The Darkest Days of the War
CIVIL WAR AMERICA
Gary W. Gallagher, editor
The Darkest Days of the War
The Battles of Iuka & Corinth
Peter Cozzens
The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill & London
© 1997 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cozzens, Peter, 1957-The darkest days of the war : the battles of Iuka and Corinth / by Peter Cozzens.
p. cm. — (Civil War America)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8078-2320-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8078-2320-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8078-5783-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8078-5783-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Iuka (Miss.) — History—Siege, 1862. 2. Corinth (Miss.), Battle of, 1862. 3. Mississippi — History— Civil War, 1861-1865 — Campaigns. 4. United States. Army—Drill and tactics — History— 19th century. 5. Confederate States of America. Army— Drill and tactics. I. Title. II. Series.
E474.42.c69 1997
973-7’33—dc 20 96-9613
CIP
cloth: 09 08 07 06 05 7 6 5 4 3
paper: 10 09 08 5 4 3 2
THIS BOOK WAS DIGITALLY PRINTED.
Para mi esposa, Issa Maria
Ya cuando lafe me habia desamparado,
tu crétste en mi
CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Six and a Half Feet of Missouri Soil
2 Fifth Wheel to a Coach
3 The Darkest Days of the War
4 This Will Be Our Opportunity
5 Things Were Beginning to Wear a Threatening Aspect
6 Let Us Do All We Can
7 Their Delay Was Our Salvation
8 Like Lightning from a Clear Sky
9 Night Quickly Set In
10 We’ll I-uker Them Today!
11 Where, in the Name of God, Is Grant?
12 A Pursuit Can Amount to Little
13 We Had Better Lay Down Our Arms and Go Home
14 More Trouble Than We Could Care For
15 Well, Boys, You Did That Handsomely
16 They Ran Like Hens
17 I Bid Them All Good Bye
18 No Time to Cool Off Now
19 The Men Would Do All They Could
20 Death Came in a Hundred Shapes
21 My God! My Boys Are Running!
22 We Must Push Them
23 I Never Saw Such Slaughter
24 Van Dorn Has Done It, Sure Enough
25 The Best We Had in the Ranch
26 The Reckoning
Appendix. The Opposing Forces in the Battles of Iuka, Corinth, and Davis Bridge
Notes
Bibliography
Index
MAPS
1 Area of Operations, September 1, 1862 20
2 Federal Advance on Iuka, September 17–19 69
3 Hébert Attacks, September 19, 5:15 P.M. 89
4 Sullivan Counterattacks, 7:00 P.M. 107
5 Confederate March to Corinth, September 29–October 3 141
6 The Battle Opens, October 3, 10:00 A.M. 167
7 The Fight for the Federal Camps, 2:00 P.M. 184
8 Battery F and the White House, 3:30 P.M. 190
9 Green’s Belated Attack, October 4, 10:00 A.M. 238
10 Batteries Powell and Robinett, 11:00 A.M. 246
11 Ord Advances on Davis Bridge, October 5, 9:00 A.M. 284
ILLUSTRATIONS
Maj. Gen. Sterling Price 5
Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn 8
Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant 75
Maj. Gen. William Starke Rosecrans 27
Brig. Gen. Lewis Henry Little 40
Brig. Gen. Charles S. Hamilton 75
Going into Battery: The Eleventh Ohio Battery at Iuka 97
Brig. Gen. David Sloane Stanley 111
Brig. Gen. Dabney H. Maury 120
Maj. Gen. Mansfield Lovell 138
Brig. Gen. John McArthur 151
Brig. Gen. Thomas A. Davies 163
Brig. Gen. Richard J. Oglesby 177
Col. John W. Fuller 226
Col. William P. Rogers 255
Confederate High Tide at the Tishomingo Hotel 268
The Aftermath of Battle, Battery Robinett 275
Maj. Gen. Stephen A. Hurlbut 281
PREFACE
People have asked me why I chose to write on the relatively obscure northern Mississippi campaign that culminated in the Battle of Corinth, on October 3-4, 1862.1 tell them I selected this topic precisely because of its obscurity, which derives solely from a want of scholarly attention—the campaign itself was far from unimportant.
Glance at any map of the Confederacy depicting its railroads, and your eye is naturally drawn to Corinth. It stood at the junction of two of the best railroads in the South. Take and hold Corinth, and Union armies would sever the most viable Confederate line of communications and supply between the eastern seaboard and the vast trans-Mississippi region. Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck recognized this, and he counted the capture of Corinth more important than the destruction of the Confederate western armies.
Corinth was also of great importance to Federal plans of conquest. The town lay between the two strategic invasion routes into the Deep South: the Mississippi River Valley corridor leading to Vicksburg, and the Nashville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta avenue into the interior of Georgia. With Corinth in their possession, the Federals would be able to transport supplies and reinforcements to armies operating along either route.
The autumn 1862 campaign had consequences for the war in the West not generally appreciated. The utter defeat at Corinth of the Confederate forces (comprised of the combined armies of Earl Van Dorn and Sterling Price, the whole under Van Dorn’s leadership) eliminated the only mobile Southern command standing between Ulysses S. Grant’s Union army and Vicksburg. After Corinth, the way was clear for Grant to proceed on his great march of conquest.
Southern defeat in northern Mississippi also contributed to the collapse of Braxton Bragg’s invasion of Kentucky. Bragg himself said it was a determining factor in his discomfiture. Undoubtedly Bragg exaggerated the impact of events in northern Mississippi to deflect criticism from his own errors, but there is much truth to his assertion. Bragg had counted on Van Dorn and Price to prevent Federal reinforcements from crossing the Tennessee River to oppose him and to strike north themselves to protect his strategic left flank. Van Dorn and Price disappointed him on both counts. And while Bragg already had fought and lost the Battle of Perryville by the time he learned of the defeat at Corinth, the news convinced him he must abandon Kentucky. The ruination of Van Dorn’s army left Bragg’s as the only significant Confederate command in the West and exposed Chattanooga to capture, compelling Bragg to withdraw to protect the Southern heartland.
The battles of Iuka, Corinth, and even Davis Bridge are worthy of study for reasons apart from their larger significance. All were vicious fights, even by Civil War standards. Iuka stands as a textbook example of a meeting engagement gone tragically awry. A Federal and a Confederate brigade collided in march column, and the ensuing three-hour struggle was over before either army commander understood what had happened. It is hard to imagin
e a more bitter clash. Nearly 1,000 of 3,200 Southerners engaged, and some 800 of 3,000 Northerners fell fighting for a single ridge. Perhaps a quarter of the Union losses were caused by the fire of other frightened Federals, a pointed reminder of the hazards of exposing raw troops to battle without the support of veterans.
Iuka also demonstrated the difficulty, given the uncertain communications of the time, of coordinating a joint tactical operation of two forces separated by more than a few miles. Grant tried and failed to crush Price between the jaws of a pincer made of Edward O. C. Ord’s and William Starke Rosecrans’s commands. Price’s escape from Rosecrans’s front occasioned a falling-out between Grant and Rosecrans that ultimately wrecked the military career of the latter.
I cannot think of any other Civil War battle in which the attackers fought under more oppressive conditions than at Corinth. Van Dorn roused his troops before daybreak, marched them eight miles, and then threw them immediately into battle. For eight hours the Confederates attacked in 100-degree heat, without food and with scarcely a drop of water. The Confederate assaults on Batteries Robinett and Powell the following day stand among the fiercest of the war and among the few in which the fighting became hand to hand.
The forgotten fight at Davis Bridge on the Hatchie River, in which the Federals bungled one of their best chances to obliterate a Southern army, also was unusually cruel. In two hours 500 Yankees were gunned down on a half-acre-wide tuck of river bank.
I also found the 1862 northern Mississippi campaign fascinating for the personalities involved. Overblown egos played a large part in the results. A more ludicrous character in high command than Earl Van Dorn is hard to imagine, and his preference for solo performances over cooperation doomed the Confederates from the start. Remarkable, too, is the squabbling between Grant and Rosecrans that emerged from victory; egged on by their staffs, they engaged in a sometimes comic battle of wills that poisoned relations between them, the two principal Northern generals in the West, during the middle period of the war.
A final word on Grant. At the time of Iuka and Corinth he was still under a shadow for his near-defeat at Shiloh. General in Chief Henry Halleck mistrusted and would have been pleased to shelve him, and President Lincoln had not yet come to appreciate his talents. Had the North lost at Corinth, Grant may have been returned to the obscurity of a Galena, Illinois, leather-goods store.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With each book that I write, I find myself more deeply in debt, and to a greater number of people, for help, suggestions, and encouragement. It is a debt I am pleased to acknowledge.
Moving from country to country with the Foreign Service, I would find it impossible to complete a book of this sort without the help of librarians and archivists. I would like to thank those who were particularly gracious in providing me with materials from their institutions. Many pointed me to sources unknown to me; this book is the richer for their help. My special thanks go to Bryon Andreasen of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana; Yvonne Arnold of the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg; Martha Clevenger of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis; Richard Himmel of the University of North Texas, Denton; James Holmberg of the Filson Club, Louisville, Kentucky; Mar- celle Hull of the University of Texas, Arlington; Karen Kearns and Lisa Libby of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California; Kathy Lafferty of the University of Kansas, Lawrence; Grace Linden of the Sioux City, Iowa, Public Museum; Robert McCown of the University of Iowa, Iowa City; Cassandra McGraw of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville; Gail Redmann of the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland; Randy Roberts of the University of Missouri, Columbia; Margaret Rose of the Public Library of Corpus Christi, Texas; and Ken Tilley of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery.
William Erwin and the staff of the Special Collections Library at Duke University made my visit there both pleasant and productive, as did Richard Shrader and the staff of the Manuscripts Department of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Gary Arnold of the Ohio Historical Society went out of his way to help me wade through the society’s many fine manuscript and printed records of Ohioans who fought at Iuka, Corinth, and Davis Bridge.
My continuing thanks go to Carley Robison, curator of manuscripts and archives at my alma mater, Knox College, for making the library’s fine Ray D. Smith Collection of Civil War books readily accessible to me.
I would like to acknowledge three people who helped me immensely during my visit to the Corinth area. Hugh Horton shared with me his vast knowledge of the battle and led me over the battlefield. Margaret Rogers, executive director of the Northeast Mississippi Museum Association, Corinth, opened the museum’s archives to me. Herbert Wood of the Davis Bridge Memorial Foundation, Bolivar, Tennessee, took me over the battlefield of Davis Bridge. Without his guidance on the ground, I could not have re-created the clash with any degree of certainty.
Stacey Allen, historian at the Shiloh National Military Park, gave me copies of an outstanding series of interpretive maps he had done on the three battles. They were of great help to me in tracing the movements of the armies.
Terrence Winschel, historian at the Vicksburg National Military Park, read the manuscript and shared with me his knowledge of the battles. He saved me from some embarrassing mistakes, such as pointing out to me that the Confederates could not possibly have dragged the captured cannon of Sears’s battery to the Iuka town square, as I had mistakenly supposed, because Iuka did not have a town square. Any remaining errors are strictly mine.
I would also like to thank Gary Gallagher, editor of the Civil War in America series, and Kate Torrey, director of the University of North Carolina Press, for both their encouragement and most constructive criticism.
To George Skoch of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, many thanks for the outstanding maps that grace the book.
To my mother, my most sincere thanks for your countless trips to the public library gathering journal and magazine articles for me. To the staff of the periodicals department of the Wheaton, Illinois Public Library, my thanks for your filling the innumerable requests for esoteric articles.
Three dear friends deserve special mention. Robert Girardi of Chicago shared with me materials from his extensive Civil War library and made many keen observations on the manuscript. Sue Bremner, of the Foreign Service, tirelessly helped me gather sources and made numerous grammatical and stylistic improvements to the manuscript. And to Keith Rocco, once again, my especial thanks for the outstanding illustrations.
A sound of alarm. Stores and parking lots have obliterated the Iuka battlefield. Little of the Corinth battlefield remains. Battery F, a fine example of Civil War earthen lunettes, stands among a tract of modern homes outside Corinth; it owes its existence to a generous landowner. A good portion of the Beauregard line of Confederate earthworks still exists but is on private land. So, too, is Oliver’s hill. The danger that both will be bulldozed is very real. Only the Davis Bridge battlefield site has been preserved intact, and that because of the initiative of members of the Bolivar Chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The work of battlefield preservation is far from over.
The Darkest Days of the War
1. Six and a Half Feet of Missouri Soil
There was a festive air in Memphis, Tennessee, the second week of April 1862, a gaiety that seemed to mock at Southern misfortune. The week before, 11,000 Confederate soldiers had been lost at Shiloh, and the Army of the Mississippi, which was to have swept the Mississippi Valley clean of Yankees, nearly wrecked. The army had marched into Tennessee from Corinth, Mississippi, to attack Federal forces encamped nineteen miles away at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee. The resultant Battle of Shiloh was to have been the first encounter of a lightning offensive leading to the Ohio River. Instead the Confederates found themselves back in Corinth. “Home to Tennessee” would come to be their rallying cry. But for the moment the stunned and sullen survivors of Shiloh could see no farther than the head
logs of the earthworks they were constructing around Corinth.
Memphis was just ninety-three miles west of Corinth, and the victorious Northern army of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was hardly more distant. But the war was young and Memphis was still free of Federals. What was lost did not seem irretrievable, and much might yet be won. Of more immediate concern, the town was playing host to a celebrity: Maj. Gen. Sterling Price. Shiloh had killed Albert Sidney Johnston and humiliated Pierre G. T. Beauregard, making Price one of the South’s few heroes.
A large crowd was on hand when the steamer carrying Price and a regiment of his Missouri division docked late on the afternoon of April 11. Poorly armed, roughly clad, and rougher looking, the Missourians shuffled down the gangplank ahead of their commander. The general stepped out onto the hurricane deck amid cheers of “Price! Price! Price!,” making a splendid contrast with his troops. Towering above most of them at six feet, two inches tall and weighing more than 200 pounds, Price carried his bulk gracefully. His complexion was ruddy and his countenance benign, and his hair and thick sideburns were silver white; had he not been clad in a resplendent new dress uniform of Confederate gray, complete with sash and sword, one might have mistaken him for a visiting English gentleman. A band struck up “Dixie,” and local dignitaries escorted Price to the town’s best hotel. At a reception in his honor that night, Price pledged to repay the city’s hospitality on the battlefield.1
Price’s Memphis welcome swelled his enormous ego but could not palliate an inner dread. Like the Tennesseans at Corinth who worried over the fate of their homes, Price was troubled to be on the east bank of the Mississippi River, rather than in Missouri, the state he had joined the Confederacy to defend.
Price was born and raised in Virginia; but all he had accomplished in life he owed to Missouri, and his gratitude ran deep. As a young man Price had come west with his father, a tobacco planter whose fortunes had plummeted after the price of the Virginia leaf fell sharply in the 1820s. The younger Price moved easily among expatriate Virginians who, like him, had resettled in the Boonslick area of Missouri. Sharing with his father a dedication to republicanism and a burning ambition, within five years of settling in Missouri Price had become a prosperous planter and a respected leader of the state Democratic Party. In 1844 he resigned as speaker of the Missouri legislature to accept a seat in the United States House of Representatives.
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