Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Southern Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, 1863–1865 139
federate barracks and brought back more than a thousand head of cattle, which had
to be pastured some twenty miles inland to find sufficient grass. Not all of the raids
involved cattle. Joint naval-military expeditions along Florida’s Gulf Coast that
summer freed 128 slaves and seized or destroyed 523 bales of cotton. 38
By August, cattle and military livestock had eaten all the grass around Fort
Myers and an officer of the 2d USCI had to request grain shipments. “We have lost
17 horses by starvation. . . . The rebels hunt cattle with a force nearly as strong as
this garrison, a few miles from where we go for them, which makes it a matter of
some hazard. . . . But there are plenty of cattle this side of the Caloosahatchee for
the present, though . . . they are extremely wild and require very strong and fleet
horses to herd them.” For a while, the troops at Fort Myers captured enough livestock
to ship to Key West to feed the garrison there, but the cattle raids eventually
petered out. By late November, an inspector reported that there was no fresh meat
at Fort Myers. 39
Five hundred miles northwest of Fort Myers, at the western tip of the Florida
panhandle, stood the state’s largest city, Pensacola. Union troops held Fort Pickens
and Fort Barrancas, which guarded the entrance to Pensacola Harbor. They had
hung on to Fort Pickens all through 1861 and reoccupied Fort Barrancas when the
Confederates evacuated Pensacola in May 1862. In the fall of 1863, the 86th USCI,
then numbered the 14th Corps d’Afrique Infantry, arrived at Fort Barrancas. The
82d USCI joined it there in April 1864. 40
Pensacola was the closest federal base to Mobile, Alabama, one of the Confederacy’s
last open seaports, which lay some sixty miles to its northwest. It had one
rail connection to Mobile and a second that ran the length of the Florida panhandle
to Jacksonville on the Atlantic Coast. Brig. Gen. Alexander Asboth, commanding
the District of West Florida, had long had his eye on both of these lines as well as
on a third that ran one hundred seventy miles from Mobile to Montgomery and
connected the seaport with the Confederate interior. Railroads to the east of Montgomery
connected it with Atlanta. 41
While Sherman’s army fought its way toward Atlanta, three hundred miles
north of Pensacola, General Asboth did what he could to assist. On 9 July, Sherman
had dispatched three thousand cavalrymen to cut the railroad east of Montgomery.
The raiders might, he told General Canby in New Orleans, find their way to Pensacola,
“leave horses there and come back to Tennessee by water.” Canby promised
to have extra forage and rations ready. On 21 July, Asboth set out to look for the
raiders. He took with him the entire 82d USCI, six companies of the 86th, five
companies of cavalry, and a pair of light artillery pieces. At a Confederate camp
38 OR, ser. 1, vol. 35, pt. 1, p. 406; Col S. Fellows to Capt H. W. Bowers, 19 Apr 1864, 2d USCI,
Regimental Books, RG 94, NA. Capt J. W. Childs to Capt H. W. Bowers, 25 Apr 1864; Capt H. W.
Bowers to Brig Gen D. P. Woodbury, 8 May 1864; Capt J. W. Childs to Capt H. W. Bowers, 27 May
1864; all in Entry 2269, Dept and Dist of Key West, LR, pt. 1, RG 393, NA.
39 Capt C. H. Willett to Capt H. W. Bowers, 2 Aug 1864 (quotation); Capt H. A. Crane to Capt
H. W. Bowers, 15 Aug 1864; Capt A. A. Fellows to Capt E. B. Tracy, 20 Nov 1864; all in Entry 2269,
pt. 1, RG 393, NA.
40 With a population of 2,876 in 1860, Pensacola had 44 more residents than Key West. Census
Bureau, Population of the United States in 1860, p. 54.
41 OR, ser. 1, vol. 26, pt. 1, pp. 817–18, 820–21, 833–34; vol. 35, pt. 1, pp. 274, 471, 479–80, and
pt. 2, pp. 165–66.