“I feel that I shall be killed to-morrow, but your order will be obeyed,” Stanley muttered, then folded his blanket about himself and again fell asleep.6
* * *
At 3:00 A.M. on September 20, Confederate officers shook their troops awake. “The astonishment of the men was indescribable when orders were received to evacuate the place,” said Louisianan Willie Tunnard. They had fought hard, driven the enemy, and assumed they would complete the work at daybreak. The logic of Maury’s argument to Price that the movement constituted not a withdrawal but merely compliance with previous orders was lost on the men in ranks. “Feds were too stormy for us at Iuka. This is too bad to think about,” W. C. Porter of the Sixteenth Arkansas scribbled in his diary. Soldiers of the Third Texas Dismounted Cavalry gathered around the six cannon of Sears’s battery they had dragged off the ridge. There were no spare horses to pull them, so the Texans drove steel files into the touchholes. They marched away leaving the spiked guns on the Jacinto road,100 yards from where they had been captured.7
Price was angry, anxious, and fearful Rosecrans would catch his column strung out on the march. Normally gentle with his men, Price vented his rage on unsuspecting teamsters of the army’s wagon train, shocking everyone. A slight delay in starting the wagons ignited him. “We never remember to have heard General Price swear, only on this occasion, and he was not choice in his language at this time,” said Willie Tunnard. “He ordered the teamsters to drive on, adding, ’If one of you stops, I’ll hang you, by God.'”
Price drove the men relentlessly. Tired and hungry—some had eaten nothing but an ear of parched corn in twenty-four hours — soldiers dropped from the ranks by the hundreds. Despite early confusion and heavy straggling, at 8:00 A.M. Price had accomplished what he had refused to consider six hours earlier: he had extricated both his army and his cumbersome trains from between the forces of Rosecrans and Grant. By 2:00 P.M. the Rebel rear guard was eight miles south of Iuka.8
* * *
Sunrise on September 20 found Stanley’s Federals ready to advance. With them, General Rosecrans stared into the morning twilight. The forest was still. There was no movement atop the ridge and no sound but the weak moans of the wounded. Rosecrans told Lt. Col. Edward Noyes to detach a company from his Thirty-ninth Ohio to reconnoiter. Edging their way up the slope, alert for enemy skirmishers, the Ohioans instead discovered a canvas of gore. The dead, said an Ohio veteran, “were found lying in almost every position. One was lying prone upon the ground, his eyes wide open, his gun resting on a log, in the act of firing. A number had guns clutched in their hands in the act of loading, their rammers half drawn. One in dying had grasped a small tree with his teeth, others died while kneeling and taking aim.”
No one had seen bodies packed so tightly before or trees so torn by shot. Benjamin Sweet crested the ridge on the Jacinto road. “There was an oak tree right in the center of the road with a wagon track on either side,” he said. “This was just as broad as I am across the shoulders, and there were forty-two bullets in it, below a line as high as my head. I counted eleven men and thirteen horses on a place about sixteen by thirty feet.” Another Ohioan counted “forty dead bodies on one spot the size of four rods square.”
Where the cannon of the Eleventh Ohio Battery had stood, there was a promiscuous tangle of dead horses and men. Said Sergeant Brown of the Fourth Minnesota, who wandered onto the ridge after the Thirty-ninth Ohio had passed,
In the low ground behind the battery twelve horses belonging to two caissons had become tangled together and piled up like a pyramid. Some below were wounded; others, dead, and over and above all, with his hind feet entangled down among the dead and wounded beneath him, stood a noble looking animal with head and ears erect, his right fore leg bent over the neck of a horse beneath him, his eyes wide open and out of his nostrils there extended, like a great white beard, a foam fully a foot long and streaked with purple. He was dead. This scene, and with it that of our dead heroes and those of the enemy lying thickly over the ground and the look of destruction and desolation that abounded in the vicinity, was the grandest and most awful spectacle of war that I viewed during a service of four and a half years.9
The ridge looked like the handiwork of a huge firing squad. The dead and dying lay in a long, dense row a half-mile long. Wounded by the hundreds groaned for water and for help, but the soldiers of the Thirty-ninth Ohio had no time to succor them. As soon as he learned the enemy was gone from the ridge, Rosecrans told Stanley to send the regiment to Iuka. Company M of the Second Iowa Cavalry galloped ahead of the Ohioans to reconnoiter the town; Battery M, First Missouri Artillery, brought up the rear to shell any Rebels still in Iuka. Colonel Fuller took charge of the patrol.10
Fuller pressed along the Jacinto road until he reached a large sweep of open fields between the road and Indian Creek. There, within sight of town, Fuller deployed into line of battle shortly before 8:00 A.M. The detachment from the Second Iowa Cavalry rode toward town in time to glimpse stragglers from the Rebel rear guard disappear down the Fulton road. The Iowans thundered down the street on the charge, but only Rebel wounded and a few frightened civilians were on hand to witness their martial entrance. Meanwhile, Capt. Albert Powell unlimbered the guns of Battery M, First Missouri, on the west bank of Indian Creek and began shelling the town. One shot crashed through the Iuka Springs Hotel and exploded among the wounded gathered there; another shattered the roof of a private home, setting the rafters ablaze. A deputation of citizens hurried from town to surrender Iuka to the Federals. Carrying a sheet tied to a broom handle, Mr. Samuel De Woody led the group of elderly men through the Federal ranks to Colonel Fuller. They begged him to spare their homes. Price’s army had left, they told Fuller, and there were no men of military age in Iuka except the wounded. Fuller ordered Captain Powell to shift his fire away from the town. The Mis- sourian trained his cannon on the last of Dabney Maury’s blocking force, which was withdrawing from the heights east of Indian Creek.11
Rosecrans was ready to pursue when word of Price’s departure reached him at 8:30 A.M. Anticipating a Confederate withdrawal, shortly after dawn Rosecrans had directed Mizner to throw out a mounted dragnet in the direction of the Fulton road. Mizner parceled out his cavalry quickly but keenly, sending eight companies of the Third Michigan Cavalry down the settlement road to slash at the enemy’s flank; the remainder of his cavalry he dispatched to the intersection of the Fulton and Jacinto- Tuscumbia roads, six miles south of Iuka, to block the head of Price’s column. To chase the Rebel rear guard, Colonel Mizner called on Col. Edward Hatch of the Second Iowa Cavalry.
After 8:30 A.M. Rosecrans added his infantry to the pursuit. He divided his forces so as to snare Price before he could reach Bay Springs, which Rosecrans guessed to be his immediate objective. Rosecrans told General Hamilton to face his division about and return to Barnett’s Crossroads. There Hamilton was to pick up the Jacinto-Tuscumbia road and drive eastward. Stanley, meanwhile, would pursue southward over the Fulton road. Hamilton and Stanley were to reunite at the intersection of the Fulton and Jacinto-Tuscumbia roads where, if Mizner’s cavalrymen proved able to delay Price, the army would drive the enemy toward the impassable defiles of Big Bear Creek along the Alabama border. It was an ambitious plan, especially the role handed Hamilton. His division had marched hard the day before, fought an unexpected and bloody battle, and had not eaten in twenty-four hours. But Rosecrans was anxious to press his advantage, with or without Grant.
When he ordered the pursuit, Rosecrans had yet to hear from Grant. There had been no reply to his dispatch of 10:30 P.M., in which Rosecrans had reported the results of the battle and begged Grant to attack in the morning. Rosecrans renewed his appeals after daybreak. At 7:00 A.M. he dispatched a message along the vedette line, again summarizing the fight and telling Grant that Stanley was marching on Iuka “as fast as excessive fatigue will admit.” At 8:45 A.M., with Iuka secure, he wrote Grant of his planned pursuit. Rosecrans waited an hour, then sent a thir
d message. The enemy, he said, “are retreating with all possible speed — Stanley follows them directly, and Hamilton endeavors to cut them off from the Bay Spring road—The men double quick with great alacrity.” His patience exhausted, Rosecrans asked angrily, “Why did you not attack this morning?"12
Rosecrans got his answer sometime after 10:00 A.M. Riding with Colonel Fuller west of town, Rosecrans spotted the head of General Ord’s column marching smartly up the Burnsville road, “with drums beating and banners flying.” Rosecrans accosted Ord. “Why did leave you me in the lurch?” he demanded. Ord pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and handed it silently to Rosecrans. It was Grant’s order directing Ord to postpone the attack—an order Colonels Lagow and Dickey were to have apprised Rosecrans of the day before.
Colonel Fuller watched Rosecrans. He saw shock turn to rage. Remembered Fuller, “This miscarriage was the beginning of a misunderstanding which grew into positive dislike between Grant and Rosecrans— a breach that was never healed.”13
12. A Pursuit Can Amount to Little
Maj. Gen. Edward O. C. Ord was an earnest, aggressive commander who had little patience with incompetent officers, regardless of their rank. As a division commander in the Shenandoah Valley he had shown his contempt for department commander Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell by feigning illness and relinquishing his command, rather than obey McDowell’s orders that he cooperate with John C. Fremont in a movement to trap Stonewall Jackson near Strasburg. Jackson escaped, pardy because of Ord’s factiousness. But Ord was not blamed. Availing himself of McDowell’s low standing with the War Department, he demanded to be relieved from duty under McDowell, whom he castigated as an inept, rude bully. Ord’s impudent demand found favor with Secretary Stanton, who granted him a transfer to the West. In a few short weeks Ord ingratiated himself with Grant and won command of the Left Wing of the Army of the Tennessee.1
By Ord’s standards of duty Grant’s performance at Iuka was as inept as any of McDowell’s missteps in the Shenandoah Valley. Grant distanced himself from the operation against Price early. Rather than travel with Ord’s column, Grant established his headquarters at Burnsville. Perhaps Grant reasoned he could better communicate with Rosecrans from Burnsville, but in exchange for putting himself five miles closer to Rosecrans’s vedette line, he sacrificed control over half his force. And Grant made only a minimal effort to keep in touch with Rosecrans. He showed little interest in the progress of his column, preferring to wait passively for dispatches from Rosecrans rather than actively follow his advance. Grant seemed preoccupied with trivialities, such as the erroneous dispatch about Antietam.
When he learned Rosecrans had been delayed and that Stanley’s division was twenty miles away, Grant decided to hold Ord six miles short of Iuka. His most aggressive action was to deliver the news of Lee’s defeat to Sterling Price.
Ord conveyed the message but made no secret of his disgust with it. Fretting about his headquarters, Ord asked his chief of staff, Col. Arthur Ducat, rhetorically, “Ducat, what do you think of it?” “Why should Price surrender when he can run?” answered Ducat. “If this dispatch goes in, he will get out if he can, because it gives him time,” the colonel continued. “The thing to do is to attack him now.”2
Ducat guessed correctly. Although he received Ord’s “insolent demand” in the early morning hours of September 19, Price withheld his answer until mid-afternoon—immobilizing Ord, who was bound by the terms of the truce under which the message was delivered not to move until Price answered.
Grant’s seeming indifference to the fate of Rosecrans continued. Early morning reports of suspected Confederate activity near Corinth prompted Grant to send Ord off with part of Davies’s division, which was resting at Burnsville, on a reconnaissance toward Corinth. For six hours, from 9:00 A.M. until 3:00 P.M., the commander of Grant’s northern column was absent from the front, on a mission that Grant should have entrusted to a subordinate.3
Ord’s absence evoked no great concern at army headquarters, nor did the lack of precise information on Rosecrans’s whereabouts. Apparently assuming Rosecrans could not possibly reach Iuka before dark, Grant dismissed him from his calculations. Not until noon did Grant send Cols. Clark Lagow and Theophilus Dickey to check on the Ohioan’s progress and, presumably, to tell him that Ord’s attack had been postponed.4
Returning from the reconnaissance, Colonel Ducat accompanied Ord to army headquarters. The languor about the place startled him. No one was charting Rosecrans’s march on the map or checking road or weather conditions. Although “it was none of my business,” Ducat found it “most extraordinary” that Grant failed to follow Rosecrans’s column. At 4:30 P.M., as Hamilton’s advance collided with Hébert, Grant remarked to Ord that General Rosecrans “was from last accounts from him too far from Iuka for us to attack on our front until further information wss received as to his whereabouts.” Ord agreed, and Grant told him to move to within four miles to Iuka, there to “await sounds of an engagement between Rosecrans and the enemy before engaging the latter.”
But Ord neither moved up as ordered nor claimed to have heard the slightest sound from the direction of Rosecrans’s army. He halted his lead division, under Gen. Leonard Ross, seven miles short of Iuka and gave no further thought to Rosecrans. At 6:00 P.M. Ross reported “a dense smoke arising from the direction of Iuka.” He concluded that Price was evacuating and destroying his stores, a judgment Ord accepted. Although billowing clouds of smoke might also suggest combat, neither Ord nor Grant—if he was even aware of Ross’s report—bothered to confirm Ross’s supposition with a reconnaissance toward Iuka.
Ord heard nothing, and so he did nothing. A strong wind, he maintained, “freshly blowing from us in the direction of Iuka during the whole of the nineteenth, prevented our hearing the guns and co-operating with General Rosecrans.”5
It was 3:30 A.M. on September 20 before Grant learned of Rosecrans’s fight with Price. Accepting Rosecrans’s admonition that he “attack in the morning and in force,” Grant told Ord to engage the enemy “as early as possible.”6
Ord got started before dawn, but a snarl at the head of his column slowed him. By 7:00 A.M. Ord had moved to within three and a half miles of Iuka. Then, for reasons that remain unclear, he stopped. Ord claimed he was merely complying with Grant’s order of the previous afternoon that he await the sound of Rosecrans’s guns before closing on Iuka; why he failed to obey Grant’s peremptory instructions of 3:30 A.M., Ord neglected to say. He held fast until 8:00 A.M., when the low boom of Capt. Albert Powell’s Missouri Battery shelling the town removed any doubt that Rosecrans had met the enemy.7
* * *
General Rosecrans was incredulous. The only explanation Ord offered for having left Rosecrans “in the lurch” the day before was that he “did not hear our guns.” Rosecrans could not accept that, either then or later. How could Ord, he asked rhetorically, who was only six miles away, fail to hear the noise of his battle with Price, when Col. John Du Bois, who was fifteen miles away “in a straight line over a rolling forest country,” heard the noise distinctly?8
It was a legitimate question for which there was — and remains—no clear answer. Ord said a sharp wind from the north blew the noise of battle away from him. Most contemporaneous letters from soldiers of his command support him. “We never heard the firing at all,” a surgeon from Ross’s division wrote his wife three days after the battle. Lt. Col. James Parrott of the Seventh Iowa told his wife the same thing, and in their diaries Sgt. Alexander Downing and Pvt. Henry Clay Adams of Crocker’s Iowa Brigade noted an odd silence from the direction of Rosecrans’s command. But August Schilling of the First Minnesota Battery wrote that he and his battery mates heard “the thunder of cannon” from the south at 5:00 P.M. and assumed Rosecrans’s column “wasn’t as lucky as we were.”9
The testimony of Ord and his men does not square with the recollections of those on the battlefield. Rosecrans’s medical director, Archibald Campbell, reported that “the night
was calm and without a breath of air stirring, so that, as the battle raged until after nightfall, we were enabled to dress the wounded by candle-light as well as if we had been inside a house.” Soldiers in both armies spoke of a heavy, still air that kept the smoke of the battle close to the ground. Assuming everyone’s recollections of weather conditions were accurate, the most reasonable conclusion is that the rolling ground close to the fighting dissipated the breeze Ord’s men felt, and that the damp air on the battlefield deadened sounds beyond a mile or two.10
With no convincing explanation, soldiers speculated on the reasons for Ord’s delay. “Everyone thinks we ought to have caught Price at Iuka, and we would have done it if the left had gone in eighteen hours sooner,” Pvt. Charles Tompkins wrote from Burnsville. Camp rumors, he added, had Grant drunk at headquarters during the batde. The same rumor circulated among the officer corps. Said Capt. William Stewart of the Eleventh Missouri, “General Grant was dead drunk and couldn’t bring up his army. I was so mad when I first learned the facts that I could have shot Grant if I would have hung for it the next minute.”11
At noon Grant met Rosecrans in Iuka. Grant corroborated Ord’s story but seemed more concerned about the developing threat to Corinth than the battle at Iuka or Rosecrans’s pursuit of Price. Grant directed Ord to leave one brigade behind to garrison Iuka and with the remainder of his force return at once to Corinth. That done, he turned his attention to matters at hand. Grant approved of Rosecrans’s actions, both in bringing on the battle the day before and in giving chase that morning, and told him to “pursue the enemy as far as I thought it likely to result in any benefit to us or injury to them,” said Rosecrans. To the War Department Grant telegraphed a short, laudatory report of Rosecrans’s performance. He regretted that Rosecrans had not blocked the Fulton road, which would have forced Price to retreat eastward, away from Van Dorn, but a subsequent ride over the ground convinced him that Rosecrans had had too few troops both to hold the Fulton road and to fight Price.12
The Darkest Days of the War- the Battles of Iuka and Corinth Page 16