The Battle of Gainesville was an American Civil War engagement fought on August 17, 1864, when a Confederate force defeated Union detachments from Jacksonville, Florida. The result of the battle was the Confederate occupation of Gainesville for the remainder of the war.
Gainesville, site of a railroad junction and depot in north central Florida, was the scene of a skirmish on February 14, 1864. About 50 Union troops entered the city intending to capture two trains. Company H of the 2nd Florida Cavalry with 130 men attempted to repulse this raid, but were defeated by the Union force, which successfully returned to Jacksonville after holding the town.
...especially desires to praise Capt. George E. Marshall, Co. G. 40th Mass. Mounted Volunteers, and his small command of forty-nine men who captured and held Gainesville for fifty-six hours, receiving and repulsing an attack from more than double his force, and, after fulfilling his mission successfully, returning to the designated place of rendevous [sic].
On August 15, Col. Andrew L. Harris of the 75th Ohio Mounted infantry left Baldwin with 173 officers and men from the Seventy-Fifth Ohio Volunteer Infantry. The Union troops on the way destroyed a picket post on the New River. At Starke, the Union troops were joined by the 4th Massachusetts Cavalry and some Florida Unionists.
The Union troops arrived in Gainesville on August 17, to find the town occupied by one company of the Second Florida Cavalry. The Battle of Gainesville took place on August 17, in the town square; many townspeople viewed the fighting from the windows of the nearby Beville house.
They were attacked from the rear by soldiers of the 2nd Florida Cavalry under the command of Captain John Jackson Dickison (Companies H and F), supported by local militia, elements of 5th Florida Cavalry Battalion, and a small artillery battery of two cannons. Dickison's men numbered about 290, although only 175 entered Gainesville and engaged in the fighting.
The Union troops were taken by surprise and had not fully deployed when the Confederate attack began. After about two hours Col. Harris gave the order to retreat from Gainesville; the Confederates continued to close in on the disorganized Union columns. Union losses numbered 28 dead, 5 wounded, 86 missing or unaccounted for, 188 captured, 260 horses and a 12-pound howitzer. The Confederates lost three killed and five wounded, of whom two died the next day. About 40 Union troops, including Colonel Harris, escaped. He reported his column was destroyed by a large Confederate force of 600–800 men and three cannon.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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