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.

Iowa's John Murray Corse: He Stayed On The Field After Part Of His Jaw Was Shot Off

John Murray Corse helped raise the 6th Iowa Infantry and was elected major because the men thought he’d stand firm when the shooting started.

At Shiloh, in April 1862, the 6th Iowa was dumped into a fight that made no sense and stayed that way for two days. Corse was shot in the leg early and stayed on the field anyway. The Davenport Democratsaid he “refused to leave his command while the engagement continued.” In his official report, Corse said the combat was “severe beyond any former experience,” which is about as emotional as he got on paper.

Promotion followed. Corse became a colonel, then a brigadier general, commanding a brigade thick with Iowa regiments—the 6th, 7th, 19th, and 20th. He drilled them hard, and expected order and discipline. The Muscatine Journal said he was  “exacting to the point of severity.” None of that bothered Corse. His men didn’t have to like him. They just had to move when told.

In 1864, he rode with Sherman in the March to the sea. In October, Confederate General John Bell Hood tried to rip out Sherman’s supply line at Allatoona Pass. Corse’s brigade was in the way. Hood demanded surrender. Corse declined. In his report, he said he informed the enemy he was prepared for the assault.

Iowa Soldiers in Sherman's Atlanta Campaign

The Fifteenth Iowa marching south from Chattanooga

General William T. Sherman told his commanders the Atlanta campaign would be “continuous,” a contest of endurance rather than brilliance. “We must wear out the enemy,” he said, “by persistent fighting.” Sherman said the army would advance “step by step, feeling for the enemy and pressing him whenever found.” The Davenport Democrat warned readers this would be “not a dash, but a grind,” while the Burlington Hawk-Eye called it “war stripped of romance and fought by inches.”

The Iowa regiments were deeply woven into Sherman’s armies. The Second, Seventh, Eighth, Eleventh, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Twentieth, Twenty-fourth, Twenty-sixth, Thirty-first, Thirty-second, and Thirty-third Iowa Infantry marched south with the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Ohio. Many were veterans, hardened by Shiloh, Corinth, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. Sherman said the western regiments had “learned to endure what would break others,” and Iowa officers understood this campaign would test that endurance daily. Private James H. Pierce of Company D, Twentieth Iowa, wrote home during the opening march that “we are feeling the enemy every day. There is no rest. We march, halt, throw up works, and fight, and then do it again.”

 

Colonel William W. Belknap of the Fifteenth Iowa said the work ahead would be “constant skirmishing, heavy labor with the spade, and frequent loss without decisive action.” The Dubuque Herald seized on the line, telling readers it was “a truer picture of the campaign than any glowing headline,” warning Iowa families the war had entered its most exhausting phase.

Forty-Seven Days Under Fire: The 26th Iowa Infantry at Vicksburg

Union troops fighting in the trenches outside of Vicksburg

The 26th Iowa Infantry was officially mustered into federal service in September 1862. Its companies came primarily from Clinton, Jackson, Dubuque, Scott, and surrounding eastern Iowa counties. Muster rolls show an average age in the mid-twenties, with a noticeable number of teenagers and men in their thirties who left families behind. An Iowa editor said the regiment appeared made up of “men more accustomed to tools than to arms,” who carried themselves with seriousness rather than excitement.

 

Training at Camp McClellan in Davenport was hurried. The papers said the state was sending men south faster than they could be fully prepared. The Davenport Democrat warned readers the new regiments would “learn the war by meeting it,” not by drilling safely behind the lines.

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.”

Hawkeye Soldiers in the Trenches at Vicksburg

Union gunboats at Vicksburg

The Mississippi rolled past Vicksburg in a brown, patient curve, carrying supplies, rumors, and the quiet certainty that whoever held this bend held the West. Vicksburg sat high on its bluffs, ringed with earthworks and guns, daring the Union army to try. An Iowa soldier said it looked “like a city nailed to the sky.” Another felt as though “the river itself had taken sides.”

Iowa troops had been circling Vicksburg for months before they ever fired a serious shot at it.

 

The winter of 1862–63 had been one long frustration. Grant tried canals, bayous, and backwater marches. Men waded through swamps waist-deep, slept in mud, and ate rations that tasted of mold and dirt. A private in the Twenty-second Iowa said they were “marching in circles through water and mosquitoes,” while another thought the campaign felt like “a lesson in how not to get anywhere.”

Iowa Soldiers on Lookout Mountain

Collecting the wounded after the Battle of Lookout Mountain

Lookout Mountain rose straight out of the Tennessee River valley, a wall of rock and timber that loomed over Chattanooga like a warning. Clouds wrapped its upper slopes so often that soldiers joked it belonged more to the sky than the earth. An Iowa private wrote home saying it looked “like a giant standing with his head in the weather and his feet in the war.”

By November 1863, Iowa troops had been staring up at it for weeks.

 

After Chickamauga, the Union army was trapped in Chattanooga, half-starved and half-defeated. Confederate guns crowned Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, closing the valley like a vise. Rations were thin. Shoes were thinner. A soldier in the Fifth Iowa Battery said men were living on “cracker dust and hope.” Another said the army felt “held down by hunger and hills.”