"Leave Nothing the Enemy Can Use": Impacts of a Confederate Raid

Author(s): Brianna Patterson

Year: 2018

Summary

In March of 1862, Confederate forces in Pensacola, Florida, decided to abandon the area to the Union forces occupying Fort Pickens, situated across Pensacola Bay. To keep all useful assets from the Union Army, the Confederates enacted what would later be known as a "scorched earth policy." As part of this strategy, Lieutenant-Colonel William Beard and his raiding party set out on March 10th to destroy all essential property associated with the lumber industry along the Blackwater and Escambia rivers. The raid is frequently interpreted by historians who focus solely on the destruction that occurred and the blow this dealt to the booming lumber industry of Santa Rosa and Escambia counties. Though this interpretation rings true, it is not entirely encompassing. Using landscape theory, this paper widens the interpretation of the event by incorporating the destroyed sawmills into the more intricate lumber landscape leading up to and following the raid. 

Cite this Record

"Leave Nothing the Enemy Can Use": Impacts of a Confederate Raid. Brianna Patterson. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, New Orleans, Louisiana. 2018 ( tDAR id: 441579)

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Keywords

Temporal Keywords
Civil War

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 1001