27th Iowa Infantry in the Minnesota Sioux Uprising

Attack on the Lower Agency in Minnesota Sioux Uprising

In August 1862, violence swept across Minnesota in what became known as the “Minnesota Sioux Uprising.” It hit fast and close. Along the Minnesota River valley, families fled farms and small towns with little warning.

New Ulm was attacked on August 19, and panic spread across southern Minnesota. Fort Ridgely was assaulted on August 20 and again on August 22. Settlers crowded into towns or ran east, leaving wide stretches of countryside empty.

On September 6, the War Department created the Department of the Northwest and placed Major General John Pope in command, with headquarters at St. Paul. Pope’s orders were clear: restore order and end the violence. His first problem was also clear. He needed troops.

The Civil War made that difficult. Regular army units were tied down in the South and East. Pope had to pull help from nearby states, even if the men were brand new. Iowa responded with the 27th Iowa Volunteer Infantry.

Rearguard Action At Jenkins' Ferry

Iowa soldiers covering the retreat at Jenkins Ferry

Jenkins’ Ferry wasn’t a battle anyone went looking for. It happened because the Union army was tired, short on food, soaked to the bone, and trying to get out of southern Arkansas without being destroyed.

The trouble started weeks earlier with the Camden Expedition. The plan looked good on paper. A Union force would move south from Little Rock, link up with other columns tied to the Red River Campaign, and tighten the squeeze on Confederate Arkansas. In reality, it was a gamble. Supplies were thin. Roads barely deserved the name, as spring rain turned everything into mud and muck.

Iowa regiments made up a big part of the force. They knew what campaigning in the Trans-Mississippi looked like, and they knew it was usually miserable. This one got bad faster than expected.

Iowa Soldiers at Iuka and Corinth

General William Rosecrans

The fights at Iuka and Corinth tested Union troops in very different ways. Iuka was a confused collision in the woods. It came late in the day and never settled into a clean line. Units bent, folded, and drifted under pressure. Corinth followed two weeks later and felt nothing like it. It was a direct assault on a fortified railroad town. Success depended on whether men could hold ground while being hit again and again.

Iowa regiments ended up in the hardest places because the campaign pushed experienced units toward weak points. When the line thinned, they were sent there. When artillery needed cover, they were placed beside it. When ground had to be held no matter the cost, they were already close.

Iuka sits in northeastern Mississippi where roads and rail lines cross. The town was nothing more than a dot on the map. What mattered was control. Confederate General Sterling Price moved in during September, hoping to regain ground and threaten Union supply routes. Union commanders tried to trap him before he could slip away. A column under William S. Rosecrans marched in from the southwest. Another under Edward Ord moved in from the northwest.

On paper, the movement seemed simple enough. Two columns would close in and crush Price’s force. In the field, everything broke down. Roads narrowed into muddy paths. Wagons jammed. Units lost their bearings. Ravines cut across the landscape and split formations without warning. The woods were thick and uneven. Sound didn’t travel the way it should have. When fighting started, part of the Union force never heard it and stayed out of the battle, forcing Rosecrans’ column to take the full weight of the attack alone.

Second Iowa Infantry At Bull Run

Fighting at Bull Run

Most Iowa soldiers fought the Civil War in the West. Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga shaped Iowa’s war. But one Iowa regiment got its start closer to Washington than most Iowans would ever get.

When the war broke out in April 1861, Iowa moved fast. Governor Samuel J. Kirkwood called for volunteers. The Second Iowa gathered at Keokuk in May, where drilling started before uniforms and equipment fully arrived. Some men trained in work clothes. Discipline came quickly. So did confidence. The Gate City reported that the camp at Keokuk was “crowded daily with citizens watching the men drill.” The regiment showed “an uncommon seriousness for troops so newly raised.”

 

By early summer, the Second Iowa was sent east, attached to the Army of the Potomac. For many of the men, it was their first time away from home. The camps around Washington were crowded and noisy. Politicians, reporters, and spectators drifted in and out. Everything the army did seemed to be watched. The New York Tribune described western regiments arriving near Washington as “plain in dress but earnest in bearing,” a contrast not lost on eastern observers.

Battleship Iowa in the Spanish American War

Battleship Iowa at sea

By the time the Spanish–American War broke out in 1898, the Iowa was one of the most powerful warships afloat. Four 12-inch guns. Thick armor. A deep, steady hull built to fight, not parade. She represented a country that had finally decided it intended to be taken seriously at sea.

The New York Times called her “a floating fortress, built less for ceremony than for punishment,” while Harper’s Weekly said the ship looked “as if she had been designed to endure blows rather than admire them.”

Much of the ship’s personality came from her captain. Charles Edgar Clark.

He believed in drills, discipline, and doing things correctly even when no one was watching. Sailors described him as calm, blunt, and unmovable once his mind was made up. Lieutenant John M. Ellicott, one of the ship’s junior officers, said Clark “spoke little, expected much, and wasted no time convincing anyone twice.”

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds

Kim Reynolds didn’t burst into politics. She edged in. Her first job was Clarke County treasurer, a position built entirely on numbers and trust. Taxes came in. Bills went out. If the math worked, no one noticed. If it didn’t, the phone rang. The job taught her a useful lesson: government feels very different when you’re the one people call after it fails.

In 2008, she ran for the Iowa Senate from a rural district. Voters wanted someone dependable, conservative, and unremarkable in the best way. Reynolds fit neatly. She didn’t chase attention. She listened, voted with her party, and avoided turning routine decisions into public drama.

That made her an easy choice when Terry Branstad returned as governor in 2011. He needed a lieutenant who would compete for the spotlight, someone who understood the machinery and wouldn’t touch the dials unless told to. Reynolds filled the role comfortably. For six years, she learned the rhythms of state government by staying just offstage.

When Branstad became ambassador to China in 2017, Reynolds stepped into the governor’s office. She kept the cabinet intact and promised continuity. Her early months were careful, almost cautious, focused on proving she could hold the job without dropping it.

John Wayne: Born In Iowa, Built For America

John Wayne had a problem growing up. He lived in Winterset, Iowa, and his name was Marion. Marion Michael Morrison.

He grew up poor. His father struggled with health problems. Money was nonexistent, and nothing came easy. He worked odd jobs, and learned not to complain when things didn’t go his way.

That mindset stuck.

When the family moved west, Marion grew into a big kid—tall, strong, athletic. Played football. Earned a scholarship to USC. And for a while, it looked like his future might be on the field.

Then fate intervened. A football injury ended his athletic dreams. The scholarship money dried up, and he found a Hollywood job. Nothing glamorous.

Barbershop Shootout In Davenport's West End

John Hassman

Edward P. Cochran walked into John Hassman’s barbershop at 804 West Second Street like a man looking for work.

He walked out like a man looking for blood.

Cochran asked if Hassman needed another barber. Hassman looked him over, laughed, and said he didn’t look like a barber. The insult landed hard. Cochran slapped him across the face—then turned and walked away.

Hassman picked up a rock and hurled it after Cochran as he left.

That was the moment the morning turned deadly.
Cochran went to the Miller Hotel, ate breakfast, then went to his room and took a Savage Automatic pistol from its place. Ten shells. Nine in the magazine, one in the chamber. Loaded to the brim.

When he circled back toward the barbershop, he didn’t go in through the front. He came around the back, stopping near a sagging, four-foot-high board fence that separated him from Hassman’s shop.

He Threatened To Chop His Wife's Head Off Because She Wouldn't Walk The Street

John Lee (aka Albert Kling)

Love doesn’t always make sense. You love someone; they go a little crazy. Threaten to kill you, and then...

This story didn’t end in murder, but—it was touch and go several times.

After her husband threatened to kill her and behead their seven children, Mrs. Kling told authorities it didn’t matter. She loved him “more than life.”

“I love that man better than my own life,” she said. “He is the father of my ten children. I still love him with all his drinking and degrading talk, his efforts to force me to lead a life of shame, and his abuse and neglect. I have loved that man as I never loved another.”

John Lee (aka Albert Kling) 39, worked at Zimmerman Steel on Rockingham Road in Davenport, but he had big plans for freeing himself from the day-to-day drudgery of work.

If his wife would cooperate.

Times were tough. The family had ten children, and Lee didn’t enough money to support them. A day didn’t pass that someone went without food or needing new clothes. Someone always had their hand out asking for more money.

One day, he told his wife there were easier ways to make money. All she had to do was sleep with other men. Pretty soon, they’d have everything they wanted.

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.”

Three Dead Before Dawn: The Hardy Family Murders

The Hardy family

Raymond Hardy was days away from getting married when he walked into his family’s farmhouse and found his life blown apart.

His mother lay dead on the couch. His brother was sprawled on the kitchen floor. Before the night was over, his father would be found beaten to death in the barn. Three people were gone. The house was quiet. Whoever had done it was already gone—or so it seemed.

Raymond called for help, grabbed a shotgun, and searched the house in case the killer was still there. Then he waited.

Within hours, Raymond Hardy became the prime suspect.

The case against him was thin, centered on where he hung his hat, and why there was blood on it. Where a revolver turned up, and how much money he had in his pockets. For Raymond, those details became a matter of life and death. If the county attorney convinced a jury, he would hang.

The Night Clara Rosen Didn't Come Home

Clara Rosen

After supper on February 6, 1909, Clara Rosen left her parents’ home on Plum Street in Ottumwa, Iowa, to walk to her sister’s house on Dare Street, a route she knew well.

She never arrived.

At eight o’clock, her sister called the Rosen home. Clara wasn’t there either. By midnight, neighbors were searching the streets. Hundreds joined in, moving through yards, alleys, and empty lots, calling her name.

Around four in the morning, Clara’s brother Fred Rosen and his friend Otto Johnson found her body in an empty lot near Dare Street. Her skull was crushed. Her body had been dragged and left in the dirt. Officer Frank Williams called undertaker C. T. Sullivan. By daylight, all of Ottumwa knew Clara Rosen was dead.

Clara was twenty-nine. Until recently, she had worked as a bookkeeper. For fifteen years, she was the lead soprano in the Swedish Lutheran Church choir. She was engaged to be married that spring. Newspapers printed her photograph: neat hair, a fashionable hat, a respectable young woman. A victim, a town rallies around.

A Demon In Human Form: The Van Winkle Murders At Fairport

Harry Jones

“Sometime during the night,” reported the Muscatine Journal, “a demon in human form visited the home of Mr. and Mrs. Will Van Winkle.”

By daylight on December 4, 1907, Fairport knew they weren’t exaggerating. William and Anna Van Winkle lay dead on the bedroom floor, beaten until their skulls gave way. Blood soaked the bedding, streaked the walls, and pooled darkly on the floorboards. It wasn’t a clean kill. It was violence that left nothing to misunderstand.

The Van Winkles were young, broke, and new to married life. William, 23, was a section hand for the Rock Island railroad, one of dozens of men who spent their days swinging tools along frozen track. Anna was twenty. They’d been married four months and lived in a drafty little home that barely deserved to be called one. They had no money, no enemies, and no business dying the way they did.

People knew almost immediately who’d done it. Or who they thought had done it.

The 6th Iowa Infantry And The War That Wouldn’t End

The 6th Iowa Infantry found itself stalled in the mud and muck

The 6th Iowa Infantry, organized in the summer of 1861, was drawn largely from Johnson, Linn, Cedar, Scott, and Muscatine counties. The recruits ranged from teenagers to men in their forties, many of whom enlisted alongside relatives or longtime neighbors.

The regiment mustered in at Camp Ellsworth in Keokuk, where weapons and uniforms were scarce to nonexistent. The Keokuk Gate City worried Iowa’s first regiments were being sent forward faster than the state could properly equip and train them.

 

Private Ezra L. Brown of Company D echoed that sentiment in a letter home. “We march and halt,” he said, “until our legs do not care which comes next.” What made it harder was the officers were no help. Many of them were learning their duties alongside the enlisted men.

Colonel Milo Smith: He Led From the Front

Milo Smith was living in Iowa when the call for volunteers went out in 1862. That summer he helped raise the 26th Iowa Infantry, a regiment drawn largely from eastern Iowa counties along the Mississippi River. The men elected Smith colonel, a decision Iowa papers treated as practical rather than sentimental. The Clinton Herald said he was “steady and methodical in the discharge of duty, attentive alike to discipline and the welfare of his command.” But that might not have been the complete story. A soldier’s letter in The Morning Democrat said the officers of the 26th were all “well liked, especially our Colonel, Milo Smith, who goes around among the men like a father.”

 

The 26th Iowa was mustered into federal service in September 1862 and sent south almost immediately. The regiment traveled downriver into Arkansas as part of Union efforts to secure the Mississippi River system and suppress Confederate positions along its tributaries.

 

The regiment’s first major engagement came in January 1863 at Fort Hindman, commonly known as Arkansas Post. The Confederate fort guarded the Arkansas River and posed a continuing threat to Union supply traffic on the Mississippi. Union commanders determined to remove it, assembling a combined force of infantry and gunboats for the attack.