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

by Peter Cozzens

  The enemy pushed steadily in, and by 11:00 o’clock it became apparent that, instead of a feint, the enemy was in full force. About 3 o’clock in the afternoon he had been pressed into the wooded angle between the Memphis and Charleston and the Corinth and Jackson [Mobile and Ohio] railroads, and had advanced within range of the defensive line under construction. The opportune moment appeared now at hand, and I directed General Hamilton, whose division was on our right, beyond the range of the enemy’s operations, to face to the westward, and move on to the enemy’s flank and rear.11

  Of course this was self-serving fiction. Nothing had been apparent at 11:00 A.M., and the only one being pressed at 3:00 P.M. was Rosecrans.

  The dark side of Rosecrans’s genius — a tendency toward intolerance and impulsiveness—was showing itself under the pressure of battle. One of his most loyal corps commanders later suggested that Rosecrans issued far too many orders during combat. Critics took this observation one step further. Contemporary accounts suggested that Rosecrans was hampered by stuttering—that he stammered and faltered even while addressing soldiers during a review. In combat, if his defamers may be believed, his stuttering rendered him incoherent. Said New York Herald correspondent William Shanks, “I have known him, when merely directing an orderly to carry a dispatch from one point to another, grow so excited, vehement, and incoherent as to utterly confound the messenger. In great danger as in small things, this nervousness incapacitated him from the intelligible direction of his officers or effective execution of his plans.”

  Although William Shanks seldom had anything good to say about anyone, the order Rosecrans dictated to Colonel John Kennett to put in play his plan for Hamilton suggested there was more than a little truth to Shanks’s allegation. It read, “Davies has fallen behind the works, his left being pressed in. If this movement continues until he gets well drawn in you will make a flank movement if your front is not attacked, falling to the left of Davies when the enemy gets well in, so as to have full sweep, holding a couple of regiments looking well to the Purdy road. Examine and reconnoiter the ground for making this movement.”12

  Ducat took the order, apparently without reading it, and set off again for Hamilton. He reached him at 3:30 P.M. For thirty minutes Davies’s artillery had been trading salvos with Rebel batteries hidden in the woods north of the White House fields. Confederate infantry could be expected to pour from the timber at any moment. It was imperative that Hamilton attack the enemy’s flank and rear before they drove in Davies. Yet Hamilton hesitated to obey. Rosecrans’s order made no sense to him. “Falling to the left of Davies?” Explained Hamilton, “Now bearing in mind that Davies’s division was to the left and in front of mine, if this order meant anything it was that my division should abandon its position on the right of the army entirely, and pass either to the rear or front of Davies in order to reach the place indicated, and would therefore have destroyed every possible chance of attacking the enemy in the flank, and would also have left the right of Davies exposed, and the way into Corinth open to the enemy.” Hamilton flipped the sheet over and scribbled, “Respectfully returned. I cannot understand it.” Ducat remonstrated in vain. He tried to explain the intent, but Hamilton declined to obey without written clarification.

  A disgusted Ducat wheeled his horse and set off on the two-mile return ride. Written clarification of an error that, though unquestionably material, was so egregious as to be obvious: Rosecrans had said, or Kennett had written, “left” when he meant “right.” Years later the mere recollection of Hamilton’s inertia sent Ducat into a tirade: “The writer doesn’t believe there is in the record of the war such a confession of weakness, and such a wretched attempt to bolster up a failure to obey instructions, and not to perform the clear duty of a general . . . to march with the instincts of a soldier to the music of battle as this one. Who, pretending to be a general, would not have found out for himself the situation, but this one?"13

  18. No Time to Cool Off Now

  Earl Van Dorn and his retinue came upon General Price at the junction of the bridle path and Columbus road a few minutes before 2:00 P.M. There, surrounded by parched and panting soldiers, they conferred. Price was for stopping. Van Dorn, determined to take Corinth before Federal reinforcements arrived, insisted the attack be pressed. They reached a compromise of sorts. The troops were allowed to rest half an hour more, but the attack would go on.

  In the mile-wide expanse between the railroads, Price had six brigades concentrated. He made no change in alignment. Hébert’s division held the left, with the brigades of Green, Martin, and Gates in the front line and Colbert’s in reserve. Maury was on the right. Phifer and Moore were still in the first line, but Moore had drifted so far west as to be lost to the assault. Maury had reinforced him with two regiments from Cabell’s brigade, the remainder of which trailed Phifer.1

  The ground played havoc with the Confederate advance. In trying to negotiate the forest, Martin’s men marched obliquely to the right instead of marching directly forward. They masked the front of Gates’s brigade, which had lagged behind a few dozen yards, bringing the Missourians to an abrupt halt. While the troops on the front line sorted themselves out, Colbert, too, was forced to stop. Meanwhile Martin Green’s brigade continued on the correct course, alone and unsupported.2

  It took Green thirty minutes to shepherd his men across the 800 yards of forest between his brigade and the White House fields. Through briars, around trees and boulders, and over logs they marched at the double- quick until, catching a glimpse of open ground through the trees, Green paused to re-form his broken battle line. At 3:00 P.M. a single shot from a Yankee twenty-pounder Parrott whisded overhead, then the forest came alive with the crash of bursting shells and falling solid shot. “All of our eleven guns were soon at work, and poured a steady stream, staggering their advancing column. . . . The infantry essayed time and again to advance and . . . the most murderous fire on their column . . . kept the whole Confederate force at bay,” reported General Davies proudly. Said his chief of artillery, Maj. George Stone, “Here .. . one of the most fierce artillery duels on record raged with the fury of desperation, the enemy being repulsed by the double-shotted guns of our batteries.”

  Davies and Stone badly exaggerated the effect of the cannonade. Green had no intention of exposing his men to canister in an open field; had he charged repeatedly as Davies claimed, there would have been scarcely a man left in the brigade to tell the story. Rather, Green held his infantry in the woods and brought up his own artillery, the two twenty-four pounders and two twelve-pounders of Capt. John Landis’s Missouri Battery and the six guns of Capt. Henry Guibor. Landis unlimbered his cannon along the forest’s edge, where Green intended his artillery to deploy. Guibor began to do the same, until a staff officer appeared with an order for him to advance his guns. To the astonishment of Landis and the dread of Guibor’s men, Captain Guibor limbered up guns and led his Missouri battery into the White House fields. He halted on an open rise fewer than 400 yards from the Federal main line. Yankee skirmishers were only 100 yards off. They peppered the battery with a few poorly aimed rounds that knocked down just two horses, then scurried away before the Rebel cannoneers loaded their guns. Federal artillery threatened to do far more damage. As soon as their front was clear of friendly skirmishers, Batteries I and K of the First Missouri Light Artillery opened fire on Guibor.3

  The first Federal shells fell short, bursting near a small cabin standing between the lines. Two women, waving a bed quilt and screaming with fear, rushed out of the cabin. Guibor’s attention was called to their presence, but the safety of his battery demanded an immediate reply to the Yankee guns. “Fire away, there!” he shouted to his section leaders. The women ducked back into the cabin, just ahead of the blast.

  Help came. Captain Landis went into battery beside Guibor, and from knolls at opposite ends of the east White House field, Missouri Federal and Confederate gunners traded salvos. In the timber near the Memphis road were five more F
ederal cannon, also manned by Missourians. To combat them General Price committed two Missouri batteries of his own: Bledsoe’s four-gun battery and Wade’s six-gun battery. By 3:15 P.M. the ground around the White House reverberated with the fire of thirty-one cannon.

  For thirty minutes the shelling went on without either side yielding. Major Stone had sent his caissons well to the rear; six guns standing with their limbers on a knoll in an open field he judged a sufficiently grave risk. Twice the limbers were emptied of ammunition, and twice Major Stone supervised their reloading with ordnance carried to the knoll by two six- mule-team wagons from Corinth. When the ammunition failed a third time and the wagons did not appear, Major Stone reluctantly removed the cannon from the knoll.

  General Davies watched them pass. “The artillerists filed slowly to the rear, men looking more like coal-heavers than soldiers, with perspiration streaming down their faces blackened with gunpowder, and the wounded horses leaving a stream of blood in the road.” Davies had reached the limits of his patience. “The artillery had fired, of all calibers, over 1,500 rounds of artillery ammunition, and still no reinforcements had arrived and no attack made on the right and left flanks and rear of the enemy to support me,” he complained in his report. “I again sent to General Rosecrans asking for reinforcements, telling him I feared I could not hold my position unless they were sent.”4

  Davies had little time to contemplate his fate. No sooner had the last of Stone’s cannon cleared the White House fields than the Missourians and Mississippians of Green’s brigade raised a cheer and swept into the open, past the batteries of Guibor and Landis. The Confederates edged to within fifty yards of Davies’s supine Federals, who had yet to fire a shot. Succumbing to the tension, the Rebels let go the first volley. It passed overhead. Grateful for the chance to fight under nearly even odds, the Yankees rose to their feet and returned the fire. The effect was terrible. “We opened on them and their lines melted away into death and confusion as quickly almost as I can write it,” recalled Lt. Col. John S. Wilcox of the Fifty-second Illinois. “Still they pushed ahead and returned our fire warm and heavy.” Said Sgt. James Payne of the Sixth Missouri, on the receiving end of the Yankee fire, “They gave us a volley that left a line of gray where it struck.” The Sixth ran into the cabin in the middle of the field, its yard unkept and overgrown with briars and brambles. The right companies glided around the yard, but those of the center and the left fell into confusion trying to negotiate the undergrowth. Sergeant Payne’s Company A was caught in the yard when the Federals opened up. The company commander was killed and the senior lieutenant wounded in the first fire. The company began to unravel, as did those on either side. Officers darted to the front to show the way forward and were cut down at a dizzying rate. Four company commanders were shot. The regimental commander, Col. Eugene Erwin, had his foot sliced apart but stayed in the saddle. His lieutenant colonel was carried off with a mortal wound, and the major was shot through the head. The Sixth Missouri held on for perhaps fifteen minutes before giving back with the rest of the brigade.5

  No one could live long, it seemed, in the east White House fields. But General Green ordered the brigade into the open again. This time the men edged forward, seeking cover behind scattered logs and boulders. The fight degenerated into a static exchange of volleys neither side seemed anxious to break.

  Survivors struggled to find words to convey the frenzy of the scene. Wrote Sergeant Payne, “The rattle of musketry became a roar like the plunging of mighty waters. The combatants were not more than thirty yards apart and the smoke made a blue haze about them that rendered outlines indistinct . . . . All the animal in man was aroused. No one seemed to think of death; the ruling impulse was to destroy.” Said Corporal Wright of the Eighty-first Ohio,

  The afternoon sun shone in the powder-stained faces of the men, the polished rammers glint and glisten amid the wreaths of battle- smoke. . . . I touch elbows on the left with a young comrade whom I had learned to love and respect for his many good qualities; a rebel bullet had torn its way along the side of his head, and I requested him to go to the rear; he responded, “I am not hurt bad enough yet!” A few feet away a comrade staggers from the ranks, drops his gun, sinks to the ground, and he is dead on the field of honor!6

  That blistering autumn afternoon yielded scores of acts as gallant as that of Corporal Wright’s friend. The misery of the men can only be imagined — bathed in sweat, choking on acrid gun smoke, and breathing a swirl of blood, urine, and burning flesh. But in succumbing to the collective frenzy of the moment, they surmounted their agony, if only for a short time. Gun barrels became so hot the hands of the men blistered as they held their rifles to reload, and cartridges burst before they could be rammed home. The men swayed and stumbled in the ranks but fought on. When told that cartridges were exploding in the faces of his men and that their rifles might burst, Colonel Sweeny of the Fifty-second Illinois retorted, “Let them burst; there is no time to cool off now.”7

  Col. James Baker, commander of the Second Iowa, lacked Sweeny’s phlegmatic streak. He certainly looked unflappable, sitting silently upon his horse, waiting for orders, but the stalemate tried his patience. Said a fellow Iowa officer of the thirty-nine-year-old lawyer turned colonel, “He had a stocky and vigorous form, a dark, or olive complexion, black hair, and dark, lustrous eyes. In personal appearance he was extremely prepossessing.” Yet he had one peculiarity in court, which his friends attributed to modesty, that he could never overcome. Said an admirer, “He never attempted to address a jury or a public assembly without at first showing signs of fear. It could be seen in his pale face and in the nervous tremor of his hand.” Perhaps it was that same hint of terror that led a lieutenant to approach Baker and suggest, “Colonel, let us charge the enemy.” The lieutenant’s appeal touched another of Baker’s traits — an independence of character bordering on insubordination, and the Iowan called to his men to fix bayonets and charge.

  Into the field they spilled at 4:00 P.M. In their path lay the Sixth Missouri. Fortunately for Baker the Missourians were in no condition to resist. All but four commissioned officers and six noncommissioned officers were dead or wounded. The color-bearer had quit the field after taking nine wounds, and Sergeant Payne followed him, his hand pierced by a bullet. With Payne’s departure, his company, which had mustered thirty- two that morning, was reduced to six enlisted men. The Sixth wavered, as did the Forty-third Mississippi on its left and the Seventh Mississippi Battalion on its right. General Davies ordered his entire division to follow Baker’s example, and Green’s Confederates fled a second time.8

  Baker missed the denouement of the charge; a bullet had penetrated his bowels. Also down was Oglesby. At the conclusion of the charge, with his aides absent on other errands, the portly Illinoisan had ridden forward to speak with Colonel Chetlain. A bullet stopped him in mid-sentence. It struck him below the left armpit, bore through his lungs, and came to rest against a dorsal vertebra. Chetlain summoned an ambulance and took charge.

  Sadly, the triumph for which Baker and Oglesby seemingly had given their lives proved short lived. The enemy showed signs of renewed life across the Memphis road, where the Union Brigade had been fighting alone and badly outnumbered, and in the forest northeast of Davies’s right flank. Fearing an envelopment, the New Yorker gave the command to retire.9

  The Union Brigade had been having a hard time. Its 250 members, together with the left companies of the Ninth Illinois Infantry, bore the brunt of Brig. Gen. Charles W. Phifer’s attack down the Memphis road. The five Federal cannon posted near the road slowed the enemy advance, which had been none too aggressive. When the artillery withdrew, the Union Brigade fell back with it, re-forming along the southern edge of the west White House field. Phifer’s dismounted Arkansas and Texas cavalrymen left the road and lined up in the timber north of the field. They stepped into the clearing, said Corporal Soper of the Twelfth Iowa, in “two unbroken and continuous lines of battle, extending to the right and lef
t as far as the eye could reach and far beyond our lines.” The Union Brigade fought feebly. When it became clear Phifer’s line extended beyond their left flank, the brigade fled across the Memphis road. But Phifer failed to press his advantage, permitting Davies to counterattack Green.10

  It was 4:30 P.M., and the soldiers of Davies’s division were played out. Those fortunate enough to have refilled their canteens before Green’s attack had long since drained them. Few had more than a handful of rounds left in their cartridge boxes. Davies’s sense of relief can well be imagined when he saw the first companies of Joseph Mower’s lead regiment, the Twenty-sixth Illinois, break into the southwest corner of the east White House fields at the double-quick. Their timing could not have been better; at the very instant the Illinoisans appeared, Green’s Confederates resumed firing from the woods. Only a few Rebel bullets carried the length of the field, but they were enough to scatter the Twenty-sixth. Davies was dumbstruck; for eight hours he had been calling for reinforcements, and now those that finally came broke at the first fire.11

  General Hackleman, too, had witnessed the abrupt collapse of the Illinoisans, and in his fury he galloped across the field to rally them. He got no farther than battle line of the Eighty-first Ohio before a bullet found him. Corporal Wright had been watching Hackleman: “I saw him quivering in his saddle and slowly fall from his horse. [Pvt.] Calvin McClelland laid down his gun and stepping back took the mortally wounded general in his arms and gently laid him on the ground.” Brigade command passed to Colonel Sweeny of the Fifty-second Illinois. The same ambulance that had retrieved Oglesby paused to pick up Hackleman, and the two horribly wounded Illinoisans — both personal friends of President Lincoln—were carried off the field together.12