A Journal of the American Civil War: V3-4

By Theodore P. Savas

Balanced and in-depth military coverage (all theaters, North and South) in a non-partisan format with detailed notes, offering meaty, in-depth articles, original maps, photos, columns, book reviews, and indexes.

Cold Harbor with Finegan’s Florida Brigade – Citizen Soldiers of the 27th Illinois Infantry at Belmont

• Language: English
• Publisher: Savas Publishing
• Release date: Dec 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781954547261

Book preview

A J

OURNAL OF

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EDITORS:

Theodore P. Savas

David A. Woodbury

Subscription and General Information

Civil War Regiments is published quarterly by Regimental Studies, Inc., a nonprofit charitable corporation located at 1475 South Bascom Avenue, Suite 204, Campbell, CA 95008. Editors: Theodore P. Savas and David A. Woodbury. Voice: [phone]. Facsimile: 408-879-9327.

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OF CIVIL WAR SITES

RICHARD B. GARNETT MEMORIAL, HOLLYWOOD CEMETERY

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APCWS 1993 MALVERN HILL/GLENDALE CAMPAIGN

Civil War Regiments, Vol. III, No. 4

Copyright 1993, 2022 Savas Publishing

ISBN-13: 978-1-954547-26-1

eISBN-13: 978-1-954547-26-1

For more information, see www.savasbeatie.com

F

EATURE

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RTICLES

All That Brave Men Could Do: Joseph Finegan’s Florida Brigade at Cold Harbor

Zack C. Waters

The Battle of Belmont and the Citizen Soldiers of the 27th Illinois Infantry

Peter Ellertsen

B

OOK

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EVIEWS

Encyclopedia of the Confederacy (4 vols), edited by Richard Current

The Classic Regimental Bookshelf: Ham Chamberlayne—Virginian: Letters and Papers of an Artillery Officer, edited by Churchill G. Chamberlayne

John T. McMahon's Diary of the 136th New York, 1861-1865, edited by John Michael Priest

When This Cruel War is Over: The Civil War Letters of Charles Harvey Brewster, edited with an introduction by David W. Blight

Gettysburg: Culp Hill & Cemetery Hill, by Harry W. Pfanz

For Country, Cause & Leader: The Civil War Journal of Charles B. Hay don, edited by Stephen W. Sears

Ben McCulloch and the Frontier Military Tradition, by Thomas W. Cutrer

Leadership During the Civil War. The 1989 Deep Delta Civil War Symposium: Themes in Honor of T. Harry Williams, edited by Roman J. Heleniak and Lawrence L. Hewitt

Sherman: Fighting Prophet, by Lloyd Lewis

List of Contents/Maps for Volume Three

F

OUNDING

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ONTRIBUTORS

:

Theodore P. Savas, Esq. San Jose, CA

David A. Woodbury San Francisco, CA

Lee W. Merideth Twentynine Palms, CA

Michael Malcolm Los Altos Hills, CA

William E. Haley Huntington Beach, CA

Organizations:

The South Bay Civil War Round Table of San Jose, CA The Long Beach Civil War Round Table

Editors:

Theodore P. Savas David A.Woodbury

Editorial Advisory Board:

Robert K. Krick, Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park

Brian C. Pohanka, Alexandria, Virginia

Terry L. Jones, Northeast Louisiana University

Arthur W. Bergeron, Jr., Louisiana Office of State Parks

William Marvel, South Conway, New Hampshire

Peter Cozzens, Alexandria, Virginia

Production Manager: Lee Merideth       Circulation: Carol Savas

Copy Assistant: Anne Tolbert Woodbury

S

TATEMENT

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P

URPOSE:

Regimental Studies, Inc., is a non-partisan, non-profit charitable corporation founded to further two specific goals. It is hoped that Civil War Regiments will encourage further research into the often neglected area of unit history studies by providing a serial outlet for ongoing regimental research. It is also our intent to raise funds for the preservation and protection of endangered Civil War sites by donating all revenue over expenses to various preservation organizations. To this end, your active support in the form of donations, advertisements, articles and subscriptions, is both encouraged and welcomed.

ALL THAT BRAVE MEN COULD DO:

Joseph Finegan’s Florida Brigade at Cold Harbor

Zack C. Waters

¹

On May 16, 1864, Maj. Gen. Sam Jones, commander of the Military District of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, received orders from the Confederate War Department to dispatch one good brigade of infantry from Florida to Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Jones promptly moved to comply, but notified Richmond not to expect much from the new brigade. I greatly doubt if one half of the men ordered will leave Florida, he cautioned, and my orders will cause desertions and disorganization.² Jones’ warning was echoed by a member of the brigade, who later characterized the unit as the odds and ends of the last crop of Florida soldiers.³ The message was clear: Lee might desperately need troops to fill his decimated ranks but, at least in terms of experience, this Florida brigade might well prove to be the scrapings off the bottom of the Confederacy’s manpower barrel.

The units ordered to the Old Dominion during the war’s last summer were the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 6th Florida Battalions, a total of approximately 1, 200 men. Composed primarily of young boys, middle-aged men, and conscripts, the latter three battalions were little more than a hodge-podge of companies which had been scattered throughout the state guarding bridges, fords, and isolated inlets. Despite this easy duty, each of these battalions was plagued with high desertion rates.⁴

The best organized of these Deep South units was the 6th Battalion. Its companies had been consolidated in September 1863 to counter enemy threats to Tallahassee and to operate against a large band of deserters and conscript evaders in Taylor County.⁵ The companies of the 2nd and 4th Battalions apparently remained separated until the order came dispatching them to Virginia. Lieutenant Colonel John M. Martin, formerly a Confederate Congressman and a veteran of Western Theater combat with the Marion Light Artillery, commanded the 6th, while Lt. Col. Theodore W. Brevard, a Tallahassee attorney and veteran of the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, directed the 2nd. The 4th was commanded by Lt. Col. J. F. McClellan.⁶

The 1st Florida (Special) Battalion had been organized in 1861, and seen service at Fernandina, St. Johns Bluff, Alum Bluff, and Thunderbolt (near Savannah), Georgia. The reputation of the 1st Battalion was unfairly tarnished by the 1862 retreat from St. Johns Bluff, though much of the blame for that debacle properly belonged to Brig. Gen. Joseph Finegan, the Confederate commander in East Florida. Lieutenant Colonel Charles F. Hopkins, the battalion’s commander, was a talented young officer who had attended the Naval Institute at Annapolis and served in the Mexican War. Unfortunately, Finegan and Florida Governor John Milton heartily despised Hopkins and delighted in making life miserable for the 1st Battalion and its commander.⁷

Despite their lackluster reputations, there were signs that these units might make good combat material. Two of the battalions, the 1st and 6th, had performed ably at the Battle of Olustee, their only major engagement. In that clash, Brig. Gen. Truman Seymour, the Federal commander of an invasion force of 5, 500 men, blundered into Finegan’s 5,000 Southerners east of Lake City, on February 20, 1864. Brigadier General Alfred H. Colquitt’s Georgia veterans—who had been rushed south to reinforce Finegan—deserved much of the credit for the victory that followed. The two Florida battalions, however, played an important role in the confused fighting.

Early in the engagement, the 6th Battalion had been ordered into line to bolster the pressured Confederate right flank. Shifting to a position south of the Florida, Atlantic, & Gulf Central Railroad, the Floridians opened a withering fire on the advancing Unionists. The unlucky Federals who caught the full force of the 6th’s volleys were the untried 8th United States Colored Troops, who suffered 60 percent casualties before retreating to safety. Not only did the 6th Florida’s prompt action stabilize the Confederate right flank but one historian of the battle concluded that their enfilading fire was one of the chief factors in causing the initial retreat of the Union battle line.⁸

For reasons that remain unclear, the 1st Florida (Special) Battalion was one of the last units ordered into the Olustee fight, but their arrival could not have been better timed. Although ordered by Finegan to support the Confederate left, Lt. Col. Hopkins discovered that Colquitt’s men, fighting near the center of the line, had exhausted their ammunition. Without requesting permission, the quick-thinking Floridian moved his men to their aid. The advance of the 1st Battalion, in company with two fresh Georgia units, knocked the Unionists onto their heels. Unable to stem the onslaught, Seymour’s Northerners soon began a headlong flight back to Jacksonville.⁹

While the fighting prowess of the Florida Brigade was still open to speculation, so was their commander, Brig. Gen. Joseph Finegan. Born in Ireland in 1814, Finegan had migrated to Florida in the 1830s and accumulated a small fortune as a planter, sawmill operator, and partner in Senator David Levy Yulee’s Florida Railroad. Finegan served as a member of the state’s convention in 1861, voting on January 10 to withdraw Florida from the Union. Thereafter, Governor Madison Starke Perry appointed Finegan as the head of military affairs in Florida; political