Y is For The Seige of Yorktown

"Having built the Army of the Potomac the previous summer, Major General George B. McClellan began planning his advance on Richmond for the spring of 1862. To capture the Confederate capital, he intended to move his army down the Chesapeake Bay to Union-held Fortress Monroe. From there, it would advance up the Peninsula between the York and James Rivers to Richmond. Such a move would allow him to flank and avoid Confederate forces in northern Virginia. It was his intention that US Navy warships would ascend both rivers to aid in expediting the advance. This element of the plan was thwarted in early March 1862 when the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia attacked Union naval forces at the Battle of Hampton Roads. Though the threat of Virginia was mitigated by the arrival of the ironclad USS Monitor, efforts to contain the Confederate vessel drew off Union warships.  Despite this, McClellan pressed forward and his forces began landing on the Peninsula in mid-March. The Union advance was opposed by around 11,000-13,000 Confederates led by Major General John B. Magruder. Establishing himself near the old American Revolution battlefield at Yorktown, Magruder constructed a defensive line running south along the Warwick River and ending at Mulberry Point. Though a formidable barrier, Magruder lacked sufficient men to man the length of the Warwick Line. Assembling over 120,000 men, McClellan began advancing up the Peninsula. Locating Magruder near Yorktown, McClellan intended to hold him in place with Major General Samuel Heintzelman's III Corps while Brigadier General Erasmus Keyes' IV Corps moved south and west to cut off the enemy's line of retreat. The Union commander initially believed that the Confederate fortifications were limited to the vicinity of Yorktown. On April 4, Union forces pushed back Confederate skirmishers before encountering the Warwick Line the next day. Arriving at Lee's Mills, Keyes was surprised to encounter defenses manned by Major General Lafayette McLaw's division. Though he probed the enemy lines, Keyes did not press the attack and instead engaged the Confederates with his artillery.  The next day, Union troops led by Brigadier General Winfield Scott Hancock reconnoitered the Confederate lines north of Lee's Mill at Dam Number One. Taking some prisoners, Hancock reported that the enemy's defenses in the area were weak. Though alerted to this, McClellan took no action. This was largely due to his ill-informed belief that Magruder possessed over 40,000 men. Aware that he was badly outnumbered, the Confederate leader had worked tirelessly through various ruses to convince the Union leadership that his command was in fact larger. He accomplished this by marching a small number of troops past the same exposed location several times, frequently shifting his artillery, and laying down heavy fire whenever Union troops were sighted. These efforts were aided by a report from Keyes in which he informed McClellan that he did not think the enemy line could be taken.  Electing not to further scout the Confederate lines, McClellan stunned his officers and the enemy when he entrenched and laid siege to Yorktown. For the next week and a half, the Army of the Potomac dug in and began constructing a vast network of batteries. As the Union troops worked, Magruder was slowly reinforced to around 35,000 men. Building fifteen batteries, McClellan planned to emplace seventy heavy guns, including two 200-pdr Parrott Rifles, as well as over forty mortars. To aid in scouting the Confederate positions, Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe's Union Army Balloon Corps began flights over the lines using two balloons, Intrepid and Constitution.  Early on April 16, Union troops under Hancock again probed the area around Dam Number One. After his men briefly exchanged fire with the enemy, Magruder recognized the area's weakness and directed Brigadier General Howell Cobb to reinforce the area with six regiments. Receiving word that the Confederates were improving their lines, McClellan ordered Brigadier General William "Baldy" Smith's division to disrupt the enemy's work but not bring on a general engagement. Opening with an artillery bombardment, Smith later pushed forward Brigadier General William Brooks' Vermont Brigade. Crossing the dam, the Vermont men penetrated the Confederate lines before encountering Cobb's men. Fending off Confederate counterattacks, Brooks' men were ultimately forced to fall back when no reinforcements arrived to exploit their advance. Later in the day, Smith attacked further downstream but with no success.  As April progressed, McClellan continued work on his batteries. Across the lines, Confederate forces swelled to around 57,000 men and leadership passed to General Joseph E. Johnston. Aware that McClellan intended to begin an intense bombardment of his lines in early May, the Confederate leader made preparations for falling back towards Richmond. Though intelligence sources indicated that a Confederate withdrawal was pending, McClellan did not alter his plans which called for the bombardment to commence on May 5. In an effort to mask his intentions, Johnston bombarded the Union lines on the night of May 3. After dark, his army began retreating west. Ascending in one of Lowe's balloons the next morning, Heintzelman was stunned to find the Confederate trenches empty.  During the fighting along the Warwick Line, Union forces suffered 182 casualties while the Confederates incurred 300. Dispatching Brigadier General George Stoneman's cavalry to pursue Johnston, McClellan began organizing his infantry to advance. He also directed Brigadier General William Franklin's division to re-board their transports for a thrust up the York River. The two armies would next clash on May 5 at the Battle of Williamsburg. Though technically a Union victory, the Siege of Yorktown first showed McClellan's weaknesses as a leader. Overly cautious and paranoid regarding enemy strength, he would be repeatedly beaten on the Peninsula by General Robert E. Lee that summer."

X is for Xenophobic

I could not find a Civil War battle that began with the letter X, so I looked for a Civil War X related word and found a perfect one.  The word is Xenophobic.  According to the dictionary xenophobia is the "fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners, or of anything foreign or strange."  Xenophobia is when people are afraid or hate another race.  This has to do with prejudice and slavery, the leading cause of the Civil War.  So in other words, xenophobia was a very crucial part of the war.  "Slavery was one major source of the tension between the South and the rest of the Union.  The primary reason for the secessions which began the Civil War was a disagreement over States' Rights:  constitutionally, how autonomous are the individual states?  The South feared that their autonomy would be weakened, slavery would be banned, and their economy and culture ruined due to laws passed by outsiders (more strangers) who didn't understand them or care to (xenophobia from the other side).  So yes, it did have something to do with the Civil War and with its aftermath.  The sad thing is....on all sides....it still does.

V is for Vicksburg

Vicksburg is one of my favorite places in Mississippi.  It is filled with history, legends, and ghosts  If you are a gambler you can find a floating casino on the river, eat at Sollies Tamales at a scenic viewpoint, hit some outlets, or just enjoy the town as a whole.  We are not talking about today.....we are talking about the 1860's when life was not pleasant and brothers fought against brothers.  The Battle(Seige) that took place at Vicksburg.  "During the late spring and early summer of 1863, Union and Confederate armies battled for control of  Vicksburg, Mississippi.  The beautiful city on the Mississippi River now preserves some of America's most  significant historic sites. Among these are forts, batteries, miles of fortifications, historic homes and structures and even the wreck of a Civil War ironclad. The fate of a continent was determined here and Vicksburg today draws visitors from around the world. It is a place where the modern world steps into the past and where visitors still walk in the foot-prints of the men and women that forged a nation.  The Battle of Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the culmination of a two year effort by Union armies and navies to wrest control of the Mississippi River from Confederate forces.Located on a strategic bend of the great river, the city became a focal point of the Civil War when Confederate troops fortified the bluffs with an astounding array of heavy artillery.  New Orleans and Memphis both fell, along with other Confederate posts up and down the river, but by the spring of 1863 Vicksburg still remained firmly in Southern hands.  The task of conquering the "Gibraltar of the Mississippi" fell to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. With an array of impressive subordinates and a massive army, he moved down the Mississippi River.  Grant tried first to bypass the Confederate guns by digging a canal that would divert the flow of the river and bringing about the fall of the citadel without the firing of a shot. The effort failed.  Grant next tried to land troops downstream at Grand Gulf. Confederate troops dug in, however, and the firepower of the U.S. Navy could not blast them from their defenses.  Frustrated but undeterred, Grand moved further south and finally came ashore near Port Gibson. Fighting his way through Confederate defenders at Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hill and Big Black River, he closed in on Vicksburg from the east.  The Confederate commander of the city, Gen. John C. Pemberton, withdrew his men into the fortifications surrounding Vicksburg. In addition to powerful batteries overlooking the Mississippi, Vicksburg was encircled by miles of massive earthwork forts, batteries and infantry trenches. Although Pemberton's army was much smaller than Grant's, he and his thousands of determined men left no doubt that they planned to fight for control of the city.  Grant moved his forces into position around Vicksburg, surrounding the Confederate army but also trapping hundreds of civilians in the city now turned into a war zone. Union troops began to dig siege works and place artillery to bombard the town as Southern soldiers and civilians prepared to withstand the coming onslaught.  The Battle of Vicksburg began on May 19, 1863, when Grant sent thousands of men storming forward in an effort to overwhelm the Stockade Redan, a powerful Confederate fort with 17-foot high walls and an 8-foot wide ditch. Defended by the 36th Mississippi Infantry, the redan (a redan was a triangular fortification) provided impossible to take. By the time the smoke cleared, Grant had lost 157 men killed and 777 wounded compared to only 8 killed and 62 wounded for the Confederate defenders.  Determined to try again before Pemberton could further strengthen his fortifications, Grant opened fire on Vicksburg on the night of May 21st with more than 220 pieces of artillery. Union warships on the river joined in and Southern soldiers and civilians alike tunneled into the ground to try to save themselves from the barrage.  The next morning at 10 a.m., the Union army attacked in lines three miles wide. Far from demoralized by the bombardment, the soldiers in the Confederate fortifications opened on the oncoming Federal infantry with musket and cannon fire. The fighting became hand to hand in a few places as the Federals tried to break through the Southern lines, but for the most part Grant's men never even got close to the main Confederate works. When the smoke cleared, more than 3,000 Union soldiers lay dead or wounded while Southern casualties were estimated at fewer than 500.  The fight for Vicksburg now turned into a brutal, ongoing siege. Union troops inched closer to the Confederate lines by digging zigzag approach trenches and pushing their positions closer and closer. Mines were dug under Confederate forts and one, the 3rd Louisiana Redan, was destroyed in a major explosion on June 25th. Southern officers, however, had heard the sound of the digging beneath their feet and had anticipated the blast. When Union troops stormed into the crater, they found Confederate troops waiting for them in a new position just to the rear of the destroyed fort.Another explosion followed on July 1st, but in the end it was starvation and not Union attacks that brought the siege to an end. With his soldiers and the civilians of Vicksburg reduced to eating mules, rats and even boiled shoe leather, Pemberton surrendered to Grant on July 4, 1863.  The victory ended Confederate control of the Mississippi as the last remaining strongholds surrendered after learning of the fall of Vicksburg. A short time later President Abraham Lincoln penned wrote the immortal words, "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea."  Vicksburg became an important Union bastion after the surrender and remained so through the end of the war."  (www.exploresouthernhistory.com)  It thrives today as a commercial and tourism destination.   If you get a chance to stop in and "sit a spell" in Vicksburg then do it!

U is for Utoy Creek

 

One of the lesser known battles was at Utoy Creek in Georgia.  It appears that "after failing to envelop Hood’s left flank at Ezra Church, Sherman still wanted to extend his right flank to hit the railroad between East Point and Atlanta. He transferred John M. Schofield’ s Army of the Ohio from his left to his right flank and sent him to the north bank of Utoy Creek. Although Schofield’s troops were at Utoy Creek on August 2, they, along with the XIV Corps, Army of the Cumberland, did not cross until the 4th. Schofield’s force began its movement to exploit this situation on the morning of the 5th, which was initially successful. Schofield then had to regroup his forces, which took the rest of the day. The delay allowed the Rebels to strengthen their defenses with abatis, which slowed the Union attack when it restarted on the morning of the 6th. The Federals were repulsed with heavy losses by Bate’s Division and failed in an attempt to break the railroad. On the 7th, the Union troops moved toward the Confederate main line and entrenched. Here they remained until late August."(http://www.nps.gov/hps/abpp/battles/ga019.htm)  There was no distinct winner of this battle.

K is for Kolb's Farm

 

I chose my topic battle for today because the name is close to my last name.  I know....funny reason to pick a battle...but it worked for me.  The Battle of Kolb's Farm took place in cobb County Georgia which is near where I currently live.  On June 22, 1864 a costly Confederate attack was waged to stop the Union armies attempt to bypass Kennesaw mountain. On June 22, 1864, Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston sent Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood´s 13,000 troops down Powder Springs Road to stop the Union army´s threat to his flank. When Confederate skirmishers encountered Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker´s 11,000 man Union Corps here at Kolb’s Farm, Hood ordered his troops to attack.  Hooker, having learned of Hood´s plans from some captured Confederates, ordered his troops to dig in. At 4:00 p.m. Hood sent two of his three divisions towards the waiting Union soldiers. After several unsuccessful charges through the woods, fields, and swamps across the road, the battered Confederates withdrew. 

The Kolb Farm House

The house is owned and has been restored by the National Park Service. It is the only surviving Civil War-era structure in the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.

J is for Johnsonville

"J" battles seemed rather difficult to find on my quest to do A-Z April Challenge about the Civil War.  I was thrilled when I came up with Johnsonville.  I actually knew a little about this battle from an American History Class I took in college. There is not a whole lot of information about this battle but what is there is interesting.  "In an effort to check the Union army’s advance through Georgia, Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest led a 23-day raid culminating in an attack on the Yankee supply base at Johnsonville, Tennessee. Swinging north from Corinth, Mississippi, toward the Kentucky border and temporarily blockading the Tennessee River at Fort Herman, Forrest then moved southward along the Tennessee River’s west bank, capturing several U.S. steamers and a gunboat which he later had to abandon. On November 4, Forrest began positioning his artillery across the river from the Federal supply base and landing at Johnsonville. The Union discovered the Confederates finishing their entrenchments and battery emplacements in the afternoon of the 4th. The Union gunboats and land batteries, across the river, engaged the Confederates in an artillery duel. The Rebel guns were well-positioned.   In fact, the Confederate artillery fire disabled the Union gunboats. Fearing that the Rebels might cross the river and capture the transports, the Union Army set fire to them. The wind then extended the fire to the piles of stores on the levee and to a warehouse loaded with supplies. Seeing the fire, the Confederates began firing on the steamboats, barges, and warehouses to prevent the Union soldiers from putting out the fire. An inferno illuminated Forrest’s night withdrawal, and he actually escaped Union clutches without serious loss. Damages totaled somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.2 million. The next morning, on the 5th, some Confederate artillery bombarded the depot in the morning but then left. Although this brilliant victory further strengthened Forrest’s reputation and destroyed a great amount of Union materiel, it failed to stem the tide of Union success in Georgia. By this time, Forrest often harassed the Union Army, but, as this engagement demonstrated, he could not stop their operations."

I is for Independence

Part I - Today is for the Battle of Independence and Independence for slaves.  On August 11, 1862, Col. J.T. Hughes’s Confederate force, including William Quantrill, attacked Independence, at dawn, in two columns on different roads. They drove through the town to the Union Army camp, capturing, killing, and scattering the Yankees. Lt. Col. James T. Buel, commander of the garrison, attempted to hold out in one of the buildings with some of his men. Soon the building next to them was on fire, threatening them. Buel then, by means of a flag of truce, arranged a meeting with the Confederate commander, Col. G.W. Thompson, who had replaced Col. J.T. Hughes, killed earlier. Buel surrendered and about 150 of his men were paroled, the others had escaped, hidden, or been killed. Having taken Independence, the Rebel force headed for Kansas City. Confederate dominance in the Kansas City area continued, but not for long.

Part II - Yesterday I had to observe another teacher teach a lesson.  Her lesson was on Harriet Tubman and the Undergroud Railroad.  Annette did an excellent job of teaching this lesson.  She pulled out all the bells and whistles with a powerpoint, vocabulary categorization activity, a KWL (Know, Write, learn) chart, alpha list (for vocabulary words), AND a cute game called Kick Me (no kicking actually involved).  I learned more about Harriet Tubman than I thought possible and her class did too.  It was amazing because the majority of her class are Special Education students.  I was amazed at how they responded.  It made me think about doing a two part post today.  One on a Civil War battle...and the other on what the Underground Railroad gave the slaves who traveled it.....Independence.  Same word....two different views of it.  Independence is the state or quality of  being  independent; freedom from the control, influence, support, aid, or the like, of others. The Underground Railroad, a vast network of people who helped fugitive slaves escape to the North and to Canada, was not run by any single organization or person. Rather, it consisted of many individuals -- many whites but predominently black -- who knew only of the local efforts to aid fugitives and not of the overall operation. Still, it effectively moved hundreds of slaves northward each year -- according to one estimate, the South lost 100,000 slaves between 1810 and 1850.  An organized system to assist runaway slaves seems to have begun towards the end of the 18th century. In 1786 George Washington complained about how one of his runaway slaves was helped by a "society of Quakers, formed for such purposes." The system grew, and around 1831 it was dubbed "The Underground Railroad," after the then emerging steam railroads. The system even used terms used in railroading: the homes and businesses where fugitives would rest and eat were called "stations" and "depots" and were run by "stationmasters," those who contributed money or goods were "stockholders," and the "conductor" was responsible for moving fugitives from one station to the next. For the slave, running away to the North was anything but easy. The first step was to escape from the slaveholder. For many slaves, this meant relying on his or her own resources. Sometimes a "conductor," posing as a slave, would enter a plantation and then guide the runaways northward. The fugitives would move at night. They would generally travel between 10 and 20 miles to the next station, where they would rest and eat, hiding in barns and other out-of-the-way places. While they waited, a message would be sent to the next station to alert its stationmaster. The fugitives would also travel by train and boat -- conveyances that sometimes had to be paid for. Money was also needed to improve the appearance of the runaways -- a black man, woman, or child in tattered clothes would invariably attract suspicious eyes. This money was donated by individuals and also raised by various groups, including vigilance committees. Vigilance committees sprang up in the larger towns and cities of the North, most prominently in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. In addition to soliciting money, the organizations provided food, lodging and money, and helped the fugitives settle into a community by helping them find jobs and providing letters of recommendation.  The Underground Railroad had many notable participants, including John Fairfield in Ohio, the son of a slaveholding family, who made many daring rescues, Levi Coffin, a Quaker who assisted more than 3,000 slaves, and Harriet Tubman, who made 19 trips into the South and escorted over 300 slaves to freedom....and Independence.

H is for Harper's Ferry

 

One of the most interesting Civil War related stories I remember from my childhood is John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry which took place from October 16-18, 1859. John Brown had spent four months living on the farm simply trying to fit in. The hike to Harpers Ferry had become routine. A new beard and a shock of wild hair kept the locals from recognizing him as the same man who had massacred slave owners in Kansas three years before. Soon the disguise would be irrelevant. “Men, get on your arms,” he famously declared late in the night of October 16, “we will proceed to the Ferry.”  Descending upon the town in the early hours of October 17th, Brown and his men captured prominent citizens and seized the federal armory and arsenal. Brown had hopes that the local slave population would join the raid and through the raid’s success weapons would be supplied to slaves and freedom fighters throughout the country; this was not to be. First held down by the local militia in the late morning of the 17th, Brown took refuge in the arsenal’s engine house. However, this sanctuary from the fire storm did not last long, when in the late afternoon US Marines under Colonel Robert E. Lee arrived and stormed the engine house, killing many of of the raiders and capturing Brown. Brown was quickly placed on trial and charged with treason against the state of Virginia, murder, and slave insurrection. Brown was sentenced to death for his crimes and hanged on December 2, 1859. 

G is for Gettysburg

I figured today I would talk on a battle most everyone knows about, Gettysburg.  Gettysburg has always been one of my favorite historical battles.  When I was young my father told me it was begun over shoes.  I used to have this vision of two men fighting over one pair of shoes.  Of course that was before I started school and learned about Gettysburg and visited the Battlefield and felt the pain and agony of this haunting place.  It is a place on earth that touches the core of you.   "Ten weeks after the battle, Confederate general Henry Heth, a Virginian whose troops were the first to engage on July 1, filed a now-famous report in which he explained why he had sent a portion of his division into the small Pennsylvania town. "On the morning of June 30," Heth wrote, "I ordered Brigadier General [Johnston] Pettigrew to take his brigade to Gettysburg, search the town for army supplies (shoes especially), and return the same day." That parenthetical phrase "shoes especially" has taken on a life of its own over the years. A 1997 newsletter of the American Podiatric Medical Association is typical—it claimed, perhaps due to its interest in foot health, that footwear was the battle's causa belli, adding, "There was a warehouse full of boots and shoes in the town."  The Confederate army at this time was threadbare and lacking necessities....like shoes.  "The Union and Confederate armies collided unexpectedly at Gettysburg (in what, in military terms, is called a "meeting engagement"). It is also true that Heth's men—indeed, much of the Union Army—were short on shoes. A rumor had even been circulating that shoes were to be found in Gettysburg, despite the fact that Jubal A. Early's men had been through the town a few days earlier, demanded a ransom that included 1,500 pairs of shoes, and come away empty-handed. It is not true, however, that there was a shoe warehouse or shoe factory in Gettysburg—only a carriage factory, a college, and a finishing school for girls. Finally, shoes were only part of the reason that Heth's men, in his own words, "stumbled into this fight" on July 1.  True, the army was footsore; but, more importantly—figuratively speaking—it was also blind. Confederate cavalry under J. E. B. Stuart had been missing for almost a week on a long ride around the Union army. As a result, Heth and his boss, A. P. Hill, had no idea what was in front of them.  Heth was not supposed to start a battle; in fact, he was under specific orders from Robert E. Lee not to do so. The Virginian—new to his command and an old favorite of Lee's—started one anyway, a "reckless act," according to historian Stephen W. Sears, and perhaps even an insubordinate one.  Nothing about war is simple, of course, and in the same way that Heth stumbled into battle, one can also stumble into a fierce historical argument. Heth's decisions were angrily debated by so-called Lost Cause historians after the war, part of a larger, often very personal battle over who was to blame for Gettysburg—Lee, Stuart, or James Longstreet.  (That these battles were largely fought by Virginians over the actions of other Virginians made them all the more personal.)   Why, then, the focus on shoes? For some early historians, it may have been a sleight of hand, a way of distracting readers from more prickly questions surrounding the Confederate defeat. Besides that, the largely accurate, if sometimes exaggerated, image of shoeless soldiers conveniently underscored the Lost Cause notion of nobility achieved through suffering. By calling attention to the ragged state of Johnny Reb, these writers also called attention to how the Confederate army, time and again, had managed to triumph in battle without nearly the numbers or materiel of its adversary. Such a state of affairs could not last forever, of course; Gettysburg was proof of that. And while no one argued that Lee lost the battle because his men did not have enough shoes, the image speaks for itself.
Finally, from a literary standpoint, "shoes especially" represents the perfect detail, quickly translating abstract historical forces into blisters on aching feet and the smell of new shoe leather."

F is for Fort Walton

I am a native Floridian and having grown up in Florida I never felt like a southerner.  I always felt like a southern Yankee.  You see Florida is unique in the south and is often referred to as the most northern of southern states. It is also said that the further north you go in Florida, the further south you get and the further south you go the further north you get.  Weird huh? This is perhaps the truest in the far western Florida panhandle. "A little-known Confederate force, comprised of local volunteers, fought a few minor battles near what is now Destin/Fort Walton Beach, Florida in the Civil War.  Florida succeeded from the United States on January 10, 1861 and within a month joined the Confederacy. Florida was very sparsely populated in 1861 and its population was thought to be just 140,000. From this population base, the state mustered 16,000 local men to serve in 11 infantry regiments and 2 of cavalry from the Sunshine State. All told, Florida units made up just fewer than 2% of the Confederate Army. One of these units, who later became Company D of the 1st Florida Infantry Regiment, was the Walton Guard.  Formed from volunteers of Walton and Santa Rosa Counties near Euchee Anna Florida in March 1861, the Walton Guard was a scratch force. Armed with few regular weapons and no artillery they formed a defensive line near what is today downtown Fort Walton Beach. The Fort Walton Mound, a thousand-year old Indian burial site, was chosen as the fortification for the unit. The mound was a truncated pyramid made of sand, dirt, and shells 223 feet long, 17 feet high and 178 feet wide. The local Native Americans had used the site as the center of their village up until the 16th century when they became extinct. It was here that the Walton Guard chose to watch over the narrows of Santa Rosa Sound and Choctawhatchee Bay.  The Walton Guards stood their ground for a year, watching over nearby Union-held Fort The Walton Guards stood their ground for a year, watching over nearby Union-held Fort Pickens and getting into a few light rifle skirmishes with Union gunboats in the area. Finally, regulars from Fort Pickens decided to scatter the Confederate force and in March 1862, a unit of the 1st US Artillery moved from the fort to within cannon range of Camp Walton. On the early morning of April Fool’s Day 1862, Union forces bombarded the Walton Guards on their Indian Mound and oyster-shell fortification. Withdrawing from the battlefield Confederate forces fell back down the peninsula and only returned to their post once the Union artillery returned to Fort
Pickens. Confederate General Braxton Bragg, upon finding out about the skirmish, sent small naval cannon to Camp Walton to give the local Confederates some more firepower. The 18-pounder cannonade sent over from Pensacola is similar to the short naval cannons used on early US Naval frigates before the Civil War. They were smoothbore pieces that could be fired comparatively rapidly for ordnance of that era. The weapon's primary handicap was that it had a short range (1-2 miles) and a low elevation. This meant that a Union ship would have to anchor nearly right in front of it to be in danger from it. With the inability to properly defend the mound and their enlistments coming up the Walton Guards evacuated the site in the summer of 1862. They spiked and buried their cannon in the mound so that it could not be used if captured and withdrew to the north.  The Walton Guards joined the rest of the 1st Florida Infantry under Colonel James Patton Anderson. They fought with Stovall's Brigade, Breckinridge's Division, D. H. Hill's Corps, Army of Tennessee at the battles of Chickamauga and Murfreesboro. The remnants of the Walton Guard surrendered and were paroled in North Carolina May 1865. Their cannon was recovered during archeological excavations of the Indian Mound and today is mounted next to the mound on US 98 in Fort Walton Beach."  If you ever visit the Fort Walton area take some time and visit the Mound.  It is right down town on the main drag and easy to locate.  Th history you will find there is fascinating.