Review - " A Wilderness of Destruction: Confederate Guerrillas in East and South Florida, 1861-1865 " by Zack Waters

[A Wilderness of Destruction: Confederate Guerrillas in East and South Florida, 1861-1865 by Zack C. Waters (Mercer University Press, 2023). Hardcover, 2 maps, photos, illustrations, footnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:238/264. ISBN:978-0-88146-881-6. $39]

In step with the rest of the seceded South, Florida responded to the outbreak of Civil War in 1861 by quickly mobilizing sizable volunteer forces. However, amid the urgency, manpower was only one of a great many concerns. Florida's particular situation posed military challenges unique to the cis-Mississippi states of the newly formed CSA. In addition to lacking efficient rail connection to the rest of the Confederacy, Florida's comparatively tiny population of military-age men eligible to bear arms had to defend an immense land area circumscribed by over 800 miles of coastline. Possessing no navy of consequence and far too few heavy guns to mount a credible coastal defense, the state also struggled to obtain allotments of weapons and ammunition seized from U.S. forts and arsenals located outside its borders. Worse, as demonstrated by numerous disasters suffered along the Confederate seaboard during the war's first twelve months, the combined operations learning curve of Union land and naval forces was unexpectedly shallow. Robbed of the manpower, resources, and time necessary to render Florida forts and ports defensible, a number of key points had to be abandoned without a fight.

Making Florida's rapidly deteriorating position even more dire, the string of early-1862 military catastrophes in the West and critical threats to the Confederate capital in the East led the central government in Richmond to further strip the state's already bare stock of defenders in order to bolster the rebel nation's front line forces. Thus, through necessity (but also to a lesser extent by tradition) Florida's state government turned to guerrilla warfare for home defense. On a national level, the Confederate Congress's April 1862 passage of the Partisan Ranger Act sought to apply structure and legality to guerrilla warfare initiatives, all of which held the potential of spiraling out of control. Unfortunately for Floridians, the turn to irregular warfare and its dire consequences to lives, livelihoods, property, and infrastructure transformed parts of the state into wastelands. Zack Waters's A Wilderness of Destruction: Confederate Guerrillas in East and South Florida, 1861-1865 offers Civil War readers the first comprehensive survey of the character and scale of irregular warfare in the state. Missouri and Kentucky's guerrilla wars still garner the lion's share of scholarly and popular attention, but Waters clearly demonstrates that Florida's inner war was similarly destructive and just as widespread.

After presenting the background context referenced above, Waters immediately jumps into a narrative of events primarily descriptive in nature. Arranged chronologically into half-yearly chapters, which are further subdivided by city, town, county, or operation, the material is well organized for conveying both knowledge of events and patterns. Enormous strides have been made in the study of the Civil War's irregular conflicts, but that progress has failed to foster consensus when it comes to categorizing irregular fighters. While some scholars have developed arguably convincing models for differentiation, others reject those formulations or argue that categories are neither needed nor helpful in furthering overall understanding. Waters himself adopts the more inclusive approach, covering military actions ranging from bushwhacker-style ambushes and raids to company and battalion-scale operations conducted by regularly enrolled units (independently or in cooperation with irregular forces). Interestingly, as gleaned from Waters's accounts, small Florida bands seem to have frequently possessed a degree of artillery support mostly absent from similarly fought actions elsewhere in the country. It does appear that Florida's guerrillas were integrated into formal military structures in ways less commonly found in other Confederate states.

During the war, Union forces proved capable of successfully landing anywhere along Florida's rivers and coast. Once ashore, they seized cities and towns, disrupted key economic activities such as lumber and salt production, and liberated slaves. Many of the last filled the ranks of newly organized black units that in turn conducted military operations within the state. However, with priorities consistently placed elsewhere, Union forces rarely possessed the military or political will to hold captured posts on a permanent basis. Some strategic points, Jacksonville being the prime example, were occupied and abandoned on numerous occasions. Indeed, while its focus is on the guerrilla conflict, Waters's narrative contributes significantly to our knowledge of the wartime experiences of a number of contested Florida population centers, including Cedar Key, Tampa, St. Augustine, and the aforementioned Jacksonville.

Curiously, information provided in the book about individual bands is largely limited to scattered recordings of their activities. Several guerrilla chieftains are named, but not much about their backgrounds (beyond the South Carolina origins of several) is revealed in the text. Information about the backgrounds and motivations of the groups of men they led is similarly sparse. Perhaps the source material just isn't there to make a thorough job of it. Much of the documented information about Confederate guerrillas and their actions is provided by Union sources. This is to a large degree expected, and, within that context, the author properly frames the challenges inherent to the process of arriving at the closest approximation of the truth in light of the typically extreme bias and hyperbole involved in contemporary reporting of guerrilla activities and their results. Also as expected given their historical and historiographical stature, the operations of the band led by Capt. J.J. Dickison are most thoroughly recounted in the text.

Readers of this study might reasonably reach the conclusion that Florida's guerrilla war was the Civil War's most successful. However, while Waters's text demonstrates that guerrilla bands proved to be consistently effective in hemming Union occupation forces within city and town environs, it is also made clear that organization and support networks were not sufficient for sustained coordination. Additionally, with Union forces constantly coming and going depending on shifting priorities determined by those higher up the chain of command, attributing Confederate successes to their own actions or simply to enemy indifference becomes, in many cases, impossible to clearly assess. In the state's interior, Guerrilla fighters clearly contributed to maintaining open channels for driving Florida cattle northward to depots that would distribute beef to Confederate armies increasingly desperate for fresh food supplies. As Waters maintains, this was arguably their most strategically significant achievement. Nevertheless, there is much debate in the literature over what effect the closing of the Mississippi River by Union forces in mid-1863 had on cis-Mississippi beef supplies, with some arguing that the overall impact of early-war enemy occupation of western theater breadbasket regions was far more significant than the loss of real and potential Texas beef deliveries. Either way, from mid-war onward, the Confederate commissary was heavily dependent on Florida beef herds and, with vital assistance from Confederate guerrillas, detached conventional forces, and specialized "Cow Cavalry," those cattle shipments continued to get through despite scattered and disorganized Union attempts to establish inland blocking points. While irregulars played a major role in sustaining this vital commissary pipeline, Waters is almost certainly correct in opining that Union failure to devote the resources and leadership necessary to conclusively end the transit of Florida beef herds was a significant strategic misstep, one that would have taken relatively little additional effort to rectify.

As the book also details, Florida's pro-Confederate irregular war faced many critical internal challenges. History consistently demonstrates the reliance of guerrilla movements upon local support, but Waters's narrative reveals time and time again that white Unionists and freedom-seeking slaves both provided Union naval landing parties and occupation forces with critical intelligence regarding the activities and locations of Confederate resources, units, and individuals. Those anti-Confederate groups provided more than just information, too. Organized into military units, they served in both occupation and counterguerrilla roles. Interestingly, Waters claims that as the war progressed relations between white Floridian Unionist fighters and black soldiers, which might have been expected to improve under shared service, instead badly deteriorated, causing heavy demoralization and desertion in the former and diminished overall operational capacity. This hindrance to the Union war effort in the state is brought up on multiple occasions in the text, though not accompanied by examples. In the end, Florida could not escape the progressive civil, economic, and social breakdowns common to regions and states where divided home fronts and guerrilla conflicts were most pervasive. As the war dragged on, increasingly large numbers of draft evaders and army deserters added further fuel to the fire. As the book's title suggests, the irregular war eventually produced "a wilderness of destruction" that Florida's thinly dispersed Confederate and state militia defenders could not hope to manage let alone prevent.

Amid the volume's many strengths are some very visible drawbacks. The most noticeable flaw lies in the text's editing. Another pass-through to correct rampant typos, spelling mistakes, missing words, etc. was badly needed. Additionally, the two bare-bones maps fail to pinpoint the locations of a great many obscure places and events described in the text. Though unfortunate, these are disappointments that won't deter an overall positive recommendation.

In its lengthy investigation of the breadth, character, and significance of the irregular conflict in the state, Zack Waters's A Wilderness of Destruction: Confederate Guerrillas in East and South Florida, 1861-1865 represents a major step forward in filling remaining gaps in the military historiography of Civil War Florida. Also, for those seeking to arrive at a more aggregated understanding of the overall impact of guerrilla warfare on the Civil War's home and fighting fronts, this volume adds a fresh and important piece to the puzzle.