Printing Politics: The Emergence of Political Parties in Florida, 1821-1861

Abstract

This dissertation makes three key arguments regarding politics and print culture in antebellum Florida. First, Florida’s territorial status, historic geographical divisions, and local issues necessitated the use of political parties. Second, Florida’s political parties evolved from a focus on charismatic men and local geographic loyalties to loyalty to party regardless of who was running to national and regional loyalties above local issues and men. Lastly, the central and most consistent aspect of Florida’s political party development was the influence of newspapers and their editors. To understand Florida politics in the nineteenth century it is necessary to recognize how the personal, geographical, and political divisions in Florida’s territorial past remained a critical factor in the development and function of national political parties in Florida. The local divisions within Florida in the 1820s created factions and personal loyalties that would later help characterize national parties in the 1840s. Political leaders, with the help of editors and their newspapers, created factions based more on personal loyalties than on ideology. By the 1850s party loyalty became paramount over personal or regional loyalties. In the last years before the Civil War Democrats linked Southern loyalty to the Democratic party and accused their opposition of treason against the South leading Florida and the nation to Civil War. Yet, throughout these political changes, editors and their newspapers remained central to political success, becoming the voice of political parties and critical to attracting and maintaining potential voters. In addition to understanding how politics functioned in antebellum Florida, this dissertation contributes to our larger understanding of the Second Party System and the South. An underlying argument of this dissertation is that while the Democrats tended to be better organized and more ideologically coherent, the Whigs suffered from constant in-fighting and splintering. This led to the Democratic domination of politics and, in the South, the ability of secession supporters to control the public conversation during the Sectional Crisis of the 1850s and lead the nation to war. This dissertation also claims that there is not just one South but many and exposes the myth of a changeless and monolithic South.