The State of Jones Read Online Free PDF Page A

the men. At first, it rained as Newton and comrades trudged over the steep hills of northern Mississippi. They arrived at Ripley footsore and mud soaked, and with ill will toward their commanders after marching for seven hours at a stretch, “at night thru rain and darkness so black you could scarcely see your hand.” They slept on wet ground, with no idea of why they were heading north with such urgency. “It is manifest that Gen Price is fast losing the confidence of all his soldiers,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel Columbus Sykes, a cotton planter serving with the 43rd Mississippi in the same brigade as Newton, to his wife Pauline. Finally, the rain had cleared and a high, hot sun had dried the roads. By the evening of October 2, the trudging columns sent up swirls of choking dust that parched throats and made it hard to breathe.
    Buck Van Dorn was a “harebrained” and “thick skulled” strategist, to borrow a description from historian Shelby Foote. He had been nearly thrown out of West Point before finishing fifty-second in his class of fifty-six, and he preferred horse racing to the drudgery of logistics, which made him ill suited to lead such a large coordinated attack. By the morning of October 3, 1862, his personal unevenness was catching up with him, and he would emerge from the impending battle facing charges of negligence. In Van Dorn’s haste to get to Corinth, he failed to take into account the undulating, heavily wooded terrain and how fatiguing such a forced march was as a preamble to battle. In his hurry, he also failed to ensure the men had adequate food and drink.
    After mess, Newton and the men fell into a short, exhausted sleep. At 4:00 a.m. on the morning of October 3, they were awoken for the final leg of the march. As they covered the last ten miles toward Corinth, the sun drew up in the sky and the temperature reached ninety degrees. The sandy roads were so hot that the men could feel the heat through their boot soles, and dust rose up like smoke. To make matters worse, it was almost completely dry for several miles around Corinth. There was no water for the men to refill their canteens. After a scorching hike, the footsore, dry-throated troops approached the town. The 7th Battalion moved across a broad triangle of ground between the two train tracks, pressing through heavy woods and undergrowth, broken by occasional pastures. Ahead, they could see the outer breastworks of Corinth, full of Yankees.
    With a hoarse shout of orders and a jangle of equipment, Newton and the rest of Company F formed their line of battle.
    October 3, 1862, 9:00 a.m., Corinth
    The 25,000 Union troops garrisoned in Corinth were no happier or healthier than the rebels who had been there. General William Rosecrans, not satisfied with the already formidable defenses, putthe men to work with axes and shovels, building a ring of batteries, large earthen bulwarks mounted with twenty-pound Parrott guns, around the circumference of town. The approaches were littered with felled timber, called “abatis,” to slow attackers. The landscape was one of open desolation, fields of nothing but hacked-off tree stumps.
    The northern men had suffered just as much from the heat and impure water of Corinth, with a sickness rate of 35 percent. Their rations were no better either; they existed on salt pork or beef unless they could supplement their diet from the surrounding countryside, already largely picked clean by the rebels. One Iowan who went foraging could find nothing but muscadine grapes. “Had grape pie for supper,” he reported.
    Once again, the Tishomingo Hotel became a hospital, and the federal infantrymen believed their doctors were just as incompetent as the rebels did. To Hugh Carlisle of the 81st Ohio, they were perpetrators of malpractice and dispensed the same ineffectual powders no matter what the ailment. He refused to take his medicine. “You must think I am a damn fool,” the surgeon said to him.
    “You must be a