Fort Pickens Relief Expedition of 1861: Lt. John C. Tidball's Journals

Fort Pickens Relief Expedition of 1861: Lt. John C. Tldball's Journals Eugene C. Tidball Along the sweep of the Gulf Coast from the Florida panhandle to New Orleans, there were several good ports in 1 861, but Pensacola Harbor, protected from Gulf storms by forty-mile-long Santa Rosa Island, was considered to be the best. On the island's western extremity, commanding the entrance to the harbor, stood Fort Pickens. Fort Barrancas was on the mainland a mile and a half across the Bay from Fort Pickens; the Pensacola Navy Yard, also on the mainland, was a mile east of Fort Barrancas. Fort Pickens was built in 1 834 to protect this strategic harbor from attack by foreign naval forces, and its guns pointed out to sea.' In 1 86 1 , when Pensacola Harbor was threatened, the hostile forces came not by sea but by land. On January 6, pursuant to orders issued by the leaders of the secession convention in Tallahassee, the Florida militia seized the arsenal near Chattahoochee; one day later, across the state at St. Augustine, a company of 1 25 state artillerymen marched on Fort Marlon and demanded its surrender in the name of the governor of Florida. The entire garrison, consisting of one sergeant, surrendered forthwith. The only U.S. Army force in the Pensacola area at that time was Company G, 1 st United States Artillery, stationed at the post of Barrancas Barracks, near Fort Barrancas on the mainland. In the absence of the company commander, ist Lt. Adam Slemmer was in charge of the company.2 By January 7, rumors had reached Slemmer that the citizens of 1 J. H. Gilman. "With Slemmer in Pensacola Harbor," Battles and Leaders ofthe Civil War, vol. ? (New York, 1884), 32?; Edwin C. Bearss, Historic Structure Report, Fort Pickens, Historical Data Section, 1821-1895 (Denver: U.S. Department ofthe Interior, Historic Preservation Division, 1983), 42. 2 John E. Johns, Florida During the Civil War (Gainsville: Univ. of Florida Press, 1963), 23-24; Gilman, "With Slemmer in Pensacola Harbor," 26. Slemmer, a Pennsylvanian, graduated twelfth in his class at West Point in 1850. After graduation, he served in the Seminole Wars and in California. Bespectacled and professorial in appearance, he returned to the Military Academy to teach from 1855 to 1859. Mark M. Boatner III, Civil War Dictionary (New York: David McKay. 1988), 764-65. Civil War History, Vol. xlii. No. 4 © 1996 by The Kent State University Press FORT PICKENS RELIEF EXPEDITION323 Florida and Alabama intended to take possession of the fortifications in the harbor, and he urgently requested instructions from Washington. On the morning of January 9, Slemmer received in the mail an order from General in Chief Winfield Scott directing him to "do the utmost in your power to prevent the seizure of either of the forts in Pensacola Harbor by surprise or assault." Slemmer decided that with his limited resources he could hold but one fort, and after consulting with the commander of the Navy Yard, on January 10, he removed his command of forty-six men, along with thirty unarmed ordinary seamen, from Barrancas Barracks to Fort Pickens. It was a "bold and well executed move on the part of Slemmer; more difficult in every way than [Maj. Robert] Anderson's move from Moultrie to Sumter," in the words of John C. Tidball, who knew Slemmer at West Point, and who was soon to be a member to the expedition to relieve Slemmer and his beleaguered company.3 Slemmer was appalled at the condition of the Fort. There was not a single embrasure shutter to be found, and the entire installation was in "a very dilapidated condition, not having been occupied since the Mexican War."4 Two days after crossing to the Fort, Slemmer and his men stood by helplessly as the U.S. flag was lowered at the Pensacola Navy Yard. The eighty-one officers and men in the fort were now all that stood between the secessionist forces and their complete domination of Pensacola Bay. Without Fort Pickens, the secessionists realized, the best natural harbor on the Gulf of Mexico would be useless to the South. That same day...