Beneath Torn and Tattered Flags, 2017 Edition, Chapters 4 – 7

This is the second installment of the revised and expanded 2017 edition of my regimental history of the 38th Mississippi Infantry. It will cover the regiment’s participation in the battle of Corinth and the siege of Vicksburg. This portion of the history will also detail the 38th’s reorganization after Vicksburg, and the regiment’s change into a mounted infantry unit in 1864. I hope you enjoy this portion of Beneath Torn and Tattered Flags, and please check back for the final installment of the regimental history of the 38th Mississippi, which will be posted very soon!

 

Chapter IIII

Redemption at Corinth

I will sum up by saying that we had to fight three days to get out of the trap old Van Dorn got us in. ¹

– Lt. Col. Preston Brent on the battle of Corinth.

In camp at Baldwyn, the 38^th’s soldiers finally had a chance to rest and reflect on

John L. Hart started out a Lieutenant in the Hanock Rebels, but eventually was promoted to Captain of the Company. He spent much of his time tracking down deserters from his command. (Old Court House Museum, Vicksburg, Mississippi)

their failure at Iuka. Some came to the conclusion that their one glimpse of battle was enough to last a lifetime and so they quietly slipped away from camp and started home. Desertions were particularly heavy in the Hancock Rebels, with the men tending to leave together in groups. On September 23, eight of the company deserted, and three days later five more ran away from the regiment.² These mass desertions from the Rebels were just the beginning of what became an epidemic of men absconding from the company, most never to return.

For the men who remained with the 38^th, the memory of their failure at Iuka must have been painful, but the fortunes of war did not allow them much time to sit and brood. Events were already unfolding in such a way as to put the regiment squarely in the middle of the bloody battle for Corinth, and afford the men the opportunity to redeem the name of the unit.

After his narrow escape at Iuka, Sterling Price realized that his army alone was not powerful enough to defeat the Union forces in northeast Mississippi. To accomplish this goal, Price understood that he needed to unite his army with that of Major General Earl Van Dorn. Price contacted Van Dorn who was already moving his small command of 5,000 men into north Mississippi, and the two generals agreed to unite their troops at Ripley, Mississippi.³

Sterling Price put his army in motion on September 26, and his men completed the dusty

Major General Evan Van Dorn commanded the army that attacked Corinth in October 1862. (Library of Congress)

march to Ripley on the morning of September 28. With the junction of the two armies complete, Van Dorn, by virtue of his seniority, became overall commander of the combined force with Price his second in command. Van Dorn’s army consisted of the divisions of Major General Mansfield Lovell, Dabney Maury, and Louis Hebert, who had taken over Henry Little’s command after his death at Iuka. In all, Van Dorn had a force of approximately 22,000 to use against the Union army.⁴

It didn’t take Van Dorn long to come up with a very ambitious plan for his army. Believing an attack on Vicksburg was imminent, he felt his best option to prevent such an attack was to push the Yankees out of their staging area in West Tennessee. For this strategy to work, the Rebels first had to take the town of Corinth, Mississippi from the Federals. To advance into Tennessee with a powerful Union force intact at Corinth would have invited an attack on the rear of Van Dorn’s army.⁵

Although the Rebel army at Ripley was only about 26 miles southwest of Corinth, the route worked they had to travel was nearly twice that distance. Starting at Ripley Mississippi, Van Dorn’s hard marching graybacks would march north some 30 miles to Pocahontas Tennessee, just over the state line. From there they would wheel due east and advance approximately 8 miles to Chewalla Tennessee; once there the army would follow the tracks of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad southeast nearly 10 miles until they reached Corinth. The purpose of this convoluted line of march by Van Dorn was to put his men in a position to assault the federal defenses northeast of Corinth.

Map Showing Van Dorn’s Route of March – Ripley to Pocahontas to Chewalla to Corinth.

(Illustration from Battles and Leaders, Volume 2, page 727)

He chose to attack from this direction knowing that the outer line of earthworks defending the city were weakest in this sector.⁶

While Van Dorn was coming up with plans to assault Corinth, his counterpart Rosecrans was working just as hard on how he would defend the city. The Union general had 23,000 men in and around Corinth, and he kept them busy with improvements to the existing Confederate-built fortifications. To make the defenses even stronger, he ordered his soldiers to build an inner line of earthwork forts along the northern and western approaches to Corinth.⁷

When completed there were seven forts stretched in an arc around the city, connected to each other by a line of trenches. The names of these strongholds were batteries Robinett, Williams, Phillips, Tanrath, Lothrop, Powell, and Madison.⁸ Fully manned with ranks of blue infantry and gleaming brass cannon, this inner line of defense would exact a heavy toll from an attacker, a fact the 38^th Mississippi was about to learn the hard way.

For the 38^th, the battle at Corinth was a defining moment in the history of the regiment. The men were already laboring under the stigma of their failure at Iuka, and a second collapse on the battlefield might have permanently destroyed the soldiers’ confidence in themselves and their regiment.

The Corinth campaign began on September 30, 1862, when Van Dorn’s Rebels began the long march north to Pocahontas, arriving in the town on October 1. The gray column turned east and headed for Chewalla, entering it on the evening of October 2. At 4 a.m. on the morning of October 3, the weary men of the 38^th were roused from their bedrolls, and the final leg of the journey from Chewalla to Corinth began. Van Dorn set a very fast pace, pushing his men to reach the town before federal reinforcements could arrive.⁹ The march was made worse for the Rebels because of the high temperature and the lack of water. James Newton Carlisle, Sr., of the 37^th Mississippi Infantry wrote how the scarcity of water made the advance miserable: “Through the driest section of the Cotton States we endured the worst of distresses, thirst. What is comparable to this burning parching fever? Lack of bread is sweet in comparison.”¹⁰

As heat exhaustion and thirst took their toll on the 38th, the roadside was soon littered with dropouts from the regiment who were unable to keep up the fast pace that Van Dorn was setting. Not all the men in the regiment who dropped out did so for physical reasons, as Lieutenant Colonel Brent complained in a letter to his wife Frances:

The morning that I left camp to go into the fight, I made a report of the affective strength of my regiment it was three hundred and fourteen all told, but when I arrived at the battle field I found that the number of the regiment was only one hundred and fifty strong. This was owing a great deal to the fatiguing march that we had to make the morning of the battle, and a great deal to the cowardice of some of the men, that never had any fight in them or ever will. I have heard from the most of them and they were on their way home, no doubt they will tell great tale of what they have seen and what they have gone through with; poor cowardly devils they have not done anything but couch themselves up in some hospital or tent and fraim themselves sick. Studying up all the while to devise some plan to get home, but finding it impossible to get a proper furlough, they openly desert both from hospital and regiment, claiming to be badly mistreated, I hope the citizens will treat them with perfect contempt and as far as possible annoy them so that they will have to return to their command.¹¹

The 38^th Mississippi was going into the fight at Corinth severely reduced in numbers, but at least those that remained were tough and committed to the cause. If Lieutenant Colonel Brent led them well in the upcoming battle, they would strike a hard blow at the Yankees.

Brent kept his small command moving towards Corinth, and around 9 a.m. on October 3, the regiment halted at a point approximately 1½ miles from the outer line of federal works. Van Dorn then began to deploy his army for the assault, ordering General Lovell to form a line of battle to the right of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, and General Price to form his two divisions between the Memphis & Charleston and Mobile & Ohio Railroads. In positioning his men, Price ordered Maury’s Division to the right, and Hebert’s Division to the left. Hebert arranged his brigade for the attack with Green’s Brigade on the left, Martin’s Brigade in the center, and Gates Brigade on the right, leaving his old brigade, now commanded by Colonel W. Bruce Colbert in reserve.¹²

To oppose the initial Confederate assault, Rosecrans massed along the outer works four infantry divisions, approximately 15,000 men. The Union soldiers had to spread themselves very thin to cover the outer fortifications, and they were outnumbered by the concentrated Rebel army, but Rosecrans did not intend for his men to hold out for long. He simply wanted his men to force Van Dorn to fully deploy and reveal his plan of attack.¹³

Initial Confederate deployment for the assault on the outer works at Corinth are shown in the upper left of the map. The Confederate troop dispositions for the second day of the battle are shown at bottom center of the map.

(Illustration from Battles and Leaders, Volume 2, page 744)

By 10:00 a.m., all of the federal skirmishers had been forced back into their earthworks, and the Rebels could begin their attack. At 11:00 Price gave the order to advance, and the 38^th Mississippi marched forward with their brigade. They moved towards a gap in the Union line between the 81^st Ohio Infantry and 12^th Illinois Infantry that was protected by a two gun detachment of the 1^st Missouri artillery (U.S.,) and the Union cannoneers made the Rebel charge a costly one as they fired round after round into the Mississippians.¹⁴ Major George H. Stone of the 1^st Missouri later wrote with pride how his artillerymen met the furious Rebel assault:

Lieutenant Conant’s section, stationed near our center, was literally mowing the rebels down; but with a determination worthy of a better cause the enemy still pressed on and near the intrenchments. The infantry supporting Lieutenant Conant’s section (Eighty-first Ohio and Twelfth Illinois) were driven back, the artillery horses nearly all shot, and the cannoneers compelled to retire, leaving their guns. The defense of this section could not have been better, Captain Welker being there in person and the last one to leave his guns when all hope of saving them was gone.¹⁵

Writing to his wife Frances after the battle, Lt. Col. Brent claimed that the honor of capturing the guns of the 1^st Missouri, giving her a detailed account of the action:

I stated that I succeeded in getting some hundred and fifty men drawn up in line on Friday, occupying the right of the brigade, a post of great honor. While I was getting my regt. in line of battle and posting the guides, the enemy fired a shell at me which passed within two or three feet of my head and struck a tree about ten feet from the regiment but did no damage. I then ordered the men to face down upon the ground which they did with great promptitude, in this position we remained for some thirty minutes receiving the heaviest cannonade that the mind could imagine; the enemy having gotten the exact position of my regiment began to throw their shells immediately in our ranks a killing some and wounding a great many we were therefore unable to remain in this position any longer so we were ordered to charge to protect ourselves from such a deadly fire – we did so and in a short time we had the enemy driven from their works and their guns in our hands, we did this in a short time, but nevertheless, we lossed a great many men in this charge fore we did not fire a gun until we were within forty paces of their works the reason of this was that they had fallen a great amount of timber in front of their works and we were buisily a climbing over tree tops, but when we cleared the tree tops we made the Yankees pay for it. My regiment in this charge captured two fine pieces of artillery, a Parriott [Parrott] and a rifle brass piece, we also taken several prisoners in this charge; after taking the breastwork and driving the enemy from it our men were so scattered that we were compelled to reform our lines again, which we did in a short time, and then pressed on after the enemy a driving them within Corinth – this ended the first days fight.¹⁶

The initial attack very well for the Confederates – the outer defenses had been overrun, and the Yankees forced back to their inner fortifications. It was at this point that the Rebel attack stalled due to a lack of ammunition and sheer exhaustion, and as darkness crept over the bloody field the booming of artillery and crack of musketry slowly faded away.

The 38^th Mississippi had done well the first day at Corinth, but their success came at a high price. One of the first to fall was the regiments brigade commander, Colonel Martin. While leading the charge on the outer works he was hit by a shell fragment and mortally wounded. In his report on the battle General Price eulogized Martin saying, “The gallant bearing of this officer upon more than one bloody field had won for him a place in the heart of every Mississippian.”¹⁷ In the 38^th Major Walter L. Kern was also wounded in the charge, hit in the right hand by a bullet while waving his sword over his head urging his men forward.¹⁸

After dark, Martin’s Brigade, now led by Colonel Robert McLain of the 37^th Mississippi Infantry, was moved to a position along the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, very close to the Union lines. The exhausted soldiers dropped their bedrolls behind the embankment and tried to get some rest, but their sleep was disturbed by the sound of picks and shovels biting into the earth as the Yankees worked through the night to strengthen their earthworks before the next attack.¹⁹

Earl Van Dorn still believed he could win a decisive victory, and he drew up plans to continue the attack on October 4. The strategy he devised would put the 38^th in the thick of the battle on the second day for it called on Hebert’s Division to lead off the advance to the inner Union works and thus bear the brunt of the early fighting. Hebert was ordered to advance with his division at first light against the Yankee right, and once engaged Maury’s Division would strike the center of the enemy line and Lovell’s Division the left.²⁰

Unfortunately for the Rebel soldiers who had to carry it out, Van Dorn’s plan of attack went awry from the very start. General Hebert was supposed to lead off the attack at daybreak but reported himself sick and was relieved of duty by General Price; command of the division passed to General Martin Green, and in the confusion which followed, precious time was lost.²¹ When Green took over he found the division on the west side of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad facing east. The general prepared to attack by placing his brigades in the following order from left to right: 2^nd Brigade (Colonel Colbert), 4^th Brigade (Colonel McLain), 1^st Brigade (Colonel Gates), and 3^rd Brigade (Colonel Moore).²²

Map of the Second Day of the Battle of Corinth (www.civilwartrust.org)

At 10:00 a.m. Green gave the order to attack and the long gray line began a slow wheel, or turn to the south. In this maneuver the division swung just like a gate, with the 3^rd Brigade the hinge and the 2^nd Brigade the outer edge of the gate, with the other brigades in between. Once they had all completed the turn and were facing south towards Corinth, the Rebels marched straight for the Yankee entrenchments.²³

During the wheeling movement, the 38^th Mississippi was toward the outside of formation; consequently, the men had to march a longer distance and move much faster than the regiments posted on the inside of the wheel. Thus the regiments belonging to Gates’s and Moore’s Brigades struck the Union line first, overrunning Battery Powell and threatening to cut the Union army in two. Colbert’s and McLain’s Brigades were slowed by the rough terrain they had to pass through, but at 10:30 they finally broke into an open field 400 yards east of Battery Powell. As soon as they were in the open, the Rebels were hit and their advance stopped in its tracks by the massed fire of Brigadier General Napoleon Buford’s Brigade. For nearly 45 minutes the men of the 38^th Mississippi loaded and fired their muskets as fast as they could, trading volley after volley with the Yankees to their front. They kept up a withering fire until their brigade commander, Col. McLain, had his leg taken off by a well-aimed shot from a federal cannon. At this point the brigade, under a heavy fire and low on ammunition, began a quick retreat along with Colbert’s Brigade. Gates and Moore’s Brigades fared not better; after taking Battery Powell, they were subjected to a terrible crossfire and unable to advance, they had to retreat and give up the fort.²⁴

Photo taken inside Battery Powell a few days after the Battle of Corinth (Shiloh National Military Park Facebook Page, accessed December 28, 2017)

Elsewhere on the field, Van Dorn was having the same kind of luck with his other two divisions. Maury’s was boldly repulsed with heavy losses in the attack on Battery Robinett, and General Lovell failed to attack at all.²⁵

Having failed to take Corinth by storm, Van Dorn realized he had no choice but to order a retreat and try to get his army safely away from the city. To escape, the Rebels had to retrace the route they had taken to Corinth. The weary soldiers plodded into Chewalla Tennessee after dark on October 4 and made camp for the night. The next morning the gray column marched west and barely avoided a disaster when they found federal troops blocking their escape route over the Hatchie River Bridge. Luckily Van Dorn found another crossing of the river and the Rebels continued their march to Ripley Mississippi where the campaign ingloriously ended.²⁶

With time to rest and reflect on the campaign, it did not take the soldiers of the 38^th long to place the blame for the failure of the Corinth campaign. Lt. Col. Brent probably mirrored the feelings of many of his men when he told his wife in a letter, “I will sum up by saying that we had to fight three days in succession to get out of the trap old Van Dorn got us in.”²⁷

For Brent the end of the campaign meant he had one very unpleasant duty to perform: making out a list of the regiment’s casualties and informing the next of kin. He started the sad news on its way in a letter to his wife:

Tell Mrs. Walker that Cicero Walker is either killed or taken prisoner I cannot say which; he was last seen on Saturday the second day of the fight on top of the enemies breast works in company with Lieut. J. W. Ball, both of whom have not been heard of since, you can tell her that we have sent some of our men back to bury the dead and that they will be hear in a few days, and I can then probably give her some information about him…my old company under the command of J. C. Williams went into the engagement with eighteen or twenty men we had four killed and some four or five wounded. I will have in a short time a list of the killed and wounded of my regiment made out and published for the benefit of the citizens.²⁸

Considering the small number of men the 38^th Mississippi took into the fight at Corinth, an examination of their casualty list shows they had fairly high losses. Of 150 men engaged in the battle, nine were killed, twenty-five wounded, two were missing, and thirty-five taken prisoner.²⁹

The battle of Corinth had been a bloody defeat for the Confederacy, but for the rank and file of the 38^th Mississippi, it was a moral victory, for the regiment had proved it could fight hard when properly led. This had a pronounced psychological effect on the men, for they knew they had redeemed themselves for their failure at Iuka. A newspaper article saved by the family of Preston Brent expressed the importance that the regiment attached to the battle of Corinth:

It will be remembered that the 38^th Miss. Regiment achieved an unenviable notoriety in Iuka. Being a new regiment, and the engagement at Iuka being the first it was placed in, it did not stand the severe crossfire…but in the battle of Corinth it blotted out every stain that may have been attached to it by the Iuka affair, and fought gallantly hand to hand with the oldest veterans in the service. The regiment now stands forth marked for its struggle in the Corinth fight and came out the proudest of the proud.³⁰

The 38^th Mississippi went into the battle of Corinth a small regiment, and came out an even smaller regiment, but the survivors were now veterans, toughened by the rigors of war. During the winter of 1862-1863 as the regiment recruited and built up its strength, these men would teach the new recruits the lessons they had learned at such high cost.

1 Preston Brent to Frances Brent, 12 October 1862. Original letter owned by Paul Crawford (Brookhaven, MS).

2 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, rolls 62-65.

3 Cozzens, 135.

4 Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 376-384.

5 Ibid., 452-453.

6 Cozzens, 137.

7 Moneyhon and Roberts, 159.

8 Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 171.

9 Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 385; Cozzens, 155.

1⁰ Corinth, Mississippi. Daily Corinthian, 8 October 1962.

1¹ Preston Brent to Frances Brent, 12 October 1862. Original is owned by Paul Crawford of Brookhaven, MS.

1² Cozzens, 166-167; Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 385.

1³ William S. Rosecrans, “The Battle of Corinth,” in Battles and Leaders, ed. Clarence Buel and Robert Johnson, (Edison, NJ: Castle Books, Reprint, n.d.), 2: 744-745.

1⁴ Cozzens, 178-179.

1⁵ Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 268.

1⁶ Preston Brent to Frances Brent, 12 October 1862. The original letter is owned by Paul Crawford of Brookhaven, MS.

1⁷ Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 386.

1⁸ Lexington (Mississippi) Advertiser, 6 December 1901.

1⁹ Clarke, 49.

2⁰ Cozzens, 229.

2¹ Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 387.

2² Ibid., 389-390.

2³ Ibid.

2⁴ Cozzens, 240-251.

2⁵ Moneyhon and Roberts, 143.

2⁶ Ibid.

2⁷ Preston Brent to Frances Brent, 12 October 1862. The original letter is owned by Paul Crawford of Brookhaven, MS.

2⁸ Lieutenant Jesse W. Ball and Private Silas Cicero Walker were taken prisoner during the attack on October 4. Both were later exchanged and returned to duty with the regiment. Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, rolls 62-65; Preston Brent to Frances Brent, 12 October 1862. The original letter belongs to Paul Crawford of Brookhaven, MS.

2⁹ Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, rolls 62-65.

3⁰ Undated newspaper clipping from the collection of Paul Crawford of Brookhaven, MS.

[End of Chapter 4]

 

Chapter V

The Winter of 1862-1863

I don’t expect to get to camp before tomorrow the mud is frozen shoe mouth to half leg deep so you know that we have hard times on this march.¹

– Private James Floyd of the Wilkinson Guards, December 5, 1862.

In late October the 38^th Mississippi with the rest of the army was ordered to Camp Rogers, located several miles outside Holly Springs, Mississippi. Here the exhausted and foot-sore Rebels finally had an opportunity to rest and recover from nearly two months of active campaigning. The location of the camp was well chosen; Sergeant Willie Tunnard of the 3^rd Louisiana Infantry said the camp “…was a pleasant one, on the hills, amid the shadows of large oak-trees. In front of it were wide extended fields, formerly cultivated in cotton, now covered with corn stubble.”²

Once they reached Camp Rogers, the high command immediately set to work rebuilding

Major Robert C. McCay (Photo Courtesy of Bob & Marie Wells)

the army and making good the losses due to casualties and desertion. Toward this end, Robert McCay, acting major of the 38^th since the wounding of Walter Keirn at Corinth, received the following orders on October 24:

Maj. R. C. McCay of the 38^th Miss. Regt. is hereby detailed to proceed to the camps of instruction at Brookhaven and Enterprise Miss. to receive such conscripts as may be assigned to the 38^th Miss. Regt. by the proper state authority and conduct them at once to this command. He will also assemble and conduct to this command all officers and men now absent without proper authority.³

Gathering conscripts and running down deserters to fill the ranks of the regiment continued all winter long, but in the end the effort only met with marginal success. In a roll of the unit taken in February 1863, the 38^th was able to muster only 264 men.⁴

While the 38^th was being rebuilt, the army itself was undergoing a massive reorganization, starting at the top with General Van Dorn. In the wake of his disastrous Corinth campaign the Mississippian was transferred to a cavalry command and replaced by Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton. He was assigned command of the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana on October 1, 1862, and he arrived in Jackson on October 14 and began to sort out his new army.⁵

In the shakeup of the army that followed the change of command, General Hebert was

Brigadier General Louis Hebert commanded the brigade to which the 38th Mississippi was attached during the Vicksburg Campaign (findagrave.com)

relieved as head of a division and sent back to lead his old brigade; the division was given to Major General Dabney H. Maury. For the 38^th, the death of Colonel Martin led to the breakup of the brigade and the Mississippi regiments were assigned to General Hebert. After the transfer, Hebert’s Brigade consisted of the following units:

3^rd Louisiana Infantry

21^st Louisiana Infantry

7^th Mississippi Infantry Battalion

36^th Mississippi Infantry

38^th Mississippi Infantry

43^rd Mississippi Infantry⁶

Assigning Mississippians and Louisianans to the same brigade was not an instant success as there was considerable friction between the two groups. The 3^rd Louisiana and 21^st Louisiana were early war regiments comprised of volunteers who enlisted at the very beginning of the conflict. They were proud men and they considered serving beside Mississippi troops, many of whom were conscripts, to be an insult. Sgt. Tunnard of the 3^rd Louisiana recounted the following incident that illustrates the feelings in his regiment:

General Hebert came into camp, and was immediately surrounded by the men, who complained bitterly that they were put in a conscript brigade. The general replied: ‘Never mind, my men; never mind. You will soon make good soldiers of them all.’ The compliment thus delicately paid to the efficiency of the regiment did not soothe the irritated and discontented feelings.⁷

While the animosity of the Louisianans faded over time, it never completely disappeared, and relations with the Mississippians were strained the entire time the two groups served together.

As John C. Pemberton went about the task of reorganizing his department, Ulysses S. Grant was preparing his troops for a drive on Vicksburg. On November 2, 1862 he moved five divisions to Grand Junction, Tennessee, and on November 8 the vanguard of a 31,000 man Yankee force swarmed into Mississippi, marching for the town of Holly Springs.

38th Mississippi Area of Operations, Winter 1862

(www.angelfire.com/ms2/grantshilohvicksburg/)

Pemberton responded to the invasion of Mississippi by ordering his troops south to the strong defenses behind the Tallahatchie River at Abbeville. Union cavalry entered Holly Springs on November 13, and by December 1 Federal troops were crossing the Tallahatchie River.⁸

The steady advance of the Yankees forced Pemberton to order another withdrawal, this time behind the Yalobusha River at Grenada. Terrible weather conditions made the march a miserable one for the men of the 38^th, as they had to journey through a nasty winter storm with a hostile army nipping at their heels. Private James Floyd of the Wilkinson Guards described the hardships in a letter to his wife Mary:

…we left camp alone near Abberville on Monday the 1^st day of this month after lying in the breastworks for two days and nights and have been marching every night still it is raining, all night and this morning is sleeting and snowing…we have plenty hard times with poor soldiers [in] such weather as this. I don’t expect to get to camp before some time tonight or tomorrow the mud is frozen shoe mouth to half leg deep all the way so you know that we have hard times on this march.⁹

The constant exposure to the elements caused a serious downturn in the health of the regiment, and in November and December sixteen men in the 38^th died of disease; nine more were so weak that they fell out of the march and were captured by the enemy.¹⁰

With the Confederate army safely behind the Yalobusha, Grant decided on a bold gamble to try and take Vicksburg. While his troops pinned the Confederates at Grenada, General Sherman took 30,000 men from Memphis and transported them down the Mississippi River by steamboat to strike directly at Vicksburg. Grant’s plan with awry almost immediately when Confederate raiders under Earl Van Dorn captured and destroyed Grant’s supply base at Holly Springs, Mississippi. With his army deep in enemy territory with no supplies, Grant was forced to withdraw to Memphis, ending his first attempt to take Vicksburg. Sherman fared no better with his end run on the Hill City; his attack at Chickasaw Bayou ended in a bloody defeat on December 29, 1862. In the wake of this setback, Sherman loaded his men back on their transports and slowly steamed north, ending the 1862 campaign against Vicksburg.¹¹

The immediate threat to Vicksburg was gone, and Maury’s Division was transferred to Snyder’s Mill, twelve miles north of the city on the Yazoo River, arriving on New Year’s Day 1863.¹²

The 38^th Mississippi manned a set of fortifications on a bluff overlooking the river with the assignment of protecting a series of log rafts that were anchored at the mouth of the Yazoo to keep Union gunboats from entering the waterway.¹³

The regiment spent many quiet months at Snyder’s Mill, and the only action the rank and file saw was their own officers fighting among themselves. The problem developed in late December when Lt. Col. Brent applied for promotion to Colonel to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Fleming W. Adams in September. Brent’s moving into the Colonel’s slot started a chain of promotions, with Major Keirn advancing to Lieutenant Colonel,¹⁴ Senior Captain McCay to Major, and Daniel Seal to Senior Captain. This series of promotions should have been a routine clerical matter, but Captain Seal threw a gigantic monkey wrench into the proceedings when he protested that the Lieutenant Colonel’s commission was rightfully his. Captain McCay angrily spelled out Seal’s self-serving plan in a seven page statement:

I now approach the immediate cause of this contestation, if from it’s novel character in many incidents it can be dignified with the appellation. On the 24^th Septr. Col. F. W. Adams resigned his position, thereby casting the character of heirs apparent upon Lt. Col. Brent, Major W. L. Keirn, and myself as first Senior Captain, of the respective positions of Colonel, Lt. Colonel, and Major. To the promotion of Col. Brent it is understood no objections have been urged, but Captain Seal, Second Senior Captain, has recently discovered, that his pretensions are superior to those of Maj. Keirn Lt. Col. and Captain McCay for that of Major and has actually obtained a commission as late as the 3^rd day of January 1863 showing that his original commission of 25 March 1862 was erroneous and that his election having taken place on the 8^th day of March 1862, his commission should have issued at that time, and consequently that the claims of Maj. Keirn dating 15^th March 1862 and of Capt. McCay dating 19^th March 1862, must yield as junior commissions.¹⁵

Captain Seal’s little scheme to gain the Lieutenant Colonelcy of the regiment aroused the ire of Preston Brent, who quickly fired off a letter in support of Keirn and McCay, stating for the record:

That from the roster of the regiment, it does not appear that Captain Seal ranks either of the two named Captains and nothing has come to my knowledge until very recently to induce me t believe that Captain Seal had other pretensions than those recognized in his position as Second Senior Captain.¹⁶

Brent went on to point out that even if Seal’s claim was correct and he did rank Keirn and McCay by date of commission, he had forfeited any right to the promotion by not speaking up when he was first assigned as Second Senior Captain. In a show of solidarity for Keirn and McCay, the regimental adjutant and eight of the regiments company commanders signed Brent’s letter, acknowledging that they agreed with his decision in the matter. Even though the officers of the 38^th were firmly against Seal, his claim had to be investigated by the high command, and thus the promotion process slowed to a crawl. Eventually General Hebert was forced to intervene personally in April 1863 when he sent a letter to the Confederate Adjutant and Inspector General’s Office requesting that the promotions for Brent, Keirn, and McCay be validated. The generals letter did the trick, and all three received their promotions, back dated to September 24, 1862, the day Col. Adams resigned.¹⁷

Rather than mire himself in a no-win fight for a promotion, Captain Seal should have concerned himself more with commanding his company. The Hancock Rebels had the highest rate of desertion and absenteeism in the entire regiment, and the problem was only getting worse, not better.¹⁸ The situation was so severe that transfer out of the company was preferable to some rather than continue under Seal’s leadership. Private Joseph Pendleton said in a letter to his sister “I am getting awful tired of this company. I wish I could get a transfer into another company.”¹⁹ The young soldier was as good as his word – he transferred to the Holmes County Volunteers shortly thereafter and served his new company faithfully until the end of the war.²⁰

Other than the promotion squabble, the only real complaints in the regiment were about the quality of the food issued and the boredom of camp life at Snyder’s Mill. Joseph Pendleton wrote to his sister in March 1863:

Oh how I wish I had some butter and eggs and cakes. The officers get plenty of favors and we privates don’t get any at all…Sister you don’t know how much help to my mind if I had some interesting books to read. I am so lonesome here. My little testament is a good friend to me. I would write oftener if I had the paper, it cannot be gotten easily.²¹

Private Pendleton was not alone in seeking comfort from his bible; in the spring of 1863 Confederate soldiers throughout the south were swept up in a wave of religious revivalism, and many in the 38^th Mississippi were eager participants. Pinkney Johnston, the regimental chaplain of the 38^th wrote of the religious tumult sweeping through the rank and file saying,

We have had for the past week very interesting prayer meetings. They were well attended

A. Gordon Bakewell served as Chaplain of the 38th Mississippi from June 1864 until the end of the war (findagrave.com)

and the very highest interest manifested. Souls are hungry for the ‘bread of life’. Often in these prayer meetings there are from twelve to twenty mourners [someone who has not been saved]. There have already been two or three conversions, and four have joined the church. Sinners are being awakened, mourners comforted, and the Christian established in the faith.²²

When not on duty or attending religious services, the men did their best to break up the monotony of camp life, as Erastus Hoskins illustrated in a letter to his wife, explaining to her how the soldiers entertained each other:

Our ‘boys’ amuse themselves in various ways – some tusling some having game chickens fighting &c it is astonishing some times to see them – after lying in the trenches all night – they are as lively as if they had just started out.²³

The boredom of camp life was briefly interrupted on March 14 when General Grant sent a small naval force up Steele’s Bayou north of Vicksburg with orders to find a useable route to get behind the Vicksburg defenses. The fleet of five ironclads plus their auxiliary vessels were supported by a division of infantry from General Sherman’s XV Corps.²⁴ In response to this incursion, Pemberton organized a detachment at Vicksburg commanded by Brigadier General Stephen D. Lee to follow the Yankees and harass them from the rear.²⁵

For Lee’s expedition to be successful, men were needed who were familiar with the

Lieutenant Samuel D. Gwin commanded the detachment of the 38th Mississippi sent to Steele’s Bayou (1861 Senior Class Book, University of Mississippi Collections)

swampy wilderness of Steele’s Bayou, and a detachment from the Holmes County Volunteers led by Lieutenant Samuel Gwin was selected to go on this mission.²⁶ In a letter to his wife Erastus Hoskins mentioned the uproar that the Yankee expedition had caused in camp:

I saw a flat boat come down the river loaded with negroes which the owner had [brought] from Deer Creek. He reported 7 gunboats in Deer Creek and about 10,000 infantry and cavalry troops there. I can’t believe there is so many. As most persons not in the army see a few thousand men together magnify the number. Genl. Hebert is busy in having guns planted so as to range up the river in case the gunboats should attempt to come down here. We have not heard from Sam and Edgar Gwin since they left – I believe I mentioned that they called for 30 men from this regiment and one Lieut. to go up the river picketing – they were all taken from John’s Company [John Hoskins, Capt. of Co. A] and Lt. Gwin in command of the 30. The call was for 250 from the brigade – I don’t know what point they were sent.²⁷

Lee’s Rebels made life very hard for the Yankee expedition, felling trees to impede the progress of the boats and constantly sniping at the enemy. The federals were forced to withdraw to avoid the capture of the little fleet, and by March 27 the ships had reentered the Mississippi River.²⁷

Lieutenant Gwin’s detachment from the Holmes County Volunteers did not return after the Yankee threat ended; instead they remained stationed north of Vicksburg, and it turned out that they did not see the rest of the regiment for nearly six months. This stalwart little band went far and saw much in that time, and their adventures will be dealt with later in the narrative.

One other interesting event that took that spring was the replacement of the 38^th’s division commander. General Maury was transferred, and Major General John H. Forney replaced him in April 1863.²⁸

The 38^th’s peaceful respite at Snyder’s Mill abruptly ended the night of April 30 1863, when the Union navy attempted to enter the Yazoo River. The fleet consisted of three gunboats and eight transports, and while they looked very fearsome, they were simply acting as a diversion so that Grant could land his army below Vicksburg. The gunboats put up a good front, attempting to know out the Rebel artillery on the bluffs, but after a two-day bombardment that caused little damage, the enemy ships withdrew and sailed back downriver. During the heavy cannonade the soldiers hugged the bottom of their entrenchments and the 38^th reported no casualties.²⁹ It was a bloodless beginning to the regiment’s bloodiest campaign: the siege of Vicksburg.

1 James Floyd to Mary Floyd, 5 December 1862. The original letter is owned by Mrs. Ada Smith of Crosby, MS.

2 Willie H. Tunnard, History of the Third Regiment Louisiana Infantry (Baton Rouge, LA: By the Author, 1866), 210.

3 Order, W. W. Witherspoon to Robert C. McCay, McCay Papers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

4 Rowland, Military History, 332.

5 Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 3-4.

6 Stewart Sifakis, Compendium of the Confederate Armies: Louisiana (New York: Facts on File, 1995), 71-72, 108-109; Sifakis, Compendium: Mississippi, 83, 125-129, 134.

7 Tunnard, 213.

8 Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 466-472.

9 James Floyd to Mary Floyd, 5 December 1862. The original letter belongs to Mrs. Ada Smith of Crosby, MS.

1⁰ Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, rolls 62-65.

1¹ Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. Volume 1: (New York: J. J. Little and Company, 1885), 428-433.

1² Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 679.

1³ Jones, Rank and File, 17-18.

1⁴ At this time the seriousness of the wound Keirn received at Corinth was not known, and it was believed that he would return to the regiment. In fact, his hand was badly mangled, leaving him unfit for combat. Keirn tendered his resignation as Lt. Col. on July 13, 1864. Resignation, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 64.

1⁵ Robert C. McCay to Louis Hebert, Undated, McCay Papers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

1⁶ Preston Brent to _____, 22 December 1862, McCay Papers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

1⁷ Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, rolls 62-65.

1⁸ Ibid.

1⁹ Joseph W. Pendleton to Sarah Jennings, 1 March 1863. A copy of this letter is in the collection of the Confederate Research Center, Hillsboro, TX.

2⁰ Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 64.

2¹ Joseph W. Pendleton to Sarah Jennings, 1 March 1863.

2² William W. Bennett, A Narrative of the Great Revival Which Prevailed in the Southern Armies (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1989), 268-269.

2³ Erastus Hoskins Letters, 1 March 1863.

2⁴ Warren E. Grabau, Ninety-Eight Days (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2000), 7.

2⁵ Jim Miles, A River Unvexed (Nashville, Rutledge Hill Press, 1994), 312.

2⁶ Record of Events, Company A, 38^th Mississippi Infantry, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 62.

2⁷ Erastus Hoskins Letters, March 1863. Note: the first page of the letter is missing so the exact date the letter was written is not known.

2⁷ Miles, 313.

2⁸ Sifakis, Compendium Mississippi, 129.

2⁹Official Records, Series 1, Volume 24, Part 1, 577-578.

[End of Chapter 5]

 

Chapter VI

The Siege of Vicksburg

For two weeks have the enemy been hammering at the gates of Vicksburg and still she refuses to open unto them.¹

– Captain William L. Faulk, May 30, 1863

While Sherman distracted Pemberton with his demonstration against Snyder’s Mill, Grant crossed the Mississippi River with an army of 44,000 at Bruinsburg on May 1, 1863. Once on Mississippi soil, Grant moved quickly and decisively, never allowing the Confederates to unite their superior forces against him. In the space of seventeen days the federals fought five major battles, winning them all: Port Gibson on May 1, Raymond on May 12, Jackson on May 14, Champion Hill on May 16, and Big Black River on May 17. The 38^th took no part in these battles as Forney’s Division was ordered to remain at Snyder’s Mill to protect Vicksburg.²

After the Confederate defeat at Champion Hill on May 16, orders went out the next day from Pemberton for Forney’s Division to march for Vicksburg and move into the entrenchments. General Hebert received the order at 11:00 a.m. and quickly issued orders for supplies to be gathered and sent to Vicksburg, and to burn anything that could not be moved. At 7:30 p.m. he formed his brigade and the march to the hill city began. The Rebel column journeyed through the night and the weary men of the 38^th arrived in Vicksburg at 2:30 a.m. on May 18^th.³

Hebert’s Brigade was ordered to the earthworks in the rear of the city, charged with defending the line of entrenchments between the Graveyard Road and Jackson Road.

Hebert’s Brigade held the portion of the Vicksburg trenches from Stockade Fort to the Great Redoubt south of the Jackson Road. At the beginning of the siege the 38^th was located several hundred yards south of the Stockade Fort.

(Illustration from Map of the Vicksburg National Military Park, Published by the Park Commission, no date.)

Hebert deployed his brigade in the following order from left to right: the 36^th Mississippi held the Stockade Redan, a large earthwork fort guarding the Graveyard Road; next came the 7^th Mississippi Battalion, 37^th Mississippi, 38^th Mississippi, and 43^rd Mississippi; the 3^rd Louisiana held a redan north of the Jackson Road, and the 21^st Louisiana anchored the brigade right flank in the Great Redoubt on the south side of the Jackson Road.⁴ Because the Graveyard and Jackson Roads were natural avenues of approach to the city, the section of the line held by Hebert’s men was destined to be the scene of some of the most intense fighting of the siege.⁵

The vanguard of the Union army reached the outskirts of Vicksburg near sunset on May 18, 1863. Despite the fact that Pemberton had nearly 30,000 well entrenched soldiers defending the city, Grant believed the Confederates were so demoralized from their recent defeats they could not withstand a direct assault.⁶ The general ordered the attack to begin at 2:00 p.m. on May 19, and at the appointed hour the Yankees stepped off towards the Rebel works. The Stockade Redan was a focal point of the Union attack and was the scene of a series of ill-coordinated assaults by the 15^th and part of the 17^th Corps.⁷

As the blue wave advanced towards the 38^th’s position, the regiment’s skirmish line out in front of the main line of works commanded by Lieutenant Hansford Lanehart began a quick retreat to the safety of the trenches. During the dash to cover, Lanehart was struck by an enemy ball and mortally wounded, becoming the 38^th’s first casualty at Vicksburg.⁸

The Yankee troops closing on the regiment’s position were the 95^th Illinois and 17^th Wisconsin of Brigadier General Thomas Ransom’s Brigade, and their advance was stopped in it’s tracks by the destructive hail of lead poured into the blue ranks by the 37^th and 38^th Mississippi.⁹ Colonel Thomas W. Humphrey of the 95^th Illinois wrote in his after action report why their assault failed:

…ordering my command forward, we charged across the first ravine, over an almost

Colonel Thomas W. Humphrey led the 95th Illinois Infantry in its attack at Vicksburg on May 19, 1863 (civilwar.ilgenweb.org)

impassable abatis of felled timber, exposed to direct and concentrated fire of musketry and a murderous enfilading fire from the enemy’s batteries of the redan on our right front, and the heavy works on the Jackson road (erroneously called Fort Hill) on our left. Being unsupported, I deemed it rashness to proceed farther, but held my position with colors planted within 100 yards of the enemy’s lines.¹⁰

The Union attack fared no better along the other sections of the front, and the federals were unable to break through the Confederate defenses. Losses in the 38^th Mississippi from the attack were very light, only one killed and three wounded.¹¹ Captain William L. Faulk recorded in his diary on May 19 “We have fought the enemy very hard today and held our positions well along the line…I thank almighty God for his protection through the past days.”¹²

Grant was undaunted by the losses his army suffered on the 19^th, and he prepared his men for an even larger and better-coordinated assault set for May 22. To help soften up the Stockade Redan before the attack, the federals employed 27 cannon on either side of the Jackson Road to blast the Rebels and wear down their defenses. Because of the storm of iron being thrown at them, the 38^th was constantly working to repair the damage done to the parapets by the Union cannoneers. At 10:00 a.m. on the 22^nd Grant gave the order to attack and a wave of blue soldiers stepped off towards the Confederate works. At the Stockade Redan, the Union soldiers in the van of the attack were 150 volunteers carrying planks and scaling ladders. Known as the “forlorn hope,” their mission was to bridge the ditch in front of the fort and then scale the parapet. The rebels poured a terrible fire into the Yankees, inflicting very heavy casualties. A few of the survivors reached the ditch in front of the redan and were pinned there until nightfall allowed them to scamper to safety.¹³

Charge of the Forlorn Hope at Vicksburg (Vicksburg National Military Park)

During the initial attack the 38^th’s position was not directly assaulted, allowing the Mississippians to deliver a deadly flanking fire into the 23^rd Indiana Infantry which was advancing to the regiment’s right against the 3^rd Louisiana Redan. The heavy volleys from the 38^th slammed into the Hoosiers and forced them to break off their attack and drop to the ground to seek shelter from the fire that was decimating their ranks.¹⁴

At 2:15 a second Union assault wave was ordered into the fight at the Stockade Redan. In

Brigadier General Thomas Ransom led his brigade in an attack on the Stockade Redan during the May 22 Assault at Vicksburg (National Park Service)

the 38^th’s front Ransom’s Brigade advanced in four columns, only to be met by a withering fire from the Mississippians. General Ransom later wrote of the attack,

The enemy had in the mean time massed troops behind their works in our front, and poured into my ranks one continuous blaze of musketry, while the artillery on my left threw enfilading shot and shell into my columns with deadly effect.¹⁵

The bravery of the federals in the face of such overwhelming fire made quite an impression on the Rebels, and years later Captain James H. Jones was moved to write about the gallantry he witnessed that day at Vicksburg:

When the cannonade ceased the Federals formed three [four] lines of battle, near the woods, and began a steady advance upon our works. Their lines were about one hundred yards apart. They came on as rapidly as the fallen timber would permit, and in perfect order. We waited in silence until the first line had advanced within easy rifle range, when a murderous fire was opened from the breastworks. We had a few pieces of artillery which ploughed their ranks with destructive effect. Still they never faltered, but came bravely on. It was indeed a gallant sight though an awful one. As they came down the hill one could see them plunging headlong to the front, and as they rushed up the slope to our works they invariably fell backwards, as the death shot greeted them. And yet the survivors never wavered. Some of them fell within a few yards of our works. If any of the first line escaped, I did not see them. They came into the very jaws of death and died…Surely no more desperate courage than this could be displayed by mortal men.¹⁶

After a mauling that lasted forty-five long minutes, the survivors of Ransom’s Brigade were withdrawn, ending the action on the 38^th’s front. A short time later Colonel Brent was ordered to move the regiment by the left flank to reinforce the 36^th Mississippi at the Stockade Redan. This movement under fire was not an easy one as Captain Jones related:

I will remember having to pass along a space of perhaps 20 feet where the trenches were not completed and therefore exposed the men to the enemy’s fire. Some few of the company ahead lay on their stomachs and refused to move thus impeding the movement. I made a rear attack with the point of my sword on their most exposed parts and set them in motion again.¹⁷

Grant acknowledged that Vicksburg could not be taken by direct assault after the failure of his army to break the Confederate line on May 22, and he decided to besiege the city and starve the Rebel garrison into submission. For the 38^th, the war was now a waiting game in the trenches with the threat of death a constant companion. Captain Jones wrote of the long days spent in the trenches:

…it was by no means a dull routine. The thunder of the cannon greeted us by day and by night; the sharp crack of the rifle, the hiss of the minie ball; somebody wounded; somebody dying – all the time.¹⁸

Besides having to worry about their own personal safety, the men in the 38^th also had to worry about their families, many of whom were living in Union occupied territory. Captain Faulk spoke for the fears of many when he wrote in his diary on May 26:

All worried and tired, but still determined to endure all for what we believe to be our rights, and confident that an over-ruling providence will work all for our good. The enemy may be a superior force, overcome us for a short time, but God will never favor the persecutors of innocent women and children. They have passed by my home and I cried to hear the condition in which I fear they have left my wife and children. God will certainly visit them with a terrible vengeance.¹⁹

For most of the 38^th, time passed very slowly as they sat in the trenches under a boiling sun, warding against a Yankee attack. Company H however had a more interesting time as they spent their days during the siege acting as the brigade provost marshal. The record of events for the company stated the men were “…in discharge of the dangerous duty of patrolling the small area of the siege, arresting stragglers and conducting them under guard to the different commands in the trenches.”²⁰

Life got more interesting for the regiment on June 2, when the 38^th was ordered to take a new section of the entrenchments, just to the right of the 3^rd Louisiana Redan on the Jackson Road.²¹ As the men filed into their new position under cover of darkness, Eleazer Thornhill heard someone mutter, “Boys you will smell hell there,”²² and the prediction proved to be entirely correct. The line of entrenchments the 38^th was now responsible for defending was very exposed, and casualties from Union sharpshooters happened with terrible regularity. The Yankees had even erected a tower in their lines to look down into the Confederate trenches and shoot at the exposed Rebels. When the men did return fire, they did so at a distinct disadvantage, as James H. Jones related in his memoirs:

Union approach trench leading to the Confederate fortifications near the 3rd Louisiana Redan – in the distance is the tower erected by Federal troops to fire down into the nearby Confederate earthworks (traverse.us.com)

Even in the matter of sharpshooting we were at a great disadvantage, because our works were located above those of our foes. One would think this gave us an advantage, but it was not so. The firing was done through port holes, and ours, being depicted against the sky, revealed the sharpshooters instantly, and exposed them to the fire of their opponents. Those of the Federals on the other hand were invisible and could not be easily located. To use these ports meant instant death, and the men preferred to stand up boldly and fire over the breastworks at the enemy, and risk the chances of a return fire.²³

Under cover of the deadly fire by their sharpshooters, Union soldiers dug approach trenches up to the 38^th’s earthworks. Sergeant Clarke of the 36^th Mississippi said the federals were so close to the 38^th’s position, “…dirt from the two ditches blended together.”²⁴

To combat the enemy at such close quarters, the men began to use six and twelve-pound shells as improvised hand grenades, throwing them into the Yankees ditches. Captain Jones described this type of warfare as having “…the appearance of a ball game, only the players never caught the balls, but fled from them.”²⁵

The Yankees pulled something new from their bag of tricks on June 25 when they exploded a mine under the 3^rd Louisiana Redan, followed by a wave of blue troops who poured into the resulting breach in the Confederate line. The surprise attack quickly turned into a trap for the federals as they were met by a hail of bullets and were unable to get out of the crater they had charged into. Captain Faulk of the Van Dorn Guards witnessed the explosion and later wrote in a letter, “I was aroused by a tremendous report and jumping up to discover a short distance away to my left that dirt was flying up in the air about one hundred feet high.”²⁶ The 38^th’s position was not directly attacked during the assault, freeing the Mississippians to pour a scathing flanking fire into the Yankees. Eleazer Thornhill recalled that during the fight:

Explosion of the mine under the 3rd Louisiana Redan (Harper’s Weekly, July 25, 1863)

John and Wash Polk were right in the hottest of the charge on top of the breastworks, and fired down among the enemy. I looked to see them fall dead, but God shielded them, and they came down unhurt from the place where the bullets flew so thick and fast. It seemed as though it would have been impossible to have escaped unhurt. There is nothing impossible with God. He will have mercy on whom he choose.²⁷

The Yankee attack was smashed, and the 38^th, protected by its entrenchments, suffered very low casualties, only one dead and three wounded.²⁸

One other source of heavy casualties in the regiment during the siege came from the Union artillery. The 38^th was sandwiched between two major targets for the cannoneers; the 3^rd Louisiana Redan on their left, and the Great Redoubt on their right, so there was a blizzard of iron being thrown their way. The Yankees tended to mass their guns during the siege to establish a massive superiority of fire over their Rebel opponents, and nowhere along the lines was this more true than at the 3^rd Louisiana Redan. At one point the Federals had over 100 guns firing against the Confederate strongpoint.²⁹ Death in the form of an explosive cloud of iron could claim a victim at any moment, and it made life in the trenches very uncertain for the soldiers. Captain Faulk recorded once such instance in his diary:

Union artillery firing on the Confederates during the Siege of Vicksburg (Library of Congress)

June 1. Some artillary firing last night opposite our lines. Heavy on the right about 3 o’clock. Shell bursted in Co. A last night just after dark killing three men and wounding two. Their provisions had just come in and they were sitting around eating their suppers when a shell exploded in their midst, showing how little we know at what moment the summons of death may come and the uncertainty of life.³⁰

As the siege ground on, one of the main concerns for the rank and file in the trenches was getting enough food to eat, as the rations were continually being reduced, and hunger became an ever-present companion. Private Eleazer Thornhill still had a keen memory of how much food the soldiers had to survive on during the siege when he wrote his memoirs many years later:

I will give you a sketch of our suffering for food. It was very scarce with us, although said to have been a good deal surrendered up to General Grant. I don’t know whether it was so or not, but one thing it came scarce to us. We got a small piece of bacon once in a while. At night a small lot of peas and bread, and near one pint of boiled peas was a two day’s ration. Sometimes it would be a bit of poor beef, and towards the last they would fetch poor mules into camp for food. I always threw mine away, I could not eat it at all, and it was what I called 48 days starvation.³¹

Despite the hardships, the men were still determined to defend Vicksburg to the last, but they realized that when the food supply ran out, surrender would soon follow. Captain Faulk recorded in his diary on June 13, “We are nearly worn out with the ditches, but will hold out as long as provisions last.”³²

After suffering through sharpshooters, artillery, and lack of food, the 38^th received

Post-war photograph of Colonel Preston Brent with the scars on his face from his Vicksburg wound clearly visible (findagrave.com)

another blow to it’s morale on June 30 when Colonel Brent was seriously wounded by a federal sharpshooter. He was up on the front line when he heard someone call his name, and when he instinctively looked up, his head was over the parapet and was instantly struck by a minie ball which passed through both cheeks. In his parole record it was noted that Colonel Brent cleaned the wound himself by taking a silk handkerchief and running it through both cheeks to cauterize the holes.³³ Preston Brent survived his terrible wounds, but he was never able to go back to the 38^th. Disfigured and in poor health, his body was broken, but the discipline and fighting spirit he instilled in the men remained to carry the regiment through two more dark and bloody years of war.³⁴

Command of the 38^th Mississippi passed to Major Robert McCay after Brent was wounded, but he was ill and confined to a hospital in Vicksburg for much of the siege. Ironically the leadership of the regiment passed to Senior Captain Daniel Seal, the man who had tried so desperately the winter before to obtain a staff officer’s commission. Exactly how much commanding Seal did during the siege is open to debate however. In a post-war letter James H. Jones wrote a less than flattering account of Seal’s leadership at Vicksburg:

Seal himself was rarely in the trenches but staid somewhere in the city all the time. I commanded the regiment after Col. Brent was wounded, but Seal claims that he was in command. There was but little commanding to do, but I did that little.³⁵

As June gave way to July with no hope of relief in sight and the food supplies in the garrison running low, Pemberton began negotiations with Grant and surrendered Vicksburg on July 4, 1863. The 38^th had an excellent view of the meeting between the two generals as they met about 30 yards in front of the regiment’s position. Once the meeting concluded the men realized that the siege of Vicksburg was over at last.³⁶

The decision to surrender on July 4^th was very unpopular with the rank and file, and Captain Faulk spoke for many when he recorded this passage in his diary:

How humiliating it is for us to be compelled to submit to such an enemy, and that too on the 4^th of July; be we have done all that men could do – we held them 48 [47] days on very scant rations and we would have continued to hold the place had our rations held out.³⁷

Under the terms of the surrender, the officers of the 38^th were allowed to keep their side arms and any horses they personally owned. The most significant term however was that all of the soldiers were to be paroled rather than sent to Northern prison camps.³⁸ With the negotiations complete, the 38^th Mississippi Infantry formed ranks at 10:00 a.m. on July 4, and marched out in front of the earthworks they had defended so faithfully. Before the surrender was completed, the regiment was hit with one final tragedy to mark the end of the Vicksburg campaign. While the men were stacking arms, a detail behind them in the trenches was gathering up discarded weapons. One of the muskets accidentally discharged and the ball hit Private Samuel S. Miller of the White Rebels. Eleazer Thornhill vividly remembered the freak accident in his memoirs:

Confederate troops surrendering at Vicksburg (Library of Congress)

After we were surrendered by Gen. Pemberton to Gen. Grant of the Federal army, orders were issued to gather up all the loose guns that were lying in the ditches, and stack them up. We had marched eight or ten paces beyond our fortifications and were arranging our guns. Miller was touching me on my right and a man on the right of him. His name I have forgotten. The first gun that Lewis Guy threw up on the fortress was an old musket, loaded with buckshot. The hammer in striking the hard clay caused it to explode and six or seven shot entered Miller between the shoulders, making a slight wound in the flesh. Miller turned around and inquired who did it, and never again uttered a word. He began to fall, and I saw the blood beginning to flow from his mouth. We held him and soon life was extinct. I was one of the detail that helped bury him.³⁹

It was a bad ending to a very bloody campaign for the regiment, and the men had paid a dear price for their stubborn defense of the hill city. According to a statement made by Captain Seal after the siege, thirty-five men were killed at Vicksburg, three of them officers; Captain Leander M. Graves of Company F, Lieutenant Hansford Lanehart of Company D, and Captain Walter A. Selph, the regimental commissary officer. Thirty-two enlisted men and five officers were listed among the wounded, including Colonel Brent. When the two men who were missing were added to the toll, the total casualties in the regiment stood at seventy-four men.⁴⁰

Captain Seal’s estimate of the number of soldiers killed in the regiment is actually low, for it does not include those men who died from their wounds after the siege ended. An examination of the compiled service records for the 38^th shows that when these men are added, the regiment’s death toll at Vicksburg was forty-three men.

Shortly after the siege ended a newspaper published a list detailing each Confederate unit that surrendered at Vicksburg and the number of men paroled, and the 38^th Mississippi was listed as paroling 249 men. Adding the 43 men who were killed during the siege, plus those still in the hospital and on detached service who were not counted in the newspaper list, the regiment must have numbered nearly 300 souls when the siege began.⁴¹

The soldiers of the 38^th Mississippi Infantry marched out of Vicksburg when their paroles were completed and as quickly as their starvation-weakened bodies permitted trekked to their homes and families. For a few precious months they were on furlough and free from the war. But all too soon the call of duty brought them back to battle in defense of the south.

1 Typescript copy of the diary of William L. Faulk, 38^th Mississippi File, Vicksburg National Military Park, Vicksburg, MS.

2 Boatner, 874-876.

3 Official Records, Series 1, Volume 24, Part 2, 375.

4 Ibid.

5 Jones, Rank and File, 19.

6 Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, (New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885), 1: 529.

7 Edwin C. Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, (Dayton, OH: Morningside House, 1986), 3: 761, 772.

8 Jones, History of Company D.

9 Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3: 770.

1⁰ Official Records, Series 1, Volume 24, Part 2, 299-300.

1¹ Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, rolls 62-65.

1² Faulk Diary, 19 May 1863, Vicksburg National Military Park.

1³ Bearss, The Vicksburg Campaign, 3: 815-816.

1⁴ Ibid., 820.

1⁵ Official Records, Series 1, Volume 24, Part 2, 298.

1⁶ Jones, Rank and File, 21.

1⁷ James H. Jones to William Rigby, 29 May 1903, 38^th Mississippi File, Vicksburg National Military Park, Vicksburg, MS.

1⁸ Jones, Rank and File, 22.

1⁹ Faulk Diary, Vicksburg National Military Park.

2⁰ Record of Events, CSR-MS, roll 62.

2¹ Official Records, Series 1, Volume 24, Part 2, 376.

2² Eleazer W. Thornhill Memoir. Original is owned by Stanley Francis of Duncanville, TX. A copy is in the collections of the Old Court House Museum, Vicksburg, MS.

2³ Jones, Rank and File, 25.

2⁴ Clarke, 104.

2⁵ Jones, Rank and File, 23.

2⁶ William Faulk to William Rigby, 17 April 1903, 38^th Mississippi File, Vicksburg National Military Park.

2⁷ Eleazer W. Thornhill Memoir. Original is owned by Stanley Francis of Duncanville, TX. A copy is in the collections of the Old Court House Museum, Vicksburg, MS.

2⁸ Undated statement by Captain Daniel Seal, 38^th Mississippi Infantry File, Vicksburg National Military Park.

2⁹ Warren Grabeau, Ninety-Eight Days. (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2000), 421.

3⁰ Faulk Diary, Vicksburg National Military Park.

3¹ Eleazer W. Thornhill Memoir. Original is owned by Stanley Francis of Duncanville, TX. A copy is in the collections of the Old Court House Museum, Vicksburg, MS.

3² Faulk Diary, Vicksburg National Military Park.

3³ Microfilm list of Paroled Prisoners, 38^th Mississippi Infantry, Vicksburg National Military Park, Vicksburg, MS.

3⁴ Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 62.

3⁵ James H. Jones to Joseph Pendleton, 28 July 1908; Located in the Pension application of Joseph Pendleton; August 1914, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Austin, TX.

3⁶ Jones, Rank and File, 28-29.

3⁷ Faulk Diary, 4 July 1863, Vicksburg National Military Park.

3⁸ Boater, Civil War Dictionary, 877.

3⁹ Eleazer W. Thornhill Memoir. Original is owned by Stanley Francis of Duncanville, TX. A copy is in the collections of the Old Court House Museum, Vicksburg, MS.

4⁰ Undated statement by Daniel Seal, 38^th Mississippi File, Vicksburg National Military Park, Vicksburg, MS.

4¹ Undated newspaper clipping from the J. L. Powers Scrapbook 1864, Catalog number Z742, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

[End of Chapter 6]

 

Chapter VII

Reorganization

I am getting tired of being bound when I cannot go when I please I always wanted to be free.¹

– Private Joseph Pendleton

January 4, 1864

While most of the 38^th was on parole, spending precious time with their families, there was still a small band of men from Company A in the field fighting the Yankees. The detachment commanded by Lieutenant Gwin that was sent out on the Deer Creek Expedition experienced a considerable amount of combat in the time they were separated from the regiment, unfortunately there is very little documentation relating to this stalwart little band. Most of the information comes from the service records of the men who went on the expedition, and while this is a scanty record, it gives just enough material to piece together a framework of their journey.

No official documentation as to the size of Lieutenant Gwin’s force has been found, but Private Eleazer Thornhill of Company A wrote in a letter to his wife that the party consisted of one officer and thirty enlisted men. After the unit was cut off from the regiment when the siege began, the men were attached to Brigadier General Matthew D.

Post-war photograph of Brigadier General Matthew D. Ector (findagrave.com)

Ector’s Brigade, specifically to Pound’s Mississippi Sharpshooter Battalion commanded by Captain Merriman Pound.² While attached to Pound’s Battalion, the detachment fought in the siege of Jackson, July 10-17, 1863, and had two men captured: J. J. McBride and Collen Sawyers. After the Confederate retreat from Jackson, Ector’s Brigade was sent as reinforcements to the Army of Tennessee in Georgia, and fought in the battle of Chickamauga on September 19-20, having three men wounded: Joseph E. Taylor, Henry C. McKinney, and Phillip J. Eubanks. In October the detachment was ordered to return to the 38^th, then reorganizing at Enterprise, Mississippi.³

The process of bringing the 38^th Mississippi back to life began on September 3, 1863, after a two-month furlough for the men. Major McCay received orders at that time to proceed to the counties in which the companies of the regiment were raised and begin rounding up his men and sending them to an exchange camp at Enterprise, Mississippi.⁴ Colonel Brent and Lieutenant Colonel Keirn were both unfit for service in the field because of their wounds, so command of the 38^th passed to McCay, and with it the unenviable task of rebuilding the regiment after the mauling it took at Vicksburg.

The main obstacle in reorganizing the 38^th after Vicksburg was simply getting the men back into the ranks after several months at home with their families. After weighing the pros and cons of returning to fight, many reached the same conclusion as Eleazer Thornhill who wrote: “By this time I had become very tired of war, and, to tell the truth, I did not like it from the very first. I had decided to remain at home just as long as possible.”⁵

The task of rounding up the wayward soldiers fell to the officers of the regiment, and typical of the orders they were given in regard to this duty was the following instruction to Lieutenant Tom T. Ball of the Price Relief from General Hebert:

…2^nd Lieut. T. Ball of Company H 38^th Regmt. Miss. Infty. will proceed without delay to the counties of Hinds, Newton & Madison in the state of Mississippi where his company was raised ready his men and bring them to this camp. He will apply to request of any cavalry command in that neighborhood to render him all assistance necessary…he will also provide the commanding officer of the cavalry lists & descriptions of the men.⁶

Hunting down men and forcing them to return to duty was not an easy job, as many of them had the aid of friends and neighbors to hide from the Confederate authorities. Eleazer Thornhill wrote in his memoir of the lengths he went to on one occasion to escape a roundup by Confederate cavalry:

We kept on down the swamp, stopping every now and then to listen. We could hear our persuers whooping to the dog. It was our intention, if possible, to get Pearl River between us. When we were crossing the road, four or five deserters saw us, and thinking we were cavalry, they put for the swamp. We came up with them and crossed the fence together, and sat down to get a little breath, as we were puffing like horses. We held a consultation and decided that we would not run any more, and that we would use the fence as a breastwork. It was well for the cavalry that they did not get through the swamp and follow us, for if they had come within range, some of them would have felt lead.⁷

The difficult job of rounding up stray soldiers continued throughout the winter of 1863-1864, and even though the 38^th Mississippi was declared exchanged in December, it was several more months before the regiment was ready for combat operations.⁸ This fact was illustrated in a letter written by Captain John S. Hoskins to his wife in November 1863 in which he informed her that his company was forty-six strong, and this small number comprised nearly half of the regiment.⁹

As 1864 dawned, the rebuilding process continued in the 38^th, but the New Year brought

Major General Leonidas Polk (wikipedia)

some surprising news to the regiment. In January the department commander, Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk, ordered that the unit be designated the 38^th Mississippi Mounted Infantry.¹⁰ Serving in this role the regiment would still fight on foot with standard infantry weapons as they always had, but now they would ride to get to the battle. In this capacity they could serve as a mobile strike force to quickly meet any enemy threat.

To meet Polk’s order, the first thing the regiment had to do was acquire enough horses to mount every man in the unit, but this was a difficult task at best because by this stage of the war, horses were very scarce, and civilians had learned to be very savvy at hiding their animals from Confederate impressment agents. This problem was partially alleviated by allowing the men to supply their own horses, and the government paid them for their use. A list of men in the 38^th who supplied their own horses contained 139 names, so the effort was rather successful.¹¹

Once the majority of the regiment was mounted, the unit received it’s first mission – the 38^th was ordered to split into three detachments, commanded by Major McCay, Captain Jones, and Captain Estelle. McCay was given the task of sweeping the area east of the Pearl River for conscripts and deserters, and Captain Jones was ordered to Woodville with his detachment.¹² Captain Estelle remained at Enterprise Mississippi with the third detachment that consisted of the men who had not yet received their horses. 2^nd Lieutenant Tom Ball was one of the officers in Estelle’s detachment, and in March 1864 he wrote a report to the Confederate Adjutant General that is very revealing about the condition of the regiment:

My command ‘38^th Miss. Infty.’ was captured at Vicksburg July 4, 1863. Not more than 150 of the enlisted men have ever reported at parole camp. All of these except some 20 have been mounted and ordered after absent men of the brigade where they are now I am unable to say. Capt. W. M. Estelle in command of the remainder my 20 men and two or three officers are on duty with the 37^th Miss. Infty. at Pollard [Alabama] in this state.¹³

Chasing conscripts and deserters was a thankless job, but the 38^th had its orders, and the men went to work on the task at hand. The mission was very frustrating, however, as the men they were hunting often had the support of the local community in evading capture. The ups and downs of the assignment were illustrated in a report filed by Major McCay in April in which he stated:

…since my return I have caught and placed in jail at Gallatin 7 deserters and two conscripts – (7 of these men are horse thieves)…I find two men here raising companies. One B. J. Foster – authority given by Col. Powers, is this right!! He had over twenty paroled men and is trying to hold them, they belonging to different commands – I arrested him and gave him one week to deliver the men up…I am glad to say, since my return large numbers of the troops are going to their commands, in preference to being caught & hope soon to finish with this county. Capt. I. N. Whitaker had some conscripts – claims to be an independent scout, and a few absentees are with him – this operates much against me, as his men stay but little in camp and all I arrest in his neighborhood claim to belong to him. Please give me instructions in regard to this command.¹⁴

The unpleasant duty the regiment had been assigned to finally concluded on April 3, 1864, when Major McCay was ordered to report to Brigadier General Lawrence Ross for new orders. Captain Estelle was directed to bring his detachment and rendezvous with McCay at Jackson, and Captain Jones remained in Southwest Mississippi attached to Colonel John S. Scott’s Brigade for several more weeks before rejoining the regiment.¹⁵

The trip to Jackson was very trying for Captain Estelle’s detachment, as the men were lacking proper clothing. In a requisition for the items his men needed, Estelle described the threadbare condition of his men:

I have marched some 100 miles and my men are barefooted and naked. I am now on the march to Jackson Miss. where I cannot get the articles called for. I have no Q.M. [Quartermaster], nor have I had one since I left the regt.¹⁶

Estelle requested for his men 20 jackets, 32 pairs of pants, 32 pairs of shoes, 19 shirts, 24 pairs of drawers, 20 hats, 22 pairs of socks, and 1 blanket.¹⁷

After Estelle reported to Major McCay at Jackson with his ragged detachment, the 38^th received orders placing the regiment in a cavalry brigade commanded by Colonel Hinchie P. Mabry, of Brigadier General Wirt Adams Cavalry Division. Mabry’s Brigade was composed of the following units:

4^th Mississippi Cavalry

38^th Mississippi Mounted Infantry

Col. Harrison’s Regiment Cavalry

Robert’s Battalion Cavalry

11^th & 17^th Arkansas Mounted Infantry¹⁸

The units comprising Mabry’s new command had all seen hard service in the war and were low on manpower, poorly equipped, and sorely in need of reorganization. Fortunately, the Confederate military authorities chose the right man to whip the brigade into an effective combat force. The Colonel had already made a name for himself as a

Post-War photograph of Colonel Hinchie P. Mabry (www.b17.com/campford2/generals/mabry.htm)

disciplinarian and fighter, starting the war as Captain of Company G, 3^rd Texas Cavalry, and working his way up to command of the regiment. At the battle of Iuka the fiery Texan had been wounded three times and captured by the federals. Offered a parole by the Yankees, the obstinate Colonel refused because the parole document referred to his country as the “so called” Confederate States of America. Mabry refused to sign the insulting papers and spent several months in a prison camp before being exchanged.¹⁹ Such was the spirit of the man tasked with whipping a rag-tag brigade of Mississippians into fighting trim, and he definitely had his work cut out for him. Erastus Hoskins wrote his wife on April 29^th, “I don’t think the different commands will be pleased with Col. Mabry commanding brigade he is a little stuck up at being in command, though said to be a good fighter.”²⁰

Mabry’s first assignment after taking command of the brigade was to take his men and operate in Yazoo County to protect the property of local citizens from Yankee raiding expeditions. The Colonel began his assignment in grand style, capturing the tinclad gunboat U.S.S. Petrel above Yazoo City on April 22, 1864. The boat was proceeding up the Yazoo River on a cotton stealing expedition when it blundered into a trap and was attacked by a detachment of Mabry’s brigade commanded by Colonel John Griffith of the 11^th & 17^th Arkansas.²¹ Writing to his wife a few days later, Erastus Hoskins described how the Petrel was captured:

There are no surviving images of the U.S.S. Petrel known to exist, but she probably looked similar to the tinclad U.S.S. Prairie Bird, which was photographed off Vicksburg circa 1864 – 1865 (wikipedia)

Our regiment was placed below the city as Sharp Shooters and as the Boat come up a head of the others our boys opened on her and compelled her to go above the city – They were then held to watch the other two boats below which did not come up. The first boat went some two miles above the city – and an Arkansas regiment got in and placed some two pieces cannon in position and opened on her shooting clear through the boat – with the cannon and the muskets kept up such a heavy fire that the enemy could not close their portholes or use their guns. The boat was soon disabled and surrendered we don’t know how many was killed the most of them got off on the opposite side and went down to the other boats…we captured eight pieces of cannon the boat was well loaded with every thing clothing, provisions, &c…Our regiment being left below to watch the Boats below did not get up to the captured boat so they got nothing that was on her I am told that she had a good supply of white linen shirts – calicos, shoes, boots, &c…²²

As Hoskins mentioned in his letter, the heavy fire from the Rebels on the banks of the river made it very difficult for the gun crews on the Petrel to load their cannons, and as a result, the Confederate artillery was able to fire at the ship with impunity. One bolt from the cannoneers sliced through the Petrel’s steam pipe, causing the boiler to explode and forcing the crew to abandon ship.²³

Despite the brigade’s early success, Colonel Mabry realized his men needed more training before engaging the enemy in any heavy combat. In a letter to General Stephen D. Lee, Mabry outlined the deficiencies in his brigade, and in so doing paid a compliment to the 38^th Mississippi. The Colonel bluntly told Lee;

My command however is not efficient. The part of the 4^th Miss. which I have with me is inefficient for want of a good field officer. Col. Harrison’s 5 co’s present are green, awkward and poorly armed. The part of the 38^th Miss. which is with me is a very good body of men. Col. Griffith’s has almost whittled out. He has only 51 men for duty this morning. I have put the part of Robert’s Battalion which is with me under Griffith temporarily which gives him about 100 men in all.²⁴

Unfortunately for Mabry, he was not going to get the time he needed to train his men. Union General William T. Sherman was poised to invade Georgia, and he was very concerned about the damage Nathan Bedford Forrest might do to his supply lines. With this in mind, he ordered General James B. McPherson, commander of the Union garrison at Vicksburg, to send an expedition into Confederate-controlled Mississippi to keep the Rebels in the state busy so they could not reinforce Forrest.²⁵

In response to Sherman’s directive, Brigadier General John McArthur marched out of Vicksburg on May 4 on an expedition to Yazoo City, some fifty miles northeast. He took with him a force consisting of five infantry regiments, two batteries of light artillery, one regiment of mounted infantry, one cavalry regiment, and detachments from two others.²⁶

Mabry received word of the Yankee raid on May 5^th, and despite the odds against him moved to intercept the enemy force. His advance troops consisting of the 11^th & 17^th Arkansas and part of Robert’s Battalion met the Federals that day near Mechanicsburg, and a sharp skirmish ensued which lasted from 3 P. M. until darkness put an end to the fighting. On the 6^th Mabry fell back before the superior force, skirmishing as he went until he reached Benton, about ten miles east of Yazoo City, where he dug in and prepared to offer the Yankees some serious resistance. Mabry later wrote a detailed account of this skirmish in his after action report, saying that on May 7^th,

…skirmishing at Benton began very early between my forces and the enemy’s cavalry. By 9 A. M. the whole of his cavalry had arrived when we had quite a warm contest for about an hour. I fell back to a good position about two miles from Benton on the Lexington road and here prepared to offer there all the resistance possible with my feeble force. Here their cavalry made several charges but were as often repulsed. They brought up two pieces of artillery which opened from a commanding eminence but they were silenced and driven off after a sharp artillery duel in which they suffered considerable loss. Unfortunately in this action two (of my four pieces) were disabled and could not afterwards be used. About 1 O’clock P. M. the whole force of the enemy reached the scene of action. The enemy at once threw out a long line of skirmishers and placed the whole force in position. As soon as his artillery (7 or 8 pieces) compelled me to withdraw mine he began to press me with his entire strength with much vigor. I fell back but kept up a continuous fight for about two miles when the enemy ceased the pursuit.²⁷

Mabry’s Brigade was too weak to confront the combined might of the Federal cavalry and infantry, so the Colonel had to content himself with shadowing the Yankee column and attacking any small groups that strayed too far from the main body. His goal was to minimize the damage the raiders could do to civilian property by not letting them stray too far from their line of march. To accomplish this the 38^th Mississippi with Mabry’s Brigade was constantly engaged with the enemy through May 18^th, fighting numerous skirmishes, most of them of short duration and relatively bloodless. The regiment suffered only one casualty during this period, Private John E. Gwin of the Holmes County Volunteers was wounded in the skirmish at Benton on May 7.²⁸

In late May or early June, Mabry’s command was reorganized and made into a Mississippi – Louisiana Brigade, consisting of the following units:

4^th Mississippi Cavalry

6^th Mississippi Cavalry

38^th Mississippi Mounted Infantry

14^th Confederate Cavalry²⁹

The 38^th Mississippi continued operations in Yazoo County until early June, when Mabry’s Brigade was transferred to north Mississippi. A large federal force was threatening to invade the area, and the Confederate army in north Mississippi desperately needed reinforcements. There was a big battle brewing, and the 38^th was going to play a part in the fighting to come.³⁰

1 Joseph W. Pendleton to Sarah Jennings, 4 January 1864. A copy of this letter is in the collections of the Confederate Research Center, Hillsboro, TX.

2 The information that the detachment was attached to Ector’s Brigade, Pound’s Sharpshooters, comes from notations made on some of the individual service records. That the unit was made part of Ector’s Brigade comes from the service record of Lt. Samuel Gwin – there is a record of wages paid to him from “Camp Ectors Brigade,” endorsed by the Quartermaster of the 10^th Texas Cavalry, which was part of that brigade. That Gwin’s men were specifically attached to Pound’s Battalion comes from the service records of Collen Sawyers and Peyton C. Baughn, both of whom have notations in their records that they were attached to “Company C, Mississippi Battalion,” in July 1863. As the only Mississippi unit in Ector’s Brigade was Pound’s Sharpshooter Battalion, this must be the unit. Sources: CSR-MS, Record Group 9, rolls 62-65. For information on Pound’s Battalion, see Rowland, Military History, 353.

3 CSR-MS, Record Group 9, rolls 62-65.

4 Order, William J. Hardee to Robert C. McCay, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 64.

5 Eleazer W. Thornhill Memoir. Original is owned by Stanley Francis of Duncanville, TX. A copy is in the collections of the Old Court House Museum, Vicksburg, MS.

6 Special Orders Number 20, Compiled Service Record of Tom T. Ball, CSR-MS, roll 62.

7 Eleazer W. Thornhill Memoir. Original is owned by Stanley Francis of Duncanville, TX. A copy is in the collections of the Old Court House Museum, Vicksburg, MS.

8 Rowland, Military History, 332.

9 John S. Hoskins to wife, 2 November 1863. Confederate Miscellany File, Ib, Mss 20, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta, GA.

1⁰ Rowland, Military History, 333.

1¹ “List of Officers and Men of 38^th Miss. Regt. Who Can Mount Themselves.” R. C. McCay Papers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History. This list has no date, but must have been compiled in early 1864.

1² Rowland, Military History, 333.

1³ Report, Tom Ball to the Confederate Adjutant General, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 62.

1⁴ Report, Robert C. McCay to the Confederate Adjutant General, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 64.

1⁵ Rowland, Military History, 333.

1⁶ Requisition, William Estelle to Assistant Quartermaster, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 63.

1⁷ Ibid.

1⁸ Hinchie P. Mabry to J. H. Reagan, 25 April 1864. Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations From the State of Texas; (Cited hereafter as CSR-TX), 3^rd Texas Cavalry, National Archives, Record Group 109, roll 21.

1⁹ Douglas Hale, The Third Texas Cavalry in the Civil War (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 28, 127-129.

2⁰ Erastus Hoskins Letters, 29 April 1864.

2¹ United States Navy Department, Comp., Official Records of the Union And Confederate Navies In The War of The Rebellion; (Washington D. C., 1895-1929), Series 1, Volume 26, 248.

2² Erastus Hoskins Letters, 26 April 1864.

2³ Official Records Navy, Series 1, Volume 26, 248.

2⁴ Hinchie P. Mabry to Stephen D. Lee, 18 May 1864, CSR-TX, roll 21.

2⁵ Official Records, Series 1, Volume 32, Part 3, 383, 479.

2⁶ Ibid, Volume 39, Part 1, 6-7.

2⁷ Hinchie P. Mabry, Official Report of Engagement with the Enemy in Yazoo County, Miss. from the 5^th to the 18^th of May 1864, 20 May 1864, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS.

2⁸ Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 63.

2⁹ Thomas Jordan and J. P. Pryor, The Campaigns of General Nathan Bedford Forrest and of Forrest’s Cavalry (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 484-485.

3⁰Official Records, Series 1, Volume 39, Part 2, 665-666.

[End of Chapter 7]

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

 

Beneath Torn and Tattered Flags 2017 Edition

In 1998 I self-published my first book, Beneath Torn and Tattered Flags: A History of the 38th Mississippi Infantry, C.S.A. I sold 400 copies of the book in short order, but I never had it reprinted after the initial run. In the years since, I have had many people contact me wanting to purchase a copy of the book; unfortunately I was unable to help them, and I felt really bad about that.

In the years since the book came out, I have found many additional sources on the 38th Mississippi, and I even went so far as to write an updated edition of the book incorporating many of these new finds. I was very proud of this revised and expanded edition of Beneath Torn and Tattered Flags, but I could never seem to come up with the considerable outlay of funds necessary to have the book reprinted.

I finally decided that my book needs an audience, and what better place to share it than my blog? What follows below are the first three chapters of the 2017 Edition of Beneath Torn and Tattered Flags. I plan to release the remaining chapters of the book over the next few weeks. I hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it!

 

Chapter I

Setting The Stage

I worry to because the Lord God does not mean for the people of a Country to war against one another…[1]

– Mary Williams, April 14, 1861, Mother of Private Reuben Williams of the Johnston Avengers.

All too often, the history of the War Between the States is told from a top down point of view, focusing on the famous leaders such as Robert E. Lee or Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson.  Obscured in this view are the contributions of the rank and file who fought for the Confederacy.  To truly understand our most destructive war, it is necessary to see it through the eyes of the men who fought the battles and shed their blood to protect a way of life that they held dear.

This book tells the story of the men who belonged to one regiment, the 38^th Mississippi Infantry, and the war as they experienced it.  Among Mississippi Infantry units that served in the war, certain regiments and battles stand out: the 6^th Mississippi at Shiloh, the 21^st Mississippi at Gettysburg, and the 12^th Mississippi at Fort Gregg are some of the names and places that come to mind.  The 38^th Mississippi never attained the fame of these units, and historians have largely ignored their contributions;  one regiment lost among the many that served the Magnolia State during the war.

There are several reasons for the 38^th’s obscurity; first unlike most Mississippi regiments, the unit remained within the state for almost its entire term of service.  Second, the battles in which the regiment participated, with the exception of the Vicksburg Campaign, were not high profile battles that captured the imagination of the public.

The rank and file of the 38^th fought at Iuka, Corinth, Harrisburg, and Sipsey River Bridge – not exactly household names at the time they were fought, today these battles are largely forgotten except by the dedicated Civil War buff.  While these battles may not be as celebrated as Shiloh or Gettysburg, the casualties the regiment suffered in these actions were just as real.  The men of the 38^th Mississippi fought and bled and died at these places, and to them they were the most important engagements of the war, and they wanted their sacrifices to be remembered by future generations.  Captain James Henry Jones of the Wilkinson Guards spoke to this need to be remembered when he wrote the following:

A great battle is made up of many varied events, of many component parts; each brigade and each regiment is more or less an independent factor in it, and these must be studied in detail to understand properly what a battle is.[2]

To truly understand the men who joined the 38^th Mississippi, it is first necessary to explain how they were shaped by the environment and culture of 19^th Century Mississippi.

One of the most important factors that influenced the men was Mississippi’s agricultural economy.  Historian William K. Scarborough described the state’s economy as

Cotton, slavery, and the plantation system – these were the dominant elements in Mississippi’s agricultural economy from the time of statehood until the Civil War.[3] 

The soil of Mississippi was very rich, particularly in the Delta of the western part of the state, and was excellent for growing cotton.  By 1850, Mississippi was the leading cotton producing state in the Union.[4]  Cotton was a labor-intensive crop, and a large population of slaves was used to work the fields.  By 1860, the slave population in Mississippi outnumbered that whites, with 437,404 slaves to only 353,899 white citizens.[5]            

At the top of the economic ladder in Mississippi were the planter class, who owned

Dr. Walter Leake Keirn of Holmes County. [Taken from the 1890 Constitutional Convention photo at MDAH]

thousands of acres of land with hundreds of slaves to work the fields.[6]  One such planter in the 38^th Mississippi was Dr. Walter Leake Keirn of Holmes County.  In the 1860 census, Keirn valued his real estate holdings at $520,000 and his personal estate at $221,600.[7]   Such large land holdings required a sizeable labor force, and to work his fields Dr. Keirn had 210 slaves.[8] 

Large plantation owners such as Keirn were the exception rather than the rule in Mississippi.  Most of the farms in the state were small family-run operations that had few if any slaves.  They commonly grew subsistence crops and perhaps some cotton to sell on the market.[9]

A good example of a small farmer who belonged to the 38^th Mississippi was James A. Bass of Lawrence County.  On the 1860 census he valued his real estate at $700.00, and his personal estate at $800.00.  The Bass family worked their land themselves and owned no slaves.[10]              

Small farmers like Bass made up the bulk of the men who enlisted in the 38^th Mississippi.  A precise list of occupations for men in the regiment has not been found, but

Post-War photo of James A. Bass [findagrave.com]

one muster roll for the Wilkinson Guards did list occupations, and it indicates how prevalent farmers were in the unit.  Of the 123 men listed on the roster for the Guards, 113 of them listed their occupation as farmer.  As to other occupations, there was one lawyer, four ditchers, one teacher, one minister, two doctors, and one trader.[11]

A significant influence that affected the men of the 38^th in the years leading up to the war was the growth of the radical abolitionist movement in the north.  Until 1830, abolitionists used moral suasion to try and convince owners that slavery was evil and should be abandoned.  Seeing little profit from this method, after 1830 the more radical abolitionists began using the political arena to campaign against slavery.[12]

As their “peculiar institution” came under direct attack, Southerners began to change their own attitudes towards slavery.  Long considered a “necessary evil,” slavery came to be viewed as a “positive good” as owners began to actively defend the institution.[13]

Constant attacks on the institution that made their way of life possible created an extreme sensitivity to the issue of slavery, which is evident in the following letter written by Joseph J. Wade in 1850.  Wade was sent to Yale University to attend college, and soon after his arrival he wrote to his mother his impressions of the north:

I arrived at New Haven last Monday and remained there two days. I was very much pleased with the place, but what little I have seen of the people, I do not like them very much.  You can’t take up a newspaper to read, but what is putting down slavery, and the Yankees can talk about nothing but slavery.[14]

During the 1850’s the split between north and south over the issue of slavery grew deeper as crisis after crisis threatened to tear the country apart.  The debate over slavery in the territory gained in the war with Mexico, the fighting in ‘Bloody Kansas,’ John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry – all combined to push the nation to the brink of civil war.[15]

The event that triggered the secession of the southern states was the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in 1860.  A member of the Republican Party that advocated no expansion of slavery in the territories, Lincoln was not even put on the ballot in Mississippi.  On January 7, 1861, a secession convention met in Jackson to decide if Mississippi would leave the Union.  On January 9, the convention passed the ordinance of secession and Mississippi became the second state to withdraw from the Union.[16]

The announcement of Mississippi’s secession sparked celebrations across the Magnolia State to commemorate the historic event.  Martha Gwin of Holmes County described in her memoir the mood in Lexington, Mississippi:

When the tocsin of war was sounded throughout our Southland in 1861, we thought ourselves rich in resources and we knew that we had God on our side, and with hearts never too old to dream, we entered into all kinds of gayeties…Our spirited matrons all decided that we must have a ‘Secessional Ball’ which was enthusiastically received…This hall was swept and garnished for many fair ladies and valiant men who assembled there from all parts of our state.  The costumes of richest fabrics with no thought of home spun garments that the sorrows of war would bring.[17]

Not all Mississippians looked on secession with the enthusiasm described by Mrs. Gwin.  In a letter written on April 14, 1861, Mary H. Williams of Pike County voiced her concerns about how the war was impacting her family:

My work here is never done and I have refrained from writing because of it and the unsettled conditions here.  Miah has been in the fields alone as Reuben and Jackson are no longer here but in the armye.  James hasn’t gone as his health is not to good.  Reuben and Jackson are just like everybody else, can’t wait to get a gun and a uniform on and parade all over the country side.  I wory about James going but he says he must to feel right with himself and his friends.  I worry too because the Lord God does not mean for people of a country to war against one another but everybody says we are not the same as the people in the North.  Miah worrys to.  He says our people in S. Carolina have done wrong to act the way they did in quitting the Union so soon.  Miah says we have worked to hard for what we have to fool it away on the say so of some lawyers and doctors who don’t have any negroes anyway…I just don’t know what is right anymore.[18]

Mississippi seceded in January 1861, but the 38^th Mississippi was not raised until May 1862, and for most of the men in the regiment, this was their first time to put on a uniform.  There are several reasons that most of the men had not enlisted earlier, and one of the chief factors was age.  In describing the men of the Van Dorn Guards, Port Gibson resident Frank Foote said they consisted “…mainly of middle-aged men of families,”[19] and this characterization held true for the other nine companies of the regiment as well.

The men who joined the 38^th Mississippi were not wild-eyed young schoolboys looking for an adventure in the army – they were men with responsibilities, wives and children to think of, and they could not run off to war until sure that their families were being properly provided for.

Four out of every five Confederate soldiers were between the ages of eighteen and thirty,[20] and by examining the muster rolls of the 38^th, it is apparent that the regiment fell to the far end of the spectrum.  Data was not available for Company A, the Holmes County Volunteers, as their muster rolls do not include age, but the average ages for the other nine companies were as follows:

Company B     –           27

Company C     –           29

Company D     –           28

Company E     –           28

Company F     –           27

Company G     –           28

Company H     –           29

Company I      –           29

Company K     –           28[21]

Another important consideration keeping many men from enlisting earlier was the simple fact that a number of them were Unionists at heart, and others had no desire to serve in any army, Yankee or Rebel.

On April 16, 1862, the Confederate Congress passed a conscription act just as the companies of the 38^th were in the process of formation.  Many who had previously been unwilling to serve joined voluntarily to avoid the stigma of being branded a conscript, while others were drafted into the regiment.  These men were a constant source of trouble as they would desert the service at every available opportunity, and the 38^th’s muster rolls are filled with men listed as deserters or absent without leave.

A good example of a Unionist who was forced into the regiment was Farris A. Fife of Claiborne County.  Conscripted into the Claiborne Guards, Fife deserted the unit after the fall of Vicksburg and joined the 17^th Wisconsin Infantry.  Years later in his pension application to the United States Government, Fife spelled out his reasons for deserting the 38^th:

All my family were Unionist in politics, and very much opposed to the war…I went into the Union lines and finally joined a Wisconsin regiment…Quite a number of my boy associates went with me to the army, but all of them are now dead…Outside of my family no one knew that I was a federal soldier; my friends knew that I had left the county and state but did not know I had enlisted.  I married and did not care to have my wife and children ostracized.[22]

Whether they joined the regiment willingly or by force, the time was rapidly approaching when the men would leave for the war.  Some became heroes; others cowards; the great majority did their duty and labored on in obscurity, and together they were all part of the history of the 38th Mississippi Infantry.

[End of Chapter 1]

1 Mary Williams to her brother, 14 April 1861.  A copy of this letter is in the collection of Joe C. Brown of Summit, MS.

2 James H. Jones, “The Rank and File At Vicksburg,” Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society.  Volume 7 (1903), 17.

[3] William K. Scarborough, “Heartland of the Cotton Kingdom,” in A History of Mississippi, ed. Richard A. McLemore, Volume 1 (Hattiesburg, MS: University & College Press, 1973), 310.

[4] Ibid., 322.

5 Carl Moneyhon and Bobby Roberts, Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Mississippi in the Civil War (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1993), 95, 140.

6 Scarborough, 343.

7 United States Bureau of the Census, Holmes County, Mississippi, 1860, Schedule 1.  Mississippi Department of Archives and History.  Cited hereafter as MDAH.

8 United States Bureau of the Census, Holmes County, Mississippi, 1860, Schedule 2.  MDAH.

9 Scarborough, 350.

10 United States Bureau of the Census, Lawrence County, Mississippi, 1860, Schedule 1.  MDAH.

11 Roster of Company D, 38^th Mississippi Infantry.  Record Group 9, MDAH.

12 James M. McPherson, Ordeal By Fire (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992), 44-45.

13 Ibid., 49-50.

14 Joseph J. Wade joined the 38^th Mississippi in 1862 as a surgeon and served with the regiment until the end of the war.  Wade Family File, Old Court House Museum, Vicksburg, MS.

15 Richard N. Current, ed., Encyclopedia of the Confederacy, Volume 3.  (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 1047.

16 Ibid.

[17] Newspaper clipping; Lexington (Mississippi) Advertiser; Date unknown; A copy is in the collection of Dan Edwards (Lexington, MS).

18 Mary Williams Letter.

19 Katy M. Headley, Claiborne County, Mississippi: The Promised Land (Port Gibson, MS: Claiborne County Historical Society, 1976), 387.

20 Richard N. Current, ed., Encyclopedia of the Confederacy, Volume 4 .  (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 1494-1495.

21 Muster Rolls; Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations From the State of Mississippi; 38^th Cavalry; National Archives, Record Group 109, rolls 62-65. Cited hereafter as CSR-MS.

22 Pension application of Farris A. Fife; United States Pension Rolls.  16 January 1911, National Archives Record Group 109.

 

Chapter II

When this you see remember me, though many a mile apart we be, when I am where you cannot be, fare away in the battle field.1

– Sgt. James W. Thornhill of the Johnston Avengers

Like most regiments recruited during the Civil War, the history of the 38^th Mississippi Infantry is firmly rooted at the county level.  The rank and file of the unit were drawn from thirteen counties to fill the ten companies of the regiment.

The initial process of organizing a company for the war was a task usually carried out by a man of wealth and prominence in the community, and this pattern was repeated during the 38^th’s formation.  When approximately 100 men were recruited, an election was held by the soldiers of the company to choose the officers who would lead them.  Quite often the captaincy was won by the man who organized the company, and the other officers were selected from among the most influential men of the community.2

The 38^th’s ten companies represented a broad cross section of the magnolia state: companies hailed from such geographically diverse regions as Holmes and Attala Counties in Central Mississippi, from Hancock County on the Gulf Coast, Newton County in the east, and from Claiborne County in the west bordering the Mississippi River.3

As a source of local pride and identity, each company assigned to a new unit would select a distinctive nickname for itself.4  Once the regimental organization was complete, each company was given a letter designation from A through K, omitting the letter J.  This was done to avoid confusion, for in the cursive script of the day the letters I and J looked very much alike, and the army wanted to make sure there were no mistakes in written orders.5

The company letter designations were assigned based on the seniority of the individual company commanders.  For example, the captain with the earliest date of commission had his company designated A, the next in seniority B, and so on down the line.

These designations were important for they determined where the companies were placed in a line of battle.  From right to left the companies were lined up in the following order:  A, F, D, I, C, H, E, K, G, B.  This formation was used because it allowed the five senior captains to be spread evenly throughout the line of battle.6

When the 38^th Mississippi Infantry was organized in May 1862, the individual companies were designated as follows:

Company A – Holmes County Volunteers

Company B – Van Dorn Guards

Company C – Hancock Rebels

Company D – Wilkinson Guards

Company E – White Rebels

Company F – Johnston Avengers

Company G – Wolf Creek Marksmen

Company H – Price Relief

Company I – Columbia Guards

Company K – Brent Rifles7

The senior company in the regiment was the Holmes County Volunteers, who were organized in Lexington on March 17, 1862, with the election of Walter L. Keirn as Captain, John S. Hoskins as 1^st Lieutenant, John Clower as 2^nd Lieutenant, and Thomas E. Dyson 3^rd Lieutenant.8

It is easy to see why the men of Company A chose Walter Keirn to be their leader.  Hailing from one of the most distinguished families in Holmes County, Keirn was the grandson of Walter Leake, Governor of Mississippi from 1822 – 1825.9  His family provided him with an excellent education, sending him to Princeton University where he graduated in 1848.  He then enrolled in the Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) School of Medicine, earning his medical degree in 1850.10

In January 1861, Keirn served as a delegate from Holmes County to the Mississippi Secession Convention, siding with the staunch secessionists.  He voted against amendments to keep Mississippi in the Union or even delay her departure, and on January 9, 1861, he joined with the majority by voting in favor of the Ordinance of Secession.11

The second company raised for the regiment was the Van Dorn Guards of Claiborne County, organized at Rocky Springs on March 19, 1862, with the election of Robert C. McCay as Captain, John J. Harper as 1^st Lieutenant, William L. Faulk as 2^nd Lieutenant, and E. T. Harrington as 3^rd Lieutenant.12

A native of Claiborne County, Robert Cochran McCay operated a mercantile at Rocky Springs and advertised that he carried “All articles usually kept in a country store.”13  The men in the Van Dorn Guards chose well, for McCay proved to be an excellent leader and his abilities marked him for promotion to a field grade position in the regiment.  As Major of the 38^th Mississippi, McCay was destined to lead his command through one of the bloodiest days in its history – a desperate, near suicidal assault at Harrisburg, Mississippi on a scorching hot day in July, 1864.14

The third company to be raised was the Hancock Rebels of Hancock County, organized on March 25, 1862, at Hobolochitto, (modern Picayune), Mississippi.  Daniel B. Seal was elected Captain of the unit, W. F. Seal the 1^st Lieutenant, H. J. Stewart the 2^nd Lieutenant, and Hiram Smith the 3^rd Lieutenant.15

Daniel Seal was born February 24, 1836, on his father’s plantation in Hancock County.  As

Post-war picture of Captain Daniel B. Seal (Goodspeed’s Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi.) 

he grew older he became interested in the legal profession and decided on a career as a lawyer.  In 1861 he was admitted to the bar in Hancock County and began his practice.  Not content to rest on his laurels, that same year he ran for a seat in the state legislature and won.  When elected Captain of the Hancock Rebels, Seal was still serving in the legislature and continued to do so throughout his term of service with the regiment.16

With his credentials, Seal seemed to have all of the skills necessary to be a good officer, but unfortunately for the regiment, he brought one other skill to the mix – he was a first class troublemaker.   His intrigues and schemes in order to win promotion eventually forced almost every officer in the unit to take sides against him.17  If this was not bad enough, Seal’s lack of leadership and discipline led to a complete breakdown of unit morale, and his company had the highest desertion rate of the entire regiment.

The fourth company to enter service was the Wilkinson Guards of Wilkinson County,

Post-War portrait of James Henry Jones, captain of the Wilkinson Guards. (Clarion-Ledger, April 3, 1955)

organized on April 1, 1862, at Woodville with the election of James H. Jones as Captain, Robert L. F. Bullock 1^st Lieutenant, Hansford Lanehart 2^nd Lieutenant, and James Scudder 3^rd Lieutenant.18

James Henry Jones was born in Autauga County, Alabama, in 1838.  His father John E. Jones was a successful lawyer and member of the Alabama State Legislature.  Captain Jones attended the University of Mississippi graduating first in the class of 1858.  Following in his father’s footsteps, he studied law, and in 1859 was admitted to the bar in Woodville, Mississippi.  Shortly thereafter the lure of the west called, and Jones moved to Bastrop, Texas, where he set up a law office.

At the outbreak of the war Jones returned to Mississippi and joined the Confederate army as a private for 60 days service under Brigadier General James L. Alcorn.  After his release from service, Jones went back to Wilkinson County and helped to raise the Wilkinson Guards.  Enlisting with him were his three younger brothers; John age 18, Robert, age 15, and Elisha, age 14.  Of the four Jones brothers who went to war in 1862, only James survived; he lived to see all three of his siblings die on the battlefield.19

A prolific writer in the post-war years, Jones made it his mission in life to make sure the 38^th Mississippi’s contributions to the war effort were not forgotten.  The articles and letters he wrote about the regiment constitute the largest single source of information on the unit.

The fifth company to be formed was the White Rebels of Lawrence County, organized at Silver Creek on April 24, 1862, with the election of James F. White as Captain, James A. Bass as 1^st Lieutenant, Milton Griffith as 2^nd Lieutenant, and Sanders E. Parkman as 3^rd Lieutenant.  After only two months in command of the company, Captain White resigned his commission for unspecified reasons and left the unit.  To fill the vacancy, the men held a new election and chose C. L. Gilmer to be their new Captain.20

Following his resignation from the Rebels, White accepted a commission as Captain of Company I, 2^nd Mississippi Cavalry from Monroe County.21  Captain White named his new command the Lula White Rebels, a move that caused many future historians to confuse this unit with his old one.  An example of  the problems caused by the similar names exists in Dunbar Rowland’s Military History of Mississippi 1803-1898, which is considered by many to be the best reference guide ever written about the Mississippi units that served in the Civil War.  In his work, Rowland lists the Lula White Rebels as serving in both the 2^nd Mississippi Cavalry and the 38^th Mississippi Infantry, while leaving the White Rebels out completely.22

The sixth company to be organized was the Johnston Avengers of Copiah County, with

Post-War Photo of John J. Green, elected 2nd Lieutenant in the Johnston Avengers in May 1862. (findagrave.com)

the election of officers taking place on May 3, 1862, in Hazlehurst.  Leander M. Graves was picked for Captain, Cornelius McLaurin for 1^st Lieutenant, John J. Green for 2^nd Lieutenant, and William B. Graves for 3^rd Lieutenant.23

Elections for company officers often degenerated into wild affairs, with the candidates vying to see which could offer the men the best bribe for their votes.  Leander Graves came up with a particularly effective appeal, promising the company “…his men shall not stay in camps when they get sick if he can help it.”24

The seventh company to enter service was the Wolf Creek Marksmen of Attala County, organized on May 7, 1862, in Multona Springs with the election of Jerry Dishman as Captain, R. J. Hubbert as 1^st Lieutenant, Berry M. Black as 2^nd Lieutenant, and John F. Anderson as 3^rd Lieutenant.25

Like many other novice officers new to military life, Captain Dishman struggled to learn the many duties required by his new position.  One of the most difficult tasks facing a new officer was learning the complex series of infantry drills necessary for moving a regiment both on the march and in line of battle.  Trying to learn the rudiments of drill while simultaneously teaching it to raw recruits, some of whom did not know their left foot from their right foot, must have been a frustrating experience.  Historian James Robertson described the problem as “…the ignorant leading the uneducated.”26

The job turned out to be more than he could handle, and Dishman was forced to admit to an officer’s examination board  that he “…acknowledged his incapacity for his position and his ignorance of its duties…”27  The captain resigned his commission after making this frank statement to the board, and took a job in a tannery making shoes for the Confederate army.28

The eighth company, the Price Relief, was organized in Jackson, Hinds County, on April 24, 1862, with the election of William M. Estelle as Captain, George H. Robertson as 1^st Lieutenant, Moses H. Curry as 2^nd Lieutenant, and John E. Tarpley as 3^rd Lieutenant.  The Price Relief was somewhat unusual in that the men were recruited from four counties instead of the usual one or two.  The majority of the soldiers were recruited from Hinds County, but there were substantial numbers from Scott, Madison and Newton Counties as well.29

There is no explanation in the records for why the Price Relief were recruited from such a large area, but the heavy recruiting efforts in the state may have made it necessary to travel farther a field to fill up the company.

Among the officers of the 38^th Mississippi, Captain Estelle was one of the most experienced officers in the regiment in terms of leading soldiers in the field.  He gained his experience during the Mexican War serving in the 2^nd Mississippi Infantry Regiment from 1846 – 1848.  The 22-year-old Estelle began his service as a 2^nd Lieutenant in the Panola Boys, Company I of the regiment, and in July, 1847, he was promoted to Captain to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of A. A. Overton.30

Business Advertisement of William M. Estelle (Semi-Weekly Mississippian, November 25, 1856)

The 2^nd Mississippi arrived in Mexico after hostilities had ended, and the regiment was relegated to performing guard duty until their return home in the summer of 1848.31  Even though he did not see combat in Mexico, Captain Estelle gained valuable experience in the complex business of leading citizen soldiers in the field.  This experience was put to good use in turning the raw recruits in the Price Relief into combat ready soldiers.

The ninth company to be raised was the Columbia Guards, organized in Columbia, Marion County, on March 25, 1862.  The company elected Franklin W. Foxworth as its Captain, Alexander E. S. Foxworth 1^st Lieutenant, John Applewhite 2^nd Lieutenant, and William J. Ball the 3^rd Lieutenant.32

Franklin William Foxworth was born on his parent’s farm three miles south of Columbia in 1839, and by 1860 he was working as a plantation overseer in Marion County.33  When the war started he enlisted in Company D, 7^th Mississippi Infantry, along with his brothers George and Job.  Elected a 2^nd Lieutenant by the company, Franklin was forced to resign soon after his promotion because of ill health.34

Once he recovered from his sickness, Franklin joined the Columbia Guards and was elected captain of the company.  Soon thereafter he was promoted to major, and the vacancy was filled by his brother Alexander, who remained captain of the Guards until the end of the war.35

Rounding out the regiment as the tenth and final company was the Brent Rifles of Pike County, organized in Holmesville on April 26, 1862.  Preston Brent was elected Captain, Henry S. Brumfield the 1^st Lieutenant, David C. Walker the 2^nd Lieutenant, and James C. Williams the 3^rd Lieutenant.36

Born in Copiah County on May 25, 1833, Preston Brent was something of a rarity among the officers of the 38^th Mississippi in that he had received his formal education at a military school.  He attended the Western Military Institute at Drennon Springs, Kentucky, and upon graduating returned to Mississippi about 1857 and settled in Pike County.37

Illustration from 1853 of the Western Military Institute (Kentucky Historical Society, Catalog Number 2004.41.39)

In October 1859, the South was shaken by John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia.  This aborted slave uprising alarmed Southerners who responded by forming militia companies to protect their communities from future uprisings.  Preston Brent formed such a unit in Holmesville named the Quitman Guards, and as a reward for his efforts, he was elected captain of the unit.  When the war broke out the company responded immediately to President Jefferson Davis’s call for troops to defend Pensacola, Florida.  Captain Brent was unable to go however as he could not leave his farm unattended on such short notice, so he was forced to resign from the company.38

Brent proceeded to put his personal affairs in order, and in September 1861, responded to Governor John J. Pettus’ call for 10,000 volunteers to serve under General Albert Sidney Johnston in Kentucky.  Elected Lieutenant Colonel of the 1^st Regiment, General James L. Alcorn’s Brigade, he spent a long hard winter as part of Johnston’s line of defense in Central Kentucky.  The 1^st Regiment saw no action during its time in the Bluegrass State, and was eventually sent back to Mississippi where it mustered out of service in February 1862.39

By an act of providence, Brent returned to Pike County just in time to help raise a new

Colonel Preston Brent (Photo courtesy of R. Brent Vasseur)

company for the war, one that was destined to bear his name and become part of the 38^th Mississippi.  This was a fortunate circumstance for the regiment, for Preston Brent proved himself to be an excellent leader and guiding force in unit.  Pike County historian Luke Ward Conerly wrote of the traits that made Brent a good officer, saying he was “…cool headed, quiet, unassuming, gallant and brave, an able commander, a hero in the flash and flail and din of battle…”40

When each company of the 38^th completed its initial organization, the new soldiers had to say their good-byes and prepare to leave their homes and families.  Many years after the war Alfred Faulk reminisced about the farewell celebration the community gave his father William and the rest of the Van Dorn Guards in April 1862: “Everybody celebrated that night at Port Gibson…Merrymaking continued in the streets until dawn.”41  As the men marched off to war they confidently boasted to the townspeople, “We’ll lick the Yankees before breakfast.”42  Eleazer W. Thornhill of the White Rebels remembered when his company left home:

We went from Lawrence Co., to Brookhaven, and there got aboard the cars, and went to Jackson, Miss.  When we left, there was a lot of handkerchief and hat shaking.  Many a man that left there that morning never came back again.  We were cheered repeatedly on our way to Jackson.43

Celebrations such as those held for the Van Dorn Guards and White Rebels were reenacted throughout Mississippi as the other eight companies that comprised the 38^th Mississippi marched off to defend their state.  Few if any of these men could have realized the trials in store for them over the next three years.  Some died in battle; many more died of disease; all faced privation and suffering.  The survivors returned to find their homes and communities in ruins after the scourge of war had swept over the land, with Mississippi forever altered by the storm of death and destruction.

The rendezvous point for the individual companies was Jackson, the capitol of Mississippi, a destination that required most to travel by train, a novelty for many of the men in the regiment.  Most were from rural areas, and for a number of them this trip was their first time away from home.  This excitement must have been lost on John C. Luper of the White Rebels who wrote his wife matter-of-factly about the trip, “Mary we go to Brookhaven on Thurs. night and have to stay there till Sat. night, we landed in Jackson all well.”44

Upon arrival in Jackson the ten companies were placed under the command of Colonel Fleming W. Adams of Harrison County who had been given authority to raise a regiment by the Confederate War Department.45  Information on Colonel Adams’ pre-war life is sparse, but the records that survive indicate he was a man of some wealth and influence in Mississippi.

At the outbreak of the war 31 year old Fleming W. Adams volunteered for service with an infantry company from Handsboro, Harrison County, Mississippi. On May 20, 1861, Adams was elected captain of the company, which the men named in his honor the Adams Rifles.  His election must have been a forgone conclusion because even before the vote, Adams was already working to have the company accepted for service by the Confederate Government.  On May 17, Adams’ older brother Robert wrote President Jefferson Davis to request that the Adams Rifles be received into Confederate service.  He told the president that his brother was “…anxious for an early opportunity of testing the nerves of Black Republicans.”46

The Adams Rifles were accepted into the army and designated Company E, 20^th Mississippi Infantry.  The regiment was ordered to Western Virginia to serve under Brigadier General John B. Floyd, and in November 1861 they participated in several small skirmishes with the Yankees.  In December Floyd’s command, including the 20^th, was transferred to Central Kentucky to serve under General Albert Sidney Johnston.47

About the same time the regiment was transferred, Captain Adams began a political lobbying effort designed to win him a promotion to colonel of an infantry regiment.  To hasten this end, Adams resigned from the 20^th Mississippi and went to Richmond to press his case in person.  On January 17, 1862, he drafted a letter to Jefferson Davis, and as this document relates directly to the creation of the 38^th Mississippi, it is worth quoting at length:

Sir,

      Some friends in Congress inform me that a bill has just been passed authorizing the President to commission officers to raise Regts. & those friends knew I was just leaving for Miss. to raise a Regt. and that some Companies had already been tendered me, and hence informed me of this bill and advised me to apply to you for the commission of Col. at once.  I am confident I can raise a Regt. in a very short time and will be glad to have the commission of Col.  I have some Companies offered me as I stated to you a few days since.  My friends offer to recommend me to gain favor; but I suppose recommendations will be unnecessary.  I am known to you as well as to those willing to endorse me.  I will call tomorrow and hope to be able to see you…48

Contrary to what he told the president, Adams did have recommendations made on his behalf, as evidenced by a letter from Walker Brooke to Davis dated February 3, 1862.  Brooke was a well-known Vicksburg lawyer who served as a Mississippi delegate to the Provisional Confederate Congress.49  In his letter Brooke recommended Adams along with several other Mississippi officers for promotion.  He closed by saying These gentlemen are all now in the service and are efficient officers – Capt. Adams has I believe already some four or five companies ready to be mustered in for the war.”50

The campaign of self-promotion paid off for Adams as he was awarded a Colonel’s commission, and more importantly, authorization to raise a regiment of infantry.  As his letters indicate, Adams had already made considerable progress in this area as he had already made arrangements for several companies to join his new regiment.

When all ten companies reached Jackson, the first order of business in forming the

Article announcing the formation of the 38th Mississippi Infantry (Memphis Daily Appeal, May 22, 1863)

regiment was the election of field officers.  The voting was done on May 12, and the men confirmed the War Department’s appointment, electing Fleming W. Adams Colonel of the regiment.  For the other two command positions in the regiment, Preston Brent of the Brent Rifles was chosen for Lieutenant Colonel, and Franklin Foxworth of the Columbia Guards picked for Major.  The rank and file had made sensible choices, electing three men with some prior military experience to lead them, but of the three, only one of them would stand the test of time.  Major Foxworth lasted barely a month in his new position, tendering his resignation on June 15 without specifying a reason.  To fill the vacancy, the senior captain by date of rank, Walter L. Keirn of the Holmes County Volunteers assumed the duties of major and received his official promotion to that rank in August 1862.51

One of the basic flaws of the election of officers was that unqualified men could be, and were, elected to positions of great responsibility in a regiment.  The 38^th certainly had its fair share, as Erastus Hoskins of the Holmes County Volunteers was promoted to assistant quartermaster in the regiment, and as such had considerable contact with the company officers; he confided to his wife his observations:

I write this to you – Dear – because I can do so without it going any farther…My dear to take the officers generally of this regiment – I think they are common and green.  The Col. – speaks of having some of them cashiered – (none of our boys) if he does he will have Charlie Gilmer appointed Captain in some of their places – I said cashier them – He will not exactly have that done – but have them examined & found incompetent, receive their resignation – and appoint Capt. & Lieut. in their place.52

Examinations were used to find and remove incompetent officers, and there were a number in the 38^th who were weeded out by this process.  One officer who didn’t measure up was Captain Henry S. Brumfield of the Brent Rifles.  Failing his examination, the captain resigned from service by sending in the following letter:

I hereby tender this my resignation of the position I hold as Capt. of Co. K, 38^th Regt. of Miss. Vols.  I do so for the following reasons.  I believe myself entirely unfit for the position, having no knowledge of military tactics & c.  I entered the service as a Lieut. and hoped that I would be able to make myself a competent officer, in this I find myself mistaken…I therefore respectfully ask that this my resignation be accepted.53

The examination process could remove the outright incompetents, but what it could not do was remove those officers who simply could not handle the strain of leading men in battle.  Combat leadership was especially important for the regimental field and staff officers, who were expected to lead their men by example through the chaos and blood of the battlefield.  Colonel Adams and Lieutenant Colonel Brent both had previous military experience, but neither one had been in combat – and it remained to be seen how they would do once the fighting started.  Erastus Hoskins wrote his wife about the regiments two top officers, and he made some interesting observations:

 Dear – we have what is generally deemed good-clever fellows as field officers.  Our Col. – very indolent – He lies about in the tent, smokes his pipe and takes his ease generally.  He has the capacity, and knows what to do.  He is tolerably profane though with all a very agreeable and easy to get a long with.  I like him notwithstanding he is lazy and profane.  Our Lt. Col. thus far is a perfect blank – he takes no command, and when on dress parade takes no position in the Regiment.  He may do better when there is a chance of a fight.  If I was in the Col. place I would stir him up.  He seems a very good easy clever fellow, and the companies who are well acquainted with him think a great deal of him.54

Hoskins observations about his commanding officers were not exactly a glowing recommendation, but it would take the true test of combat to determine just what kind of leaders Adams and Brent were.

With the election of officers complete, the regiment was assigned an official title: the 38^th Mississippi Volunteer Infantry.  Over the course of the next three years the soldiers of the 38^th became an extended family, bonded by their shared experiences of living together, fighting together, and in all too many cases, dying together.

During their stay in Jackson the new recruits were initiated into a soldier’s life, and like all men new to the service they wrote about their new experiences to the loved ones back home.  Documentation on this early period in the regiment’s history is scarce, but fortunately one soldier’s correspondence does survive, and it gives an interesting insight into how one enlisted soldier felt about army life.

The source of this material was Sergeant James W. Thornhill of the Johnston Avengers who left a pregnant wife and two small children at home when he marched off to war.  The sergeant cared very deeply for his family, and he wrote to them constantly to tell them how he was getting along.

One subject that was near and dear to the soldier’s heart was food, and Sgt. Thornhill had a lot to say on the subject:

We are getting along verry well hear so fare.  We have plenty to eat we get corn meal and flour and sugar and coffee and molasses and peas and pork and some gets beef but I have been lucky enough not to get any beef yet and I am in hopes I will not get any we get vinegar and soap and salt I think we are fareing verry well although som complain mightly as for my part I think we are doing verry well if we only could get tents…55

This time of plenty as described by Sgt. Thornhill soon became a distant memory as the regiment began active campaigning, and the men learned to survive on a bare-bones diet.

One common theme that appears in letters sent to the soldiers from home are warnings about the evils of military life.  Within the army camps existed every vice known to man, and for many new recruits, away from home for the first time, these temptations were well nigh irresistible.  Gambling, drinking, and profanity were all very common, and soldiers received constant reminders from home to stay on the straight and narrow.56  J. A.  Gillespie wrote to her brother William, a private in the Brent Rifles, to give him this warning:

Oh! William let me entreat you to beware of the sins of the camp.  Do not be tempted to join in them remember you have an angel wife in heaven and your hearts desire is to go to her.  Be a true Christian and perhaps you may influence others to do right.57

For men away from home for the first time, Jackson was an exciting place, and many in the 38^th spent their free time exploring.  Sgt. Thornhill was one of these men, and he eagerly wrote to his wife Jane about what he had seen:

I expected when I come to Jackson that I should see everything that would entice a man to spend money but was mistaken for I can’t even get apiece of bread in the bakers shops but that makes no diference as long as we can get plenty in camps.  I have been to penitenuary but could not get in and also to the factory there you can see as many as twenty or thirty girls at work at one time some weaving and some warping some doing one thing and another and some of them the prettiest girls you ever saw.  I have been all over town for we have not been drilling any scarsly although I have been at liberty I have not stoaled over town as much as some of the boys.58

Once the novelty of camp life wore off, many soldiers suffered from bouts of homesickness, and Sgt. Thornhill was no exception.  On May 19 he wrote these moving words to Jane:

…but if I chance to never to return home remember that my heart is with you although I am fare away my heart is at home with them that is near and dear to me as my own life…the tears do flow in my eys as I am writing these lines to think of my loving wife and prattling little children who are left behind to suffer I know not what but do not greave but God helping them and me we will meet again shortly.59

Sadly, Sgt. Thornhill never saw his beloved wife and children again.  Less than two months after writing this letter he was dead of the measles, having never fought in a single battle.  The day after he poured out his heart-felt sentiments to his wife, the 38^th Mississippi received orders to report to Corinth, a mere eight days after being mustered into service.  The men were green recruits, but the grave military situation in North Mississippi precluded the luxury of an extended training period.  The soldiers of the 38^th had to learn the art of war from the front lines, and the lessons they learned were paid for in blood.60

1 James W. Thornhill to Jane Thornhill, 18 May 1862.  Original letter is owned by Mrs. Norma Fortenberry (Osyka, MS).

2 Bell I. Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 19-20.

3 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, rolls 62-65.

4 Wiley, 20.

5 Dominick J. Dal Bello, Parade, Inspection and Basic Evolutions of the Infantry Battalion (Santa Barbara, CA: By the author, 1996), 7.

6 Ibid.

7 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 62.  Note: The nickname of the White Rebels does not appear in the Compiled Service Records; see War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies; (Washington, D. C., 1880-1902), Series 4, Volume 2, 934.

8 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 62.

9 Walter Keirn subject file, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.  Also see Cecil L. Summers, The Governors of Mississippi (Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing, 1980), 45-46.

10 Walter Keirn subject file, Mississippi Department of Archives and History; Letter from Mikey Keirn to Author, May 10, 1997.

11 Journal of the Mississippi Secession Convention  (Mississippi Commission on the War Between the States, 1962), 5-16.

12 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 62.

13 Dunbar Rowland, Mississippi, Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions, and Persons, Arranged in Cyclopedic Form (3 Volumes) (Atlanta GA: Southern Historical Publishing Association, 1907), Volume 3, 569; Merchants Invoice, Robert C. McCay, 1 January 1859.  The original is owned by George Slaton of Wilmington, NC.

14 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 64.

15 Ibid., roll 62.

16 Goodspeed’s Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi  (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1891), Volume 2, 732-733.

17 Preston Brent to Louis Hebert, 22 December 1862.  Robert C. McCay Papers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

18 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 62.

19 Goodspeed’s, Volume 1, 1055-1056.

20 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 62.

21 W. A. Evans, Mother Monroe (Aberdeen, MS: Monroe Publishing Company, 1979), 107.

22 Dunbar Rowland, Military History of Mississippi 1803-1898  (Spartanburg, SC: The Reprint Company, 1978), 330, 403.

23 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 62.

24 James W. Thornhill to Jane Thornhill, 18 May 1862.  Original letter owned by Mrs. Norma Fortenberry (Osyka, MS).

25 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 62.

26 James I. Robertson Jr., Soldiers Blue & Gray  (New York: Warner Books, 1991), 49.

27 Minutes, Officers Examination Board, 8 July 1862, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations From the State of Alabama; 37^th Infantry, Service Record of Moses B. Green, National Archives, Record Group 109, roll 369.

28 Confederate Pension Application, Mrs. Bettie Dishman; May, 1914; Texas State Library and Archives Commission; (Austin, TX).

29 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, rolls 62-65.

30 Muster roll; Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Soldiers Who Served During the Mexican War in Organizations From Mississippi;  2^nd Infantry; National Archives, Record Group 58, Roll 4.

31 Rowland, Military History, 30-31.

32 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 62.

33 History of Marion County Mississippi; (Marion County Historical Society, 1976), 83.  See also United States Bureau of the Census.  Marion County, Mississippi, 1860.  Roll 586, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

34 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, 7^th Infantry; roll 161.  Also see the Job Foxworth Diary, 12 February 1862, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

35 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 63.

36 Ibid., roll 62.

37 Undated newspaper clipping; the original clipping is owned by Paul Crawford of Brookhaven, MS.

38 Luke Ward Conerly, Pike County Mississippi 1798 – 1876  (Nashville: Brandon Printing Company, 1909), 137, 160.

39 Rowland, Military History, 368-369.

40 McComb (Mississippi) City Enterprise, 29 January 1903, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

41 Vicksburg (Mississippi) Sunday Post, 3 July 1988.

42 Ibid.

43 Eleazer W. Thornhill Memoir.  Original is owned by Stanley Francis of Duncanville, TX .  A copy is in the collections of the Old Court House Museum, Vicksburg, MS.

44 John C. Luper to Mary Luper, 12 May 1862.  A copy is owned by Mrs. Margie Halthorn (Columbia, MS).

45 Roster, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 62.

46 Robert L. Adams to Jefferson Davis, 17 May 1861, Letters Received By The Confederate Secretary of War, 1861-1865 (Cited hereafter as Secretary of War), National Archives, Record Group 109, roll 2, #804-1861.

47 Rowland, Military History, 236-237.

48 Fleming W. Adams to Jefferson Davis, 17 January 1862, Secretary of War, National Archives, Record Group 109, #9910.

49 Ezra J. Warner and W. Buck Yearns, Biographical Register of the Confederate Congress  (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975), 34, 291.

50 Walker Brooke to Jefferson Davis, 3 February 1862, Secretary of War, #10293-1862.

51 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 109, roll 63;  Robert C. McCay to Louis Hebert, Undated letter, McCay Papers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

52 Erastus Hoskins to “Lou” Hoskins, 22 June 1862, Erastus Hoskins Letters, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.  Cited hereafter as Erastus Hoskins Letters.

53 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 109, roll 62.

54 Erastus Hoskins Letters, 22 June 1862.

55 James W. Thornhill  to Jane Thornhill, 18 May 1862.  Original letters of Thornhill are owned by Mrs. Norma Fortenberry (Osyka, MS).

56 Robertson, 101.

57 J. A. Gillespie to William Allen, 30 June 1862.  Original letters are in the William Allen Collection, Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State University.

58 James W. Thornhill to Jane Thornhill, 18 May 1862.  Original letters are owned by Mrs. Norma Fortenberry (Osyka, MS).

59 Ibid, 19 May 1862.

60 Rowland, Military History, 331.

 

Chapter III

Going to See The Elephant

My prayer is that God will soon end this unholy war for it seems that the country will be ruined and oh! the desolate firesides that it has caused.1

Mrs. J. A. Gillespie to her brother William,

July 25, 1862.

On May 20, 1862, the 38^th Mississippi was ordered to fall in and the long gray column of men was marched to the railroad depot where they boarded the trains that took them to the seat of war.  The men traveled north on the Mississippi Central Railroad, and upon arrival in Grenada the regiment was sent to a camp of instruction for several days of much needed training before being sent on the Corinth.2

After leaving Grenada, the regiment traveled on to Corinth, but the exact route taken is not known, but it must have been a long, exhausting, and dusty trip.  There was no direct railway linking Grenada with Corinth, and the existing route that crossed into Tennessee before turning south and continuing on to Corinth was already cut by the Union army.  With this in mind, the most likely route taken by the 38^th was to continue north by rail on the Mississippi Central to a point near Oxford, Mississippi.  There they would have to leave the trains and march overland due east until they struck the Mobile and Ohio Railroad.  From that point they could travel directly to Corinth by rail.

Wartime Illustration of Corinth, Mississippi (Harper’s Weekly, June 21, 1862)

The long and exhausting trip to Corinth gave the men plenty of time to think about the serious threat to the army they were about to join.  After the battle of Shiloh on April 6-7, 1862, the rebels under the command of General P. G. T. Beauregard retreated back to Corinth and quickly set to work improving the defenses protecting the city.  The Confederates had plenty of incentive to work hard because the victorious Union army under the command of Major General Henry W. Halleck had begun a slow and methodical advance towards the rapidly entrenching Rebels.  Halleck’s massive blue-clad army, 110,000 men strong, inched towards Corinth, taking nearly a month to reach their objective, arriving on the outskirts of the city on May 25.  To oppose this force Beauregard had only 66,000 men, including the half-trained reinforcements such as the 38^th Mississippi that were being rushed to his aid.3

The exact day the 38^th arrived in Corinth is not known, but it was probably on or before May 27.  That was the day the regiment was issued weapons and it seems likely this occurred after the reached Corinth.  The 38^th was issued 405 percussion muskets and 405 sets of accouterments for them – cartridge boxes, cap boxes, bayonet scabbards, and waist belts.4  The firearms given to the men were .69 smoothbore muskets, a weapon that was obsolete even before the war began.  Guns such as these had a maximum range of 100 yards and an effective range of 50 yards, so anyone armed with such a weapon had to be in close contact with the enemy to have any hope of hitting him.  In the decade prior to the Civil War, great advances had been made in firearms technology, most notably the development of a rifle that was practical for military use.  The rifle made use of a grooved barrel to impart spin on an elongated bullet, greatly increasing its accuracy and range.  In the hands of a trained marksman, an individual target could be hit from as far away as 600 yards.  The South had few rifles at the beginning of the war, and was in fact hard pressed to provide all of its soldiers with smoothbore weapons.  The men of the 38^th would be at a distinct disadvantage if they came up against rifle equipped Federals, but until they were issued better weapons or acquired them on the battlefield, the “pumpkin slingers” would have to do.5

The men soon had a chance to test their weapons as the 38^th was ordered to the front lines shortly after their arrival at Corinth.  On May 28^th, one day after receiving their muskets, the regiment suffered its first combat casualties.  Privates William P. Cotton and Ed Ellis of Company A were both wounded while on picket duty out in front of the main entrenchments.6

Realizing he was hopelessly outnumbered, General Beauregard ordered his army to abandon Corinth on May 29, 1862.  Retreating to the southwest, the Rebels marched along the Mobile and Ohio Railroad 52 miles to Tupelo, arriving on June 9.  The soldiers were quickly put to work building a series of earthworks around the city to strengthen its defenses.7

Retreating to Tupelo exposed the men of the 38^th to their first real hardships of the war, and for most it was a rude awakening.  On June 10, 1862, Sgt. Thornhill wrote home describing conditions in the regiment:

…my dear companion a soldiers life is a hard life I will assure you we have tight times hear we get tolerable plenty of flour but not greese only what little we can get out of what little bacon we get and that is mighty little and you know that it is sorry living we get a little molasses sometimes no coffee nor no rice a little fresh beef and that is sorry eating we have been retreating now for two weeks but I think we will stop for a while.8

During the retreat the suffering of the soldiers in the 38^th was compounded by the large-scale outbreak of disease that swept through the ranks of the regiment.  Most Confederate soldiers, the 38^th included, came from rural backgrounds and had never been exposed to the diseases that were common to city-born troops.  Consequently, when exposed to large groups for the first time in their lives, they fell sick in alarming numbers.9

In the 38^th Mississippi, the casualties from disease were staggering: during the course of the war 218 men in the regiment died of disease, more than twice the number that were killed in combat.  190 of these men died during the regiments first nine months of service, after their initial exposure to these new diseases.  As the war went on the number of deaths due to disease tapered off as the survivors built up immunity; after nine months service, the regiment lost only 28 more men to disease for the remainder of the war.10

The Wilkinson Guards had the dubious distinction of losing more men to disease than any other company in the regiment.  An examination of one muster roll for the company reveals just how fast an epidemic could devastate a unit.  For the period from April 9, 1862 – June 20, 1862, 32 of the 128 men in the Guards died of disease.11 The other companies in the regiment were hard-hit as well; Sgt. Thornhill graphically described the effects that disease had on the Johnston Avengers:

…this leaves me in tolerable health although I am not well I have something similar to the mumps my jaws has been swelled and sore for several days but they are better now I do not think I have got the mumps.  J. J. Erwin and W. L. Owens are gone to hospital Isham has the measles this morning they are broak out right smart.  J. C. Erwin is sick and Elisha Breland is sick he has the measles…12

This was the last letter Sgt. Thornhill ever wrote to his family.  On July 3, 1862, he died at an army hospital in Columbus, Mississippi, a victim of the disease he described so well in his letter.13

Certificate from the Confederate Adjutant and Inspector General’s Office concerning the death of Sergeant James W. Thornhill of the 38th Mississippi Infantry (Compiled Service Record of James W. Thornhill, 38th Mississippi Infantry; accessed on Fold3.com, December 27, 2017).

In the wake of this epidemic, the 38^th Mississippi was left a shell of a regiment, in desperate need of more men to fill the depleted ranks.  In late June 1862, Colonel Adams received orders sending the unit to Columbus, Mississippi to recruit new men and build the 38^th back up to fighting strength, but the contagion continued to plague the regiment.  On June 28^th Erastus Hoskins, now the regimental quartermaster, wrote his wife with grim news about the effects of disease on the unit:

The health of the regiment has not improved any since we got here.  We send some to the hospital every day.  One company left home with a hundred and twenty men and has lost nineteen – they all died in hospitals.  Another company left home with one hundred twenty five and have lost twenty seven and I expect will lose another tonight…When a soldier dies in camp I have to get the coffin and the company bury him.   Some few have died in all the companies except in Captain Keirn’s.14

Due to the continuing sickness in the regiment, the effort to build up the strength of the 38^th was largely ineffective.  Of the 963 men who started out from Jackson in May, only 322 remained to take part in the unit’s first fight at Iuka in September.15

The 38^th remained in the Columbus area on recruiting duty until early August 1862 when

Colonel John D. Martin was the 38th Mississippi’s Brigade commander at the Battle of Corinth. (trr.cobb.blogspot.com)

they were ordered to Saltillo to rejoin the army.  On returning, the regiment was finally assigned to a permanent command: Colonel John D. Martin’s Brigade, Brigadier General Henry Little’s Division, Major General Sterling Price’s Army of the West.16

To fully understand the 38^th’s position in the chain of command, a brief overview of how Confederate armies were organized is in order.  At the very bottom of the chain was the regiment, the basic building block of an army.  On paper a regiment was 1000 men strong, but as in the 38^th’s case, disease and combat could reduce a unit to one quarter of that number.  A Colonel commanded a regiment, and his job exposed him to a high degree of personal danger.  Regimental officers were expected to lead by example and inspire the men under them with a conspicuous display of personal bravery.  This leadership by example often worked wonders for unit morale, but it also led to very high casualties in the officer’s ranks.17

The next step up in the chain of command was the brigade, consisting of two or more regiments under the leadership of a colonel or brigadier general or colonel.  Confederate brigades were generally named after their commander, and to instill a sense of unity, regiments from the same state were grouped together whenever possible.18  The 38^th was assigned to Martin’s Brigade, which consisted of the following units:

36^th Mississippi Infantry

37^th Mississippi Infantry

38^th Mississippi Infantry

37^th Alabama Infantry19

Leadership at the brigade level during the Civil war was very demanding job for the commanding officer.  His duties required not only personal bravery but also good management skills to keep control of the individual regiments in his brigade and have them fighting as a cohesive unit in the chaos of battle.20

The 38^th was fortunate to have Colonel John D. Martin as their brigade commander, a veteran who had already proven his leadership ability on the field of battle.  Martin began his military service as the commanding officer of the 25^th Mississippi Infantry, later designated the 2^nd Confederate Infantry.  Martin led the 2^nd at the bloody battle of Shiloh on April 6-7, 1862.  He showed his ability for higher command when late on the afternoon of the 6^th he took over leadership of the brigade after the wounding of Brigadier General John S. Bowen.  Martin led the brigade very credibly throughout the remainder of the battle, marking himself for promotion to a more responsible position.21  A soldier in the 36^th Mississippi Infantry said of him, “Col. Martin is a young man who, from appearances, has the vim necessary for a bold and dashing leader, and I believe is a favorite with the troops under his command.”22

The next level in the chain of command was the division, led by a brigadier general or

Brigadier General Henry L. Little was the 38th Mississippi’s Division Commander at the Battle of Corinth (www.wikipedia.com)

major general.  A division was made up of two or more brigades, and in combat it was the job of the division commander to remain close to his troops so that he could manage them effectively, but not get so close that he was sucked into the battle and lost control of the units under his command.23  Once again the 38^th was fortunate to be placed under a very experienced division commander, Brigadier General Henry Little.  A 22-year veteran of the United States Army, Little resigned his commission in 1861 to fight for the Confederacy.  He first drew attention to himself for the way he handled his brigade at the battle of Elkhorn Tavern, Arkansas, and shortly thereafter he was promoted to lead a division.24  General Little commanded the 1^st Division, composed of the following brigades:

1^st Brigade – Colonel Elijah Gates

2^nd Brigade – Brigadier General Louis Hebert

3^rd Brigade – Brigadier General Martin E. Green

4^th Brigade – Colonel John D. Martin25

At the top of the chain of command was the army, commanded by a general, lieutenant general, or major general.26  The Army of the West, commanded by Major General Sterling Price, consisted of two divisions of infantry:

1^st Division – Brigadier General Henry Little

2^nd Division – Brigadier General Dabney Maury

Rounding out the army was Brigadier General Frank C. Armstrong’s brigade of cavalry, and eleven batteries of artillery – nine attached directly to infantry brigades, and two serving as the reserve artillery.27  All told, Price had under his command approximately 17,000 men in the Army of the West.

The head of the army, Sterling Price, was a well-known figure in his home state of

Major General Sterling Price (Library of Congress)

Missouri, having served as its governor from 1853-1857.  Although he initially opposed secession, Price took command of the pro-Confederate state militia because of his disgust at the methods used by unionists to keep the state from joining the Confederacy.  Price cared very much for the men he commanded, and they in turn were very fond of him and gave him the affectionate nickname “Old Pap.”  Price led his Missourians into battle at Wilson’s Creek and Lexington, in Missouri, and Elkhorn Tavern in Arkansas, where his men earned a well-deserved reputation as extremely tough soldiers.  In early May 1862, Price accepted a commission in the Confederate Army as Major General.28

On March 29, 1862, Price was ordered to move his army east of the Mississippi River and Join P. G. T. Beauregard’s army defending Corinth.  The Army of the West participated in the retreat from Corinth on May 29, and soon after their arrival at Tupelo Beauregard was relieved of command and replaced by  General Braxton Bragg.29  The new commander began transferring the bulk of his troops to Chattanooga on July 21, a move that culminated in a Rebel invasion of Kentucky.  With the bulk of the army transferred out of state, only two organized Confederate forces were left to defend Mississippi: Price’s Army of the West, stationed in the northeast part of the state, and Major General Earl Van Dorn’s army garrisoned at Vicksburg.  To aid his movement into Kentucky, Bragg charged Price with keeping pressure on the federal troops in the vicinity of Corinth under the command of Major General William S. Rosecrans.  By maintaining a threat to Corinth, it was hoped that the Union general would not send reinforcements to the Federal army opposing Bragg in Kentucky.30

By late August 1862, Bragg had his army marching through Tennessee in route to Kentucky, and three Union divisions were detached from Rosecrans and sent to the aid of Major General Don Carlos Buell.  In early September Price began receiving reports indicating Rosecrans was preparing to move his entire force to join Buell.  With very clear orders from Bragg to prevent such reinforcements from taking place, Price put the Army of the West into motion on September 11, 1862, with his destination Iuka, Mississippi in the northeast corner of the state.31

Martin’s Brigade was positioned at the head of the army and spent much of the march on picket duty well out in front of the main Rebel column, watchful for any sign of the Yankees.  As they advanced the men could plainly see how the war had ravaged the countryside.  Sergeant George P. Clarke of the 36^th Mississippi Infantry described the desolation caused by the conflict:

Plantations were overgrown with briars and weeds, and the plows were rusting in the weedy furrows.  Those who had once followed them had already fallen in the heat of battle…an all pervading gloom brooded over the landscape and hill, and ghostly chimneys, surrounded by skeleton fences, proclaimed the fact that war is no child’s play.32

After three days of hard marching, the Rebels entered Iuka on the morning of September 14, only to find that Rosecrans had abandoned the town and retreated back to Corinth.33  Price had his men camp in the fields surrounding Iuka, and the 38^th, along with the rest of the army, ate well from the abandoned commissary stores left behind by the federals in their hasty retreat.34

While Price was planning his next move, Major General Ulysses S. Grant, Union commander of the District of West Tennessee was formulating a trap to destroy the Rebels at Iuka.  Grant’s strategy called for Major General Edward O. C. Ord to take his 8,000 men at Corinth and march on Iuka from the northwest.  At the same time, a second column of 9,000 men commanded by General Rosecrans was to march on Iuka from the southwest, cutting Price’s line of retreat.  If the two Yankee columns hit Price at the same time, his army would be destroyed or forced to surrender.35

By September 19, Grant’s trap seemed well on its way to a successful conclusion.  Rebel scouts sent back reports of the Union force approaching from the north, and Price deployed his army to meet this threat.  However, the column under Rosecrans approaching from the south along the Jacinto road was undetected by Price’s men as the Yankees moved into a blocking position across the Rebels line of retreat.  Price finally received word of this movement at 2:30 p. m. on the 19^th, and realizing the threat it posed, immediately ordered General Hebert’s Brigade into motion to meet this new danger.  Hebert made contact with the vanguard of the federal column one mile south of Iuka on the Jacinto road and took up a blocking position, forming his line of battle across the road.36

Grant planned to trap Sterling Price’s Army at Iuka with a pincer movement: Ord’s troops marching from the northwest and Rosecrans force from the southwest.  If the two federal columns could converge on Price at the same time, the Rebel general would be in a very difficult position.

Price realized one lone brigade couldn’t stop the powerful federal column without assistance, so he ordered General Little to take Martin’s Brigade and reinforce Hebert.  He was very concerned about the danger Rosecrans posed to his rear and he decided to accompany Little and personally monitor the situation on the Jacinto road.37

As Martin marched his men at the double-quick down the Jacinto road towards the sounds of battle, the soldiers of the 38^th Mississippi had to face their own inner fears as they prepared to face their baptism of fire.  None of the men recorded their thoughts on the subject, but they were probably very similar to those expressed by Sgt. Clarke of the 36^th Mississippi:

Every one felt that peculiar sensation that comes just on the eve of battle, and which only a soldier knows.  It has been described as something like the lump that gets into a young fellows throat when his about to ‘pop the question.’38

As General Little approached the front with Martin’s Brigade he found Hebert’s men engaged in a furious assault to capture the 11^th Ohio Battery at the center of the Union line.39  After a quick examination of the situation, Little determined his first priority was to secure Hebert’s flanks, ordering Colonel Martin to take the 36^th Mississippi and 37^th Alabama and move them to support the left of the Rebel line.  Little took personal command of the 37^th Mississippi and 38^th Mississippi and moved them to protect Hebert’s right flank.  He placed the 38^th with its left astride the Jacinto road, and the 37^th to the right of her sister regiment.  After placing the two regiments into line of battle, Little ordered the gray ranks to advance after warning Colonel Adams and Colonel Robert McLain of the 37^th not to fire as Hebert’s men were in front of them.40

Map of the Battle of Iuka (Civil War Trust, http://www.civilwar.org)

As Adams and McLain marched towards the Union line, General Little remained behind to consult with General Price.  As the two talked on horseback, a stray bullet whistled under Price’s arm and struck Little in the head, killing him instantly.  In the confusion that followed, the advance of the 38^th and 37^th was forgotten and for all intents and purposes the Mississippians were on their own.41

In his report of the battle, Colonel Adams stated that once given the order to attack, he marched the 38^th forward, keeping the regiments left flank aligned on the Jacinto road.  As they neared the Union line the regiment had to climb a gentle rise, and as they reached the top, Adams heard someone on his left in the road give the command to halt.  Assuming the order came from General Little, the Colonel halted the regiment in place.  This order came at the worst possible moment, for the 38^th had crested the hill and was now in full view of the nearby Union line of battle.  The exposed Rebels made an excellent target, and the cannoneers of the 12^th Wisconsin Light Artillery very quickly sighted in on the regiment and sent their explosive shells screaming into the 38^th’s line.  The air was filled with hot metal as the projectiles exploded around the men, and Colonel Adams ordered the regiment to lie down to avoid the storm of shrapnel.42

Adams’ next actions are very confused, and a close examination of the records left by the participants is necessary to understand what transpired on the battlefield that day.  In his report of the action Colonel Adams stated:

The regiment halted and remained under a heavy fire for some time on the hill, when a command was given by some one on the left to fall back.  I asked who the command came from, but was unable to ascertain.  The regiment fell back some 50 or 60 yards with but little confusion, and were rapidly formed in line again.  We moved forward again under order to join with General [John] Whitfield’s command, but about this time the firing ceased in our front, and it becoming dark, I halted and remained in that position until some time in the night.43

Lieutenant Colonel Brent also submitted a report on the battle, and his account of the 38^th’s retreat from the hill differs in one important aspect from that of Colonel Adams.  Brent stated when ordered to fall back, “…a portion of the regiment fell back in confusion, the remainder in good order.”44  Brent’s statement does not differ widely from that given by Adams, but it does indicate that the retreat of the 38^th was more disorganized than the Colonel was willing to admit.  There are no further wartime sources relating to the 38^th’s part in the battle of Iuka, but there is post-war evidence available that indicates that both of these reports were falsified to cover up a shocking case of cowardice on the part of Colonel Adams.  Captain James H. Jones of Company D made this damning accusation in his history of the Wilkinson Guards.  Jones wrote, “Participated in the battle of Iuka, and was one of two companies that stood after the flight of their Colonel from the fire of a masked battery.”45  One man’s charge of cowardice may be suspect, but Corporal Isiah Rush of the Van Dorn Guards confirmed Jones’s claim.  Rush applied for a Confederate soldiers pension in Texas in 1925, and on his application he wrote, “Adams, on account of cowardice at the battle of Iuka, resigned and Brent was elected Colonel.”46

Colonel Adams’s actions at Iuka begin to make sense when placed into context by the accusations of Jones and Rush.  The decision to halt the 38^th on top of a hill in full view of the enemy’s artillery based on a command given by an unidentified individual is not the action of someone eager to come to blows with the Yankees.  Even worse, Adams’ account of the regiment’s retreat appears to be an outright lie to cover up for the fact that his actions led to a stampede to the rear by most of the regiment.

If the regiment did break in the face of the enemy, and the available evidence indicates that it did  (Jones and Rush wrote their accounts years apart, in different states, and neither published their writing) the blame must be placed at the feet of Colonel Adams.  The 38^th Mississippi was a green unit fighting it its first battle, and the soldiers of the regiment looked to Colonel Adams for guidance and support.  When Adams lost his courage in the face of the enemy, it was only natural that it had a devastating effect on the morale of the men, and as a result many of them broke for the rear at the first opportunity.

Had Colonel Adams displayed a little more fortitude, the 38^th might have played a significant part in the battle.  Historian Peter Cozzens asserts that Adams

…withdrew his Mississippians sixty yards at precisely the moment when their continued presence might have hastened the capture of the 11^th Ohio Battery and provided the crucial reserves needed to carry the assault over the ridge…47

The 38^th’s rapid departure from the field also caused problems for their sister regiment, the 37^th Mississippi.  As that unit advanced, it was rocked by musket fire smashing into its right flank.  As the regiment wheeled to the right to deal with this threat, the 37^th was hit again, this time on its exposed left flank where the 38^th was supposed to be.  The enraged men of the 37^th concluded

The Thirty-Eighth Mississippi had disappeared from their left at the same time McLain’s men took their first volley from that direction, leading them to conclude that their fellow Mississippians had run.48

As night settled over the battlefield, the fighting slowly sputtered to a halt, and the darkness was filled with the groans and cries of hundreds of wounded men.  The 38^th’s casualty list reflects the short time the unit spent under fire: the regiment took 322 men into the battle, and of that number only 4 were killed and 4 wounded.  Among the dead was 2^nd Lieutenant Jonathan M. Price of the White Rebels, who had the dubious distinction of being the first officer of the regiment killed in action.  The 38th also had 31 men missing, which is not surprising considering the nature of their chaotic flight from the front lines.49  Once the officers had completed the task of reforming the regiment, the 38^th rejoined Martin’s Brigade and was posted on the front line to the left of Colonel Elijah Gates’ Brigade where they spent a fitful night in close proximity to the Union picket line.50

The Yankees and Rebels had fought each other to a draw on the first day of battle, and General Price intended to continue the contest the next day.  But during the night Price’s senior officers convinced him to withdraw because his army was in danger of being crushed between two Union forces.  Price had been very lucky on the 19^th, for General Ord north of Iuka had not been able to hear the sounds of battle, and believing Rosecrans was still some distance from the town, refused to attack.  Price received another lucky break from General Rosecrans, who left the Fulton road leading south out of Iuka open and unguarded.  During the night Price marched his army down this path heading towards Bay Springs.51

As the 38^th marched silently out of Iuka in the early morning hours of September 20, it did so without its colonel.  Claiming a knee injury in the fight, Adams relinquished command of the regiment to Lieutenant Colonel Brent.  On September 24, Adams sent in his resignation and requested a leave of absence until it was approved.  The colonel quietly faded away and was never seen again by the regiment.  With Adams gone, it was now in the hands of Preston Brent to build the 38^th into a hard fighting regiment.52

The Rebel retreat ended at Baldwyn, Mississippi, but the bad luck that had plagued the 38^th during the campaign did not end with Colonel Adams departure.  Sgt. Clarke of the 36^th Mississippi observed one tragic incident involving the regiment and wrote about it in his memoir:

I am now going to relate one of the saddest and most heart rending incidents that came under my observation during the whole war.  There were two brothers in our Brigade – members I think, of the 38^th Mississippi Regiment.  They had not been at home since their enlistment the winter before.  The day after our arrival at Baldwyn, their mother and sister arrived at the camp on a visit to them, bringing clothing and a box of delicacies from home.  The two brothers had been on picket or guard duty, and came up just as the two ladies arrived at the camp.  Their guns were loaded, and as they met the ladies one of them brought his gun to the ground with such force that by some means it fired, sending the whole load through the head of his brother, killing him instantly before he had time to return the salutations of his relatives.  Speak of heart rending cries and lamentations, but in all my life I never heard that which followed this accident exceeded.53

These brothers mentioned by Sgt. Clarke were J. G. and S. L. Leonard, members of the Van Dorn Guards from Claiborne County.  In his service record, J. G. Leonard is listed as “…accidentally killed on the retreat from Iuka, September 23, 1862.”  His brother S. L. Leonard later deserted from the regiment and never returned.54  It was a bad ending to a bad campaign for the 38^th that left the regiment with a tarnished reputation.  But the fortunes of war gave them the chance to redeem themselves a few weeks later at the crossroads of Corinth, Mississippi.

1 J. A. Gillespie to William Allen, 25 July 1862.  Original letters are in the William Allen Collection, Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State University.

2 James H. Jones, History of Company D.  Original manuscript is in the J. F. H. Claiborne Papers, University of North Carolina Library, (Chapel Hill, NC);  Roster of Company D, 38^th Mississippi Infantry, Record Group 9, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

3 Moneyhon and Roberts, 95, 140.

4 Ordnance Invoice, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 62.

5 Henry Woodhead, ed., Echoes of Glory: Arms and Equipment of the Confederacy (Morristown, NJ: Time Life Books, 1991), 21-27.

6 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, rolls 62-63.

7 Peter Cozzens, The Darkest Days of the War: The Battles of Iuka & Corinth (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 23.

8 James W. Thornhill to Jane Thornhill, 10 June 1862.  Original letters are owned by Mrs. Norma Fortenberry (Osyka, MS).

9 Wiley, 245-246.

10 Muster rolls, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, rolls 62-65.

11 Muster roll, Company D, 38^th Mississippi Infantry, 9 April 1862 – 20 June 1862, National Archives, Record Group 109, Box 405.

12 James W. Thornhill to Jane Thornhill, 10 June 1862.  Original letters belong to Mrs. Norma Fortenberry (Osyka, MS).

13 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 65.

14 Erastus Hoskins Letters, 28 June 1862.

15 Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 133; Series 4, Volume 2, 934.

16 Rowland, Military History, 331.

17 Paddy Griffith, Battle in the Civil War (Field Books, 1986), 22.

18 Mark M. Boatner III, The Civil War Dictionary (New York: David McKay Company, 1959), 612; Griffith, 22.

19 Rowland, Military History, 332.

20 Griffith, 22.

21 Stewart Sifakis, Compendium of the Confederate Armies: Mississippi  (New York: Facts on File, 1995), 114;  Official Records, Series 1, Volume 10, Part 1, 621-625.

22 “Letter from Gen. Price’s Army.”  Daily Mississippian, 12 September 1862.

23 Boatner, 611;  Griffith, 22.

24 Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Gray  (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959), 188-189.

25 Cozzens, 325-326.

26 Griffith, 22.

27 Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 374-375.

28 Warner, Generals in Gray, 246-247.

29 Cozzens, 12, 23.

30 Terry Winschel, “A Fierce Little Fight In Mississippi,” Civil War Times Magazine, August 1994, 52.

31 Ibid., 52-53.

32 George Powell Clarke, Reminiscence and Anecdotes of the War for Southern Independence (Decatur, MS: Privately Published, 1996), 40.

33 Winschel, 53.

34 Edwin C. Bearss, Decision in Mississippi (Little Rock: Pioneer Press, 1962), 21.

35 Ibid., 26-27.

36 Cozzens, 78.

37 Winschel, 57.

38 Clarke, 42.

39 Cozzens, 98-100.

40 Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 131-135.

41 Cozzens, 100-101.

42 Bearss, Decision in Mississippi, 53;  Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 135.

43 Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 135.

44 Ibid.

45 Jones, History of Company D.

46 Pension application of Isiah Rush, September 1925, Texas Library and Archives Commission, (Austin, TX).

47 Cozzens, 101.

48 Ibid., 102-103.

49 Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 133-136;  Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 64.

50 Bearss, Decision in Mississippi, 54.

51 Ibid., 34, 56-57.

52 Official Records, Series 1, Volume 17, Part 1, 135;  Muster roll, CSR-MS,

53 Clarke, 45.

54 Muster roll, CSR-MS, Record Group 9, roll 64.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Across Five Christmases

In honor of Christmas 2017, I thought I would take a look back at five Christmases in Mississippi; those of 1861 – 1865 to see how they were reported in the newspapers of the time. This first article comes from the Natchez Daily Courier, December 25, 1861, when the war was still a novelty:

“Merry Christmas.”

“Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;”

Who wrote the above lines? We should like to know, for since we can recollect, at Christmas Eve, they always float through our brain like far-off strains of sweetest melody,

Listing of Christmas Day Church Services in Natchez (Natchez Daily Courier, December 25, 1861)

and as old Time silvers our once brown hair, our happy boyhood’s Christmas Eve, with its joyous, innocent sports, rendered more pleasant by the presence of a loved father and mother, brothers and sisters, comes back to us in thoughts too gladsome to think upon. “No more; never, no more.”

This morning our little folk will be up with the dawn; soft beds and downy pillows will have no attractions for them, while little, barefooted feet will patter over the cold floor to the chimney corner, to see what the Patron Saint of Christmas gifts has bequeathed them. How their bright eyes will glisten, as with almost suppressed breath they proceed slowly and carefully to empty their stockings of their precious contents. Santa Claus’s heart will be filled with deep, quiet joy, and vow that each succeeding Eve shall rival the last. 

Men and women – you who have to stem Life’s stern realities; who battle for your Country’s cause with the sword and needle, on the battlefield and in the hospital, on the lonely sentinel rounds and about the dying soldier’s couch, in the tent and in the house – to all, Men, Women and Children, we wish you, with many, many happy returns, a “Merry Christmas.”

By the Christmas of 1862, the war was no longer young, and many Mississippians had given their lives on battlefields across the south. On December 25, 1862, the Natchez Daily Courier published this article:

CHRISTMAS.

“The peculiar situation of our country, forbids us realizing the usual pleasures and festivities of a Christmas Day, in all their bearings. Fathers and sons are absent in the tented field; many a family mourns the loss of some loved one, struck down by the invader;

Advertisement requesting volunteers to help decorate Trinity Church in Natchez for Christmas (Natchez Daily Courier, December 16, 1862)

while others are suffering from the crushing and vindictive acts of the inhuman foe. Under such circumstances, it cannot be expected that homes will look natural, or the inmates gathered about the hearth-stone appear altogether gay. Yet to such of us who may be permitted to greet each other on this occasion of Christmas, we cannot refrain from wishing a happy season. Let us remember those who are absent, and invoke the God of all mankind, that they may be returned to us before another Christmas, with the blessings of Peace to our glorious Confederacy.

Christmas has been celebrated from time immemorial by the believers in Christ, and many times have the Roundheads of the ancient puritanical stock attempted its suppression. Some of these same Roundhead descendants, at the North, are now the prime movers for the destruction of the South; and should they succeed, it would not astonish us at all to hear of their making, as in ancient days, one grand attempt to destroy the time-honored institution of Christmas. The old Roundheads decided that it was impious to eat cake and drink ale on Christmas; why should the latter-day, Abolition Roundheads hesitate to set aside Christmas day altogether as a season of Christian rejoicing and festivity?

But we hope the Butlers, the Banks, and all other Cromwellian Roundheads of New England, will be banished [from] the South before another Christmas Holyday.”

Far from being banished, by the time Christmas 1863 rolled around, much of Mississippi had been invaded and occupied by the Union army. One of the towns that fell to the Yankees was Natchez, but the Union soldiers stationed there found the Confederates in the region still had some fight left in them that December of 1863. On December 30, 1863, the Chicago Tribune reported:

NATCHEZ, MISS., DEC. 16, 1863

“For some time nothing has appeared in the Tribune to let people at home know that there is such a place as Natchez, and to remind them that the secesh have not yet left us in undisturbed possession of the most beautiful of the Mississippi cities and its rich plantations. We had even been congratulating ourselves that our time would be served out here until this ‘cruel war is over,’ and we could march with shouts of joy to our old homes, when suddenly Wirt Adams, the same who sought after Col. Ben Grierson so earnestly and took such good care to keep out of his way when Grierson found him, appeared on a creek three miles from here. Gen. Gersham had fortunately just arrived, and marching out with infantry and artillery, he sent his cavalry under Col. Farrar to get in their rear. The colonel, although an infantry officer, handles cavalry better than any other in the corps.

Union Occupation Troops at Natchez (www.natchez.org)

By cutting across through plantations, over roads where the enemy never thought of looking for him or for any other man, he succeeded in getting entirely around them, and reached a position, where, could the rest of the forces have been brought up in time, we must have forced the rebels back on the troops around Natchez. But Adams had artillery and Col. Farrar had only cavalry, so was shelled out of his position and the chivalry slipped through our fingers. They are still hovering around here and are the same party who on Friday last, fired on the steamer ‘Brazil,’ between Waterproof and Rodney, killing two ladies. Fine chivalry, are they not? 

Christmas 1864 found many Mississippi cities still occupied, and both sides hoping for an end to the bloody conflict. On December 20, 1864, The Vicksburg Herald noted:

“CHRISTMAS – Before another issue of our paper shall reach our readers, Christmas will

General Orders No. 6 Concerning the Celebration of the Christmas Holiday in Vicksburg (The Vicksburg Herald, December 20, 1864)

have come and gone. May it prove to each an all a happy Christmas – carrying joy and gladness to every heart, and run as a sweet fore-token of the happy day when ‘peace on earth and good will to man’ shall be the burden of every prayer and the aspiration of every heart in our broad land. 

May it be the last Christmas which shall visit us as a people belligerent, and a nation discordant and dissevered. May the next Christmas dawn upon us a united people, with war’s ugly scars all healed, war’s rude emblems cast aside, and the old ship of State sailing proudly on in her grand and glorious career, more bright and more beloved for the fires through which she has passed. 

May he, who overrules all things, see fit in his mercy and tender kindness to put it in the hearts of those who are now seeking the destruction of the freest and best government heaven ever gave to unworthy men, to desist from their wickedness, and come back like prodigal children to the parents bosom they have so sorely wounded by their unholy and unnatural warfare.”

Christmas 1865 saw peace return to a weary land, and white Mississippians attempting to come to terms with their loss. The following article is from The Weekly Standard in Port Gibson, December 23, 1865:

CHRISTMAS EVE!

“To-morrow night, ‘the eve before Christmas,’ they merry little kingdom of juvenillity will retire gaily and gladly to sweet slumbers and pleasant dreams of well filled stockings, fll of barking dogs, and crying dolls, and chirping birds, and all the delicious little nic-nacs that look so bright and beautiful to the sparkling, dancing eyes of childhood. Noise and toy’s and glad little hearts filled with holiday joys, will give signs of a merry time with thousands of precious little rebels who for four years past have been indulging Christmas festivities in a ‘gone up’ ‘so-called’ country, on pea-nuts and molasses candy. 

Old Kris-Kringle will find many little lips, the lips of new born rebels, to kiss as he passes from one cosy little bed to another, that he never kissed before, and many of the stockings will have grown out of his knowledge, for he too deserted rebeldom when secession took from him his Chimney-Corner domain. It is gratifying to know that at least one class of people can feed, and feast, and fatten, and breathe the free pure air of this blessed Sunny land without test oaths or pardons, and we hope the little ones will be allowed full swing – let them be ‘gay and happy,’ and fill them to the tip of the nose with sweet meats, for many have been without for many years, and many never saw such things. They belong to a region of bliss, of blissful ignorance of the trials and troubles that inhabit older hearts – they know but one Constitution and one creed, that which begins ‘now I lay me down to sleep.’

Santa Claus Illustration by Cartoonist Thomas Nast

While the period of the festive season returns to us to find a sad heart, so far from marring the general joy with our own sorrows, we offer to each and all the friendly grasp, and the salutations and smiles of festive greetings. We tender to the old and the young, the grave and the gay, the compliments of the season, and a thousand good wishes that they may have many returns of happy holy-days, and that those who surround each home and hearth, may be ‘as merry as a marriage bell.’ Christmas Gift!

To all the readers of my blog – I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

 

The Mementoes of that Tragic Conflict: Civil War Artifacts in the Museum of Mississippi History

For the past four years as I have worked at the Mississippi Department of Archives & History, I have been able to look out the windows of our reading room and watch the construction of the Museum of Mississippi History. I take great pride in this building, as I played a small part in helping to create the exhibits that went into it. Before coming to work at MDAH, I was employed as an historical researcher at Communication Arts Company in Jackson. At the time I was hired, my primary job was to do research for the exhibits going into the new museum, and I spent years in completing that task. After so much work, and so many years of waiting, the museum opening is only two days away; the grand opening is on December 9, 2017!

The Museum of Mississippi History under construction in October 2014. (Photo by Author)

In honor of the opening of our new Museum of Mississippi History, I thought I would share some information about Civil War artifacts that were donated to MDAH in the early years of the department’s history. A few weeks ago while doing some research I found a catalog of the museum’s holdings dating from the late 1920’s – the following information comes from this manuscript:

“CATALOG OF THE COLLECTIONS IN THE HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM OF THE MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY”

[Series 1382, Box 5415, MDAH]

When the Mississippi Department of Archives and History was being proposed in 1901, one of the main components of the new agency was envisioned as “An Historical Art Gallery. It is intended that this collection should embrace the portraits or statues of great Mississippians and the views of historic places and events.” [“Historical Society,” Weekly Clarion-Ledger, November 28, 1901]

When the Mississippi Department of Archives and History was established in 1902, it did indeed include a “Hall of Fame” which is still in existence and is still adding portraits of distinguished Mississippians. By the time this catalog was written in the late 1920’s, the Hall of Fame already had 96 portraits, many of which were Mississippians that had fought in the Civil War. Among those listed in the catalog were the following portraits:

Jefferson Davis (1808-1889):
Jefferson Davis was president of the Confederate States of America. Before that, he served in the U.S. Army, as a representative and senator in the U. S. Congress, and as secretary of war. [Photo by author, text is from: http://www.mdah.ms.gov/oldcap/hall-of-fame.php%5D

Earl Van Dorn (1820-1863):
Earl Van Dorn, a veteran of the Mexican War, also fought in the United States Army in the Seminole War and against the Comanches in the West. He served as a major general in the Confederate Army and won fame for his successful cavalry raid on Holly Springs. [Photo by author, text from: http://www.mdah.ms.gov/oldcap/hall-of-fame.php%5D

William Wirt Adams (1819-1888):
William Adams organized the First Mississippi Cavalry Regiment of the Confederate Army and fought in the battles of Shiloh, Corinth, Iuka, Raymond, and Champion Hill. He was a state representative before the war and later served as a state revenue agent and U.S. postmaster. [Photo by author, text from: http://www.mdah.ms.gov/oldcap/hall-of-fame.php%5D

I already mentioned that the catalog was compiled in the late 1920’s – the manuscript itself is not dated, but this description of a dress on pages 4-5 gave me a very clear indication of when it was put together:

“This dress was made about 1781, several years before the cotton gins invention. Made 148

Jane Grafton’s Dress [MDAH Museum Division Collections, Accession #1960.326.1]

years ago. Mrs. Jane Grafton, who lived in Adams County near Natchez, raised the cotton, picked the seed from the cotton, spun the thread, wove the cloth, raised the indigo used in dyeing the blue stripe and made the garment by hand, sewing it with homespun thread. Preserved and presented to the State Historical Department by Mrs. S.L. Chamberlain of Greenwood, Mississippi, a great grand daughter of Mrs. Jane Grafton, September 19, 1917.”

On page 5 I found this curiously worded listing:

“Presentation of flag to Rodney Guards, Co. D, 22nd Miss. Inf. C.S.A.”

I found the following article concerning the flag of the Rodney Guards in the Port Gibson Reville (Mississippi), April 12, 1906:

One of those pathetic incidents that so often spring up in connection with the late War Between the States occurred yesterday afternoon in the offices of the Department of Archives and History, when two battle-scarred veterans of the Civil War turned over to the the State the flags under which they had fought so valiantly and which they had preserved with so much care for over forty years.

The mementoes of that tragic conflict were secured by John W. Broughton, Confederate history commissioner for Jefferson County, while the two men who released their much prized banners were Joseph Kling of Jefferson County and A.M. McCallum of Union Church. The flags were of most magnificent design. The first was that of the Rodney Guards, which was made and presented during the early part of the war by the ladies of Rodney, to whom it was returned when the regimental flag was adopted…The most pathetic feature of the presentation came when Mr. Kling, who had been desperately wounded at the Battle of Shiloh, gave up his old company flag.

The old man, now fast approaching the allotted three score and ten years, made a striking figure with his long, wavy hair, which time had changed to a silvery gray, with his eyes moistened with tears at the thought of parting with his much loved flag, and with voice throbbing with emotion and feeling. He stated to Mr. Rowland in charge of the department, that he had intended to die and be buried with the banner by his side, but after much persuasion had been induced to donate it to the collection being gotten up by his state for the preservation of the memories of that noted conflict. A strange coincidence is the fact that yesterday was the forty-fifth anniversary of the wounding of Mr. Kling at the battle of Shiloh…

At the time of the battle of Shiloh, Joseph Kling was serving as a sergeant in the “Rodney Guards,” Company D, 22nd Mississippi Infantry. His service record notes that he was “wounded and taken prisoner at battle Shiloh & returned to Co. October 24, 1862.” Kling returned to the 22nd Mississippi, and was wounded and captured again at Pulaski, Tennessee, on December 24, 1864. He spent the remainder of the war in a prison camp. Kling lived in Jefferson County, Mississippi, until his death in 1914.

On Page 7 was an item that spoke to a significant loss to the Union navy during the Civil War:

“This brass ring was a part of the steam cylinder of the Federal Gunboat De Kalb, sunk by the Confederates in the Yazoo River, one an one-half miles below Yazoo City, in 1864. Presented Aug. 29, 1911, by W. G. Deles of Yazoo City.”

USS Baron DeKalb – The catalog was off by a year, the ironclad was sunk in the Yazoo River on July 13, 1863, and never raised. [www.navsource.org]

Since the sinking of the Baron DeKalb in 1863, when the Yazoo River is low, the remains of the boat are visible – the picture below was taken in the early 1950’s:

Photo of the wreck of the Baron DeKalb [The Yazoo Herald, March 31, 1960]

During the war, both the Union and Confederate armies were swept by religious revivals; one reminder of this spiritual awakening was found on Page 12:

“Book of Prayers and other Devotions for the use of the soldiers of the army of the Confederate States” A copy of this book has been digitized and can be found online at: docsouth.unc.edu.

 

Some artifacts listed in the catalog were powerful reminders of the “Lost Cause.” such as this listing from Page 14:

“Star from Head Quarters Flag of General N.H. Harris, which was used at the siege of Petersburg.” 

General Nathaniel H. Harris of Vicksburg commanded a Mississippi Brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia [Old Court House Museum, Vicksburg, Mississippi]

There are many items on the catalog list that belonged to Confederate officers that served in the Civil War; one such item is listed on Page 16:

“Derringer captured by General W.S. Featherston from a Federal Officer during the Confederate War. Presented by Mrs. Hamilton Johnson, January 19, 1920.

Brigadier General Winfield Scott Featherston commanded Mississippi brigades in both the eastern and western theaters of the war [wikipedia entry for Winfield S. Featherston]

Some of the artifacts initially donated to the State Historical Museum were found to be better suited to the State Archives: a good example is the following manuscript found on Page 17:

“Note Book of Rev. A. A. Lomax, Chaplain Sixteenth Mississippi Regiment Infantry, Army of

Picture of Reverend Alexander A. Lomax [The Baptist, Jackson, Miss., July 18, 1901]

Northern Virginia, 1864.” This item is now in the Archive holdings listed under catalog #Z/0772.000/SF. This notebook belonged to Reverend Alexander A. Lomax, and our online catalog describes it thus: “Diary and notebook of the Reverend Alexander A. Lomax, chaplain of the 16th Mississippi Regiment. The book includes a ‘catalog of officers and members of church, 16th Miss.,’ a list of sick and wounded in the regiment, a list of persons baptized by Lomax in 1863 and 1864.”

Originally a member of the 12th Mississippi Infantry, Lomax became chaplain of the 16th Mississippi Infantry in December 1863. He was known as the “fighting chaplain” for his habit of picking up a musket and fighting during the regiment’s battles. He explained his reason for fighting thus: “My place is on the firing line; for if any of my boys should be mortally wounded, I would be there to take a dying message to a loving mother, wife, sister or sweetheart; and if in the rear, the poor soldier might die before I could get to him.” [http://npshistory.com/series/symposia/gettysburg_seminars/5/essay8.htm]

Some of the artifacts listed in the catalog were very simple, but filled with meaning. One such item was listed simply: “This book was the property of Colonel M. Farrel, Fifteenth Mississippi who was killed at the Battle of Franklin…The book was a present from Lieutenant Robert L. Johnson, Company C, Fifteenth Mississippi.” 

Colonel Michael Farrell was an Irish immigrant who commanded the 15th Mississippi

The Clarion-Ledger, May 19, 1870

Infantry; mortally wounded at the Battle of Franklin, he died on Christmas Day, 1864. He must have been much beloved by his men, as they campaigned after the war to have a monument built to his memory. I found the following written about Colonel Farrell in The Nashville American, November 13, 1905: “As to our lamented and brave Mike Farrell, too much cannot be said in his praise. As an officer you know his record, and as a true Southern patriot he fought and died for principle. He did not have a relative in the South, neither did he own one dollar’s worth of property. He was a very poor man, working at his trade – a brickmason – when the war began, and even the horse he rode and loved so dearly (Old Bullet) was a present to him from his command.”

Colonel Farrell never got his monument; today he rests in the Confederate cemetery at

Gravestone of Colonel Michael Farrell (findagrave.com)

Franklin Tennessee, his only marker a small, square stone with the letters “Col. M.F.” chiseled into it. His small book, however, still exists in the collections of the Mississippi Museum of history as a small reminder of the gallant Colonel Farrell of the 15th Mississippi.

Some of the artifacts listed in this catalog belonged to people I have already written about: a good example is found on Page 36: “The Historical Relics on the two middle shelves are preserved in the Mississippi State Museum in memory of Captain T. Otis Baker of Natchez, Mississippi, Captain of Company B. Tenth Mississippi Regiment of Infantry, C.S.A.” I wrote about T. Otis Baker back in July 2011, and that article can be found here: https://mississippiconfederates.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/soldier-spotlight-t-otis-baker-10th-mississippi-infantry/. I highly recommend reading this article, although I must say I am a bit biased; but still it’s a very interesting story about a young soldier who grew up on the battlefields of the Civil War. I am also very happy to say that T. Otis Baker’s Uniform and equipment have a honored spot in the new Museum of Mississippi History.

Uniform of Captain T. Otis Baker in the new Museum of Mississippi History (Photo by Author)

Some items in the catalog are reminders of the famous ships used in the war; such as this artifact found on Page 38: “Brass spike from the ‘Star of the West,’ vessel which was sunk in the Tallahatchie River to prevent Grant’s army’s reaching Vicksburg 1863. Same vessel which drove the United States forces from the harbor of Charleston in 1861. Had been captured by the Confederates.”

Illustration of the Star of the West from Harper’s Weekly, January 19, 1861.

For years after she was sunk, the wreck of the Star of the West was visible when the Tallahatchie River was low. In 1870 a newspaper said of the wreck:

At Fort Pemberton, six miles above the entrance of the Tallahatchie into the Yazoo, the wreck of the famous steamship Star of the West lies where she scuttled and sunk, directly in the middle of the river, and a dangerous obstruction to passing steamers. The engine walking beam, greatly injured by rust, and one weather-beaten wheel-house of this monster steam-ship stand high above the level of the river, to warn approaching vessels from above

Illustration depicting the wreck of the Star of the West (Battles & Leaders, Volume 3)

or below that they must give the wreck as wide a berth as possible. The channel at this point admits only a few spare feet on either side, while the current is swift as a mill-race, and pilots must exercise their best care and skill to make the run successfully. The Star of the West, it will be remembered, was driven to sea, off Charleston harbor, by Confederate batteries, when making an effort to provision Fort Sumter, and caused the firing of the first gun of the war. She was afterwards captured off Galveston, Texas, by Van Dorn and a party of Confederates under him, carried into New Orleans, and finally up the Yazoo. She was an unlucky vessel, and never did the Confederates any good, except to entail expense in caring for her. The blackened hulk and rusty, weather-beaten machinery may lie for ages in their present position, a fitting emblem of her useless career. [Tri-Weekly Clarion, January 1, 1870]

Some of the items donated to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History were rather…esoteric, such as this item from Page 40 of the catalog:

“This tobacco is 60 years old. It was brought home by John McDonnell of Cowan’s Battery

Post-war picture of John McDonnell (Confederate Veteran Magazine, Volume 13, page 322)

at the close of the Civil War. Preserved by Mrs. Elizabeth McDonnell and presented December 15, 1910.” A Jackson newspaper actually wrote an article about this donation to the museum, saying, “The tobacco is of the home-made plug, and is in an excellent state of of preservation. It is 45 years old, and still retains much of its strength.” [Jackson Daily News, December 6, 1910]

Fortunately for posterity, John McDonnell’s wife left the museum a few other artifacts related to his service in the Civil War:

“Confederate coat, Knapsack and saddle bags of John McDonnell of Cowan’s Battery…Preserved by Mrs. Elizabeth McDonnell and presented December 15, 1910.”

I am not certain about the tobacco, but I am happy to report that John McDonnell’s Uniform coat is on display in the new museum.

John McDonnell’s Uniform Coat on Display in the Museum of Mississippi History (Photo by Author)

I thought I would close this article with an artifact from the catalog that has a very personal meaning to me. Found on Page 43 of the catalog is the following description:

“A remnant of the Battle Flag of the ‘Bloody” Sixth Mississippi Regiment carried at the Battle of Shiloh and through many battles during the War for Southern independence. At the Battle of Shiloh, seven color bearers were killed and wounded while carrying the flag.”

Flag of the 6th Mississippi Infantry, on display in the Museum of Mississippi History. (Photo by Author)

I get a little thrill every time I see these scraps of flag, still in the same apothecary jar it was in when donated to the museum. The reason is simple, it’s the call of blood and kinship; my G-G Grandfather, Littleton H. Johnson, and his half-brother, William H. Harper, both served in the 6th Mississippi, and would have seen this restless symbol of the Confederacy defiantly waving in the breeze.

There are thousands of artifacts on display in the Museum of Mississippi History, and I am sure that many of them will speak to you the way that the flag of the 6th Mississippi Infantry speaks to me. I encourage everyone that has an appreciation for Mississippi History to go see the new museum – you won’t be disappointed!