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The Terrible Marsh “The labors were fast overcoming me, and I was glad when darkness closed the scene,” recalled a sick and worn-out Lieutenant Keysor. Sergeant Dodds of the th Illinois spoke for all that day on the Union side: “Dear, oh dear! Such a time was never seen by mortal man—such a defeat—such confusion— such suffering!” A crescent moon faintly illuminated the narrow, hilly Ripley road leading northwest away from the Agnew farm. Wilkin’s rear guard of the th Illinois, Fifty-Ninth U.S. Colored Infantry, and Ninth Minnesota passed another half dozen wagons whose “luried flames,” recalled Nicholas Schreifels, “reddened the evening sky.” Utter defeat and fatigue exacted a dreadful toll on spirit as well as body. During the “fore part of the night,” forty-six-yearold Lt. J. C. McCain of Company B eased gingerly onto a log, intending to go no farther. Sergeant Lucius A. Babcock loyally stayed with his officer, as did several privates. It was said they “preferred to be taken prisoners to killing themselves in running in such a climate, and under such unfavorable circumstances .” Many others also gave out.1 About  p.m. Wilkin bumped into the rear of the supply train, whose lead wagons, he was told, were “slowly passing through the bottom land and creek.” The tragedy that unfolded at Hatchie swamp exceeded anything that yet befell Sturgis’s incredibly ill-led force, but it was completely avoidable. Never realizing that the dry detour circled a half mile west, two cavalry brigades , two horse artillery batteries, Sturgis’s cavalry escort, and a horde of infantry churned the two-hundred-foot-wide slough into muddy soup. Seven or eight ambulances (one with liberator Hens Lüthye) and one wagon made it across, but more than a hundred vehicles and a dozen artillery pieces  chapter nine ‫ﱸﱷﱶ‬ Our Poor Exhausted, Foot Sore Boys! waited their turn. Then a caisson “stuck fast in the mud” and “completely obstructed the passage.” Vehicles trying to go around became mired up to their axles. Utter chaos ensued. Sergeant Merrilies discovered “a gulf of mud and water, the whole passage jammed with a mass of men, horses, wagons, ambulances and artillery plunging and floundering in the abyss, carriages dashing recklessly into each other, getting smashed up and turned over, the drivers yelling, lashing, swearing, and making [the] night hideous, and getting the passage so hopelessly blockaded that it was impossible to get either one way or the other, except on foot or on horseback.” Frank Lyon compared the confusion to the Tower of Babel. “Every man was calling for his regiment and company, and so many were calling at the same time that a person couldn’t understand himself.” Gratified to hear shouts of “th this way!” Private Sheehan of the Ninety-Fifth Ohio found “quite a squad” of men, but most belonged to the Ninety-Fifth Illinois! In the intense darkness after the moon set at : p.m., observed Merrilies, “numberless lanterns and candles twinkled all the way across, where the line of men were eagerly picking a way out, the imperfect light adding to the dismal character of the scene.” Going barefoot, Corporal Carlson’s little party from Company H made “but slow progress” in the “deep and sticky mud.” Some of the infantry tried to work around the slough, but “in the woods,” wrote Capt. Edmund Newsome of the Eighty-First Illinois, “it was all a swamp and thick with under-brush and running briers. We got through but the consequence was that the various regiments were mixed together.”2 On the high ground at Stubbs’s farm a mile and a half beyond Hatchie Bottom, Winslow’s cavalry brigade held the fugitives until Sturgis ordered them “to push for Ripley [fourteen miles north] as fast as possible.” Sturgis hoped to reorganize a short way past the town, although he already wrote off the artillery and wagon train. Grierson was to see to “the abandonment of all things” at Hatchie swamp and withdraw last of all. “For God’s sake don’t let us give it up so,” Bouton pleaded with Sturgis. He promised the Fifty-Fifth U.S. Colored Infantry would hold if supplied with “the ammunition that the white troops were throwing away in the mud,” and if given help, he pledged to save the artillery and the train. “For God’s sake,” Sturgis whined, “if Mr. Forrest will let me alone I will let him...

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