A Hurricane of Death Howling Through the Woods: With the 4th Iowa on Pea Ridge

Looking back on the ferocious fighting at the Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862, Captain William H. Kinsman of the 4th Iowa called it "a perfect hurricane of death howling through the woods." 

 "The weather was splendid and the smoke, instead of hanging murkily among the trees, rose rapidly and rolled away over the hills in dense, sulfurous masses. The thunder of the artillery was terrific as the shot and shell hissed and screamed through the air like flying devils while the infantry with their rifles, shotguns, and muskets kept a perfect hurricane of death howling through the woods. The Rebels fought well but generally fired too high and their batteries, although getting our range accurately, missed the elevation much of the time. Their poor shooting was our salvation. Had they done as well as our men with the tremendous odds against us, they must have annihilated us," he wrote. 

          Captain Kinsman’s description of his regiment’s participation in the Battle of Pea Ridge first saw publication in the March 29, 1862, edition of the Council Bluffs Nonpareil.

 

Captain William H. Kinsman of the 4th Iowa later led the 23rd Iowa as colonel. He was killed in action May 16, 1863, during the Battle of Champion Hill east of Vicksburg. 

Pea Ridge battleground, Arkansas

March 10, 1862

          Another great battle for the Union has been fought and another victory won. We have met the combined Rebel armies of the southwest and routed them with great slaughter. Right gloriously have the 4th Iowa and 9th Iowa sustained the well-earned reputation of our Iowa troops and won unfading laurels for themselves.

          Ordered in the morning to occupy and hold with my company a high hill on the left of our division to prevent the Rebels from turning our left flank, I had a good opportunity of seeing the positions occupied by both armies. Although they were mostly hidden from view by the heavy timber, which, with the exception of a few cleared fields, covered the valley, the roar of the artillery and the incessant rattle of musketry designated where the batteries and infantry were posted.

          The Rebels, 15,000-strong under General [Sterling] Price, had by a circuitous route got beyond us on the Springfield Road in the night and on the morning of March 7 were very strongly posted with their right wing resting against a high hill and their left stretching across the valley for a mile. Opposed to Price’s force we had all told less than 2,100 men and 12 guns consisting of the 1st and 9th Iowa Batteries. At 8:30 a.m., Colonel [Grenville M.] Dodge opened the ball and the battle was soon raging all along the line with the fierceness and obstinacy which omened a terrible struggle.

          The weather was splendid and the smoke, instead of hanging murkily among the trees, rose rapidly and rolled away over the hills in dense, sulfurous masses. The thunder of the artillery was terrific as the shot and shell hissed and screamed through the air like flying devils while the infantry with their rifles, shotguns, and muskets kept a perfect hurricane of death howling through the woods. The Rebels fought well but generally fired too high and their batteries, although getting our range accurately, missed the elevation much of the time. Their poor shooting was our salvation. Had they done as well as our men with the tremendous odds against us, they must have annihilated us.

          At one time when they were attempting to turn our right flank with an overwhelming force, Colonel Dodge led a battalion of the 3rd Illinois Cavalry and charged on them like a whirlwind, scattering them in the wildest confusion. In riding 300 yards, Colonel Dodge had three horses shot under him. General Price told some of our boys of the 4th Iowa who were captured on the day of the fight and have since escaped that Dodge fought more like a devil than a human being.

At Pea Ridge, Colonel Grenville M. Dodge of the 4th Iowa commanded the First Brigade of the Fourth Division of the Army of the Southwest. Wounded in the side and hand during the engagement, he would recover and go on to become commander of the 16th Army Corps during the Atlanta campaign. He famously got into a fistfight with one of his division commanders during that campaign and was eventually shot in the head by a Confederate sharpshooter but survived. 

          Several of the Rebel colonels inquired of our boys who those black-coated fellows were and who led them. They said there must have been at least 3,000 of them. When the boys told them that there were less than 600 of them, the colonels said they needn’t tell them any such stuff as that for they knew it was a damned lie.

But they sent their compliments to Colonel Dodge for bravery of himself and his command. And well they might for opposed to his brigade of 1,050 men and two guns of the 1st Iowa Battery were six regiments of Confederate troops, a large force of Missouri State Guards, and 18 guns. Many of these Confederate troops were the men who did the hard fighting at the Wilson Creek battle. All day, from 8:30 in the morning to 5:30 at night, the “iron brigade” held its ground, dealing death into the Rebel ranks. When the pressure became too great, the 4th Iowa walked away from the field in good order with the sullen, savage tread of men who might be driven by main strength but could not be conquered.

          Company B, stretched out across the hill as skirmishers, away to the left of the whole division, was mistaken by the Rebels for a regiment and nothing but their ignorance of our numbers prevented them from swarming over the hill and pushing us off. From the force they had at its base beyond us, they could easily have sent up 20 to our one. As it was, they contented themselves with stretching a line of skirmishers just below the brow of the hill and across it among the trees. They kept shooting at us all day with muskets, squirrel rifles, and arrows with poor success, however, for we held our position and fully accomplished the object for which we occupied the hill and had only one man wounded.

          The boys kept telling me of shots whizzing past them with no report. I told them they must be mistaken, never thinking of Indian arrows. They persisted in it and I concluded that some butternut scoundrel, having no regards for the laws of civilized warfare, was shooting with an air gun. But it was Van Dorn’s Indians shooting arrows. My men did better shooting. It was seldom that they could get a fair pop at a Secesh but when they did, down went his house.



          One fellow skulked along almost to our extreme left. One of the boys caught a glimpse of him and fired and away he scampered for cover, crouched as low as he could run. Frank Walton fired and the fellow fell. The next day we found him dead, shot through the shoulders. Several of the boys said they were sure they hit their man but of course no one went to the spot to see as unnecessarily making a target of one’s self for 50 bullets wouldn’t pay. The next day, however, the boys strolled over the hill and found 11 dead bodies, shot with musket balls, and probably several more had been carried away by their comrades.

          The 9th Iowa boys under the hill fought bravely and were badly cut up. When they fell back, we of course left the hill and went with them. The Rebels swarmed up over the hill and sent a hailstorm of balls after us as a parting salute, but we got out of the woods in safety and joined the 4th Iowa in an open field in time to unite with it in rounding up an Iowa bunch for four fresh regiments which General Curtis had sent to reinforce us.

The general had come himself and with full faith in the grit of his Iowans, ordered them to fix bayonets and charge on the enemy. Not a murmur ran along the line as with empty cartridge boxes and empty guns, the boys fixed the unfailing bayonets to the pieces and were ready to go. Charge! A wall of steel glistened and flashed in the deepening twilight and steadily moved across the open field toward the wood where the Rebel lay in ten-fold force.

You would have been proud of the 4th Iowa to have seen them then, moving with unfaltering tread, unsheltered, and in full view of a concealed enemy who might at point-blank range open a perfect hailstorm of destruction upon them. But our cheering had evidently frightened the Rebels and not a shot greeted us. After standing at the edge of the woods a few minutes, we marched to our camp of the previous night, got our suppers, and had just got stowed away snugly under blankets when the order came: “be ready to march in 20 minutes.”

General Samuel R. Curtis
Army of the Southwest

The ready 4th was ready. We marched to the battleground again and awaited daylight for a renewal of the fight. Daylight came. The light of the campfires of both armies which had reddened the sky faded away before it. Sunrise, and not a shot had broken the silence. We began to think the Rebels had fled and left their fires to deceive us. The morning was chilly and we built fires with secesh rails and warmed ourselves.

Suddenly a round shot came singing along over our heads and the boom of a 6-lb Rebel gun sounded the reveille. Now the balls came whizzing along handsomely. Bang, bang, bang went the guns of one of our batteries and the dance of death was fairly begun again. Colonel Dodge came riding down the road past us when a 6-lb shot sang past his head and then a shell came humming along and burst, tearing a hole in his coat. He was riding parallel with the line of his brigade and only a few steps from us. The Rebels had got our range and the colonel thought it advisable to move us which he immediately did.

The forces which Sigel had engaged on Friday under Van Dorn and McCullouch had reinforced Price in the night and now their whole army, numbering 39,000 men, was together and as we have since learned, Price told his men we would surrender in an hour or two. But he had mistaken the temper of the men he had met. Our smoothbore batteries with an incessant shower of shot and shell and Sigel with his rifled guns soon made the enemy’s position too hot for him and before 10 o’clock, his whole army was retreating in the wildest confusion.

The iron hail had broken Price’s golden dreams of victory and spoils and so thoroughly was he impressed with a sense of danger that he fled with his army 17 miles that night as we learned by Sergeant Finley of the 4th who was taken prisoner the first day and escaped Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, I visited the hospitals. Grim, ghastly, and terrible were the scenes that met the view on every side. Cannon shot and shell make frightful wounds and men with their brains dashed out, legs and arms crushed and mangled, or bodies torn open were scattered in all directions.

Dead horses were lying all over the field and many hobbling about with broken legs were shot by the men to relieve them of their misery. Oak trees a foot in diameter were cut off by the rifled shot and others much larger were pierced through and through. Our wounded men bear their sufferings like heroes. Acting adjutant Bell was shot through the lungs on the first day and died yesterday. His last words were “Bully for the 4th Iowa.” He was a noble fellow and brave as a lion.

Lieutenant [James T.] Chittenden of Co. K is shot through the lungs. I fear he cannot live. I went to see him tonight. After a pressure of the hand, he said he did not know but this would end him. I told him I hoped not. He replied that he “had a little rather not himself but he had not the disposal of the matter in his own hands.” Then he added, “we have gained a great victory.” I told him yes and passed out, perhaps never to see him again. I thought of the many jovial times we had at Rolla and cursed anew the rebellion which us cutting down so many of the choicest spirits of the land. Many of your readers will remember Lieutenant Chittenden as a young lawyer of much promise in southwestern Iowa and as noble-hearted a man as ever trod Iowa soil. God grant that he may yet recover.

I might write a volume of the incidents of the battle but time forbids. It is now past midnight. Reveille will sound at 5:30. I was out late last night and got but little sleep. I must turn in and get a nap as we march at 8 o’clock in the morning and will probably have more fighting. Here is the number of killed and wounded in the 4th Iowa:

Number of men engaged  548

Officers killed                  1

Officers wounded            4

Enlisted men killed          18

Enlisted men wounded    139

Missing                           1

          Several of the wounded men will die. The wounded will be sent back to Keatsville, Missouri, 13 miles from here, in the morning as we go forward. Old Ben McCulloch and McIntosh were killed in the fight on Friday. Emmett McDonald commanded one of the Rebel batteries. The Bluffs boys are all well and doing well.

 Colonel Dodge, in his official report as commander of the First Brigade, says: “Capt. W. H. Kinsman with Company B, 4th Iowa, and two companies of the 24th Missouri, were detached from the brigade and deployed as skirmishers on the extreme left of the division, holding the high ridge on our left flank, which he did efficiently, and with great good judgment, against a greatly superior force of the enemy.”

 Source:

Letter from Captain William Henry Kinsman, Co. B, 4th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, Council Bluffs Nonpareil (Iowa), March 29, 1862, pg. 2

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