On August 22, after being bivouacked in summer quarters, the regiment arrived in Tuscumbia, Alabama, which is in the northwest corner of the state a few miles from the Mississippi border. By this time, General Ulysses S. Grant had taken over Halleck's responsibilities in northern Mississippi. The 8th Wisconsin was still part of the Army of the Mississippi, but General William Rosecrans had replaced Pope as commander. The regiment was in the second brigade of General David S. Stanley's second division, which was led by Colonel Joseph A. Mower. Pope's army was assigned to hold 20 miles of rail from Corinth east to Iuka, where the 8th Wisconsin was stationed. On September 13, 1862, the Confederate Army of the West under General Sterling Price appeared at Iuka and forced the regiment back to Farmington. Shortly thereafter, forces under Rosecrans and General Edward Ord attempted to capture Price's army, which awaited, at Iuka, the arrival of massive reinforcements from General Earl Van Dorn's Army of West Tennessee. On September 19, during the Battle of Iuka, a fresh north wind caused an acoustic shadow that prevented Ord from hearing the battle. Consequently, he was unaware of it, and his troops stood idle while fighting raged a few miles away. Nevertheless, the Army of the Cumberland forced Price to withdraw during the night. He soon linked up with Van Dorn in Ripley. On October 3 and 4, the combined Confederate armies launched a full-scale assault on Corinth, which was repulsed by troops under Rosecrans. During heavy fighting in this Second Battle of Corinth, 21 soldiers of the 8th Wisconsin died, and 60 were wounded. Colonel Mower was wounded in the neck and briefly captured. Newspaper accounts of this battle claimed that Old Abe soared over the front lines. According to David McLain, these stories are exaggerated:  … a bullet cut the cord that held the eagle to his perch. About the same time that the cord was cut, Old Abe was shot through one wing, cutting out three quill feathers, but not drawing blood, and the bearer (McLain) was shot through the left shoulder of his blouse and right leg of his pants. … (The eagle) flew about 50 feet down the line, must have been what caused the newspapers to come out the next week with great headlines telling about the eagle of the 8th Wisconsin getting away after a rebel bullet cut his cord and soaring, over the lines of both armies, and back to his perch, which is not so.