Talk:Battle of Gainesville

Tommorow marks the 141st anniversary of the Battle of Gainesville. Usually my travels historical take me to events which took place centuries ago and thousands of miles away. Often I neglect searching for history in my own backyard and this battle occured less than 2 miles from it, so some of the soldiers could well have passed by or through my yard, and only a little more than a century before I was born (which, in terms of the vast tides of history, is the day before yesterday). I recall attending school here with some decendants of the Confererate combatants including one of Captain J.J. Dickinson. And also how reenactments used to be held of the February 1864 skirmish. But personal proximity and reflections aside, what I see in this battle of my hometown are two things- First it prevented our Northern countrymen from taking a vital rail depot, seizing much needed supplies and effectively cutting the state in half. As well as securing a supply base for themselves which could have been used to support a later drive on Tallahassee. And so it reaffirmed the verdict of Olustee nearly 6 months earlier. Florida would remain the only Southern state to not lose its capital during the war. Small comfort, but no small source of local pride. Second, battles such as this and Olustee along with numerous others, large and small, famous and obscure, helped reinforce in the Southern mind the myth that "One Reb can whup 10 Yanks". Of course this was utterly untrue. But it did show that a small, motivated force under capable, aggressive leadership, fighting on and for their own soil could outmaneuver, surprise and vanquish a larger, better equipped force which is overextended, fatigued, demoralized, unsupported and unaccumstomed to local climate conditions. Anyone who has spent any time in Gainesville in August knows how brutal the heat can be. The Russians have "Marshall Winters" to aid them against invaders but we have "Major Summers" :)--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 14:13, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Two battles of Gainesville

There were two engagements in Gainesville - February 1864 (Union victory) and August 1864 (Confederate vistory). The numbers of soldiers involved in both battles numbered in the hundreds. In the more northern theaters of war, neither of these would have been battles, just skirmishes. Even the Battle of Olustee, Florida, which had about 5,000 troops on each side would have been considered skirmishes in the northern theaters. So, the way I see it, either both engagements in Gainesville were battles, or both were skirmishes. A memorial sign in downtown Gainesville was erected long ago by the Daughters of the Confederacy on the second engagement, listing it as "The Battle of Gainesville." The first engagement is not mentioned as the DOC were not in the habit of erecting memorial signs for Union victories.Thomas R. Fasulo (talk) 00:40, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I do not see what point you are advocating. In my recent edit I removed the sentence "Depending on your criteria for an armed encounter between two opposing forces, there may actually have been two Battles of Gainesville" because it is unencyclopedic. The measure of whether something is a battle or not is not equivalence with what happened in the same place or in another theater. If the engagement appears in the ABPP/CWSAC list, we count it as a battle. Otherwise, different Wikipedia editors use their own criteria, sorry to say. In this case, the first engagement is not even mentioned in the Official Records, although it is listed in Dyer's Compendium as "Capture of Gainesville." The second action is documented in the OR as "AUGUST 15-19, 1864.--Union Raid on the Florida Railroad, including action (17th) at Gainesville, Fla." and there are 7 reports about it from Union officers (including J.J. Dickison--note spelling). Note that this is not the "Florida Expedition," as stated in the article. I think the article currently has a good balance here--a brief mention of the February action in Background, a more thorough description of the August. And I don't object to calling this relatively minor action a battle because I think an article named "Action at Gainesville" is too obscure to be useful to the average reader. ("Union Raid on the Florida Railroad" would be a better one, IMHO.) Hal Jespersen (talk) 15:26, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I just checked my CD copy of the Official Records and found: SERIES I--VOLUME XXXV/1 [S# 65] FEBRUARY 5-22, 1864.--The Florida Expedition. No. 2.--Reports of Brig. Gen. Truman Seymour, U. S. Army, Commanding District of Florida., an Official Report to General Turner - Chief of Staff (to General Gillmore?) and General Orders #5 to the army in Florida praising the units that went to Gainesville, captured it and held it against an assault by Dickison's cavalry. Both are dated 17 February 1864 from General Seymour. So it is listed in the Official Records. My Post Office address is Gainesville even though I live outside the city limits. I have lived here since January 1985. A lot of people here pretend there was only one skirmish in Gainesville and that was a Confederate victory. In fact, the last two years have seen a reenactment (which actually takes place west of High Springs) of "The" Battle of Gainesville. The result is most people, even many reenactors, do not know there was an earlier battle of Gainesville which was a Union victory. And somewhere around here I have a copy of the memoirs of Lawrence Jackson, Company C, 2nd Florida Cavalry who describes the fighting at Gainesville that he took part in before he headed to Olustee. See the bottom of http://battleofolustee.org/letters/jackson.htm. Thomas R. Fasulo (talk) 01:00, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, you're right. Sorry. I was searching for "Gainesville near Florida" (because there's a more CW-prominent one in Virginia) and see that this report says "Fla." Great software. :-) Hal Jespersen (talk) 01:36, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

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