By Spessard Stone
The Lower Peace River Valley, below Fort Meade and encompassing present-day Hardee County, Florida, was a region with an inordinate Union allegiance.
When the Civil War began in April 1861, Manatee County was divided by dissimilar economies and politics with the western region dominated by its merchants, sugar cane planters, and large cattle ranchers, while the eastern part, which contains present-day Hardee County, was populated mainly by yeoman farmers.
Most of the eastern Manatee County Cracker farmers appeared just not to want to be drawn into the conflict and preferred to tend their farms and market their cattle. Others had served in federalized companies during the Seminole wars and had a strong attachment to the national government.
Although some slave owners professed Union loyalty, nearly all were either fervent secessionists or ultimately sided with the cause.
Of the county's 253 slaves recorded in the 1860 Slave Schedule, there were in the east only twenty slaves, owned by five: David J. W. Boney, Dempsey D. Crews, Sr., the William Parker Estate, William Smith, and Maxfield Whidden.
Some citizens, however, ardently supported the Confederacy in the war's early stages. When the Polk County-organized Company E, 7th Florida Infantry, was mustered in the spring of 1862, area enlistees included: David Brannon, brothers Reuben Carlton and Wright Carlton, brothers John W. Hendry and James M. Hendry, brothers William J. and Stephen P. Hooker and their half-brother Lewis H. Parker, brothers William C. and David H. Platt, E. W. Thompson, brothers Maxwell and John W. Whidden, and brothers John A., James W. and Nathan Williams. Other enlistees included: William N. Hair, Company E, 8th Florida Infantry, in May 1862; George Albritton, Company B, 9th Florida Infantry, May 23, 1863. James A. Albritton, his brother, also served in the Rebel Army according to their father, Thomas H.
Four of these men died in service: David Brannon at Atlanta on July 5, 1862; David H. Platt in Tenn. about July 6, 1862; Stephen P. Hooker, January 7, 1863 in Tenn.; 2nd Lt. William J. Hooker, after November 28, 1863.
For some the cow cavalries, which gathered and drove beef cattle north and acted as home guard units, offered an option.
Capt. F. A. Hendry's Company of Fort Meade, active since September 1863, drew into its ranks William Smith of Fort Hartsuff and from the Fort Meade area (all of whom later moved into now Hardee County), Albert J. Hendry, Eli English, Everett S. Parker, and John L. Skipper (who had opposed secession).
The conscription acts of 1862 and their zealous enforcement by local Confederate agents, however, alienated many area residents. By December 1863, rebel army deserters and conscription evaders hiding in the woods between Charlotte Harbor and Lake Okeechobee were estimated at several hundred.
In December 1863, Enoch Daniel of the Charlotte Harbor area went to Union-held Key West where he raised a volunteer force, known as the Florida Rangers. Daniels, with fifteen men, moved inland to the mouth of the Myakka River on December 25 and then proceeded to Horse Creek, with a dispatch on December 27 of four men to Fort Hartsuff.
A plan to capture seven cattle drivers went awry when six deserters guided a Confederate attack on the Union boats, awaiting Daniels, who, nevertheless was later returned safely to Useppa Island on January 1, 1864.
Union authorities were not deterred from their plans by the setback. On January 5, 1864, General Woodbury was authorized to commission Henry A. Crane, formerly of Tampa, as captain of the Second Florida Rangers (Cavalry). On January 10, Fort Myers was occupied.
The Confederates' forcible removal of all inhabitants to the north side of the Peace River and repeal of the draft exemption for cattlemen on February 17 led to increased Union adherence.
The enlistment in the Second Florida Cavalry on February 22 and March 10, respectively, of two prominent men, William McCullough, formerly of Fort Meade, as 1st lieutenant of Company A, and James Dopson Green of Fort Green, as 1st lieutenant of Company B, reflected the changed situation.
Green, the political leader of eastern Manatee County, and William McClenithan of Fort Meade, on arriving at Fort Myers provided intelligence that led Capt. Crane to dispatch troops led by Green to Fort Meade where on March 21 they proceeded to the homesteads of Confederates Willoughby Tillis and Thomas Underhill, confiscating supplies at Tillis' and killing Underhill.
A second raid with over 100 men was ordered by Capt. Crane. On April 7 at Bowlegs Creek, Green and McCullough's troops skirmished with James McKay, Jr.'s forces and killed James Lanier and wounded Henry Prine, but the Union's drive to Fort Meade was checked.
Green and McCullough's commands, thereafter, participated in the May 6-7 occupation of Tampa.
The Confederate response to the Fort Meade incursions had been on May 11 an order to "drive the deserters and tories before you."
After receiving intelligence of the mistreatment of Union families at Fort Meade, a 212-man force of refugee troops and colored troops of companies D, G and I, crossed the Caloosahatchee River on May 14.
Green with fifty men went in advance and took possession of the fort without meeting any resistance on May 19. After seizing considerable forage and supplies and destroying the barracks, the Second Florida left. With seventy women and children refugees and over one thousand head of beef cattle, they returned to Fort Myers on May 27.
Enlisting from this area in the Second Florida from December 1863 to March 1865 were the following men, of some of whom had previously served in the Confederate Army:
From Fort Meade enrollees included: Thomas J. Hilliard; Francis A. Ivey; William McClenithan Sr. and sons Tobias, William Jr., and Norman; William McCullough.
Fort Green area enlistees included: James D. Green; James M. Hendry and his brothers, Charles Hendry and Robert C. Hendry, and their cousin, Archibald W. Hendry.
Joining from Fort Hartsuff were: David J. W. Boney; brothers Calvin C. and John Collier, Jr.; brothers William M. and Dempsey D. Crews, Jr.; brothers William N. and Streety A. Hair; Berryan Summerall (deserted); Edward Whidden; John L. Whidden; Maxwell Whidden and his brothers Jesse Whidden, James E. Whidden and William Whidden; Wade Hampton Whidden and his sons Charles H., David D., Dempsey N. and John H.
From Troublesome Creek came: Reuben Carlton and his brother Albert Carlton. Lily enrolled: James A. Albritton, Henry Messer, and the Platt brothers: Joshua A., Lewis B., John W., and Nathan C.
From Horse Creek came: George C. Mizell, brothers Henry and Riley Summeralls (deserted), and Thomas L. Thigpin, and from now Brownville: Simeon B. and George W. Williams (sons of Rowland) and Thomas E. Williams (deserted, son of William A.).
(Buried in Hardee County are also these Union men, who probably moved here after the war: Nathan Lowe, William Lowe, Daniel May, James M. Powell.)
Manatee County was in a crisis. Sheriff J. J. Addison in July 1864 lamented that over half of the taxpayers had gone over to the Yankees, as had a county commissioner, while two other commissioners had been taken prisoners.
Of the four-man county commission, Jesse Alderman of Fort Green and Henry Langford of Fort Hartsuff had in fact deserted to the Union while John H. Hollingsworth was believed to have been captured but later managed to resume his office with L. P. Johnson.
After May 1864, the Union forces redirected their energies to raids at Brooksville in July and Manatee in August.
Representative of the refugees were two men from Lily, Thomas H. Albritton and John M. Bates.
Albritton, a Union sympathizer, only after being threatened with death, had, about January 1865, sought protection at Fort Myers where he worked as a teamster in the Quartermaster Dept. While gone, the Confederate authorities drove off his beef cattle, tore up his place, and injured his orange trees.
John M. Bates, to avoid Confederate conscription, had laid out in the woods before going with Nathan C. Platt to Fort Myers in 1864. There Bates was employed tending horses until Fort Myers was abandoned when he was sent to Sea Horse Key where his family joined him. He suffered losses of 25 head of cattle and 100 hogs.
Illness and then internal dissension developed between the white refugee families and colored troops, as well as alienation among the loyalist soldiers and their Yankee officers.
Meanwhile, the cow cavalry, with Hendry's company judged the most efficient and reliable, had reasserted the authority of the Confederates in the Peace River Valley.
The emboldened Confederates subsequently on February 20, 1865 launched an attack on Fort Myers, which was repulsed. Thereafter, a holding order prevailed until the South's surrender.
This article, a revised version of Tories of the Lower Peace River Valley, was published in The Herald-Advocate (Wauchula, Fla.) of November 25, 1999.
April 24, 2001 & links = October 18, 2001