a makeshift rope into the dry moat. Hadjo, however, was not on the official list of prisoners. However the Seminole escaped, they made their way to their band's encampment at the headwaters of the Tomoka River, about forty miles south of St. Augustine. Because of their having been poorly treated, they vowed to continue fighting, and the war was prolonged for four more years. The cell from which Coacoochee escaped was long part of the official lore of the fort. Confederate States period In January 1861, Florida seceded from the United States in the opening months of the American Civil War. Union troops had withdrawn from the fort, leaving only one man behind as caretaker. On January 7, 1861, three days before Florida seceded, 125 militiamen marched on the fort by the order of Governor Madison S. Perry. The Union soldier manning the fort refused to surrender it unless he was given a receipt for it from the Confederacy. He was given the receipt and the fort was taken by the Confederacy without a shot. General Robert E. Lee, then in command of the coastal defenses of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida, ordered that most of the artillery in the fort be sent to other, more strategic, forts. This left only five cannons in the water battery to defend Fort Marion. The Saint Augustine Blues, a militia unit formed in St. Augustine, were enrolled into the Confederate Army at Ft. Marion on August 5, 1861. They were assigned to the recently organized Third Florida Infantry as its Company B. More than a dozen former members of the St. Augustine Blues are buried in a row at the city's Tolomato Cemetery. Men from the unit were most likely part of the force that originally occupied the fort on January 7, 1861. The fort, along with the rest of the city of St. Augustine, was reoccupied by Union troops after acting mayor Cristobal Bravo officially surrendered the city to Union Navy fleet commander Christopher Raymond Perry Rodgers on March 11, 1862. The Confederate forces left the city the previous evening in anticipation of the arrival of the Union fleet under the command of Commodore Dupont. Second United States period The fort was taken back by Union forces on March 11, 1862, when the USS Wabash entered the bay, finding the city evacuated by Confederate troops. The city leaders were willing to