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.
Defending
the Nashville Pike
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.
Hell's
Half Acre
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.
Breckinridge's
Charge
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.
"A Hard
Earned 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 as a supply depot
and base of occupation for the Union for the duration of the war.
President Lincoln received the victory he desired 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.”
