Glory
Page 36
1845
March 3: President John Tyler signs the bill that makes Florida the twenty-seventh state of the United States of America.
1855–58
The conflict known as the Third Seminole War takes place with a similar outcome to the earlier confrontations—money spent, lives lost, and the Indians entrenched more deeply into the Everglades.
1859
Robert E. Lee is sent in to arrest John Brown after his attempt to initiate a slave rebellion with an assault on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (later West Virginia). The incident escalates ill will between the North and South. Brown is executed December 2.
1860
The first Florida cross-state railroad goes into service.
November 6: Abraham Lincoln is elected to the presidency and many Southern states begin to call for special legislative sessions. Although there are many passionate Unionists in the state, most Florida politicians are ardent in lobbying for secession. Towns, cities, and counties rush to form or enlarge militia companies. Even before the state is able to meet for its special session, civil and military leaders plan to demand the turnover of Federal military installations.
1861
January 10: Florida votes to secede from the Union, the third Southern state to do so. February: Florida joins the Confederate States of America.
Through late winter and early spring, the Confederacy struggles to form a government and organize the armed forces while the states recruit fighting men. Jefferson Davis is president of the newly formed country. Stephen Mallory of Florida becomes C.S.A. Secretary of the Navy.
April 12–14: Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and the first blood is shed when an accidental explosion kills Private Hough, who then has the distinction of being the first Federal soldier killed. Federal forces fear a similar action at Fort Pickens, Pensacola Bay, Florida. Three forts guarded the bay—McRee and Barrancas on the land side, and Pickens on the tip of forty-mile long Santa Rosa Island. Federal Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer spiked the guns at Barrancas, blew up the ammunition at McRee, and moved his meager troops to Pickens, where he was eventually reinforced by five hundred men. Though Florida troops took the navy yard, retention of the fort by the Federals nullified the usefulness to the Rebs of what was considered the most important navy yard south of Norfolk.
July 21: First Manassas, or the First Battle of Bull Run, Virginia—both sides get their first real taste of battle. Southern troops are drawn from throughout the states, including Florida. Already, the state, which had been so eager to secede, sees her sons being shipped northward to fight and her coast being left to its own defenses by a government with different priorities.
November: Robert E. Lee inspects coastal defenses as far south as Fernandina and decides the major ports of Charleston, Savannah, and Brunswick are to be defended, adding later that the small force posted at St. Augustine was like an invitation to attack.
1862
February: Florida’s Governor Milton publicly states his despair for Florida citizens as more of the state’s troops are ordered north after Grant captures two major Confederate strongholds in Tennessee.
February 28: A fleet of twenty-six Federal ships sets sail to occupy Fernandina, Jacksonville, and St. Augustine.
March 8: St. Augustine surrenders, and though Jacksonville and other points north and south along the coast will change hands several times during the war, St. Augustine will remain in Union hands. The St. Johns River becomes a ribbon of guerilla troop movement for both sides. Many Floridians begin to despair of “East Florida,” fearing that the fickle populace has all turned Unionist.
March 8: Under the command of Franklin Buchanan, the CSS Virginia, formerly the scuttled Union ship Merrimac, sailed into Hampton Roads to battle the Union ships blockading the channel. She devastates Federal ships until the arrival of the poorly prepared and leaking Federal entry into the “ironclad” fray, the USS Monitor. The historic battle of the ironclads ensues. Neither ship emerged a clear victor; the long-term advantage went to the Union since the Confederacy was then unable to break the blockade when it had appeared, at first, that the Virginia might have sailed all the way to devastate Washington, D.C.
April 2: Apalachicola is attacked by a Federal landing force. The town remains a no-man’s-land throughout the war.
April 6–8: Union and Confederate forces engage in the battle of Shiloh. Both claim victories. Both suffer horrible losses with over twenty thousand killed, wounded or missing.
April 25: New Orleans falls, and the Federal grip on the south becomes more of a vise.
Spring: The Federal blockade begins to tighten and much of the state becomes a no-man’s-land. Despite its rugged terrain, the length of the peninsula, and the simple difficulty of logistics, blockade runners know that they can dare Florida waterways simply because the Union can’t possibly guard the extensive coastline of the state. Florida’s contribution becomes more and more that of a breadbasket as she strips herself and provides salt, beef, smuggled supplies, and manpower to the Confederacy.
May 9: Pensacola is evacuated by the Rebs and occupied by Federal forces.
1863
May 20: Union landing party is successfully attacked by Confederates near St. Marks.
May 22: Union Flag Officer DuPont writes to his superiors with quotes that had the Union not abandoned Jacksonville, the state would have split and East Florida would have entered the war on the Union side.
Into summer: Fierce action continues in Virginia: Battle of Fair Oaks, or Seven Pines, May 31, the Seven Days Battles, May 25–June 7, the Battle of Mechanicsville, June 26, Gaines Mill, or Cold Harbor, June 27. More Florida troops leave the state to replace the men killed in action in these battles and in other engagements in Alabama, Louisiana, and along the Mississippi. Salt becomes evermore necessary: Florida has numerous salt works along the Gulf side of the state. Union ships try to find them, confiscate what they can, and destroy them.
August 30: Second Battle of Manassas, or Bull Run.
September 16–17: The Battle of Antietam, or Sharpsburg, takes place in Maryland where the “single bloodiest day of fighting” occurs.
September 23: The Preliminary text of the Emancipation Proclamation is published. It will take effect on January 1, 1863. Lincoln previously drafted the document, but waited for a Union victory to publish it; both sides claimed Antietam, but the Rebels were forced to withdraw back to Virginia.
October 5: Federals recapture Jacksonville.
December 11–15: The Battle of Fredericksburg.
December 31: The Battle of Murfreesborough, or Stones River, Tennessee.
1863
March 20: A Union landing party at St. Andrew’s Bay, Florida, is attacked and most Federals are captured or killed.
March 31: Jacksonville is evacuated by the Union forces again.
May 1–4: The Battle of Chancellorsville. Lee soundly beats Hooker, but on May 2, General Stonewall Jackson is accidently shot and mortally wounded by his own men. He dies on the tenth.
June: Southern commanders determine anew to bring the war to the Northern front. A campaign begins, which will march the Army of Northern Virginia through Virginia, Maryland, and on to Pennsylvania. In the west, the campaign along the Mississippi continues with Vicksburg under siege. In Florida, there is little action other than skirmishing and harrying attacks along the coast. More Florida boys are conscripted into the regular army. The state continues to produce cattle and salt and provide for the Confederacy.
July 1: Confederates move toward Gettysburg along the Chambersburg Pike. Four miles west of town they meet John Buford’s Union cavalry.
July 2: At Gettysburg, places like the Peach Orchard and Devil’s Den become names that live in history.
July 3: Pickett’s disastrous charge.
July 4: Lee determines to retreat to Virginia.
July 4: Vicksburg surrenders. July continues: The Union soldiers take a very long time to chase Lee. What might have been
an opportunity to end the war is lost.
July 13: Draft riots in New York.
August 8: Lee attempts to resign. President Jefferson Davis rejects his resignation. August continues into fall: Renewed Union interest in Florida begins to develop as assaults on Charleston and forts in South Carolina bring recognition by the North that Florida is a hotbed for blockade runners, salt, and cattle. Union commanders in the South begin to plan a Florida campaign.
A Biography of Heather Graham
Heather Graham (b. 1953) is one of the country’s most prominent authors of romance, suspense, and historical fiction. She has been writing bestselling books for nearly three decades, publishing more than 150 novels and selling more than seventy-five million copies worldwide.
Born in Florida to an Irish mother and a Scottish father, Graham attended college at the University of South Florida, where she majored in theater arts. She spent a few years making a living onstage as a back-up vocalist and dinner theater actor, but after the birth of her third child decided to seek work that would allow her to spend more time with her family.
After early efforts writing romance and horror stories, Graham sold her first novel, When Next We Love (1982). She went on to write nearly two dozen contemporary romance novels.
In 1989 Graham published Sweet Savage Eden, which initiated the Cameron family saga, an epic six-book series that sets romantic drama amid turbulent periods of American history, such as the Civil War. She revisited the nineteenth century in Runaway (1994), a story of passion, deception, and murder in Florida, which spawned five sequels of its own.
In the past decade, Graham has written romantic suspense novels such as Tall, Dark, and Deadly (1999), Long, Lean, and Lethal (2000), and Dying to Have Her (2001), as well as supernatural fiction. In 2003’s Haunted she created the Harrison Investigation service, a paranormal detective organization that she spun off into four Krewe of Hunters novels in 2011.
Graham lives in Florida, where she writes, scuba dives, and spends time with her husband and five children.
Graham (left) with her sister.
Graham with her family in New Orleans. Pictured left to right: Dennis Pozzessere; Zhenia Yeretskaya Pozzessere; Derek, Shayne, and Chynna Pozzessere; Heather Graham; Jason and Bryee-Annon Pozzessere; and Jeremy Gonzalez.
Graham at a photo shoot in Key West for the promotion of the Flynn Brothers trilogy.
Graham at the haunted Myrtles plantation, Francisville, Louisiana.
Graham and the Slushpile Band playing the Memnoch the Devil Ball at the Undead Con in New Orleans, 2010.
Graham with dear friend, actor Doug Jones.
Graham (third from left) with F. Paul Wilson, R. L. Stine, Jon Land, and other friends at the seventh annual ThrillerFest, held in New York City, 2011. The authors participated in the “Be Book Smart” campaign organized by Reading Is Fundamental, the nation’s oldest and largest children’s literacy organization.
Graham (seated center) with her local Romance Writers of America group in Broward County, Florida, 2011.
Graham (second from left) with fellow authors Stephen Jay Schwartz, F. Paul Wilson, and Barry Eisler participating in a panel at the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention, Los Angeles, 2011.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1999 by Heather Graham Pozzessere
cover design by Mauricio Diaz
978-1-4532-3369-6
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
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