Crocker's Iowa Brigade: General Marcellus Monroe Crocker

Marcellus Monroe Crocker

Marcellus Monroe Crocker was living in Des Moines when Fort Sumter fell, practicing law and coughing his way through tuberculosis. He was thin, already sick, and had every excuse to sit the war out. Few would have questioned it. Instead, he went to work.

Within weeks he was moving through central Iowa raising volunteers. The Iowa State Register said he took up the task “without flourish or delay,” traveling town to town despite failing health, speaking plainly about what lay ahead and promising nothing except hard service. Those efforts produced the 13th Iowa Infantry. When the regiment elected its officers, the men chose Crocker as colonel, “because he knew what he was doing and didn’t pretend otherwise.”

The 13th Iowa entered service in the fall of 1861 and headed south almost immediately. Training was brief. Rifles and gear were uneven. Crocker made up for it by drilling the men hard. He pushed order and repetition until movement became instinct. An officer said he “taught us to move as if confusion were a thing we could not afford.”

The lesson paid off at Shiloh. On the morning of April 6, 1862, the 13th Iowa was rushed into line as Confederate forces crashed into Grant’s army. The battlefield dissolved into smoke and noise. Units overlapped. Officers vanished. Orders arrived late or not at all. The Dubuque Herald called it “a fog of powder and panic, where men fought what they could see and guessed at the rest.”

Crocker kept the 13th together longer than most. He shifted the regiment again and again near the Hornet’s Nest as Confederate attacks surged forward in waves. A private wrote home saying, “The colonel seemed everywhere at once, quiet, steady, telling us where to go when nothing ahead looked like a place any man ought to be.” His horse was shot out from under him. He hopped on another, riding the line under heavy fire. The Iowa City Republican said Crocker “exposed himself freely, apparently careless of danger so long as his men stood.”

The regiment held until ammunition ran dangerously low and the Union line on either side collapsed. When the order came to fall back, the withdrawal was costly but controlled. Crocker left the field exhausted, feverish, and coughing blood. Within weeks, his health collapsed.

Many assumed his war was over. He returned to the field in the summer of 1862. Thinner. Weaker. Promoted brigadier general, he was given command of Crocker’s Iowa Brigade—made up of the 11th, 13th, 15th, and 16th Iowa Infantry.

He drilled them relentlessly, enforced cleanliness, order, and silence under fire. He demanded that officers know their men and that men trust their officers. An officer said Crocker “believed discipline was mercy in another form, because it kept men alive when fear took over.”

That discipline was tested at Corinth in October 1862.

Confederate forces attacked the Union-held rail junction, launching repeated assaults against fortified lines. Crocker’s brigade held a key sector. The fighting was close and violent. Musketry cracked at short range. Artillery tore gaps in the ground. The Chicago Tribune said the fire was “continuous and merciless, such as few fields have endured.”

A soldier in the 15th Iowa remembered, “The general sat his horse like he’d nailed it there. Seeing him steady made it easier for us to do the same.” Ammunition ran low. Cartridges were passed hand to hand under fire. The Muscatine Journal said Crocker’s brigade “repulsed assault after assault without confusion or retreat.”

Losses were heavy, but the line held. Corinth stayed in Union hands.

Health intervened again. By late 1862, tuberculosis forced Crocker to step aside. Grant arranged a transfer to New Mexico, hoping the dry air might preserve one of his best officers.

The climate helped. In early 1863, Crocker rejoined the army for the Vicksburg Campaign. Promoted to division command in the XVII Corps, he led troops through forced marches, river crossings, and constant maneuver. A soldier said, “The general looks like he might fall apart, but he never does.”

At Vicksburg, Crocker’s division took position north of the city. The work there was relentless—digging trenches, advancing by yards, enduring steady fire from Confederate sharpshooters. Siege warfare replaced movement. The Iowa State Register called it “a war of patience, sweat, and shovels.” Crocker visited the lines daily. A soldier said, “He coughs until he can scarcely speak, then tells us quietly to keep our heads down.”

During the assaults of May 19 and May 22, Crocker’s men paid dearly. Losses mounted across the army. Crocker opposed further assaults, arguing that siege operations were the only sane course. Grant agreed.

Crocker’s health collapsed again in June. He was forced to leave the field before Vicksburg surrendered on July 4, 1863. He served briefly in administrative posts, then resigned in August 1863. Tuberculosis finished what battle could not. He died on August 26, 1865, at thirty-five.