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A History of Columbia County Florida (1996) Edward F. Keuchel 130/340

A History of Columbia Cozmty, Florida
$20.00 a month were asked to pay $30.00 a month for room and
board in the only boarding house which would accept them.34
In 1873 the county was disrupted by the so-called “Lake City
Outrage.” The incident involved Warren S. Bush, a white Colum­
bia Countian who became a Republican after the Civil War. He
served as tax collector in 1871 and was elected to the state
legislature in 1872. Bush was upset over some of Governor Ossian
B. Hart’s political appointments in 1873. He vented his anger by
assembling some friends who shot up the houses of county officials,
and temporarily ran postmaster W. W. Moore out of town. Bush
and two of his associates were indicted by a county grand jury and
bound over for trial. The trio was acquitted in state court after
threatened witnesses refused to testify. A federal trial based upon
violations of the Enforcement Act of 1870 was delayed and ulti­
mately dropped. The situation was so explosive that federal troops
patrolled Lake City for several weeks. Finding no judicial way to
restrain Bush, postmaster Moore tried to get him out of the county
and pushed for Bush’s appointment as tax collector at Cedar Key.
He met with success and Bush was appointed tax collector at
Cedar Key. Shortly after assuming his new duties, Bush was
removed and arrested when it was discovered that he had em­
bezzled some $24,000 while serving as tax collector in Columbia
County.35
Given such a chaotic state of affairs, it is not surprising that
politics was blamed for the court house fire in 1874. During the
early morning hours of December 20, an arsonist set fire to the
court house in Lake City leveling it to the ground. Court house
blazes were not exactly new to Columbia County. Previous fires
had occurred in 1848,1860, and 1867. The structure that burned in
1874 had been built after the 1867 fire. The flames of 1874 might

34Tallahassee, Floridian, November 5, 1872; Shofner, Nor Is It Over Yet, p. 73;
Davis, Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 385.
“Shofner, Nor Is It Over Yet, p. 229.

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