The Louisiana Brigade at Perryville
- Derrick Lindow
- Jul 4
- 12 min read
In 2022, I led my first tour at Perryville battlefield for the inaugural Symposium on the Field, and chose to talk about the Louisiana Brigade commanded by General Daniel Adams. What followed was months of research and an appreciation and "love of study" for this organization in the Army of Mississippi. There's just something about these guys that always grabs my attention now whenever I am studying another battle, like Stones River or Chickamauga. This story will be divided into two parts in order to keep the amount of reading to a reasonable level. Before we get into the actual post below, I just want to preface this with the fact that General Adams left us a total of four sentences to describe the actual fighting of his brigade during the Battle of Perryville. Thanks, General!
Born in Frankfort, Kentucky on June 10, 1821, Daniel Adams was 41 years old when he led his brigade at Perryville. Though born a Kentuckian, his family moved to Mississippi when he was a child. He attended Yale where he graduated as the valedictorian (I have not been able to find any other record of this, and I am wondering if historians have mixed up he and Randall Gibson, who did go to Yale). Other sources state that he attended the University of Virginia. His obituary merely states that he and his brother had "excellent collegiate educations" which aided his prosperous law career.[1]
In 1843 he gained notoriety for killing a Vicksburg, Mississippi newspaper editor, James Hagan of the Vicksburg Sentinel, in a fight. Hagan wrote something unwelcome about Adams’s father, Federal Judge George Adams. The article hinted that the elder Adams received $500 from the state treasury for some suspicious reason, but did not give any evidence. The young Adams went to Vicksburg and confronted the newspaperman. He demanded a retraction of the story and the original author’s name. “‘Instead of answering, Hagan flew at him, seized him, and threw him." As Adams lay on the ground, Hagan sprung upon him at which point Adams pulled a pistol and "the deadly weapon was used.” Adams received an acquittal in his murder trial after his claim of self defense won over the jury.[2]
Before the outbreak of hostilities, Adams served in the Mississippi militia as a second lieutenant--his only military experience. As a young, wealthy, Southern gentleman, Adams not only fulfilled his societal role in the militia but took up politics for a time and served a stint in the Mississippi legislature. He moved to New Orleans in 1852, where he began a law practice and became a respected member of the New Orleans elite.[3]
At the start of the war, Adams was the lieutenant colonel of the 1st Louisiana Infantry as a part of General Braxton Bragg’s force at Pensacola. After Adley Gladden's promotion to brigadier general, Adams became the regiment's colonel. At the Battle of Shiloh, his regiment fought in Gladden’s brigade until the general fell mortally wounded, and Adams assumed command. During an attack on the Hornet’s Nest, a bullet entered his head above the left eye and exited near his ear, which severed the optic nerve and left him blind in that eye. While soldiers carried him to the rear, Adams passed out and became “unresponsive.” The wagon driver thought him dead and dumped his body on the side of the road to lighten the load. Men from the 10th Mississippi found him and realized he was very much alive. He spent a month recovering in Corinth and later returned to field command.[4]
Adams took command of a new all Louisiana brigade in August 1862, the only Louisiana brigade in the Army of Mississippi. He arrived with the reputation of an “aggressive” officer, but at Perryville he seems to have shown good judgment as his superiors failed to adequately communicate with him. This new Louisiana brigade consisted of:
13th Louisiana
16th Louisiana
20th Louisiana
25th Louisiana
Austin’s Battalion, or the 14th Louisiana Battalion of Sharpshooters
5th Company, Washington Artillery of New Orleans commanded by Cuthbert Slocomb.[5]
Of all these regiments, the 13th Louisiana could boast one of the most unique organizations on either side. Commanded by Randall Gibson, its ranks were full ofFrenchmen, Spaniards, Mexicans, Italians, Germans, Chinese, and Irishmen as well as men from other nations and ethnicities. It was a thoroughly New Orleans regiment. Company A, composed of many New Orleans police officers named themselves the Southern Celts. With the diversity found in pre-war New Orleans, it is unsurprising that it produced a regiment like this. At the beginning of the war, the regiment’s official language was French. Too many of the non-French speakers, especially the officers, struggled to learn it and General Twiggs ordered they abandon French for English. Adding to the French flavor of the regiment were six Zouave companies, the Avegno Zouaves. These men were originally outfitted with the French inspired uniforms and wore them as late as 1862. Possibly, some men still wore them in October 1862 as some Union sources mentioned fighting the “Louisiana Tigers” on the hills of Boyle County, Kentucky.[6]
Gibson was 30 years old at the time of Perryville, and like Adams, was a native Kentuckian. He attended and graduated from Yale in 1853, then returned to New Orleans to study law. His military career began in 1861 with the 1st Louisiana Artillery, but eventually he raised the 13th. Gibson commanded a brigade at Shiloh, but his competence was questioned by Braxton Bragg after he failed to take a position in the Hornet's Nest. Gibson attacked the Hornet’s Nest three times and was repulsed at each attempt, even though he repeatedly asked for, and was denied, artillery support for his attack. Essentially black listed, he was relegated to regimental command. Bragg wrote of Gibson, “A want of confidence in their leader Gibson — destroyed theirs… he is an arrant coward. Finding I could do nothing with this force…I moved to the extreme right.” After the demotion and stain on his reputation, Gibson undoubtedly felt like he had something to prove at Perryville. Even with the army commander's disdain, Gibson and the 13th Louisiana still held the first position in the brigade's line.[7]
The most active Louisianans of the brigade during the battle were those in Austin’s Battalion of Sharpshooters, or the 14th Louisiana Battalion. Commanded by 22-year-old Major John “Ned” Austin, the battalion performed their role and duties in an exceptional manner. Born in 1840, Austin served as a clerk in New Orleans at the start of the war. At Perryville, Austin led his men with a plethora of experience that he obtained at fights such as Belmont, Shiloh, and Farmington with the 11th Louisiana. In the summer of 1862, several Louisiana regiments were disbanded for various reasons. These men were not ready to go home, and Austin was allowed to handpick 200 men from the old 11th Louisiana to form two companies of sharpshooters attached to Adams’s brigade.[8]
One of the most famous outfits in the entire Confederate army was the Washington Artillery of New Orleans. At Perryville, this battery, the 5th Company, was commanded by Captain Cuthbert Harrison Slocomb. The battery consisted of six guns:
Two 6-pdr smoothbores
Two 3-inch rifles
Two 12-pdr howitzers
The 5th Company was the only one of the Washington Artillery batteries to serve in the western Confederate armies while the other four companies were in the Army of Northern Virginia. The battery originally consisted of men from the elite of New Orleans. After Shiloh, the demographics of the battery began to change which brought sharp class distinctions. Those from New Orleans high society served as the fighting men, or the "members," of the battery, while the lower-class men served in roles such as the teamster, drivers, and those that cared for the animals and worked the forge. These two groups did not even encamp as one unit.
Their first combat came at Shiloh where they were under the command of Captain W. Irving Hodgson, who helped organize the battery in New Orleans. His performance at Shiloh was suspect and he resigned his commission. When he tried to come back, the men of the battery unanimously refused to restore him to command. They preferred Slocomb.
Shiloh was an epiphany for most of the men in the battery. War would not resemble their first days in New Orleans at Camp Lewis. During the Corinth Campaign one of the sections participated in the Battle of Farmington. Individual sections also spent a lot of time on outpost duty where they gained valuable experience in long range firing which served them well at Perryville.[9]
Unlike the 13th, the men of the 16th Louisiana were from all over the state, and from very rural areas. There was much less ethnic and class diversity in the ranks of this regiment. Originally commanded by Colonel Preston Pond, the regiment suffered 27% casualties in its first action at Shiloh. There, Pond commanded the brigade on the extreme Confederate left, which included the 16th. The following campaign for Corinth further reduced their numbers due to widespread disease and fighting at Farmington. At Perryville, the 16th was commanded by Georgia native Colonel Daniel Gober. He graduated from medical school at the University of Louisville and practiced medicine in rural Louisiana prior to the war. At Perryville, he was 34 years old.[10]
German units were not reserved for Union regiments only. For a Confederate unit, the 20th Louisiana fielded a high number of "Dutchmen." Several of the companies had names like the Steuben Guards, Ashenheimer’s Louisiana Musketeers, and the Reichard Rifles. Commanding these companies were officers with names like Muller, Schaedel, Schneider, Eicholtz, and Brummerstadt. Command of the regiment fell to Colonel Augustus Albert Moritz Reichard, a 42 year old man with a wide variety of life experience to boast. He was born in 1820 in Hanover, Germany, and came to America in 1844 where he worked as a cotton and sugar broker in New Orleans where future Confederate Secretary of War Benjamin Judah was his business partner. He also served in the Prussian and Hanoverian consulates in New Orleans. At Shiloh, Reichard received a wound and glowing praise for his actions. During the Corinth Campaign, the regiment suffered from the miserable conditions and in one night, 57 men allegedly deserted.[11]
One of the newer regiments in the brigade was the 25th Louisiana, commanded by Stuart W. Fisk. It was not organized until late March 1862 and missed the Battle of Shiloh because it was in Memphis still awaiting arms for most of its men. Its only action prior to Perryville was at the Battle of Farmington, which was not a huge fight, and the regiment took few losses.[12]
Adam's brigade was one of four in Patton Anderson’s division. During the coming engagement, the division was split into two sections. Two brigades, commanded by Colonel Thomas Jones and Brigadier General John C. Brown, were sent north, while his remaining two brigades, Adams's and Colonel Samuel Powell's, lingered on the left flank.
On October 8th, the brigade found itself deployed well to the south of today's park boundary, with its left anchored along the Springfield Pike. Originally, Adams received orders to advance and support Powell's brigade to his left--the extreme left of the army. These two brigades were meant to protect communications with Danville and Harrodsburg, yet Adams and his men would have an entirely different task later in the afternoon.[13]
At 11:30, Adams received orders from Anderson to “halt, or move slowly until the Third Brigade (Powell), arrived opposite my line. In obedience to this order I halted the brigade several times and moved very slowly until I came near the enemy at the foot of a hill.” Moving at such a slow pace, caused by the inability of the brigades to stay in contact with one another, was maddening. Several times, Adams dispatched messengers to Powell to get him to “move up as rapidly as possible.” Adams never received a response. He eventually sent his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant E.M. Scott, who failed to return. Somehow he wandered into Union lines, and the Louisville Daily Journal listed Scott as one of the many prisoners sent to Louisville on October 13th.[14]
Powell was new to brigade command, but there is no good explanation as to why a massive gap developed between the two brigades on the flank. Anderson’s whereabouts remain fuzzy as well, and historian Kenneth Noe believes that Anderson basically abandoned Adams to General Simon B. Buckner’s control, and that Powell just followed bad orders. Perhaps Anderson saw what lay beyond on Peter's Hill, and halted Powell before he had a run-in with Gilbert’s entire corps. Whatever the reason, it is one of many examples of dysfunction in Confederate high command.[15]
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