The Battle of Pensacola was a 15-month armed struggle for Pensacola, Florida that began before the outbreak of the American Civil War. Confederate forces took control of the port city on the Gulf of Mexico while U.S. forces retained a foothold on nearby Santa Rosa Island. In May 1862 Confederate troops evacuated and the U.S. occupied the city.
After Abraham Lincoln was elected President, but before he took office, southern states began seceding from the United States, led by South Carolina on December 20, 1860. Around midnight of January 8, 1861, the small garrison of Fort Barrancas repelled a group of local men intent on taking the fort. Some historians suggest that these were the first shots fired by United States forces in the Civil War.
On January 10, 1861, the day Florida seceded from the Union, the garrison evacuated Fort Barrancas to the dilapidated but more defensible Fort Pickens.
Over the next several months, both sides built new cannon batteries and brought in more personnel. The opposing forces engaged in cannon duels many times but with little effect. Near the end of the year, manning stood at about 10,000 men on the Confederate side opposed by 2,000 Union soldiers around Fort Pickens.
On 9 October 1861 the commander of Confederate forces in Pensacola, General Braxton Bragg, ordered an assault on Fort Pickens that was ultimately unsuccessful. Colonel Harvey Brown, the commander of Union forces, felt this attack required an answer and planned an attack of his own. Fort McRee, the closest fortification to Fort Pickens and a road block to any attempted assault on Pensacola, was to be the primary target.
Starting on the morning of 22 November 1861, Fort McRee and the Pensacola Navy Yard were bombarded heavily by Union forces at Fort Pickens, and by two ships, Niagara and Richmond. Initially returning strong fire, the Confederates were able to hold their own and even managed to heavily damage the Richmond. However, the combined efforts of the two ships eventually led to the suppression of fire by an adjacent battery early in the afternoon with the guns of Fort McRee falling silent by 5pm. A fall in tide and the onset of darkness caused the two ships to withdraw.
After the days fight, General Bragg sent messengers out to ascertain the extent of damage to the Confederate defenses. The commander of Fort McRee, Colonel John Bordenave Villepigue, advised that his position was heavily exposed on most sides and that half his weapons had been dismounted and their powder stores unprotected. Villepigue stated he was unable to return fire and asked to sabotage the fort and withdraw. Worried about the effect the retreat would have not only on his men but the enemy as well, Bragg denied the request.
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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