Captain Loomis L. Langdon
Commanding Battery M, First Artillery,
on revisiting the Battlefield

Captain Loomis L. Langdon.
From a carte de viste by Sam Cooley, Photographer to the 10th Army Corps,
made in Beaufort,S.C.. The CDV is signed by Langdon and dated April 15, 1864.
Our thanks to Michael Wilson, (mwzouave@hotmail.com) who owns the CDV.
Colonel Loomis L. Langdon - later in life - about 1890.
Florida State Archives Photographic Collection

Here are two letters from Captain Loomis L. Langdon after the war in which he describes seeing of the Olustee battlefield in 1873, and his attempts 1879 to obtain government assistance in reburying the dead.

"In the fall of 1873, while traveling northward through Florida, I saw the battlefield from a platform of the train. All that could be seen of the monument described above were parts of two sides of a weather-stained and brokendown fence, and even this would have been passed unnoticed except for the conductor having pointed it out to me in compliance with my request. That was all that marked the scene of a conflict from which, of four thousand one hundred Federal soldiers who went under fire at noon, scarcely one half marched out at sunset unhurt."

"It was during the year 1876 that I made an attempt, through a friend in Washington to get detailed by the war department to take charge of collecting and reinterring of the remains of the Federal soldiers who were killed at Olustee or who died of their wounds in the neighboring village of Lake City.

"It was my intention, with such means as I could obtain in the vicinity, a small outlay by the government, and with what assistance could be procured from the nearest military posts, to establish a small cemetery set out within it flowering shrubs and trees indigenous and suitable to that climate...and thus in some small degree, perpetuate in that dreary region the memory of the 'brave men who fell there.

"It was indulging in imagining such results as I have suggested, and while fondly anticipating the melancholy pleasure of this memorializing and adoring for all time the sacrifice of my gallant and beloved comrades who are to sleep eternally on that soil which they ransomed with their lives, that I received a final answer in the negative.

Report of Captain Loomis on the battle

Captain Loomis Landgon's dress uniform epaulettes and container.

From the Richard Ferry Collection. Used with permission.

Other Letters from Olustee
Battle of Olustee home page
http://battleofolustee.org/