Editing David Levy Yulee (section)

==Florida businessman==
[[File:Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins01.jpg|thumb|left|[[Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins State Historic Site]]]]
In 1851, Yulee founded a {{convert|5000|acre|km2|adj=on}} [[sugar cane]] plantation, built and maintained by enslaved African Americans,<ref name="fch.ju.edu">{{cite web |title=David Levy Yulee: Conflict and Continuity in Social Memory |url=https://fch.ju.edu/FCH-2006/Wiseman-David%20Levy%20Yulee.htm |publisher=Jacksonville University |last=Wiseman |first=Maury |access-date=2013-06-27}}</ref><ref name="WaPo">{{cite news |last1=Weil |first1=Julie Zauzmer |title=More than 1,800 congressmen once enslaved Black people. This is who they were, and how they shaped the nation. |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/interactive/2022/congress-slaveowners-names-list/ |access-date=5 May 2024 |publisher=[[Washington Post]] |date=10 January 2022}} Database at {{Citation|title=Congress slaveowners|date=2022-01-13|url=https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-congress-slaveowners|newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=2024-04-29}}</ref> along the [[Homosassa River]]. The remains of his plantation, which was destroyed during the Civil War, are now the [[Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins State Historic Site]]. Yulee was also business partners with [[John William Pearson]] at [[Orange Springs, Florida]], but he abandoned his idea of building a railroad in the area as tensions rose and war seemed imminent.<ref>{{cite news|last=Cook|first=David|title=Orange Springs Once Thriving Resort|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19871206&id=r2kxAAAAIBAJ&pg=6788,3959519|access-date=May 2, 2014|newspaper=Ocala Star-Banner|date=December 6, 1987}}</ref>

While living in [[Fernandina, Florida|Fernandina]], Yulee began to develop a railroad across Florida. He had planned since 1837 to build a state-owned system. He became the first Southerner to use state grants under the [[Internal improvements|Florida Internal Improvement Act of 1855]], passed to encourage the development of such infrastructure. He made extensive use of the act to secure federal and state [[land grant]]s "as a basis of credit" to acquire land and build railroad networks, which were built with slave and Irish immigrant labor<ref name="fch.ju.edu"/> through the Florida wilderness.<ref name="archive">[http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/pkyonge/Yulee.htm John R. Nemmers, "A Guide to the David Levy Yulee Papers"], University of Florida Smathers Libraries, Special and Area Studies Collections, March 2005, accessed 24 July 2011</ref>

Issuing public stock, Yulee chartered the Florida Railroad in 1853. He planned its eastern and western terminals at deep-water ports, [[Fernandina, Florida|Fernandina]] ([[Port of Fernandina]]) on [[Amelia Island]] on the [[Atlantic Ocean|Atlantic]] side, and [[Cedar Key, Florida|Cedar Key]] on the [[Gulf of Mexico]], to provide for connection to ocean-going shipping. His company began construction in 1855.  On March 1, 1861, the first train arrived from the east in Cedar Key, just weeks before the beginning of the Civil War.