Florida Gov. John Milton. (Oil painting over photograph, Claribel Jett, Fla. Dept. of State)
Oct. 10, 2024 by David Silverberg
When “Milton” came up on the National Hurricane Center’s list of hurricane names, it hardly seemed appropriate for a killer storm.
Rather, it seemed nerdy, best suited for an owlish accountant. It evoked Milton Berle, the slapstick comedian who had his heyday in the early days of television (for people who remember him).
But for those with a sense of Florida history, it was a creepy evocation of a volatile governor who was so completely tied to the Confederate cause that he could not bear its defeat. A hurricane bearing his last name aimed at Florida seemed a coincidence ripe for the hauntings of Halloween—and very ominous for those following the storm’s track.
So, who was John Milton and what happened to him and what did he mean for the state of Florida? And could there be a cosmic meaning in what was otherwise a complete coincidence of timing and names?
Origins of a reluctant Floridian
The most famous John Milton was the seventeenth century English Puritan poet who penned the epic poem Paradise Lost about the revolt of the angel Satan against God and his subsequent exile to the depths of Hell.
As it happens, Florida’s John Milton was related to that John Milton. Indeed, he was part of a family distinguished both in England and the United States. His great grandfather, also named John Milton, was a hero of the Revolutionary War and a presidential candidate in 1789, when he ran as a Federalist from Georgia and received two electoral votes. His son, Homer Virgil Milton, was a hero of the War of 1812.
The John Milton who became governor of Florida was born on April 20, 1807 near Louisville, Ga., and grew up in Georgia, “reading” law (a less formal education than a degree and one also pursued by Abraham Lincoln).
Milton practiced law in Georgia and in 1830 he married Susan Amanda Cobb, with whom he had a son and two daughters. They subsequently lived in Georgia, Alabama and New Orleans.
He married a second time (presumably on the death of his first wife) and had two sons and seven daughters by his second wife, Caroline Howze.
Florida had been acquired by the United States from Spain in 1821. While it attracted immigrants as a land of opportunity then, as it does to this day, Milton, who was described by The New York Times in his youth as “gay and dashing” went there driven by a different motivation: he killed a man in a duel over a lady and had to flee Louisiana..
Wealthy by the time he moved to Florida in 1846, he bought a 7,000-acre plantation near the town of Marianna, about 65 miles northwest of Tallahassee. Named Sylvania, it was worked by an enslaved population.
When the Third Seminole War broke out in 1855, Milton served as captain of volunteers until the conflict ended in 1858.
But Milton made his real mark in politics.
Success and secession
In the presidential election of 1848 Milton served as a presidential Elector, voting for Democrat Lewis Cass.
Florida’s Democratic Party was split between Conservatives, who favored states’ rights and Whigs who favored the union. Milton turned out to be an effective orator and a fiery Conservative. In this he followed the thinking of John Calhoun and South Carolinians who argued that states had the right to “nullify” federal laws with which they disagreed.
By 1849 the question of slavery was beginning to roil national politics. In 1852 it suddenly moved to the forefront of the national debate when Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published.
As a wealthy slave owner and states rights advocate, Milton became a defender of slavery and a proponent of secession. Elected a state senator in 1850, he obsessively pursued the idea, making emotional, intense speeches in its favor. In this he closely resembled another southerner, planter and author Edmund Ruffin of Virginia, who also fanatically advocated secession.
The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 brought the question of union, secession, state rights and slavery to a head.
In 1860, Florida had only 140,424 inhabitants. Most worked in agriculture in some way and settlement was largely in the northern part of the state with the exception of Key West, which at the time was America’s richest city, built on salving wrecked shipping. As small as the state’s population was, it had expanded exponentially in the years since the United States had acquired the territory.
Of the population, according to the 1860 census, 41,128 were white men, 36,319 were white women, 31,348 were black male slaves and 30,397 were black female slaves. There were only 454 free black men and 478 free black women.
The electorate was tiny. Only white men had the vote. When debate began over secession in 1860—in what may be surprising to modern readers—there was strong unionist sentiment in the state legislature and about half the state’s population.
Milton’s fiery oratory won him the Conservative nomination for governor. His opponent was Edward Hopkins, who led the Constitutional Unionists. The ultimate vote was small and extremely close: 6,994 for Milton and 5,248 for Hopkins, a difference of only 1,746 votes, but enough to make Milton governor.
It was the same election that made Abraham Lincoln president. Across the South secessionists prepared for war. The outgoing governor, Madison Perry, was authorized to spend $100,000 in arms and munitions for state forces.
Milton continued to push for secession and Edmund Ruffin of Virginia traveled to Tallahassee to add his support.
At Milton’s strenuous urging, on January 10, 1861 the state legislature passed an ordinance of secession by a vote of 62 to 7, becoming the third state to secede. The seven dissenters unsuccessfully tried to have the ordinance submitted to a general referendum but failed.
A minority of partisan politicians prevailed and declared Florida a “sovereign and independent nation.”
Civil War
Milton was such a secessionist that he didn’t even want Florida to join the Confederate States of America. He even resisted the Confederate Secretary of War’s call up of the state militia to serve in the Confederate army.
Nonetheless he realized, however vaguely, that the rebellion would take a common effort. Still, with Florida’s tiny white male population, people were not going to be its greatest contribution to the cause.
Instead, Florida contributed the fruits of its agriculture, especially cattle and salt, to the Confederacy and Milton was instrumental in organizing its collection and shipment to the north. It briefly made Florida, if not the breadbasket of the confederacy, certainly its meat monger.
During the war the Union took note of this supply and tried to stop or impede it.
In February 1864 Union troops marched out from Jacksonville, which they held, to disrupt the food supply. Their commander, Gen. Truman Seymour, decided to exceed orders and take Tallahassee. Confederates from Florida and South Carolina sought to stop him and they met in battle at the town of Olustee. The Confederates beat the Union troops who retreated back to Jacksonville.
A contemporary illustration of the Battle of Olustee, which has been criticized for various inaccuracies. For example, neither side fought from behind fortifications. (Art: US archives)
Battle even came to Fort Myers, which in 1865 was an actual fort, whose surrounding community was home to around 400 pro-Union Floridian refugees.
The fort, which was largely a wooden blockhouse, housed the 2nd Florida Cavalry, largely made of pro-Union Floridians, a company of New York volunteer infantry and the 2nd United States Colored Infantry. The troops raided surrounding ranches, depots and grazing lands to cut off Confederate supplies.
Fort Myers in 1865. (Art: Leslie’s Illustrated)
On February 20, 1865 about 500 Confederates approached the fort, which was manned by about 275 Union troops, and demanded their surrender. When the Union commander refused, battle commenced and after four hours of fighting the Confederates withdrew. In March the Union forces abandoned the fort on their own volition.
It was barely more than a skirmish but has gone down in history as the southernmost battle of the Civil War.
A shot in Sylvania
As the southern cause declined so did Milton’s will and determination and he was reportedly worn down by the cares of office.
In March 1865 he left Tallahassee for his plantation in Marianna but not before he sent a message to the state legislature. In it he stated that Union Army leaders “have developed a character so odious that death would be preferable to reunion with them.”
By the dawn of April the Confederacy was on its last legs and the capital, Richmond, was about to fall.
Apparently unable to face the prospect of a Union victory, Milton committed suicide at his home plantation, Sylvania, on April 1, putting a bullet in his brain.
The next day Richmond fell. Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia on April 9. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 15. And Edmund Ruffin, Milton’s fellow secessionist, also committed suicide on June 17.
To the best of this author’s ability to determine, John Milton was the only American governor ever to commit suicide in office.
Commentary: Omens or oddities?
Aside from the oddity of having a storm hit Florida that bore the name of one of its governors, the story of Gov. John Milton revives the specter of the causes he favored, which were otherwise laid to rest by the civil war and subsequent history.
There was the idea of nullification; that a state could simply “nullify” a federal law it didn’t like by calling it unconstitutional.
In 1830 this was the argument South Carolinians made over a federal tariff they opposed. John Milton supported their rejection of federal law and policy.
In 2023 Collier County, Fla., passed its own nullification ordinance, the misleadingly named “Bill of Rights Sanctuary” ordinance, giving itself the right to nullify federal law if a citizen deems a federal law unconstitutional. With the passing of Hurricane Milton, this ordinance may come back to haunt the county as it deals with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which operates, of course, under federal law.
There was the idea of secession, of pulling out of the federal compact altogether.
In 1860 this is what John Milton energetically propounded and vigorously pursued, eventually succeeding in leading Florida out of the federal union.
Today, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has pursued what has been called “soft secession,” defying federal mandates, rules, regulations and policies as he serves his own political ambitions. He has defied the federal government in matters large and small ranging from COVID mandates to extraditing Donald Trump to other states to answer for his crimes. He even made a point of snubbing President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris when they visited or called to offer or coordinate assistance with hurricanes Helene and, yes, Milton.
No doubt DeSantis will continue to pursue his version of secessionism through the November election and after, especially if its results don’t favor his opposition to abortion rights and the election of Harris.
But as John Milton—and January 6th—helped to show, secessionism and insurrection don’t end well and they’re not likely to end well this time.
The storm named Milton also throws into relief Florida’s determined denial of the reality of climate change. From then-Gov. Rick Scott informally banning the term from state government to the legislature and DeSantis officially striking it from state legal and official documents, climate change denial is embedded in the state’s leadership mentality—even when climate change-induced storms pummel the state they govern with increasing force.
Perhaps the coincidence of an extremely powerful, destructive, climate-change fueled storm called Milton and the legacy of a fanatical but destructive governor named Milton provides a kind of poetic lesson that Floridians should heed.
And that lesson is simply this: Denying climate change is…well…suicidal.
Liberty lives in light
© 2024 by David Silverberg
Hurricane Milton seen from the International Space Station. (Photo: NASA)