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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)
