Today in History:

72 Series I Volume XVII-I Serial 24 - Corinth Part I

Page 72 WEST TENN. AND NORTHERN MISS. Chapter XXIX.

SEPTEMBER 21, 1862.

Major-General GRANT:

Your dispatch received.* I have already ordered Mizner to mass his cavalry at Peyton's Springs and south of jacinto; Hamilton's division to take post on the jacinto and Booneville road. Stanley camps 1 mile east of Davenport's Mill. My headquarters will be in Jacinto to-night.

Price, short of provisions, retreats toward Fulton.

Breckinridge and Van Dorn were certainly destined to some kind of co-operation in this move; what they are about I cannot tell, but we will try to whip them in detail if we can catch them.

Have ordered four days' supplies for our army to be at Jacinto tonight if possible.

the rebels killed were far more than we thought yesterday; they had collected 162 dead for burial 200 yards in rear of their little hospital, where they were found yesterday covered with tarpaulins. Those 16 where Colonel Stanton, [?] third Arkansas, was lying were collected by the rebels to be carried down to the same point. My count was 99. These with the 162 make 261 rebels killed. This, at the usual allowance, would make them 944 wounded. Our men found bloody rags, &c., along the line of their march.

W. S. ROSECRANS,

Major-General.


HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE MISSISSIPPI,
THIRD DIVISION, DISTRICT OF WEST TENNESSEE,

Corinth, Miss., September 29, 1862.

MAJOR: Having received the reports of the commanders of the troops, list of stores and prisoners captured, i hasten to lay before the major-general commanding the following report of the battle of Iuka:

Mower's able reconnaissance, on the 15th, on the Burnsville road, to within 2 miles of Iuka, with other information, having established the fact that Price occupied that place with a force of about twenty-eight regiments of infantry, six batteries and a strong body of cavalry, you resolved to attack, and gave orders for Ord's and Ross' commands to concentrate at Burnsville, while I prepared to do the same at Jacinto. I telegraphed you, proposing that the force from Burnsville should attack the rebels from the west and draw them in that direction, and that I would move in on their rear by the Jacinto and fulton roads and cut off their retreat. Your approval of the plan having been received, I ordered Stanley to concentrate his division at Jacinto on the 18th, where they had all arrived by 9 p. m. I dispatched you that evening from Jacinto of the arrival of Stanley's troops, jaded by a long march, and that in consequence of it we would not be able to reach Iuka until 2.30 o'clock of the 19th. the whole column, consisting of Stanley's and Hamilton's divisions, with five batteries, moved by daybreak of the 19th on the Tuscumbia road toward Barnett's. I dispatched you at 7 a. m. that it had moved forward in good spirits and time and that I had hoped to reach Iuka by 2.30 p. m. We reached Barnett's, a distance of 12 miles, by noon, having driven the enemy's cavalry pickets some 2 or 3 miles. here Sanborn's brigade of Hamilton's division took the lead; the rest of Hamilton's division came next, and Stanley's division followed. The advance drove the enemy's cavalry skirmishers steadily before them until we arrived within 1 1/2 miles of Iuka, near the forks of the

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*Not found.

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Page 72 WEST TENN. AND NORTHERN MISS. Chapter XXIX.