Yulee, David Levy, 1810-1886

David Levy Yulee (born David Levy; June 12, 1810 – October 10, 1886) was an American politician and attorney. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as Florida's territorial delegate to Congress from 1841 to 1845 and as one of its first U.S. Senators from 1845 to 1851 and again from 1855 to 1861. Yulee was the first person of Jewish ancestry to be elected and serve as a U.S. Senator. He founded the Florida Railroad Company and served as president of several other companies, earning the nickname of "Father of Florida Railroads." In 2000 he was recognized as a "Great Floridian" by the state.

Born a British subject in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands), his family moved to the United States in the early 1820s, settling near present-day Jacksonville, Florida. His parents sent their son to a boy's academy and college in Norfolk, Virginia. Levy studied law with Robert R. Reid in St. Augustine, was admitted to the bar in 1832, and started a practice in St. Augustine. During his twenties, Levy served in the territorial militia, including during the Second Seminole War. In 1834 he was present at a conference with Seminole chiefs, including Osceola. In 1836 he was elected to the Florida Territory's Legislative Council, serving from 1837 to 1839. He was a delegate to the territory's constitutional convention in 1838 and served as the legislature's clerk in 1841.

Levy was elected in 1841 as the delegate from the Florida Territory to the United States House of Representatives and served four years. Once seated, Levy worked to gain statehood for the territory and to protect the expansion of slavery in other newly admitted states. In 1845, after Florida was admitted as a state, the legislature elected Levy as a Democrat to the United States Senate, the first Jew in the United States to win a seat in the Senate. He served until 1851; during his tenure, he took Yulee as his surname. In 1851 Yulee founded a 5,000-acre sugar cane plantation, built and maintained by enslaved African Americans, along the Homosassa River. In 1853, Yulee chartered the Florida Railroad to provide for ocean-ghoing shipping between the state's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Construction on the railroad lasted between 1855 and 1861.

In 1855 Yulee was again elected by the Florida legislature to the Senate. Yulee's inflammatory pro-slavery rhetoric in the Senate earned him the nickname "Florida Fire-Eater". He would resign from the Senate in 1861 in order to support the Confederacy at the start of the American Civil War. During the Civil War, Yulee did not seek any elective or appointive office. There is some dispute as to his wartime legislative service as some sources state that he served in the Confederate Congress and others do not. After the war, Yulee was imprisoned in Fort Pulaski for nine months for treason, specifically for aiding in the 1865 escape of Jefferson Davis. After receiving a pardon and being released from confinement, Yulee returned to Florida and rebuilt the Yulee Railroad, which had been destroyed by warfare. His leadership helped bring increased economic development to the state, including the late nineteenth-century tourist trade.

Selling the Florida Railroad, he retired with his wife to Washington, D.C. in 1880, where she had a family. Yulee died six years later while visiting in New York City. Yulee was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.