Napoleon Bonaparte Broward (April 19, 1857 – October 1, 1910) was an American river pilot, captain, and politician. He was elected as the 19th governor of the U.S. state of Florida, serving from January 3, 1905, to January 5, 1909. He was most widely known for his major project to drain the Everglades, to recover land for agricultural cultivation. As governor, he built alliances with the federal government to gain funds for this project. In 1915, the newly formed Broward County was named in his honor.
Broward previously served as the sheriff of Duval County, Florida and in the Florida House of Representatives. He was allied with the Straightouts, Populist-leaning elements of the Democratic Party in the state.Proctor, S. (1947). "Napoleon B. Broward: The Years to the Governorship". The Florida Historical Quarterly, 26(2), 117–134. , p. 123
According to one study, Napoleon started "'the Broward Era' of liberal, or 'progressive,' government, which continued under his successors Albert W. Gilchrist and Park Trammell."
Early life and education His childhood was spent on a series of family plantations along the St. Johns River in Jacksonville. During the Civil War, the Broward family plantation was burned by Union troops occupying the town, and the Broward family's slaves were freed. After the war, the Browards struggled to recover.
Broward's parents both died when he was still quite young. Broward, along with his brother, tended the family farm for a few years before moving into the city with their uncle.
Broward first worked on the river with this uncle, Joe Parsons, doing odd jobs on his steamboat during the summer. In 1876, having graduated high school, Broward became a ship's mate and traveled to New England. He stayed in that region for two years, working on ships along the New England coast and coming home a stout young man, standing six foot two and weighing over two hundred pounds.
After gaining experience in the north as a ship's mate, in 1878 Broward returned to Jacksonville and took a job working tugboats on the St. Johns River. He became acquainted with many of the captains and shipping operations.
Broward married his captain's daughter (Georgiana Carolina "Carrie" Kemp) in January 1883. That spring, he applied for a license to pilot ships over the St. Johns Bar, a constantly shifting sandbar that stretched across the mouth of the St. Johns, sometimes above water and sometimes many feet below. Piloting ships over the treacherous bar was quite lucrative.
Broward seemed destined for a life of comfort until his wife died a day after giving birth to his son in late October 1883. The son, also named Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, would only live for six weeks.Proctor. p. 121
By 1885, he was back on the St. Johns, piloting his father-in-law's steamboat Kate Spencer. While working on the ship, he met the young daughter of a fellow boat captain, Annie Isabell Douglass, a frequent passenger and the two were married in 1887. The couple ended up having eight daughters and one son:
Annie Dorcas Broward Starrett (1889–1923) Josephine Broward Beckley (1892–1970) Enid Lyle Broward Hardee (1894–1943) Elsie Hortense Broward Dumas (1896–1948) Ella Jeanette Broward Shevlin (1899–1961) Agnes Carolyn Broward Craig (1901–1995) Florida Douglass Broward Segrest (1904–1988) Elizabeth Hutchison Broward Crawford (1906–1992) Napoleon Bonaparte Broward III (1910–1989)
Political beginnings Broward established his reputation as a good pilot and captain. In January 1888, a major prison break disgraced the city's sheriff, who was subsequently removed from office. The county Democratic leadership convened and nominated Broward as the best man to become the new sheriff. The governor appointed him to the post on February 27. In less than a month, Broward gained statewide notoriety for breaking up gambling operations in the city.
Broward soon took an active part in city politics. In the early 1890s, the Democratic Party in Florida was undergoing some internal strife. Two factions developed in Jacksonville that eventually became the major statewide camps, the Antis and the Straightouts.Proctor. p. 123 The Antis were conservative and pro-business, whereas the Straightouts were allied with Populists and agrarians. Broward joined the Straightout camp. In this period, Populists, sometimes in biracial alliances with Republicans, won numerous states in the South. The Democratic Party struggled to regain power in state legislatures.
In the election of 1892, the Straightouts, under Broward's leadership, swept the city offices: Broward's close friends, John N.C. Stockton and John M. Barrs, became city attorney and councilman, respectively, while Broward retained the sheriff's office. (He was an indicted felon when elected.) The Antis continued to struggle for power and two years later, the split between the two camps became even more severe. The Antis the Straightouts accused each other of voter fraud, complaining to the secretary of state and the governor. Anti sympathizers held most of the state offices, and the Antis won out. Broward was replaced by a new appointee when the Antis regained power in the city.
Cuban involvement In 1895, Broward, his brother, and an associate began building a new steamboat, The Three Friends. Located on Fort George Island, the proprietors of the boat-building company were John Joseph Daly and Charles Scammell. During the construction, Cuban insurgents began fighting for independence from Spain. Broward was approached by a prominent member of Jacksonville's Cuban community about shipping a load of munitions and some Cuban expatriates from Nassau to Cuba. Broward agreed, and in January 1896, The Three Friends shipped out of Jacksonville on her maiden voyage, bound for Cuba.
Broward continued this military filibustering operation until President William McKinley declared war on Spain. Several times Broward was nearly caught and destroyed by Spanish gunboats. Aware of Broward's identity, the Spanish ambassador to the United States demanded that the American be stopped and his ship impounded. U.S. authorities tried to catch him, but Broward eluded them by loading The Three Friends under cover of darkness in secluded locations, hiding her behind larger ships as she left the St. Johns, and picking up Cubans and munitions from other ships at various points near the mouth of the river. Except when trying to evade capture, Broward never pretended not to be a filibusterer. He gained notoriety around the state for his daring deeds. However, Broward did take precautions against having his cargo intercepted by the Spanish, such as concealing arms and munitions inside shipments of groceries to the island.
Return to politics In 1896, the Straightouts offered to nominate Broward for sheriff, but he was busy with his filibustering operation and declined. In 1900, the war ended and his filibustering days were over.
Broward accepted the Democratic nomination for the State House and was elected almost without opposition. In the House, Broward supported many progressive initiatives, including a state dispensary bill and a law allowing insanity as grounds for divorce (at the request of powerful developer Henry Flagler). The most important law he supported was the Primary Election Law.
Broward had long supported a primary election system to replace the state's convention system, which was controlled by a small clique headed by Flagler. A strong law was drawn up in the House, which Broward enthusiastically supported, but after the Senate weakened the bill substantially, he withdrew his support. The bill passed anyway.
Broward was not naïve when it came to politics. As a Straightout and a supporter of the "common man," Broward naturally opposed Flagler's control of the party nominating system in the state. It tended to produce Democratic candidates from the Anti faction. As Florida had disfranchised most blacks and was essentially a one-party state, Anti control of the party nominating system effectively meant Anti control of the state government. Broward was smart enough to sponsor Flagler's requested divorce bill, but still wanted to wrest power from the big man.
Campaign for governor Broward did not run for the House again in 1902 because he was busy with a salvage operation in the Keys. During the summer of 1903, he decided to run for the governorship, as he had been approached numerous times during the spring and the summer about running for the office. As the party was hard pressed to find another liberal candidate, he agreed to run for office.
Broward was never wealthy, and in fact, frequently found himself in debt for one reason or another. The liberal forces in the state did not have great financial backing, while the conservative forces controlled most of the money and most of the newspapers in the state, as well as the major cities.
Broward said of his chances, "I don't intend to go after the cities. Their newspapers are against me and they don't take me seriously. But I'm going to stump every crossroads village between Fernandina and Pensacola and talk to the farmers and the crackers and show them their top ends were meant to be used for something better than hatracks. I'm going to make 'em sit up and think. They won't mind mistakes in grammar if they find I'm talking horse sense."
Broward began campaigning immediately. His strongest opponent was Robert W. Davis, the railroad (and hence Flagler) candidate, while the two other candidates presented smaller threats. Broward hit Davis early and throughout the election for being a railroad man. Davis and the city newspapers generally derided Broward as an idiot as well as a liberal whose time had passed.
The greatest issue in the campaign was Everglades drainage, a program first examined by the sitting governor, William S. Jennings. Broward came out strongly in favor of drainage, calling the ground "the fabulous muck." While campaigning, he carried an elevation map of the various parts of the Everglades. If Broward found that he was losing an argument over drainage, he would point to his map and say, "Water will run downhill!"
Davis and Broward easily moved ahead into the second primary, and the campaign grew fiercer, with Davis at one point saying, "Mr. Broward is a man of but little ability and no intellectual brilliance whatever!" Broward used Davis's congressional record to repeatedly attack his voting in support of his railroad ties. Broward appealed to few urban voters and no business interests, while Davis could not win support among farmers or rural voters. On election day, Broward's rural voters gave him the primary victory by only 600 votes out of 45,000. The general election some weeks later was uneventful, and Broward was inaugurated on January 3, 1905.
Governorship Broward's biggest push as governor was for drainage of the Everglades, then considered useless swamp, as white settlers did not understand its ecology or relation to water table and habitat. Early in his term, Broward was attacked often and by many different people for his drainage program and for the land tax he instituted to pay for it. One newspaper noted, "The treasury will be drained before the Everglades." As drainage progressed, Broward began taking his fiercest opponents for "ocular displays" in the Glades, showing them the work that had been done and how it was progressing. John Beard, one of Broward's most effective opponents, was eventually convinced by one of these trips that the land was fertile and that drainage was working. Broward retaliated against Frank Stoneman, publisher of the predecessor of the Miami Herald who opposed the drainage, by refusing to certify his election as circuit judge.Douglas, Marjory; Rothchild, John (1987). Marjory Stoneman Douglas: Voice of the River. Pineapple Press. pp. 98–99.