The Darkest Days of the War- the Battles of Iuka and Corinth

by Peter Cozzens

  Rosecrans forwarded the results of Mower’s reconnaissance to Grant. General Hamilton at Jacinto corroborated the Vermonter’s intelligence. His cavalry had just captured an ordnance train; the Rebel drivers confessed that they had come from Iuka, where Price lay with “his whole force.”28

  The news awakened Grant. From doubt and vacillation he swung in the space of a few hours to an almost reckless frenzy. On the strength of Colonel Mower’s report he decided to attack Price. Whatever might be Van Dorn’s intentions, Grant was sure the Mississippian could not possibly reach Corinth in less than four days, giving him time to draw down the garrison there for a rapid march against Price.

  Hastily composed, Grant’s plan was simple enough. He would bring together the commands of Ord and Rosecrans for an attack on Iuka from the west. After leaving enough troops at Rienzi and Jacinto to prevent a surprise attack on Corinth, Rosecrans was to march with the remainder of his army to Burnsville, there to meet Ord, who had just reached Corinth with the understrength divisions of Brig. Gens. John McArthur and Thomas A. Davies. From Burnsville Ord would march over the Burnsville road, north of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, to Iuka and then attack from the northwest. Rosecrans, meanwhile, would advance south of the railroad on Ord’s right. Grant would travel with Ord. To reinforce Ord Grant summoned Brig. Gen. Leonard Ross’s division from Bolivar. Assuming Ross arrived promptly, Grant calculated he would have 15,000 men — 6,000 in Ord’s column and 9,000 in Rosecrans’s — with which to meet Price, whose numbers he estimated to be roughly the same.29

  Rosecrans agreed with Grant’s purpose but questioned his method. He believed that the best “chances of success lay in the celerity of our movements.” Since Hamilton already was at Jacinto, nine miles southwest of Burnsville, and the country from Burnsville to Iuka was, as Rosecrans described it, “full of morasses and covered with brush, [which] would be difficult to operate in,” Rosecrans suggested that he be allowed to march from Jacinto to Iuka—it would save time, and the ground was better.

  Actually the idea had originated with Hamilton. On the night of September 17, while reporting the capture of a Confederate wagon train, he admonished Rosecrans to “let Stanley join me here and we will slip into Price’s rear, and have another like force move on him from Corinth and he will be in a tight place.” There was much in Hamilton’s proposal to recommend it, as Rosecrans perceived. From Jacinto he might march both his divisions along the Tuscumbia road to Barnett’s Crossroads, four miles southwest of Iuka, then swing to the northeast and block both the Jacinto and Fulton roads, Price’s only lines of retreat. Leaving a small force to hold the Jacinto road, Rosecrans then could move his main body along the Fulton road toward Iuka. If Ord attacked Price simultaneously, the Confederates would be snared in a four-sided trap with no means of escape: the Tennessee River to the northeast was impossible to cross without lengthy preparations; Ord would close off the northwest exit from Iuka; and Rosecrans would seal off the roads leading southwest and southeast from town.

  Grant deferred to Rosecrans in his “plans for the approach” because the latter “had a most excellent map showing all the roads and streams in the surrounding country [and] was also familiar with the ground.”30

  Grant was gambling. In the Civil War simultaneous movements of two widely separated commands were, as Rosecrans’s biographer aptly put it, “notoriously tricky” to orchestrate. Even a plan seemingly as simple as Rosecrans’s “required close timing and careful leadership for each jaw of the pincers, for Price had sufficient strength to match either Union force.” The able French student of the war the Comte de Paris thought the risks should have been obvious: “In a region the topography of which was so little known, where the roads became broken up at the first rainfall, and the streams, the swamps and the forests combined to retard the movements of armies, and communications between headquarters were extremely uncertain, such a maneuver, undertaken in the presence of so active an adversary as Price, was full of danger.” But both Grant and Rosecrans judged the opportunity to catch the armies of Van Dorn and Price apart to be greater than the danger of a preemptive attack by either one. Anxious to start even before he heard Rosecrans’s proposal, Grant had written General Ord on the afternoon of September 17: “We will get off all our forces now as rapidly as practicable. I have dispatched Rosecrans that all our movements now would be as rapid as compatible with prudence.” Ord was to come on to Glendale before dusk, there to be ready to board trains for Burnsville at dawn on September 18.31

  Despite a torrential rain that fell all day, Ord reached Glendale as planned. Cyrus Boyd of the Fifteenth Iowa marveled at the misery the men endured on the march. “Have traveled all day and toward all points of the compass and the rain has poured down all the time turning the dust all to mud,” he complained to his diary. “We are wet to the hide and the air is very cold. We made up a fire in some old pine logs and stayed up most of the night drying our clothes and keeping warm.” All night long the rain came down, pounding the roads to paste.

  It was an inauspicious beginning to a movement that demanded rigid adherence to a timetable.32

  6. Let Us Do All We Can

  Earl Van Dorn was ready to fight. The president had made it clear he was to command in Mississippi and that the better part of the paroled prisoners were to be his. With them, Van Dorn boasted to Secretary of War Randolph, he could “clear the west” of Federals even without Price’s cooperation.

  Although he had the authority and might soon have the men needed to take the offensive, Van Dorn had trouble settling on an objective. First he told Randolph he was inclined to move against Memphis from Holly Springs. Then, on reflection, the Mississippian concluded Memphis was of minimal strategic value and could never be held against the combined land and river counterattack that would surely follow its capture. Van Dorn also ruled out Bolivar. Stripped of its garrison to reinforce Corinth, the Tennessee railroad town could be taken easily, but a march against it would expose Van Dorn’s lines of communication to the Federals at Corinth.

  Van Dorn at last conceded that Price had been right; Corinth was indeed the key to clearing the Federals from northern Mississippi and to recovering West Tennessee. On September 16 Van Dorn told Price he was disposed to join forces for an attack on the town. While neglecting to mention Davis had placed him in overall command, Van Dorn nevertheless ordered Price to bring his army to Pocahontas, by way of Rienzi, “so that we may join our forces and attack without loss of time . . . . Rosecrans is a quick, skillful fellow, and we must be rapid also.” Regardless of how the Federals responded, he added, Corinth would be the objective and Pocahontas the assembly area. Two couriers delivered Van Dorn’s message on the morning of September 19 and, rather unceremoniously, announced to Price that President Davis had placed him and his Army of the West under Van Dorn’s command.1

  Price welcomed Van Dorn’s summons. His relief at the prospect of decisive action overcame any pique he may have felt at what Thomas Snead, at least, considered a high-handed indignity on the part of the president. Indeed, Price was eager to leave Iuka under any circumstances. The evening before, Frank Armstrong had warned that the Yankees were six miles northwest of town and coming on “in considerable force"; his own pickets were fast falling back before them. Maury pushed his division four miles down the Burnsville road to meet the Federals, who halted two miles short of his lines, and at nightfall Price committed Little to extend Maury’s right.

  The stay in Iuka had agreed with Little. His appetite had returned, and he had slept well two nights running. With his health back, Little felt “very hopeful; if they attack us we will not only repulse them but gain a victory! God grant it!"2

  Perhaps God would grant him victory, but Price was not going to tempt fate to find out. Unlike Little, Price had found nothing in Iuka to comfort him. Each day the army lingered in town, his fear of Grant and Rosecrans grew—and with it his calculations of their strength—so that by nightfall on September 18 Price was convinced th
at they had marshaled 30,000 or 40,000 men against him. Van Dorn’s directive gave Price the nudge he needed to leave. He answered Van Dorn decisively at dawn on September 19: “I will make the movement proposed in your dispatch. . . . Enemy concentrating against me.”

  But by noon Price doubted he could get away without a fight. Daylight had revealed Leonard Ross’s lead division of Ord’s command, drawn up on Turnpike Hill, and Price could only assume that more divisions lay behind it. He ordered supply trains loaded and the troops readied to march the next morning. To Van Dorn Price now wrote, “I will move my army as quickly as I can in the direction proposed by you. I am, however, expecting an attack today, as it seems, from the most reliable information which I can procure, that they are concentrating their forces against me.”

  Price knew that the enemy he faced northwest of Iuka was commanded by Ord. What he did not know was that he was about to confront a threat from the south that not only would rule out a quick departure from Iuka but also would jeopardize the very survival of his army.3

  * * *

  Rosecrans was on the move, slowly and behind schedule, but closing on Iuka nonetheless. The drenching rain of September 17 had disrupted his timetable. Rosecrans had assured Grant that both his divisions would be at Jacinto before midnight, but darkness and muddy roads had prevented Stanley from reaching the rendezvous point with Hamilton at Davenport’s Mill, on the outskirts of Jacinto. The rain lingered until nearly 10:00 A.M. the next morning, compelling Rosecrans to write Grant that it would be 2:00 P.M. before he had his forces concentrated at Jacinto. But, Rosecrans was quick to add, he would then immediately push on beyond Jacinto to the Bay Springs road: “If Price’s forces are at Iuka the plan I propose is to move up as close as we can tonight and conceal our movements.”4

  Concerned but not alarmed, Grant concluded that Rosecrans would be near enough to Iuka by nightfall on September 18 to permit Ord safely to begin his attack the next morning. He guessed that Armstrong’s troopers had been deployed on Ord’s front to cover a Confederate retreat. Anxious to strike a blow before the Old Woodpecker flew off, Grant told Rosecrans Ord would advance at 4:30 A.M. and admonished him to close up.5

  Grant’s appeal found Rosecrans not south of Iuka, as he had assumed, but at Jacinto, many hours behind schedule. General Stanley again was the unwitting culprit. Whether from treachery or by accident, a local guide had led Stanley astray, so that instead of entering Jacinto at 2:00 P.M. on September 18 as Rosecrans had expected, his column stacked up on the road behind Leonard Ross’s division near Burnsville. When Rosecrans learned of Stanley’s predicament, he elected to bivouac at Jacinto. At 9:00 P.M., as Stanley’s soldiers shuffled into camp, Rosecrans wrote Grant of the delay. He tried to put a hopeful face on matters. Hamilton was only eight miles from Barnett’s Crossroads, and Stanley would start at 4:30 A.M. to make up the lost ground. Although the men were tired and Iuka was twenty miles away, Rosecrans thought he could reach the town by 2:00 P.M. on September 19—certainly no later than 4:30 P.M. In the worst case, Rosecrans assured Grant, two and a half hours of daylight would remain to give battle. “When we come in,” Rosecrans concluded, “[we] will endeavor to do it strongly.”6

  MAP 2. Federal Advance on Iuka, September 17-19

  Rosecrans’s feigned exuberance fooled no one at Burnsville. Grant was “very much disappointed” and dismissed Rosecrans’s guarantees. Recalled Grant, “He said, however, that he would still be at Iuka by two o’clock the next day. I did not believe this possible because of the distance and the condition of the roads, which was bad; besides, troops after a forced march of twenty miles are not in a good condition for fighting the moment they get through. It might do in marching to relieve a beleaguered garrison, but not to make an assault.” Grant altered his plans accordingly. He later claimed that he “immediately sent Ord a copy of Rosecrans’s dispatch and ordered him to be in readiness to attack the moment he heard the guns to the south or south-east.” No copy of any such communication from Grant to Ord has been found, and Ord in his report said he did not hear of the change of plans until 10:00 A.M. on September 19, when he was handed a message from Grant’s aide, Col. Clark Lagow, that read, “I send you dispatch received from Rosecrans late in the night. You will see that he is behind where we expected him. Do not be too rapid with your advance this morning unless it should be found that the enemy are evacuating.”

  Why Grant would have waited until morning to inform Ord of Rosecrans’s situation and risk bringing on a batde before both columns were in place is a mystery. In any case Ord did not move out aggressively at daybreak, so no harm was done. Rather, Ord undertook a leisurely reconnaissance, gendy probing the Rebel lines but otherwise avoiding a fight.7

  In the meantime perhaps Grant and Ord could bluff Price into surrendering. A telegram just in from the War Department gave a stunning— and badly distorted — account of the recendy concluded Battle of Antie- tam. There, near the banks of the Potomac River in Maryland, Robert E. Lee’s invasion of the North had been turned back. Despite suffering heavy losses, Lee’s army had recrossed the river into Virginia intact. But what Grant read was this: “Longstreet and his entire division prisoners. General Hill killed. Entire rebel army of Virginia destroyed.” Were this true, Grant reasoned, then the war was all but over; a fight at Iuka would be a senseless effusion of blood. He asked Ord to pass the telegram through the lines and call on the Confederates “for the sake of humanity to lay down [their] arms.”

  Price was not intimidated. He placed no credence in the dispatch; even if it were true, Price assured Ord, the news “would only move him and his soldiers to greater exertions in behalf of their country . . . . Neither he nor [his soldiers] will lay down their arms . . . until the independence of the Confederate States shall have been acknowledged by the United States.”8

  While it failed to produce the desired effect on Price and his lieutenants, the erroneous news of Lee’s annihilation did cheer Rosecrans’s tired soldiers, who stepped onto the Tuscumbia road before daybreak on September 19 for the thirteen-mile hike to Barnett’s Crossroads, the first leg of their march on Iuka. That the Rebels might stand and fight troubled few: a large number of Rosecrans’s soldiers were green and knew not what to expect, and the batde-hardened preferred a stand-up fight to senseless marches and vicious clashes with guerrillas.

  This day, fine weather eased the march. Said the medical director of the army, “The roads were in splendid order, hard, and entirely free from dust. The men marched . . . in fine order, none lagging and very few straggling.” Morale was high. Samuel Byers and his comrades of the Fifth Iowa were “perfectly gay with anticipation of being killed. . . . We sang jovial songs as we marched along. . . . Hurrying through the woods towards the enemy, we saw the poetry of war.”9

  Rosecrans too was cheerful, pleased to have gotten his army off early. Col. John Mizner had two regiments of cavalry on the road to screen the advance by 4:00 A.M., and Col. Edward Hatch rode off a few minutes later with his Second Iowa Cavalry to reconnoiter beyond the army’s right flank, in the direction of Peyton’s Mill. Awakened at 2:00 A.M., the vanguard of the infantry, Col. John B. Sanborn’s brigade of Hamilton’s division, was on the march two hours later. Gen. Jeremiah C. Sullivan’s brigade followed at 5:00A.M. Even Stanley, who pulled up the rear, looked like he would keep pace.

  Progress was good. The cavalry covered six miles before 6:00 A.M., the infantry three, moving Rosecrans to write Grant: “Troops are all on the way, in fine spirits by reason of news [of Lee’s defeat]. Eighteen miles to Iuka, but think I shall make it by the time mentioned — 2 o’clock P.M.” Unaware that Grant had cautioned Ord to do nothing until Rosecrans opened the fight, he added, “If Price is there he will have become well engaged by the time we come up, and if so twenty regiments and thirty pieces [of] cannon will finish him.” Wrongly assuming that Ord would start the battle, thereby preventing Price from turning his full attention southward, Rosecrans reiterated his intention to split his command when
it reached Barnett’s Crossroads: Hamilton’s division would go up the Fulton road, and Stanley would advance along the Jacinto (Bay Springs) road.10

  First contact occurred when Colonel Hatch and his Iowa troopers stumbled upon a handful of Rebel cavalry pickets two miles northwest of Peyton’s Mill. Hatch gave chase. At noon his Iowans rode into the camp of Falkner’s First Mississippi Partisan Rangers at Peyton’s Mill. The Mississippians were unprepared and badly outgunned. The Iowans dismounted, deployed in the woods near the mill, and poured a rapid fire from their carbines into Falkner’s men. Falkner shoved enough of his rangers into line to present a respectable front, and the two regiments traded volleys until the Mississippians receded into a dark swamp. Hatch remounted his regiment and continued on to Thompson’s Corner, where he burned some Rebel commissary stores. Satisfied no serious threat existed to Rosecrans’s right flank, Hatch returned to Barnett’s Crossroads to camp for the night.11

  Hatch’s brief skirmish was largely superfluous to Rosecrans’s main effort. Of far greater moment was a clash shordy before noon on the Tuscumbia road, one-half mile west of Barnett’s Crossroads, between eight companies of the Third Michigan Cavalry under Capt. Lyman Willcox, charged with screening Sanborn’s infantry brigade, and Rebel scouts. Willcox brushed the Southerners away and pressed on toward Cartersville, but Colonel Sanborn chose to pause at Barnett’s Crossroads for orders.12

  They came thirty minutes later. A courier from army headquarters told Sanborn to resume the march until he reached the intersection of the Tuscumbia and Fulton roads at Cartersville. There Sanborn was to “go into the strongest position I could find for defense, and to hold that crossing at all hazards against the enemy.” Sanborn sought clarification of the order from his division commander, but General Hamilton could add nothing. Both he and Sanborn concluded that Rosecrans wished Sanborn merely to wait at Cartersville until the rest of the army began the last leg of the march—Stanley by way of the Jacinto road, and Hamilton along the Fulton road.13