by Tish Osborne

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Florida succeeded from the Union Jan. 11, 1861, less than three years after war with the Seminole Indians had been declared over and only 16 years after statehood.

But unlike the Indian conflict, most Floridians would fight far from home in this war, at places called Gettysburg, Shiloh and Perryville.

"Before the Civil War, Florida had been well on its way to becoming another of the southern cotton states," according to Michael V. Gannon in "Florida: A short history." Indian land had been granted and gobbled up by many who started plantations in eastern Hernando County and used some of the state’s 65,000 slaves to work them.

When war was declared, the Confederate States of America called on Florida to provide 6,000 soldiers. Fifteen thousand responded, an estimated 43 percent of the able white male population.

It was the highest percentage of available men of military age from any Confederate state. Florida troops were organized into eleven regiments of infantry; two regiments of cavalry; and numerous smaller units, including artillery, home-guard, and militia. Another 2,000 men, mostly Army veterans from the Seminole Wars, decided to fight for the Union.

Virginia Jackson, director of the Hernando Heritage Museum and an organizer of the Brooksville Raid re-enactment, provided information about the county during the Civil War in "A Millennial History of Hernando County," published by the Hernando Today in 2000.

She explained that 60 men from Hernando County joined the 3 rd ^{Florida Infantry, Third Florida, Company C was later known as the "Hernando County Wildcats." They were led by Captain Walter Terry Saxton, who owned a plantation three miles south of present-day Brooksville at a town called Pierceville.}

These farms and those left to run them became the Confederacy’s "meat locker" during the war. Central and Southern Florida provided cattle, driving them north to Gainesville regularly where they were distributed to feed the South’s soldiers. Other cattle were loaded on ships that ran the Union blockade and were sold in Cuba, providing funds to the Confederacy.

The Caloosahatchee region of southwest Florida supplied 25,000 herd of cattle to the southern army during the war. The militia men that protected the cattle from Union raids like the one at Brooksville were called the "Cow Cavalry."

The contributions of Hernando County farms were mentioned directly by Col. J.J. Dickinson, who in 1889 wrote a military history of the state.

"The counties of Bradford, Alachua, Marion, Levy and Hernando, lying between the St. John’s river and the Gulf of Mexico, were known by the enemy to be among the valuable portions of the state, owing to the almost inexhaustible supplies of sugar, syrup, cattle, with oranges, lemons, limes, arrowroot and other semi-tropical productions."

Dickinson said the supplies "were of inestimable value to the State and the Confederacy."

The colonel said the area must be defended to avoid "the carrying off of the slaves, who were the only able-bodied tillers of the soil, and better fitted for field work than the white man."

Turpentine harvested from the many pine trees in Hernando County was another asset. Jackson reported that the resin from pine trees was used in glue to build ships and the turpentine, separated from the resin by boiling, was used for medicinal purposes.

So along with the slaves, the cow cavalry, old men and the infirm, only the women were left to proceed.

The Florida Office of Cultural and Historical Programs provides a look into how it was for women.

"Women had to take on many additional responsibilities. Whether it was a large plantation in north Florida or a small subsistence farm in peninsular Florida, women often had to perform all of the tasks that the men had done, as well as their own."

The absence of working men, combined with the severe economic hardships imposed by the Union naval blockade, made life difficult.

The Union navy plied the Florida Coast. Frequently, the Union soldiers would land at spots like Bayport, the scene of the start of the Brooksville Raid, to destroy the salt works and burn farms on their marches inward.

"As towns along Florida's coast changed hands, the inhabitants often found themselves as refugees in their own land--forced to relocate inland or live under Union or Confederate occupation," according to the OCHP web site.

Still, the women gave additional support to the Confederacy by making clothing for Southern soldiers and raising funds to n support the Florida Hospital set up for sick and wounded Florida soldiers in Richmond, Virginia.

This reliance on Florida's supplies intensified after the Battle of Vicksburg when the South lost its trans-Mississippi supply route.

Gannon reported that patriotism for the southern cause, so common at the beginning of the war, was later tempered by exposure to an increasing amount of death and suffering. At first, the South relied on volunteers, but as early as April 1862 it was necessary to institute a draft in order to fill the ranks.

Draftees and those disillusioned by years of war increasingly deserted the Confederate ranks in the latter part of the conflict. Bands of deserters in Florida operated against southern authority in parts of the state.
  Approximately 5,000 Floridians, about one out of every three soldiers, died or were killed in Confederate service. Many of those who survived were disabled or had their lives shortened due to health problems related to the hardships of military service.

Captain Saxton lived to muster out of the Confederate Army. By then, what remained of the 3rd Florida regiment had combined with the 1st Florida Infantry and amounted to only 240 men.

Saxton’s brother, Frank, was wounded at Perryville, Company C’s first battle, in 1862. His wife, Hope, received a Confederate military pension. Another brother, James Randolph, was killed at Missionary Ridge in 1863, while youngest brother Benjamin was sent home early in the war because he was underage, records show.

The Cow Cavalry surrendered on June 5, 1865 in Bayport, the site of the landing for the Brooksville Raid, formally ending the Civil War in Florida.