What if Florida had been organized into two territorial governments instead of just one upon its annexation?
The logical point of division would have been to use the Suwanee river to divide west and east Floridian sections, as the Spanish had done in their period of occupation, like this:
(credit for this map goes to user @SuperFrog) [Note, prior to 1812, Spanish West Florida extended further west to include the Mobile District, which became the coastal counties of Alabama and Mississippi, prior to 1810, it included the "Florida parishes" of Louisiana, east of the Mississippi and north of New Orleans which had briefly declared themselves "The Republic of West Florida" before being occupied and annexed by the USA, prior to the 1795 treaty of San Lorenzo, aka "the Pinckney Treaty" which set the West Florida northern boundary at the 31st parallel, its border was much further north, and encompassed roughly the southern half, or two-fifths of modern day Mississippi and Alabama in addition to most of Louisiana east of the Mississippi barring New Orleans and Baton Rouge, prior to 1783 and the Spanish takeover from British, the West Florida-East Florida borderline was *not* the Suwanee river, pictured above, but the Apalachicola river, a bit to the west of it, which is also part of Georgia's western border.]
Each half would have its natural center, Pensacola for the west, and St. Augustine for the east.
Why go through the expense of two territorial governments for a relatively sparsely populated territory, that will not be "ripe" for statehood for decades?
A little additional foresight that could be apparent to the southern Senators and Representatives by the time the handover of Florida is consummated in 1821, after they've gone through the bruising sectional frictions over Missouri in 1820 that led to the Missouri Compromise.
The debates leading to the Missouri Compromise highlighted the salience of maintaining slave-state, free-state balance of power in the Union and in the Senate, and Missouri and Maine's admissions into the Union were paired to maintain parity at 12 slave states to 12 free states.
But, another part of the Missouri Compromise did not bode well for *long term* maintenance of parity, west and north of Missouri, slavery was to be prohibited in the vast Unorganized Territory making up the bulk of the remainder of US territorial lands from the Louisiana Purchase (as modified by the Adams-Onis 'step-boundary'), and permitted only south of it, in the Arkansas Territory.
East of the Mississippi, no restrictions were placed on slavery in newly acquired Florida, but the Michigan territory around the northern Great Lakes had slavery prohibited by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.
So, barring acquisitions of additional territory south of 36-30, not a guaranteed or near term prospect in the early 1820s, the United States clearly possessed much more federal territory eligible for carving out free states than slave states.
The writing should be on the wall, the south needs to get what it can in terms of states out of Florida. Two is better than just one.
That remains the case even if the people of the day assume west of the western meridian marking the boundary of Missouri it is a “Great American Desert” that will take generations, possibly into the 20th century, to mature into statehood.
In OTL, by 1837, the paired admissions of Arkansas and then Michigan provided for a free-slave balance of 13-13. With Florida organized as two territories, West Florida and East Florida, I do not see why that would change.
In OTL, the next state admitted, in early 1845, was Florida, as a single state.
Now, with their smaller land area, and much more importantly, smaller population, would either West Florida, or East Florida, have met the population threshold to be eligible for individual statehood by the OTL Florida March 1845 timeframe?
If not, by what time would either of the alternate "Floridas", be ready for admission to the Union as states? At any point of course, a sympathetic Democratic Administration, of which there several in the 1840s and 1850s, might put its thumb on the scale of one or the other Floridas.
For comparative purposes, I'll continue recounting the state admission history of OTL - Florida's OTL admission around March 1845 gave the slave states a 14-13 edge. Texas' admission around December 1845 increased the slave state state edge 15-13, but in a few years, the free states caught up, with Iowa (1846), and Wisconsin (1848) [hmm, wonder if sudden arrival of Germans had anything to do with that one?]. So by the beginning of 1849 the sections were matched 15-15.
But then California's admission as free state in 1850 gave the free states a lead, 16-15, and the free states never relinquished the lead after that, with no more slave states ever admitted, but Minnesota (1858), Oregon (1859), and Kansas (1861) admitted as more free states adding to a four free state surplus, 19-15, before the outbreak of Civil War fighting in 1861.
Along the way, in 1850, the imbalance caused by California, the insult of northerner's proposed Wilmot Proviso against slavery expansion in the Mexican Cession, and the greater aggressiveness of pro-slavery fire-eaters (and their conversion to "positive good" arguments about slavery) caused the south to demand and successfully use the Democratic Party to overturn the 36-30 line and open the Great Basin territories north (and south) of the line potentially to slavery through "popular sovereignty", and then the remaining Great Plans territories to slavery north of the line to slavery by the same method.
With two Floridas available for admission, possibly later, it might be possible to postpone the sectional crisis, and compromise of 1850. Or perhaps not, perhaps only some preceding details would change.
For example, in this ATL
a) In 1845, neither Florida is ready for statehood, but Texas is. This creates a one slave-state advantage in Senate six months later than OTL. The admission of Iowa into the Union brings back the sectional balance to 16-16 in 1846. The admission of Wisconsin as a free state in 1848, creates a slight 17-16 imbalance in favor of Free States. But perhaps, by this point, growth in West Florida territory, and national and Democratic partisan interest in sectional balance under President Polk, suffices for him to win admission of West Florida as a slave state, effective 1848 or 1849. When California petitions for admission as a free state in 1850, perhaps this is granted, but as a concession to southern complaints, East Florida is admitted as a slave state, and between that and rejecting the Wilmot Proviso, no provision is made in 1850 to abandon the 36-30 line or introduce the concept of Popular Sovereignty for the territorial organization of New Mexico and Utah territories, which are loosely organized with a border at 36-30 with New Mexico assumed to be legal for slavery and Utah to be without legal slavery.
The greater southern comfort with Senate balance in and after 1850 slows the growth of southern fire-eating and the demand for acquisition of Cuba and for a Kansas-Nebraska act to open up the plains north of 30-30 to slavery prior to 1856, thus preventing the emergence of the Free Soil emphasizing Republican Party by that time.
However, the admission of Minnesota as a free state in 1858 gives the free states a 19-18 advantage of one over the slave state, and with the two "Florida cards" played, the south has no "unplayed cards" except for making Indian Territory a state, which nobody wants to do. And Oregon's petition for statehood the very next year threatens to make the imbalance worse. *That* probably induces the Democrats, and a probable Democratic Administration (unless somehow there is a surviving Whig Party or nativist American Party administration) to introduce the "popular sovereignty" gambit and push for division of Kansas and Nebraska in hopes of enabling the former to enter the Union as a slave state. If that happens, and unless either the Whigs or the Know-Nothings have consolidated themselves as the defining and and strong counter-party to the Democrats, *that* should spark the emergence of the *Republicans* are an allohistorical clone of that party, echoing its OTL platform.
The *Republicans* might debut and win their first Presidential election as a national party in 1860, provoking secession and Civil War, or more likely, lose in 1860, but win in 1864, causing secession and provoking outbreak of the Civil War starting in 1865. There are 12 Confederate states instead of 11, with West Florida and East Florida among them.
b) Alternatively, West Florida is admitted in the late 1840s as a counter-balance to Iowa or Wisconsin, or a counter-balance to California in 1850, but East Florida, mostly consisting of the peninsula, is considered too sparsely settled and undeveloped for statehood and not admitted into the Union prior to 1861. Thus, an imbalance between free and slave state numbers in favor of the former starts appearing by no later than 1850 and the Compromise of 1850, Kansas-Nebraska act, and all that logically follows, continue on as in OTL.
What is interesting about that the Republicans as Free Soilers campaigning in 1856 and 1860 might have some *slight* "give" in their absolute opposition to the expansion of slavery beyond states where it is already legal, accepting the possibility of it expanding into a new state of East Florida when it is admitted into the Union, because 1) their own northern constituents generally would not be planning to move there, and 2) they know pragmatically that among the settler population already are many slaveholders from deep south states, with their slaves, enforcing slave codes. Or the Republicans may *not* make this exception. Or they may be vague. In any case, even if Republicans are pretty unequivocal about an East Florida exception, that will hardly make them less noxious to southerners.
Presuming Republican national electoral victory in 1860, and then South Carolina getting the ball of secession rolling, the seven deep southern states would vote for secession, including West Florida. The politically active settlers and locally based territorial authorities in East Florida territory will be in all likelihood pro-secession and pro-Confederate also. Pro-Confederate settlers, politicians, and militia would probably get cross-border support from West Florida and Georgia. But there would be federal troops, commanders, and forts as well.
More likely than not, pro-Confederate forces would seize any populated locations of value on the Florida mainland in East Florida territory, with the Union Navy and blue jackets perhaps occupying the Florida Keys. There would be 11 Confederate states, and the CSA constitution would proclaim East Florida, along with Arizona and Indian Territory, Confederate territories. But the CSA Congress might vote to admit East Florida as a full-fledged state during the Civil War. Upon defeating the Confederacy, the US would feel no obligation to recognize a CSA elevation of East Florida to statehood, and would not hesitate to revert it to pre-war territorial status.
A longer term result of East Florida non-statehood during Reconstruction could be that Federal military and civil interference with local Constitutional and Civil Rights matters in the territory could justifiably continue even after the federal government is obliged to end the occupation and congressional interference with reconstructed former Confederate *states*. The relatively small size of East Florida's population, also means that its electoral composition could be highly sensitive to move in and out of various demographics, included white Confederate sympathizers, freedmen, southern Unionists, northern whites, and new immigrants.
Alternatively, there is a possibility that Federal garrisons hold federal forts in East Florida or most of it, and with Union naval support and limited, but rising over time troop reinforcements, hold East Florida or the whole Florida peninsula from CSA invaders coming from Georgia and East Florida. Just possibly, even if against the sentiments of most of the white population or any territorial assembly, the territorial Governor may be a federal loyalist and may hold out in a territorial capital, which might be around St. Augustine and using the Castillo San Marcos, or around Jacksonville, or if losing that, perhaps maintain a loyal Union capital around Tampa Bay. If it is a Union state through the war, even if reluctant, white Unionists and runaways/"contraband" will increasingly take refuge there during the war, and the economy will become increasingly entwined with other Union areas and US military and government orders. East Florida will increasingly get a reputation as "unsouthern" among other southern states, even if its culture actually is pretty southern. Postwar this could make its political culture, and overall culture more border state like than deep southern. Eventually, post air conditioning, Florida went this way anyway. But being a Unionist redoubt during the American Civil War could make this development begin precociously.
The logical point of division would have been to use the Suwanee river to divide west and east Floridian sections, as the Spanish had done in their period of occupation, like this:
(credit for this map goes to user @SuperFrog) [Note, prior to 1812, Spanish West Florida extended further west to include the Mobile District, which became the coastal counties of Alabama and Mississippi, prior to 1810, it included the "Florida parishes" of Louisiana, east of the Mississippi and north of New Orleans which had briefly declared themselves "The Republic of West Florida" before being occupied and annexed by the USA, prior to the 1795 treaty of San Lorenzo, aka "the Pinckney Treaty" which set the West Florida northern boundary at the 31st parallel, its border was much further north, and encompassed roughly the southern half, or two-fifths of modern day Mississippi and Alabama in addition to most of Louisiana east of the Mississippi barring New Orleans and Baton Rouge, prior to 1783 and the Spanish takeover from British, the West Florida-East Florida borderline was *not* the Suwanee river, pictured above, but the Apalachicola river, a bit to the west of it, which is also part of Georgia's western border.]
Each half would have its natural center, Pensacola for the west, and St. Augustine for the east.
Why go through the expense of two territorial governments for a relatively sparsely populated territory, that will not be "ripe" for statehood for decades?
A little additional foresight that could be apparent to the southern Senators and Representatives by the time the handover of Florida is consummated in 1821, after they've gone through the bruising sectional frictions over Missouri in 1820 that led to the Missouri Compromise.
The debates leading to the Missouri Compromise highlighted the salience of maintaining slave-state, free-state balance of power in the Union and in the Senate, and Missouri and Maine's admissions into the Union were paired to maintain parity at 12 slave states to 12 free states.
But, another part of the Missouri Compromise did not bode well for *long term* maintenance of parity, west and north of Missouri, slavery was to be prohibited in the vast Unorganized Territory making up the bulk of the remainder of US territorial lands from the Louisiana Purchase (as modified by the Adams-Onis 'step-boundary'), and permitted only south of it, in the Arkansas Territory.
East of the Mississippi, no restrictions were placed on slavery in newly acquired Florida, but the Michigan territory around the northern Great Lakes had slavery prohibited by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.
So, barring acquisitions of additional territory south of 36-30, not a guaranteed or near term prospect in the early 1820s, the United States clearly possessed much more federal territory eligible for carving out free states than slave states.
The writing should be on the wall, the south needs to get what it can in terms of states out of Florida. Two is better than just one.
That remains the case even if the people of the day assume west of the western meridian marking the boundary of Missouri it is a “Great American Desert” that will take generations, possibly into the 20th century, to mature into statehood.
In OTL, by 1837, the paired admissions of Arkansas and then Michigan provided for a free-slave balance of 13-13. With Florida organized as two territories, West Florida and East Florida, I do not see why that would change.
In OTL, the next state admitted, in early 1845, was Florida, as a single state.
Now, with their smaller land area, and much more importantly, smaller population, would either West Florida, or East Florida, have met the population threshold to be eligible for individual statehood by the OTL Florida March 1845 timeframe?
If not, by what time would either of the alternate "Floridas", be ready for admission to the Union as states? At any point of course, a sympathetic Democratic Administration, of which there several in the 1840s and 1850s, might put its thumb on the scale of one or the other Floridas.
For comparative purposes, I'll continue recounting the state admission history of OTL - Florida's OTL admission around March 1845 gave the slave states a 14-13 edge. Texas' admission around December 1845 increased the slave state state edge 15-13, but in a few years, the free states caught up, with Iowa (1846), and Wisconsin (1848) [hmm, wonder if sudden arrival of Germans had anything to do with that one?]. So by the beginning of 1849 the sections were matched 15-15.
But then California's admission as free state in 1850 gave the free states a lead, 16-15, and the free states never relinquished the lead after that, with no more slave states ever admitted, but Minnesota (1858), Oregon (1859), and Kansas (1861) admitted as more free states adding to a four free state surplus, 19-15, before the outbreak of Civil War fighting in 1861.
Along the way, in 1850, the imbalance caused by California, the insult of northerner's proposed Wilmot Proviso against slavery expansion in the Mexican Cession, and the greater aggressiveness of pro-slavery fire-eaters (and their conversion to "positive good" arguments about slavery) caused the south to demand and successfully use the Democratic Party to overturn the 36-30 line and open the Great Basin territories north (and south) of the line potentially to slavery through "popular sovereignty", and then the remaining Great Plans territories to slavery north of the line to slavery by the same method.
With two Floridas available for admission, possibly later, it might be possible to postpone the sectional crisis, and compromise of 1850. Or perhaps not, perhaps only some preceding details would change.
For example, in this ATL
a) In 1845, neither Florida is ready for statehood, but Texas is. This creates a one slave-state advantage in Senate six months later than OTL. The admission of Iowa into the Union brings back the sectional balance to 16-16 in 1846. The admission of Wisconsin as a free state in 1848, creates a slight 17-16 imbalance in favor of Free States. But perhaps, by this point, growth in West Florida territory, and national and Democratic partisan interest in sectional balance under President Polk, suffices for him to win admission of West Florida as a slave state, effective 1848 or 1849. When California petitions for admission as a free state in 1850, perhaps this is granted, but as a concession to southern complaints, East Florida is admitted as a slave state, and between that and rejecting the Wilmot Proviso, no provision is made in 1850 to abandon the 36-30 line or introduce the concept of Popular Sovereignty for the territorial organization of New Mexico and Utah territories, which are loosely organized with a border at 36-30 with New Mexico assumed to be legal for slavery and Utah to be without legal slavery.
The greater southern comfort with Senate balance in and after 1850 slows the growth of southern fire-eating and the demand for acquisition of Cuba and for a Kansas-Nebraska act to open up the plains north of 30-30 to slavery prior to 1856, thus preventing the emergence of the Free Soil emphasizing Republican Party by that time.
However, the admission of Minnesota as a free state in 1858 gives the free states a 19-18 advantage of one over the slave state, and with the two "Florida cards" played, the south has no "unplayed cards" except for making Indian Territory a state, which nobody wants to do. And Oregon's petition for statehood the very next year threatens to make the imbalance worse. *That* probably induces the Democrats, and a probable Democratic Administration (unless somehow there is a surviving Whig Party or nativist American Party administration) to introduce the "popular sovereignty" gambit and push for division of Kansas and Nebraska in hopes of enabling the former to enter the Union as a slave state. If that happens, and unless either the Whigs or the Know-Nothings have consolidated themselves as the defining and and strong counter-party to the Democrats, *that* should spark the emergence of the *Republicans* are an allohistorical clone of that party, echoing its OTL platform.
The *Republicans* might debut and win their first Presidential election as a national party in 1860, provoking secession and Civil War, or more likely, lose in 1860, but win in 1864, causing secession and provoking outbreak of the Civil War starting in 1865. There are 12 Confederate states instead of 11, with West Florida and East Florida among them.
b) Alternatively, West Florida is admitted in the late 1840s as a counter-balance to Iowa or Wisconsin, or a counter-balance to California in 1850, but East Florida, mostly consisting of the peninsula, is considered too sparsely settled and undeveloped for statehood and not admitted into the Union prior to 1861. Thus, an imbalance between free and slave state numbers in favor of the former starts appearing by no later than 1850 and the Compromise of 1850, Kansas-Nebraska act, and all that logically follows, continue on as in OTL.
What is interesting about that the Republicans as Free Soilers campaigning in 1856 and 1860 might have some *slight* "give" in their absolute opposition to the expansion of slavery beyond states where it is already legal, accepting the possibility of it expanding into a new state of East Florida when it is admitted into the Union, because 1) their own northern constituents generally would not be planning to move there, and 2) they know pragmatically that among the settler population already are many slaveholders from deep south states, with their slaves, enforcing slave codes. Or the Republicans may *not* make this exception. Or they may be vague. In any case, even if Republicans are pretty unequivocal about an East Florida exception, that will hardly make them less noxious to southerners.
Presuming Republican national electoral victory in 1860, and then South Carolina getting the ball of secession rolling, the seven deep southern states would vote for secession, including West Florida. The politically active settlers and locally based territorial authorities in East Florida territory will be in all likelihood pro-secession and pro-Confederate also. Pro-Confederate settlers, politicians, and militia would probably get cross-border support from West Florida and Georgia. But there would be federal troops, commanders, and forts as well.
More likely than not, pro-Confederate forces would seize any populated locations of value on the Florida mainland in East Florida territory, with the Union Navy and blue jackets perhaps occupying the Florida Keys. There would be 11 Confederate states, and the CSA constitution would proclaim East Florida, along with Arizona and Indian Territory, Confederate territories. But the CSA Congress might vote to admit East Florida as a full-fledged state during the Civil War. Upon defeating the Confederacy, the US would feel no obligation to recognize a CSA elevation of East Florida to statehood, and would not hesitate to revert it to pre-war territorial status.
A longer term result of East Florida non-statehood during Reconstruction could be that Federal military and civil interference with local Constitutional and Civil Rights matters in the territory could justifiably continue even after the federal government is obliged to end the occupation and congressional interference with reconstructed former Confederate *states*. The relatively small size of East Florida's population, also means that its electoral composition could be highly sensitive to move in and out of various demographics, included white Confederate sympathizers, freedmen, southern Unionists, northern whites, and new immigrants.
Alternatively, there is a possibility that Federal garrisons hold federal forts in East Florida or most of it, and with Union naval support and limited, but rising over time troop reinforcements, hold East Florida or the whole Florida peninsula from CSA invaders coming from Georgia and East Florida. Just possibly, even if against the sentiments of most of the white population or any territorial assembly, the territorial Governor may be a federal loyalist and may hold out in a territorial capital, which might be around St. Augustine and using the Castillo San Marcos, or around Jacksonville, or if losing that, perhaps maintain a loyal Union capital around Tampa Bay. If it is a Union state through the war, even if reluctant, white Unionists and runaways/"contraband" will increasingly take refuge there during the war, and the economy will become increasingly entwined with other Union areas and US military and government orders. East Florida will increasingly get a reputation as "unsouthern" among other southern states, even if its culture actually is pretty southern. Postwar this could make its political culture, and overall culture more border state like than deep southern. Eventually, post air conditioning, Florida went this way anyway. But being a Unionist redoubt during the American Civil War could make this development begin precociously.
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