Iuka was a Civil War engagement fought in Mississippi, 1862. It was a Union victory.
Maj. Gen. Sterling Price's Army of the West main column marched into Iuka, Mississippi, on September 14. Price's superior, Gen. Braxton Bragg, the commander of the Confederate Army of the Mississippi, who was leading an offensive deep into Kentucky, ordered him to prevent Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans's Army of the Mississippi troops from moving into Middle Tennessee and reinforcing Brig. Gen. James Negley's division of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio, which was garrisoning Nashville. Price had about 14,000 men, and he was informed that, if necessary, he could request assistance from Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn, commanding the District of the Mississippi, headquartered at Holly Springs. Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, commanding the Army of the Tennessee, feared that Price intended to go north to join Bragg against Buell. Grant devised a plan for his left wing commander, Maj. Gen. E.O.C. Ord, and his men to advance on Iuka from the west; Rosecrans's forces were to march from the southwest, arrive at Iuka on the 18th, and make a coordinated attack the next day. Ord arrived on time and skirmishing ensued between his reconnaissance patrol and Confederate pickets, about six miles from Iuka, before nightfall. Rosecrans informed Grant that he would not arrive at Iuka on the 18th but would begin his march at 4:30 am, the next morning. On the 19th, Ord sent Price a message demanding that he surrender, but Price refused. At the same time, Price received dispatches from Van Dorn suggesting that their two armies rendezvous, as soon as possible, at Rienzi for attacks on the Federal forces in the area. Price informed Van Dorn that the military situation had changed so he could not evacuate Iuka immediately. He did, however, issue orders for his men to prepare for a march the next day, to rendezvous with Van Dorn. Rosecrans's army marched early on the 19th, but, instead of using two roads as directed, it followed the Jacinto (Bay Springs) Road. After considering the amount of time that Rosecrans required to reach Iuka, Grant determined that he probably would not arrive on the 19th, so he ordered Ord to await the sound of fighting between Rosecrans and Price before engaging the Confederates. As Rosecrans advanced, his men fought actions with Confederate troops at points along the way. About 4:00 pm, just after ascending a hill, the Union column halted because the Confederates were well-placed below in a ravine, filled with timber and underbrush. The Confederates launched attacks up the hill, capturing a six-gun Ohio battery, while the Federals counterattacked from the ridge. Fighting, which Price later stated he had "never seen surpassed," continued until after dark; the Union troops camped for the night behind the ridge. Price had redeployed troops from Ord's front to fight against Rosecrans's people. Ord did nothing, later proclaiming that he never heard any fighting and, therefore, never engaged the enemy; Grant also remarked that he had heard no sounds of battle. Following the fighting on the 19th, Price determined to reengage the enemy the next day, but his subordinates convinced him, instead, to march to join Van Dorn, as earlier planned. At the same time, Rosecrans redeployed his men for fighting the next day. Price's army evacuated via the uncovered Fulton Road, protected its rear with a heavy rearguard and hooked up with Van Dorn five days later at Ripley. Although Rosecrans was supposed to traverse Fulton Road and cover it, he stated that he had not guarded the road because he feared dividing his force; Grant later approved this decision. Rosecrans's army occupied Iuka and then mounted a pursuit; the Confederate rearguard and overgrown terrain prevented the Union pursuit from accomplishing much. The Federals should have destroyed or captured Price's army, but instead the Rebels joined Van Dorn and assaulted Corinth in October.
On September 19, 1862, Union and Confederate forces clashed at Iuka, Mississippi, in what became the first engagement of the Iuka-Corinth Campaign of the Civil War. Confederate Maj. Gen. Sterling Price led the Army of the West on an advance that Union Brigadier General William S. Rosecrans succeeded in halting.
To confront Price, Major General Ulysses S. Grant deployed two separate Union armies in a coordinated double envelopment. Rosecrans moved his Army of the Mississippi toward Iuka from the southwest, while three divisions of the Army of the Tennessee, led by Maj. Gen. Edward Ord, closed in from the northwest. Pulling off this kind of pincer maneuver posed real challenges during the Civil War, particularly across rough ground like that surrounding Iuka, since both prongs of the attack had to converge on the enemy simultaneously. With telegraph technology still too primitive for reliable battlefield coordination, commanders of that era often relied on other signals, in this instance the noise of combat itself, to synchronize their movements. Grant and Ord intended to join the fight the moment they heard Rosecrans engage the enemy, but an acoustic shadow muffled the sounds of battle, leaving them unaware that fighting had already commenced.
Rosecrans' troops fought alone throughout the afternoon. By evening, Price's Confederates pulled back from Iuka along a route the Union forces had failed to seal off, moving to link up with Confederate Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn. Together, they would soon face Rosecrans again at the Second Battle of Corinth.
After the Union victory at Corinth in May 1862, Halleck moved up to become general in chief of the Union Army, and Grant took his place leading the forces at Corinth, Mississippi. Grant's command was reduced from what Halleck had held, though, since Buell's Army of the Ohio now functioned independently, leaving Grant with only his own Army of the Tennessee alongside Rosecrans' Army of the Mississippi, roughly 100,000 troops combined. With the Confederates having pulled out of Corinth that summer, Grant's men spent their time defending supply routes across western Tennessee and northern Mississippi. Sherman's division held Memphis, Ord's division watched over the supply line at Corinth, and Rosecrans controlled the rail line running east from Corinth to Iuka. When Bragg pushed his Confederate forces north out of Tennessee into Kentucky that September, Buell set out after him from Nashville, and the Confederates recognized they had to keep Grant from sending Buell reinforcements.
Bragg had directed Price to bring the Army of the West from Tupelo toward Nashville to support the Kentucky campaign. By September 13, Price's forces had reached Iuka, a town roughly 20 miles east of Corinth in the northeastern part of Mississippi. This location served as a modest Union supply depot, the farthest eastern point Grant had secured along the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. Skirmishing broke out between Price's cavalry and the pickets guarding the small garrison there. Before sunrise on September 14, Colonel Murphy, commanding the 8th Wisconsin Infantry, ordered the depot's supplies burned and withdrew his brigade of 2,000 men toward Corinth. Confederate troops rushed in, extinguished the flames, and claimed a substantial cache of supplies still intact. As a result, Rosecrans removed Murphy from command and had him face court-martial.
Once in Iuka, Price's army waited for Van Dorn's Army of West Tennessee, numbering about 7,000, to join them. Together the two commanders planned to strike at Grant's supply and communication lines in western Tennessee. Such a move would either stop Grant from reinforcing Buell, assuming he responded as anticipated, or, if Grant held back, free the combined force to trail Bragg and bolster his push northward.
Rather than wait for the enemy to strike first, Grant endorsed a strategy to trap Price using two converging columns before Van Dorn's men, still four days away to the southwest, could arrive to help him. He dispatched Ord with three divisions of the Army of the Tennessee, some 8,000 soldiers, along the Memphis and Charleston Railroad toward Burnsville, from where they would take roads north of the tracks and approach Iuka from the northwest. At the same time, Rosecrans' army was to advance along the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, bringing two divisions totaling 9,000 men in from the southwest to seal off any Confederate retreat, while the rest of his force stayed behind to defend Corinth against Van Dorn. This somewhat intricate two-pronged strategy actually originated with Rosecrans, who knew the Iuka region well from earlier service there. Grant himself traveled with Ord's headquarters and exercised little direct authority over Rosecrans once the fighting began.
On the evening of September 18, Ord pushed his men toward Iuka, and before darkness fell his scouting party traded fire with Confederate outposts some six miles outside the town. Rosecrans, meanwhile, fell behind schedule, since his route was longer and the roads were thick with mud, and one of his divisions wandered off course, forcing it to double back and find the proper path. That same night he sent word to Grant that his position was still twenty miles distant, though he intended to resume the march at 4:30 the next morning and expected to arrive at Iuka by the middle of the afternoon on the nineteenth. Because of this setback, Grant instructed Ord to close to within four miles of the town but to hold off engaging the Confederates until he heard combat break out between Rosecrans and Price. Ord called on the Confederates to surrender, a demand Price rejected outright. Price, however, had just gotten word from Van Dorn urging that their two commands unite at Rienzi to strike the Union forces nearby, so he directed his troops to ready themselves for departure the following day.
Rosecrans set his column moving early on September 19. Rather than splitting his force between the Jacinto and Fulton roads as originally intended, approaching Iuka from the southwest and southeast at once, he kept his men together on the Jacinto Road alone, wary that a divided command spread over both routes could not aid each other quickly enough if the Confederates struck.
By that afternoon Rosecrans had closed to within two miles of Iuka, driving in Confederate outposts as he came, when at 4:30 p
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