Volume XXIV Issue #4 • An Excerpt From:

Hell On The Hatchie:
The Fight at Davis Bridge Tennessee

by Thomas E. Parson, Ranger, Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center

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Note: All Blue & Gray feature articles are annotated.

Metamora Ridge looking east toward the Hatchie River

Van Dorn’s offensive had been one of necessity rather than opportunity. Gen. Braxton Bragg had invaded Kentucky in August 1862, with the Confederate Army of the Mississippi, where his offensive was opposed by the Union Army of the Ohio under Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell. As the two opponents maneuvered for advantage, Bragg learned his opponent was receiving reinforcements from West Tennessee and North Mississippi. Bragg, the ranking Confederate general in the department, contacted his two senior commanders in Mississippi, Van Dorn and Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, urging them to coordinate their efforts and seize the initiative. A demonstration on their part would prevent additional Union troops from transferring to Kentucky and could also exploit the Union weakness that Bragg assured them existed in their own theater of operations.1

Van Dorn was unable to obey initially (one of his two divisions was campaigning near Baton Rouge while the other was guarding the Mississippi River at Vicksburg and Port Hudson) and so it was Price who responded with his own two divisions. Under the mistaken belief that Brig. Gen. William S. Rosecrans was leading his Union Army of the Mississippi into Tennessee, Price marched toward the Tennessee River in a movement designed either to cut off Rosecrans or follow him into the Volunteer State. Occupying the small town of Iuka, Mississippi, Price was surprised to learn that Rosecrans had not headed north but was to the west, near Corinth. Unsure of what to do, Price tarried in Iuka for several days contemplating his next move.2

Although Price may have been unsure of what to do, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was not. Overseeing the District of West Tennessee from his headquarters in Corinth, Grant rapidly began moving troops in a bid to crush Price’s small army. Maj. Gen. Edward O. C. Ord was ordered to march his three divisions out of Corinth and threaten Iuka from the north. Meanwhile Rosecrans, with his two divisions in Rienzi, Mississippi, would march eastward and close off any escape to the south. It was a sound plan, but one that went seriously awry when Rosecrans was unable to take his position in the allotted time. Repeated delays held off the scheduled attack and Grant eventually directed Ord to make his attack only after he heard Rosecrans’ guns to the south.3