governor. ⁶ Northern-born and a long-time Unionist resident of Key West, Marvin immediately acted to relieve uncertainty and to arouse the defeated from their apathy. To prepare for Florida's reentrance into the Union, a statewide election was held for delegates to a constitutional convention, ⁷ which met in Tallahassee on October 24, 1865. Composed almost entirely of ex-Confedcrates, the convention was dominated by the old plantation, small town, port city oligarchy. Philosophically conservative, they would later be call Bourbons by their political opponents. Reactionary insofar as the blacks were concerned, their views were based on paternalistic attitudes rather than racial hatred. Many of them would become proponents of the New South concept of Henry Grady and John B. Gordon. Northern investors such as Henry Flagler would find them enthusiastic allies. Confronted with the necessity and practicality of bringing Florida back into the Union under Presidential Reconstruction, these ex-Confederates annulled the Ordinance of Secession, then repealed the state law which legalized slavery. They rejected Governor Marvin's recommendation that civil rights be extended to the freedmen and Florida's Civil War debt of $2,100,000 be repudiated. Not until the convention was notified that repudiation was an inflexible demand of President Johnson was it voted. The delegates also reluctantly supported a watered-down civil rights bill. ⁸ It was obvious that the role of the Negro had changed but not the attitude of the white Floridian toward him.

Interest in state government continued at a low ebb. When the state held its first postwar election to replace Governor Marvin's provisional administration, Negroes were still denied the franchise, and only four thousand whites went to the polls to give the Unionists a hollow victory. Since the voting strength in Florida prior to the Civil War had been fourteen thousand, it was obvious that the new governor, David S. Walker of Tallahassee, did not have a clear mandate from the people. A former slaveholder, Walker was a cousin and successor of long-time antebellum Whig and Unionist leader General Richard Keith Call. ⁹ If left to his own devices, Walker would follow a moderately conservative policy and not disturb the ex-Confederate control of the state.

The new legislature was more aggressive than the similarly composed convention. The old defeatist attitude was disappearing as things returned to normal. As a stop-gap, a stringent Black Code

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