Sherman issued special orders that set aside a portion of Florida as designated territory for runaway and freed former slaves who had accompanied his command during its March to the Sea. In January 1865, Union General William T. Tallahassee became the second-last Confederate state capital to fall to the Union army. As southern morale suffered, deserters from both sides took refuge in Florida, often attacking Confederate units and looting farms. However, wartime conditions made it easier for slaves to escape, and many of them became useful informers to Union commanders. But there was little fighting in Florida, the only major conflict being the Battle of Olustee near Lake City in February 1864. On the outbreak of war, the Confederates seized many of the state’s army camps, though the Union retained control of the main seaports. Its chief importance was in food supply to the south, and support for blockade-runners, with its long coastline full of inlets, hard to patrol. With the smallest population, nearly half of them slaves, Florida could only send 15,000 troops to the Confederate States Army. Confederate soldiers in Pensacola, Floridaįlorida joined the Confederate States of America at the beginning of the Civil War, as the third of the original seven states to secede from the Union, following Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 election.
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