The Jackson County War

Reconstruction and Resistance in Post-Civil War Florida

By: Daniel R. Weinfeld

Narrated by: Emil Nicholas Gallina

Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

From early 1869 through the end of 1871, citizens of Jackson County, Florida, slaughtered their neighbors by the score. The nearly three-year frenzy of bloodshed became known as the Jackson County War. The killings, close to 100 and by some estimates twice that number, brought Jackson County the notoriety of being the most violent county in Florida during the Reconstruction era. Daniel R. Weinfeld has made a thorough investigation of contemporary accounts. He adds an assessment of recently discovered information and presents a critical evaluation of the standard secondary sources.

The Jackson County War focuses on the role of the Freedmen's Bureau, the emergence of white Regulators, and the development of African-American political consciousness and leadership. It follows the community's descent after the Civil War into disorder punctuated by furious outbursts of violence until the county settled into uneasy stability seven years later. The Jackson County War emerges as an emblem of all that could have and did go wrong in the uneasy years after Appomattox and that left a residue of hatred and fear that endured for generations.

The book is published by The University of Alabama Press.

©2012 The University of Alabama Press (P)2015 Redwood Audiobooks

How to Resist Federal Tyranny

Daniel Weinfeld’s The Jackson County War is a fine example of recent scholarship seeking to nuance our understanding of class and violence in the Reconstruction South. As the book’s description says, Weinfeld focuses upon Marianna and Jackson County, Florida, which, while being violently resistant to Freedmen’s Bureau and Republican Party rule, was also, not coincidentally, home to the type of working class whites who’s defiance erupted forth in Concorde, San Jacinto, and Charleston.

Although the book is entirely too academic to give the subject the partisan fire it deserves, Weinfeld still thrills us with a pretty deep dive into the young men who fought for the CSA but had little material skin in the game, who then came home and showed what skin they actually had in that game: an uncompromising commitment to white rule and ruthless racism.

These defiant men went back to war, not only against their racial and occupying foes, but also against Jackson County’s collaborationist landed elites, who quickly and quietly acquiesced to the freedmen because they needed them to stay and labor. As the author says, these elites, “resigned themselves to the postwar reality,” and so, “lived in fear of their sons.”

For all that Weinfeld adds to our local knowledge of Reconstruction, it still paints the picture we’ve long known – especially since 2020 (or is it 1820?) – of a cynical victorious party using a morality of inclusion to empower black revenge as one aspect of a political reordering designed to guarantee the hegemony of the party.

To this apocalyptic situation the protagonists said, “No! Instead we’ll cleanse the earth with blood and fire and see who still wants to profit from our debasement.”

Weinfeld’s narrative thus joins the growing chorus celebrating Southern defiance which makes Reconstruction all the more beautiful. War is one thing. War at home is another.