 Iowa In the Civil War |
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Fighting Hawkeyes 4th Iowa Infantry Regiment Unit History
About 3 o'clock the following morning, March 7, Private Thomas Welch of the 3rd Illinois Cavalry was patrolling the road west of Elkhorn Tavern. Snow had stopped falling but the weather was bitter cold, and Private Welch was confident that he would meet neither friend nor foe in that extreme rear area. Then suddenly a party of Rebel cavalry loomed out of the night, and Private Welch was a prisoner. As he was hustled back down the road under guard he could scarcely believe what he saw--company after company of marching Confederate infantry, troops of cavalry, caissons, and numerous artillery pieces, Van Dorn had sixty-five guns against Curtis's fifty. To Welch it seemed that he was passing through the entire army of the C.S.A. Escape was uppermost in his mind, and at the first opportunity he turned into a side road and plunged into the icy undergrowth. As rapidly as he could, Welch made his way back through the woods to Elkhorn Tavern, awakened his commanding officer, and told him what he had seen. Welch's story reached Curtis's headquarters at 5 o'clock in the morning, about that same time reports were coming in from Sigel's camp that the enemy was moving in strength along the Bentonville road. By first daylight the entire Federal camp was alerted; the hundreds of Rebel campfires were still smoking but the Confederates had vanished. The plan for bypassing the Union army during the night and attacking in the rear was General McCulloch's. Van Dorn approved it, and soon after nightfall of the 6th he started Price's Missourians moving north along the Bentonville detour, an eight mile road which circled the Federal positions and then entered Telegraph Road, two miles north of Elkhorn Tavern. Ill with a cold, Van Dorn rode in an ambulance with the advance units. He left one division at the bivouac camp to guard the baggage train and keep campfires burning brightly for the benefit of the watchful Yankees. Around midnight the Confederates were delayed by trees which Colonel Dodge's Iowans had felled across the road. According to plan, Van Dorn should have been astride Telegraph Road, positioned for an attack by daylight, but he was three hours late getting there. Soon after dawn, advance cavalry units were already skirmishing along the Federal flank, and from Curtis's encampments came the sounds of blaring bugles, drums beating the long roll, and the rumble of artillery wheels. As soon as Curtis realized that Van Dorn had tricked him, he began turning his army around. Curtis wrote in his report of the battle: "I directed a change of front to the rear so as to face the road upon which the enemy was still moving. At the same time I directed the organization of a detachment of cavalry and light artillery, supported by infantry, to open the battle." It was Sigel's division under Osterhaus that moved out toward the Bentonville road to challenge McCulloch's army. At that time of the morning, McCulloch should have been five miles farther east, massed along Pea Ridge in close communication with Price's army which was beginning to cannonade the Federals near Elkhorn Tavern. This five-mile separation between Price and McCulloch would prove to be crucial before the day ended. Instead of attacking with two coordinated wings, Van Dorn was forced to fight two separate battles, one of them screened from his headquarters by hills and woods and too far away for any unity of direction. Osterhaus' regiments marched northwestward across fields filled with withered cornstalks, passing around Leetown where yellow hospital flags were already fluttering from the scattered houses of the hamlet. The night's coating of snow was melting rapidly. Along the south edge of a field, Osterhaus deployed infantrymen of the 36th Illinois and 12th Missouri, supporting them with a battery of the 4th Ohio. With bugles blowing and pennons flying, a squadron of the 3rd Iowa Cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel Henry Trimble then crossed the fields and advanced into a brushy wood. Confederate infantry waiting in concealment caught them in short musket range. During the next five minutes a large number of Iowans became casualties, including Trimble with a severe head wound. The survivors broke ranks and retreated. For the next two hours McCulloch's 10,000 Confederates dominated the field. At one time early in the fighting, confused Union artillerymen shelled their own troops, and Sigel was so dismayed by the way the battle was going that he was on the verge of advising Curtis to retreat or surrender. Around noon a charge by McCulloch's Texans, supported by Pike's Cherokees under Stand Watie, broke through the Federals' forward lines. The Indians attacked with rifles, shotguns, knives, and arrows, and "their war whoops were more terrifying than the Texans' Rebel yells." Union cavalrymen went tearing back in retreat, some without hats or arms, riding through the infantrymen with shouts of "Turn back! Turn back!" Stand Watie's Cherokees swept over a battery, killing the gunners, but they were so excited by their success that instead of pressing the Federal retreat into a route, they milled around the guns. General Pike later described them as "all talking, riding this way and that, and listening to no orders from any one." Taking advantage of this momentary lull, Sigel unlimbered his rear batteries, and at the first artillery fire the Indians scurried back into the woods as frightened as the Union cavalrymen had been of their scalping knives. At the same time, Osterhaus sent the 22nd Indiana and 36th Illinois Infantry regiments charging across the field to retake the battery. By 1:30 McCulloch's advance had been stalled. Pike and Stand Watie had finally restored order among the Cherokees, but it was evident that the undisciplined Indians would be no use in a frontal charge; they wanted to fight individually behind trees and boulders. McCulloch brought up one of his crack infantry regiments, the 16th Arkansas, and sent skirmishers forward. Mounting, he rode out ahead of the Arkansans' advancing lines. When the skirmishers moved into a brushy area, McCulloch went in with them. His black velvet coat and white felt hat made a good target for a squad of infantrymen from the 36th Illinois waiting behind a rail fence. He was struck in the breast and soon expired. Peter Pelican of Aurora, Illinois, fired once, leaped over the fence, and secured the dead general's gold watch before the advancing Arkansans drove him back to the cover of the fence. The time was 2 o'clock, a decisive hour in the contest between Curtis and Van Dorn. Carr, at Elkhorn Tavern, and Osterhaus, at Leetown, had both been calling urgently for reinforcements. Curtis decided to send his reserve division under Colonel Jefferson C. Davis to aid Osterhaus. Davis led off with his two Illinois regiments and two batteries of artillery. At this same hour Sigel and Asboth, who had been guarding the Bentonville road flank, started moving toward the Leetown area. General Price meanwhile had been giving Colonel Carr a severe mauling north of Elkhorn Tavern, and Van Dorn was confident that a coordinated attack by Price and McCulloch would bring a quick victory. He sent messengers racing to McCulloch with orders to attack in full force about 2 o'clock. McCulloch, however, was dead before the orders reached him. His successor, Colonel James McIntosh of the Arkansas Mounted Rifles, rallied the Confederates and led a charge against Federal infantry concealed in a dense woods. Fifteen minutes later McIntosh was killed, shot from his horse. Less than half a mile to the east, Colonel Louis Hebert's Louisianians had become entangled in a thick brushwood and were taking a severe shelling from Davis' batteries. Davis' 59th Illinois was on the edge of this same thicket. "The underbrush was so heavy," Lieutenant Colonel George Currie recorded, "we could not see twenty feet from us." Hebert's men finally surged out, fighting hand-to-hand with the Illinois infantrymen. A few minutes later the 18th Indiana, moving to the front in double-quick time, found the 59th Illinois retiring in disorder. Sure of victory, Hebert led his men out into the open, only to be flanked and then surrounded by fresh Illinois and Indiana troops. At 2:30 p.m., Colonel Hebert's brigade fell apart and he was captured. With their leaders gone, the units of Van Dorn's right wing collapsed. Demoralized soldiers retreated in confusion--divisions, regiments, and companies becoming intermixed. Batterymen and cavalrymen along the Bentonville road--most of whom had seen no action--waiting impatiently for orders, but none came. About 3 o'clock General Pike learned of the loss of the army's leaders. He tried to rally the troops near Leetown, but it was too late. He began riding about the rear area "an odd-looking figure in frontier buckskins" ordering his Indians and other scattered units to move toward the high ground of Pea Ridge and try to make their way to Van Dorn's position near Elkhorn Tavern. When Sigel reached Leetown about 4 o'clock to bring the full power of his artillery to bear on the Confederates, to his dismay, he found no one there to fight. Around Elkhorn Tavern that day; however, it was a different story. At about the same time that McCulloch's cavalry began their early morning skirmishing with the Federals near Leetown, Price's army of 6,200 men reached the Telegraph Road junction two miles north of Elkhorn Tavern. Very few Union soldiers were in that deep rear area, and the Confederates moved rapidly southward along Telegraph Road, meeting scattered resistance from the 24th Missouri Union Infantry. This regiment had been placed on light guard duty in the rear because its term of service had ended and the men were awaiting orders to be sent home. Two companies of Missouri and Illinois cavalry came to their aid. In an enveloping movement, Price sent his first and second brigades down the west side of the road, while he led a third brigade down the east side. A mile north of the tavern, Colonel Elijah Gates led his Missouri Confederate cavalry in a sweeping charge across the fields, fell back before heavy fire, dismounted his men, attacked, and was again driven back. To meet this thrust at his rear supply area, Curtis chose Colonel Eugene Carr, a born horse soldier with piercing eyes and a jutting black beard. Carr rode hurriedly up to Elkhorn Tavern, ordered his staff to establish division headquarters there, and immediately began forming a battle line. To the east of the road went Colonel Grenville Dodge's brigade; to the west Colonel William Vendever's brigade. When Carr first saw the advancing masses of Confederates he was amazed at the size of the force that had got in the Union army's rear. He sent an urgent call for reinforcements back to Curtis, and ordered Dodge and Vandever to take defensive positions and hold fast. Union artillery was already emplaced along both sides of the road facing southward; the pieces had scarcely been turned about when the Confederates opened a bombardment. For thirty minutes the big guns dueled, with Elkhorn Tavern in the midst of the exchange. A new York Herald correspondent, who had counted on the relative safety of Carr's division headquarters, reported: "A shell bursting upon a company of infantry beside the tavern; another fell among horse teams in the rear yard; a solid shot struck the building and passed completely through. Polly Cox, her son, and his wife were not injured; at the first shriek of an overhead shell they had taken refuge in the cellar." As dense clouds of smoke began covering Pea Ridge, a few reserve companies of infantry and cavalry and a battery of mountain howitzers reached Carr's headquarters. At that stage of the fighting, Curtis dared send no more troops to his right because of McCulloch's fierce assault against his left. "Colonel Carr," Curtis later wrote, "sent me word that he could not hold his position much longer. I could then only reply by sending him the order to 'persevere'." With almost uncanny accuracy, Price's gunners now began blasting the 3rd Iowa Battery from the ridge. A cavalry charge followed up the shelling, but was forced back by Vandever's 9th Iowa Infantry. In a succession of attacks and repulses that continued through the morning, both sides suffered heavy casualties, among them Price's most trusted brigadier, William Slack, mortally wounded. Both Carr and Price also were painfully wounded but refused to leave the field. About 2 o'clock, as though by mutual agreement, the exhausted troops of both armies drew apart for the first lull of the day. During this period Carr, still awaiting reinforcements, consolidated his defense positions, while Van Dorn prepared to mount a massive attack, hoping for a coordinated action from McCulloch's army to the west. By 3 o'clock the battle was raging furiously again, Price attacking Dodge's 4th Iowa and 35th Illinois with such force that Dodge's left collapsed. When Vandever saw what was happening, he ordered his brigade to shift rightward and close the gap. As Vandever was executing this change of front, Colonel Henry Little's Confederates swarmed out of the brush with wild yells, breaking through Vendever's 9th Iowa, capturing men and guns. "With a shout of triumph," Colonel Little reported, "Rives's and Oates's regiments dashed onward past the Elkhorn Tavern, and we stood on the ground where the enemy had formed in the morning." Bringing batteries forward, the Confederates quickly enfiladed Dodge's regiments, forcing them back to a rail fence opposite Vandever's hastily re-formed line. "At this time the ammunition of the 4th Iowa was almost entirely given out," Dodge reported, "and I ordered them to fall back, which they did in splendid order in line of battle, the enemy running forward with their batteries and whole force." As an early dusk fell over the smoky battlefield, Captain Henry Guibor unlimbered a Confederate battery directly in front of the tavern and began dueling with Carr's harried gunners, who had fallen back almost to Curtis' headquarters. About 5 o'clock Curtis himself came up with Asboth's division and found Carr still persevering, doggedly holding his line across Telegraph Road almost a mile below the tavern. Weariness from eleven hours of continuous fighting and loss of blood from three wounds had brought Carr near to collapse. Curtis immediately relieved him, ordered the troops to bivouac in position, and then asked for a report of casualties. The 4th and 9th Iowa regiments had paid heavily for their stubborn resistance. The men of the 24th Missouri, whose terms of service had ended, but who had to bear the first shock of Price's attack, had taken 25 percent casualties. Elkhorn Tavern, which had served as a Union headquarters in the morning, now became a Confederate headquarters. "My troops," said Sterling Price, "bivouacked upon the ground which they had so nobly won almost exhausted and without food, but fearlessly and anxiously awaiting the renewal of the battle in the morning." The tavern cellar served as a hospital, one of the first patients being Price himself. By the light of a candle, Mrs. Cox cleaned his wounded arm and bandaged it with one of her aprons. Van Dorn was pleased to learn that Price's troops had captured seven cannon and 200 prisoners, but as the night wore on and the full story of the route of McCulloch's troops began to come in, he realized that victory on the left had been nullified by defeat on the right. General Pike arrived to report the loss of McCulloch, McIntosh, and Hebert; he had placed Stand Watie's mounted Cherokees on Pea Ridge and was hopeful the Indians would fight better on the morrow. Hours later Van Dorn heard from Colonel Elkanah Greer; the Texas cavalryman had collected remnants of McCulloch's scattered regiments and was awaiting orders. Van Dorn ordered Greer to march his force up to Telegraph Road and prepare for another day of fighting. Outside the tavern, troops built fires against the night chill. Although orders were issued to extinguish these blazes, many continued to burn long after midnight. From the darkened Federal lines only a short distance away, sounds came clearly on the frosty air. "Their artillery and baggage wagons," noted Colonel Henry Little, "seemed to be continually moving." General Curtis's artillery and wagons were indeed moving that night, into positions selected by Franz Sigel, who had been given the responsibility for preparing a massive artillery attack at dawn. Sigel studied campfires along the ridge, estimating the location of Confederate troops, and disposed his guns accordingly. He also ordered his own troops to keep silent and build no fires. At midnight, Union division commanders and staff officers met in Curtis's tent. Carr, Dodge, and Asboth were wounded and depressed. Only Curtis and Sigel were optimistic. Curtis pointed out that for the first time in the fighting the Union army had four infantry divisions massed for attack; Sigel was confident that his artillery would stop Van Dorn's drive. In their lines facing Elkhorn Tavern, the Union troops shivered and tried to catch a few winks of sleep. Some angrily discussed the Indians' way of fighting, their barbarous use of scalping knives. They also could hear the sounds of their enemy, "the tread of their sentinels and the low hum of conversation but a few yards away." Back to the Fighting Hawkeye's Index
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