Blue and Gray in Tampa Bay: The Civil War on Florida’s Gulf Coast

In Florida, the third state to secede from the Union in 1861, confrontations between Confederate and Union troops raged along the Gulf Coast. During Blue and Gray in Tampa Bay: The Civil War on Florida’s West Coast, visitors learned about stealthy Confederate blockade runners and Florida’s “Cow Cavalry,” plus how the War Between the States affected Secessionists, Unionists, slaves and women in the Tampa Bay area. Civil War-era maps, weaponry, photographs and reproduction uniforms were included in the exhibit. “The opening date of January 10th is significant,” said the History Center’s Saunders Foundation Curator of History, Rodney Kite-Powell. “Florida seceded from the Union exactly 150 years ago, on January 10, 1861.”