Pleasant Hackleman’s brigade manned the breastworks between the Columbus road and the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. Before committing the brigade, Hackleman sent the Seventh Iowa and Battery K, First Missouri Light Artillery, scouting up the Columbus road. They found the breastworks empty and the enemy forming in the woods beyond. Hackleman deployed his remaining two regiments, the Second Iowa and the Fifty-second Illinois, to the right of the battery. Col. Thomas W. Sweeny of the Fifty-second despaired of his predicament; 500 yards of undefended breastworks lay between the right flank of his regiment and the railroad. Sweeny detached two companies to watch the gap, called for artillery support, and settled in to defend the extreme right of the division as best he could. The time was nearly 10:00 A.M. Not a shot had been fired, but several dozen of Davies’s Federals already had fallen, victims of sunstroke. The number climbed with the sun.11
* * *
By 9:00 A.M. Rosecrans’s mind had cleared. With his blessing, General Hamilton occupied the breastworks on Davies’s right. Again Federal flanks failed to touch: 400 yards of breastworks lay empty between Davies and Hamilton.
Of far greater moment was the mile-wide gap between Davies’s left and the small force McArthur had marshaled atop Oliver’s hill. Davies had not forgotten Rosecrans’s admonition that he “in no event cease to touch his left on McArthur’s right.” But he either miscalculated the distance involved or assumed McArthur would use the two regiments he had sent him to cover the ground. The Scotsman, however, had his own problems. With Lovell’s entire division arrayed to attack the hill, and J. C. Moore’s brigade deploying just beyond Lovell’s left, McArthur needed every available man close at hand. He used the reinforcements from Davies accordingly, hurrying the Fifty-seventh Illinois to the left of the Fourteenth Wisconsin and inserting the cannon from Capt. Henry Richardson’s Battery D, First Missouri Battery, between the regiments.12
A rattle of musketry from the rail bed announced the return of Rebel skirmishers. In the same instant Col. Andrew Babcock’s Seventh Illinois arrived at the double-quick, and McArthur sent it to the hill north of the Chewalla road. It was a weak position. A deep ravine just beyond the line of abatis offered shelter to an enemy attacking in front. Babcock threw a company into the ravine but was helpless to close a 200-yard interval between his left and the right flank of the Fifteenth Michigan.
To fill the gap, McArthur appealed to Davies for more troops. The request startled Davies, but he nonetheless released the Fiftieth Illinois, his only reserve. “While moving to the front there suddenly fell upon our ears, low cannonading and the low sharp roll of musket firing,” said the regimental historian. It was 10:00 A.M. After nearly two hours of deploying, skirmishing, and waiting while Van Dorn briefed his generals, the Confederates had moved to the attack.13
* * *
When it came, Mansfield Lovell’s attack was irresistible. The Confederates approached from three directions, subjecting McArthur’s five regiments to a cross fire that fast made their positions untenable. Although the outcome was never in doubt, McArthur’s small force inflicted sharp losses on Lovell’s Confederates. What Albert Rust called the “extremely animated” resistance of the Twenty-first Missouri stopped his brigade briefly below the brow of the ridge. When it got going again, thick timber on the slope split the brigade in twain. The Third and Seventh Kentucky setded into a close-range duel with the Twenty-first Missouri. The three regiments on the brigade left, screened by the Fourth Alabama Battalion, drifted past the Missourians' right flank, over the ridge and down its east slope toward the railroad cut.
That detour doomed the Twenty-first. The regiment had had some bad moments but was holding its ground against the Kentuckians. The color-bearer had sneaked away at the first volley, trailed by several dozen soldiers perhaps hopeful the standing order to “follow the colors” would exculpate them. It did not. Col. David Moore drew his saber and waded into them. To Moore’s relief Cpl. Jess Roberts redeemed matters. “He gallandy seized the colors,” Moore recalled, “and advanced on the line of batde . . . causing great enthusiasm among the men.”
No sooner had Corporal Roberts’s band returned than Moore’s horse was killed, pinning the colonel to the ground. Moore was pulled free, badly dazed. The regimental surgeon could not help him—he too had been shaken up when his mount threw him—so Moore stumbled to the rear, no longer fit to command.
Maj. Edwin Moore took charge. Soldiers spilled past him by the dozen, and gradually the regiment yielded the crest to the Confederates. Moore and his line officers restored order in the railroad cut. Joined by the Sixteenth Wisconsin the Missourians charged back up the ridge, holding it until Rust outflanked them. Faint from the heat and lack of water, at 10:30 A.M. the Missourians fell back, having lost only a dozen men in sixty minutes of sharp fighting. The Sixteenth Wisconsin went with them.14
MAP 6.The Battle Opens, October 3, 10:00 A.M.
Preceded by skirmishers from the Fourth Alabama Battalion, Rust’s left regiments glided past the Missourians' right flank to the steep eastern edge of the ridge. As the Alabamians stepped from the protection of the forest and started down the railroad embankment, a bitter fire erupted from across the track. The Alabamians broke and “fled in wild confusion,” exposing the main line to a deafening chorus of rifle volleys and shelling. The Ninth Arkansas, the Thirty-first Alabama, and the Thirty- fifth Alabama charged off the slope toward an enemy entrenched not sixty yards away. Solid shot replaced shell, remembered Pvt. W. G. Whitfield of the Thirty-fifth, and one “struck a large tree, just a few feet from my head, and tore it to pieces. One of my company, who was deaf, turned his head to one side and looked up as though he heard it.”
When the Rebels crossed the track, the Yankee gunners turned to canister. The carnage was terrific, and Rust’s men retired up the slope.
Encouraged by several craven officers, the Thirty-first Alabama fell apart, and neither its colonel nor Rust could rally the men. After Rust left to re-form the Ninth Arkansas and the Thirty-fifth Alabama, the regiment simply marched off the field.
Rust had come up against the Fifty-seventh Illinois and Lt. George Cutler’s two-gun section of Richardson’s Battery D, First Missouri Light Artillery. The Illinoisans held a strong line on the hill but lacked the cover afforded by the old Confederate entrenchments, which ended 100 or 200 yards to their right.15
“Reforming, they come again with that cold-blooded yell which has to be heard to be appreciated,” said one Illinoisan. Again the Rebels were repelled. A third time they charged. Averred Capt. James Zearing of the Fifty-seventh, “Our men stood the shock nobly, delivering the most steady and effective fire that I have seen during the war.” But this time the Confederates kept coming. A hundred men fell in a few seconds, reported Rust; he concluded, however, that “to have halted would have brought certain destruction upon my command.” Rust directed the Ninth Arkansas to make a detour to the left to avoid the deepest part of the railroad cut, ordered bayonets fixed, and sent his line forward. The fire from the Fifty-seventh intensified, said Captain Zearing, “but it had no effect in checking their march. They advanced on the double quick in the utmost disregard of human life.”
The Illinoisans were stunned. The Ninth Arkansas and the Thirty- fifth Alabama swept on, intent on taking the two guns of Cutler’s section. Cutler limbered them just a few dozen yards ahead of the Rebels. One cannon bounced off the hill to safety, but the limber team of the second gun ran wild when a wheel driver panicked and jumped from his horse. The limber pole broke, and the cannon slammed into the dirt. A few members of the battery tried to push it off, giving up only when the Rebels were near enough to bayonet them. Lt. Albert Goodloe of the Thirty-fifth Alabama watched Private Whitfield, who earlier had almost been beheaded by a shot from that very cannon, chase after the last Yankee to leave. He nearly caught the cannoneer, said Goodloe, “but the Yankee was too fleet for him.” The rest of the men were not far behind Whitfield. They left behind the cannon — on the breech of w
hich the name “Lady Richardson” was boldly painted in white — and followed the fleeing Federals.16
To the right of Cutler’s section the Fourteenth Wisconsin put up an even stronger stand against half of John Bowen’s brigade. Companies E and K had been thrown forward to the railroad embankment; the remainder of the regiment was tucked behind the old Confederate earthworks along the brow of the hill. From the hilltop the two cannon of Battery I, First Missouri Light Artillery, and remaining gun of the First Minnesota joined in to shell the Rebels.
The target of their fire was Capt. C. K. Caruthers’s Mississippi Sharpshooters Battalion, an untested unit more anxious than most to prove itself. Explained Lt. William C. Holmes, “The battalion had assumed a new role in the great science of warfare. We had been drilled in the ’skirmish drill' almost exclusively, and our place in the army was in the front, leading the entire division in the advance, but always in the rear in the retreat. Individually, to a man, we were anxious to show our hand in the line of warfare set apart to us, for our small size made us the jest of the other regiments.”
At 10:00 A.M. Caruthers’s battalion was ordered out in front of the Twenty-second Mississippi. “We felt our way to the front,” continued Holmes, “when all at once an entire battery turned loose solid shot whose unearthly screams through the air set up the most gigantic dodging I have ever seen. . . . On we went, and musket shots were added to the horribly sublime music, till suddenly an exhilarating frenzy seemed to take possession of every man, and we swept away the enemy’s skirmishers, despite the huge limbs of trees cut off by the solid shot.”17
Young James Newton was among the Yankee skirmishers driven in by Caruthers’s Mississippians. “I could not run so fast as I had ought on account of a sore foot, and for one spell I was right between two fires,” Newton remembered. “I had sense enough left to know that such a thing would not do for me so I went off to the left and the secesh went past me.”
Newton was at least momentarily safe. Several of his comrades, however, were gathered in by the pursuing Mississippians, who spilled into the railroad cut. There they paused. Not fifty yards away—"belching forth fiery destruction, simply grand in its sublimity,” said Lieutenant Holmes — stood the two guns of Cutler’s section. Although it made them an easier target, the men of Caruthers’s battalion instinctively huddled together. Unable to see the enemy through the smoke, they fired blindly uphill, losing men and hitting nothing until Capt. Tom Atkinson of Company C mounted the embankment, waved his tall white hat, and shouted, “Come on, boys, let us take it!” Lieutenant Holmes watched for a response. A sergeant from his own company lifted his musket and yelled, “Come on boys, let us follow him up.” Men started forward, a few at a time, until “all seemed infused with the sublime horror of the occasion, and to a man we rushed over that embankment, up the hill to the very mouth of the cannon.”
They got no farther. Concealed by the smoke and their breastworks, the Fourteenth Wisconsin let loose a volley that Holmes said sent the Mississippians stumbling “down that hill much faster than we ran up it.” Halfway down they met the Twenty-second Mississippi coming up. No orders were given; remembering their skirmish drill, the men shouted to one another to “form on its left” and with the Twenty-second Mississippi went up the hill again.
This time the Rebel line made it to within a few yards of the breastworks before stopping. Instead of giving back, the Mississippians took cover and returned the fire. Lieutenant Holmes and his company “took refuge in an old gully, and for a few minutes a torrent of Minie balls passed over us, cutting the leaves and twigs from the trees. We were almost covered, but we were out of danger.”18
Not so the Fourteenth Wisconsin, thanks to the pathetic resistance of the Fifteenth Michigan, which broke before Bowen’s First Missouri and the Thirty-third Mississippi of Villepigue’s brigade coming down the Chewalla road. The Rebels spilled over the breastworks to the right of the Fourteenth Wisconsin, catching that regiment in the most concentrated cross fire of the morning. Men fell at a dizzying rate. Captain Vaughan of Company E, the most popular officer in the regiment, was shot at near point-blank range. Pvt. Andrew Sloggy caught him as he fell. “Tell my wife, and all my friends that I did my duty, and died for my country,” he muttered to Sloggy, who tried to coax two soldiers into carrying Vaughan off. “It was of no use,” lamented Sloggy. “The captain urged me all the while to leave him before the rebels would get me. I stayed with him until there was no choice for me but to leave.” Another well-liked member of the same company, Pvt. J. M. Vandoozer, was shot through the head while taking a chew of tobacco. Two days later, friends found Vandoozer’s body, the plug of tobacco still grasped in his fingers. More seriously for the morale of the regiment, the entire color guard was killed or wounded. The bearer of the regimental colors was bayoneted, and the standard fell between the lines. A soldier from the Fifteenth Michigan, in a small act of redemption for his regiment’s poor conduct, dashed into the fray, grabbed the colors, and returned them to the regiment that evening. The bearer of the national colors, Sgt. Dennis Murphy, came away with his flag. When the regiment entered the fight, Murphy had remarked, “I’ll come out a dead sergeant or a live lieutenant.” He emerged with a field commission, a cripple for life. Although repeatedly hit, he had hung onto the flag until it was in tatters and soaked with his blood.19
Bowen’s Confederates came over the breastworks with clubbed muskets. The slaughter of the color guard had paralyzed those nearby. They were too startled to fire or run, and the Rebels were among them before they regained their composure. Twenty-one Wisconsin men surrendered. In the confusion the regimental sergeant major, returning from the brigade train, walked into the Rebel ranks with a supply of ammunition. Also captured was Private Newton. His dodge away from Caruthers’s skirmishers brought him into the breastworks simultaneously with the Twenty-second Mississippi: “I could see the Butternuts on both sides of the ditch; when they came up . . . I surrendered.”20
Lieutenant Holmes got himself a Yankee, though not in the manner he may have wished. Holmes had hidden in the gully until after the Twenty- second Mississippi cleared the breastworks. When the firing died down, he got up and wandered forward to find it or his own battalion. “I found no Twenty-second. It had gone clear out of sight after the fleeing enemy, but left behind a sure and terrible token of its work.” With his own troops gone as well, Holmes became “an interested spectator.” He walked along the breastworks just abandoned by the Fourteenth Wisconsin. There before him “was presented a sight that could but appeal to the heart of the hardest soldier—men dead, dying, wounded, all in line just as the regiment stood.” (Seventy-eight to be precise — 27 dead and 51 wounded — of the 225 men who had answered roll that morning.) Among them was one unhurt soldier. In his arms he cradled the body of a man just dead, shot through the head. “’My friend, are you hurt?'” Holmes asked, thinking to himself what a “travesty” he had done the word “friend.” “No, but this is my poor dead brother, and I could not leave him,” the Federal answered. “I would not mind it for myself so much, but his poor wife and little baby!”
As the only unwounded Rebel present, Holmes might claim the man as his prisoner, but “I could stand no more of that, and I went to the next man sitting down and gritting his teeth with pain.” Holmes repeated his question: “Are you hurt, my friend?”
“Oh, yes,” the man answered, showing Holmes a bubbling bayonet wound in the groin.
“Well, here is a grain dose of morphine I had for myself should I be wounded. Will you take it?”
“Oh yes, with pleasure and thanks.”
Holmes handed it to him, reflecting on the absurdity of the scene. “I thought what ought to ring down the ages of humanity to great and small: ’Well, what foolishness! Here we have been trying to kill each other, and now we are trying to do all we can to repair the damage done.'”
Holmes passed to the next live man, whom he found clutching a tree, shot through the lungs and groaning with
every breath. Holmes gave him a dose of morphine. He handed his last dose to a young boy who sat crying and cradling his mangled arm, then returned to the bayoneted man. The morphine had eased his pain. Holmes sat down beside him — “an intelligent, talkative Yankee"—and the two fell into a friendly discussion, punctuated by the moans of the dying.21
The fight was not quite over. Still on the field was the Seventh Illinois. The random retreat from Oliver’s hill, which neither Oliver nor McArthur could control, left the Illinoisans alone and apparently forgotten. The weatherworn abatis and the ravine in front of their position helped them stop a frontal attack by Villepigue’s Thirty-ninth Mississippi. A few minutes later they spotted a thick line of Rebel skirmishers emerging from the timber 200 yards northeast of their right flank. Cautiously the Rebels moved across abatis-laced open ground toward the empty breastworks beyond the flank of the Seventh. Col. Andrew Babcock had his right companies train their rifle-muskets on the flank of the slowly advancing line.
The skirmishers belonged to J. C. Moore’s brigade of Maury’s division. When the Thirty-ninth Mississippi moved to the attack, Moore was directed to advance as far as the timber line at the edge of the abatis, there to await orders. Moore sent part of the Second Texas Infantry and one company of the Thirty-fifth Mississippi into the open, where they ran into skirmishers from the Seventh Illinois. The Illinoisans ran back to their breastworks, and for a moment the field fell silent. Then the Thirty- ninth Mississippi broke apart, and Moore charged.
The Rebels swept from the woods five regiments strong. The Second Texas was on the right of Moore’s first line, and the Forty-second Alabama was on the left. Both were fine commands. Sandwiched between them, where it could do the least harm, was the Thirty-fifth Mississippi, a new regiment of dubious reliability that had a camel to carry the officers' baggage and a colonel who drank too much. The Fifteenth and Twenty- third Arkansas trailed in support.
The Darkest Days of the War- the Battles of Iuka and Corinth Page 21