After the disastrous East Florida campaign of early 1864, which culminated in the bloodbath of Olustee, the Civil War in Florida went back to the status quo of raids and specifically for the Federals occupation duties. There was one raid in September, however, that managed to leave a mark on Floridian memory. This raid’s high point was the Battle of Marianna, occurring at a lightly populated yet important location for the Confederate war effort.
A Raiding War
Though
spared the larger battles in most other theatres of the war, West Floridian
defenders were not in good shape heading into what would be the last year of
the war. One Major-General Sam Jones reported, “The health of the whole command
in this department has been unusually bad this season. It is believed that it
would have been much worse had it not been for the use of quinine as a
prophylactic, for the sanitary condition of the troops improved materially
after its issue.” While quinine alleviated the diseases endemic to hot and in
many places swampy Florida, the men were still severely short of clothes,
especially shoes. The requests of Jones and other officers for clothes and
other valuable goods went unheeded.[1]
Making
matters worse, they were almost at the complete mercy of the Union military,
with only strategic disinterest keeping the rebel presence alive in the
interior. Fanny Chapman, a resident of Marianna, later wrote that “No part of
our coast from Pensacola to Apalachicola was protected, while every bay, bayou,
and inlet was blockaded, and the Apalachicola River was open to Federal
gunboats at any time.”[2]
The commander of the Union Army in West Florida was about to exploit
Confederate weakness.
Alexander S. Asboth
Alexander
Sandor Asboth was born in Hungary in 1811. He became an engineer for the
government, then took part in the 1848 Hungarian revolt against Austrian rule.
Like the other revolutions of that year, it failed and Asboth joined thousands
of other European liberals in moving to America. Also like the other “Dutch”,
he was a fervent supporter of the Union cause and joined the army in 1861.
