Yulee. At least they think they
are. He is well known as the father of
the first cross-Florida railroad connecting Fernandina Beach
to Cedar Key. There is a statue of Yulee
in front of the historic Fernandina
Beach railroad station. Just across the bridge, on the mainland,
there is even a town, Yulee, named after him.
So who was David Levy Yulee?
Was he the enterprising visionary who built the Florida Railroad,
connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Gulf of Mexico? Was he the savvy political leader who became
the first Jewish person elected as a United States Senator? Or, was Yulee a scoundrel and slave owner who
used his political ties to gain personal wealth? Was he a forceful voice for the secession of
the Southern States who did not take up arms himself in the Civil War? Was David Yulee a traitor?
David Levy Yulee may have been all of these things and more.
Read More About David Yulee and Other Characters from Northeast Florida's History
David Levy (his name before changing it later to Yulee) was
born on June 12, 1810 on the island of
St. Thomas in the Virgin
Islands (then part of the Danish West Indies.) His father, Moses Elias Levy, was a Sephardic
Jewish businessman, originally from Morocco, who became wealthy through
the lumber industry. His mother, Hannah
Abendanone, was also a Sephardic Jew.
Her family had emigrated from Spain
to England before finally
settling in the West Indies.
While in the West Indies,
Moses Levy built a small fortune in the lumber industry. In 1821 he acquired a land grant in Florida in under a
Spanish program intended to entice migration to its colony. He was able to purchase approximately 50,000
acres of land in North East Florida stretching from St.
Augustine to what is now Alachua
County, halfway across the Florida peninsula. Levy’s vision was to turn this land into what
he called “New Pilgrimage”, a place where European Jews could escape
persecution.
In 1822, Moses Levy divorced his wife, left his two daughters
behind, and brought his two sons, Elias and David with him to Florida.
They settled in Micanopy, on the western edge of his land grant. There, he established “Pilgrimage
Plantation”, where he began to grow sugar cane and other crops. His recruiting efforts were hampered by the
fact that most Jewish migrants were not farmers. Additionally prospective colonists were leery
about relocating to Florida
which they considered untamed territory full of savage natives, strange animals
and tropical disease. Levy once
lamented, “It is not easy to transform peddlers and stock brokers into
practical farmers.” Ultimately, his
dream failed, having only been able to recruit approximately twenty-five
settlers.
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| Moses Elias Levy Historical Marker - Micanopy Florida |
The older son, Elias, briefly attended Harvard, while the
younger, David, was sent to an academy in Norfolk,
Virginia. From there, David studied law in St. Augustine where he
started a law practice in 1832. Although
both sons spent time at the plantation, each ultimately rejected their father’s
philosophy and moved away.
While still in his twenties David Levy served in the Florida
Territorial Militia during the Second Seminole War. Ironically, during this war, the Seminole
Indians attacked and burned Pilgrimage Plantation to the ground, ending his
father’s hopes for a Jewish refuge in Florida
forever.
David Levy entered local politics under the tutelage of
Robert Reid who would go on to be appointed Florida Territorial Governor. He was elected to the Florida Territory
Legislative Council in 1836, the legislative body governing Florida before statehood. Under Reid’s guidance, he quickly rose
through the ranks of the Democrat Party and served as a delegate to the
territory’s constitutional convention.
In 1841 Levy was elected as the delegate from the Florida
Territory to the United States
House of Representatives. There, he lobbied
hard for Florida
to be admitted as a state.
When Florida
became a state in 1845 David Levy was chosen to represent it as a United States
Senator. Around this time he also met
and married Nancy
“Nannie” Wickliffe, a strikingly beautiful woman and daughter of former
Kentucky Governor Charles Wickliffe. He
petitioned the Florida Legislature to change his name to Yulee, an Americanized
version of his father’s original surname “Youli.” It is believed that this change was made at
the urging of his new bride who did not want to share his Jewish name, Levy. Confirming this belief is the fact that David
Levy (now David Levy Yulee) converted to his wife’s Presbyterian religion.
The dashing Senator and his stunning bride made an impact on
the Washington
social scene. At the time, some called
Mrs. Yulee the “Wickliffe Madonna”, a reference to her beauty and social
grace. The gregarious Senator made many
important business and political connections during this time.
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| Nancy "Nannie" Wickliffe Yulee |
As a Senator, Yulee made several speeches calling for the
protection of the institution of slavery in the years leading up to the Civil
War. His pro-slavery rhetoric was so
inflammatory that it earned him the nickname of the “Florida Fire-Eater.” Although Yulee denied that he was in favor of
the South’s possible secession from the Union, he did appear to prepare for it
by requesting and receiving a list from the War Department of all of the
munitions and equipment then stored in Florida.
David Yulee served his six year Senate term, and in 1851 ran
for re-election. He lost the election to
Stephen R. Mallory of Pensacola. Yulee contested the election, but the Senate
seated his opponent while it took up the challenge. It took over a year for them to finally
declare that Mallory was, indeed, the victor.
Although he owned vast amounts of land all over Florida, Senator and
Mrs. Yulee moved to his five thousand acre plantation near Homosassa called
“Margarita.” He originally purchased
the property as swamp land, drained it, and planted sugar cane. He built a sugar mill where he produced sugar
and molasses. Over one thousand slaves
labored at the plantation.
Yulee also began work on a railroad that would run from the
Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, an idea
that he had considered for several years.
When completed, the railroad would cut across northern Florida
from the port of Fernandina
on the Atlantic coast to Cedar Key on the Gulf of Mexico. Yulee had extensive holdings in both towns
and would profit greatly from the railroad’s completion. He received both state and federal grants and
issued stock in his company to finance construction.
Work began on the railroad in 1855. Almost all of the land clearing and
construction was performed by slave laborers. The tasks requiring skilled labor
were done by tradesmen imported from Europe. Yulee was also re-elected to the Senate that
year. The additional clout that he had
as a sitting Senator no doubt helped to move the project along.
Reprinted with Permission from the Book
South of the St. Marys River: Stories from the History of Northeast Florida
The country faced a financial crises is 1857. “The Panic of 1857”, as it was called, left
Yulee’s Florida Railroad Company on the brink of collapse. In order to bring in much needed money to
complete the line, Yulee sold a majority interest to a northern investment
syndicate headed by Edward Dickinson. Yulee
remained on as president of the company and thereby remained in control of its
operations.
The railroad line was completed on March 1, 1861. By this time tensions between the northern
and southern states were coming to a head. The State of Florida
officially seceded from the Union just a few
weeks earlier on January 10, 1861, being the third state to do so. On January 21, David Yulee along with four
other Senators (including Jefferson Davis who would later become President of
the Confederate States of America)
spoke on the Senate floor to bid their colleagues farewell before withdrawing
and returning to their home states.
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| Jefferson Davis |
At 4:30 a.m.
on April 12, 1861, Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in South
Carolina's Charleston
Harbor marking the start
of the American Civil War.
Unlike many of
his contemporaries, David Yulee, then fifty one years old, did not take up arms
against the Union; although, if he chose, he
certainly would have been given an officer’s rank. Instead, after briefly serving in the Confederate
Congress, he spent the war years tending to his plantation and his railroad.
The war was not
good to The Florida Railroad Company. In
January 1862 Union forces attacked Cedar Key, destroying the railroad’s western
terminus. Two months later they also
attacked Fernandina by sea. The Union
ship USS Ottawa fired on the last train as it attempted to escape with many
citizens on board, including David Yulee himself. The ships cannon balls struck the rear few
cars of the train, killing or injuring many of the passengers. A shell fragment killed the man sitting next
to him, but Yulee was unharmed.
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| USS Ottawa |
While David
Yulee escaped death, his railroad did not.
Florida’s
Governor John Milton wanted to tear up the tracks of the now moribund line so
that the iron could be used elsewhere in the war effort and also to prevent
Union forces from using the tracks.
Governor Milton wrote to Yulee on May 30, 1863: "I have reason to know that
the Confederate Government very much needs iron, and that the necessity is daily
becoming more pressing in the conduct of the existing and formidable war." Yulee bitterly disagreed and outright refused, going so far
as to seek an injunction from the courts.
Even his old friend, Jefferson Davis, is said to have referred to Yulee as
a traitor for his refusal. In the end Milton prevailed. The tracks were seized by the state and the
iron was removed from many sections.
Meanwhile
Yulee’s plantation, Margarita, was flourishing.
It had become a major supplier of sugar products to the Confederacy. Yulee and his family lived in a grand home he
constructed on Tiger
Tail Island
overlooking the plantation. Then, in
April of 1864, Union troops sailed up the Homosassa River
and destroyed the plantation, including the Yulee home. Nothing was left except the sugar mill, the
ruins of which today are a Florida State Historic Site. All of the slaves on the plantation were
freed with presumably, many of them joining the Union cause.
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| Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins |
Yulee was away on business in
Gainesville
when the news of his plantation’s destruction reached him. Grateful that his family was able to flee, he
and his family never returned and, instead, relocated to his plantation “Cottonwood”, in Archer.
They lived there until the end of the war.
The war effectively ended on
April 9, 1865 when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his troops to
Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. Jefferson Davis and his close aides fled the
Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia, but were captured by Union forces on May 10 in Irwin County, Georgia. It was rumored that when Davis
left Richmond
he brought with him several train cars full of gold, cash, jewelry, other
valuables, personal belongings and Confederate papers. However, when Davis was captured he was virtually penniless
and the rumored treasure could not be located.
On the night of May 15, 1865 under the cover of darkness a
small convoy of wagons crossed into Florida
from Georgia. On board were ten Confederate soldiers. They traveled only at night and followed
crude trails through the dense pine forest.
Their cargo consisted of Jefferson Davis’ personal papers and an unknown
amount of treasure. A week later they reached their destination: Cottonwood Plantation, where they hoped to find
sanctuary before continuing on to rendezvous later with Davis.
David Yulee is again away on business when the caravan
arrives. The men were greeted by Mrs.
Yulee who informed them that Jefferson Davis had been captured. Now knowing that the Confederate cause is
truly over, they leave the documents with Mrs. Yulee, but divide up the
valuables among themselves. What happened
to the treasure from there has long been a subject of rumor. Some speculate that the rebel soldiers buried
it somewhere along the railroad line before surrendering to Union troops. The loot has never been recovered nor has the
exact amount been substantiated.
On May 25, 1865 David Yulee was arrested by Union soldiers while
in Gainesville, Florida.
Tipped off about the Confederate documents at Cottonwood,
they also conducted a raid there. At the
plantation they discovered the stash of documents and charged Yulee with
treason. He spent the next nine months
imprisoned at Fort Pulaski in Georgia. While he was imprisoned, his wife conducted
an extensive letter writing campaign aimed at securing his freedom. Eventually, General Ulysses S. Grant was
swayed and arranged for Yulee to be released.
He received a full pardon the following year and by 1870 even hosted
by-then President Grant at his home in Fernandina.
Upon his release in 1866, Yulee returned to Fernandina and
began work on reconstructing his decimated railroad. But things had changed with the outcome of
the Civil War, particularly the labor market.
In short, the slave labor which Yulee had previously used was no longer
available to him. Instead, he brought in
workers from the north paying them just one dollar per day. Of that, fifty cents was withheld for room
and board. He may have also relied on
the use of convicts who were leased from Florida
prisons, a common practice at the time.
That same year, the railroad syndicate defaulted on its
bonds. The railroad was auctioned off
and bought back by the same syndicate for twenty percent of the bonds
value. David Yulee sold his shares in
1877, staying on for a short time as its vice president. He and his wife retired to Washington, DC
in 1880, where she had family.
Nannie Yulee died at home in 1885. The following year, while visiting his
children in Maine,
Yulee caught a cold. The cold developed
into pneumonia during his return journey. He died at the Clarendon Hotel in New York City on October
10, 1886 at the age of seventy-six.
David Levy Yulee was buried in Oak
Hill Cemetery
in Washington, DC.
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| Gravestone of David Levy Yulee |
The life of David Levy Yulee was one of both accomplishment
and controversy. Some see him as a great
visionary who acted on and accomplished his dream of building the first
railroad across Florida. Others criticize his use of slavery in its
construction and on his plantation. Some
praise Yulee for being the first Jewish person elected to the United States
Senate. Others note that he rejected his
father’s efforts to establish a safe haven for European Jews and always
downplayed his ancestry. Some consider
him a patriot. Others see a man who was
a traitor to both the United
States of America and to the Confederacy. We know the facts about David Yulee’s life,
but his legacy remains a subject of debate.
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