David Levy Yulee

Early life and education

Born David Levy in Charlotte Amalie, on the island of St. Thomas, his father Moses Elias Levy was a Moroccan Sephardi Jew who made a fortune in lumber. His mother was also Sephardi; her ancestors had gone from Spain to the Netherlands and England. Some had later gone to the Caribbean as English colonists during the British occupation of the Danish West Indies, now the United States Virgin Islands. His father Moses Levy was a first cousin and business partner of Phillip Benjamin, the father of future Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin.

After the family immigrated to the United States, Moses Levy bought 50,000 acres (200 km²) of land near present-day Jacksonville, Florida Territory. He wanted to establish a "New Jerusalem" for Jewish settlers. The parents sent their son to a boy's academy and college in Norfolk, Virginia. David Levy studied law with Robert R. Reid in St. Augustine, was admitted to the bar in 1832 and practiced in St. Augustine.

Early political career

Yulee served in the territorial militia, including the Second Seminole War, and in 1834 was present at a conference with Seminole chiefs, including Osceola.

In 1836 he was elected to the Florida Territory's Legislative Council, and he served from 1837 to 1839. He was delegate to the territory's constitutional convention in 1838, and served as clerk of the legislature in 1841.

Florida businessman

In 1851 Yulee founded a 5,000-acre (20 km²) sugar cane plantation, built and maintained by slaves, along the Homosassa River. The remains of his plantation, which was destroyed during the Civil War, are now the Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins State Historic Site. Yulee was also business partners with John William Pearson at Orange Springs, Florida but he abandoned his idea of building a railroad in the area due to the upcoming Civil War.

While living in Fernandina, Yulee began to develop a railroad across Florida. He had planned since 1837 to build a state-owned system. He became the first Southerner to use state grants under the Florida Internal Improvement Act of 1855, passed to encourage the development of infrastructure. He made extensive use of the act to secure federal and state land grants "as a basis of credit" to acquire land and build railroad networks, on the back of slave labor through the Florida wilderness.

Issuing public stock, Yulee chartered the Florida Railroad in 1853. He planned its eastern and western terminals at deep-water ports, Fernandina (Port of Fernandina) on Amelia Island on the Atlantic side, and Cedar Key on the Gulf of Mexico, to provide for connection to ocean-going shipping. His company began construction in 1855. On March 1, 1861, the first train arrived from the east in Cedar Key, just weeks before the beginning of the Civil War.

Later political career

Yulee was elected in 1841 as the delegate from the Florida Territory to the US House of Representatives and served four years. He was seated after his election, but several attempts were made to prevent Yulee from taking his seat on the grounds that he was not a citizen; he agreed to suspend his legislative activities pending resolution of this issue in the next Congressional session. By late March 1842 the associated investigations, committee votes, and attempts to bring the issue to a vote in the full House, which included a defense by Levy and testimony from witnesses favorable to him, had not produced a definitive opinion of the House. He was allowed to take his seat, and there were no further attempts to unseat him. Once seated in the House, Yulee worked to gain statehood for the territory and to protect the expansion of slavery in new states.

In 1845, after Florida was admitted as a state, the legislature elected him as a Democrat to the United States Senate, the first Jew to win a seat in the Senate, and he served until 1851. In 1855 he was again elected to the Senate, and he served until withdrawing in 1861 in order to support the Confederacy at the start of the American Civil War.

Yulee's inflammatory pro-slavery rhetoric in the Senate earned him the nickname "Florida Fire Eater". During his Senate career he served as chairman of the Committee on Private Land Claims (1845-1849) and the Committee on Naval Affairs (1849-1851).

Civil War

During the Civil War Yulee did not seek any elective or appointive office, though some sources erroneously state that he served in the Confederate Congress. After the war, Yulee was imprisoned in Fort Pulaski for nine months because of his presumed support for the Confederacy.

Reconstruction

After receiving a pardon and being released from confinement, Yulee rebuilt the Yulee Railroad, which had been destroyed by warfare. He served as president of the Florida Railroad Company from 1853 to 1866, as well as president of the Peninsular Railroad Company, Tropical Florida Railway Company, and Fernandina and Jacksonville Railroad Company. His development of the railroads was his most important achievement and contribution to the state of Florida. He was called the "Father of Florida Railroads". His leadership helped bring increased economic development to the state, including the late nineteenth-century tourist trade. In 1870 Yulee hosted President Ulysses S. Grant in Fernandina.

Marriage and family

In 1846, Levy officially changed his name to David Levy Yulee (adding his father's Sephardic surname). That year he married Nancy Christian Wickliffe, the daughter of Charles A. Wickliffe, the former governor of Kentucky and Postmaster General under President John Tyler. His wife was Christian, and they raised their children in her faith.

Death and legacy

Selling the Florida Railroad, Yulee retired with his wife to Washington, D.C. in 1880, where she had family. He died six years later while visiting in New York. Yulee was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.