Fragile Freedom

One of the original Thirteen Colonies, South Carolina had signed the Declaration of Independence and was the 8th State to ratify the Constitution on May 23rd, 1788. Mississippi had been a state for now over 40 years. It was reaching the point where only the older generation remembered when it was an open territory against the vast western frontier. Though not as young as Oregon or Minnesota or California, Florida, on the other hand, had only been a state for 15 years, only just over half a year older than Texas. It was entirely possible that there had been many in the state who remembered what it was like before the Florida Purchase Treaty ceded the Spanish territory to the US in 1822, combining East and West Florida into the Florida Territory. Yet on January 10th, 1861, Florida would become the third state to secede from the Union. Once declared a “Free and Independent State” in its Constitution, it was now ready to declare itself an “Sovereign and Independent Nation” in an open convention that agreed by a v