The Gamble Plantation: A Civil War Site in Florida

For many people, summer vacation means going south, to Florida, an even hotter state, with hungry mosquitoes, in pursuit of a sandy beach and a certain rodent, nameless here, who hangs out around Orlando. If you are going to Florida and want to take a break from the sand and the mice, make a little detour down US 301 to the quaint little town of Ellenton, where you'll surprise yourself by finding an antebellum plantation house.

The Gamble Plantation Historic State ParkGamble Plantation Historic State Park is part of the Florida parks system that packs some intriguing lessons and stirs up some old memories in a state that most tourists don't think of as a place for lessons and memories-except, perhaps, Kodak moments. Since most people have trouble thinking of Florida as a southern state at all, Gamble Plantation is a necessary reminder that Florida is, after all, closer to Georgia than to New York.

The crop of choice for south Florida plantations in the first half of the nineteenth century was sugar cane, still a major crop in south Florida, still dependant upon human labor. Robert Gamble, son of a wealthy planter family near Tallahassee, established what would eventually become a plantation of over three thousand acres, with over a hundred slaves engaged in the very demanding work of raising sugar cane.

The center of the plantation and the most visible reminder of a way of life that is gone with the mule is the mansion. Built of brick and tabby (a mixture of sand, seashells, and lime familiar to those who have explored the ruins of early English settlements along the Atlantic coast), the outer walls are nearly two feet thick.

They remind me of the walls of old buildings I have seen in Mexico, built for the same reason, to keep the inhabitants cool. The two-story house is surrounded on three sides by porches on both floors. All ten rooms of the house have cross ventilation from windows always shaded by the porches. The house is elegantly furnished, but the guides admit that only one dish is part of the original furnishings of the house.

It was not a bad life for those who lived in the mansion. Most of the people who lived on the plantation lived elsewhere, and there are no ruins of the houses they lived in. The interpretive center in the park is honest in its discussion of the slaves and their labor. There is a haunting list of the names of the slaves, and a reference to slaves ranging in age from three to over a hundred. But, there is no more, only a dark shadow on a sunny afternoon.

Two names are associated with this park, that of Robert Gamble, who began the plantation, and that of Judah P. Benjamin, Secretary of State of the Confederacy. But Gamble was forced to sell the plantation in 1856, and Benjamin spent his few legend-swaddled days at the mansion nine years later, as he was fleeing from Union soldiers before his escape to England, where he created a new life and a new career for himself.

The mansion had several owners, and by 1925, it was an uninhabited ruin, when it was purchased by the Judah P. Benjamin Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and presented to the state of Florida. The controversial battle flag of the Confederacy is not flown at Gamble Plantation. Instead, the true flag of the Confederacy flies alongside the flags of the United States and of Florida. A tattered example of it is displayed in a room where there is also a portrait of Robert E. Lee, who, the guide reminded us, was the only person ever to graduate from West Point without a single demerit.

Before the War Between the States, Judah P. Benjamin was the first Jewish member of the United States Senate. Later he served as Attorney General, Secretary of War, and finally Secretary of State of the Confederacy. To learn more about him, look at this page from a fascinating library of information about great Jewish Americans here. Mosey on over to the Gamble Plantation Historic State Park page here for the latest news, hours, fees, and special events.

I visited Gamble Plantation on one of its open house days, held twice a year, when free tours of the mansion are given. I happened to stand in line ahead of a young man who, to these jaded American eyes, appeared black, and his mother who, to these same eyes, appeared white. In many ways, they were any mother and any son enjoying an outing together-an outing with extra credit from the history teacher, by the way. But the young man's joking about how they would have been received at the mansion many years ago reminded me of Nietszche's famous remark that every laugh is a cry for help.