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During the American Civil War, an out-of-season U.S. landfalling hurricane killed dozens but its memory in the historical record was lost amid much greater loss of life in the battlef ields far ther nor th.
he year 1863 was a pivotal year in American history as major battles between Union and Confederate forces marked a gradual and inexorable shift of fortunes in favor of the Union. The American Civil War was in its third year and news of its battles constantly filled the columns of newspapers and magazines. More than 3,000 soldiers died in early May 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Hundreds more died in the early battles at Vicksburg in late May, adding to the accumulating Civil War death total already in the tens of thousands and unprecedented in American history at that time.
Amid the manmade carnage on land, a natural disaster brought a less extensive but locally severe tragedy of lost lives to the Florida coast. On 28 May 1863 an unprecedented hurricane made landfall in northwest Florida-the only landfalling hurricane now recorded in American history in the month of May. This unusual hurricane arrived in even more unusual times. The absence of any major effect on combat readiness and the relatively localized effects of the worst damage seems to have limited the duration of the memory of this storm even locally. This paper documents its rediscovery and the effects it had on the greater drama prevailing in the country.
DATA SOURCES. We relied on the extensive series of official government documents that were printed in the late 1800s and early 1900s for written accounts of the storm. Union ship officers wrote to their superiors and to the board of inquiry investigating the storm concerning the loss of the USS Amanda, and there are other accounts from ships in the immediate area of the storm. These accounts provided details that are not available in the extant logbooks. The pertinent accounts were published in the 1903 volume (U.S. Navy Department 1903). We also used the original logbooks of the U.S. Navy located at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. In addition, we made use of land-based weather records held in Records Group 27 at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland,...