Palmetto Leaves is a memoir and travel guide written by Harriet Beecher Stowe about her winters in the town of Mandarin, Florida, published in 1873. Already famous for having written Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Stowe came to Florida after the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865). She purchased a plantation near Jacksonville as a place for her son to recover from the injuries he had received as a Union soldier and to make a new start in life. After visiting him, she became so enamored with the region she purchased a cottage and orange grove for herself and wintered there until 1884, even though the plantation failed within its first year. Parts of Palmetto Leaves appeared in a newspaper published by Stowe's brother, as a series of letters and essays about life in northeast Florida.
Scion of New England clergy, Stowe keenly felt a sense of Christian responsibility that was expressed in her letters. She considered it her duty to help improve the lives of newly emancipated blacks and detailed her efforts to establish a school and church in Mandarin toward these ends. Parts of the book relate the lives of local African-Americans and the customs of their society. Stowe described the charm of the region and its generally moderate climate but warned readers of "excessive" heat in the summer months and occasional cold snaps in winter. Her audience comprises relatives, friends, and strangers in New England who ask her advice about whether or not to move to Florida, which at the time was still mostly wilderness. Although it is a minor work in Stowe's oeuvre, Palmetto Leaves was one of the first travel guides written about Florida and stimulated Florida's first boom of tourism and residential development in the 1880s.
Background
Stowe buys an estate
By the time Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) moved to Florida in 1867, she was already internationally famous for authoring Uncle Tom's Cabin, published as a serial between 1851 and 1852. The novel expounded upon her abolitionist views and was extraordinarily influential in condemning slavery in the United States. Stowe's opposition to slavery sprang from a moral passion based on her Christian faith. She had grown up the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, Lyman Beecher; seven of her brothers became ministers in Calvinist or Congregational denominations, and she married a minister.Gotta, John (September 2000). "The Anglican Aspect of Harriet Beecher Stowe", The New England Quarterly, 73 (3) p. 412–433.
In 1860, Stowe's son Frederick "Fred" William Stowe enlisted in the First Massachusetts Infantry Regiment when Abraham Lincoln called for volunteers in anticipation of the Civil War. Much beloved, yet troubled, Fred Stowe had developed a problem with alcohol as early as sixteen. He took to army life, however, and was promoted to lieutenant. After receiving a head wound at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, he endured severe headaches and was forced to resign his commission.Wilson, p. 493. His alcoholism worsened, and he may have compounded it with a liberal use of opiates and narcotics, which were widely available.Thulesius, p. 21.Wilson, p. 498.
In 1866, Fred encountered two young farmers in Connecticut who had spent time on duty as Union soldiers in Florida during the war. He learned from them that land there was plentiful and cheap, and many recently emancipated blacks were available at low wages to work it. When he shared this information with his mother, Stowe and her husband Calvin Ellis Stowe considered it a prime opportunity to hasten their son's rehabilitation.Thulesius, p. 32. For $10,000 ($ in 2009) she purchased a cotton plantation near Orange Park, south of Jacksonville, named Laurel Grove, that was originally established by slave trader Zephaniah Kingsley in 1803 and managed in part by his African wife, Anna Madgigine Jai, until 1811.May, Philip S. (January 1945). "Zephaniah Kingsley, Nonconformist", The Florida Historical Quarterly 23 (3), p. 145–159.Kingsley and Anna Jai moved to another plantation at the mouth of the St. Johns River in 1814 where they lived for 25 years, now protected by the National Park Service as Kingsley Plantation.
Stowe intended that Fred would manage the estate as he recovered from his wounds and addictions. As an extension of her abolitionist ideals, she wrote to her brother Charles Beecher, however, about her potential role in the endeavor: My plan ... is not in any sense a mere worldly enterprise. I have for many years had a longing to be more immediately doing Christ's work on earth. My heart is with that poor people whose cause in words I have tried to plead, and who now, ignorant and docile, are just in that formative state in which whoever seizes has them. Corrupt politicians are already beginning to speculate on them as possible capital for their schemes and to fill their poor heads with all sorts of vagaries. Florida is the State into which they have, more than anywhere else, been pouring. Emigration is positively and decidedly setting that way; but as yet it is mere worldly emigration, with the hope of making money, nothing more.Wilson, p. 515.
Charles Stowe, her son, later wrote that his mother searched for higher purpose in everything she did, from growing potatoes to writing. She wrote that the prospect of setting up a series of churches along the St. Johns River would be the best way to train former slaves, remarking "I long to be at this work and cannot think of it without my heart burning within me".Stowe, Charles, p. 220–221.Whitfield, Stephen (April 1993). "Florida's Fudged Identity", The Florida Historical Quarterly, 71 (4), p. 413–435.The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin had made Stowe an international celebrity. Already active in abolitionist circles, she had been familiar with Frederick Douglass, a former slave who had educated himself and risen to prominence throughout the North, giving lectures on the evils of slavery and thinking about how a population of freed but impoverished and uneducated blacks could sustain themselves (Thulesius, p. 61–65). At some point following Uncle Tom's Cabin but before the Civil War, Stowe invited Douglass to her house and asked him this question personally. Education, according to Douglass, was the primary answer. Stowe was leaving soon on a speaking tour of England and she expected to be given a large sum of money from British sympathizers to be employed in charity work to assist runaway slaves. Douglass intended to start an industrial school for ex-slaves and anticipated she would give him about $20,000. Whether through some miscommunication, Stowe's mishandling of funds, or Douglass's own fault, Stowe eventually gave him only $500; Douglass was confused and disappointed (Thulesius, p. 65). Florida was little populated and developed: it had just a fraction of the population of Georgia and Alabama. South of Ocala, approximately two people lived per square mile.Stover, John F. (February 2000). "Flagler, Henry Morrison", American National Biography Online. Retrieved on June 30, 2009.
Florida's school system was in disarray at the end of the Civil War; in 1866 a Northerner named A. E. Kinne noted there were fewer schools for white children than freedmen's schools for black children. In 1860, there were no official schools for black children and slaves were prohibited from any education. At the same time, there were 97 public schools for white children and 40 private academies for them, some of which appeared to get public funding. In May 1865, the total Florida population was 154,000, and an estimated 47% of it was black, almost all of whom were former slaves.Laura Wallis Wakefield, "'Set a Light in a Dark Place': Teachers of Freedmen in Florida, 1863-1874", Fall 2004, MA Thesis, pp. 9, 12-14, University of Central Florida, accessed 17 Nov 2010 A difference in attitudes about education between the races was apparent as freed blacks saw education as the key to increasing their opportunities, or at least escaping conditions they had endured during servitude.Wakefield, Laura (Spring 2003). "'Set a Light in a Dark Place': Teachers of Freedmen in Florida, 1864-1874", The Florida Historical Quarterly, 81 (4), pp. 401–417.
Transformation and failure
In the late winter of 1867, Stowe followed her son to Florida, finding that the warmer weather allowed her to spend more time on two novels she was writing. Her first weeks in Orange Park utterly transformed her and she became enchanted with Florida at once,Wilson, p. 520. writing that she felt she had sprouted wings and become "young & frisky".Thulesius, p. 36. She accompanied her son one day to collect the mail, which was deposited in Mandarin, about across the St. Johns River. They rowed to the eastern shore and Stowe fell in love with a cottage in Mandarin, attached to an orange grove. Stowe's transformation in Florida was rooted in her identification and familiarity with Puritan New England: industry and thrift in a climate where cold sharpened one's senses and values. The laid-back attitude of the people and warmth of the Southern climate were seductive. She at first attempted to persuade her brother Charles to purchase the land in Mandarin, writing to him and asking "How do you think New England theology would have fared had been landed here instead of Plymouth Rock?" She wrote about the land and climate intoxicating her and pondered the effect it might have had on literature when she posed an idea to her publisher: "I hate to leave my calm isle of Patmos—where the world is not and I have such quiet long hours for writing. [Ralph Waldo] Emerson could insulate himself here and keep his electricity. [Nathaniel] Hawthorne ought to have lived in an orange grove in Florida."Thulesius, p. 117.
Within a year, Laurel Grove failed. Fred was inexperienced and made poor bargains with local merchants. Before the war, plantations had been largely self-sufficient, but Fred paid high prices for goods shipped in from Savannah and Charleston. He took days off at a time to visit saloons in Jacksonville. An unanticipated infestation of cotton-worm larvae (Helicoverpa zea) destroyed much of the cotton crop. Only two bales were produced by Laurel Grove; Stowe realized the venture was a failure. Fred committed himself to a rehabilitation asylum in New York,Alcohol would haunt Fred Stowe for the rest of his life. He sailed to the Mediterranean to remove himself from temptation, but could not shake his addiction. In 1870, he was living with his parents in Mandarin when he resolved not to embarrass them anymore. He caught a ship to Chile, but continued to San Francisco, then a rough port. Some friends took him to a hotel, where he settled in and left to run an errand. He was never heard from again. Stowe tried in vain to have him located, and in her old age, she spoke of him constantly. (Wilson, p. 559–560.)(Stowe, Charles, p. 278–279.)Thulesius, p. 39–41.Wilson, p. 526–527. and at some point in 1867, Stowe purchased the cottage and the attached grove in Mandarin.
Citrus was distributed primarily in a regional market and was a luxury in northern cities; oranges in New York sold for about 50 cents per fruit.Wilson, p. 521. The acreage attached to the house Stowe purchased could produce an income of $2,000 a month ($ in 2009). Stowe wrote to author George Eliot to update her on the progress of improvements to the house in Mandarin, putting up wallpaper, improving plaster, and building a veranda that wrapped around the structure. She took pains not to disturb a giant oak and instead built the veranda around the tree. The house could accommodate as many as 17 family members and friends.Stowe, Charles, p. 221–222.