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

by Peter Cozzens

  The noise especially troubled Fuller, and he walked to his outposts with Colonel Smith to get a better feel for what it portended. Earlier General Stanley had cautioned the Ohioan to watch Davies’s skirmishers, who were to cover his front, for out of the forest beyond them the Confederate attack was certain to come. To Fuller’s amazement his outposts told him that Davies’s skirmishers had crept away after Fuller formed his brigade. Pickets from Dabney Maury’s division took their place—Fuller could see them plainly under the bright moonlight. Behind the Rebel pickets came the cannon.

  Fuller took steps to dislodge them. He told Maj. Zephaniah Spaulding of the Twenty-seventh Ohio to take skirmishers “cautiously through the fallen timber, if possible, to gain and hold the edge of the woods.” At the same time he sent two companies from the Sixty-third Ohio under Capt. Charles E. Brown to sweep the Memphis road as far as the forest.1

  Three hundred yards away, on a small rise beside the White House, Lt. Thomas Tobin placed the four guns of Hoxton’s Tennessee Battery. Nearby, Col. William Burnett, Maury’s chief of artillery, helped align Sengstak’s and McNally’s batteries. Together these batteries would provide the predawn barrage Van Dorn had ordered.

  Lieutenant Tobin had more courage than common sense. First he ran one gun forward of his infantry support to within 200 yards of Battery Robinett. Then he decided to reconnoiter a bit farther himself. With his bugler he walked off the ridge and down the Memphis road, straight into the leveled rifle-muskets of Captain Brown’s Ohioans. Tobin and his bugler were hustled off to division headquarters, and Brown waved his men into tall grass beside the road, there to await daylight. Likewise intent on bringing down enemy artillerymen at dawn, skirmishers from the Sixty- fourth Illinois crawled forward on Brown’s right.2

  It was 4:00 A.M. Tentative streaks of orange fingered the eastern horizon. Above, the stars shined brightly. Here and there a few campfires, started by Union soldiers more troubled by the cold than the prospect of attracting enemy fire, flickered furtively. Suddenly the night erupted. Wrote a startled Colonel Fuller, “What a magnificent display! Nothing we had ever seen looked like the flashes of those guns. No rockets ever scattered fire like the bursting of those shells!” General Rosecrans had returned to his headquarters thirty minutes earlier to get some badly needed rest. The first salvo awakened him, and he was back in the saddle before servants could bring him breakfast.

  The shells from Colonel Burnett’s barrage rained down. They “were flying through the air like mosquitos of a summer night and I thought they were the prettiest thing a bursting in the air I ever saw, most especially when they did not come close,” said Charles Colwell, in town with Davies’s trains. The first shot landed in the bivouac of the Twenty- seventh Ohio. “Well do I remember that first shot,” recalled Pvt. W. W. Adams, “fired from a rebel gun from the edge of the timber right in front of Robinett—a fuse shell that struck a stack of guns and knocked them down right close to me, scaring me out of my sleep.” Adams sat up with a start and watched the burning fuse and black shell streak toward a group of soldiers huddled in the rear making coffee. It toppled their camp-kettle but left the men unhurt. They doused the fire and scampered away.

  Most of the Rebel rounds passed harmlessly overhead, and losses on the front line, where the men lay down behind logs or shielding folds in the ground to wait out the storm, were light. But in the rear all was a maddening confusion. The lighted windows of the Tishomingo Hotel and a roaring bonfire started to warm the wounded left outdoors were inviting targets. Soldiers of the Fifth Minnesota ran from their bivouac to extinguish the blaze, but not before Rebel gunners got the range of the hotel. A solid shot crashed through a window and eviscerated a man being carried down the stairway on a stretcher. Outside, Charles Colwell watched a shot ricochet off the ground and strike a fleeing woman in the back. There was no one to give Colwell orders, so he took it upon himself to lead the train out of range. When he returned, after the firing had ceased, surgeons and orderlies were dragging wounded from the hotel. Colwell set about gathering ambulances to help carry them off.3

  For nearly an hour Burnett’s gunners had the field to themselves, while Federal infantrymen puzzled over the failure of Batteries Williams and Robinett to respond. Their silence was intentional. Lieutenant Robinett was waiting for dawn to betray the source of the cannonade. Capt. George Williams, commander of the army’s heavy artillery and directly responsible for Batteries Williams, Robinett, and Phillips, also was loath to fire in the dark. The evening before, he had noticed a Federal field battery unlimber between Batteries Williams and Robinett; he feared firing in that direction until he was sure it had left.

  By 5:15 A.M. the darkness had dissipated enough to disclose both the Rebel cannon and the departure of the friendly battery. Lieutenant Robinett opened on Tobin’s exposed battery from in front. Captain Williams joined in with an enfilading fire of thirty-pounder Parrotts from Batteries Williams and Phillips. In less than thirty minutes the Confederate guns ceased firing. At that instant Captain Brown’s Ohioans rose from the grass and opened a short-range fusillade on the crews of Hoxton’s battery, who were scrambling to limber their guns. Sharpshooters from the Sixty- fourth Illinois joined in. Horses fell by the dozen, and five cannoneers crumpled. Brown charged. He overran a James gun, which was brought in by men from Battery Robinett, and captured a caisson and five artillerymen. Skirmishers from the Second Texas Infantry dashed forward to prevent Brown from penetrating farther into the woods, and Colonel Burnett was able to get the rest of his pieces away.4

  * * *

  The field fell silent. The sun rose at 6:00 A.M. in a clear and cloudless sky, burning away the dew quickly—a sure sign October 4 would be as hot as the day before. General Rosecrans rode the length of his lines, hoping to get in one final inspection before the enemy attacked. The soldiers hardly noted his passing; all eyes were trained on the forest in front. An hour passed. The mounting tension demanded a resolution. “If they’re goin' to take us, why don’t they come and do it in the cool of the morning? It’ll be hot after a while,” snarled a soldier in the Eighty-first Ohio. Another hour slipped away. Hungry Federals dropped their guard long enough to gulp down a hastily boiled cup of coffee and a few slices of bacon.

  No one needed food and rest more than General Rosecrans. For forty- eight hours he had eaten little and slept less. His nerves had worn thin, and only the seeming certainty of an attack kept him in the saddle. When none came, Rosecrans grew impatient, and at 8:00 A.M. he told General Stanley to find out why the Rebels had not stirred.5

  General Van Dorn asked the same question. When dawn came and went without a sound from the left, the Mississippian sent a staff officer galloping to Hébert to learn what had delayed his attack. But Hébert could not be found. Van Dorn dispatched a second staff officer, then a third. Like the first, they returned empty-handed. Finally, at 7:00 A.M., Hébert came to headquarters. He reported himself sick and asked to be relieved of duty. Van Dorn excused him, and Price put Brigadier General Green in command of the left wing.

  Whether Hébert truly was ill and, if so, it was illness that had made him invisible on the field of battle the day before will never be known. Sick or not, he did nothing to redeem himself before reporting to Van Dorn. He had neglected to inform his brigade commanders of the plan of battle or the hour of the attack. When the courier bearing the order placing him in command found Green, he was breakfasting behind his brigade, which he had withdrawn 100 yards from the Mobile and Ohio Railroad so that his men might also eat unmolested by Yankee skirmishers. Only moments earlier a messenger from Hébert had brought him word of the Louisianan’s illness. Green was a “kind-hearted, unostentatious man,” thought Lt. Col. Columbus Sykes of the Forty-third Mississippi, but not really up to division command. Lieutenant Colonel Bevier agreed: “General Green, upon whom the authority then fell, was hopelessly bewildered, as well as ignorant of what ought to be done.” He placed Col. William H. Moore in command of the brigade and set abo
ut familiarizing himself with the situation; in the time spent, wrote Bevier, “we lost a score of our most worthy comrades” to Yankee skirmishers.6

  As the morning wore on, skirmishers on both sides stepped up their deadly game of cat and mouse, in part to ease the strain of waiting. Cpl. Ephraim Anderson of the Second Missouri lost a messmate in the exchange. Will Ray long had been convinced he would come through the war unscathed, but that morning he awoke with a cold premonition of death. At dawn he wrote a farewell diary entry to his wife, asking those around him to make sure the diary, his personal effects, and a lock of his hair were sent home after he fell. Ray was shot through the heart and died beside Anderson, who stuffed the articles in his jacket.7

  General Stanley saw to the execution of Rosecrans’s reconnaissance order personally. Five men from each company in the division were selected for the duty, making a force equal to two regiments. They moved into the field on either side of the Memphis road. Stanley chose Colonel Mower to lead those to the left of the road; he would direct those on the right side. Stanley had erred in picking Mower; the Vermonter had kept warm with a bottle during the night and now was deeply in his cups.

  The long blue skirmish line started forward at 9:00 A.M. Stanley’s band managed to reunite with Captain Brown’s Ohioans, but sharp and accurate fire from the Second Texas Infantry brought a swift end to their reconnaissance. Mower, meanwhile, had veered to the left. He crossed the Memphis and Charleston Railroad and pursued pickets from Lovell’s division, who seemed as loath to fight as their commander. Too drunk to distinguish his own skirmishers from the Rebels, Mower gave chase for a mile before his small party stumbled upon the main line of Villepigue’s brigade. The Rebels opened up at close range, but in the deep forest their aim was bad. A scattered volley from behind his left flank caught Colonel Mower’s attention; assuming the fire to be friendly, he rode foggily toward the source. Coming into a clearing, Mower found himself in the midst of a small party of Rebels. That sobered him, and he spun his horse and dug in the spurs. A bullet toppled the animal, and Mower hurt his neck badly in the fall. The Southerners hustled him away as his now lead- erless skirmishers retreated.

  Stanley’s reconnaissance neither clarified the situation for Rosecrans nor provoked an assault, but it did add to Van Dorn’s anxiety. Any more such aggressive Federal probing might derail his plan of attack and cause the battle to open spontaneously. Already the skirmishing on Maury’s front was reaching a dangerous intensity, and it was with difficulty the Virginian restrained his frondine brigades. He, too, was impatient: “For hours we listened and awaited our signal . . . . I have never understood the reason for so much delay.”8

  * * *

  Martin Green was having a hard time. Upon assuming command he inspected his lines, which rested behind the embankment of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. His own brigade, now led by Col. William H. Moore of the Forty-third Mississippi, lay to the left of Phifer’s brigade of Maury’s division. Gates’s brigade rested on Moore’s left. Col. Robert McLain, who had taken charge of the Fourth Brigade after Martin was wounded, held the division left. Colonel Colbert’s brigade was in reserve.

  Green’s inspection was appropriate under the circumstances, and the delay engendered was excusable. But what Green did next was not. Perhaps because it had been so roughed up in the White House fight, he pulled his brigade from the front line and replaced it with Colbert’s. No sooner had he done this than Colonel McLain complained that the much longer Federal lines would overlap his left flank. So Green reversed himself, ordering Colbert to move to the left of McLain and reinserting Moore in his original place on the division right. These peregrinations cost an hour.

  Green did not know what to do with Cabell’s brigade, which Van Dorn had assigned to Hébert the night before to support his attack. Green dismissed him with ambiguous orders: although Cabell was to hold his brigade within supporting distance of William H. Moore, he would be subject to orders from his own division commander, General Maury. The incompatibility of these instructions would fast become evident.

  Green at least appreciated what his division was up against. He understood that the concave nature of the Federal defenses meant Colbert and McLain would have far more ground to traverse before making contact with the enemy (in this case Hamilton’s division) than would Gates and Moore, who were directly opposite Davies’s division and Battery Powell. Consequently he directed Colbert and McLain to “move forward en echelon, throwing their left forward, so as to come to a charge at the same time as the right.” Just before passing the word to attack, Green remembered Cabell: “I sent for re-enforcements, believing that we would need them, for I could see the enemy had two lines of fortifications, bristling with artillery and strongly supported by infantry.”9

  “Finally, about 10:00 A.M., somebody concluded we had better charge, and the order was given,” said Lieutenant Colonel Bevier. “With a wild shout, our whole brigade jumped swiftly across the railroad, and charged toward the enemy’s line,” Lieutenant Colonel Hubbell of the Third Missouri recalled. Moore swept across the railroad on their right. But, as Bevier was shocked to see, they charged with their left in the air: McLain and Colbert had lagged behind and were lost to sight. And they attacked without a reserve. Before Cabell started, Maury diverted him to fill the gap on Phifer’s left that Moore’s advance occasioned.

  MAP 9. Green’s Belated Attack, October 4, 10:00 A.M

  “Stopping but a moment in the edge of the woods, to reform our companies, slighdy disarranged by the fallen timber, our brave brigades pushed right ahead,” continued Bevier. “The shot and shell from more than half a hundred guns crashed and whistled around us incessantly. No orders could be heard.”10

  None were needed. As the Missourians emerged from the forest, their objective was obvious: Battery Powell, alive with the flashes of a dozen cannon. Between them and the redoubt lay a half-mile of open ground and a dense curtain of blue-clad skirmishers. As he had Stanley, General Rosecrans had enjoined Davies to reinforce his skirmish line to feel out the enemy. A few minutes before 10:00 A.M. Davies dispatched the Seventh Iowa toward the left of the Illinois sharpshooters, who had crept to the fringe of the forest. Col. Elliott Rice was hardly beyond the breastworks before he spotted Green’s Confederates crossing the railroad and making for the division right. Rice relayed the news to Davies, who recalled the Iowans at once.

  The sharpshooters of the Sixty-fourth Illinois were too far out to hear the recall, but they could not have obeyed the order had they heard it. Lying in the dirt to escape shells from Battery Powell that whizzed dangerously low overhead, the Illinoisans watched thousands of Confederates pour forth from the forest in front of them and hundreds more double- quick around their flanks. Capt. John Morrill tried to shepherd his command back to the cover of a low ravine, but no one paid him any attention. The sharpshooters sprinted past, and the retreat he had hoped to direct disintegrated into a rush for safety. In fifteen minutes the Sixty- fourth lost sixty-nine men.11

  As the Seventh Iowa and survivors of the Sixty-fourth Illinois cleared their front, the cannoneers in and around Battery Powell intensified their fire. The effect was devastating. Attested Sergeant Payne of the Sixth Missouri,

  A sheet of flame leaped out from fronting rifle pits and showers of iron and leaden hail smote the onrushing men from Missouri with terrible and deadly effect. Great gaps were torn in their ranks, to be filled as soon as made. . . . Not for a moment did they halt. Every instant death smote. It came in a hundred shapes, every shape a separate horror. Here a shell, short-fused, exploding in the thinning ranks, would rend its victims and spatter their comrades with brains, flesh, and blood. Men’s heads were blown to atoms. Fragments of human flesh still quivering with life would slap other men in the face, or fall to earth to be trampled under foot.12

  The slaughter was the same in Gates’s brigade. At first William Kavanaugh of the Second Missouri found the charge to be “a sublime sight . . . that magnificent body of men movin
g majestically forward in regular battle array.” But then they came into the open and the shelling started. Men began to fall rapidly. Lines unraveled, and “unavoidably we became scattered.” Colonel Francis Cockrell rode among his men, encouraging them forward, but the smoke had become so dense no one could see him.

  Two of his messmates were dead, but Private Kavanaugh kept on. Beside him was Wallace Martin, his closest friend. Both were exhausted. They had lain awake most of the night, nervously relating their battle experiences to each other and speculating on what the morning might bring. Martin closed the conversation. Tucking up his blanket, he rolled away from Kavanaugh, saying, “Will, let’s go to sleep, tomorrow some of us have to be killed, but we do not know who it will be.” One hundred fifty yards short of the Yankee breastworks, Martin fell, shot through the brain. Kavanaugh was unhurt, but thirty-five of the forty-five men of his company already were down.

  Many more Missourians would have died on the open field had Rosecrans not blanketed his front with skirmishers. The Seventh Iowa and the Sixty-fourth Illinois Sharpshooters blocked the fields of fire of most of the batteries around Battery Powell until the Confederates reached Elam Creek, between 300 and 400 yards away. At that range the gunners simply could not get off enough rounds to halt the Rebels before they closed on the Federal lines. They drew a hundred yards nearer, and as Davies had predicted, his men wavered. The New Yorker watched one man fire his rifle madly in the air, duck his head, then jump up from behind the breastworks and dash for the rear. “A very few of those who had fired followed his example, and I only regret that I was not near enough to the cowards to have them shot down, as I had shot at two the day before on leaving the line under similar circumstances.”13

  Davies egregiously understated the defections from his ranks. Two hundred yards short of the Federal works, Moore and Gates paused to dress ranks. The Confederates let go a volley, then came on at the double- quick, yelling, “On to the battery! Capture the Battery!” That broke the will of the Federals. Whole units collapsed. The entreaties of officers were useless. The order of their going is uncertain, but the inescapable truth is that nearly the entire division fled while the enemy was yet a hundred yards off.