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9 our Company and regiments mourns the loss of Their very Best october 9, 1862–January 10, 1863 The fall months of 1862 witnessed the Confederate tide recede from Kentucky, culminating with the Battle of murfreesboro. This time might have been one of recovery and wisely used to recoup the losses suffered in the Kentucky Campaign; indeed, Colonel W.G.m. Davis’s Floridians in east Tennessee did earn a respite during December. The suspension of campaigning for Colonel William miller’s troops, however, was short lived; before 1862 ended the troops were again engaged in heated combat. The troops spent the holidays away from family and friends, casualties mounted, and yet another retreat was ordered. Small wonder, then, that morale plummeted during winter’s first weeks. At Harrodsburg, while Braxton Bragg and edmund Kirby Smith pondered their next move, surgeons, their assistants, and townspeople cared for the several thousand wounded. The injured John inglis, riding upon a saddle of blankets on a mule’s back, passed through the town on the morning of october 9 and stared with horror at the “piles of amputated limbs at Houses used for Hospitals . . . waggon loads of them both yank and Confed.” John love mcKinnon of the 1st Florida, wounded in the arm at Perryville, found himself in one of the hospitals. late in life he maintained gratitude for Harrodsburg, whose “good ladies came to the hospital day after day, taking to their homes such wounded soldiers as could be moved . . . and they never forgot to care for those who had to remain.”1 When Bragg ordered a withdrawal southward to Bryantsville on october 10 to protect his lines of communication and retreat, the majority of the wounded remained in Harrodsburg. The next day Bragg decided to abandon Kentucky entirely , and the rebel columns retired to the southeast. This region of southeastern Kentucky through which the army passed was barren of food, causing a paucity of rations. To make matters worse, the weather steadily deteriorated during the last half of the month; when combined with the poor state of the soldiers’ clothing , the conditions caused even those with the strongest resolve to question their motives.2 lieutenant inglis wrote that the men’s daily ration during the retreat consisted of one piece of hardtack that the soldiers supplemented with corn and acorns. others risked punishment by stealing livestock to obtain sustenance. The temperatures October 9, 1862–January 10, 1863 93 plummeted and the first snows fell as the columns cleared the Cumberland mountains and marched toward Knoxville. The Floridians, the majority of whom had never seen snow, were particularly affected. Samuel Pasco, who had the benefit of a headquarters wagon and a cabin in which to sleep, wrote during the cold snap, “[W]e have to build large fires to keep warm. The men are very destitute of clothing & shoes & there is much suffering in consequence.”3 During the last week in october an intense storm hit the eastTennessee valley, dumping several inches of snow onto the Floridians and their comrades. Archie livingston explained that the snowfall “found many, many soldiers entirely unprepared fortheoccasion.Numberswerewithoutshoes&blanketsandonly clothed by a shirt and [pair of] pants of thin material and even unprotected by a tent or tent Fly.” Willie Bryant complained that because the soldiers were without tents, the cold “gave us fits.” The soldiers stripped nearby fields of wooden fence rails to use as firewood despite an order to the contrary.4 While Colonel William miller’s Brigade encamped near Knoxville, the 6th and 7th Florida infantry regiments bivouacked just to the northeast at Blaine’s Crossroads under the command of the newly promoted brigadier general W.G.m. Davis. The 1st Florida Cavalry, Dismounted, remained at Cumberland Gap, collecting stragglers as they arrived and dispatching them to their units. Before the month was out, Davis’s infantry joined the 1st Florida Cavalry, Dismounted, in the mountains. Casmero o. Bailey, an Alachua County resident serving in the 7th Florida, wrote on october 31 that “maj [Tillman] ingram came back from Knoxville and he brought the order for us to go to Cumberland Gap. . . . i expect we will see a hard time of it at the gap but i am in hopes we will not have to stay there all winter.” major William T. Stockton wrote of his soldiers’ attitudes after hearing the news: they “hate awfully the idea of going back to the mountains.” Captain Samuel mcConnell wrote after spending a week in the higher altitudes: “in...

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