History - Company "A", 13th Iowa Infantry

Company A, Thirteenth Iowa Infantry, was enrolled at Mount Vernon, Iowa, September 12th to 20th, 1861. It went to Davenport early in October, and was mustered into the service of the United States for three years, November 1, 1861. With the regiment it went to Benton Barracks, near St. Louis, Missouri, November 20, 1861. The barracks were unhealthy, and the measles attacked the command, causing some deaths, and laying the foundation of disease which caused the discharge of a number of the men at a later period.

December 11, 1861, the regiment went to Jefferson City, Missouri, and went into camp in tents, and spent the winter, until March 8, 1862, when it went back to St. Louis, Missouri, and thence by the way of Cairo by boat up the Tennessee River to Pittsburg Landing. The 13th Iowa Infantry fought the Battle of Shiloh on April 6th and 7th, 1862. The number of men in the company in that engagement is not certainly known, but was about sixty-three. Of that number the casualties in the company were as follows: Killed or died of wounds, Seven; wounded and discharged for wounds, Nine (to include Private Alonzo Smith) ; wounded and not discharged, Nine. The killed and wounded in the entire regiment was one hundred and sixty-two; missing, nine.

The company, with its regiment, participated in the Siege of Corinth; the march to Boliver, Tennessee; the march to and Battle of Iuka; the Battle of Corinth, October 3 and 4, 1862; the pursuit of Price and Van Dorn to Ripley; the Campaign to Holly Springs, and south of that point, the return to Memphis; down the Mississippi River by boat to the vicinity of Vicksburg; the digging of canals to get around Vicksburg; the Siege of that city (Siege of Vicksburg); the expedition to Jackson, Mississippi; the expedition up the Yazoo River; the march to Monroe, Louisiana; the march to Meridan and return; then home on veteran furlough, March, 1864. Thence by boat up the Tennessee River to Clifton, Tennessee, across the country to Huntsville and Decatur, Alabama; across Sand Mountain to Rome, and joined the Army of General Sherman, for the Atlanta Campaign, at Ackworth, Georgia, June 8, 1864.

The record of the company in the Campaign against Atlanta challenges the attention of every soldier. On June 30, 1864, the tri-monthly report shows as follows:

Present for Duty: Commissioned Officers - Two

Enlisted Men - Forty-Eight

On Special Duty - Five

Absent on Special Duty: Commissioned Officers - One

Enlisted Men - Six

Sick: Eight

Total Absent and Present: Seventy

On July 2nd the Brigade moved to the right of the Army, and at five P.M. on the 3d relieved a brigade of the Fifteenth Corps under the command of General Giles A. Smith. The Eleventh and Thirteenth Iowa were in advance, and Company A on the Skirmish line, commanded by the dauntless Captain Kennedy. The enemy was pushed back rapidly one mile, when night stopped the movement. The company had suffered in wounded. On the 4th of July the brigade again advanced, the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Regiments in advance, until noon, when the Eleventh and Thirteenth again relieved them and took the advance. On that historic day no enemy could withstand the impetuous rush of the Iowa boys, and at night the enemy was driven behind the heavy outworks.

On the 5th the advance continued, and at three P.M. Captain Kennedy and the other commanders of the skirmish line had captured the works protecting the approach to the creek and were upon the banks of the Nickajack. The company remained upon the picket line that night and the next day. It was not their place on the roster of detail, but the order given to Colonel Shane was to place one his most trustworthy officers in this position. The creek was deep, crooked, and the crossing difficult and dangerous. A charge upon the works of the enemy, or one from them, was imminent. Consultation by the adjutant with the colonel resulted in the decision by that officer to keep Captain Kennedy and A Company in the position, in holding which they suffered severely and won the admiration of the entire brigade. The loss of the company in the advance on Nickajack Creek and holding the position were as follows: John R. McClaskey, July 6th, leg amputated; John J. Arford, July 6th, died; Samuel D. Umstead, July 3rd, died; Benjamin E. Butler, July 9th, wounded.

On the 20th of July began that grand advance which terminated in the great struggle of the 22nd of July. On the morning of the 21st the Regiment made its memorable charge upon the Rebel works, to enable General Leggett to capture and hold the famous Leggett’s Bald Hill, which formed the key to the position of July 22nd. In this charge, in which the regiment lost one hundred men in twenty-seven minutes, the company lost as follows: Killed - two; wounded - ten.

On July 22, 1864, when the brigade was so fiercely attacked, Captain Kennedy was sent, with four companies, to reinforce the Eleventh and Sixteenth Regiments. After a resistance as heroic as was ever made by soldiers, when the company had more prisoners in its trenches than there were men in it’s own ranks, after one of the gallant men had been thrust through with a bayonet because he did not promptly comply with the demand for surrender, and when completely surrounded by the Rebels, twenty-three men of the company were captured and started on that sorrowful march to the rear, the end of which was Andersonville, starvation, despair, and death. The losses of the company in this series of engagements from July 3rd to 22nd of July 1864, were forty-eight, leaving only seven present for duty of the fifty-five who had composed it on June 30, 1864.

The company participated in the remainder of the campaign; the pursuit of Hood; the "March to the Sea"; capture of Savannah; the march through the Carolinas; the capture of Columbia; Battle of Bentonville; march to Raleigh, Richmond, and Washington; the great review, and thence to Louisville, Kentucky, and muster out July 21, 1865, on the anniversary day of it’s Charge at Atlanta.

The Battle of Shiloh (Pittsburg Landing) on during April 6th and 7th, 1862 and the Battles around Atlanta, Georgia on July 21st and 22nd, 1864; took the heaviest toll on the men of both Company "A" and the 13th Iowa Infantry Regiment.

Contributed by:

M1A2 Training Assistance Fielding Team (TAFT)
Al Jahra Kuwait

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