Lincoln assumed temporary command of Fort Taylor when Col. John Wilder traveled to Havana, Cuba. While in command, Lincoln served on courts martial, witnessed the execution of some disobedient soldiers, and served on an examining board to assess officers of the 2nd Florida Cavalry (Union). He also devoted countless hours to providing spiritual and educational instruction to soldiers of the 2nd USCT, as well as local Blacks, despite many local civilians’ opposition to Black troops. His brother Alford finally arrived at Key West, but Dora did not, and Lincoln vowed to continue writing to her every day.
In February 1865, Lincoln left Key West with Companies E, G, and H of the 2nd USCT with the object of quashing blockade running around the port of St. Marks on the Florida mainland. At dawn on March 6, 1865, Lincoln led Companies B and G into the fray at the Battle of Natural Bridge, near present-day Woodville, Florida. Here, Lincoln met his fate. Soon after the battle, instead of opening a letter from her husband as usual, Dora received a letter from Col. John Wilder of the 2nd USCT, dated March 12, 1865, which described her husband’s last hours among the living.
Wilder addressed Dora at Alford’s request—Lincoln’s brother was too distraught to take up the pen. The letter stated that, amid the battle, at 1 p.m. on March 6, 1865, a piece of shell from Confederate artillery struck Lincoln in the bowels. He feared the wound was mortal, but hoped to recover on the steamer Alliance and remained cheerful as his comrades carried him from the field. Soon, after requesting to eat, Lincoln drifted into permanent sleep as his spirit “calmly and Peacefully departed.”
Dora would never again see her new husband since Wilder could not send Lincoln’s body home; the undertaker declared he had “been dead too long in the hot climate.” Wilder’s heart bled as he praised Lincoln for being self-sacrificing, true, and ambitious. He mourned Lincoln’s loss, and the irony that “it was his desire to have an independent command, and he received it, alas, only to lay it down again in death.”
All information about Lincoln from "Benjamin C. Lincoln Papers, James. S. Schoff Civil War Collection," William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan.
