Thunder at the Gates by Douglas R Egerton

Author:Douglas R Egerton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465096657
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2016-09-20T16:00:00+00:00

AS THE MEN SORTED OUT THEIR EMOTIONS THE MORNING AFTER Smith’s execution, they all assumed that they were in for a quiet, lengthy stay in northern Florida. Literally without loss of life, the regiments had successfully carried out Gillmore’s plan, capturing Jacksonville and the rail junction of Baldwin and driving Confederate cavalrymen into the backcountry. Despite being instructed to entrench and await further orders, Seymour wrote to Gillmore on February 17, informing his commander that he intended to take portions of six regiments and destroy the railroad near the Suwannee River, roughly 100 miles from Jacksonville. The thirty-nine-year-old Seymour, a veteran of the Seminole War, thought himself familiar with Florida’s terrain, and he also suspected that he faced only tattered remnants of cavalry and militia units. “Greatly surprised” to hear of the incursion, Gillmore dispatched his chief of staff to Jacksonville “to stop the movement.” Choppy seas prevented the order from arriving at Camp Shaw until midday on February 20, by which time Seymour and the troops would be in the thick of the largest battle waged in Florida.17

General Beauregard had initially guessed that Gillmore’s intended target was Savannah, but as it became clear that the objective was the Jacksonville area, he moved to bolster Florida’s defenses. General Joseph Finnegan was already posted at Olustee Station with several regiments, and Beauregard ordered General Alfred Colquitt to hurry south and guard the rail lines west of Baldwin. By February 18, Finnegan commanded 4,600 veteran infantrymen, 600 cavalrymen, and three batteries of twelve guns. Serving with the Confederates was Colonel Abner McCormick, who in a reference to the Smith hanging assured his men that the invading force was “made up largely of negroes from Georgia and South Carolina, who have come to steal, pillage, run over the state, and murder, kill, and rape our wives, daughters and sweethearts.” McCormick exhorted his troops to “teach them a lesson,” vowing that he would “not take any negro prisoners in this fight.”18

The order to move reached Hallowell’s hand on the morning of February 19, and by 8:30 a.m. five companies of the Fifty-fourth were marching behind their colonel as part of the 5,500-man-strong force, a larger number of Union soldiers than were engaged at Wagner. Three New York regiments took the lead, advancing along the bed of the Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad. Companies from two New England regiments trailed, with Pennsylvania recruits in the Eighth USCT next. Inexplicably, almost all of the regiments in the front were untested raw recruits. As part of Colonel James Montgomery’s brigade, the First North Carolina and the Fifty-fourth brought up the rear in what quickly became a very long column. After marching twenty miles, some members of the Fifty-fourth wondered if “there was any danger of the rebels getting into our rear.” Seymour, unworried, pushed forward and declined to send scouts or skirmishers in advance of his main force. That night the soldiers unrolled their blankets along the track, the full moon, one soldier remembered, “brightening the white,

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