September 27, 1864 "Marianna Day"
September 27, 1864
Marianna’s Urban Battlefield
Traffic flows across site of Civil War
battle
By: Dale Cox
Aerial View of the Battle of Marianna Site
Photo by Dale Cox
Thousands of cars pass each day over the ground where more than one hundred years ago, hundreds of men fought and bled. Much of the scene of the 1864 Battle of Marianna is now covered by the pavement of a four-lane highway.
The battle was fought on September 27, 1864, when hundreds of Union soldiers rode overland on horseback from Pensacola and attacked the city at high noon. The raid was the deepest penetration of Florida by Union troops during the entire Civil War. Several participants, who had fought in a number of other battles, described the fight at Marianna as the “most intense” for its size of any they experienced during the war.
The Battle of Marianna actually began about three miles northwest of town at
the place where the old Campbellton Road crossed Hopkins’ Branch, a narrow
sluggish stream. Colonel Alexander B. Montgomery and two companies of
Confederate cavalry tried to hold off the advancing Union soldiers here,
hoping to stop them from reaching town.
The effort failed and Montgomery and his outnumbered soldiers were driven
back from their positions along the branch. Fighting as they went, they fell
back to Marianna. When they reached the edge of the city, most of the
Confederates rode back into town via an old road that followed the route of
today’s Kelson Avenue before turning onto North Caledonia Street and coming
back up to the center of town.
The Union commander, Brigadier General Alexander Asboth, thought he might be able to cut them off by dividing his force and sending some of his men along the old road after them, while he and the rest of the Northern soldiers charged up LaFayette Street. When he reached what is now the intersection of LaFayette and Russ Streets, however, he found Colonel Montgomery and his cavalry waiting for him.
The first group of Union soldiers, men from the 2nd Maine Cavalry, charged, but the Confederate horsemen opened fire and drove them back. Infuriated, Asboth called out “For Shame! For Shame!” to his men as they retreated. He then ordered a second group of soldiers, also from the 2nd Maine Cavalry, to charge and led them himself. The scene of all this fighting was in LaFayette Street directly in front of today’s Jackson County Chamber of Commerce offices. Over the years the street has been widened and pavement now covers the entire area where the two forces battled.
Asboth’s second charge came on so fast that the Confederates did not have time to reload their muzzle-loading weapons. Unable to fight back, Montgomery and his men retreated up LaFayette Street with the Union soldiers hot on their heels.
About half way between the Russ Street intersection and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, however, the local residents had placed a wall of wagons, logs and other debris across the street. The Confederate cavalrymen rode over and around this barricade and continued to retreat, the Union soldiers following right behind them. What Asboth and his men did not know, however, was that scores of local men and boys were hiding behind fences, shrubs and trees along both sides of the street, ready to open fire as soon as he and his soldiers passed between them.
No sooner had the head of the Union force made it past the barricade than did the local residents open fire on them. A Northern soldier later remembered that the ambush mowed down “every officer and man at the head of the column.” General Asboth was shot twice, once in the jaw and once in the arm and knocked from his horse. Other officers and men were severely wounded as well, some receiving as many as eight gunshot wounds.
The Southern forces were too outnumbered, though, and their success did not last long. Part of the Union force continued to pursue Colonel Montgomery and his cavalry down the street, around the courthouse and down Jackson Street to the old bridge. The colonel was captured at the southeast corner of courthouse square (then actually a circle) when he was thrown from his horse. Quite a few of his men made it to the river, however, where they tore up the floorboards of the wooden bridge to keep the Union troops from crossing after them. A sharp fight took place at the bridge, but Asboth’s men were unable to force their way across.
Back on West LaFayette Street, however, things quickly deteriorated. The local volunteers were cornered in the cemetery and yard surrounding St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, but refused to surrender. For a time it appeared they might actually be able to hold out, but the Union second in command, Colonel L.L. Zulavsky ordered a bayonet charge through the cemetery and finally forced them to surrender. Several were killed and wounded when some of the Union troops fired on them after they had given up, but officers quickly brought the scene under control.
Despite the surrender in the cemetery, a few of the Confederates barricaded themselves inside the church and two nearby homes and refused to come out. When they kept shooting at his soldiers, Colonel Zulavsky ordered the buildings burned to drive them out. Four men died in the fire that swept through St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.
Eighteen men lost their lives in the Battle of Marianna, either killed outright or mortally wounded. Another thirty-five were wounded. Forty-four of the Confederates were also captured and carried away to Northern prisons, while eight of the Union soldiers were captured and eventually sent to Andersonville prison in Georgia.
Ironically, much of the scene where this bloody fighting took place is now
buried under asphalt pavement. Over the years LaFayette Street has been
widened to the point that the four-lane highway now covers virtually the
entire scene of the Battle of Marianna, with the exception of the grounds of
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. The quiet cemetery behind the church still
appears much as it did on the afternoon of September 27, 1864, when local
men and boys fought atop the graves of their ancestors in a failed effort to
protect their town. The memory of their courage echoes down through the
years, however, even as cars and trucks rumble past across the site where
much of the fighting took place.
Editor’s Note: Writer and historian Dale Cox is a native of the Jackson County community of Two Egg. The son of Clinton and Pearl Cox, he attended Malone High School and Chipola College before going on to work for more than twenty-five years as a journalist and newsroom manager. He recently retired from The New York Times Company. The author of the new book, The Battle of Marianna, Florida, he divides his time between the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and the piney woods of Jackson County.
2009 Marianna Day Reenactment Photos >>>> [NOTE: Off Site Page]
Grave of Captain Henry J. Robinson
Greenwood Club Cavalry
Sons of Confederate Veterans National -
Army of Tennessee
Florida Division
