ABC Wednesday: "B" is for Battlefield

This is the sign to the Olustee Battlefield, a state battlefield park between Jacksonville and Lake City, Florida. On February 20, 1864 a Union expeditionary force out of Jacksonville met a Confederate "army" of roughly equal strength here in the pine woods near the small railroad depot of Olustee. Over the course of a few hours that afternoon over 2,000 soldiers became casualties out of the 10,000 total men engaged. This makes Olustee one of the costliest battles of the entire American Civil War in terms of percentage of casualties per man engaged. Even though it was a small battle by Civil War standards (there were well over 100,000 men at Gettysburg the previous year in 1863 in Pennsylvania) it was still by far the largest battle fought in Florida and helped buy the Confederacy a little more time before the untilmate defeat in 1865. Florida best served the Confederacy by supplying vast quantities of beef, salt, and other food products to the Confederate armies further north, though over 14,000 Floridian men did serve under arms - including many of my ancestors, some of whom fought on this very battlefield. I grew up just 15 minutes away by car and could hear the cannons each year when they would hold the annual reenactment. I still enjoy going out every year to watch the reenactment, visit the camps and suttlers, and enjoy a trip back in time.