[FHStoday] TODAY IN FLORIDA HISTORY FOR AUGUST 31

[Nick Wynne]

TODAY IN FLORIDA HISTORY
AUGUST 31
1863            The Federal bark, Gem of the Sea, captured the Confederate 
sloop, Richard, which was owned by John Mooney and James Fuell of West 
Florida.
                 News was received in Tallahassee that men of the 5th and 
8th Florida Infantry Regiments captured at Gettysburg were imprisoned on 
Johnston's Island.

1864            The following Florida units participated in Confederate 
General John Bell Hood's ill-fated attempt to break the lines of General 
William T. Sherman at Jonesboro (south of Atlanta):

                 Florida Marion Artillery
                 Florida 1st Cavalry Regiment
                 Florida 1st (Reorganized) Infantry Regiment
                 Florida 3rd Infantry Regiment
                 Florida 4th Infantry Regiment
                 Florida 6th Infantry Regiment
                 Florida 7th Infantry Regiment

         An excerpt from the civil war diary of Hiram Smith Williams, who 
settled in Rockledge in 1872 and who served two terms as a state senator in 
the 1880s.  Williams was a member of the 40th Alabama Regiment and was a 
combat engineer during the Atlanta Campaign.
                 "The ordeal is past and J[ohn] B[ell] Hood is gone 
under.  Went to East P[oin]t yesterday morning, remained there all day, and 
this morning early came down to Jonesboro.  Our infantry reached here, and 
charged the enemy in their works as usual, only to be repulsed with heavy 
loss.  This horrid useless waste of human life, this wholesale butchery is 
terrible and should damn the authors through all time."
                 "Our company reached the place just as the fight 
commenced, but did not see much of it.  Had a hearty laugh at one of our 
Lieutenants, who was carrying a musket and teakettle.  Directly a shell 
burst near him and away went the gun while he struck out in a dog trot.  A 
few minutes after another shell bursted and a piece or rather spent 
fragment struck him on the leg, when away went the teakettle and away went 
the Lieutenant, who was seen no more untilwe were far out of danger.  Thank 
god, I have stronger nerves than that."
                 "Our boys have been repulsed all along the line, and I see 
it requires no military man to tell that Atlanta is gone."
                 Lewis N. Wynne and Robert A. Taylor (Editors), This War So 
Horrible:  The Civil War Diary of Hiram Smith Williams 
(Tuscaloosa:  University of Alabama Press).

1872            Charles H. pearce, minister of the African-Methodist 
Episcopal Church of Tallahassee, was nominated as a candidate for a third 
Florida Senate term by Governor Harrison Reed at the Leon County Republican 
Convention.

1906            Elizabeth Hutchinson Broward, eight child of Governor and 
Mrs. Napoleon Broward, became the first child born to a sitting governor in 
the State of Florida.  She was born in the Brown House on Monroe Street in 
Tallahassee.

1912            The Socialist Party of Florida, meeting in convention in 
Ocala, nominated Thomas W. Cox as its candidate for governor.