Joseph M. Jones Steamboat Collection
Confederates in the Newly-Captured Pensacola Fort--1861. Full of enthusiasm and military spirit, but suspecting little what trials lay before them, the Confederate volunteers pictured here are drilling at one of the forts that had been abandoned by the Federal Government, even before the momentous shot was fired at Sumter. Fort Pickens, through the forethought of Commander Henry Walke, who disobeyed his orders most brilliantly and successfully, had been saved to the Federal Government. The other batteries and forts at Pensacola, however, had been handed over to the Confederacy, and here we see the men in gray, early in '61, taking advantage of the gift. Not the new uniforms, the soldierly and well-fed appearance of the men, the stores of ammunition for the great guns.
