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

by Peter Cozzens

  A timely order from General McKean spared Colonel Oliver further embarrassment. Acting on his own volition McKean directed Oliver to fall back across Cane Creek and destroy the bridge, if time permitted. Cane Creek meandered from north to south through a long, patchwork expanse of pastures and cultivated fields paralleling the trace of old Confederate works, which ran a mile to the east. The Chewalla road bridged Cane Creek a mile behind Oliver’s advanced position at Alexander’s Crossroads. Just six feet wide, Cane Creek was more of an obstacle than it appeared. Its banks were twelve feet high and steep, and the ground nearby was spongy.

  Oliver did not stand upon the ceremony of his going but pulled his brigade back from the crossroads at once. The soldiers of the scattered Fourteenth Wisconsin already were nearing the creek, so that Oliver only needed to extricate the Fifteenth Michigan and his two howitzers. But even that proved daunting. After the Fourteenth Wisconsin disintegrated, the lack of any serious resistance emboldened Villepigue’s Mississippians, and they rapidly closed on Oliver’s withdrawing regiments. Bullets peppered the pastures and roadbed and around the Federals, and they shoved across the bridge with growing alarm. During the brief cannonade at Alexander’s Crossroads an axle of one of Oliver’s howitzers had splintered. The crew dragged it as far as the creek before the rope snapped. The Minnesotans spiked the gun, shoved it into the creek, where it wedged between the banks and the dry bed, then hurried across the bridge.13

  Safe on the east bank of the creek, Oliver’s men rallied. Skirmishers eased into place beside the road and opened on Villepigue’s Mississip- pians. It was 7:30 A.M. The sun hung at the level of the treetops. Its rays burnt a warm sheen on the dew lingering in the meadows and fields. Dismounting on the bridge, Yankee troopers tore up the flooring, felled a tree across the frame, and then sprinted past the skirmishers to rejoin their mounts.

  Colonel Oliver chose as his next position the first defensible high ground beyond Cane Creek, a timbered hill that abutted the track of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. Rising a half-mile east of the creek bridge, the hill was one of a two-mile-long, semicircular chain of hills, low knolls, and short ridges that followed the trace of Beauregard’s earthworks. The railroad ran through a deep cut between the western face of Oliver’s hill and a hill equally high on the south side of the track. The track itself lay on a bed of fine blue and white marl, a sparkling contrast to the orange dirt of the hills.14

  Oliver was pleased with the position. It commanded both the Chewalla road and the railroad and “was a strong one and easy to hold against anything but an overwhelming force.” But he was troubled by his standing order, which was to fall back and avoid pitched battle. At 8:00 A.M., as Oliver was placing his two regiments and one remaining howitzer on the crest, General McArthur arrived and eased his qualms. McArthur also liked the ground and told Oliver bluntly to “hold the position at all hazards.” Well aware Oliver’s command was too small to defend even the most ideal terrain without being flanked, McArthur rode off to bring up his brigade.15

  Whether McArthur exceeded his authority in ordering Oliver to stand firm is uncertain. In his report McArthur said he “determined to make a stand on Cane Creek Bluff.” In a telegram written shortly after Oliver fell back from Alexander’s Crossroads, Rosecrans told Grant that he had ordered McArthur to take charge of matters along Cane Creek and to “push forward to make strong reconnaissances.” When McArthur reported the hill to which Oliver had withdrawn seemed “of great value to test the advancing force,” Rosecrans authorized him to “hold it pretty firmly with that view” — that is to say, only long enough to compel the enemy to reveal his strength, not “at all hazards,” as Oliver understood his orders.

  Rosecrans later attributed McArthur’s zeal to his “Scotch blood,” which boiled at the prospect of battle.16

  McArthur’s decision to fight on Oliver’s hill was undoubtedly wise. Rosecrans was in a tight spot and needed time. At 8:00 A.M. he had no troops besides McArthur’s with which to resist a Confederate advance down the Chewalla road. Far from being neatly aligned in a continuous arc north of town, as Rosecrans had intended, his army was scattered about the countryside. The command nearest Oliver’s hill was Crocker’s Iowa Brigade at Battery F, a mile away. General Hamilton had his division deployed a mile and a half northeast of Corinth, watching the Monterey and Purdy roads. The head of Stanley’s column was still at least two hours away, and Davies’s division was only then entering town.

  When Davies reported to army headquarters for instructions, he found Rosecrans doubtful and a bit dazed, not at all sure where the main blow might fall or if the Rebels intended to attack Corinth at all. Rosecrans still entertained the notion that the movement against Oliver might be no more than a diversion to cover a move against Grant. Rosecrans told Davies to take his division out a mile and a half and form line of battle astride the Memphis and Charleston Railroad as quickly as possible. Written instructions followed: “Rush forward your skirmishers on your front and feel what you have got to handle, if anything.” What Davies was to do after that was unclear. “We may assume the offensive very soon; it depends upon the pressure that may come on the right,” the order concluded.

  The muddle outside headquarters mirrored Rosecrans’s addled mind. In the commotion Capt. W. H. Chamberlin of the Eighty-first Ohio felt the tension of coming battle. “It was evident that something was going to happen. Troops were moving in every direction, teams were driving at break-neck speed, and all the usual business appearance of the town was giving way to inextricable confusion. At the same time, the sound of artillery grew more distinct and nearer, and orderlies and staff officers were dashing by on hurried hoof.”17

  15. Well, Boys, You Did That Handsomely

  Earl Van Dorn was as free of anxiety as Rosecrans was consumed by it. At daybreak Van Dorn’s army was concentrated precisely where he intended it to be, not dispersed beyond reach as was Rosecrans’s command. And unlike his West Point classmate, Van Dorn harbored no doubts about the enemy’s plans. He knew of the chain of lunettes the Federals had built near town — some said that a lady spy smuggled sketches of the fortifications and periodic reports of Yankee troop strength to him — and, said Maj. John Tyler, Van Dorn had deduced Rosecrans’s design of fighting a delaying action from the old Confederate earthworks. To Tyler’s surprise, Van Dorn arrayed the entire army in full view of the earthworks, retaining no reserve. One mile north of Alexander’s Crossroads General Price detoured to the left, deploying his two divisions 400 yards short of the earthworks, between the Memphis and Charleston and Mobile and Ohio Railroads. Price formed Hébert’s division on the left and Maury’s on the right. Brig. Gen. Martin Green’s Second Missouri Brigade held the extreme left, its flank resting on the Columbus road. Frank Armstrong brought his troopers over to cover the three-quarters of a mile of ground between Green’s left and the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. Next came the Mississippians and Alabamians of Col. John Martin. Gates’s First Missouri Brigade fell in on Martin’s right. Perhaps out of consideration for its losses at Iuka, Hébert retained his own brigade, now led by Col. W. Bruce Colbert, in reserve. Dabney Maury deployed two brigades forward. Brig. Gen. Charles W. Phifer took the left with his brigade of dismounted cavalry, and Brig. Gen. John C. Moore’s brigade lined up with its right touching the track of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. Brig. Gen. William Cabell formed his Arkansas brigade in supporting distance of Phifer and Moore.1

  Price played his role well. He hid his misgivings from his men behind all the martial pomp he could muster. Dressed in the multicolored plaid hunting shirt the soldiers had come to call his “war coat,” Price rode the length of the line. With him was the mounted headquarters band, which paused now and then to encourage the troops with popular tunes. The musicians unwittingly provided Gates’s Missourians with a good laugh as well. Midway through a rendition of “Listen to the Mockingbird,” a Federal shell struck an oak tree, splitting it in two and showering the musicians with limbs and leaves. The
band darted for the rear, trailed by hoots of derision. More shells followed. Bunched together in closed ranks, the men surrendered themselves to the whim of a chance hit.

  Neither Price’s presence nor the brief serenade could distract the soldiers from another source of growing agony. The temperature, which was climbing with the sun, hovered about the ninety-degree mark. Men by the hundreds had fallen out during the march, and those left standing swayed from heat and hunger. The 400-yard-wide abatis of fallen timber between them and the earthworks, into which Yankee infantry was pouring, did not help their humor. William McCurdy of the Thirty-seventh Mississippi later wrote that only thirteen men stood with him from his company; “the balance were broke down and left by the road side. Marched to death and suffering with hunger, we were soon drawn up in line of battle near the breastworks of the enemy. . . . The timber was cut down between us and fell[ed] across each other.”2

  On the south side of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad Mansfield Lovell struggled to bring up his division. For nearly an hour he was forced to wait on the west bank of Cane Creek while a detail from Villepigue’s brigade repaired the bridge. Colonel Oliver did what he could to slow their work. General Davies lent McArthur a section of Battery I, First Missouri Light Artillery, which the Scotsman passed on to Oliver. Colonel Oliver placed one of its pieces, a James six-pounder rifled gun, beside the remaining howitzer of the First Minnesota Battery.

  The two cannon opened a long-range fire on the bridge. At the same time Capt. Levi Vaughan edged his Company E, Fourteenth Wisconsin, down the forward slope to skirmish with Villepigue’s men. Few if any Mississippians were hit, as the spent Yankee bullets splashed harmlessly in the water or thudded against the bank. Oliver’s cannoneers also missed their mark, but the chance of a shell bursting on the bridge kept the Mississippians from giving their full attention to the work.3

  The bridge was hammered back together by 9:00 A.M. Two of Villepigue’s regiments hurried across and into line in a rolling pasture below Oliver’s hill. John Bowen got his brigade rapidly into position on Villepigue’s right and deployed skirmishers to help subdue the harassing fire. Albert Rust came over and extended Lovell’s front nearly a half- mile beyond the left flank of Oliver’s tiny command. A squadron of Col. William H. Jackson’s cavalry was inserted between each brigade of infantry. With his eight remaining companies Jackson rode to the extreme right, intending to reconnoiter west and south of town as soon as the attack began.4

  At 9:30 A.M.—ninety minutes after Oliver’s cavalry had wrecked the Cane Creek Bridge — the Confederate army was ready to advance against the outer works of Corinth. General Van Dorn took up headquarters in the Murphy house on the Columbus road, behind Price’s center. There he called a final conference before launching the assault, which he meant to open on the right with Lovell’s division. Certain of success, Van Dorn waited for his generals and let the minutes slip by.5

  * * *

  General McArthur moved with a will, galloping to his brigade headquarters, a half-mile down the Chewalla road, to rouse the Sixteenth Wisconsin and the Twenty-first Missouri. After marching most of the night, said a Wisconsin volunteer, both regiments “had just settled in their tents when the bugle call to arms summoned the men to rush out and fall into line of battle.” There was hardly time “to eat something hurriedly and get ready to meet the enemy.” From the northwest came the low rumble of cannon firing, then a staff officer appeared to show them the way forward. McArthur left the Seventeenth Wisconsin behind to guard the brigade camp and provide the nucleus of a fall-back position.

  By the time McArthur returned to the front, it was evident Oliver would need more than the two regiments the Scotsman brought with him. He had repelled Rebel skirmishers who had come down from the far ridge to challenge the Fourteenth Wisconsin and the Fifteenth Michigan for possession of the railroad cut, but that small victory merely portended a larger danger, should the enemy occupy the southern hill in force. To delay them Oliver sent the Twenty-first Missouri across the track and onto the hilltop.

  The Confederates also were probing heavily up the Chewalla road. The Fifteenth Michigan commanded that approach and had succeeded in keeping Villepigue’s skirmishers at bay. In expectation of an all-out attack by the Mississippians, Oliver retained the Sixteenth Wisconsin in reserve.

  For McArthur the greatest threat lay to the northeast, beyond Oliver’s right flank, where the enemy was clearly deploying “so as to gain the old rebel breastworks.” Leaving the defense of the hill again to Oliver, McArthur went off in search of reinforcements.

  He found them quickly, thanks to a confused but concerned General Davies. Rosecrans’s oral orders that Davies stop short of the outer breastworks were contrary to his thinking of the night before, when Rosecrans seemingly had settled on fighting a delaying action from there. Not having been privy to Rosecrans’s thinking, Davies accepted his instructions without question. Indeed, Davies may have been relieved that Rosecrans did not expect him to form at the outer breastworks, where the distance between the railroads — the sector he was to defend—was nearly two miles. With six regiments absent on various details, Davies had with him only 2,924 officers and men: Brig. Gen. Pleasant Hackleman mustered just 1,097 men in his First Brigade, Brig. Gen. Richard Oglesby counted a mere 720 in the Second Brigade, and Col. Silas Baldwin had 1,117 troops.6

  Davies led his small command out the Memphis road. After marching a mile and a half as ordered, he halted at 9:00 A.M. at the fork of the Chewalla and Columbus roads and formed a compact line of battle in the timber. Whatever relief Davies felt at having his division drawn together gave way to misgivings over the larger fate of the army. Artillery fire from the northwest had grown louder and more regular, leading Davies to conclude Oliver had withdrawn to the breastworks.

  Davies’s better instincts prevailed: “Thinking a movement forward on the Columbus road would support Colonel Oliver and prevent the enemy flooding down too rapidly upon us I sent to General Rosecrans for permission to move forward and occupy the rebel breastworks on the Columbus road. He replied that I could do as I thought best.” With his commanding general’s vague blessing, Davies marched northward.7

  Rosecrans was behaving oddly. The Ohioan faced his first test in a real battle, and that realization apparendy left him dazed. The campaigns in western Virginia had been seriocomic, brief encounters between half- trained mobs. The fight at Iuka had happened suddenly and developed a logic of its own before Rosecrans had time to respond. Now a veteran army confronted him—a foe, however, who offered Rosecrans ample time to put his plan into play. Yet Rosecrans hesitated. Receiving only halfhearted or inscrutable instructions, it is no surprise McArthur and Davies chose to respond as the situation on the ground seemed to dictate.

  Brig. Gen. Thomas A. Davies (Massachusetts Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, and the U.S. Army Military History Institute)

  A fifteen-minute hike brought Davies’s division to the edge of a large, open field, in the center of which the Columbus road forked. The main road continued due north; a well-worn bridle path diverged toward the northwest. While contemplating how, or if, he should divide his force between the two trails, Davies sent the Seventh Iowa and a section of Battery K, First Missouri Light Artillery, up the Columbus road to reconnoi- ter to the breastworks. His calculations were interrupted by a winded courier from McArthur, who told him that Colonel Oliver would be overrun unless he sent him two regiments at once.

  As the whole purpose of his forward movement had been to assist Oliver, Davies decided to oblige. He immediately detached two regiments from Baldwin’s brigade, the Seventh and Fifty-seventh Illinois, and a section of Battery D, First Missouri Light Artillery, to reinforce the Michigander.8

  Before Davies was able to consider his next move, Lt. Col. Arthur Ducat, who had been transferred to Rosecrans’s staff before the battle, rode up with new—and more definite—orders from headquarters. Ducat reiterated Rosecrans’s approval of Davies’s re
quest to advance to the Rebel breastworks and told him “not to let the enemy penetrate beyond” them, an admonition implying far more strenuous resistance than the developing action Rosecrans had earlier intended. Ducat reminded Davies that “in no event must he cease to touch his left on McArthur’s right” and cautioned him to keep watch over the bridle path between the Chewalla and Columbus roads.9

  Davies parceled out what remained of his depleted division along the breastworks. The departure of Baldwin’s two regiments left him slighdy more than 1,500 men with which to hold a front two miles long. The men in ranks, if not Rosecrans or Davies, knew the task was impossible. “The regiments were stretched to their utmost capacity, in a thin line, but yet there were immense gaps which could not be filled,” Captain Chamber- lin lamented. Pvt. Erastus Curtis agreed: “We formed in a single line of battle, with intervals between each man, of from three to four feet, the like of which I had never seen before, [and] never after.”

  The position was not a particularly strong one, either. Said Captain Chamberlin, “The old abatis, formed by felling the timber for the space of three hundred yards in front of the works, had lost much of its strength by time. . . . Beyond this was thick woods, whose abundant foliage, yet unhurt by the frost, formed an impenetrable cover for the movement of the rebel troops.” The works themselves, observed Cpl. Charles Wright, were “a slight affair, and would serve only as protection against musketry.”

  Chamberlin and Wright might have added that their regiment had been reduced by detachments to five companies, a mere 238 men. With this small force, augmented by a twenty-four-pounder howitzer and a ten-pounder Parrott gun from Battery H, First Missouri Light Artillery, Col. Thomas Morton started down the bridle path to defend the breastworks where the trail crossed. Davies inserted the rest of Oglesby’s brigade to the right of Morton’s Eighty-first Ohio. Col. Augustus Chetlain, who had just reported from Burnsville with six companies of the Twelfth Illinois, formed 300 yards beyond the flank of the Ohioans. A gap nearly as wide yawned between the Twelfth Illinois and the Ninth Illinois on the brigade right.10