James Tuttle: The Iowa General Who Held The Line

General James Madison Tuttle

James Madison Tuttle didn’t look like a soldier. He had the look of someone used to counting ledgers and weighing grain, not ordering men forward into rifle fire.

Before the war, he was a businessman in Keokuk, Iowa. Steamboats, trade, the river. A life built on schedules and contracts. When the war broke out in 1861, Tuttle was forty-one years old. Older than most volunteers. Too old, some thought, to start a war career from scratch.

 

The Keokuk Gate City said he was “not a man of noise or flourish, but one whose habits of order and decision commend him to command.” It was meant as reassurance. Iowa was sending fathers, clerks, and farm boys to war. They wanted officers who looked like men who’d bring them home.

 

Tuttle helped raise the 2nd Iowa Infantry and was elected its colonel. In 1861, officers weren’t handed down from Washington. Men chose whom they trusted. The 2nd Iowa chose Tuttle. The Gate City noted the regiment had selected “a commander of cool judgment, whose influence over the men is quiet but complete.”

 

They learned what that meant at Fort Donelson in February 1862.

 

The Union army pushed into Tennessee under Ulysses S. Grant, crashing into Confederate forts that guarded the rivers. Donelson was cold, muddy, and confused. Attacks stalled. Lines bent. Confederate generals tried to break out and escape.

Grant needed someone to hit hard and hold ground. The 2nd Iowa went in with bayonets.

 

The Davenport Gazette reported that the regiment “advanced with a steadiness that astonished even veteran officers,” adding that “the ground was contested foot by foot, and the snow itself was trampled into mud and blood.” A Keokuk paper described the charge as “one of the most daring movements yet made by Iowa troops.”

 

They charged uphill through brush and snow, straight into entrenched Confederate positions. A soldier’s letter reprinted in the Gate City said, “We went forward without cheering, for there was no breath left for it.”

 

They broke the line. They took prisoners by the hundreds. An Iowa editor crowed that “the 2nd Iowa alone captured more rebels than its own number engaged,” calling the assault “the turning moment of the day.” Grant noted that the regiment advanced “with unwavering firmness under a most destructive fire,” a line that Iowa papers reprinted with pride for weeks.

 

Tuttle was wounded in the shoulder but stayed on the field. The Gate City said that “Colonel Tuttle, though struck and bleeding, refused to quit the line while the work remained unfinished.” One correspondent added that “his presence was worth a brigade that day.”

 

Promotions followed quickly. By the end of Donelson, Tuttle was a brigadier general. An Iowa editor said, “The honor is well bestowed, and Iowa may claim him without reservation.”

 

Three months later, Tuttle was back in it again at Shiloh.

 

On April 6, 1862, Confederate forces slammed into Grant’s army near Pittsburg Landing. Camps were overrun. Units shattered before they could form. Men ran for the river.

 

Tuttle commanded a brigade in W. H. L. Wallace’s division. They were thrown into the worst of it. Dense woods. No clear lines. Smoke so thick men fired at sound and shadow.

 

The Dubuque Herald printed a letter from an Iowa officer who wrote, “We could scarcely see ten yards before us, yet General Tuttle remained cool and gave his orders as if on drill.” Another Iowa paper described the stand as “a wall of men where flight might otherwise have followed.”

 

Wallace was mortally wounded nearby. The division bled until it barely existed. A survivor’s account said, “We fought till the regiments were companies, and the companies were squads, but the line did not break.”

 

By nightfall, they were still standing.

 

Shiloh didn’t end cleanly. It ended with rain, exhaustion, and thousands of dead. Iowa papers did not dress it up. The Gate City called it “a victory bought at a fearful price,” but added that Tuttle’s command had “done its full duty and more.”

 

In 1862, he was given division command in the Army of the Mississippi. That led him to Corinth, Mississippi, another grinding fight over railroads and supply lines. Trenches. Heat. Disease. Confederate counterattacks that flared and died.

 

During the Battle of Corinth, Iowa correspondents said Tuttle’s division “met the assault firmly and without confusion.” One report said, “The men expressed confidence that their ground would not be yielded while General Tuttle remained with them.”

 

Then came the turn that ended his field career. In early 1863, Grant reorganized his army during the long buildup to Vicksburg. Command positions shifted. Tuttle found himself outranked by men he didn’t respect and sidelined by a command structure he didn’t trust.

 

He resigned.

 

The Gate City reacted with surprise, writing that “the service loses an officer of proven steadiness,” while another Iowa paper remarked that “General Tuttle retires without stain, having done his duty wherever placed.” Tuttle offered little explanation, saying only that he believed he could “serve the country better elsewhere.”

 

The war wasn’t finished with him, though. In 1864, Iowa needed a man to organize its defenses against Confederate raiders and guerrillas operating along the Mississippi. Tuttle was appointed commander of the District of Iowa.

 

The Des Moines Register said the appointment placed “a man of method and firmness in a post where both are required.” Railroads were guarded. River traffic watched. Militia organized. Panic kept down.

 

An eastern Iowa paper noted that “General Tuttle governs without bluster, and the result is order.”

 

After the war, he returned to civilian life. He served a term in Congress, representing Iowa’s First District. One editor wrote that “he carries into civil office the same habits of plain speech and steady judgment that marked his military career.”

 

He died in 1892.