In early January of 1861 when Florida joined the other Confederate states and seceded from the Union, there were Union (U.S. Army) soldiers stationed at Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island, right off Pensacola. Confederate soldiers demanded that the Union soldiers surrender now that Florida was a Confederate state
The Civil War that raged across the nation from 1861 to 1865 was the violent conclusion to decades of diversification. Gradually, throughout the beginning of the nineteenth century, the North and South followed different paths, developing into two distinct and very different regions.
