Jacob G. Lauman, Iowa's Forgotten General

General James G. Lauman

Jacob G. Lauman was born in Maryland, but Iowa shaped him. He settled in Burlington years before the war, working in construction and business, known locally as steady and exacting. When the first calls for volunteers echoed across the state in 1861, Lauman stepped forward quickly. The Burlington Hawk-Eye said he joined “with no flourish and no delay, as one who understands that duty does not require applause.”

He helped raise the 7th Iowa Infantry and was elected its colonel. That mattered. In those early regiments, men chose leaders they trusted to keep their heads when smoke and fear took over. A private said, “We wanted a man who would stand still when the air was full of lead. Lauman did.”

 

The 7th Iowa went south early and learned the war in fragments—quick marches, sharp fights, confusion that never quite matched the maps. At Belmont, Missouri, in November 1861, the regiment saw its first actual combat. Confederate fire cracked through the thick woods along the Mississippi. Men lost sight of the officers within seconds. Smoke turned the trees into shadows.

 

A soldier in the 7th said, “We fought in a fog of powder and noise, firing at shapes that moved and sometimes at nothing at all.” Lauman stayed mounted longer than most officers dared, riding between companies and shouting orders that barely carried. The Dubuque Times said Colonel Lauman “exposed himself freely and seemed indifferent to danger so long as his men held.”

Then came Fort Donelson, and the winter that made soldiers old fast.

 

On February 15, 1862, the Confederate breakout smashed into McClernand’s division. Lauman’s 7th Iowa was near the center of the storm. The attack came hard and early, rolling through frozen timber and breaking lines faster than orders could travel. A private wrote that “the enemy came yelling like devils out of the trees, and for a moment it seemed the earth itself was giving way.”

 

Lauman tried to hold position while units on either side collapsed. The regiment lost cohesion. Men fell back in pockets, firing as they went. Lauman later admitted the line was overwhelmed, writing that the assault struck “with a suddenness and weight that no raw troops could long withstand.”

 

Iowa papers didn’t hide the chaos. The Davenport Democrat called the fighting “confused and terrible,” but added pointedly that Iowa regiments “retired only when the ground itself refused them footing.” Another paper said Lauman’s regiment “lost heavily, yet did not disgrace itself.”

 

Promotion followed soon after. By mid-1862, Lauman was a brigadier general commanding a brigade that included Iowa units already scarred by Donelson and Shiloh.

 

At Shiloh, Lauman’s brigade fought near the Hornet’s Nest, where the battle hardened into something brutal and unmoving. Confederate attacks surged again and again. Men fired until barrels burned hands. An Iowa soldier said, “The bullets came so thick that the air seemed stitched together with them.”

 

Lauman was slightly wounded but stayed on the field. A captain said the general “moved among the men with a calm that steadied them when nothing else would.” The Muscatine Journal later said his brigade “stood in a fire that would have broken less disciplined troops.”

 

Through 1862 and early 1863, Lauman commanded troops across western Tennessee and northern Mississippi—marching, drilling, skirmishing, digging. It was a war that didn’t make engravings but consumed men just the same. An officer wrote home, “The general is exacting, but he does not spare himself. He sleeps little and expects the same of us.”

 

Then the army turned toward Vicksburg. By the spring of 1863, Lauman commanded a division in the XVI Corps under Stephen Hurlbut. His men—many from Iowa—marched through choking heat and red dust, cutting roads where none existed and digging trenches under a sun that punished hesitation. A soldier in the 3rd Iowa said, “The clay burns our hands, and the air itself tastes of powder.”

 

Lauman’s division held ground north of the city, facing strong Confederate works. The men dug closer each day. Siege life settled in—snipers, sharpshooters, sudden explosions. The Iowa State Register called it “a war of patience and shovels.”

 

When Grant ordered assaults on May 19 and May 22, Lauman’s men watched other divisions charge and be torn apart. The lesson was simple. Earthworks favored the defender now.

 

On June 27, orders came for Lauman to advance against a position near the railroad redoubt. The instructions were unclear. Reconnaissance was poor. The ground ahead was open and exposed.

 

Lauman’s division moved forward, anyway. What followed was a disaster. Confederate artillery and musketry swept the field. Men fell almost immediately. Units were pinned down without cover. Attempts to advance became desperate attempts to crawl backward. A soldier in the 28th Iowa said, “We were struck down as fast as men could fall. It was slaughter, not battle.”

 

Another Iowa soldier remembered, “The ground was white with smoke and dark with bodies. No man could stand upright and live.”

 

Lauman tried to halt the movement when it became clear the position was untenable, but the damage was done. Casualties were severe. Iowa regiments suffered heavily. The Dubuque Herald called it “one of the bloodiest and most useless sacrifices of the siege.”

 

Blame came fast—and it came down on Lauman. Hurlbut placed the responsibility squarely on him. Grant removed Lauman from command. No court-martial. No public hearing. Just silence.

 

Lauman protested quietly, writing that he had acted “in obedience to instructions received and with no intention beyond their faithful execution.” His men believed him. A sergeant wrote home, “The general was punished for another man’s mistake. We know it, though it will not be printed.”

 

Iowa papers bristled. The Burlington Hawk-Eye argued Lauman had been “condemned without trial,” while the Iowa City Republican warned that “a faithful officer may be ruined as readily as a careless one when failure demands a name.”

 

Lauman never returned to field command. He remained in the army briefly in administrative roles, then returned to Iowa. He died in 1867, only four years after Vicksburg.

 

History remembers him largely for one failed attack. Iowa remembered the rest—the frozen woods at Donelson, the smoke at Shiloh, the long months of steady service when nothing went right and men needed someone who would not panic.

 

An Iowa veteran wrote years later, “General Lauman was not perfect, but he was brave, and he did not send us where he would not go himself.”

 

Maybe that was enough.