WEST VOLUSIA AND THE ST. JOHNS RIVER - 7 -
About the only thing that the Third Seminole War really did was give Floridians practice for what was to come a few years later. On January 10, 1861, Florida seceded from the Union it had joined a scant 16 years earlier. Men and cattle were West Volusia’s two biggest contributions to the Confederacy during the War Between the States. The men went into the armies of Lee in Virginia and Johnston and Bragg in Georgia and Tennessee. The cattle went to feed those armies. In 1863, after the North captured Vicksburg, Miss., most of the South was cut off from Western beef supplies. Florida was the only one place for hungry Confederate eyes to turn. Much of the beef came from the grasslands and palmetto scrub of West Volusia. This area didn’t see any battles between Union and Confederate forces. But there were dozens of fights between Confederates, settlers and bands of outlaws. The outlaws were mostly deserters from major theaters of war in Georgia and South Carolina. It was easy for someone in either the Confederate or Union Army to desert, steal a horse, cross into Florida and disappear into the palmetto scrub. The state also was a haven for draft dodgers, called layouts at that time, from the rest of the Confederacy. Deserters and layouts formed gangs that sometimes numbered in the hundreds. They preyed upon the helpless citizens until the War ended. When the war ended in 1865, Florida was in better shape than most of the rest of the South. There had been no prolonged campaigns and pitched battles upon its soil, so the state wasn’t a gutted ruin like Virgina, Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas.
The river and the vacant land attracted investors by the hundreds. When the war ended, West Volusia was mostly cattle range with a few scattered settlements. |
West
Volusia in particular was ready for economic development. It had plenty of open land for
farming. River boats could ply the St. Johns for the county’s entire length, from
Lake Monroe in the south to Lake George in the north. That was particularly important, for
the transportation of goods and materials, before the arrival of railroads.