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Their evident object was to lure us on to their own stronghold, and had we fallen into the trap, it would perhaps have resembled, on a smaller scale, the Olustee of the following year. With a good deal of reluctance, however, I caused the recall to be sounded, and, after a slight halt, we began to retrace our steps.
He had but just returned from the rebel prisons where he had been since the unfortunate battle of Olustee. The hasty flight of the Third division opened the flank and rear of the First division to the charge of the rebels, who now rushed on with redoubled fury and with demoniac yells, carrying everything before them. The First division fell back, but not in the disorder and confusion of the other.
Well, if that is all, it is a lucky escape." We little dreamed that on that very day the march toward Olustee was beginning. The battle took place next day, and I add one more extract to show how the news reached Beaufort. "February 23, 1864. "There was the sound of revelry by night at a ball in Beaufort last night, in a new large building beautifully decorated.
"Come on den les go," he answered, and drove off. They passed through Olustee, then Sanderson, Macclenny and finally Baldwin. It was raining and they were about 20 miles from their destination, Jacksonville, but they drove on. They reached Jacksonville and were taken to a house that stood on Liberty street, near Adams. White people had been living there but had left before the Northern advance.
He said: "There have been men base enough to propose to me to return to slavery our black warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee, and thus win the respect of the masters they fought. Should I do so, I should deserve to be damned in time and eternity. Come what will, I will keep my faith with friend and foe." He meant never to be misunderstood on this point.
But victories like Olustee, Florida, barren in '64, could not avail them now, even if they had the troops to win them. The lower South was now as much isolated as the trans-Mississippi. Between its blockaded and garrisoned coast on one side and its sixty-mile swath of devastation through the heart of Georgia on the other it might as well have been a shipless island.
The latter theory was strengthened by the fact that, when General Seymour reoccupied Jacksonville, the following year, he took with him twenty thousand men instead of one thousand, and the sanguinary battle of Olustee found him with too few. Out on Picket
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