country can be fully and fairly protected in the exercise and enjoyment of their newly acquired rights of freedom, then, in my judgment, they will be a quiet and contented people, unambitious of any political privileges, or of any participation in the affairs of the government. Protected in their persons and property, they may be stimulated to be industrious and economical by a desire to acquire property in order to educate themselves and their children, and improve their physical, moral and intellectual condition." "What their condition as a race may be at the end of fifty or a hundred years, I do not think any person is wise enough to predict; but we may reasonably hope and believe that they will progress and improve in intelligence and civilization, and become, not many years hence, the best free agricultural peasantry, for our soil and climate, that the world has ever seen." "I think a clause may be so drawn as to accomplish this object and at the same time exclude the colored people from any participation in the affairs of the government." "May Almighty God, in whose hands are the destinies of all the nations of the earth, and without whose blessing all your works will be in vain, enlighten your understandings so that you may see, and incline your wills so that you may do whatever will advance His glory and promote the peace, the happiness and the welfare of all the people of our beloved State. "WILLIAM MARVIN, Provisional Governor." The Governor should have known, from years of religious training, that the glory of God would not be advanced by excluding from the right of citizenship nearly one-half of the population of the State for no other crime than the color of their Not quite half of the time has passed in which the Governor predicted that the colored people would only become the best agricultural peasantry the world ever saw, and yet he finds these very people occupying nearly all the industries, occupations and professions that are carried on by their white brothers, notwithstanding the great odds against them by reason of their former condition. The convention adjourned after a session of twelve days, but the Constitution was not submitted to the people for ratifica tion. There is no question that some of the best talent in the State was elected to the convention. Judge Burritt, of Duval, an able man and an intense loyalist, when advised of his election, was in New York city, and immediately embarked for Jacksonville on the ill-fated steamer "Mount," which was lost at sea with all on board. Had he been permitted to take part in the convention and the subsequent measures of reconstruction, it is quite probable that different results would have been reached. Judge Baltzell, also, was one of the most upright, able, clearheaded members of the convention, and had his life been spared he would have been a power for law, order and government. He was, without doubt, the ablest man in the convention, and thoroughly loyal to the restored civil government. George K. Walker was one of the purest and best men of the old regime. He was in very poor health, but he was most earnest in seeking to harmonize the conflicts growing out of the new condition of affairs, and to establish order, peace and civil law. On one occasion, when a member of the convention proposed some violent constitutional restrictions upon the freedmen, he in earnest and eloquent strains admonished the member and the convention to "remember that we are here only by the grace of the Federal government, and it is not becoming in us to deny to others the rights we claim for ourselves, and disregard the obligations we have assumed to the government through whose liberality we stand here free citizens of the Republic." CHAPTER III. The Election of the First Governor after the Civil War, and the Organization of the Legislature under the Constitution of 1865. Ex Recommendations The Remarks by Governor Marvin at the Inauguration. Laws Passed by the Twenty-two days after the making and the adoption of the Marvin Constitution, an election was held for Governor and other State officers. There seems to have been no opposition candidate for Governor, and no nominations were made for that office. The old line Whigs seem to have had an understanding that they would not vote for a Democrat, as they charged the Democrats with having brought on the war, and as D. S. Walker had figured so prominently in the politics of the State, having been elected one of the Judges of the Supreme Court, and one of the most popular leaders of the old Whig party, he became the candidate for Governor by general consent, Democrats being anxious to get back into the Union by the help of either friend or foe. The election was held on the 29th of December, and resulted in the election of D. S. Walker, he receiving five thousand eight hundred and seventy-three votes, with only eight votes cast against him. The Legislature met December 18th, 1865, and elected Joseph John Williams, of Leon County, Speaker, against G. Troup Maxwell, of Leon, by a vote of twenty to seventeen. The two Houses, after the permanent organization, met in joint session and canvassed the vote for Governor, and declared Walker's election. W. W. J. Kelly, whose vote was only two thousand four hundred and seventy-three, was declared elected Lieutenant-Governor. After some preparations the Governorelect came forward, accompanied by Governor Marvin, to be inaugurated. Governor Marvin addressed the Legislature, and recited to them the great difficulties he had to encounter, as Provisional Governor, in establishing a civil government, and how he found the State government overthrown and prostrated, with no money in the Treasury; and praising in the highest terms the work done by the convention, in incorporating in the Constitution that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall in future exist in this State, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been convicted by the courts of this State, and that all the inhabitants of the State, without distinction of color, are free and shall enjoy the rights of person and property without distinction of color; and that in all criminal proceedings founded upon an injury to a colored person, and in all cases affecting the rights and remedies of colored persons, no person shall be incompetent to testify as a witness on account of color." He reminded them of the action of the convention in repudiating the State debt contracted in support of the rebellion, and of the ordinance nullifying secession. And further to assure them how heartily he endorsed the policy of the previous convention, pointed them to the fact that he had humbly obeyed the request of the convention that the civil officers of the Confederate State Government, who had been suspended at the surrender, by the military authority, had been directed by him to resume the exercise of their respective offices. The colored troops, which the convention had by resolution requested the Governor to exert himself to have removed from the interior of the State, he informed them had nearly all been removed to the seaboard by the. General in command at that time. He recommended, among other things, that a law should be passed that where a laborer had entered into a contract in writing before the Judge of Probate or a Justice of the Peace, to labor upon a plantation for one year for wages, or a part of the crop, and the contract specified the wages to be paid, and the food to be given, that if the laborer abandoned the service of his employer, or was absent therefrom two days without the leave of his employer, or failed without just cause in other important particulars to perform his part of the contract, that then he may be arrested by the proper tribunal, and if found guilty on a hearing of the case, be sentenced to labor during the unexpired term, without pay, upon the higways, in a goverment workshop, or upon a government plantation to be rented or bought either by the State or by the different County Commissioners in their respective counties. He said that the faith of the nation was pledged for the protection of the freedmen, and those who had been loyal to the government during the rebellion. How the Governor could with any degree of reason conceive the idea that the Confederate State Government that had, during the war, hunted the Union men like the partridge on the mountains, and had denounced them as deserters and spies to the Confederate cause, and whose people had lost the services of that most valuable adjunct, the negro, whose stalwart arm had for years filled their homes with luxury, could deal justly with these two elements is beyond comprehension. After giving them all the advantages of religious training which inspires a sense of justice, yet it is not humane to have expected them at that period to be able to deal fairly and justly with those two classes of our population. It might be inferred from the attitude of the convention relative to the removal of the colored troops from the interior that the black soldiers stationed in the different parts of Florida at the close of the war were very overbearing in their conduct toward the ex-slaveholders, and incited the freedmen to lawlessness; but such was not the case. There were several colored regiments scattered through the interior; among them was the Second United States Colored Infantry, raised at Washington, D. C., two-thirds of its members being ex-slaves, and during the entire time they were stationed here I know of no complaint made against them of any misconduct toward the exslaveholders. In fact, when any of the white citizens were accused or arrested for any offense against the military authorities, they would always request the officer in command to have them arrested and guarded by the colored troops. They were spoken of by the whites in the very highest terms as to their conduct and general appearance, and thousands of whites would come out to witness their dress parade, and would often bring out their families, and not one word of insult was ever offered to them unless first insulted by the ex-slaveholder-who was always some low fellow who had shirked the Confederate army, and who imagined that such insults would palliate his shame. The reason why they desired the colored troops removed was that they |