Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/258

 in the expedition against Vicksburg. It took part in the disastrous Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, after which it went to Milliken’s Bend, where General McClernand succeeded to the command of the army. During the year 1862 the regiment had lost by death, capture and discharge, three hundred and twenty-five men, and gained fifty-six by enlistment, so that it numbered seven hundred and twenty-six at the beginning of 1863. The new year opened with the capture of Arkansas Post, after which the Ninth was sent with the army to Young’s Point, opposite Vicksburg. The encampment was in a swamp near the river, where for long weeks, amid rain and floods, the camp was nearly submerged. Sickness and death were thinning the ranks, and acres of graves were made in the oozing swamps. The army was at last driven by the floods to the levee, where, cooped up between the river and the vast overflowed stretch of lowland, the men had to lie in their camps day after day, listless and despondent. As the floods increased malaria invaded every camp, the swamps and graveyards were overflowed, and the dead had to share with the living the narrow levee, the only land above the all-pervading waters. Here, amid the gloom and despair that prevailed, hundreds of the bravest and noblest young men of western homes sickened and died, with the sad thought that none of the glory of the battle-field would temper the tidings of their fate to distant friends, and their deaths could contribute nothing to aid the great cause they had volunteered to serve. For more than two months the Ninth suffered in these swamps.

In June, 1863, Captain Carskaddon, of Company K, was promoted to colonel of the regiment, as Lieutenant-Colonel Herron had been made a Brigadier-General on the 29th of November of the same year he was again promoted to Major-General; and Major Coyle was promoted to lieutenant-colonel; Captain Carpenter, of Company B, became major and Lieutenant Mackenzie, adjutant.