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Foreword Soldiers who were recruited from states at the outer fringes of the short-lived Confederacy suffered disconnection from their homefolk to an extent far more wrenching than that faced by their counterparts from central regions of the South. Virginians and South Carolinians in the Confederate armies faced plenty of daunting ordeals—indeed, even death in a painful percentage of cases—but at least they were able to maintain a degree of contact with their homes and families. Several Confederate regiments raised in Kentucky became famous on the basis of their campaigns far from their geographical roots, as the “Orphan Brigade .” Troops from the Trans-Mississippi theater fighting in the east were cut off from their origins, especially after the fall of Vicksburg. Similarly, soldiers in the small detachment of Florida men who fought with the Army of Northern Virginia enjoyed virtually no prospect of a visit to (or from) their families during the long war. Even letters to and from home dwindled as a result of Unionist occupation of Florida and the intervening territory. The Florida brigade’s isolation from home resulted in an archival vacuum still evident today, long after the soldiers’ discomfort with their fate has evaporated . The letters that usually serve modern historians as raw material do not survive for the Florida men in much volume—in fact, they never wrote them in many cases, knowing they probably would not reach home. Contemporary newspapers, which printed reports from the front, suffered from the same gap. Over many years and across many miles, Zack Waters and Jimmy Edmonds have diligently mined every conceivable source in repositories around the country in quest of traces of the Florida Confederates. Their zealous quest xii / Foreword uncovered letters, diaries, and memoirs in Atlanta, Boston, Durham, Jackson, Richmond, Ocala, Carlisle, and points between.The bibliography at the end of this book cites twenty-seven manuscript collections and twenty-four contemporary newspapers, as well as published sources both familiar and arcane. Primary material harvested in that fashion provided the grist for production of this book. Waters and Edmonds inject substance into the profiles of the officers and men of the brigade, chronicling their campaigns in their own words and in accounts by their contemporaries. The Florida brigade stood near the epicenter of many a musketry maelstrom during four long years of fighting. From Virginia’s peninsula in 1862 through the famous incursions into Maryland and Pennsylvania in 1862 and 1863 to the dreary days at Petersburg and the bitter end at Appomattox, the Floridians carved out a solid military record. In a long succession of combat experiences, the brigade’s two most famous moments came at Fredericksburg and Gettysburg. As part of the Confederate force defending Fredericksburg’s waterfront in December 1862, the Florida men came under criticism for their performance. Split into widely separated detachments, and led by junior officers when seasoned commanders went down, some of them surrendered to enemies who attacked across the Rappahannock River. Historians Waters and Edmonds conclude that at Fredericksburg their subjects “certainly set no standard for steadfast heroism.” When fighting under good leadership, and in a unified line, the brigade made a fine record on numerous other fields—including at Gettysburg. On July 2, the Florida regiments attacked with élan enemy units emplaced along the Emmitsburg Pike. A Pennsylvania major in their path wrote that he had never “seen such desperation on the part of the rebels,who hurled their columns upon us.” Civil War books continue to leap from the presses in astonishing numbers. Most of them endlessly belabor familiar topics. Yet another new title that finally , breathlessly, reveals “the real truth” about the battle of Gettysburg, or some supposedly pivotal fragment of that conflict, seems to appear every fortnight or so. Meanwhile, in the 140 years since Appomattox, fewer than a dozen books have focused on Florida’s soldiers. Much more attention has been given to the state as a Confederate commissary locker than as the source of military personnel. On the verge of the Civil War sesquicentennial, Zack Waters and Jimmy Edmonds have resurrected the Florida brigade of Lee’s army from relative Foreword / xiii oblivion. Nearly a century and a half after their campaigns, the Florida men who fought under Perry, Lang, and Finegan on the battlefields of Virginia and Maryland and Pennsylvania emerge from the shadows in the pages of this book. Robert K. Krick Fredericksburg, Virginia A Small but Spartan Band ...

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