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Regiments faced disease, infighting
By Tony Bridges
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
Look up the Battle of Natural Bridge - fought near Tallahassee at the end of the Civil War and re-enacted there today - and you may find the attacking Union forces described as 1,000-strong and "seasoned."
That's one way to put it. Another might be inexperienced. Or maybe underfed, disorganized, divided and blitzed by disease.
Being that they were the losers of that particular engagement, and that this is a Southern town, there's not much said about the men in Federal blue. But here's a little secret from the historical record: They were Union outcasts, squirreled away in a corner of the war where they did more dying from fever than from the sting of Rebel bullets.
One regiment was at least half made up of Confederate deserters and staffed by Northern officers who hated the Southern men. The other two consisted mainly of illiterate laborers, despised by their fellow soldiers because they were black.
By the time they arrived south of the capital in the spring of 1865, the men were not so much an army as a ragged knot of the sick and tired. And then they marched into the guns of a determined Confederate force that had the home-field advantage.
The details of the Battle of Natural Bridge come from accounts by the Natural Bridge Historical Society, government archives, the published diaries of Lt. William McCullough, who served with the Union forces, and research by Bruce Graetz, curator of the Museum of Florida History.
It's a tale of an invasion that never really had much of a chance.
"The overall result was more about terrain and tactics than anything," Graetz said. "Even if they'd been highly trained, I don't know that it would have mattered."
Outcasts and deserters
The troops assigned to Florida were not among the Union's finest because the war here just didn't matter as much.
"Florida was a backwater of the Civil War," Graetz said. "There were much bigger things happening on the national stage."
Not all the settlers in the state wanted to join the Confederacy, and those who didn't made their way to Union camps on the west coast. They were joined by men who'd fled after serving with the Rebel army, either by choice or by force.
Women and children, and some of the men, settled in refugee camps protected by Federal troops, particularly in Fort Myers and Cedar Key. The rest of the men donned blue coats and banded into military units, making up their own training as they went.
They formed the 2nd Florida Cavalry - a horse militia with few actual horses - and were assigned to the government's main West Florida force, along with the 2nd and 99th Colored Infantry Regiments.
The 2nd Infantry was from Virginia, trained heavily in drill and ceremony but not much else. The 99th was from Louisiana, where they had been used mainly for field labor. Few were literate or experienced - not nearly on par with the 54th Massachusetts, a black unit that fought in the Battle of Olustee, Florida's fiercest military encounter - according to Graetz.
Together, the three units settled into a uneasy, harsh existence.
Racial and political clashes were common, with white soldiers against blacks, Northern against Southern. Commanders of the two black regiments reported frequent assaults on their troops by fellow soldiers and even civilians; white officers complained the black units behaved like undisciplined mobs. Animosity between regular Union officers and former Confederates boiled into fights, military arrests, even killings.
Meanwhile, the conditions were brutal - spoiled flour, rotten meat full of maggots and relentless, heaving, disease-carrying clouds of mosquitoes.
They didn't do much fighting - not in a state that saw only three major battles during the entire war. Mostly, their job was to guard the refugees, patrol the coastal areas and occasionally venture into the interior for brief raids.
But many of them died all the same - there were five times as many casualties from yellow fever as actual combat in just one of the infantry regiments.
So many succumbed that Lt. William McCullough, an officer in the 2nd Cavalry, kept a running death count in his diaries.
They had been living that way for more than a year when the order was given to invade North Florida.
Too big, too small
The Yankees came by sea.
Union naval ships ferried them to the St. Marks River on March 4, and they marched north from there. Treading heavy in leather brogans, carrying 10-pound muskets and rubber ponchos for shelter, they sweated through their wool coats all the way to the Newport river crossing.
Graetz said the Federals made a mistake in the size of their army. It was too big to move quickly, not big enough for an all-out invasion.
"They were kind of in that awkward, in-between space," he said.
Johnny Reb was waiting for them at Newport.
Southern forces set fire to the bridge and drove the enemy back with rifle fire, then hightailed through the woods to spread the word about the invading force. The end of the war was close and most people knew it, but men turned out in droves to fight.
They were afraid Tallahassee would fall to black soldiers, Graetz said.
Regular troops from the Confederate 5th Cavalry and Kilcrease Light Artillery knew the only way to the capital lay across Natural Bridge, a spot where the river dipped below the limestone. They dug in on the higher ground, where they could fire down on anyone approaching the bridge.
Militiamen and cadets from the Florida Military Institute - now Florida State University - came to help.
Union commanders left the 2nd Cavalry to guard Newport and headed for Natural Bridge with the two infantry regiments. They arrived just before dawn March 6.
"It's difficult to dislodge an entrenched defensive force," Graetz said. "You sometimes need three times the number, and they were about equal."
The fight lasted less than a day before the Union troops withdrew. They repelled a Confederate counter-attack, then turned for the coast.
"They basically did a forced march all the way back (about 21 miles) and they had a lot of wounded, too," Graetz said.
Except for a few brief scuffles in which Northern soldiers were captured by the rebels - four were executed as deserters, the rest sent to the infamous prison camp in Andersonville, Ga. - the battle had ended.
Tallahassee had been kept from Yankee hands that day.
Two months later, the South surrendered, the war was over and Union troops began their occupation of the state capital.
And the Federals who'd failed at Natural Bridge?
They were among the occupying forces.
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By Tony Bridges
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
Look up the Battle of Natural Bridge - fought near Tallahassee at the end of the Civil War and re-enacted there today - and you may find the attacking Union forces described as 1,000-strong and "seasoned."
That's one way to put it. Another might be inexperienced. Or maybe underfed, disorganized, divided and blitzed by disease.
Being that they were the losers of that particular engagement, and that this is a Southern town, there's not much said about the men in Federal blue. But here's a little secret from the historical record: They were Union outcasts, squirreled away in a corner of the war where they did more dying from fever than from the sting of Rebel bullets.
One regiment was at least half made up of Confederate deserters and staffed by Northern officers who hated the Southern men. The other two consisted mainly of illiterate laborers, despised by their fellow soldiers because they were black.
By the time they arrived south of the capital in the spring of 1865, the men were not so much an army as a ragged knot of the sick and tired. And then they marched into the guns of a determined Confederate force that had the home-field advantage.
The details of the Battle of Natural Bridge come from accounts by the Natural Bridge Historical Society, government archives, the published diaries of Lt. William McCullough, who served with the Union forces, and research by Bruce Graetz, curator of the Museum of Florida History.
It's a tale of an invasion that never really had much of a chance.
"The overall result was more about terrain and tactics than anything," Graetz said. "Even if they'd been highly trained, I don't know that it would have mattered."
Outcasts and deserters
The troops assigned to Florida were not among the Union's finest because the war here just didn't matter as much.
"Florida was a backwater of the Civil War," Graetz said. "There were much bigger things happening on the national stage."
Not all the settlers in the state wanted to join the Confederacy, and those who didn't made their way to Union camps on the west coast. They were joined by men who'd fled after serving with the Rebel army, either by choice or by force.
Women and children, and some of the men, settled in refugee camps protected by Federal troops, particularly in Fort Myers and Cedar Key. The rest of the men donned blue coats and banded into military units, making up their own training as they went.
They formed the 2nd Florida Cavalry - a horse militia with few actual horses - and were assigned to the government's main West Florida force, along with the 2nd and 99th Colored Infantry Regiments.
The 2nd Infantry was from Virginia, trained heavily in drill and ceremony but not much else. The 99th was from Louisiana, where they had been used mainly for field labor. Few were literate or experienced - not nearly on par with the 54th Massachusetts, a black unit that fought in the Battle of Olustee, Florida's fiercest military encounter - according to Graetz.
Together, the three units settled into a uneasy, harsh existence.
Racial and political clashes were common, with white soldiers against blacks, Northern against Southern. Commanders of the two black regiments reported frequent assaults on their troops by fellow soldiers and even civilians; white officers complained the black units behaved like undisciplined mobs. Animosity between regular Union officers and former Confederates boiled into fights, military arrests, even killings.
Meanwhile, the conditions were brutal - spoiled flour, rotten meat full of maggots and relentless, heaving, disease-carrying clouds of mosquitoes.
They didn't do much fighting - not in a state that saw only three major battles during the entire war. Mostly, their job was to guard the refugees, patrol the coastal areas and occasionally venture into the interior for brief raids.
But many of them died all the same - there were five times as many casualties from yellow fever as actual combat in just one of the infantry regiments.
So many succumbed that Lt. William McCullough, an officer in the 2nd Cavalry, kept a running death count in his diaries.
They had been living that way for more than a year when the order was given to invade North Florida.
Too big, too small
The Yankees came by sea.
Union naval ships ferried them to the St. Marks River on March 4, and they marched north from there. Treading heavy in leather brogans, carrying 10-pound muskets and rubber ponchos for shelter, they sweated through their wool coats all the way to the Newport river crossing.
Graetz said the Federals made a mistake in the size of their army. It was too big to move quickly, not big enough for an all-out invasion.
"They were kind of in that awkward, in-between space," he said.
Johnny Reb was waiting for them at Newport.
Southern forces set fire to the bridge and drove the enemy back with rifle fire, then hightailed through the woods to spread the word about the invading force. The end of the war was close and most people knew it, but men turned out in droves to fight.
They were afraid Tallahassee would fall to black soldiers, Graetz said.
Regular troops from the Confederate 5th Cavalry and Kilcrease Light Artillery knew the only way to the capital lay across Natural Bridge, a spot where the river dipped below the limestone. They dug in on the higher ground, where they could fire down on anyone approaching the bridge.
Militiamen and cadets from the Florida Military Institute - now Florida State University - came to help.
Union commanders left the 2nd Cavalry to guard Newport and headed for Natural Bridge with the two infantry regiments. They arrived just before dawn March 6.
"It's difficult to dislodge an entrenched defensive force," Graetz said. "You sometimes need three times the number, and they were about equal."
The fight lasted less than a day before the Union troops withdrew. They repelled a Confederate counter-attack, then turned for the coast.
"They basically did a forced march all the way back (about 21 miles) and they had a lot of wounded, too," Graetz said.
Except for a few brief scuffles in which Northern soldiers were captured by the rebels - four were executed as deserters, the rest sent to the infamous prison camp in Andersonville, Ga. - the battle had ended.
Tallahassee had been kept from Yankee hands that day.
Two months later, the South surrendered, the war was over and Union troops began their occupation of the state capital.
And the Federals who'd failed at Natural Bridge?
They were among the occupying forces.
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