Talk:St. Augustine in the American Civil War

Notable contributions
"Other notable contributions of the Confederate war effort were at least three black residents" -- how is contributing three black residents significant? Nearly every community in the South provided dozens of black folks (most of them involunarily). CsikosLo (talk) 14:51, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Freed black slaves ?
The last paragraph stated that "since St. Augustine was under Union control, it became one of the few places where Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves." I deleted that wording for the following reason.

This is incorrect! On the morning of January 1st, 1863, Lincoln spent considerable time at the telegraph office determining exactly which areas of the Confederacy were under Union control, as no slaves in those areas were allowed to be "freed" under his Proclamation - according to Constitutional law. Slaves were only declared free in areas under Confederate control, as these areas were still in revolt against the United States government. Of course, in many areas under Union control that had been part of the Confederacy, slaves were mostly freed by local Union military forces already, using the "contraband" argument.Thomas R. Fasulo (talk)!

Civil War images
I am 99% sure that the Florida State Archives Photographic Collection at http://www.floridamemory.com/PhotographicCollection/ has some images taken inside Fort Marion while it was under Union control during the Civil War. I participated in the re-staging of these images during a Union garrison at the Fort years ago. The photographer had a 1860s camera. However, I have been unsuccessful in finding these images as the search feature on that site isn't exactly the best. Perhaps someone else would like to try. Good Luck. Thomas R. Fasulo (talk) 23:47, 18 May 2010 (UTC)