In February
of 1864 a small force of Confederates marched eastward from Lake City to
confront a force of Union soldiers marching west from Jacksonville. They met
and fought Florida’s largest Civil War battle on February 20, with the
Confederate forces emerging victorious and the Union forces retreating to
Jacksonville. Approximately 151 Confederate soldiers died defending Lake City
that day, and they are buried in Memorial Cemetery near the old football field.
Later in
that year General Ulysses S. Grant decided upon a strategy of degrading the
South’s war making capacity by destroying the means of keeping the Confederate army
supplied. The first phase of this strategy unfolded in May of 1864 in the
Shenandoah Valley, which was considered the breadbasket of the Confederacy.
Grant sent General Philip Sheridan to the Valley with orders to completely
devastate its ability to produce agricultural products. He supposedly
instructed Sheridan to render the Valley so desolate that “a crow flying over
it would have to carry his own rations.” Sheridan followed his orders to the
letter, completely destroying everything of agricultural value in his path. He
wrote to Grant:
I have destroyed over two thousand
barns filled with wheat and hay and farming implements; over seventy mills
filled with flour and wheat; have driven in front of the army over four
thousand head of stock, and have killed and issued to the troops not less than
three thousand sheep. This destruction embraces the Luray Valley and Little
Fort Valley, as well as the main [Shenandoah] Valley.
In November
of that year General William Tecumseh Sherman marched south from the smoldering
ruins of Atlanta, Georgia, on his famous (or infamous) march to the sea. Saying
that he would “Make Georgia howl,” Sherman cut a swath of destruction 60 miles
wide and 285 miles long from Atlanta to Savannah.
Although it
was highly unlikely that Union General Truman Seymour would have wrought
similar devastation on Lake City had he been successful in reaching the town, contemporary
Lake Citians could not have known that, and they must have been very thankful
to the men who gave their lives in defense of the town.
For as long
as I can remember an obelisk has stood in front of the courthouse in Lake City
commemorating the sacrifice of those men who died defending Lake City. It is
not a statue of a Confederate general. It merely recites what the men did, who
was in charge, and gives a list of some of the fallen. I have no doubt that it
was erected at a time of hard feelings toward those “damnyankees” who turned
the South into the equivalent of a Third World country, but the war is now more
than a century in the past. There are probably more descendants of “damnyankees”
living in Lake City than there are descendants of people who lived here during
the Civil War. The time for hard feelings should be over.
Some people now want to remove that monument. I say to them that the time for hard
feelings should be over. There is a world of difference between an obelisk
commemorating men who died defending their hometown from a possible "Shermanesque" destruction and a statue of a
slave-trading Confederate general suspected of overseeing the massacre of black
Union soldiers at Fort Pillow.
I suggest
that the obelisk stay, but that something be added to it. There were other men
who died at Olustee that day, and some of them were members of the most
prestigious unit of black soldiers in the Union Army, the 54th Massachusetts
Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Indeed, the 54th Massachusetts and the 35th United
States Colored Troops fought the rearguard action which covered the retreat of
the Union forces.
There are
two blank faces on the base of the obelisk. Why not add a commemoration of the
Union troops, black and white, who gave their lives in a cause they deemed just
as important and just as noble as defending home and hearth against an invading
army?
A tribute to
the Union soldiers could go on the blank side of the obelisk visible from the
sidewalk. On the blank side facing the shrubs, it might be possible to engrave
a few lines from Thomas Hardy’s “The Man He Killed:”
"Had he
and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should
have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
"But
ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at
him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
...
"Yes;
quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat
if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown."