and the lamented Samuel A. Rice received a wound which proved fatal. The Eighteenth Iowa was in the reserve under Colonel Edwards guarding the ordnance train and was not engaged in the battle.
At the close of the campaign the regiment returned to Fort Smith, and for several months was employed in that vicinity. Colonel Edwards had been promoted to Brigadier-General, and Lieutenant-Colonel H. J. Campbell was made colonel of the Eighteenth, with J. K. Morey as major. During the winter the regiment made a hard march on short notice beyond Fort Gibson. It was sent to protect a train of six hundred wagons of army supplies, Indian goods and sutlers’ wares. The men for a part of the time subsisted on corn in the ear, and after their return to Fort Smith often suffered for food. The supplies which came by steamboats were often delayed by attacks from the enemy. The Eighteenth remained in the service until late in the summer of 1865, when it mustered out and returned to Iowa. While it had been engaged in none of the great battles of the war and thus deprived of winning the fame and glory shared by many other Iowa regiments whose brilliant achievements are associated with historic fields, it can be truthfully recorded that the Eighteenth Iowa never failed to render faithful service in every station in which it was placed.
