Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

The South Atlantic Coast, 1863 –1865 65
walked and pushed the car. Many of the freed slaves belonged to the three prisoners.”
Despite the invasion’s apparent success, some veterans entertained a sense of
foreboding. Colonel Fribley of the 8th USCI told Appleton that the army in Florida
was “beginning just as we first did in Virginia, knowing nothing, with everything
to learn.” 14
The Confederates had not been idle since the Union landing at Jacksonville.
General Beauregard, commanding the three-state department, ordered reinforcements
to Brig. Gen. Joseph Finegan’s District of East Florida from as far away as
Charleston. “Do what you can to hold enemy at bay and prevent capture of slaves,”
he telegraphed Finegan. Beauregard’s other concern was to preserve Florida for
the Confederate commissary department. “The supply of beef from the peninsula
will of course be suspended until the enemy is driven out,” Finegan warned. Insufficient
rolling stock and a 26-mile gap between the Georgia and Florida rail
systems hindered troop movements, but on 13 February, Finegan advanced with
barely two thousand men to look for a defensible position east of Lake City. He
found one at Olustee Station, thirteen miles down the track. By the time Union
troops approached a week later, Finegan’s force had grown to nearly fifty-three
hundred men. 15
General Seymour announced his plan to advance toward the Suwanee River on
17 February. If successful, the move would take him two-thirds of the way to the port
of St. Mark’s on the Gulf Coast. His striking force of fifty-five hundred men—eight
infantry regiments, a mounted command, and four batteries of artillery—trudged
through the piney woods of northeast Florida. Accompanying two white regiments in
the lead brigade was the untried 8th USCI, which had arrived from Philadelphia just
two weeks before Seymour’s expedition sailed for Florida. The 1st North Carolina
and 54th Massachusetts marched together at the rear of the force. 16
The right of way of the Florida Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad afforded
the easiest route west. By the early afternoon of 20 February, Seymour’s force had
been on the move since 7:00 a.m., with no rest of more than a few minutes in each
hour and no food. The sixteen-mile march had led “over a road of loose sand, or
boggy turf, or covered knee-deep with muddy water.” Just short of Olustee Station,
skirmishers of the 7th Connecticut Infantry met the enemy. 17
The Confederates withdrew to trenches they had begun digging the day before
and brought reinforcements forward rapidly. As the Union skirmishers fell back, their
ammunition nearly exhausted, they met the other two regiments of their brigade. Col.
Joseph R. Hawley, the brigade commander, tried to deploy the 7th New Hampshire
Infantry as skirmishers but gave the order incorrectly. He then tried to correct him-
14 New York Tribune, 20 February 1864; Appleton Jnl, pp. 164 (“turkeys”), 168, 169 (“men beg,”
“with a lot”), 170, 176 (“beginning”).
15 OR, ser. 1, vol. 35, pt. 1, pp. 323, 325 (“The supply”), 331, 579 (“Do what”).
16 New York Tribune, 1 March 1864; Emilio, Brave Black Regiment, p. 158.
17 New York Times, 1 March 1864 (quotation). The 7th Connecticut’s commanding officer
reported “at 1.30.” OR, ser. 1, vol. 35, pt. 1, p. 310. The commander of another brigade said “at 2
p.m. precisely” (p. 301); General Seymour, “about 3 p.m.” (p. 288). The name of the railroad is taken
from the map in George B. Davis et al., eds., The Official Military Atlas of the Civil War (New York:
Barnes and Noble, 2003 [1891–1895]), pp. 334–35. Other sources call it by shorter variants of the
name. OR, ser. 1, vol. 35, pt. 1, p. 299 (Florida Central); Emilio, Brave Black Regiment, map facing
p. 160 (Florida Atlantic and Gulf).