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

by Peter Cozzens

  It was a fine story from Hamilton’s perspective; unfortunately no one came forward to endorse it. Ducat denied having delivered any order for a night attack. Rosecrans makes no mention of it in his report, and neither do Hamilton’s own brigade commanders. Surely such an assault would have been coordinated with Davis and Stanley, yet both were silent on the matter.

  Rosecrans was hardly capable of planning anything so complex as a night attack. He was tired and bewildered, certain only he was badly outnumbered— at least three to one by his reckoning. Such odds alone would have rendered a counterattack unthinkable. Rosecrans believed his only option was to consolidate his army behind the inner fortifications — that is to say, the five fortified artillery redans that formed an arc around the west and north sides of Corinth — and await the enemy’s assault. Rosecrans maintained he arranged his divisions deliberately. “McKean’s division was to hold the left,” he wrote later,

  the chief point being College Hill, keeping his troops well under cover. Stanley was to support the line on either side of Battery Robinett, the three-gun redan surrounded by a five-foot deep ditch. Davies was to extend from Stanley’s right northeasterly across the flat to the Purdy road. Hamilton was to be on Davies’s right with a brigade, and the rest in reserve on the common east of the low ridge and out of sight from the west. Colonel Mizner with his cavalry was to watch and guard our flanks and rear from the enemy.

  But Rosecrans’s orders effecting the concentration were slow in coming and suggest he improvised his lines during the night.6

  General Davies got no hint of the commanding general’s purpose when he visited headquarters at 8:00 P.M.. In any case Davies was more interested in speaking his mind than in executing orders. Said Davies, “I reported to General Rosecrans and stated to him that the services of my three brigadier generals were lost, many of my officers were killed and wounded and the men worn out with fatigue, and that he must not depend upon my command on the following day, although the men would do all they could.” Rosecrans raised no objection, nor did he mention the frontline role he claimed to have decided upon for Davies’s battered command. Rather, he told him to take his division to the east side of town, where Rosecrans assured Davies he would be held in reserve on October 4. A grateful Davies returned to the front, roused his men, and got them on their way at 10:00 P.M.

  McArthur partly filled the gap with his own and Oliver’s brigades, both of which were under the Scotsman’s command. Rather than guarding the army’s left with his entire division, as Rosecrans said he intended for McKean to do, the incompetent old Pennsylvanian was being quietly shunted to make way for McArthur. He was left with only Crocker’s four Iowa regiments to defend the ground around Corona College.7

  In the narrow triangle of felled timber between the railroads, General Stanley deployed Fuller’s Ohio brigade to fill the remainder of the line vacated by Davies. The last of Fuller’s regiments had shuffled into town at sunset, and at 9:00 P.M. the reunited brigade marched from Corona College to its assigned position. Rosecrans and Stanley were on hand to greet the men and to hear their plaints for water. Most had marched all day along dusty roads without a drop to drink, and they were nearly as exhausted as the troops they replaced. Water was ladled out, along with a liberal ration of whiskey mixed with quinine, the surgeons' prescription for heat exhaustion.

  Rosecrans watched Fuller deploy with great interest. The ground between the railroads, watched over by Battery Robinett and its three twenty-pounder Parrotts, commanded the direct approach to the railroad junction and, as such, was sure to be the fulcrum of the fight on the morrow. Stanley understood this, too, and so saw to the dispositions personally. Battery Robinett sat atop a low ridge that sloped most abruptly to the east. Stanley placed the Forty-third Ohio, which was led by Col. Joseph Lee Kirby Smith, whom many thought the best regimental commander in the army, near the crest of the ridge on the left side of Battery Robinett. Smith’s line fronted west and ran from the cut of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad to the edge of the redan. Fuller, meanwhile, put the Sixty-third Ohio on the right side of Battery Robinett, fronting north. Its left rested on the Memphis road, thirty yards from the redan. The Twenty-seventh and Thirty-ninth Ohio completed the line in the direction of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad.8

  Mower’s brigade was behind Battery Robinett, where it had reformed after its late afternoon tangle with Green’s Missourians. Stanley sent it, less two regiments retained as a reserve for Fuller, to cover the ground between Batteries Williams and Phillips, which McKean, left with only Crocker’s brigade, was unable to fill. Mower’s best unit, the Eleventh Missouri, Stanley held directly behind Battery Robinett. Even in the moonlight the Missourians could see it was an unenviable position, as the battle line on the crest blocked their field of vision. Stanley held the Fifth Minnesota, which had reached Corinth two hours earlier, on the northwest edge of town, 400 yards behind Fuller’s right flank.9

  Fuller and Smith certainly appreciated the gravity of their surroundings — the Rebels could be plainly heard felling trees and rolling artillery into position less than four hundred yards to their front, and their skirmishers greeted the Ohioans with a fusillade — but they did not seem unduly troubled by them. The two were old friends, and Fuller asked Smith to make the rounds with him. They chatted pleasantly. Smith was his usual, cheery self. He “joked in low tones with as much unconcern as though the rebels were miles away,” remembered Fuller. “Colonel,” Smith said, “where did you get forage for your horses tonight? I don’t know whether mine smells the battle afar off, but he keeps singing out ’Ha(y)! Ha(y)!' and I think he made a remark about oats.”

  Col. John W. Fuller (Massachusetts Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, and the U.S. Army Military History Institute)

  His brother officers knew they could always rely on Smith for a kind word, a good joke, or—in battle — solid leadership. Brig. Gen. Alpheus Williams, under whom the twenty-six-year-old Ohioan served early in the war, came to admire him deeply: “He was my beau-ideal of a young man. . . . There was a daily beauty in his life that won the hearts of all who knew him. . . . He was so capable, so brave, so self-reliant without vanity, so patient and so persevering in the line of duty, that I have looked confidently—though not without apprehensions for his personal safety—for splendid services and rapid and well-earned advancement.” While Fuller and Smith joked, their men drank their water and whiskey and then, too tired to throw up breastworks, lay down to sleep beside their muskets.10

  It was midnight before Hamilton drew in his division. Even then he failed to assume his precise assigned position. He anchored his left on a redoubt of freshly turned soil named Battery Powell (also known as Battery Richardson) that contrabands had completed that day. Rather than face his entire division toward the northeast to complete the army’s concave arc around Corinth, as Rosecrans wished, Hamilton cajoled the Ohioan into allowing him to place Dillon’s Sixth Wisconsin Light Artillery and the Eightieth Ohio and Tenth Iowa regiments from Sullivan’s brigade on a ridge to the right of Battery Powell, fronting west so as to command the Purdy road. The rest of the division formed behind and at right angles to Dillon and his infantry supports, which were thus abandoned with their flank “in the air.” The Twelfth Wisconsin Battery went into position 400 yards southeast of Dillon, fronting north. Next came Lt. Junius MacMurray’s Battery M, First Missouri Light Artillery. The Eleventh Ohio Battery, which Lt. Henry Neil had refitted after Iuka with surplus guns and men drafted from infantry regiments, unlimbered on what was to be the right of Hamilton’s line. The two remaining regiments of Sullivan’s brigade — the Fifty-sixth Illinois and the Tenth Missouri — filled in the ground from the left of the Twelfth Wisconsin Battery to the right rear of Davies’s division. Buford’s brigade deployed in support of MacMurray’s and Neil’s batteries. It took Hamilton until nearly daybreak to complete his preparations, and no time was found for his weary men to throw up breastworks. Laying aside gross incompetence,
the most charitable explanation for Hamilton’s unorthodox dispositions is that he intended to fashion a defense in depth, with the Eightieth Ohio and the Tenth Iowa to pivot rearward on Battery Powell and pass through the second-line regiments as the enemy neared.11

  Though his hand was unsteady, Rosecrans kept in the saddle deep into the night, to give at least the appearance of guiding his army’s deployment. He dismounted at 3:00 A.M. to catch perhaps three hours of sleep, but not before issuing one final order that deprived Davies’s division of any chance at rest. As Hamilton moved into line, Rosecrans reconsidered the wisdom of leaving Davies in reserve on the east side of Corinth. The Ohioan decided to move him back through town to reoccupy part of the ground Davies had abandoned four hours earlier. Davies had the men roused, a task that alone took nearly an hour, and got them going at 2:30 A.M.

  They filed past Rosecrans headquarters and moved into line between Battery Powell and the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. What remained of Oglesby’s brigade, now led by Col. August Mersy, formed in reserve. Behind Battery Powell, Capt. Henry Richardson unlimbered the three twenty-pounder Parrott guns of his Battery D, First Missouri Light Artillery, and the single twelve-pounder howitzer and six-pounder gun of Lt. John F. Brunner’s section of Battery I. Davies posted the remainder of his cannon on either side of Battery Powell. Col. Thomas Sweeny lined up Hackleman’s brigade along the summit of a gentle slope that fell off toward the Purdy road, facing west. Davies inserted what remained of the Union Brigade on Sweeny’s left, fronting north. Col. John Du Bois, an insufferable but competent Missourian who had been serving on the army staff, was detailed to command the 757 men left in Baldwin’s brigade. With them he completed the line but lacked the numbers needed to reach the railroad, leaving a gap of 250 yards between the brigade left and the track. The ground immediately in front of Davies was flat and open. Strewn here and there were bits of an abatis. From 325 to 600 yards away the flat yielded to forest, in the depths of which the Confederates could be heard assembling for battle. Soldiers of the Sixty-fourth Illinois Sharpshooters felt their way into the woods; an unattached unit that had missed the first day’s fight, the Sixty-fourth had drawn the unenviable duty of skirmishing the division front.12

  General McArthur withdrew his brigade and that of Oliver to make room for Davies and returned them to the nominal command of McKean at Corona College. McKean placed McArthur on Crocker’s left, between Batteries Phillips and Tanrath, and kept Oliver in reserve. At 4:00 A.M. on October 4, nearly ten hours after the fighting had sputtered out, Rosecrans at last had a battle line assembled to resist the attack that most were sure would come with the dawn.13

  * * *

  To the Confederate lines the night wind brought the rumble of wagons and artillery carriages and the tread of marching soldiers. What these sounds meant, no one could tell. Van Dorn speculated the Federals were evacuating Corinth. Unable to hear the noise from his bivouac, Price accepted Van Dorn’s guess. Martin Green thought otherwise. “What made me doubt they were evacuating was the chopping of timber,” he said; retreating soldiers do not fell trees. Nor did many of the men think the Yankees were departing. On the contrary, the sounds of moving wagons and marching men suggested to them that the enemy was receiving substantial reinforcements. Some convinced themselves they heard locomotives— presumably laden with troops — chug into town.14

  Van Dorn had no means of confirming his suspicions. Opposing lines were too close to permit a reconnaissance of the enemy’s position. Not that the lack of hard intelligence on Federal defenses troubled Van Dorn much. Careful planning was contrary to his nature. Van Dorn was a hostage to his own success; the gains of the first day made it impossible for a man of his temperament to consider withdrawing, even with the prospect of Federal reinforcements close at hand. He knew that Rosecrans had at least as many troops as he and that the Ohioan’s lines would grow stronger the closer he was pushed toward town: “The line of attack was a long one, and as it approached the interior defenses of the enemy that line must necessarily become contracted,” Van Dorn observed. Yet he chose to attack at dawn with everything he had.15

  An artillery barrage at 4:00 A.M. would signal the attack. The three batteries of Dabney Maury’s division were selected for the duty, with orders to run their cannon forward to a partially cleared ridge that overlooked Corinth, 500 yards northwest of Batteries Robinett and Williams. Hébert would begin the attack with his division. The Louisianan had performed miserably on the first day, issuing no orders to Gates or Green until sunset, when he told them to withdraw from their advanced position and regroup along the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. “The Missourians, and indeed all his division, were exceedingly denunciatory of the conduct of this officer, the many truculent remarks made not needing repetition here,” remembered Lieutenant Colonel Bevier. But as his objective was to turn the Federal right, and as it was Hébert’s division that lay opposite it, Van Dorn had to rely on Hébert to redeem himself.

  Van Dorn’s instructions were explicit: “Hébert, on the left, was ordered to mask part of his division on his left; to put Cabell’s brigade en echelon on the left also, Cabell’s brigade being detached from Maury’s division for this purpose; to move Armstrong’s cavalry brigade across the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, and if possible to get some of his artillery in position across the road. In this order of battle he was directed to attack at daybreak with his whole force, swinging his left flank in toward Corinth and advancing down the Purdy Ridge.”16

  To Dabney Maury and Mansfield Lovell went supporting roles. As Maury explained his instructions, “The orders given me were to charge the town as soon as I should observe the fire of the Missourians, who were on my left, change from picket firing to rolling fire of musketry.” In light of Lovell’s torpor of the day before, Van Dorn’s orders to him were too discretionary. He was to form his division with two brigades in line of battle and one in reserve, his left flank resting on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, and then either wait in place or feel his way slowly forward, as he saw fit, until Hébert was engaged. Once Hébert had attacked, Lovell was “to move rapidly to the assault and force his right inward across the low ground southwest of town.”17

  The thoroughness of the Confederate preparations varied with the character of their commanders. Price summoned Hébert upon receiving the attack order from Van Dorn; the Louisianan, however, neglected to brief his brigade commanders. Van Dorn informed Maury directly of his role. The Virginian drew in J. C. Moore’s brigade and aligned it with that of Phifer behind the embankment of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad.

  Beyond showing them a crude sketch of their sector, Lovell had little to offer his brigade commanders; he could not say whether the Yankee lines rested on two redoubts or one or whether they had been reinforced. Lovell detailed Bowen’s brigade as the storming party but told him to stop for further orders after he came in sight of the enemy redoubt, or redoubts, as the case might be.

  Van Dorn counted on a swift and vigorous attack to drive Rosecrans from Corinth before he could definitely be reinforced. That urgency he failed to instill in his subordinates. Maury could be relied on to do his part, but caution would again be the watchword on Lovell’s front, and Louis Hébert, who was to direct the main attack, kept his own counsel that night.18

  * * *

  Of course Rosecrans had not been reinforced, but troops were on the way to him, and in greater numbers than Van Dorn or his lieutenants probably imagined. Communications between Grant and Rosecrans were problematic. Rebel troopers had cut the railroad and telegraph lines into Corinth, so that all messages between the two headquarters had to be sent by courier from Bethel, Tennessee. With the Confederate army astride the direct road to Corinth, couriers had to detour through Farmington, meaning that eight hours were needed to get a note from one general to the other. Worse yet, from the evening of October 3 until well after dawn on the fourth, there was no telegraph operator on duty at Grant’s headquarters in Jackson to receive the messages that
couriers brought to Bethel for transmission.19

  Despite the paucity of information, by the afternoon of October 3 Grant knew Rosecrans was engaged. He had received Rosecrans’s morning message relating Lovell’s demonstration against Oliver, and scouts at Bethel had reported heavy firing from the direction of Corinth. On the basis of these reports, Grant scraped together units to reinforce Rosecrans. He directed his chief engineer, Brig. Gen. James McPherson, to march four regiments from Bethel “with all speed” to Corinth. Later that evening he ordered General Hurlbut to start for Davis Bridge no later than 3:00 A.M. on October 4 with those units of his division not on outpost duty and two regiments from Leonard Ross’s command. Should he find the enemy retreating, Hurlbut was to destroy the bridge and contest their crossing of the Hatchie River. If the enemy were still threatening Corinth, he was to press on and strike them in the rear. “Rush as rapidly as possible,” Grant urged him. Before retiring for the night, Grant penned an empty exhortation to Rosecrans: “General Hurlbut will move today towards the enemy. We should attack if they do not. Do it soon Fight!"20

  20. Death Came in a Hundred Shapes

  The early morning hours of Saturday, October 4, were unseasonably frigid, a cruel contrast to the unrelenting heat of the day before. Sweat- soaked uniforms sharpened the chill of the night. Few could sleep. Those not marching into new positions cradled their rifle-muskets and drew themselves tight to rest, but the ground was simply too cold; no sooner did a man doze off than he awoke shivering. Then there were the sounds of impending battle to distract even the most exhausted. In front of Battery Robinett the sounds were especially ominous. Shortly after midnight the bumping and scraping of artillery limbers replaced the shuffling beat of marching men. For three hours the soldiers of Fuller’s brigade listened to cannon being wheeled into line along the edge of the forest 400 yards away.