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Israel Putnam “Put” Darden was born on March 10, 1836, in Fayette, Jefferson County, Mississippi and was the son of John Pendleton Darden and Martha Fleming Darden. His grandfather, David Darden, and other family members had emigrated from Georgia to the Mississippi Territory in April 1798. John Darden was one of the wealthiest citizens of Jefferson County and was a succesful planter who had settled near the Red Lick community in northeastern Jefferson County. “Put” Darden earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Mississippi in 1856 and was known for his skills in public speaking. He acquired a share of his father’s land and purchased an adjoining farm several years later. By 1860 he owned a cotton plantation of more than seven hundred acres and twenty-eight slaves. ^i.

At the beginning of the Civil War, he enlisted as a lieutenant in the Jefferson Flying Artillery. The Jefferson Flying Artillery Battery was organized in Fayette County, Mississippi on April 3, 1861. The battery was originally organized as the Jefferson Troop for cavalry and mustered into service on April 1, but several days later on April 3, the unit was equipped with artillery. The captain of the Jefferson Artillery was William L. Harper. The First Lieutenants were Howell Hinds, A. J. Cameron and Second Lieutenant was Archibald J. Cameron. In August 1861, the Third Lieutenant was Putnam Darden. The battery was armed with two 6-lb. smoothbores and two 12-lb. howitzers. By July 26, 1861, Harper reported that the Jefferson Artillery had eighty-one men with forty-eight horses. After some time in camp at Cane Ridge Church and Camp Dunbar, the battery was ordered in July or August to Mississippi City, opposite Ship Island. On October 1, 1861, the battery was ordered to Richmond, Virginia. The battery traveled to New Orleans and they took a boat to Memphis, were the battery stayed for a week and was posted on the river bank to stop a steamer that was supposedly trying to run the blockade. After staying in Memphis, the battery took the railroad to Chattanooga, Tennessee and were ordered to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where they arrived on October 13, 1861^.ii

During the winter of 1861-1862, the battery was camped at Bowling Green, Kentucky with General Albert S. Johnston's army. When Johnson retreated to Tennessee, the Jefferson Flying Artillery went with the army. In the reorganization of the army at Murfreesboro, Tennessee on February 23, 1862, the battery was assigned to General S. A. M. Wood's Brigade, which was in Confederate General William Hardee's Corps. On April 6 through 7, 1862, the battery fought at the Battle of Shiloh. On April 6, the Confederate attack was so successful that Captain Harper had difficulty in following the infantry with his four guns. The battery charged through the camp of the Union Sixteenth Wisconsin. Becoming separated from the brigade, Harper joined Smett's Battery in bombarding a Federal camp, and later, after changing position, he was posted by Confederate General Benjamin Cheatham’s division and was within four hundred yards of a Federal battery. An artillery duel broke out between Harper’s artillery and the Union battery. The artillery lasted until the infantry took up the fight. Seventy of Harper’s men were in the battle and eight of them were wounded. Among the wounded was Harper, who turned his command over to Lt. Putnam Darden. On April 7, the battery fought alongside the Washington Artillery, 5th Company, of New Orleans and were involved in some of the most hotly contested ground on the field. Darden had only six men to work each gun and they were worn out from the arduous labor from the previous day’s battle. Lt. Darden and his men made a desperate effort for about half an hour to hold their line, but the men began to fall at their posts from exhaustion. With the supporting infantry gone, the men limbered up under a galling fire and retired. During the retreat, Darden was compelled to leave one gun behind on account of the horses being killed, but he managed to bring off a 12 lb. howitzer that had been captured from the Federals. On April 26, at Corinth, the battery reported an effective total force of only forty-two men.ⁱⁱⁱ

During the siege of Corinth, Mississippi that followed the battle of Shiloh, the battery fell back with the Confederate army to Tupelo and in July 1862, the battery accompanied General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Mississippi to Chattanooga. In August 1862, the army was reorganized but the battery continued to fall under the command of General Hardee, Army of the Mississippi. Under command of Capt. Darden, the battery accompanied the Confederate army into Kentucky.

At 2:45 p.m., General James Patton Anderson’s Second Division attacked the Union right. The attack was followed by General Bushrod Johnson’s brigade. Johnson’s men crossed the Chatham Hilt through Chatham’s orchard toward Doctor’s Creek. A section of Union Captain Peter Simonson’s battery began to fire on Johnson’s brigade. Johnson came under fire from Union infantry and artillery. Buckner ordered Confederate General Daniel Adam’s brigade to support Johnson. At 1:15 p.m., the Washington Artillery, 5th Company, under General Daniel Adams brigade, went into position on high ground at Bottom Hill. At 2:30 p.m., the battery opened fire.  Union General Lovell Rousseau, divisional commander, called up Union Captain Cyrus Loomis 1st Michigan Artillery and placed them into position in order to fire on Darden and the Washington Artillery. An artillery duel broke out between the Union and Confederate batteries that lasted an hour. ^iv.

As Johnson prepared to move out, Buckner changed his orders and sent the 17th Tennessee to secure the left and support a section of Darden’s battery. He also ordered Johnson to move the rest of his regiments at an oblique down a hill about twenty degrees to the left, which would bring Johnson’s men to the intersection of Doctor’s Creek and a country lane that the Chatham’s used to connect with the Mackville Road diagonally opposite of the Henry Bottom’s house. Johnson’s men, along with Confederate General Daniel Adams brigade, attacked the 42nd Indiana Infantry. Both Darden’s and Slocomb’s battery fired into the 42nd Indiana. The 42nd Indiana broke and fled for the hill behind them.

A brief artillery duel broke out between Slocumb’s battery and Union Captain Henry Hescock’s battery. Union General Lytle ordered the 3rd Ohio Infantry to the rail fence on the ridge above the Bottom’s House. The 3rd Ohio had originally abandoned their position during the artillery duel. The 3rd Ohio retook their position, while under the fire of Darden’s and Slocumb’s batteries. Loomis, Simonson, and Hotchkiss’s guns which were located at the Russell House fired back at the oncoming Confederates. Eventually, Johnson, Adams, and General Patrick Cleburne’s brigades pushed back the Federals towards the Dixville Crossroads.


Unfortunately, Darden did not turn in an after-action report, so what he did during the rest of the battle is unknown, and how many rounds he expended during the battle is also unknown.  During the battle, Darden had two men wounded and one captured. Private Gus Wilcox was shot in the right thigh and the Confederate army left him at Harrodsburg on October 10, 1862. On November 4, 1862, Gus Wilcox Sr. wrote to Mississippi Governor John J. Pettus stating that his son was a member in the Jefferson Artillery. He wrote to the Governor that his son was “seriously wounded  (shot through both legs) and a prisoner at  Harrodsburg, Kentucky. My wife is anxious to go to him. Will it be possible to get her a permit to pass our lines. Mrs. Wilcox is a staunch secessionist, a native of Virginia, has three sons in the armies of the Confederacy, and will be sure to give either aid, comfort, or information to the enemy.  She has influential friends in Louisville on whom she relies to procure her a pass to returned.” v. Wilcox was taken prisoner and sent to the Louisville military prison on May 14, 1863. He was sent to Fort Monroe, Virginia for exchange. He was sent home to Jefferson County, Mississippi to recover. On September 29, 1863, he was sent back to a Confederate hospital and declared unfit because of the necrosis of the tibia in his right leg from the bullet wound received at Perryville. He finished the war working in the Confederate arsenal in Atlanta, Georgia. Lewis Page was a private in Darden’s battery and was severely wounded during the battle and left in Harrodsburg on October 10, 1862, and presumed dead. During the battle, Emil T. Geyer was captured. He was a bugler. After the exchange, he was detailed to instruct a band in General Bushrod Johnson’s brigade on May 14, 1863.

The Jefferson Flying Artillery fought at Stone’s River and Hoover’s Gap, from June 24 to July 4, 1863. On October 3, 1863, Darden received the Confederate Southern Cross. On October 12, 1863, he was on detached duty as Acting Chief of Artillery for General Alexander P. Stewart’s division. He fought during the Atlanta Campaign from May to September 1864. Darden’s battery also fought in Tennessee in November and December 1864. During the battle Nashville, Darden lost Lieutenant Bullen and Sergeant Turpin and two cannons. On May 10, 1865, Darden was paroled at Meridian, Mississippi and returned to Jefferson County.

In 1866, he was elected to the Mississippi legislature, but his term ended with the beginning of military rule in 1867. To encourage agriculture, horticulture, and manufacturers of all kinds in the local area, he played an important role in the founding of the Jefferson County Planters,’ Mechanics,’ and Manufacturers’ Association in 1868 and served on its board of directors for twenty years. After the Grange movement swept the state in the early 1870s, Darden spent most of his time promoting the organization’s goal of protecting the rights and interests of farmers. A national fraternal organization that encouraged sectional reconciliation, stressed the importance of education, and welcomed white men and women of all ages with agricultural interests, the Grange, formally the Patrons of Husbandry, had widespread appeal at a time when farmers were struggling to survive in a depressed agricultural economy. Darden led the way to establish the Phoenix Grange in his neighborhood and subsequently served as the organizations head. In 1873 and 1874, as many farmers lost their land in delinquent taxes, he and other Grangers played a decisive role in organizing Taxpayer Leagues, which urged white voters of all parties to unite and overthrow the “carpetbagger regime.^”vi.

Put Darden took over the as leader of the state Grange in 1876 and served as the organization’s leader until his death twelve years later. Over that time, membership declined, but the organization’s political influence increased. Darden visited almost every county annually to reactivate, encourage, and establish Granges. Although many of the earlier Grange cooperatives had failed, Darden achieved limited success in the early 1880s by promoting cooperative stores on the Rochdale plan, which allocated stock and dividends to consumers based on their patronage. Darden was also a key player in the development of the Morrill Land Grant Act, which enabled the founding of Mississippi State Agricultural and Mechanical College, now known as Mississippi State University (MSU) and the Hatch Experiment Act, which enabled the creation of the MSU Experiment Station in 1886. ^vii.

Darden fought for state and national legislation to regulate railroads and advocated changes in Mississippi’s lien law to ensure that property in foreclosure sales would bring at least three-fourths of its market value. Although Grange bylaws prohibited the discussion of politics, Darden told Grangers to vote only for men who promised to support their interests.^viii.

Grangers backed Darden for governor at the 1885 state Democratic convention, but he received only forty-two votes to Governor Robert Lowry’s 193. Later that year, at the meeting of the National Grange in Boston, Darden was elected the organization’s Worthy Master. ^ix.

His first wife died in 1860, when their son was only nine months old. Darden married again in the fall of 1865, but his second wife died about a year later. He remarried again and had four children with his third wife before she died. His fourth and final marriage took place in November 1885 and resulted in three more children, one of whom was born after his death. A fire destroyed Darden’s country home in 1882, and he lost all of his papers, books, and war relics. He had eight children. ^x.

Put Darden died at his home after a brief illness. Grangers across the state and nation held memorial services for their deceased leader. In 1891 the National Grange placed a monument honoring Darden on the grounds of the Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College at Starkville, which is now the Mississippi State University. Without Darden’s leadership, Grange membership in the state declined, and the organization ceased to exist in Mississippi after the organizations 1898 meeting.^xi.

i.      https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/israel-putnam-darden/

ii.       https://www.americancivilwar101.com/units/csa-ms/ms-art-jeffersonflying-batt.html

iii.       https://www.americancivilwar101.com/units/csa-ms/ms-art-jeffersonflying-batt.html

iv.       Kenneth Noe, Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle, The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, 2001, 174-177; Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, The Pride of the Confederate Artillery: The Washington of the Army of the Tennessee,

v.        The Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi, Letter from Gus H. Wilcox to Mississippi Governor John J. Pettus, November 4, 1862. https://www.cwrgm.org/

vi.       https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/israel-putnam-darden/

 vii.     https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/israel-putnam-darden/

             viii.     https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/israel-putnam-darden/

ix.       Ibid.

x.        Ibid.

             xi.        Ibid.

 

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