Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/500

 Iowa Cavalry this day marched forty-five miles, had a sharp skirmish with the enemy and captured a Rebel camp with much property. At the Battle of Corinth it did good service on the right, acting as couriers and joining in the pursuit.

In Grant’s Mississippi campaign it was continually employed; entering Holly Springs, driving the enemy out and on the 19th marched on Ripley, dispersing a large force of the enemy capturing many prisoners, horses, and mules. The Battle of Coffeeville was fought on the 5th of December in which the Union forces under Colonel Dickey were defeated. The Second Iowa here lost twenty-two men in killed and wounded. It soon after marched to La Grange, where it went into winter quarters.

The orders for this expedition were issued on the 16th of April, 1863. The army consisted of the Second Iowa Cavalry, the Sixth and Seventh Illinois with five pieces of artillery. The object of the raid was to cut railroad communications with the Confederate army at Vicksburg, in the rear of that city, to inflict damage on the enemy’s resources in central Mississippi and to make way as best it could into the Union lines of the Department of the Gulf.

Colonel B. H. Grierson of the Sixth Illinois Cavalry was in command. On the morning of the 17th the troops began one of the most daring raids of the war. At Clear Spring Colonel Hatch with his command separated from the main body and managed to attract the attention of the enemy to his regiment, concealing by stratagem the march of the main body under Grierson. This he did so successfully as to give the principal column nearly two days’ start of the enemy’s forces gathered to resist the invaders. After obliterating Colonel Grierson’s trail, Hatch marched in the direction of West Point and, when near Palo Alto, was attacked in rear and on both flanks by a large force