By the last year of the war, the armies of the Confederacy were virtually starving, as well as the citizens of the South. Food was extremely scarce and where Union troops had moved through an area, they commandeered the food supplies of the Southerners leaving them with little to sustain themselves. The contrast between Federal and Rebel soldier was also startling. Where one’s uniform or clothing fell from a pair of bony shoulders, the other’s uniform was, for the most part, well filled. But there was food to be had for the South. Unfortunately, it was in Florida where beef, pork, and other commodities were available but shipments to the starving south were difficult. The Union had pretty much blockaded every Southern port, so delivery by water was virtually nil. That left only one route—overland, through Florida scrub, palmetto, and swampland. And that’s how the famous “Florida Cow Cavalry” was born.
    The following story, “Cracker,” is based on a reading before the Florida Historical Society at Mountain Lake, on February 8, 1940, by Theodore Lesley, the grandson of one of the members of the Confederate Cattle Battalion of Florida, and from other information provided by Kyle S. VanLandingham and David Bamford, whose ancestors served in the battalion and who maintain a very informative website on the subject. I am grateful to them for their assistance.
                                        -W. R. Publisher
 

    First of all let’s define the term, “cracker.” It has, when referred to native Floridians, as having a somewhat negative meaning. Not so. The term stems from the early days when Florida cowboys and later Confederate cow cavalrymen, in lieu of the rope used by Texas cowboys, wielded a bullwhip, l0- to 12-feet long made of braided leather, and when snapped over a cow’s head, made a sharp “crack.” Thus was born the term, “cracker.”
    When the Civil War broke out, many Floridians heeded the call to arms, joining units that were shipped out to fight the Federals in places far north of their homeland. Two Florida regiments were sent to the aid of the Army of Tennessee while others went to fight with  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia.  This left  Florida  for  the  most  part,  and certainly the homes of the men “who went away to war,” unprotected from bands of roaming outlaws and army deserters.
    As the war dragged on into the final years, the South was reeling from the acute shortage of food as a result of the continuous Union sea blockade. They needed meat and other goods and they needed them badly. Thus, Florida, with her great cattle herds was ordered by the Confederate government in Richmond to furnish meat for the army of General P.G.T. Beauregard, who maintained his headquarters in Savannah, Georgia. As Theodore Lesley put it, “the state Commissary officials undertook this duty immediately and entered with great energy upon the task of assuming beeves from Florida’s prairies for the Northern drives.”
    But the Commissary Department had discovered that most able-bodied men in the state had volunteered at the first call for soldiers making them unavailable to lead the drives. To remedy this, the state turned to General Braxton Bragg, who commanded the Army of Tennessee where many Floridians were serving. Florida wanted Bragg to detail from their present duty a number of the most experienced and able-bodied cowmen to assist the state in driving the cattle herds north for shipment to the starving south. At first the request was denied, but finally great pressure from higher sources “was brought to bear on this commander” and just before the fall of 1863, he sent a number of Florida men home for this service (Note: The main character, Tree Hooker, in Rick Tonyan’s Guns of the Palmetto Plains, published by Pineapple Press in 1994, is one of those Confederate soldiers detached to Florida for “cow” service).

   Although many of the early drives were successful, the drovers faced numerous hardships and obstacles along the Florida trail. In his oral presentation to the Historical Society in 1940, Lesley describes a typical drive from Fort Meade, east of Tampa, to Savannah.
    At that time the cattlemen were loosely organized. In March 1864, the Florida Commissary  Department under the head of Major Pleasants W. White, proposed that the Confederate drovers be divided into companies, each appropriately staffed with officers, arms and equipment as any other army in the field. That same month the CSA War Department in Richmond authorized the formation of the units into a battalion, eventually consisting of nine companies with a strength of approximately 800 men. It was given the official name of lst Battalion Florida Special Cavalry, but generally referred to simply as the Cattle Battalion, Cow Cavalry, Commissary Battalion, or Munnerlyn’s Battalion.
     Its leader, Charles J. Munnerlyn, was from Decatur County, Georgia. Although born in South Carolina, he grew up in Georgia where his family moved and was educated at Emory College (now Emory University).  He studied  law,  was admitted to the bar but never practiced. In 1861 Munnerlyn was elected to the Confederate Congress as a representative from Georgia and was one who voted for the Conscript Law (the first draft in American history). The idea was met with great opposition and was probably the reason for his defeat in his reelection attempt.
    He then joined a Florida cavalry company as a private and served in that capacity until July 1864 when he was authorized by Richmond to form the Cow Cavalry battalion, operating under the Commissary Department.  As Theodore Lesley put it, “No doubt, his former political connection to the Southern capital was the reason for him to be chosen…”
    To bring order out of chaos, Major Munnerlyn’s first thought was to organize the stationing of troops at locations where they might meet any Union invading party and at the same time bring confidence to the surrounding countryside.  The first three companies that fell under his command were stationed near Brooksville where Munnerlyn also had his headquarters, with Captain Leroy C. Lesley commanding one company; his son, John T., with a company in the Tampa area; and Captain F. A. Hendry, heading the company of cow cavalrymen near Fort Meade.
    The companies were made up of those Confederate soldiers who had been detached from the Army of Tennessee, which numbered about 80 while the remainder was drawn from the local militias, many of them young boys 18 and under.  The state law at the time required every able-bodied man between a certain age (and it varied as the war went on) to belong to some command. Also, cattle owners who had previously been exempt from military service were now subject to the draft, either as “conscripts,” or “reserves.” The Cow Cavalry also included a few deserters who had been rounded up. One of the most controversial figures in the Cattle Battalion was a wealthy cattle rancher named Jacob Summerlin. A Unionist by his own admission, and declared so in a request to U.S. President Andrew Johnson for a pardon following the war, he reportedly had been selling his “beeves” to Cuba at a hefty price, rather than to the Confederacy which was paying much less per head. His operation was halted and he was “forced” to join the Cow Cavalry, serving in Captain Francis A. Hendry’s Company A in the Fort Meade area. In his request for the pardon in 1865, he maintained that he never “fired a shot at a U. S. citizen,” obviously referring to Union soldiers.
  Meanwhile, other commands soon followed until there were a total of nine. It should be noted that one of the companies, under the command of Captain Edward Lutterloh, actually served under J. J. Dickinson’s command and didn’t re-join the Cow Battalion until the end of the war.
    When not assigned to guarding and driving the Florida herds, the cow cavalrymen performed numerous other duties, including rounding up deserters, fighting the Federals out of Jacksonville and St. Augustine who were constantly attempting to stop the cattle drives, and repelling landings by the Union Navy along the rivers and coastlines of central and south Florida. Some of them conducted raids of their own against the Union forces.
     A vivid and exciting description of life on a cattle drive in Civil War Florida is contained in Rick Tonyan’s fictional account.
    Following the roundup of the Florida cattle from the scrub and palmetto range south of Kissimmee, and in the Indian River country, the “beeves” (as the cattle were called) and hogs (most drives usually included the “porkers,” would be herded north, towards Lake Monroe with the initial destination, Baldwin, then a railhead for shipment to Southern forces in Georgia and Alabama.  Along the way there would be stopovers at locations that had cow pens or corrals where the animals could be contained for the night.   The town of Enterprize (spelled then with a “z” would become the seat of Volusia County until DeLand was founded in 1882) was such a stopover.
    Mostly, the drives remained east of the St. Johns and crossed wherever drive leaders considered appropriate. In the fictional character Tree Hooker’s case, he preferred the crossing at Palatka (at that time spelled Pilatka), particularly after Captain Dickinson and his raiders freed the town of Yankee troops.  But they would be back and in the novel, Tree was forced to find other locations for crossings.

    But before reaching Baldwin, located just off present I-10 near Jacksonville, Tree learns that the railhead has been taken over by Union forces out of Jacksonville and the town virtually burned down and the railroad torn up, forcing him to drive the herd on up to the railhead at Brunswick, Georgia, another three-weeks on the trail. The Confederate victory at Olustee in north Florida in February 1864 had pretty much opened up the corridor to the starving South.
    Then it was back, round up another herd and drive north again, experiencing stampedes, bad weather, the environment, and the occasional detour around Union patrols out looking for them in an attempt to “rustle” the herd and take them to St. Augustine. Outlaws, deserters, and other bad hombres preyed on the cattle guard also.
    At the close of the roundup and cattle drive season, which generally followed the first frost that damaged the grass, the Cow Cavalry would return to normal Army routine back home, pulling picket duty, protecting the countryside from deserters and outlaws, and patrolling along the coastlines to repel Union landings. The battalion participated in several skirmishes and battles during its tenure including the Union raid at Brooksville. However, the Cow Cavalry’s most significant military action was an unsuccessful attempt in February 1865 to capture Fort Myers on the coast of southwest Florida, which had been occupied by Union troops in early 1864.
    Indeed, the Federal occupation of Fort Myers was one reason for the establishment of the Cow Cavalry, since the Federals conducted raids in the interior, attacking loyal Confederate citizens and rounding up cattle for their own use at Fort Myers.
     During one season, it is estimated that 15,000 “beeves” and hogs were delivered to Charleston, Savannah, and Confederate General Hood’s army.
   In December 1864, Munnerlyn was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and his assistant, William Footman, to major. Several months later, the war was over and Munnerlyn formally surrendered his battalion to the Federals on June 5, 1865, almost two months after Lee’s surrender at  Appomattox. Several companies had surrendered the previous month.
     In June 1865, in a final act of Confederate patriotism, Captains Lesley (son and father), and the McKay family, assisted Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin in his escape through central Florida en route to Cuba and eventually England.
    In general, the Cow Cavalry was successful in its attempt to feed the South, and although it was active for only about a year, it drove a number of beef north (the total number is not known) and succeeded in keeping at least central and south Florida free of Yankee occupation. Much of Munnerlyn’s success can be attributed to Captain  Dickinson and his band of Confederate raiders, who operating along the St. Johns, kept the Yankees off-balance and distracted.
    After the war Colonel Munnerlyn returned to Decatur County and became active in the local government. He and his wife, Eugenia Shackleford, had nine children.
     The former leader of Florida’s famous cow cavalry, died in 1898 at the age of 76.

(For additional and detailed information about the cow cavalry in Florida, go to Kyle S. VanLandingham and David Bamford’s prolific and well-documented website, http://www.geocities.com/yes_album/Special_Cavalry.html

    Special thanks to Kyle and David for their assistance and permission to use certain aspects of their website. –W.R.)

An annual cross-state ride is held the first full week in March of each year. For 2002 the dates are March 3-9. The ride begins at a site just east of Bradenton and ends in Ft. Pierce, a total of approximately 120 miles. Each day’s ride is approximately 15 to 20 miles long. The purpose of the ride is to draw attention to Florida’s horse and cattle heritage. The ride travels along right-of-way on Rt. 64 and riders have to be at designated points at certain times of the day. The annual event is sponsored by the Florida Cracker Trail Association.
     For further information about the Cow Cavalry and the history of cattle raising in Florida, read Joe A. Akerman, Jr.’s book, FLORIDA COWMAN, A History of Florida Cattle Raising, published by Florida Cattlemen’s Association, Kissimmee, Fla., 1976.

(NOTE; A circular or flyer calling on Florida citizens to “Support the Soldiers of the South” was written and posted by Major P. W. White, Chief Commissary Officer in Florida. Following the fall of Vicksburg in 1863, Florida became the main source of beef for the Confederacy. Major White posted the flyer asking the citizen cattle farmers to do their duty and provide subsistence for the south and the Confederate armies. At this time, cattlemen were reluctant to roundup and drive their cattle north because the Confederate government could not pay the high prices demanded by the cattlemen. In his letter of November 2, 1863, he defends his actions by posting the circular. His letter provides a good summary of the serious situation facing the Confederates’ food situation. While the Florida Confederate Cattle Battalion was not officially organized yet, the detailed men from the Army of Tennessee were assisting in driving cattle north to the railheads. However, Akerman, in his book, Florida Cowman, writes the following: “Although it was not intended for general circulation, the circular was posted in many spots and soon became general information. General Pierre G. T. Beauregard (who commanded the forces in the south), later asserted that it was ‘one of the major causes of the Union expedition to Jacksonville and thence to Lake City.’” (This, of course, culminated in the Battle of Olustee in February 1864, a Confederate victory that virtually drove the Union out of Northern Florida except for bases at Jacksonville and St. Augustine. – W. Russell).