USA > Illinois > History of the Fourth Illinois cavalry regiment > Part 6
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About a half-mile from the forks, beyond a space of some 200 acres of fallen timber, an extensive camp of the enemy's cavalry could be seen .. After a reconnoissance I ordered the two advance companies of the Seventy-seventh Ohio, under Colonel Hildebrand, to deploy forward as skirmishers and the regiment itself to follow in line at an interval of one hundred yards.
In this order I advanced cautiously until the skirmishers were engaged. Taking it for granted this disposition would clean the camp, I held Colonel Dickey's Fourth Illinois Cavalry ready for the charge. The enemy's cavalry came boldly down to the line, breaking through the line of skirmishers, when the regiment of infantry, without cause, broke, threw away their muskets and fled.
The ground was admirable to a defense of infantry against cavalry, it being miry and covered with fallen timber. As the regiment of infantry broke, Dickey's cavalry began to discharge their carbines and fell into disorder. I instantly sent orders to the rear for the brigade to form in line of battle, which was promptly executed.
The broken infantry and cavalry formed on this line, and as the enemy's cavalry came to it our cavalry in turn charged and drove them from the field. I advanced the entire brigade upon the same ground and sent Colonel Dickey's cavalry a mile further on the road.
On examining the ground which had been occupied by the Seventy-seventh Ohio we found fifteen dead and twenty-five wounded. I sent for wagons and had all the wounded sent back to camp and the dead buried and ordered the whole camp to be destroyed. Here we found ammunition for field pieces, also two caissons and a
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-general hospital with about two hundred and eighty wounded confederates and about fifty of our own men. Not having the means of bring these off Colonel Dickey took a surrender, signed by Medical Director Lyles and all attending surgeons and a pledge to report themselves to you as prisoners of war, also a pledge that our wounded would be carefully attended and surrendered 'to us tomorrow as soon as an ambulance could go out.
I enclose a written document and request that you will cause to be sent out wagons or ambulances for the wounded of ours tomorrow, also that wogons shall be sent out to bring in the many tents belonging to us which are pitched along the road for four miles. I did not destroy these because I knew the enemy could not remove them.
The roads are very bad and arestrewn with abandoned wagons, ambulances and limber boxes.
The enemy has succeeded in carrying off the guns but has crippled his battery by abandoning the hind limber boxes of about twenty guns.
I have the honor to be your obedient servant,
GENERAL SHERMAN, Brigadier General Commanding Division.
Headquarters First Army Corps, Medical Department, May 2, 1862. To Major George Williamson, Assistant Adjutant Major General :- For the information of the Major General and by his order I have the honor to submit the following statement:
On Sunday, the 6th inst , I established a hospital on the field for the care of those of the first army corps who . might be wounded in the then pending battle between the Confederate forces and those of the Federal.
To this hospital I had removed such of the more severly wounded as were injured in the engagement of the 6th and 7th, numbering with surgeons infirmary corps some three hundred and twenty Confederates. As your. Medical Director I thought it my duty to remain with the party on the field.
In addition to our own people we had some sixty-five Federals who were prisoners, many of whom were
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wounded, who were attended by Federal surgeons. L extended to them every courtesy and assistance in my power and freely shared with them every comfort I could procure for our own men.
On the 8th in the afternoon, and subsequent to the skirmish with the enemy and Colonel Forest's Cavalry, my attention was directed to a pistol shot said to be directed at my hospital by some Federal Cavalry. I went out and met the officer who had fired the shot, as I then ascertained. I remonstrated against so inhuman an outrage and refused to surrender to him. He left and in about an hour Colonel Dickey of the Federal army came up with a Cavalry force and demanded my surrender. I was powerless and reluctantly yielded myself and the party of unfortunate prisoners.
Colonel Dickey drew up in pencil something like a parol by which we agreed to remain and report to General Grant. I expressly refused to sign the document unless it was understood that we were subject to recapture by our own forces. Colonel Dickey assured me that of course that was always understood but he would take care that we were not retaken and left us with the promise that he would send for us the next morning. This, however, he fortunately for us failed to do, as we were rescued on the evening of the 9th by a detachment of our own cavalry.
Your obedient servant,
W. D. LYLES, Medical Director.
This charge, by the rebel cavalry, was led by General . N. B. Forest in person. He received a wound in the
charge, probably from our carbines. Company H, it seems, was not with us on this accasion, or at least not all of it, and below Sergeant J. B. Cook tells of their experience that day :
After the firing ceased the Fourth Illinois Cavalry was sent back to their old camp near the landing where feed could be secured, except Company H (our company), which was ordered to camp near the front and report to General Sherman at dayligh to scout in his front-we found some forage and some vacant tents in the camp of the
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Seventeenth Illinois Infantry close to Sherman's headquarters. On this portion of the field the dead lay in the roads, the fields and the timber, everywhere, dead artillery and cavalry horses.
Dismounted guns with the spokes shot out of the wheels encumbered the roads, and pretty much everywhere else the confederate dead largely in the majority. (By the way a cavalryman is sometimes compelled to ride over a dead man but never over a dead horse for the horse always bolts. That is the live one I mean). It was now dark, and hitching my horse to a wagon loaded with oats, I ripped one of the sacks and with another comrade entered one of the tents in which we found a soldier lying on some hay, but we soon found the man was dead.
We also found the next tent had two dead men in it, so we moved the first man in with them, and finding some hay we gave some to our horses and reserved some to lay on ourselves and occupied the dead man's tent, where we slept until near daylight. By daylight we were in the saddle, Captain Wemple in command and fourteen men present for duty. On reaching General Sherman's tent he ordered us to go out about a mile to the right front, then to the left along his front. We were soon at a large house used as a confederate hospital. While the captain talked to the surgeon in charge, we were in the midst of about fifty rebels who were not wounded. They were stragglers, had no officers amongst them and talked with us like citizens generally would in such a case.
I picked up an officer's sabre which lay beside two young men and threw away my heavy one. These young men belonged to a Louisiana regiment. They looked rather too neat tohave been two days in a battle and were probably stragglers both days. This was the first time we had ridden around amongst live rebels and it seemed a strange preformance.
Here we passed to the left and soon came to a camp of more stragglers, who answered questions respectfully, but eyed us rather suspiciously. In this camp there were about thirty men: Passing on we came to a large one
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room house and several tents. Here we found no surgeon, the floor had seveenteen badly wounded men, one lay across two others and had died there. They begged us to remove him, which we did. Here we found the first federal, a corporal from an Ohio regiment badly wounded on the ground and close by a dead rebel colonel on a cot in a tent. We threw the colonel out and placed the Ohio man on the cot and lost no time in mounting, as a regiment of cavalry was now seen dashing down a ridge east of us to cut us off from the camp, and we started through an open field. We had not gone out far when the pickets fired on the rebs, at the same time repulsing them and showering a volley of bullets over us. This caused the alarm Tuesday morning.
When we reached General Sherman he was on his horse at the center of his division and his men all seemed to be in line. As we halted here a moment for our captain to report to him, one man fired off his gun and the general ordered him to be shot, but the colonel of his regiment interceded for him, said he had fought both days and did not know any better. The general excused him with a reprimand and soon quiet again prevailed.
We were excused from duty for a time and rode over the battlefield. I saw a confederate artillery captain lying dead with seventeen of his men and eighteen horses around him-his guns dismounted and one of his caissons exploded. I think this was in front of McClernand's left and well out towards the front line.
The captain's sabre was still in its sheath, his uniform, sash, boots and spurs still on as he fell. He had made a good fight. As I looked over this wreck I was reminded that the battle was won from men who were "worthy of our steel." I think this battery was from New Orleans.
Late in the evening I was ordered to take sixteen men and report to General Sherman for picket duty. I reached his tent at dusk. He had nothing in his tent but a saddle on which he was sitting while his staff was skirmishing for something to eat. He had just returned from a few miles out on the Corinth road where he had
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been with three regiments, one of which was ours, and had a lively skirmish in which Colonel Forest of the First Tennessee rebel cavalry was wounded and his troops driven from the field. He ordered me two miles out. We reached our post in impenetrable darkness and sat on our horses until daylight.
SERGEANT J. B. COOK, Company H, Fourth Illinois Cavalry.
We were now sent back to our old camp. The rebels had occupied it during the two-day's battle and had looted it of everything of value. Our regiment flag was left in camp and the rebels took it, also our company flag which was presented to us by the citizens of Earlville, I believe, the day we went into camp. Captain Shepardson, I remember, had us take an oath that we would defend that flag with our life's blood. We left camp that morning without thinking of the flag-we never carried it-it was packed away safely(?) in the captain's trunk, where it had been for months. Prehaps these flags may come to light yet, sometime, if there is anything about them that they can be identified by.
Headquarters Fourth Illinois Cavalry, Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, April 14, 1862.
Report of Major Samuel M. Bowman of the Fourth Illinois Cavalry to Brigadier General William T. Sherman, Commanding Division:
On receiving your order at Chickasaw on yesterday morning about eight o'clock to take my command there present and proceed to destroy the bridge of the Charleston and Memphis railroad across Bear creek, I proceeded to execute the order.
My command consisted of one-hundred picked men of the following companies of the Fourth Illinois Cavalry: Company E, Captain Rockwood; Company G, Lieutenant Harper; Company H, Lieutenant Fisk; Company L, Lieutenant Merriman and Company M, Lieutenant Allshouse, with twenty men each.
We took the Chickasaw and Iuka road as far as Bear creek, driving the enemy's pickets across the creek, who,
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supposing we were the head of a column advancing on Iuks, fired the bridge across the creek in order to impede our progress. We then dashed up the creek at full speed to the vicinity of the railroad bridge designated.
I placed mounted platoon at the point where the road crosses the railroad track to prevent the passage of cars from the east and to guard us on that side and marched the balance of the force into a swamp within a quarter of a mile of the bridge, where I dismounted the men, a part of them to fight on foot and part to use axes.
I ordered one platoon under Captain Rockwood to march down by the side of the railroad toward the bridge and another, under command of Lieutenant Fisk, to march in the same direction on the track, and at the same time placed two platoons, one under Lieutenant Callon and the other under Lieutenant Merriman, in the swamp as near as possible to the bridge, to act as sharpshooters. I thien ordered an advance on the bridge, firing at the enemy's guard wherever seen. The guard appeared to be about one-hundred-fifty strong, and seemed quite unwilling to yieldthe occupancy of the bridge, and contended as long as they could against us.
At the same time a party of choppers, under Lieutenant Harper, commenced cutting away the trestle work, and in half an hour from the time we arrived on the ground the bridge was on fire and a span of the trestle work over the swamp cut away, and in an hour more we had totally destroyed the bridge and five-hundred feet of the trestle work. We also destroyed the telegraph poles and sunk the wire of about half a mile of the telegraph line along the side of the railroad.
We killed four of the enemy's guard and one horse, took two cavalrymen prisoners and returned to the boat before sundown without injury to my command.
Every officer and every man under my command did his duty on the occasion. I have no stronger words to express my entire approbation of the conduct of all concerned. The bridge was two-hundred and forty feet in length in two spans with stone peirs and abutments left
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standing. We had no means of destroying these. The trestle work was likewise of stone piers, left standing. Length of bridge destroyed, two-hundred and forty feet: length of trestle work, five-hundred feet, and length of telegraph wire, half a mile.
I have the honor to be most respectfully, your obedient servant, S. M. BOWMAN,
Major, Commanding Fourth Illinois Cavalry.
April 18th-Company I stood picket on the Purdy road with Lieutenant Hyde in command. We have had strict orders, all of the time against foraging. Today Enoch Hunter was caught preparing a pig for a roast. The Lieutenant began to score Hunter for violating the orders so Hunter went on to explain how it happened. He said he was sitting down by a tree with his sabre across his lap and the pig ran against it and killed itself and he thought he might as well eat it. The explanation was satisfactory and we ate the pig, the Lieutenant helping us. April 30th-We made a raid on the railroad near Purdy today, tore up a lot of the track, burned some ties and trestle work, captured an engine with engineer, fireman and a lineman. They were hunting for the break we had made in the telegraph wire, which they found.
This was a very disagreeable trip. We went, part of the way, in the night and it was so dark our guide was lost and we had to halt until daylight. It rained a good portion of the way and the roads were fearfully muddy. Night overtook us before we got back to camp and the command was scattered in the dark. The main portion of the command arrived in camp at midnight, but quite a good many came straggling in the next day.
The army commenced to move on Corinth about May 1st but the major part of our regiment remained with Sherman's Division. We had the extreme right. We did picket duty and scouted nearly every day on Sherinan's right and front.
May 4th-The army moved again and we camped that night near the state line. We had just got our tents pitched when the effective mounted force of Company I
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was ordered out on picket, without their suppers. We expected to be relieved soon but we were not relieved until ten o'clock the next morning. We were stationed along a road on the state line, that, we were told, some rebel troops would probably pass along that night. We sat on our horses all night in a drizzling rain, two in a place, a few rods apart and ordered to be very vigilant. My comrade, John Cleveland, leaned over on his horse and slept until morning, I did not sleep a minute. We did not see or hear anyone, not even the "grand rounds."
I judge from the following extract from the report of General John A. McClernand of his operations before Corinth, Camp Jackson, June 4, 1862, that at least two companies of our regiment was attached to our division, but I have found no record of it anywhere else:
On the 11th the same division struck their tents and moved forward about two miles and a half in the direction of Corinth, to the crossing of the old state line with the Purdy and Farmington road, and camping here near the Fielder house.
A reconnoissance in the direction of Corinth was made by Companies C and D, Fourth Illinois Cavalry, under command of Captain L. D. Townsend accompanied by Lieutenant S. R. Tresilian of General Logan's staff.
Pushing forward his reconnoissance in advance of any that had been previously made, Captain Townsend came in contact with the enemy's picket near Easles house on the Hack road, leading from Purdy to Corinth and drove back their accumulating numbers some distance. This position at the cross roads was vital to the line of our advance upon the enemy at Corinth as it protected our right flank from attact.
To strengthen and secure so important a position, rifle pits were dug and earthworks were thrown up as a cover, both for our infantry and our artillery. Among several outposts one was established upon the Little Muddy creek near the Harris house, which, although much exposed and often threatened by the enemy, was firmly held by the Twentieth Illinois and a section of artillery
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under command of Lieutenant Colonel Richards. Numerous reconnoissances were also made resulting in repeatedly meeting the enemy's pickets and reconnoitering parties and driving them back.
We have been kept very busy scouting and picketing. Our pickets and those of the rebels are in sight of each other much of the time and there is skirmishing almost daily between the pickets.
I quote from my diary: May 27th-Our pickets and the rebels are within speaking distance of each other. We agreed not to shoot at each other while we held our present positions. We also left our arms, by agreement, and met between the lines; saluted each other with "how are you Yank" "how are you Reb:" had a friendly chat; ate a lunch of hard-tack, sowbelly and corndodger together and exchanged some presents. At parting we shook hands and bade each other farewell, remarking that perhaps the next time we met it would be in battle, but we agreed to give each other the best licks we could if we did. About their first inquiry was to know if we were the Fourth Illinois Cavalry. They said they knew us for they had had several brushes with us and we had always worsted them, but they said they were not afraid of the "Dutch Cavalry" (First Illinois). They were the First Mississippi Cavalry.
The morning of May 30th it was discovered the enemy had evacuated Corinth. We marched into Corinth in the advance of Sherman's Division and spent the balance of the day scouting in the direction the rebel army had gone. We brought in about a dozen prisoners. A part of the army went west toward Grand Junction, repairing the railroad, and we went with them acting as guards part of the time.
On Jan. 2d at about two o'clock in the afternoon we received orders to march, taking two days rations. We were accompanied by two companies of the First Illinois Cavalry with Colonel Dickey in command. We passed a part of General Sherman's Division as we were going out.
We led off in a southwest direction for the purpose
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of dispersing a force of rebels that were reported to be camped near the bridge over the Tuscumbia river.
Night set in soon after we left Corinth and it rained hard in the afternoon and fore part of the night. Owing to the intense darkness we were ordered back two or three miles and bivouacked till morning, after we were nearly to our destination. It was twelve o'clock when we laid down.
At daylight we mounted and went on to the river but we found the bridge burned and the enemy gone. We turned back till we met General Sherman, then we went on into Chewalla. From there we went on up the railroad to where the rebels had partly burned two trains of cars, loaded with their army stores. They had burned a bridge near here, probably supposing their trains had all passed when they fired it, but it seems that they had not. I submit herewith General Sherman's report:
Headquarters of Fifth Division, Army of the Tennessee, Camp at Chewalla, June 10, 1862. Report of General W. T. Sherman, Commanding Division and Expedition to Captain George E. Flynt, Assistant Adjutant General :
I have the honor to report that on the 2d inst, at about two p. m., in camp before Corinth, I received General Halleck's orders: "You will immediately move with your division and that of General Hurlbut's through Corinth and dislodge the enemy from his position near the Memphis and Charleston railroad. " On inquiry, by telegraph of the major general commanding, I learned the enemy in question was supposed to be at or near Smith's bridge across the Tuscumbia creek, seven miles southwest of Corinth.
The division was immediately put in motion, followed by that of Brigadier Generat Hurlbut. We marched in and through Corinth in a violent rainstorm and took the road toward the southwest. The rain made the road so heavy that we only made four miles, when darkness overtook us, and we lay in mud and rain that night by the roadside, but I directed Colonel Dickey of the Fourth
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Illinois Cavalry to proceed three miles further on the road and to send out a party to Smith's bridge to ascertain the position of the enemy.
Satisfied the enemy was there to dislodge, I then proceeded to carry out the second part of my instructions, namely, "assist in getting up and repairing all the locomotives and cars you can find."
Stationing General Hurlbut near Young's station on the Memphis & Charleston railroad, which covered the approach from Smith's bridge, I then conducted my own division to the high ridge back of Chewalla and there bivouacked.
Large working parties were at once sent forward on the railroad, about three miles west of Chewalla, where the enemy had permaturely burned the bridge over Cypress creek, thereby preventing the escape of seven locomotives and trains of cars, filled with their own stores. They had destroyed, or nearly so, this property by fire and a mass of wreck encumbered the railroad track for a mile. We set to work immediately to clear the track, repair the locomotives and a few platform cars which had not been utterly ruined, with the vast amount of truck wheels, couplings and iron works.
In this way we have saved seven locomotives, one of which was flat on its side in the ditch, about a dozen platform cars, over two-hundred pairs of truck wheels and the iron work of about sixty cars, all of which have been sent to Corinth or remains at Chewalla on the side track.
This work has been pursued night and day until yesterday afternoon when orders were recieved from Major General Halleck to discontinue it and move with my own and General Hurlbut's Division further west.
All the bridges to the west, whether on the railroad or common road, have been burned and the road otherwise obstructed, but I have already sent forward parties to make the necessary repairs and shall tomorrow move the whole command to Pocahontas and beyond.
I have the honor to be your obedient servant,
W. T. SHERMAN,
Commanding Division and Expedition.
Jan. 13, 1862-We went to Grand Junction and loafed
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about town nearly all day. A detachment from Company I captured two mule teams engaged in hauling flour to the rebel army from a mill near town. They were allowed to load and then were driven inside our lines and of course everything was confiscated.
We lay that night in the fence corners at the railroad crossing a half mile north of the Junction and at daylight Companies I and K of our regiment escorted General Sherman into LaGrange.
The Junction is a small town of but about a dozen houses, is fifty miles east of Memphis, and is at the crossing of the Mississippi Central with the Memphis & Charleston railroad.
LaGrange is a railroad station three miles west of the Junction and several times larger-buildings good and quite modern. The citizens are mostly wealthly planters and bitter rebels. The ladies especially treat us with the utmost contempt.
We were camped on the premises of Mr. Mickley, a wealthy planter owning thousands of acres and two-hundred slaves. The rebels burned five-hundred bales of cotton for him and he is a rank rebel.
June 22d-We moved our camp to Lafayette, ten miles west of Moscow.
The following general orders are submitted for the information they convey:
Headquarters Army of the Tennessee, in field near Corinth, June 11, 1862. General Order No. 54 to J. A. Rawlins, Assistant Adjutant General.
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