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LIVING HISTORY
Childs ordered the 21-year-old lieutenant to ride into the
wilderness and escort the Florida War’s most dangerous
warlord back to the fort. Sherman chose 10 men to ride with
him as a show of force.
For the first couple of miles as he rode beside Joe, Sherman
was fairly sure he would be OK. His memoirs of decades
later only give the smallest hint of what was running through
his mind. Treachery is what he said he began to suspect. By
treachery he meant ambush, and ambush meant he must
have been thinking of gruesome ways so many others had
died. Of course, the young officer must have been scared.
But Sherman wrote his recollections of his encounter years
after his successes at Shiloh, Corinth, Meridian and Atlanta.
It was after he became the scourge of Georgia’s civilians with
his March to the Sea “to make them howl.”
It was after he burned down all those stately plantations
all the way through the Carolinas, like Coacoochee burned
down Florida’s finest. But after Sherman had dodged so
many bullets and the murderous glares of thousands, what
could he remember of the fears of that young man he was before
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he became America’s icon of total war? He only recorded
a glimpse.
MEETING RECALLED
According to his memoirs, Sherman found Coacoochee’s
little camp beside a pond. There were 15 or 16 warriors, but
Sherman couldn’t tell them apart. Where was the famous
marauder? None of them really stood out. Then a man he
described as young and handsome, but otherwise seemingly
ordinary, approached his horse.
“Me Coacoochee,” he announced as he slapped his chest.
Sherman, who started his military career during the Second Seminole War,
went on to lead Union soldiers, seen destroying parts of Atlanta, during
RICK CRARY
>> Sherman’s celebrated March to the Sea.
Coacoochee’s forces joined in the effort to turn Col. Zachary Taylor’s troops back at the Battle of Okeechobee.