Person Record
Metadata
Name |
Livingston, Archibald A. (Archie) |
Other Names |
Archie |
Born |
10/10/1836 |
Birthplace |
Madison County, Florida |
Father |
Daniel G. Livingston, Sr. |
Mother |
Rhoda Ann Townsend Livingston |
Notes |
Twenty-six-year-old Archibald Livingston did not rush to the colors in 1861. Apparently at the behest of his father, Archie and his younger brother Theodore did not join the Confederate Army until May 1862 when the conscription act made them liable for military service. Following their brother Albert, Archie and "Tede" joined the "Madison Gray Eagles," Company G of the 3rd Florida Infantry, then stationed near Tallahassee. Before long, the unit was transferred to Mobile, Alabama, then to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where it joined the campaign into Kentucky. Having hoped to remain in Florida, Archie confessed that he "committed a blunder" to join the 3rd and did so only to carry out his parents' wish of serving with his brothers. Once committed to the Confederate Army and to the 3rd Florida, however, Archie Livingston had no regrets. "As for me I am a soldier for the war," he wrote in the fall of 1862. The letters of Archie Livingston chronicle the campaigns of the 3rd Florida Infantry in the Army of Tennessee from Kentucky in 1862 to the battle of Franklin in December 1864, where he was captured. The letters also provide glimpses of the Florida home front, in which Archie was intensely interested, and an intimate portrait of the extended Livingston family. Archie Livingston's letters are part of a larger collection of 50 letters from the Livingston brothers and cousins John Livingston and John Inglis to their parents and siblings. The family had moved in the 1840s from South Carolina to Madison County, Florida, where the patriarch, Scottish-born Daniel G. Livingston, became a wealthy carriage maker and farmer, owning at least 300 acres of land and 15 slaves. Daniel and Rhoda Ann Townsend Livingston had 11 living children in 1860, of which Archie was the oldest. Even more than most letters from Civil War soldiers, the Livingston letters reveal the precarious balance concerns between for family, community, and country. Archie Livingston's letters begin with the aftermath of the Confederate invasion of Kentucky. The 3rd Florida was part of Gen. John C. Brown's Brigade of Gen. James Patton Anderson's division of Gen. Braxton Bragg's army. The regiment incurred such heavy casualties at the battle of Perryville (October 8, 1862) that, in December 1862, it was consolidated with the 1st Florida. The 1st/3rd Florida Consolidated Infantry served in Gen. William Preston's (later Stovall's) brigade (sometimes called the Florida Brigade) of Gen. John C. Breckinridge's Division of the Army of Tennessee. |
Spouse |
Mary Frances Webb |
