CHAPTER XXII
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH IOWA INFANTRY
THIS regiment was made up of companies recruited largely in the counties of Allamakee, Clayton, Delaware, Floyd, Buchanan, Mitchell and Chickasaw. The Twenty-seventh went into camp at Dubuque in August, 1862, and was there organized by the appointment of the following officers: Colonel James I. Gilbert, Lieutenant-Colonel Jed Lake, Major George W. Howard and Adjutant C. A. Comstock. Soon after the regiment entered the service it was ordered to Minnesota to assist in protecting the frontier from the terrible massacre there inaugurated by the Sioux Indians. General Pope was in command of that department. Colonel Gilbert was sent with his regiment to Fort Snelling, and was soon after sent, with six companies, one hundred twenty-five miles northwest to Mille Lac to superintend the payment of an annuity to a tribe of Indians. He returned to St. Paul on the 4th of November and learned that Major Howard with the four companies left at Fort Snelling had, during his absence, been sent to Cairo, Illinois, where he was ordered to join him. The united command was soon after sent down the river to Memphis to join General Sherman’s army.
Not long after the army moved into central Mississippi to operate against Vicksburg. The Twenty-seventh regiment was sent to the Tallahatchee River to guard the Mississippi Central Railway between that stream and Waterford. Parties of Confederate cavalry were hovering near the railroad and on the 20th of December one of them made a dash on the regimental hospital, captured eleven
