Iuka, the fiercest battle of the war, 217 men out of 482 of my
regiment are shot--The awful Rebel charge at Corinth--Moonlight on
the battlefield--Bushels of arms and legs--Tombstones for
fireplaces--One of Grant's mistakes.
All that summer, after taking Corinth, we chased up and down the State
of Mississippi, trying to get fair battle with the Rebel army. At last
the chance came, and for my regiment it was an awful one--the battle of
Iuka.
The battle of Iuka took place on the 19th of September, 1862. It was
fought by a handful of the troops of General Rosecrans against half the
army of General Price. Grant was only a few miles away, but although
commander-in-chief, he knew nothing of the hardest-fought battle of the
Civil War until it was over.
One morning before daylight while camped in the woods near Jacinto half
expecting to be attacked, we heard that Price's army was in Iuka, some
eighteen miles away, and that if we would hurry there and attack from
one side, General Grant, with Ord's troops, would attack from another
side. How eagerly the regiment made the forward march on that beautiful
autumn day! The woods were in their fairest foliage, and it seemed too
lovely a day for war and bloodshed. The bugles played occasionally as
the men hurried along, but not a shot was fired. No noise like war fell
on the soldiers' ears as they tramped over the beautiful country road
toward the Tennessee River. They had time for reflection as they
marched, and they knew now they were going to battle. There had been no
time for letters or farewells, and each thought the other one, not
himself, most likely to fall in the coming engagement.
There were only 482 of my little regiment now marching there, hoping,
almost praying, the enemy might only wait. How little anyone dreamed
that before the sun set 217 of that little command would be stretched
dead or dying among the autumn leaves!
It was just two o'clock when the regiment ran on to the army of the
enemy, lying in line right across the road close to Iuka. My own
regiment was in the advance. Instantly it, too, was in line of battle
across that road, and in a few minutes absolutely the fiercest little
conflict of the war began. Our brigade was fearfully outnumbered.
Rosecrans, had ten thousand soldiers within five miles of the
battlefield, yet let three or four small regiments and a battery do all
the fighting. Ten miles away, in another direction, lay General Grant
and General Ord, with many other thousands, as silent as if paralyzed.
An unlucky wind blew, they said, and the sound of our cannon, that was
to have been the signal for them to attack also, was unheard by them.
Charge after charge was made upon our little line, and the Eleventh Ohio
Battery, which the regiment was protecting, was taken and retaken three
times. There were no breastworks, yet that one little brigade of
Hamilton's division stood there in the open and repulsed assault after
assault. It was the Iowa, the Missouri, and the Ohio boys against the
boys of Alabama and Mississippi, and the grass and leaves were covered
with the bodies in blue and gray. Not Balaklava, nor the Alma, saw such
fighting. It was a duel to the death. For hours the blue and the gray
stood within forty yards of each other and poured in sheets of musketry.
Every horse of the battery at the left of my regiment was killed, and
every gunner but one or two was shot and lying among the debris. No
battery in the whole four years' war lost so many men in so short a
time. Antietam, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, could show nothing like it.
Only the setting sun put an end to what was part of the time a hand to
hand conflict. One daring Rebel was shot down and bayoneted clear
behind the line of Company B, where he had broken through to seize the
flag of my regiment.
That night the enemy slipped away, leaving hundreds and hundreds of his
dead and wounded on the field. With a few lanterns our men then went
about and tried to gather up the wounded; the dead were left till
morning. There were 782 Union men lying there in their blood that long
night, 608 of them out of a single small brigade. While mothers and
sisters at home were praying for the safety of these dear ones at the
front, their spirits that night were leaving their torn bodies in the
dark and ascending heavenward. Five of my eight messmates of the day
before were shot. It was not a question who was dead, or wounded, but
who was _not_. Fifteen officers of our little half regiment were dead or
wounded. The enemy lost more than one thousand men in trying to destroy
that single brigade and its Ohio battery.
The burying party the next morning found nineteen dead Rebels lying
together at one place. At another spot 182 Rebel corpses lay in a row
covered by tarpaulins. The enemy had not had time to bury them.
It was a principle among our generals that if a command fought well in a
battle or got cut all to pieces, that was the particular command to be
put at the very front in the next hard scrap. And so it was that within
two weeks my regiment was placed outside the breastworks at Corinth, to
wait and receive another awful assault.
The night before the battle of Corinth the Fifth Iowa Regiment lay
across the Purdy road, in the bright moonlight. I remained awake all
night, talking with a comrade who shared my blanket with me. Poor Jimmy
King! he survived the war only to be murdered later on a plantation in
Mississippi. As we lay there in the wagon road, the awful losses of my
regiment at Iuka kept us thinking there in the moonlight what would
happen on the morrow. When morning came the firing opened, and for all
that day the battle raged fiercely at the left and center left, we
getting the worst of it, too. The Rebels were charging works that they
themselves had built when they held the town during Halleck's siege.
General Haccelman and many other of our officers had fallen. Our own
division, though fighting some, had lost but few men. That evening an
order came for us--Hamilton's Division--to assault the enemy's left
flank at midnight. Before the hour came, however, the move was decided
to be too dangerous, and we changed our position to one nearer the
forts. All the night we lay there under the brightest moonlight I ever
saw. Under the same quiet moonlight, and only six hundred yards away
from us, also lay the victorious Rebel army. They believed Corinth as
good as taken, but they had only captured our outer lines of forts. Yet
it looked very bad for us. Every house in town was full of our wounded
and our dead lay everywhere.
Once in the night I slipped away from the bivouac and hurried to the old
Tishimingo Hotel, to see a lieutenant of my company, who had been shot
through the breast. Never will I forget the horrible scenes of that
night. The town seemed full of the groans of dying men. In one large
room of the Tishimingo House surgeons worked all the night, cutting off
arms and legs. I could not help my friend. It was too late, for he was
dying. "Go back to the regiment," he said, smiling, "all will be
needed."
It was a relief to me to get back into the moonlight and out of the
horror, yet out there lay thousands of others in line, only waiting the
daylight to be also mangled and torn like these. The moon shone so
brightly the men in the lines, tired though they were, could scarcely
sleep. There the thousands lay, the blue and the gray, under the same
peaceful moon, worshiping the same God, and each praying for dear ones
North and South they would never again see. God could not answer the
prayers of the men in both armies that night. Had He done so, all would
have been killed on the morrow. At early daybreak I again went to see my
lieutenant. As I entered the building a cannonball from the enemy
crashed through the house and killed four soldiers by the stairway. My
friend, with many others, was being carried out to die elsewhere.
It was soon full day. In one of the rooms I saw the floors, tables, and
chairs covered with amputated limbs, some white and some broken and
bleeding. There were simply bushels of them, and the floor was running
blood. It was a strange, horrible sight,--but it was war. Yes, it was
"hell." I hastened back to the lines. Nine o'clock came, and now we knew
that the great assault was to be made. We looked for it against our own
division, as we lay in the grass waiting. Suddenly we heard something,
almost like a distant whirlwind. My regiment rose to its feet, fired a
few moments at scattering Rebels in our front, and were amazed to see a
great black column, ten thousand strong, moving like a mighty
storm-cloud out of the woods and attacking the forts and troops at our
left. Instantly we changed direction a little and, without further
firing, witnessed one of the greatest assaults of any war. It was the
storming of Fort Robinett. The cloud of Rebels we had seen divided
itself into three columns. These recklessly advanced on the forts,
climbing over the fallen trees and bending their heads against the awful
storm of grape and canister from all our cannon. A perfect blaze of
close range musketry, too, mowed them down like grass. Even a foe could
feel pity to see brave men so cruelly slaughtered.
When the assault had failed and the noise of battle was stilled, I
hurried down in front of Robinett. My canteen was full of water and I
pressed it to the lips of many a dying enemy--enemy no longer. Our grape
shot had torn whole companies of men to pieces. They lay in heaps of
dozens, even close up to the works. General Rogers, who had led a
brigade into the hopeless pit, lay on his back, dead, with his flag in
his hand. _He was the fifth one to die carrying that flag._ When I
reached him some cruel one had stripped him of his boots. Another had
taken his fine gold watch.
In this attack on Corinth the brave Southerners lost 5000 wounded, and
we buried 1423 of their dead on the battlefield. Our own loss had been
2200 dead and wounded. That night I stood guard under an oak tree on the
battlefield among the unburied dead. Many of the wounded, even, had not
yet been gathered up. The moon shone as brightly as the night before,
while thousands who had lain there under its peaceful rays before the
battle were now again sleeping, but never to waken.
Our regiment now pursued the flying Rebels with great vigor. The
quantities of broken batteries, wagons, tents, knapsacks, guns, etc.,
strewn along the roads behind them were immense. At the Hatchie River
the Rebels were momentarily headed off by a division under Hurlbut that
had hurried across from Bolivar. A seven hours' battle was fought at the
bridge, but the Rebels got away in another direction. Possibly the best
friend I had in the world, save my kin, was killed at that bridge. It
was Lieutenant William Dodd, a classmate in school. His head was shot
off by a cannonball just as his regiment was charging at the bridge.
The pursuit of the enemy was being pushed with vigor when the army was
ordered to desist and return to camp. It was an astounding order, as it
was in our power to destroy the defeated and flying columns. That order
was one of the mistakes of Grant's earlier days as a commander. Indeed,
we of the rank and file had little confidence in Grant in those days. We
reflected that at Shiloh he was miles away from the battlefield at the
critical moment. Sherman had saved the Union army from destruction
there. At Iuka, Grant, though commander, did not even know a battle was
going on. At Corinth he was forty miles away, and now, when we had the
enemy almost within our grasp, he suddenly called us back. Rosecrans
protested. It was in vain. The order, more imperative than before, was
repeated. It required months, and great events, to make Grant the hero
of the army which he afterward became.
This entry I find in my diary in one of those days: "Our commander of
the district is General U. S. Grant, who took Donelson; but aside from
that one hour's fighting, and a little fighting at Shiloh, the troops
know little about him. Rosecrans is at present the hero of this army,
and, with him leading it, the boys would storm Hades."
With the mercury at one hundred, the dust in the roads ankle deep, and
the whole atmosphere yellow and full of it, the regiments exhausted by
the pursuit, and yet disgusted at our recall, slowly tramped their way
back to Corinth. Now I visited my wounded companions in the hospital. On
inquiry for certain ones I learned that they were dead and lying out in
the improvised graveyard near by.
For some reason the dead at Hatchie Bridge were not buried. A week after
the battle my brother rode by there on a cavalry expedition and made the
horrible discovery that hogs were eating up the bodies of our dead
heroes. _That too was war._
We now camped on the edge of the town and went on building still other
and greater forts. Many of the soldiers made huts for themselves. It was
getting cooler now, and little fireplaces were built in the huts and
tents. Brick was scarce, and in a few instances the men used the stone
slabs from a graveyard close at hand. It seemed vandalism, but the dead
did not need them and the living did.