A Tropical Frontier: The Last Resort

The Twenty-third novel in the award-winning "Tropical Frontier" series, "The Last Resort" is, in addition, the Third novel in the "Cow Hunters" sub-series. The Civil War finds its way to the southern frontier, where young, impetuous Henry Hackensaw, eager to join up and serve, discovers he'd had no idea what war was.
During the Battle of Olustee, the ratio of Union casualties to troops involved made it the second bloodiest battle of the War for the Union, with 265 casualties per 1,000 troops. Soldiers on both sides were veterans of the great battles in the eastern and western theaters of war, but many remarked in letters and diaries that they had never undergone such terrible fighting.
The Battle of Olustee took place on February 20, 1864, near Lake City, Florida, pitting Union troops, including the famed 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Colored Regiment, against seasoned Confederate troops. General Truman Seymour, commander of Union forces, made several, arguably serious blunders, thus handing the day to the South. The Confederate victory ensured that Florida beef and pork - essential to the war effort following Grant's victory at Vicksburg and the resulting Union blockade of the Mississippi, which obstructed access to Texas beef - continued to flow to the armies of the South.