Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Along the Mississippi River, 1863–1865 217
any attack, and showing careful generalship.” It is not clear whether he referred to
General Smith’s management of his entire force, or to Bouton’s rearguard action. 73
Smith’s cavalry had covered the eighteen miles from Pontotoc to Tupelo by noon
on 13 July; by midafternoon, the destruction of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad was
well under way. The Union force had now gotten between the Confederates and the
railroad. While the cavalry tore up the tracks and burned bridges and trestles for several
miles on either side of Tupelo, the two infantry divisions and Bouton’s brigade
halted a mile or two west of town on either side of the road they had traveled that day.
The Confederate department commander, Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee, who had joined
Forrest a week earlier with a small force of infantry, ordered an assault on the Union
position for the next morning, 14 July. 74
Bouton’s brigade occupied high ground on the left of the Union line, two-thirds
of a mile south of the road. The position was far from the main thrust of the Confederate
advance, but it afforded an excellent view. “About 7 A.M. skirmishing was
heard along the line,” Lieutenant Buswell recorded in his diary. West of the Union
camp stood a stone wall, and beyond it an abandoned cotton field, perhaps one mile
by three quarters, and beyond that woods. Six batteries of six guns each took station
in the field. “The troops were ordered to keep close down and keep quiet behind the
stone wall,” Buswell wrote.
Soon the rebs were seen coming through the timber . . . and the batteries commenced
firing. . . . They came out into the clearing 3 divisions, 3 lines deep, dismounted,
their leader, who we learned was Chalmers, riding back and forth behind
their ranks, on a noble white charger, his hat in one hand and sword swinging in the
other, cheering on his men. . . . [T]heir ranks were mown through & through, but
they charged and charged, until nearly up to the cannon, when orders were given to
our forces to fire, when we arose from behind the wall & fence and met them face
to face. It was desperate, they came on with many a cheer and occasionally a rebel
yell, their losses were tremendous. . . . [T]hey . . . were finally compelled to give
way, and back they fell across the field. . . . The [Union] troops . . . remained in line
of battle all day, and orders were rec’d to remain so all night, our coffee & hard tack
being brought to us on the line. 75
Heat may have accounted for as many Confederate casualties as did federal
gunfire. “These two causes of depletion left my line [of battle] almost like a line
of skirmishers,” one of Forrest’s brigade commanders complained. Another colonel
reported that his regiment suffered 25 percent casualties “through exhaustion and
overheat.” The oppressive weather likewise kept Smith’s men from pursuing the retreating
Confederates. 76
About sunset, Bouton shifted the bulk of his brigade north in order to shorten
the Union line. The new campsite was some seven hundred yards closer to the
road, at the base of the rise the troops had held throughout the day. The brigade left
73 OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, p. 330.
74 Ibid., pp. 306, 312, 316.
75 Buswell Jnls, 14 Jul 1864.
76 OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 252, 338 (“through exhaustion”), 349 (“These two”).