December 31, 1862---The Battle of Stones River: Day One

DECEMBER 31, 1862:        

The Battle of Stones River, Tennessee (The Battle of Murfreesboro; the Second Battle of Murfreesboro) (Day One): 

The Confederate Army of The Tennessee was camped in Murfreesboro, Tennessee only 30 miles away from Union General William S. Rosecrans’ Army of The Cumberland in Nashville. General Braxton Bragg chose to bivouac in this area in order to position himself to interdict any Union advances towards Chattanooga and to protect the rich farms of Middle Tennessee that were now feeding his men. 

With the recent Union defeat at Chickasaw Bluffs, and especially at Fredericksburg, President Lincoln desperately wanted a Union victory to close out the year and to herald the coming of the Emancipation Proclamation. 

Therefore, he had Union General-In-Chief Henry Halleck telegraph Rosecrans, telling him that, “… the Government demands action, and if you cannot respond to that demand someone else will be tried.” 

Faced with dismissal, the often too-cautious Rosecrans moved his army from Nashville toward Murfreesboro. With limited Intelligence, Rosecrans divided his army in three so as to find the Rebels, who were camped at Stones River. Bad winter weather slowed their approach. 

However, by the evening of December 30^th, the armies faced each other across the river. As dusk fell, the army bands began to play, and a “Battle of The Bands” ensued. Finally, one side began to play “Home Sweet Home,” and the other picked up the refrain. Both armies ended the impromptu concert playing in unison.

The battle plans of Rosecrans and Bragg precisely mirrored each other, with each trying to turn the other’s right flank. The Confederates struck first. At dawn, men in gray and butternut 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. They caught the Union men at breakfast and swept regiment after regiment from the field. The Union right flank was shattered, and the only thing that staved off disaster was the ground, which slowed Johnny Reb’s advance, and allowed Billy Yank time to mount a defense. 

After the surprise of the first assault, the Union men gave ground grudgingly. It took nearly three hours to drive the Blue back toward a line of trees, even though at points the Gray could mount attacks from three sides. Many Federal units lost more than one-third of their men, as did many Confederate units. A Union soldier recalled the carnage as looking like the slaughter pens in the stockyards of Chicago. The name stuck, and “Slaughter Pen” was later applied to all such killing grounds in the war.

 As the battle raged, Rosecrans rearranged his forces into a “horseshoe” and funneled his reserves to the Slaughter Pen, trying to stop the slaughter by overwhelming numbers. As the Union line fell back to the line of trees (cedars), and disappeared into the woods and beyond, the pursuing Confederates were forced to break their line in order to pursue. Atomized units entered the woods in groups of a half-dozen or less men. It was at this point that the Union artillery opened up, blasting the woods and the Rebels within. Lieutenant Alfred Pirtle later wrote:

“… 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.”

The violence was equal to, or even greater than, the Slaughter Pen, for at this point, Rosecrans’ forces were directly astride the Nashville Turnpike and the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad with their flank heavily anchored in the woods, known locally, and forevermore, as the “Round Woods.” The Union troops dug into the Round Woods blasted the Confederates even as the canister shot tore them apart. Just as the Federals named the approach to the Round Woods the Slaughter Pen, the Confederates named the woods “Hell’s Half-Acre.” J. Morgan Smith of the Thirty-second Alabama later wrote:

 “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.”

 

The Union brigade that held the Round Woods was the only Union unit not to retreat on the 31st. The men were so proud of their efforts that they erected a monument there immediately after the battle, now the oldest intact Civil War monument in the nation.

As the early winter dusk fell, the two sides broke off the attack as if by mutual consent.

  

On this New Year’s Eve, no Confederate States have given up the rebellion, and the Emancipation Proclamation will become law at 12:00 AM. As night falls, expectant slaves and other blacks gather to await the stroke of midnight when they will be free men and women. This time of waiting gave rise to the tradition of celebrating “Watch Night” on every New Year’s Eve, in the black community.

1862 saw the Civil War transmogrify from a political dispute of limited aims, punctuated by small military engagements, into a continental conflict defining the future freedoms of all Americans, regardless of color, an all-out war that swallowed young lives like a ravenous beast.

The Union, which had started the year with overwhelming numbers (but little action) in the Eastern Theater, a string of victories in the Western Theater, and a complete victory in the Far Western Theater, had been set back step by step, less by any inherent Confederate superiority than by bad generalship in the field. President Lincoln had shuffled General Officers like cards: Scott, McClellan, Pope, Burnside, and Halleck had each had their moment, and each had failed, whether through overcautiousness, self-interest, or merely not grasping the nature of what the war had become. This failure cost lives at Shiloh Church, at Bull Run a second time, at Antietam Creek, at Fredericksburg, at Perryville, at Stones River; and at a few hundred other, less remembered places.

Yet, much good came out of this year. The U.S. Congress had passed the Homestead Act and the Morrill Act, establishing Land-Grant Colleges; the telegraph had reached San Francisco; and the public temper had shifted, making Emancipation a reality.     

The South had lost ground. Tennessee and Arkansas and Indian Territory, though battled over, were Union territory once more; and the Border States had held fast, becoming increasingly Unionist even as the waves of war rolled over them.  New Orleans was part of the United States once again, as was Norfolk, Virginia. The Eastern Seaboard of the Confederacy and the Gulf Coast were either blockaded or in Union hands. Supply and food shortages were plaguing both civilians and military alike. 

The dream of international recognition of the Confederacy was fading. The war took on an international aspect as British textile workers in Manchester, England, starved through a hard winter for lack of work due to lack of cotton. Yet, the British workingman wavered not in his belief in the Union cause, leading Abraham Lincoln to write an open New Year’s Eve letter to those struggling:

"I cannot but regard your decisive utterances on the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country.

"It is indeed an energetic and re-inspiring assurance of the inherent truth and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity and freedom… Whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace and friendship which now exists between the two nations will be, as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual." 

The grateful textile workers later erected a statue of Lincoln memorializing the President’s kind words.

The Confederacy’s greatest assets were its military men---Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, J.E.B. “Jeb” Stuart, John Mosby, John Hunt Morgan, and James Longstreet---who commanded an army, increasingly ragtag, that could inflict punishing defeats on a better equipped and larger force. But by New Year’s Eve 1862, it was becoming apparent that gallantry and tactics would not be enough. Still, the battles went on.