April 28, 1862. |
1862. |
April 30. |
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body of Missouri and Arkansas troops; and General Mansfield Lovell, who had fled from New Orleans when Butler's troops and the National gun-boats approached that city,
had just arrived with his retreating force.
In addition to these, the army had been largely increased by militia who had been sent forward from Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, the States immediately threatened with invasion.
The organization of the corps of Hardee, Polk, Breckinridge, and Bragg, was continued.
The whole number of Beauregard's troops was about sixty-five thousand.
Most of them were the best drilled and best tried fighting men in the Confederacy.
Bragg was Beauregard's second in rank, and commanded the Army of the Mississippi. Van Dorn was placed at the head of the re-enforcements, and Breckinridge of the reserves.
The whole force was within intrenched lines.1 Such was the condition and position of the contending armies on the 3d of May.
On that day General Pope sent out Generals Paine and Palmer with detachments2 on a reconnoissance in force toward the hamlet of Farmington, an outpost of the Confederates, about five miles northwest of Corinth, and then in command of General Marmaduke, of Missouri.3 His troops, about forty-five thousand strong, were in the woods around the little log meeting-house near the hamlet.
Marmaduke made very little resistance when attacked, but fled to the lines at Corinth, leaving as spoils for the victors about thirty of his command slain and a hundred wounded; also his camp, with all its supplies, and two hundred prisoners. The National loss was two killed and eleven wounded. The cavalry and artillery pushed on to Glendale, a little east of Corinth, and destroyed the railway track and two important trestle-bridges there.
In the mean time, General Wallace had sent out
Colonel Morgan L. Smith, with three battalions of cavalry and a brigade of infantry, upon the Mobile and Ohio railway, who fought the Confederates in a wood, and destroyed an important bridge and the track not far from Purdy, by which supplies and re-enforcements for Beauregard, at Jackson, Tennessee, were cut off.4
1 These defenses were mostly along the brows of the first ridges outside of the village of Corinth, extending from the Memphis and Charleston railway on the east, and sweeping around northward, crossed the Mobile and Ohio railway to the former road, about three miles westward of Corinth. See map of the battle-field, on page 294. At every road-crossing there was a redoubt, or a battery with massive epaulements. Outside of these works on the north were deep lines of abatis.
2 These troops were composed of the Tenth, Sixteenth, Twenty-second, Twenty-seventh, Forty-second, and Fifty-first Illinois volunteers; the Tenth and Sixteenth Michigan volunteers; Yates's Illinois sharp-shooters; Houghtailing's Illinois and Hezcock's Ohio batteries; and the Second Michigan cavalry.
3 See page 540, volume I.
4 This was a timely movement, for, while the bridge was burning, an engine that had been sent up from Corinth to help through three trains heavily laden with troops from Memphis, and hurrying forward by the longer way of Humbolt and Jackson, because the direct road was of insufficient capacity at that time, came thundering on. The Nationals, who lay in ambush, captured it, and ran it off at full speed Into the ravine under the burning bridge. The re-enforcements for Beauregard were thus effectually cut off.
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