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The Chamber publishes these events on our Event Calendar as a service for our members and community based on information that is provided to us.
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Living History, Civil War - Raid on the Salt Works
Date and Time
Sunday Nov 24, 2019
10:00 AM - 4:00 PM ESTNov 24, 2019 10am-4pm
Location
Pioneer Florida Museum & Village 15602 Pioneer Museum Road Dade City
Fees/Admission
$10
Contact Information
352-567-0262
Living History, Civil War - Raid on t...Description
Live entertainment throughout the day, great food, traditional craft demonstrations, museum village open with docents in period attire. Bring your lawn chairs, grab your spot for the reenactment, lunch from the concession stand, enjoy music from the 7 lbs of Bacon Mess Band prior to the battle. Raid on the Salt Works 2:00 p.m. Saturday & Sunday It’s November 1864, the anaconda grip of the US Military is choking the life out of the Confederacy. Lee is bottled up in Richmond and Petersburg along with the Florida Brigade, inlcuding remnants of the 2nd, 5th and 8th Florida. Atlanta fell back in July and Sherman is now marching unchecked through Georgia, burning everything in his army’s path. The tattered remnants of the Confederacy’s Army of Tennessee, including the dwindling ranks of the 4th, 6th and 7th Florida, are on one final and fateful march north, about to be sacrificed at the beastworks outside Franklin and Nashville. On the Gulf Coast of Florida Union raids are becoming more frequent and ferocious. Ever since the fall of Vicksburg in July of 1863, Confederate armies are now cut off from supply routes across the Mississippi. They are increasingly more dependent on the goods Florida produces like cattle, turpentine, citrus and salt. Salt was the lifeblood of any mid-19th Century army. It was one of the only ways to preserve food and was also used in curing leather. In New Orleans, at the beginning of the war, a 200-pound sack of salt cost 50 cents. By 1862, it was up to $25. A Confederate private made $11 per month. A salt works operation near Saint Joseph’s Bay, near present-day Panama City was capable of producing 150 bushels of salt per day but that operation was discovered and destroyed in 1862. The Pioneer Florida Museum & Village’s 2019 Living History and battle reenactment follows the opening moments of various operations by the US Navy, Marines and infantry companies from many of the newly-formed United States Colored Troops (USCT) regiments against salt works operations between Cedar Key and Tampa Bay. The way most raids would transpire was Union troops would show up, chase off the salt workers and perhaps some militia or Home Guards, then proceed to wreck the operation. In the museum’s 2019 scenario, lead elements from some the aforementioned units clash with salt workers and a handful of armed guards, chasing them through a nearby rail station, a patch of corn stalks and off the field. As the Union troops are wrecking the salt works operation, a hastily assembled group of Confederate units that might have included dismounted elements of the 2nd and 5th Florida Cavalry as well as members of the 1st Florida Reserve, Home Guards and state militia, rallies to the scene. The Confederates drive off the Union vanguard and re-take the salt works but no sooner are they repairing the salt works operation than Union artillery opens up. Full companies step into line and a pitched battle ensues as each side rushes any available units to the area. In our 2019 presentation Raid on the Salt Works, the confrontation becomes more about pride than about salt. Weary of hit-and-run tactics, the Union soldiers want to stand toe-to-toe with their Confederate counterparts and take their measure. With the walls of their new nation collapsing around them, the desperate Confederates fight ever more fanatically. Who will prevail in this test of wills?
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