Being on lower ground the Fourth Minnesota suffered the least. Nevertheless, the Minnesotans lost more in that brief exchange of friendly fire than they had in sidestepping the Rebels all afternoon.5
The Confederates suffered less from misdirected volleys because there were far fewer demoralized Southern soldiers milling about behind the front line. Hébert and Martin fought the battle alone, and no regiment in either of their brigades broke. By nightfall every regiment was committed to the fight. Not until 7:00 P.M. did the reinforcements Price had asked Little to bring forward just before the Marylander’s death reach the batdefield. Col. Elijah Gates’s brigade appeared “just in time to fire and receive one round when the enemy withdrew on account of darkness,” said a Missouri lieutenant. Or so the lieutenant thought. Gates’s volley actually struck the Third Louisiana, which was then bracing itself for Sullivan’s counterattack. Major Russell of the Third succeeded in quieting the Missourians before they could reload.6
That the Missourians were anxious to kill Yankees is understandable. They had “double-quicked six miles through the suffocating dust and beneath a sultry sun, increasing their gait to a run as they neared the battlefield.” As they drew near the fighting, stragglers from the front told them of the death of Little. “Sadness and sorrow” greeted the news. “Their leader and first brigadier had fallen. . . . In Henry Little our brigade lost its main stay and support,” attested Lt. Col. Robert S. Bevier, commander of the Fifth Missouri. As word of Little’s death spread through the ranks, General Price appeared. With hat in hand and a wild look in his eyes, Price exhorted his “brave Missouri boys” to “stand up to the work.” Cried Price, “Move up, boys, we are whipping them—we have already driven them back a mile and captured nine pieces of their artillery. Go in, boys, and give them your best!” The Missourians replied first with a yell, then with their well-intentioned but poorly aimed volley.
After calming down, Gates’s Missourians lay down behind Hébert’s brigade and listened to the “terrible crash of musketry” that receded from the ridge and then died out.
Lieutenant Colonel Bevier was surprised to receive orders to advance. “It was dark as pitch,” he recalled. “I was directed to move my command a certain direction until ordered to halt.” Bevier’s men marched blindly, not sure they were near the front until they stumbled upon dead and dying soldiers from the Fortieth Mississippi. The Missourians stepped over them and felt their way forward. They splashed through a swamp, and the noise startled Yankee pickets. Bevier was in a fix: “We were getting into place rapidly, when the Federals opened fire, to my great personal inconvenience; for I happened to be between the two lines, and my men, in their eagerness, shot under my horse and over him, and made a rest of both ends of him, and I must say that we—my horse and I—made a pretty good bulwark.” Bevier yelled at his men to stop shooting. The Yankees disappeared. Bevier deployed skirmishers and got his men out of the swamp and into a dry glade. “I thought this was getting close enough in the dark; and as no one sent me orders to halt, I halted and waited instructions, which soon came, informing me that I was right in thus doing wrong.” Bevier’s men lay down to rest. Through the trees Yankee officers passed hushed commands along their lines.7
* * *
All night long, scenes similar to the close call of Lieutenant Colonel Bevier were played out across the battlefield, some with climaxes tragic, other grimly comic. The night was cold and the dew fell heavily. Not a breath of air stirred. Voices carried easily. The snap of a twig or the rustle of a bush was enough to set nervous pickets to shooting. Opposing lines were not more than 300 yards apart, and in some places as near as 70 yards.
The careless acts of tired soldiers brought deadly reminders of the enemy’s proximity. Said a Missouri Confederate, “One of our company struck a match to light his pipe, when several shots were immediately fired at him without effect. . . . The blaze from the enemy’s guns was but a little distance in the brush beyond us.” Fires were forbidden, and officers were alert to the slightest infraction. A few soldiers from the Eighth Wisconsin, perhaps assuming they were far enough to the rear to be exempt from the prohibition, lit a small fire to boil coffee. A harsh voice in the dark reproached them. “That’s right! Kindle fires, call the fire of the enemy and get your damned heads blown off!” The soldiers smothered the blaze but not before it revealed the angry officer to be General Rosecrans.
Anyone who strayed from his unit did so at his own risk. Some did and were shot; others wandered into opposing lines and were grabbed. A captain of the Fourth Minnesota bumped up against a wounded horse. It fell on him, but he was near enough the regiment that his men heard his cries and pulled him from under the animal. A lieutenant from the Fifth Missouri braved death to get water for his thirsty soldiers. “We needed water sorely, and our only chance for a supply was in the little brook half-way between the lines,” said Lieutenant Colonel Bevier, who would not think of ordering anyone to hazard his life for it. But Lt. John Lippincott believed he could make it, and Bevier allowed him to try. Lippincott gathered an armload of canteens and edged forward. In the moonlight, Bevier traced his progress:
He had nearly reached the creek when he stumbled into an unlucky hole, which drew a scattering shot or two that would have amounted to nothing had he kept still, but he precipitately commenced a disorderly retreat, causing his canteens to make the most infernal clatter ever made by canteens before or since. The enemy supposed our whole army was charging upon them, and opened a most terrific discharge. Lippincott, with his usual judgment, made for the headquarters of the regiment, tumbled over three or four of his superior officers and landed full length on me, nearly knocking the breath out of me and centering all the fire on our devoted heads. We escaped with a few scratches; and, with such pleasant interludes as this, “wore the uneasy night away.”8
There was nothing remotely humorous in the plight of the wounded, for whom thirst was a hellish torment. Moaning pleas for “water, water; only a drop of water!” struck a chorus of suffering that kept on until daybreak. The doleful refrain was more than some could bear. A “humane soldier, forgetting the foe, would attempt to pass the canteen, but a crack of the musket would warn him to keep close,” lamented a Texan.
Others ventured their lives for nothing more noble than ghoulish curiosity. Having missed the fight, Ephraim Anderson of the Second Missouri crept over the battlefield in the night, impelled perhaps by an unspeakable desire to visit death’s aftermath. Said Anderson of the experience,
The moon was nearly full, and threw a strong light upon the pale and ghastly faces of the thickly strewn corpses, while it glanced and sparkled upon the polished gun-barrels and bright sword bayonets of the enemy’s guns, which lay scattered around. The dead were so thick, that one could very readily have stepped about upon them, and the bushes were so lapped and twisted together—so tangled up and broken down in every conceivable manner, that the desperate nature of the struggle was unmistakable.
The carnage around the battery was terrible. I do not think a single horse escaped, and most of the men must have shared the same fate. One of the caissons was turned upside down, having fallen back upon a couple of the horses, one of which lay wounded and struggling under it; and immediately behind was a pile of not less than fifteen men, who had been killed and wounded while sheltering themselves there. They were all Federals, and most of them were artillery-men. Some of the limbers were standing with one wheel in the air, and strewn thickly around all were the bloody corpses of the dead, while the badly wounded lay weltering in gore.9
Around the Ricks house, which Chief Surgeon Archibald Campbell had appropriated as a hospital early in the batde, Federal surgeons sliced and sawed. The wounded came so fast that both the house and the yard were full before dark, and Campbell had operating tables set up in the forest. A new recruit from the Eighth Wisconsin stumbled upon the scene and was forever sorry he had: “This was the most appalling sight I ever beheld, to see men brought in wounded in all manne
r of ways. About fifteen surgeons were busy dressing and amputating.” John Risedorph of the Fourth Minnesota was similarly appalled: “There in great piles were arms and legs, some horribly mutilated while others had simply been penetrated by the wicked minie ball. Some feet were naked while others had their boots or shoes on. Gallons, yes barrels of blood had made the adjacent ground red and muddy.”10
Not the cries of the wounded, their own thirst, the nearness of the enemy, or the volleys that lit the forest in fitful flashes sufficed to keep some men from sleep or from appreciating the mocking irony of nature. Remembered Major Gilbert of the Thirty-ninth Ohio, “I got a little sleep — the night was very beautiful — stars shone bright and peacefully down upon this scene of strife — they never looked so quiet and good to me before.” Most, however, lay awake — listening to the groans and gunfire — and brooded the night away. Five days later a Mississippi soldier penned his thoughts in a letter home: “I know this, that the events of that evening have considerably increased my appetite for peace, and if the Yankees will not shoot at us anymore, I shall be perfecdy satisfied to let them alone.”11
11. Where, in the Name of God, Is Grant?
Capt. Frank von Phul returned to the Coman place, the cottage General Little had taken as his headquarters, after nightfall. Father Bannon was there, keeping watch over the general’s body. Phul lingered a moment, then left for army headquarters to attend to one final task as aide-de- camp to Little. At the Moore house Phul was told General Price had taken lodging for the night with his close friend, former Missouri governor Trusten Polk. Phul found the home where Polk had taken quarters and went inside. General Price was there, in his bedclothes, looking tired and distracted.
Phul asked him softly, “General, what shall I do with General Litde’s body?”
“My Little, my Little; I’ve lost my Little,” muttered Price. Phul quietly contemplated the general: “The lines of sorrow were like furrows on his brow.”
After a moment Phul repeated the question. “General, what shall I do with General Little’s body?”
“My Little; I’ve lost my Little, my only Litde.”
Phul persisted. “General, what shall I do with General Little’s body?”
“My Little is gone; I’ve lost my Little,” muttered Price.
Phul turned to leave. “That was the only reply I could get from General Price. He was almost crazed with grief, and I don’t believe he knew what I was asking him.”
Descending the steps into the dark, Phul met Colonel Snead. With Snead were Col. Wirt Adams, Generals Hébert, Maury, and Armstrong, and a staff officer from Van Dorn’s army. Phul explained to Snead his purpose in coming. Snead reassured Phul; he would speak to the general about Little’s body.1
Colonel Snead had come to Price’s lodgings with pressing business of his own. Before retiring for the night Price had told Snead he intended to renew the batde with Rosecrans at daylight, notwithstanding the loss of Little or the presence of Grant northwest of town. The orders he dictated to Snead were vague. Maury was to move his division to the batdefield. General Armstrong would occupy the vacated line with dismounted cavalry. Armstrong was to delay any advance by Grant long enough for Price to defeat Rosecrans. The precise manner of the attack Price left for the morning. Snead wrote out the orders and settled in at headquarters, “determined,” he said, “to remain awake all night.”
He would not have gotten much sleep in any case. Shortly after midnight General Hébert arrived. The Creole was inconsolable. His brigade had been cut to pieces, Hébert told Snead. The death of Little so disheartened the men that Hébert doubted their will to fight. While Hébert unburdened himself to Snead, General Maury came in. Snead found him as downcast as Hébert. “He was convinced that Grant would attack us in overwhelming force in the morning, brush our cavalry out of his way, destroy our trains, and assail us in rear,” said Snead. Wirt Adams and Frank Armstrong spoke next. They shared Maury’s views. All four insisted Snead take them to Price. Snead vacillated: “I was still hesitating what to do when one of Van Dorn’s staff arrive[d] with important dispatches from Van Dorn, and asked to see the general. I hesitated no longer, but took them to his lodgings.”
They found Price asleep. Awakening, Price assumed his adjutant and division commanders had come to call him to batde. “Great was his disappointment when he ascertained the true cause of our coming,” said Snead. Maury spoke first. “The old man was hard to move,” Maury remembered. “He had taken an active personal part in that battle that evening. . . . The enemy had been so freely driven back, that he could think of nothing but the complete victory he would gain over Rosecrans in the morning. He seemed to take no account of Grant at all.”
Price was adamant; retreat was out of the question. “We’ll wade through him, sir, in the morning,” he told Maury. “General, you ought to have seen how my boys fought this evening; we drove them a mile, sir.”
“But,” remonstrated Maury, “Grant has come up since then, and since dark you have drawn me from before him; my brigades are lying in the streets, with their backs to Grant, and the whole wagon train is mixed up with us, so that we can’t get into position promptly in the morning. . . . Placed as we are we shall be beaten, and we shall lose every wagon.”
Brig. Gen. Dabney H. Maury (.Massachusetts Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, and the U.S. Army Military History Institute)
Price sat on his bed in his nightshirt. As Maury continued, Price drifted from alert confidence into sleepy dejection. “You can’t procure another wagon train like this, not if you drain the State of Mississippi of all its teams,” said Maury. “We have won the fight this evening. We decided on going back anyhow in the morning to Baldwyn, and I don’t see that anything [that] has happened since we published that decision should detain us here any longer.”
Price turned to the others. Snead, Armstrong, and Adams all sustained Maury’s views. Reluctantly Price admitted the prudence of returning to Baldwyn to join Van Dorn as planned. He told Snead to have the wagon train depart at 3:00 A.M. on the Fulton road. Maury would detach one brigade to escort the train. Hébert’s division would follow. Maury’s remaining two brigades were to take up blocking positions on a ridge east of town, a mile and a half from the battlefield. Armstrong’s cavalry would act as rear guard.2
It was 2:00A.M. when the gathering broke up. Snead returned to headquarters, drafted the necessary orders, then went out again. One final, painful item of business remained before the army moved out.
Snead walked to the Coman house. “General Litde must be buried at once,” he told Father Bannon, “for we retreat before dawn.”
Snead called on some soldiers to dig a grave in a small garden beside the cottage, while Bannon gathered up the sacral necessities. Three staff officers, a civil engineer, and Little’s orderly followed Father Bannon and Snead to the garden. Each carried a candle. The soldiers lowered Little’s body into the ground, and Father Bannon spoke a few words. Captain Phul watched as “the last spadeful of earth was placed upon the grave and patted into shape. Our candles still flickered in the darkness, sending out weird shadows.” A plain sheet of pine board marked “General Henry Little” was thrust at the head of the grave, and the officers dispersed.3
* * *
General Rosecrans passed the night pacing the front, speculating on the meaning of the sounds drifting through the forest from the Confederate lines. With no word from Grant, Rosecrans assumed the worst— that Price’s entire army confronted him, ready to renew the contest at dawn, and that Grant would do nothing to distract the Rebels.
Rosecrans called together his division commanders, who agreed with him the army should hold its ground. Before midnight Rosecrans quietly replaced Hamilton’s exhausted soldiers with Stanley’s division, then he sent a reconnoitering party beyond his right flank to search for a route he might use to outflank Price.
While the divisions of Hamilton and Stanley changed places, Rosecrans apprised Grant of the batde
and implored him to attack in the morning. Rosecrans sent the dispatch by courier over a long line of vedettes he had taken pains to establish between his army and that of Grant before the battle, then returned to the front.4
The racket continued, ominous but inconclusive. The Rebels, thought Rosecrans, seemed to be “cutting, chopping, driving stakes, halting and aligning their men.” The noise increased until it was evident the Rebels were on the move, but in what direction was anyone’s guess. In his company, said an Ohio private, opinion as to whether the Rebels were “leaving or getting ready to renew the fight was about equally divided.”5
Rosecrans grew agitated. A new sound, the rumble of wagons, rolled through the forest. “I heard the movement of the train in the distance towards the southeast, and artillery moving apparently along the very heights I desired to occupy, and from which my reconnoitering party had not returned. This gave me no litde uneasiness.”
Rosecrans was at the front at 4:00 A.M. when “the voices of drivers of artillery or ambulance trains, evidently anxious and in haste,” replaced the dull thud of axes and sharp singing of saws. Was Price changing positions to take him in the flank, or was he retreating? Rosecrans returned to his field headquarters and gave orders for the troops to be roused and fed at once; the army would go forward at dawn — in pursuit if the Rebels were retreating, or to the attack if Price was still there.
Rosecrans searched out General Stanley, whose division would lead the advance, to give him his instructions personally. He found the fellow Ohioan sleeping in a fence corner.
“Stanley, Stanley,” Rosecrans whispered.
“What do you want, Rosie?”
“You will go in at sunrise on the bayonet; not a shot is to be fired.”
“They are five to our one; they have butchered my men like sheep,” remonstrated Stanley.
Rosecrans answered with a question: “Where, in the name of God, is Grant?” Then to Stanley: “But go in on the bayonet—don’t fire a shot.”
The Darkest Days of the War- the Battles of Iuka and Corinth Page 15