Napoleon Bonaparte Broward (19 April 1857-1 October 1910) was Governor of Florida (D) from 3 January 1905 to 5 January 1909, succeeding William Sherman Jennings and preceding Albert W. Gilchrist. He was best known for his draining of the Everglades to recover land for agricultural cultivation and to control flooding.
Biography[]
Napoleon Bonaparte Broward was born in Duval County, Florida in 1857, and he was raised outside of Jacksonville. After his parents died, he moved in with his uncle in the city, and he worked on his uncle's steamboat before serving aboard several other ships, marrying his captain's daughter in 1883. Having acquired a good reputation as a pilot and captain, he was elected Sheriff of Duvall County on 27 February 1888. In less than a month, he broke up gambling operations in Jacksonville, and he joined the pro-Populist Party and liberal "Straightouts" faction during the early 1890s. In 1892, the Straightouts swept city offices, but, in 1894, the conservative and pro-business Antis took control of the state government and appointed a new Sheriff. In 1896, Broward began to ship Cuban insurgents and munitions to Cuba during the Cuban War of Independence, and he gained notoriety for his daring filibustering deeds. When the Spanish-American War ended, he was elected to the State House, and he supported a state dispensary bill, insanity as a grounds for divorce, and the implementation of primary elections. He became known as a supporter of the common man, and he was elected Governor in 1904 after visiting the villages between Fernandina and Pensacola to talk with farmers and promising to drain the "fabulous muck" of the Everglades to recover land for agricultural cultivation. He also emphasized education and upgraded the state's universities, created a state textbook commission, reformed the state hospital system, regulated accounting, and made the state's Railroad Commission permanent. In 1908, after his appointed US Senator William James Bryan died and his successor William Hall Milton pledged to not run for re-election, Broward ran for Senate and endorsed John N.C. Stockton for Governor, but both of them lost. He died in 1910 after winning the primary in another run for US Senate. On the night of 18-19 October 2017, a statue of him at the Broward County Courthouse was removed after he was discovered to have supported the eviction of African-Americans to a new all-black colony and claimed that white people had no time to "make excuses for the shortcomings of the negro".