Battle of Iuka - Background

Background

After the Siege of Corinth in May 1862, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck was promoted to be general in chief of the Union Army and Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant replaced him in command at Corinth, Mississippi. This command was smaller than Halleck's, however, because the Army of the Ohio under Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell now operated as a separate command, leaving Grant command of only his own Army of the Tennessee and Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans's Army of the Mississippi, together about 100,000 men. Since the Confederates evacuated Corinth that summer, Grant's forces had been engaged in protecting supply lines in western Tennessee and northern Mississippi, with Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's division in Memphis, Maj. Gen. Edward O. C. Ord's division guarding the Union supply battle at Corinth, and Rosecrans's army holding the railroad from Corinth east to Iuka. As Confederate General Braxton Bragg moved north from Tennessee into Kentucky in September 1862, Buell pursued him from Nashville. The Confederates needed to prevent Buell from being reinforced by Grant's command.

Confederate Maj. Gen. Sterling Price had been ordered by Bragg to move his Army of the West from Tupelo toward Nashville, Tennessee, in conjunction with Bragg's Kentucky offensive. On September 13, his army reached the town of Iuka in northeastern Mississippi, about 20 miles east of Corinth. It was a small Union supply depot, the easternmost outpost that Grant had established on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. Price's cavalry skirmished with pickets posted by the small Union garrison stationed there. On September 14, before dawn, the Union commander, Col. Robert C. Murphy of the 8th Wisconsin Infantry, set fire to the supplies of the depot and marched his 2,000-man brigade back to Corinth. The Confederates dashed in and doused the flames, reaping a large collection of valuable supplies. Rosecrans relieved Murphy and ordered him to be court-martialed.

Price's army settled in Iuka and awaited the arrival of Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn's Army of West Tennessee, approximately 7,000 men. The two generals intended to unite and attack Grant's lines of communication in western Tennessee, which would prevent Buell's reinforcement if Grant reacted the way they expected, or might allow them to follow Bragg and support his Northern invasion if Grant acted more passively.

Grant did not wait to be attacked, approving a plan to converge on Price with two columns before Van Dorn, four days march to the southwest, could reinforce him. Grant sent Ord with three Army of the Tennessee divisions (about 8,000 men) along the Memphis and Charleston Railroad to move to Burnsville, take the roads to the north of the railroad and move upon Iuka from the northwest. He also ordered Rosecrans's army on a coordinated move along the Mobile and Ohio Railroad that would bring two divisions (9,000 men) swinging into Iuka from the southwest, closing the escape route for Price's army, while the remainder of that army protected Corinth against any threat from Van Dorn. The relatively complex plan for the two-pronged assault was actually Rosecrans's, who had previously been stationed in Iuka and felt familiar with the area. Grant moved with Ord's headquarters and had little tactical control over Rosecrans during the battle.