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==[[Civil War]]==
On [[January 10]], [[1861]], Florida became the third state to secede from the Union. Shortly thereafter, the commanding Union Army officer in Pensacola, Lieutenant [[Adam J. Slemmer]], decided to abandon Forts Barrancas and McRee and consolidate Union forces at [[Fort Pickens]]. Slemmer explained his decision as strategically necessary:
{{cquote|I called on Commodore [[James Armstrong|[James] Armstrong]] (Union Commanding Officer of the [[Navy Yard]]) ... He had received orders to cooperate with me. We decided that with our limited means of defense we could hold but one fort, and that should be [[Fort Pickens]], as it commanded completely the harbor and the forts and also the navy yard.|20px|20px|"Pensacola in the Civil War." ''Florida Historical Quarterly'', Vol. IX, No. 2, 1978.}}
Slemmer's men destroyed over 20,000 pounds of gunpowder at [[Fort McRee]], spiked the guns at [[Fort Barrancas]], and evacuated 51 soldiers and 30 sailors to Fort Pickens.<ref name="PICW">"Pensacola in the Civil War." ''Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. IX, No. 2, 1978.</ref> On [[January 12]], rebel troops from Alabama and Florida occupied Fort McRee, as well as the Navy Yard and Fort Barrancas.
At 10:00 AM on the morning of [[November 22]], [[1861]], the Union batteries at Fort Pickens opened fire on the Confederate steamers docked at the Navy Yard wharf. The steamers escaped the line of fire with minimal damage, but the Confederate guns at Forts McRee and Barrancas returned fire. The Union ships ''[[Wikipedia:USS Richmond (1860)|USS Richmond]]'' and ''[[Wikipedia:USS Niagara (1855)|USS Niagara]]'' soon moved closer to shore and joined the Union barrage, firing primarily at Fort McRee. Union guns shot off the flagstaffs at both McRee and Barrancas. Confederate general Braxton Bragg called the artillery battle "grand and sublime," and wrote that "the houses in Pensacola, ten miles off, trembled from the effect; and immense quantities of dead fish floated on the surface of the lagoon, stunned by the concussion."<ref name="Davis">Davis, William Watson. [http://books.google.com/books?id=YlIpAAAAYAAJ ''The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida.''] New York: Columbia University, 1913.</ref>
The artillery battle continued the next day. In all, Union troops expended 5,000 rounds of ammunition while Confederate troops returned some 1,000 shots. Fort Pickens on the Union side sustained little damage, but Confederate-held Fort McRee, its water battery, as well as the navy yard and the village of [[Warrington]] all sustained extensive damage. Federal troops did sustain two deaths and 13 wounded. Federal artillery inflicted even more damage on [[January 1]] and [[January 2|2]], 1862, causing extensive fire damage at the Navy Yard and exploding the powder magazine at Fort McRee.<ref name="PICW" />
==Postbellum abandonment==