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Updated: June 29, 2025
Quite a considerable force of the enemy was assembled in our front, near Tuscumbia, to resist our advance. It was commanded by General Stephen D. Lee, and composed of Roddy's and Ferguson's brigades, with irregular cavalry, amounting in the aggregate to about five thousand. In person I moved from Corinth to Burnsville on the 18th, and to Iuka on the 19th of October.
The next morning Rosecrans himself renewed the attack and went into Iuka with but little resistance. Ord also went in according to orders, without hearing a gun from the south of town but supposing the troops coming from the south-west must be up by that time.
General Rosecrans proposed that I should send two brigades to Iuka in support of this movement, which General Grant acceded to, and said in making this movement for me to go on and carry out the plan I had suggested in destroying the Memphis and Charleston Railroad and the supplies gathered along it. CORINTH, April 4, 1863.
Ord was on the north-west, and even if a rebel movement had been possible in that direction it could have brought only temporary relief, for it would have carried Price's army to the rear of the National forces and isolated it from all support. It looked to me that, if Price would remain in Iuka until we could get there, his annihilation was inevitable.
By the 12th all were in except a small force under Colonel Murphy of the 8th Wisconsin. He had been detained to guard the remainder of the stores which had not yet been brought in to Corinth. On the 13th of September General Sterling Price entered Iuka, a town about twenty miles east of Corinth on the Memphis and Charleston railroad. Colonel Murphy with a few men was guarding the place.
The intermediate time was spent, for the most part, in defensive operations in the enemy's country, the great army that entered Corinth having been scattered east, north, and west to various points. Two important battles were fought, by one of which an attempt to retake Corinth was defeated. The other was at Iuka, in Mississippi, where a considerable Confederate force was defeated.
At Iuka I made what appeared to me the best disposition of matters relating to the department, giving General McPherson full powers in Mississippi and General Hurlbut in West Tennessee, and assigned General Blair to the command of the Fifteenth Army Corps; and summoned General Hurlbut from Memphis, and General Dodge from Corinth, and selected out of the Sixteenth Corps a force of about eight thousand men, which I directed General Dodge to organize with all expedition, and with it to follow me eastward.
His orders contemplated that he should not make a serious attack, until Rosecrans had gained his position on the south; but, as usual, Rosecrans had encountered difficulties in the confusion of roads, his head of column did not reach the vicinity of Iuka till 4 p.m. of the 19th, and then his troops were long drawn out on the single Jacinto road, leaving the Fulton road clear for Price's use.
I ordered pursuit by the whole of Rosecrans' command and went on with him a few miles in person. He followed only a few miles after I left him and then went into camp, and the pursuit was continued no further. I was disappointed at the result of the battle of Iuka but I had so high an opinion of General Rosecrans that I found no fault at the time. On the 19th of September General Geo.
At Iuka I issued all the orders to McPherson and Hurlbut necessary for the Department of the Tennessee during my absence, and, further, ordered the collection of a force out of the Sixteenth Corps, of about eight thousand men, to be commanded by General G. M. Dodge, with orders to follow as far east as Athens, Tennessee, there to await instructions.
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