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| (American Military History, Vol. 1, Center of Military History, U. S. Army Washington, D. C.) (Click on images for enlargement) |
(Excerpted from National Park Service/Stones River National Battlefield)
At dawn on December 31, 1862,
General J. P. McCown’s Division with General Patrick Cleburne’s men in support
stormed across the frosted fields to attack the Federal right flank. Their plan
was to swing around the Union line in a right wheel and drive their enemy back
to the Stones River while cutting off their main supply routes at the Nashville
Pike and the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad.
The men of General Richard Johnson’s
Division were cooking their meager breakfasts when the sudden crackle of the
pickets’ fire raised the alarm. The Confederate tide swept regiment after
regiment from the field.
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| Lt. John A. Beall, Co. D, 14th Texas Cavalry (Dismounted) with Berdan Sharps Rifle (Liljenquist Family Collection/Library of Congress) |
“Many of the Yanks were either
killed or retreated in their nightclothes … We found a caisson with the horses
still attached lodged against a tree and other evidences of their confusion.
The Yanks tried to make a stand whenever they could find shelter of any kind.
All along our route we captured prisoners, who would take refuge behind houses,
fences, logs, cedar bushes and in ravines.”
Union artillery tried to hold its
ground, but the butternut and gray wave swept over them. Federal commanders
tried to halt and resist at every fence and tree line, but the Confederate
attack was too powerful to stop against such a piecemeal defense.
Soon General Jefferson C. Davis's
Division found itself caught between attacks from the front and the right. By
8:30 AM those units also began to fray and retreat to the north.
The ground itself helped stave off disaster.
The rocky ground and cedar forests blunted the Confederate assault, and Rebel
units began to come apart. Confederate artillery struggled to keep pace with
the infantry. Still, the Army of the Cumberland’s right flank was shattered
beyond repair.
After McCown’s dawn assault,
Confederate units to the north began attacking the enemy in their front. These
attacks were not meant to break through, but to hold Union units in place as
the flanking attack swept up behind them.
General Philip Sheridan had his men
rise early and form a line of battle. His men were able to repulse the first
enemy attack, but the loss of the divisions to his right forced Sheridan’s
commanders to reposition their lines to keep Cleburne’s Division from cutting
off their escape route. Sheridan’s lines pivoted to the north, anchored by
General James Negley’s Division in the trees and rocks along McFadden Lane.
Confederate brigades assaulted
Sheridan’s and Negley’s Divisions without coordination. The terrain made
communication and cooperation between units nearly impossible. For more than
two hours, the Union forces fell back step by bloody step slowing the
Confederate assault.
By noon, the Confederate Brigades of
A.P. Stewart, J. Patton Anderson, George Maney, A.M. Manigault, and A.J. Vaughn
assaulted the Union salient from three sides. With their ammunition nearly
spent, Negley’s and Sheridan’s lines shattered and their men made their way
north and west through the cedars towards the Nashville Pike.
The cost of this delaying action was
enormous. Sam Watkins of the First Tennessee Infantry, CS was amazed at the
bloodshed.
“I cannot remember now of ever
seeing more dead men and horses and captured cannon all jumbled together, than
that scene of blood and carnage … on the (Wilkinson) … Turnpike; the ground was
literally covered with blue coats dead.”
All three of Sheridan’s brigade
commanders were killed or mortally wounded and many Federal units lost more
than one-third of their men. Many Confederate units fared little better. Union
soldiers recalled the carnage as looking like the slaughter pens in the
stockyards of Chicago. The name stuck.
While the fighting raged in the
Slaughter Pen, General Rosecrans was busy trying to save his army. He cancelled
the attack across the river and funneled his reserve troops into the fight
hoping to stem the bleeding on his right. Rosecrans and General George Thomas
rallied fleeing troops as they approached the Nashville Pike and a new line
began to form along that vital lifeline backed up by massed artillery.
The new horseshoe shaped line gave
the Army of the Cumberland solid interior lines and better communication than
their attackers. The Union cannon covered the long open fields between the
cedars and the road. Most of the troops in this line had full cartridge boxes
and knew that they must hold here or the battle would be lost.
Again the woods and rocky ground
helped the Union. Confederate organization fell apart as they struggled through
the cedars. Most of Confederate artillery was unable to penetrate the dense
forests strewn with limestone outcroppings. Each wave of enemy attack along the
pike was repulsed in bloody fashion by the Federal artillery that commanded the
field.
Lieutenant Alfred Pirtle (Ordnance
Officer, Rousseau’s Division) watched the cannon do their deadly work that
afternoon.
“… then our batteries opened on them
with a deafening unceasing fire, throwing twenty-four pounds of iron from each
piece, across that small space. … But men were not born who could longer face
that storm of canister. … They broke, they fled, and some took refuge in the
clump of trees and weeds.”
As night approached, the Union army
was bloody and battered, but it retained control of the pike and its vital
lifeline to Nashville. Although Confederate cavalry would wreak havoc on Union
wagon trains, enough supplies got through to give General Rosecrans the option
to continue the fight.
The Round Forest was a crucial
position for the Army of the Cumberland. Poised between the Nashville Pike and
the Stones River, the forest anchored the left of the Union line. Colonel
William B. Hazen’s Brigade was assigned this crucial sector.
At 10 AM, General James Chalmers’
Mississippians advanced across the fields in front of Hazen’s men. The
partially burned Cowan house forced Chalmers’ men to split just before they
came a within range of the Union muskets. Artillery batteries guarded Hazen’s
flanks with deadly fire while the infantry poured volley after volley into the
Confederate ranks. General Chalmers was wounded as his men wavered then broke.
Chalmers’ attack was followed by
General Daniel Donelson’s Brigade as General Bragg sought to tie up Rosecrans’
reserves pressing the Union left. Donelson’s men crashed through Cruft’s
Brigade south of the pike. Hazen’s men held firm to the north and Union
reinforcements were able to seal the breach.
During the afternoon of December
31st, Bragg called on General Breckinridge’s troops to hammer the anchor point
of the Union line guarding the Nashville Pike. Two brigades went in first
suffering the same fate as those that went before. Two more of Breckinridge’s
Brigades made a final assault as daylight began to fail. Hazen’s men,
reinforced now by Harker’s Brigade, clung to their positions.
The carnage as described by J.
Morgan Smith of the Thirty-second Alabama Infantry prompted soldiers to name
the field Hell’s Half Acre.
“We charged in fifty yards of them
and had not the timely order of retreat been given — none of us would now be
left to tell the tale. … Our regiment carries two hundred and eighty into action
and came out with fifty eight.”
Colonel Hazen’s Brigade was the only
Union unit not to retreat on the 31st. Their stand against four Confederate
attacks gave Rosecrans a solid anchor for his Nashville Pike line that finally
stopped the Confederate tide.
Hazen’s men were so proud of their
efforts in this area that they erected a monument there after the battle. The
Hazen Brigade Monument is the oldest intact Civil War monument in the nation.
After spending January 1, 1863
reorganizing and caring for the wounded, the two armies came to blows again on
the afternoon of January 2nd. General Bragg ordered Breckinridge to attack
General Horatio Van Cleve’s Division (commanded by Colonel Samuel Beatty)
occupying a hill overlooking McFadden’s Ford on the east side of the river.
Breckinridge reluctantly launched
the attack with all five of his brigades at 4 PM. The Confederate charge
quickly took the hill and continued on pushing towards the ford. As the
Confederates attacked, they came within range of fifty-seven Union cannon
massed on the west side of the Stones River. General Crittenden watched as his
guns went to work.
“Van Cleve’s Division of my command
was retiring down the opposite slope, before overwhelming numbers of the enemy,
when the guns … opened upon the swarming enemy. The very forest seemed to fall
… and not a Confederate reached the river.”
The cannon took a heavy toll. In
forty-five minutes their concentrated fire killed or wounded more than 1,800
Confederates. A Union counterattack pushed the shattered remnants of
Breckinridge’s Division back to Wayne’s Hill.
Faced with this disaster and the
approach of Union reinforcements, General Bragg ordered the Army of Tennessee
to retreat on January 3, 1863. Two days later, the battered Union army marched into
Murfreesboro and declared victory.
The Battle of Stones River was one
of the bloodiest of the war. More than 3,000 men lay dead on the field. Nearly
16,000 more were wounded. Some of these men spent as much as seven agonizing
days on the battlefield before help could reach them. The two armies sustained
nearly 24,000 casualties, which was almost one-third of the 81,000 men engaged.
As the Army of Tennessee retreated
they gave up a large chunk of Middle Tennessee. The rich farmland meant to feed
the Confederates now supplied the Federals. General Rosecrans set his army and
thousands of contraband slaves to constructing a massive fortification, Fortress
Rosecrans that served as a supply depot and base of occupation for
the Union for the duration of the war.
President Lincoln got the victory he
wanted to boost morale and support the Emancipation Proclamation. How important
was this victory to the Union? Lincoln himself said it best in a telegram to
Rosecrans later in 1863.
“I can never forget, if I remember
anything, that at the end of last year and the beginning of this, you gave us a
hard earned victory, which had there been a defeat instead, the country
scarcely could have lived over.
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