James M. Denham – författare

Representing half of the state’s population, the U.S. Middle District Court is one of the busiest federal courts in Florida. It is recognized most often as the battleground for the Terri Schiavo “right to die” case, but it has been at the center of major decisions for more than fifty years. The famous and the infamous have stood before the judges of the Middle District courts, including young civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall, mobster Santo Trafficante, drug lord Carlos Lehder, baseball star Denny McLain, movie star Wesley Snipes, criminal defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, and Constance Baker Motley, the first African American woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The verdicts have made headlines, but little is known about the inner workings of the court in which they were delivered. In Fifty Years of Justice, James Denham presents the fascinating history of the U.S. Middle District Court of Florida from its founding in 1962 to the present. Readers will discover the intricacies of rulings, the criminal defendants and civil litigants, and the dedicated officials—the unsung heroes—who keep the justice system running day to day. From desegregation to discrimination, espionage to the environment, trafficking to terrorism, and a host of cases in between, litigation in these courtrooms has shaped and shaken both state and nation.

Previously unpublished letters offering a view of everyday life in north Florida before the Civil War

In 1840, twenty-three-year-old George Long Brown migrated from New Hampshire to north Florida, a region just emerging from the devastating effects of the Second Seminole War. This volume presents over seventy of Brown’s previously unpublished letters to illuminate day-to-day life in pre–Civil War Florida.

Brown’s personal and business correspondence narrates his daily activities and his views on politics, labor practices, slavery, fundamentalist religion, and local gossip. Having founded a successful mercantile establishment in Newnansville, Brown traveled the region as far as Savannah and Charleston, purchasing goods from plantations and strengthening social and economic ties in two of the region’s most developed cities. In the decade leading up to the Civil War, Brown married into one of the largest slaveholding families in the area and became involved in the slave trade. He also bartered with locals and mingled with the judges, lawyers, and politicians of Alachua County.

The Letters of George Long Brown provides an important eyewitness view of north Florida’s transformation from a subsistence and herding community to a market economy based on cotton, timber, and other crops, showing that these changes came about in part due to an increased reliance on slavery. Brown’s letters offer the first social and economic history of one of the most important yet little-known frontiers in the antebellum South.

A volume in the series Contested Boundaries, edited by Gene Allen Smith

Illuminates the early American period in the upper Caribbean

Scourge of the Caribbean explores the mysterious and dramatic life and career of Charles E. Hawkins, a relatively unknown naval figure in early national America. Hawkins's action-packed life at sea in his brief but accomplished career reveals much about an era when the rules of the maritime world, especially in the Caribbean, were in flux. For the US Navy and its commanders, the Caribbean presented an untold number of ambiguities: revolutionary juntas, privateering, piracy, and deadly disease, all within some of the most beautiful landscapes and waterscapes on earth.

Hawkins, from a well-connected family, took to the sea as a midshipman in the US Navy. Stalled promotion, economic setbacks, and blunted opportunities stymied the young officer, but ambition, combined with varied experiences and maritime pursuits, presented other prospects. At a time when individual agency mattered most, Hawkins stepped outside traditional boundaries of conduct on numerous occasions. Hawkins followed a mentor into the Mexican navy and became the most successful and feared raider of Spanish ships, earning the sobriquet "scourge" because of his raids along Cuba's northern coast. In 1835, Hawkins joined the Texas independence movement against Mexico. Within the historical narrative are lurid accounts of adultery, affairs of honor, a bloody assassination, and complicated maritime legal battles. Based on prodigious research, this lively tale will appeal to those interested in maritime and early American history and the upper Caribbean in the Age of Sail.

Illuminates the early American period in the upper Caribbean

Scourge of the Caribbean explores the mysterious and dramatic life and career of Charles E. Hawkins, a relatively unknown naval figure in early national America. Hawkins's action-packed life at sea in his brief but accomplished career reveals much about an era when the rules of the maritime world, especially in the Caribbean, were in flux. For the US Navy and its commanders, the Caribbean presented an untold number of ambiguities: revolutionary juntas, privateering, piracy, and deadly disease, all within some of the most beautiful landscapes and waterscapes on earth.

Hawkins, from a well-connected family, took to the sea as a midshipman in the US Navy. Stalled promotion, economic setbacks, and blunted opportunities stymied the young officer, but ambition, combined with varied experiences and maritime pursuits, presented other prospects. At a time when individual agency mattered most, Hawkins stepped outside traditional boundaries of conduct on numerous occasions. Hawkins followed a mentor into the Mexican navy and became the most successful and feared raider of Spanish ships, earning the sobriquet "scourge" because of his raids along Cuba's northern coast. In 1835, Hawkins joined the Texas independence movement against Mexico. Within the historical narrative are lurid accounts of adultery, affairs of honor, a bloody assassination, and complicated maritime legal battles. Based on prodigious research, this lively tale will appeal to those interested in maritime and early American history and the upper Caribbean in the Age of Sail.