In the final days of the Civil War, John Milton, who served as governor of Florida for most of its four years in the Confederacy, killed himself. Wednesday marks the 150th anniversary of Miltons suicide.
Milton came from a distinguished family, including claiming ancestry from the great English poet John Milton. His grandfather -- also named John Milton -- served more than 20 years as Georgias secretary of state, though he found Florida far less pleasant than his grandson ever did. In 1777, John Milton was captured by British forces and held as a prisoner of war in St. Augustine.
Unlike his grandfather, Milton found little success in Georgia politics where he studied law, despite his first wife coming from the politically powerful Cobb family. While he did well in militia elections, being elected colonel and serving in the Second Seminole War, Milton came up short in a congressional bid. Milton certainly did not help his political aspirations when he walked up behind rival Major J.T. Camp and fired a double-barreled gun in his back. Camp quickly died but Milton claimed he had been threatened and was found not guilty of murder.
After practicing law in Georgia and Alabama and surviving a steamboat accident in New Orleans, Milton moved to Florida, settling in Jackson County in 1846. There he led a plantation named Sylvania by Marianna which grew to more than 6,000 acres and relied on more than 50 slaves.
Milton did far better in Florida politics than he ever did in Georgia. Only four years after he moved to Florida, Milton was sitting in the Florida House as a pro-secessionist Democrat. He took part in the 1860 Democratic conventions when that party divided and ran two presidential candidates, ensuring Abraham Lincoln would win.
In the Legislature, Miltons background as an attorney helped him on the Judiciary Committee. He was nominated to, but not elected to, the state Supreme Court. No surprise considering his background in Georgia, Milton led the Militia Committee -- experience would prove helpful a few years later.
Elected governor in 1860 over Edward Hopkins, Milton worked fairly harmoniously with Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Unlike Gov. Joe Brown up in Georgia, Milton thought highly of Davis and even named a son after the Confederate president.
For his part, Davis appreciated Miltons work for the Confederacy.
"It is gratifying to me to be able to say to you that in this time of our great trouble, when so many are disposed to withhold from the Confederate government the means of success, you should occupy the high standpoint of strengthening its hands by all the means in your power and of nobly disregarding all considerations except the common weal, Davis wrote Milton during the war.
Florida remained something of an afterthought during the war despite it providing support for the Confederacy, namely by supplying food. But Miltons militia background proved useful as he rallied Florida against Union forces in the successful Olustee campaign of February 1864 and in beating back a Union attempt to take Tallahassee in March 1865 which led to a Confederate victory at the battle of Natural Bridge.
But despite the Southern win at Natural Bridge, the writing was on the wall. Milton, who remained committed to the Confederate cause, sent a final message to the Legislature in March 1865 in which he said a united America was impossible after the war and vilifying the way the Union conducted military operations.
In this conflict the baseness, cruelty and perfidy of our foe have exceeded precedent," Milton wrote the Legislature. They have developed a character so odious that death would be preferable to reunion with them.
Milton certainly meant his words. On April 1, 1865, little more than a week before Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House, Milton committed suicide with a shot to the head.
Despite the governors suicide, the Milton family remained prominent in Florida politics. His grandson William Hall Milton briefly served in the U.S. Senate during the first years of the 20th century and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1912. The Milton family even proved prominent outside of Florida. Jeff Milton, the son named after Jefferson Davis, was something of a famed Old West lawman who served with the Texas Rangers.
Milton wasnt alone in preferring death to reuniting with the North. The convention that took Florida out of the Union in January 1861 featured Virginia agricultural reformer Edmund Ruffin as a guest speaker, who was one of the leading fire-eaters calling for secession in the 1850s. Ruffin won some fame for firing the first shot at Fort Sumter to open the war but, like Milton, did not want to live in a reunited nation. On June 17, 1865, Ruffin ended his diary, one of the most important primary sources of the Civil War era, making the same points Milton did about the Union and expressed his unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule and the perfidious, malignant and vile Yankee race. Then, like Milton, Ruffin killed himself with a shot to the head.
Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or follow him on Twitter: @KevinDerbySSN. Kevin wrote a masters thesis on Edmund Ruffin, the reading of which is an excellent cure for insomnia.
