The Smallest Tadpole's War in the Land of Mysterious Waters

The Smallest Tadpole’s War in the Land of Mysterious Waters is based on a true story, a family story. It is part of the Florida Special Collection at the State Library of Florida, and the Florida History Collection at the University of Florida Smathers Library, Florida State Strozier Library and Gulf Coast State College. In early 1861, Florida was a rural frontier state that had joined the Union just 15 years before. Its population of 140,000 was by far the smallest of any of the states that formed the Confederacy. Nearly 63,000 of the population were African Americans, most of whom were slaves working in an agricultural-based economy. The majority of the white population was relatively poor and rural. In the 1860s, a Northern newspaper referred to Florida as "the smallest tadpole in the dirty pool of succession."