I wanted to share a story from my family history from across the years for Memorial Day.
I originally wrote this many years ago about my G-G-G-Grandfather on the 150th anniversary of his death. He enlisted in the Union Army in September 1862, after pestering his wife for months to let him do so. He left behind his Iowa farm, a wife and seven children aged 1 ½ to 16 years old (an eighth had died 2 years before in infancy) to serve in the 23rd Iowa Infantry. My apologies as this is rather long, but I hope you will find it worthwhile. Everything in this account is from historical sources, btw, including letters written home by members of the 23rd, official records, and other accounts of the battle
Edit: I have no idea why DKos has decided to remove my spacing between paragraphs. When I go into edit it still shows them, when I publish they go away. So, my apologies on the appearance of things, I hope everyone is still able to read it alright
2nd edit: Yeah, Dkos is going to fight me tooth and nail to add any paragraph spacing. Go figure, since it shows up ok in this intro section. Sorry.
Early on the morning of June 7th, Sergeant James O'Bleness marched toward a levee near the Mississippi River. He was part of a small group of sleepy Iowa veterans slogging through the morning dew headed toward a gap in a ragged line of figures atop the levee. When it had mustered into service in Des Moines nine months earlier, O'Bleness' regiment, the 23rd Iowa Volunteer Infantry, had boasted over a thousand men in its ranks. Now, it could barely call up 150 men able bodied enough for field service. The men waiting on the levee for the regiment to join them in line were new recruits, recently freed slaves comprising the 9th and 11th Louisiana (Colored) Infantry. Most had been in the army a matter of days. Some had just received their rifles the day before and had never fired them.
Colonel Samuel Glasgow, promoted to command of the regiment after Colonel Kinsman was killed leading the regiment's charge at Big Black River Bridge a few weeks earlier on May 17th, trotted ahead on horseback to get a look over the levee, which was now serving as a breastwork for the line of nervous new recruits.
Shocked by what he saw, Colonel Glasgow's voice rang out, “Double quick, for God's sake! They are right on us!” The men rushed up the levee just as grey uniformed figures were charging toward the other side…
In May, James O'Bleness had written a letter home, telling his children “Hamilton...I hope you will raise a good crop. Be industrious and get a good name – it is worth everything else to you... Lettie J., I wish I could come home and see you all once more, but I may never come home again. You must try and be a good girl and get to heaven. I hope you will study hard and become a good scholar so that you can teach your little brothers and sisters...Eva and Willie, I wish that I was at home, to hear you talk and tell you stories. I could tell you a great many things if I were there. Be good children. I will come home some time, perhaps. I know I will if I live.” To his wife Sarah, he wrote “I often think of you and the children; I thought this morning that I would like to sit down with you to breakfast. Fighting is a hard business. I can't say that I like it all...”
O'Bleness was twice the age of most of the men in the regiment. He'd turned forty in February, and at his age, with seven children, no one would have said ill of him had he stayed home and tended to his farm in Saylor Township. His wife Sarah had forbid him from enlisting earlier in the war but relented in August when a number of other men from the township enlisted in the new company being raised in Polk County to become part of what the papers were calling the "Western Regiment", and that would eventually be designated the 23rd Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment.
The day before arriving at Milliken's Bend, twenty miles upriver from Vicksburg, the 23rd Iowa had been returning from escorting prisoners to Memphis, an honor given it for the regiment’s role in breaking the Confederate lines at the Battle of Big Black Water Bridge, a battle that cost the regiment dearly as it and its sister regiment, the 22nd Iowa, led the charge against the Confederate lines. Beloved Colonel William Kinsman had fallen at the head of his regiment in the charge, as had many others.
Now on June 6th, 1862, as it returned downriver to rejoin Grant’s army, the 23rd received orders to reinforce the Union camp there due to reports of Confederate activity in the area. Milliken's Bend had once been a major part of the army's supply line, but now served mainly as a camp for newly formed regiments of freed slaves enlisted into the army. The 23rd Iowa was to reinforce these new regiments in the event that the reports of Confederate activity were true. The regiment arrived aboard several river transports in the early evening on the 6th and, with no further reports of Confederates at hand, opted to remain on their transports overnight. The Union forces already at the Bend numbered about a thousand men, camped between two levees parallel to the Mississippi River.
The reports of Confederate activity were true. A Confederate division was casting about for a way to knock the Union army besieging Vicksburg off balance and also communicate with the Confederate army trapped in the city.
Early on the morning of June 7th, the division split, and a brigade of Texans numbering about 1,500 men under Brigadier General Henry McCulloch (brother of General Ben McCulloch of Battle of Pea Ridge fame) marched on Milliken's Bend while a sister brigade marched on Young's Point and a third brigade waited a few miles to the rear ready to support the other two if needed. The Confederates believed (mistakenly) that Milliken's Bend was still a significant part of the Union supply line and hoped that breaking the line would disrupt Union operations around Vicksburg.
Pickets (sentries) reported the approach of the Confederate troops, and while the Louisiana regiments formed up on the levee word was sent to the 23rd Iowa to debark and form up in the center of the Union line. By the time the 23rd arrived at the levee, the Confederates were already charging the Union defenses.
The Confederates struck the Union line at an angle, hitting the the 9th Louisiana hard on the Union left first. Earlier in the Vicksburg Campaign, some Union officer with more enthusiasm than sense had ordered part of the Osage Orange hedges adjacent to the levee to be cut down, leaving an unobstructed path to the left of the Union lines that the charging Confederates now took full advantage of.
A vicious hand-to-hand battle ensued atop the levee, and some later reports said that the Confederates, infuriated that they were facing mostly black troops, cried for no quarter to be given. Big, strapping John Virtue of Company B of the 23rd, standing over six feet tall and two hundred pounds, engaged in a bayonet duel with one of the Texans atop the levee that ended with both men impaling each other. As the two struggled, Thomas McDowell, likewise of Company B, clubbed down the wounded Confederate with the butt of his rifle only to be mortally bayoneted himself by another Texan as he did so.
In the midst of this chaos several of the newly-armed Louisiana soldiers approached William Littell of Company D of the 23rd to ask where they could find firing caps for their rifles. Horrified, Littell cried “My God, men! Have you no caps?” and quickly discovered that the men were actually carrying full cap pouches but didn't know it, so green were they to their soldiering equipment.
The left of the Union line quickly crumpled, sending men streaming back to the inner levee for cover. The Confederates, now over the outer levee, poured a volley into the 23rd Iowa's exposed flank and the survivors of this attack abandoned their position and retreated to the inner levee as well. The retreating Union troops found cover behind the second levee but there was nowhere else to retreat to from there but into the Mississippi River. If the Confederates pushed their attack over the second levee, the outnumbered Union forces faced annihilation.
The USS Choctaw and USS Lexington, two Union gunboats patrolling the river, steamed up to investigate the sounds of battle and, finding the Union troops in dire straits, began throwing shells over the inner levee into the oncoming Rebels. The Confederates, surprised by the unexpected artillery fire landing among their ranks, made a critical mistake and halted their advance, unwilling to expose themselves to the gunboats' direct fire by cresting the second levee. Enthusiasm for continuing the attack was further blunted by the mistaken belief that the unarmed transports the 23rd Iowa had arrived in were also gunboats. Thinking they were now heavily outgunned by a large number of gunboats rather than just two, the Confederates contented themselves with some camp looting, patted themselves on the back on driving the Union troops back to the river, called it a victory and marched away.
In the days after the battle it would be called a victory by both sides, and newspapers in the North carried the story because despite much larger battles happening, this was only the second time that black troops had engaged in combat during the war (the 23rd Iowa were the only white Union troops present at the battle, except for the white officers of the colored regiments). The battle would soon be overshadowed by the 54th Massachusetts and its famous charge on Battery Wagner, but for a few weeks, Milliken's Bend was widely known.
But on the afternoon after the battle, on the field lay dozens, perhaps hundreds, of dead Union soldiers, white and black. Records were poorly kept on the casualties of the battle, but at least a quarter (and possibly as many as half) of the Union troops engaged were dead, wounded or missing when it was over. Of the perhaps 150 men of the 23rd Iowa at Milliken's Bend (some reports say as few as 120 were there), 23 were killed, 42 others wounded.
And the body of Sgt. James O'Bleness, farmer, husband, father, lay on the field where he fell during the retreat to the inner levee, a bullet through his left cheek.
...And 158 years later, his great-great-great-grandson tells the story of how he died.