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

by Peter Cozzens

  General Lovell left headquarters in a turmoil. Although he had accepted his orders with only mild doubts, Lovell was troubled enough to withhold the plan from his brigade commanders.

  Price lingered at headquarters. Anguish contorted his features. “You seem despondent, General Price,” said Van Dorn. “No!” Price retorted, brushing aside his doubts with gallant words. “You quite mistake me. I have only given you the facts within my knowledge and the counselling of my judgment. When you reach Corinth you shall find that no portion of the army shall exceed mine either in courage, in conduct, or in achievement.”

  Price’s ire was the greater because, as Colonel Snead had predicted, it was his command that stood to suffer most from failure. Price had brought with him to Ripley 14,363 men: 6,602 in the division of Hébert, 3,896 infantrymen under Maury, 1,428 troopers in Armstrong’s cavalry brigade, and 928 artillerymen. Van Dorn had Lovell’s division and two cavalry regiments, perhaps 7,000 men in all. Although contributing two-thirds of the force for the expedition, Price had no real voice in its conduct.8

  * * *

  Monday, September 29, broke cloudy and warm. It had rained intermittendy for three days, but the heat had evaporated the water before it settled. Although commissary officers were slow to load the wagons, delaying Lovell’s departure until mid-afternoon, he marched the six miles Van Dorn required of him before nightfall.9

  Price broke camp at daylight on September 30. Well fitted with provisions, his men marched quickly behind Lovell’s column, covering eighteen miles before they stopped for the night outside the tiny hamlet of Jonesborough, nine miles short of Pocahontas. Lovell bivouacked at Metamora, Tennessee, in thickly wooded bottomland west of the Hatchie River.10

  October 1 was clear and warm. The sandy surface of the Ripley- Pocahontas road scorched the feet of Price’s soldiers, and fine particles of dust swirled up and stung their eyes. But they marched hard, covering eight miles before going into camp beside Lovell’s division, which had remained at Metamora to await their arrival. The more fortunate of Price’s soldiers rested in an open cornfield. Others found themselves sleeping “in a bottom densely and heavily wooded, with a thick undergrowth beneath, and almost a canopy of vines above.” Those with strength left to walk wandered over to the Hatchie River, where they enjoyed a cool bath in the gathering twilight.11

  MAP 5. Confederate March to Corinth, September 20-October 2

  During the day Jackson’s cavalry left Lovell and rode to Pocahontas to keep alive the impression that the Confederates intended to cross the Tuscumbia and drive northward. Price scarcely had his command settled for the night when a courier brought an urgent message from Van Dorn, calling on him to assemble lumber-gathering details on the Hatchie River near Pocahontas and begin work on a bridge. Not long after issuing the order, Van Dorn was distracted from his bridge-building ruse by a matter of real urgency. Lovell had discovered that the Federals had partially burned Davis Bridge, a simple wooden structure spanning the deep, sluggish, sixty-foot-wide Hatchie River just east of Metamora. This was the bridge for the road from Pocahontas to Corinth; the next nearest crossing was at Cram’s Mill, seven miles south. A detour to Cram’s Mill would cost the army at least a day, and with it most certainly the element of surprise.

  While Price’s men labored through the night to build a bridge they would never cross, Lovell set his men to repairing Davis Bridge. Despite a lack of tools and an encounter with Federal pickets, the Rebels worked quickly, laying the last plank before 4:00 A.M. The division took to the road at once; its destination for the day was Chewalla, Tennessee, a mile and a quarter north of the state line and nine miles northwest of Corinth. Price followed after sunrise. Van Dorn left his unwieldy wagon train two miles east of Davis Bridge, at the intersection of the Chewalla road and a sand trail from Cram’s Mill known as the Boneyard road. He detached the First Texas Legion and two batteries of artillery to guard the train and left Wirt Adams’s cavalry regiment at Davis Bridge, to warn of any Federals who might approach from the west to relieve Rosecrans.12

  It was a sullen and apprehensive army that marched toward Corinth. Lovell had waited until the early hours of October 2 to brief his brigade commanders on their destination. Against a moonlit backdrop of cypress trees and muscadine vines, to the accompaniment of hammers and saws, Lovell told the generals of Van Dorn’s grand scheme.

  The commander of his first brigade, Brig. Gen. Albert Rust, spoke up loudly against it. “It was impossible to succeed in the attack,” Rust told Lovell. “The enemy had or could have more men there than we could assault with, such were their facilities for concentrating, and . . . the defenses constructed by General Beauregard were somewhat formidable, and . . . were very much strengthened by the enemy,” concluded Rust. “If we [can] not succeed we had better lay down our arms and go home,” Lovell replied. Rust, a robust forty-four-year-old former attorney and Arkansas congressman, stuck to his opinion; the plan was pure madness and must be abandoned. Brig. Gen. John Villepigue commanded Lovell’s second brigade. What opinion the thirty-two-year-old West Point graduate, whom Beauregard once called a “most energetic young officer,” had of Van Dorn’s plan is unknown. The commander of Lovell’s third brigade, Brig. Gen. John Bowen, a handsome, thirty-one-year-old West Pointer who had resigned from the army to take up architecture in St. Louis, was skeptical but decided to withhold judgment until he learned more.

  Lovell and Bowen picked their way through the tangled black woods to call on Van Dorn, who had taken up headquarters at the Davis house.

  What Bowen saw and heard there satisfied him that Rust had been right. General Van Dorn was busy sketching a map of the country between Davis Bridge and Corinth. A local guide was helping him draw in the roads. Van Dorn motioned Bowen to his side. He showed him the sketch and pointed out the roads leading to and from the Hatchie River. A superb, outspoken soldier who had risen from the colonelcy of the First Missouri for his combat record and strict standards of discipline, Bowen had only just joined Van Dorn’s army. Although he had date of rank on Dabney Maury, he had been relegated to command of a brigade. Not surprisingly, Van Dorn’s map failed to impress him: “The map was a crude sketch on a sheet of letter paper, drawn to no particular scale, and such as I deemed utterly unsuitable for the ordinary movements of an army.” Apparently no one bothered to show him or Lovell the fine engineer maps that Price had given Van Dorn, and so the two left the Davis house convinced the fate of the march rested on a childlike drawing and the word of a civilian guide.13

  Regimental officers and the rank and file still knew nothing of the object of their march. Price’s Missourians certainly disliked the aspect of things. Their pleasure at crossing the state line into Tennessee the day before had been immense. That they might return to Mississippi was too distasteful to contemplate; “not that we disliked the state,” said one, “but we wanted to go north.” Texan Newton Keen predicted the worst. Everyone regretted having to serve under Van Dorn again, “for we had been under him at the battle of Elkhorn [Tavern], and had no confidence in him . . . . We went into the campaign whipped.”14

  Such was the mood of the men being shepherded unawares to fight a battle their generals had dismissed as already lost.

  * * *

  General Grant seemed easily distracted after Iuka. His spirits, already low, fell farther when Julia left for St. Louis. He steeled himself long enough to meet Van Dorn’s expected attack against Bolivar or Corinth. When none materialized, Grant left Tennessee to visit his wife.

  His pretense for going to St. Louis was to confer with Maj. Gen. Samuel Curtis, commander of the Department of the Missouri. The day before the Batde of Iuka, Halleck had wired Grant that the enemy was constructing two ironclad boats on the Yazoo River, in Louisiana. After the damage the Rebel ram Arkansas had done to the Federal river flotilla two months earlier at Vicksburg, the mere rumor that more were being built was enough to set the high command to worrying. Halleck wanted Grant to consult with General Curtis, whose
headquarters were at St. Louis, about the feasibility of sending a small force from Memphis or Helena, Arkansas, to destroy the boats.

  An exchange of telegrams would have sufficed to coordinate such an operation, but Grant wanted badly to go to St. Louis. To excuse his absence he painted for Halleck a picture of perfect calm in his district, writing him on September 24, “The enemy being driven from his position in front of Bolivar by the rapid return of troops drawn from there to reinforce Corinth, and everything now promising quiet in our front for a short time, I shall go to Saint Louis in person to confer with General Curtis.” Perhaps suspecting Halleck would question the need for his trip, Grant added that “another reason for my going is that for several weeks my health has not been good and although improving for the last few days I feel that the trip will be of benefit to me.”

  What benefit he derived from his untimely departure is open to speculation. Franklin Dick, a well-respected St. Louis attorney and the brother-in-law of Francis Blair Jr., wrote Attorney General Edward Bates on September 28, two days after Grant’s arrival, that the general had been seen staggering about town in a drunken stupor. A friend of Dick had spoken to Grant and found him “tight as a brick.” A correspondent for the New York Times was more charitable and probably more honest. He thought Grant looked “remarkably well, although bearing some marks of the fatigues of his summer campaign.”

  Before leaving for St. Louis, Grant had had the presence of mind to clarify command relationships in his district by dividing the area into four geographical divisions. He gave Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman command of the First Division, which embraced all territory south of the Hatchie River and west of Bolivar then under Federal control. To Major General Ord went the Second Division, which ranged from the Kentucky state line to Bethel, Tennessee, as well as the additional responsibility of guarding the Memphis and Ohio, Mobile and Ohio, and Memphis and Charleston Railroads — the iron-bounded triangle that was the heart of Grant’s district. Rosecrans commanded the Third Division, which consisted of Corinth, Iuka, and a number of small outposts east of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. McArthur’s division of Ord’s corps, which was operating around Corinth, was placed under Rosecrans’s command. Rosecrans also was to watch the railroad lines south of Bethel and east of Chewalla. The Fourth Division, under Brig. Gen. Isaac F. Quinby, comprised country safely in Federal hands — all of western Tennessee north of the railroads and the posts of Forts Henry and Donelson.15

  Grant’s lieutenants were diligent in his absence. Forgetting his assurances to Halleck that all would remain quiet in the district while he was away, in his Memoirs Grant let slip the true nature of things at the time he left: “We were in a country where nearly all the people, except the Negroes, were hostile to us and friendly to the cause we were trying to suppress. It was easy for the enemy to get early information on our every move. We, on the contrary, had to go after our information in force, and then often returned without it.”16

  Ord and Rosecrans did their best to confirm rumors that Price and Van Dorn had joined forces at Ripley to “capture Corinth or break our line of communication and force us to retreat toward Columbus, [Kentucky].” Federal scouts combed the countryside, and strong cavalry patrols visited every town and hamlet in the district.

  They turned up nothing. Rather than reassure him, the negative reports only caused Rosecrans to feel more exposed. He was sure the enemy was out there—perhaps west of the wooded valley of the Hatchie River, which his patrols had yet to penetrate.

  Other problems loomed. Heavy detachments for outpost duty and patrols left Rosecrans with only the divisions of Davies and McArthur to garrison the town — fewer than 10,000 men in all. Worse yet, McArthur had been compelled by a later date of rank to yield his division to the hopelessly inept Brig. Gen. Thomas McKean, recendy arrived from command of the post of St. Louis. A graduate of West Point, McKean had resigned his commission in 1834. He foiled to win it back during the Mexican War, serving as an enlisted man through the entire conflict. Afterward McKean wisely returned to his civilian occupation of civil engineer. Only the shortage of officers at the outbreak of the Civil War got him a brigadier general’s commission, and he was shuffled off to a series of quiet, backwater garrison commands. At fifty-two McKean was regarded by most as too old for field duty. Somehow he had wangled a combat command, and Rosecrans was stuck with him.17

  Rosecrans put the soldiers in Corinth to work strengthening the fortifications. When he set up headquarters in town on September 26, Rosecrans was dismayed to find the interior defensive works still consisted only of Batteries Robinett, Williams, Phillips, Tanrath, and Lothrop, which Captain Prime had built on the College Hill line earlier in the summer. Rosecrans ordered the lunettes connected by breastworks and the ground to the west and north covered by abatis. He organized all able-bodied Black contrabands into twenty-five-man squads and put them to work beside his soldiers. Finally, Rosecrans directed that the line of lunettes be extended to cover the approaches from the north. Construction began on Battery Powell, a six-gun artillery redoubt situated a half- mile north of town and a mile east of Battery Robinett that would command the Purdy road. The men labored at a frantic pace.

  For four days the work went on. By September 30 a line of breastworks had been raised between College Hill and Battery Robinett. Enough trees had been cut to erect a thin abatis from Battery Robinett to the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. But from the track to Battery Powell the ground lay open.18

  The closing days of September brought reports of enemy movements west of the Hatchie River, but where or why the Rebels were marching remained a mystery. Captured prisoners themselves did not know their destination. Like most Rebel prisoners they dissembled, telling their captors that Van Dorn and Price had marshaled an army of 40,000. Rosecrans doubted but could not entirely dismiss these numbers. Instead he rationalized away his fears. Whatever their strength, the Confederates would “have the impression that our defensive works at Corinth would be pretty formidable. I doubted if they would venture to bring their force against our command behind defense works. I therefore said: The enemy may threaten us and strike our line entirely, get on the road between us and Jackson and advance upon that place, the capture of which would compel us to get out of our lines and fight him in the open country.” (This was the course of action Lovell had urged upon Van Dorn.)19 However, Rosecrans did not give himself over completely to wishful thinking. He ordered Davis Bridge burned on the night of September 30, but the cavalrymen charged with the task were sloppy and succeeded in burning only the floor planking. The next morning he called in Crocker’s brigade from Iuka and ordered Hamilton’s division, which was strung out as far south as Rienzi, to draw closer as well. To slow any Rebel advance against Corinth from Pocahontas, Rosecrans told McKean to send two more regiments from Col. John Oliver’s brigade to Chewalla, then held by the Fifteenth Michigan Infantry and a company of cavalry.

  Oliver’s Fourteenth and Eighteenth Wisconsin regiments broke camp at 2:00 P.M. on October 1 and, accompanied by the First Minnesota Light Artillery, hurried out the Chewalla road. To better defend against an attack from the west, Rosecrans told Stanley to move his division by way of Kossuth to the Hatchie River.20

  Stanley had a miserable march. The soldiers of Fuller’s brigade rose at 7:00 A.M.; Mower’s men, with farther to march, had been awakened four hours earlier. All day long the two columns marched, “through a region of few settlements, poor log cabins, rolling oak ridges and sluggish streams,” most of which had dried up under the summer sun. The temperature climbed to ninety-four degrees before noon. Fuller halted his men for a meal and short rest in Kossuth at noon, and the brigade reached the Hatchie River at dark. It was midnight before Mower reached Kossuth. He entered the town almost alone. “The heat and dust and swift pace were too much for the men,” recalled a member of the Forty-seventh Illinois. “One by one the boys dropped out, unable to continue further. Those who reached their destination threw themselves down in the furrows of
an old corn field, too weary to build fires or seek refreshment.”21

  Ten miles to the north the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Wisconsin regiments trudged toward Chewalla. They halted at sunset, a half-mile short of the village. Blocking their further progress was the Fifteenth Michigan, intent on using the road to march in the other direction. Having been fired on by enemy scouts, the Michiganders told tales of 40,000 Rebels waiting on the far bank of the Hatchie River to sweep down on them. Sgt. William Tucker of the Fourteenth Wisconsin found their plight rather amusing. “On our arrival near Chewalla we found the Michigan boys badly broken up and with their camp equipage making for a more friendly country,” Tucker wrote. “At first we were inclined to be somewhat surprised at them for being in so much of a hurry to move from that locality. It was supposed by our command that it was nothing more than a band of bushwhackers, which were frequendy prowling around our outposts.”

  The Michiganders gave as good as they got, confessed Tucker. They “insisted that they were ready to remain with us, and that we would have all the fun we wanted in the morning, if not before.” Colonel Oliver reformed the regiment and placed it in line of battle with the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Wisconsin on a long low ridge south of Chewalla commanding the road from Davis Bridge. He placed two twelve-pounder howitzers from the First Minnesota Light Artillery on the crest astride the road and sent the rest of the battery back to Corinth. Skirmishers edged off the ridge and melted into the dense timber.