Evacuation of Corinth, May 29-30, 1862

On the 29th and 30th of 1862, the 32nd Mississippi Infantry Regiment was withdrawn from Corinth with the Confederate Army south to Baldwyn, where it stayed through June. One of the men of my great grandfather’s regiment recalled: “Many boys passed their homes on the retreat.” Indeed, Great Grandfather Oakes was one of those who passed within sight of his family’s farm in Kossuth on that march south.

Col. Lowrey reported of his 32nd Mississippi that many of the men were sick and recuperating at home in communities around Corinth. When the army evacuated, those too sick to march with the army were cut off when enemy captured the city. Many of these later were able to make their way to rejoin their units.

At daylight on the 30th, Union Gen. Halleck becomes aware of the Confederate evacuation and vainly sends troops in pursuit. Alas, his one real opportunity for destroying Bragg's army slips through his fingers.

Sources:  Corinth Herald, May 17, 1902; 32nd Mississippi Regimental Return, June 1862

Beginning of the evacuation of Corinth, MS, 1862

During the very warm night of May 29th, 1862, without detection by the enemy, Confederate Gen. Gen. 
P.G.T. Beauregard masterfully withdrew his army of 45,000 troops to a point 7 miles south of Corinth, across Tuscumbia Creek. Various units from my great grandfather’s division took part in guarding the turnpike bridge over the Tuscumbia Creek while the army passed, then they burned the bridge, then followed army to Baldwyn, Mississippi. Other units guarded the railroad bridge, and after all the cars passed over, burned this bridge also. Jessee Cheeves, of Great Grandfather's 32nd Regiment, remembered guarding the wagon train as the Confederate army evacuated Corinth.

The 6th Tennessee Cavalry Regiment—of which another of my ancestors, Great-Great Grandfather David Crockett Neal was a member—was cut off by the Federal forces during the evacuation. But it cut it's way through and followed the army on to Tupelo.

Another Skirmish for the 32nd Regiment

Awaiting the inevitable conflict with Union forces from the north following the Battle of Shiloh, Great Grandfather Nathan Oakes’s 32nd Mississippi Infantry Regiment in Gen. William Hardee's Corps, participated in a minor fight with the enemy on the Payne farmAnother northeast of Corinth, Mississippi. According to the regiment’s colonel, Mark P. Lowrey, while not having yet seen action, the regiment did act as skirmishers on while on outpost duty here in 1862. Lowrey reported that on this date, 2 privates were wounded and captured—1 from Great Grandfather's Co. D, John Dilworth, and another from Co. C, James Spain, who later died.* The next day the 32nd Mississippi was called back to the town.

Photo by Mark Dolan, 2007

By the 28th, it was clear that the Federals had advanced to within a few hundred yards of the Rebel entrenchments around Corinth. Con-federate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard authorized Hardee to conduct a reconnaissance of Federal move-ments. Hardee sent Gen. Patrick Cleburne with 4 regiments out the Farmington road where they engaged in heavy skirmishing with the enemy.

By now, Gen. Beauregard decided to abandon Corinth and will evacuate on the 29th.

          __________________________________________________________________

Photo by Mark Dolan, 2007

The Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center is operated by the National Park Service as part of the Shiloh National Battlefield. The exhibits of both the Siege and the later Battle of Corinth are helpful and informative (and it's much more attractive inside than the architecture at first reveals). However, it was the research library that was the most useful to us when we visited a few years back in our search for Great Grandfather Nathan Oakes in the 32nd Mississippi Infantry Regiment.

We were allowed extensive use of the center’s collection of new and reprinted volumes of the period of the War Between the States. Ranger Tom Parson was exceptionally helpful and made copies of several pages of books we were interested in. Pat took this picture of me in front of the library wall in the research room.

* A number of men from the regiment died of sickness and disease in the early days at Corinth. However, the death of Pvt. James Spain, following his wounding at Bridge Creek, was likely the first death resulting from wounds received in battle.

Source: 32nd Regimental Return, June 1862; Corinth Herald, May 17, 1902; Stonewall of the West, Craig L. Symonds

Great Uncle Turner enlists in the 32nd MS Regiment

Over the past few months, coinciding with the 150th anniversary of Civil War battles over the remaining 3 years ahead, I have been tracking my Great Grandfather Nathan Richardson Oakes from his enlistment in the Confederate Army in March 1862, to his surrender in April 1865. I also had other family members who fought in that war. Great Uncle William D. Turner enlisted in my great grandfather's Co. D of the 32nd Mississippi Infantry Regiment  Uncle Turner had just completed 12 months of service in the 9th Mississippi Regiment.

Both ancestors will survive the war, and finally back in Mississippi on June 1, 1865, Great Grandfather Oakes will marry his prewar sweetheart Martha Ellen Turner, who was also "Billy" Turner’s younger sister.

Great Grandmother Martha Oakes and her brother,
William "Billy" D. Turner, years after the war

32nd Mississippi Infantry's skirmish at Box Chapel, 1862

In the weeks following the Battle of Shiloh, the Confederate army, which had fortified itself around the city of Corinth, Mississippi, was on high alert as Union Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck was slowly moving his army of 100,000 toward that town.

Little is officially known about my great grandfather’s regiment, the 32nd Mississippi Infantry, during the weeks after Shiloh, and before the evacuation of Corinth in May. Because the regiment had only been formed recently, and since most of the men were green recruits, their main task was to be thrown out on picket duty along the front line, facing the Union army as it slowly moved on Corinth. Oftentimes, these assignments turned into clashes with the enemy. Years later, Great Grandfather Oakes wrote in the magazine, the Confederate Veteran, that his Company D participated in “many skirmishes” about this time. One of the first encounters with the enemy was on May 3-5, 1862, along road to Farmington. It turned into what is probably the company’s first real “skirmish,” near a church known as Box Chapel. One of his comrades in Co. A, Jesse Cheeves, remembered the fight this way:

The writer, then a boy was put on picket three-hundred yards north of the road. At daybreak one yankee made his appearance, the first 'yank' this writer had seen, with a gun in his hand. Owing to his quick disappearance I did not get to fire on him. Immediately the advancing picket were called in and formed in line with the reserve at the Chapel. Several shots were fired by the time we reached the Chapel when a lone cavalryman road up and reported the enemy advancing in force. We fell back on the road to Corinth to fool them but they did not follow far.*

The skirmish on Farmington Heights wasn't too serious of an encounter for the men of the 32nd Regiment, but it was the first of many throughout the month of May in 1862, and is was one of countless more over the course of the war. Like Cheeves, Great Grandfather Nathan Oakes was only a "boy"—a 16-year old at the time—and, like Cheeves, this was probably the first armed Yankee he had ever seen, too.

Photo by Mark Dolan, 2007

"Box Chapel" as it appears today

* In the larger perspective of the battle, the Federal cavalry had been working its way around the flanks of the Confederate defensive lines at Corinth to occupy a high ridge running southward from Farmington, 3 miles east of Corinth. Learning of the Federal movement, Rebel defenders were sent on a night march out the Farmington Road on May 3rd, and at 10:00 AM on the 4th, they encountered the enemy. The Confederate force drove the Federals back several miles before halting. However, instead of occupying and fortifying the high ground taken, Gen. 
P.G.T. Beauregard ordered his troops to fall back to his lines around Corinth. On the Union side, Maj. Gen John Pope reported the facts differently. He wrote that his force “found the enemy 4,500 strong, with four pieces of artillery and some cavalry, occupying strong position in front of the town. Our forces advanced at once to the assault, and after a sharp skirmish carried the position in handsome style. The enemy left 30 dead on the field and their tents and baggage. The cavalry in pursuit toward Corinth” (Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Vol. 10).

Gen. Halleck's slow march toward Corinth

Since April 29, 1862, after massing over 100,000 troops for his Corinth campaign, Union Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck had moved his army from the Tennessee border toward his objective only 10 miles in four days. Over the next 22 days, Halleck, a leader of extreme caution, will average only 1/3 of a mile per day. During this period, Confederate units from my great grandfather’s corps made sorties towards the Federal advance forces at Farmington, outside of Corinth, as they probed the enemy's strength, preparing for the battle to come.

32nd Mississippi assigned to S.A.M. Wood's Brigade

Gen. Sterling Alexander Martin Wood

In May 1862, Great Grandfather Nathan Oakes's 32nd Mississippi Regiment (a.k.a. "Lowrey's Regiment") was officially recorded as belonging to Wood's Brigade. In the organization of the army recorded in the Official Records for June 30, 1862,* the 32nd is listed together with the 16th Alabama, 33rd Mississippi, 44th Tennessee, and Baxter’s Battery, altogether commanded by Brig. Gen. S.A.M. Wood, in the Maj. Gen. William J. Hardee's Third Army Corps. Gen. Braxton Bragg commands the Army of Mississippi (soon to be renamed the Army of Tennessee). It's likely that the regiment was added as a replacement unit to make up for the corps’s significant losses at the Battle of Shiloh.

Sterling Alexander Martin Wood was born in Florence, Alabama on March 17, 1823. He attended St. Joseph College in Kentucky, and then moved to Tennessee to practice law. In 1851, Wood returned to Alabama, where he served in the state legislature. From 1851-1857, Wood was solicitor of Alabama's 4th judicial court. He also served as editor of Florence's Gazette newspaper before the war.

Wood's home state of Alabama seceded in January 1861. On April 3, Wood joined his state's militia as captain of the "Florence Guard." In May, he was elected colonel of the 7th Alabama Infantry Regiment and served with his regiment in Pensacola, Florida. In October of that year, Col. Wood was given brigade command and joined the Army of Central Kentucky and served at Bowling Green. After promotion to brigadier general on January 7, 1862, he was given command of a brigade in the Army of Mississippi. Shiloh would be Wood's first battle as brigadier general. However, he was wounded while leading his brigade in the fighting on April 6-7.

Although Lowrey's Regiment was attached to Wood's Brigade by this point, it did not participate in the Battle of Shiloh because it was not yet equipped. Instead, the regiment remained at Corinth to guard prisoners taken at the battle.

Following Shiloh, Wood continued to lead the brigade through the fighting in the Kentucky, Murfreesboro, Tullahoma, and Chickamauga Campaigns. Wood was wounded again in the Battle of Perryville, and his command fell temporarily to Lowery, who was also wounded in the battle. A few weeks after the army's victory at Chickamauga in September 1863, Wood resigned his commission, opening a path for the newly promoted Brig. Gen. Mark P. Lowrey to assume command of the brigade.

After his resignation, Wood returned to his law practice. Later, he served again in the Alabama Legislature and also as a law professor at the University of Alabama.

S.A.M. Wood died in 1891 at age 67, and is buried in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

* To my knowledge, this is the first mention of the 32nd Mississippi Infantry Regiment in the The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. See Vol. 10, Part 1.

Sources: Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Vol. 10; Wikipedia

Early days in the 32nd Regiment, 1862

In the later weeks of April, following the Battle of Shiloh, the Confederate army within the fortified area around the town of Corinth, Mississippi, was on high alert as Union Gen. Halleck was massing over 100,000 troops for his Corinth campaign.

Little is known about my great grandfather’s unit, the 32nd Mississippi Infantry Regiment (soon to be attached to Wood's Brigade) during the weeks after Shiloh and before the evacuation of Corinth in May. The conditions for the entire army were far from pleasant. As writer David Williamson notes, "When the rain stopped and hot weather set in, drinkable water became scarce and, in the poor sanitary conditions, disease, especially chronic diarrhea, spread through the camps as neither town nor the Confederate Army were able to handle the large number of sick and wounded."

About this period Col. Mark Lowrey reported that the regiment was reduced by sickness and absences. Many of the men were sent to their homes nearby to recuperate. It wasn't until June, after the evacuation from Corinth, that conditions in the regiment improved. At Baldwyn, Mississippi, outside Tupelo, Col. Lowrey reported, "Since reaching this place we have been in camp of instruction and the regiment has improved very sensible both in drill and discipline and we hope by our next return to be able to report a deciding improvement in health which at this time is very bad indeed."

Photo by Mark Dolan, 2010  

Where the 32nd Mississippi Infantry Regiment encamped on College Hill

Williamson goes on to write that of the 45,000 troops stationed in and around Corinth, by mid-May, 18,000 were hospitalized with sickness. Some of the brigade, perhaps including the 32nd Regiment, may have avoided some the squalor of the camps by being placed on outpost duty north of Farmington, a village about 4 miles east of Corinth. The regiments were likely posted there to keep them close to the action, into which they soon would be drawn.

Photo by Mark Dolan, 2010

The 32nd Mississippi Regiment encamped near the Corona College from March to May 1861

Sources: The Third Battalion Mississippi Infantry and the 45th Mississippi Regiment, David Williamson; 32nd Mississippi Regimental Return, June 1862

David Crockett Neal, 6th TN Cavalry Regiment

I'm honored to have had several ancestors on my mom's side of the family who fought in the War for Southern Independence. Mom's great grandfather, David Crockett Neal, from Giles County, Tennessee, enlisted in the 11th (Gordon's) Tennessee Cavalry Battalion, Company B. The battalion was mustered into Confederate service in Nashville on January 8, 1862. Six companies were formed as part of this unit. Little is known about the battalion in its early months. It's known that in early 1862, it was part of the Western Department, garrisoned in Nashville. The battalion took part in the evacuation of Nashville on February 15th. On March 31st, it was assigned as an unattached cavalry unit in the Army of Mississippi in Corinth. It likely participated in the Battle of Shiloh, and it provided cover for Gen. 
P.G.T. Beauregard’s army as it withdrew from Shiloh to Corinth following that battle on April 7, 1862.

During the subsequent Siege of Corinth in May, the 11th Tennessee Cavalry Battalion was consolidated with the 2nd (Biffle's) Tennessee Cavalry Battalion to form the 6th Tennessee Cavalry Regiment.* The new regiment participated in operations against Federal Gen. Henry Halleck's slow advance and siege of Corinth between April 29 and May 30, 1862. It continued to operate in North Mississippi through the balance of that year and into January 1863, serving in Gen. John H. Wharton's Brigade.

It was during the regiment's assignment in and around Corinth that my Great Grandfather Nathan R. Oakes, enlisted as an infantry recruit nearby in Kossuth. There is no evidence to suggest that either of these ancestors ever met during the war, although as Providence would have it, they were both participants in several of the same battles, including Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and Atlanta. It will be in the next generation that the Neal and Oakes families intersect again, this time when my mother's parents married in Texas more than 50 years later.

* While officially designated the 6th Tennessee Cavalry Regiment, it is often listed as the 1st Tennessee Cavalry Regiment in the Official Records. In fact, according to Tennesseans in the Civil War, which has compiled the histories of the state's military units, the record of this regiment is often confused. When first organized it was called the 1st Tennessee Cavalry Regiment. However, its designation was later changed to the 6th when it was discovered that there already existed a 1st on the Confederate rolls. In the Official Records the regiment is sometimes listed as the "1st" and other times the "6th." In other instances, in an attempt to clarify, it is listed as the "1st [6th]." And these discrepancies are the easiest to sort out! Oh, and there were also at least 14 Union cavalry regiments recruited from Tennessee. They, of curse, have the same numerical designations as their Confederate counterparts, 1st to 14th.

Source: The Eleventh Tennessee Cavalry Battalion, F. Walter (unpublished manuscript)

Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard leads the army

The new commander of the Confederate army in the West was Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, a Louisiana-born author, civil servant, politician, and inventor. But most of that would come later in his life. His early and most famous achievements came as a U.S. army officer and then as a Confederate general in the American Civil War.

Trained as a civil engineer at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Beauregard graduated in 1838. He served with distinction as an artilleryman and engineer in the Mexican-American War. He then returned to teach at the Academy, eventually becoming its superintendent in 1861.

With the South's secession, Beauregard's first assignment as a Confederate general was to command the defenses Charleston, South Carolina. It was there on April 12, 1861, that he ordered the firing on the Union held Fort Sumter, the opening shots of the War Between the States.* Three months later he was the victor at First Manassas (a.k.a. First Battle of Bull Run), the first major battle of the war.

Beauregard briefly led the Army of Mississippi (later renamed the Army of Tennessee), in which Great Grandfather Nathan Oakes enlisted in March 1862, after he assumed command from the fallen Albert Sydney Johnston at Shiloh. He continued as the army's commander through the Siege of Corinth which followed. After overseeing the masterful withdrawal of his army of 45,000-man army from Corinth to Tupelo, Beauregard resigned as the army's commander, citing health concerns.

He returned to Charleston and defended it from repeated naval and land attacks in 1863. In 1864, he defended the the city of Petersburg against a superior Federal army, thus preserving Gen. Robert E. Lee's supply line and saving the Confederate capital of Richmond.

Later in 1864, he was appointed commander of Confederate forces in the West, which included the Army of Tennessee under John B. Hood and and Richard Taylor's Department of Alabama and Mississippi. It was a thankless job, without true operational control, especially over the rash and reckless Hood. His department experienced little success in halting the advances of the superior Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman.

In early 1865, Beauregard attempted to concentrate his small and scattered forces in South Carolina before Sherman could reach Columbia, ordering the battered Army of Tennessee to be shipped east to reinforce him. In February, he was replaced by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, although he continued as Johnston's second in command. In April, Johnston and Beauregard convinced a reluctant President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet that the war should end. Beauregard surrendered to Sherman with a majority of the remaining Confederate generals and their armies on April 26, 1865.

After War Between the States, Beauregard served as president of the New Orleans, Jackson & Mississippi Railroad, and also Adjutant-General of Louisiana. Refusing several offers to head armies of foreign governments after the war, he did the author a couple of books on warfare and the military: Principles and Maxims of the Art of War (1863) and Report of the Defence of Charleston (1864).

Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard died in 1893, and is buried in the Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans in the tomb of the Army of the Tennessee.

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Beauregard and the Development of the Confederate Battle Flag

Southern Cross / Confederate Battle Flag
Source: Museum of the Confederacy

Following First Manassas, Gens. Beauregard and Joseph Johnston advocated the use of a standardized battle flag to avoid confusion between the Confederate national flag and the USA's "stars and stripes." The new battle flag with now familiar St. Andrews Cross pattern, including 13 white stars on a red field, was first introduced in the Army of Northern Virginia. Later, the "Southern Cross" battle flag was brought to the Western Theater at the Battle of Shiloh, and thereafter variations of the flag appeared throughout the Southern armies.

Today, the renowned battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia—the one Beauregard promoted—is the best known of all Confederate flags and one of the most familiar symbols associated with the Southern cause. However, it was never the official flag of the Confederate government. Unfortunately today, it is Beauregard's army flag that is most associated with the Confederacy, along with the negative political and cultural baggage that moderns have attached to it.

Surprising to some, not all units adopted Beauregard's battle flag. For example, Gen. William Hardee designed his own corps battle flag (below), which was flown for the first time at Shiloh. When Gen. Johnston took over command of the Army of Tennessee at Dalton in 1864, he adopted a variation of the "Southern Cross" for his army, adding white edging to it. However, Gen. Patrick Cleburne's Division of Hardee's Corps, in which my Great Grandfather Nathan Oakes served, appealed to keep their "Hardee Flags." Due to the division's hard-earned respect and well-earned fame, the appeal was granted. Thus, the unique Hardee/Cleburne flag, instead of Beauregard's, was flown by the division until the final surrender of the Army of Tennessee at Greensboro, North Carolina in April 1865.

Replica of the Hardee Battle Flag, hanging in my library
First flown at Shiloh in 1862
Patrick Cleburne's Division earned the privilege to fly this flag rather
than the standard Confederate battle flag that Beauregard advocated.

* Ironically, the Union commander at Fort Sumter was Major Robert Anderson, an Academy graduate, who had been Beauregard's artillery instructor at West Point.

Source: Civil War Trust

Melville's "Shiloh: A Requiem (April, 1862)"

Shiloh: A Requiem (April, 1862)

Herman Melville

Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows fly low
Over the field in clouded days,
The forest-field of Shiloh—
Over the field where April rain
Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain
Through the pause of night
That followed the Sunday fight
Around the church of Shiloh—
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
And natural prayer
Of dying foemen mingled there—
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve—
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,

And all is hushed at Shiloh.

Photo by Mark Dolan, 2007

The Confederate Monument at Shiloh, erected in 1917
to honor all the Confederates who fought in the battle.

Bloody Shiloh, 2nd Day

Source: Civil War Trust

The action of the second day of the Battle of Shiloh played out much like the first day, except in reverse order and with opposite effect.¹ 

After Gen. Johnston was killed on the the first day, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard took command of the Confederate forces. In the fighting on that day, the Federal army was routed and pushed back to the area around Pittsburg Landing, finding relative shelter in the uneven terrain and under the protection of the massed Union artillery. What Beauregard did not know was that Grant's troops had been reinforced overnight by Buell's men.² 

Now on the second day, Grant had 40,000 soldiers to attack Beauregard's 30,000 outnumbered and exhausted men. Despite several counterattacks, Beauregard knew his force could not prevail, so by dusk, he orchestrated a withdrawal to Corinth. Covering the retreat, Col. Nathan Bedford Forrest met the pursuing Federal forces under Gens. Thomas and Sherman. He successfully checked the Federal pursuit at Fallen Timbers, and the Battle of Shiloh came to an end.

Photo by Mark Dolan, 2007

The "Bloody Pond" at Shiloh

Although a beautiful and tranquil place when we visited the battlefield in December 2007, this shallow pool of water was once reported to be the scene of great horror. It was in the path of the retreating Union Army as it was pushed back toward the river on the first day of battle. Being the only water in the immediate area, the wounded from both sides crawled here to quench their thirst and bathe their wounds. So many bled in and around the pond that witnesses said the water was stained the color of blood.

¹ To see an excellent animated map of the Battle of Shiloh, visit the Civil War Trust website.
² Some interesting footnotes to my Civil War ancestor's history are that among Buell's troops that reinforced Grant's soldiers at Pittsburg Landing, was a young Union lieutenant, Ambrose Bierce, who in later years would become a famous American writer. He wrote about his experience in this battle in What I Saw of Shiloh. His firsthand knowledge of the war provided material for many of his shockingly realistic short stories. Also present at the Battle of Shiloh was Union Gen. Lew Wallace, who, after the war, wrote one of the most beloved novels of his century, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Both Bierce and Wallace went on to fight the Confederates on many of the same battlefields as my great grandfather, Nathan Oakes.

And a further bit of trivia, Welshman and Confederate Pvt. Henry Morton Stanley was captured on the second day at Shiloh. Surviving the war, he went on to become a renown African adventurer, Sir Henry Morton Stanley, who in 1871 famously "found" Scottish missionary, Dr. David Livingston, near Lake Tanganyika in present day Tanzania.