 Iowa In the Civil War |
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Fighting Hawkeyes 4th Iowa Infantry Regiment Unit History
On the 17th, at Sugar Creek, near the extreme southwestern part of Missouri, the cavalry brought on a heavy engagement with the enemy, and Colonel Dodge's brigade was brought up to support the troopers and artillery, but the rebels retired before the infantry became actively engaged. Here the army halted a few days for rest and supplies, Price meantime continued his retreat to the Boston Mountains where he was reinforced by McCulloch, Van Dorn and McIntosh with a large body of troops, principally from Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, and a considerable number of Indians. The midnight march on March 5, 1861, from the Cross Hollows back to Sugar Creek; there was snow on the ground; that it was a cold sleety night, and the men set fire to the old deserted log houses to warm themselves by and that on the morning of March 6th, they lined up behind Sugar Creek and commenced entrenching and slashing down the timber. About 4 o'clock that afternoon, one of the scouts, belonging to Captain White's Independent Company, came to Colonel Dodge and informed him that the enemy was moving north on the Bentonville and Cassville road; that there was a deep ravine which the road passed through, which could be blockaded by falling timber in it. Dodge went to General Curtis immediately to report these facts and he ordered Dodge to take part of his command and two companies of the third Iowa Cavalry and blockade the road. It was night when the group started. Dodge took the Fourth Iowa and these two companies of the third Iowa Cavalry with him, and the scout guided them. Two companies under Captain Nichols got lost on the march and crossed the Cassville road. The rest of the group followed the road to the ravine and felled the timber on each side of the road for a long distance, until it was completely blocked. When the group returned about midnight, they could hear the enemy coming and were fearful they would cut off the 4th Iowa, but Captain Nichols found the enemy had missed them and returned to camp before the enemy came up. General Sterling Price in his report said that the blockading of this road held him until after day-light, as his men had no tools or axes to clear the road and prevented them from attacking as planned at daylight. Dodge was so sure that the enemy was in the rear that when he went to the conference of officers at a little log school-house, he took his whole brigade with hime so that when General Curtis heard the firing near the Elkhorn Tavern between eight and nine o'clock that morning, he saw Dodges command and asked whose it was and when the Colonel answered he ordered Dodge to proceed to the Elkhorn Tavern and see what the firing meant. Dodge soon discovered that there was a large force of the enemy in the rear and Colonel Carr, who was with Dodges command, sent for his whole division; thus, opened the great battle of Pea Ridge. When the Butterfield Company opened a stagecoach line between St. Louis and San Francisco in 1858, a shrewd Arkansas farmer who lived on the route converted his home into a tavern. His name was Jesse Cox, and his large two-story frame house stood just below the Missouri border at the east end of a swell of ground called Pea Ridge. To make certain that travelers would recognize and remember his tavern, Cox mounted the horns and skull of a huge elk at the center of the ridgepole. Elkhorn Tavern with its overhanging roof, wide porches, and big fireplaces soon became known as a place where "good cheer was most ample." Three years later, war was raging in Missouri, and the transcontinental coaches were no longer running on that route. During 1861 the Confederates won some victories in Missouri, but after Brigadier General Samuel R. Curtis took command of Union forces on Christmas Day, the tide began to turn. Jesse Cox watched anxiously as Confederate Brigadier General Ben McCulloch slowly withdrew from Missouri with his Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas troops. In February 1862, Brigadier General Sterling Price's Missouri Confederates also began retreating into the Boston Mountains of Arkansas, with Curtis' pursuing Federals not far behind. Cox sympathized with the South, but he was also concerned over the safety of his fine cattle herd. Thousands of soldiers foraging through the countryside could soon make short work of livestock without payment to the owner. Leaving his tavern in the care of his wife Polly and his young son Joseph, Cox set out for Kansas with the cattle herd. Before he returned, Elkhorn Tavern would become the vortex of one of the bloodiest battles fought west of the Mississippi River.
On March 3, Major General Earl Van Dorn, a handsome and flamboyant veteran of the Mexican War, arrived in the Boston Mountains to take command of the combined Confederate forces of Price and McCulloch. Responding to a forty-gun salute, Van Dorn promised his troops a victory after which they would sweep across Missouri to St Louis. They numbered 16,000 men, including a thousand Cherokees fresh from Indian Territory under command of Brigadier General Albert Pike. Van Dorn immediately set this army in motion northward, confident that he could smash the 10,500 Federals strung out across seventy miles of northwest Arkansas. He overlooked the fact that thousands of his men were without battle experience. Many were recent Arkansas volunteers, incensed by the invasion of their state. General Prices adjutant noted: "Very few of the officers had any knowledge whatever of military principles or practices. As for the Cherokees, they knew nothing of discipline or firing by command." For three days the Confederates marched through rain and melting snow, subsisting on scanty rations. On March 6, near Bentonville, Van Dorn's cavalry struck hard at one end of the Federals' extended line. General Curtis; however, had been alerted, and had already begun concentrating his forces along Little Sugar Creek, two miles below Elkhorn Tavern. When the Confederates attacked at Bentonville, Brigadier General Franz Sigel's two divisions under Peter Osterhaus and Alexander Asboth were moving into their new positions. Sigel himself directed the rear guard withdrawal until nightfall of the 6th, fighting off slashing attacks from Joseph Shelby's Missouri cavalrymen, Osterhaus and Asboth were moved into their new positions and prepared good defenses for the coming fight. In the extreme rear of Curtis' main line of defense was Elkhorn Tavern, still occupied by Polly Cox, her son Joseph, and his teenage wife, Lucinda. They were somewhat crowded by the addition of the Union army's provost marshal and his staff; the adjacent storehouses and barn were filled with army rations, and all about the grounds were wagons and tents containing ordnance and other supplies. Curtis's headquarters was a mile to the south. Nearby was Colonel Eugene Carr's division. On the bluffs above Sugar Creek, Colonel Jefferson C. Davis' division of Indiana and Illinois regiments was well dug in. West of Davis' position, Sigel's men were building fortifications and emplacing guns, facing southward. All preparations anticipated an attack from the south. As darkness deepened, a light snow began falling. Four miles away to the southwest, the campfires of the Confederate bivouac began twinkling; by 8 o'clock they were burning in a wide arc. Back to the Fighting Hawkeye's Index
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