(MENAFNEditorial)
Summary: Florida may have seceded from the Union during the Civil War but one of its most important cities and ports Key West remained a Union stronghold.
February 4 2015 Key West FL-A quick look at a map of the United States prior to the Civil War would lead a person to believe that Florida would join the Confederacy. They would be mostly right. However a quick thinking Union commander station in Key West Florida took his troops to secure Fort Zachary Taylor making sure that Key West would remain a nautical stronghold for the Union and help win the war. This odd fact of history is just one of the many aspects that will be celebrated during the annual Civil War Heritage Days Festival being held February 6th through the 8th.
“It is just another one of those quirks in history that helps make Key West such a unique place” said Norman Vogel owner of the iconic Key West restaurant the Roof Top Café along with his wife Wednesday. “People automatically assume that the island went rebel like the rest of the state but that just wasn’t the case.”
Many historians agree that the island so far from the mainland of the United States probably did not care much which side they were on as long as the war did not interfere with their primary industry: wrecking. The barrier reef that sits only a few miles from the island was a threat to all ships Union and Confederate and when it came to plundering the wreckage Key West residents were equal opportunity plunderers.
Many of the ceremonies that will take place during the weekend long celebration to be held primarily at Fort Taylor will focus on how life was for residents of the southernmost island during these dark days in American history. Even residents living there today point out that it was not so much the geography of where people were but where they were from.
“Key West had much more in common with the whaling and shipping states of the north than it did with the agricultural economy of the south” said Vogel himself a 20 year transplant from Pennsylvania. “People living here then just like now had a strong connection to family and friends back home in New England.” To point out how that feeling still permeates Key West to this day Vogel shared a common joke among locals: “When people on their island vacations ask us about the south we tell them it’s north of here.”
For more information on the Civil War Heritage Festival Days please contact them at (305) 292-6850
For more information on the Roof Top Café please visit their website: http://www.rooftopcafekeywest.com/
Jack Terry is a freelance writer and blogger who spent many years living as a transplanted northerner in the southernmost city.
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