No Better Place to Die- The Battle of Stones River

by Peter Cozzens

  Clearing the now abandoned rail fence, McNair's Arkansans pursued the Federals as they fled, individually or by squad, through the cotton field and into the woods along the Wilkinson Pike. Midway through the field McNair broke off the pursuit, turning his attention instead to the exposed right flank of the First Ohio.

  Major Jacob Stafford and his Buckeye State volunteers were fighting splendidly, having held three Rebel regiments at bay for twenty minutes—“the fiercest engagement,” claimed Levi Wagner, “for its short duration of any we experienced while in the service.” But, with McNair rapidly gaining his rear, Stafford knew that to continue the fight would be to sacrifice his regiment. Accordingly, he barked out the order to retreat. In the din, it was not heard. He repeated the command. Again there was no response. Stafford screamed the command a third time in “such forcible language that to ignore it would have been an act of rashness.” The Ohioans fell back into the right flank of the Fifth Kentucky as it attempted a change of front to the west. In the confusion, the First Ohio disintegrated.

  The collapse of the First Ohio emboldened Liddell's Arkansans. Within minutes the men of the Second and Fifth Arkansas had risen to their feet and charged the Sixth Indiana. Left without support on the right and with the Seventeenth and Twenty-third Tennessee already along the fence to the left, the Sixth began leaking men rearward. Like Major Stafford of the First Ohio, Colonel Hagerman Tripp saw that further resistance was futile. With the Second and Fifth Arkansas now only twenty-five yards away and the Sixth and Seventh Arkansas already one hundred yards in his rear, he wisely ordered a withdrawal. The Fifth Kentucky, alone now in the cornfield, also bid a hasty retreat. Only the Ninety-third Ohio remained. Their commander, Colonel Charles Anderson, had thrice called for orders. None came. Finally in frustration he began deploying his skirmishers to cover the withdrawal of the units to his front. Just then Baldwin rode up and instructed him to fall back. Anderson complied, though he later made the strange complaint in his report that he had been denied a meaningful role in the battle.

  As the Federals fled into and through the timber without a fight, some of Liddell's veterans momentarily forgot their hatred of the Northerners. John Berry of the Seventh Arkansas recalled a brief but poignant encounter with a wounded Federal at the wood's edge. Stopping to place a piece of wood under the Yankee's shattered leg, Berry remarked that he was “nearly dead for water.” The grateful soldier offered Berry his canteen. He declined, reminding the Federal that he would need it for himself. But the soldier in sisted, and so Berry took a few swallows of “the best water, it seemed, that I ever drank. If that man is still alive,” Berry later wrote in Confederate Veteran, “I should like to hear from him.”10

  On the east side of Gresham Lane, meanwhile, Cleburne's remaining brigades encountered opposition as determined as that which Liddell and Johnson faced. Their two units moving together smartly into the cedar glade opposite the Widow Smith house, S. A. M. Wood and Lucius Polk entered the woods confident that McCown had swept the area clean. They were wrong. Lying undetected behind the outcrop to their front was the One Hundred First Ohio of Colonel William P. Carlin's brigade. The Ohioans waited patiently as the Confederates penetrated deeper into the cedar brake, a brake so dense that company commanders could not see the length of their lines. Then, with Wood's Butternuts just a few yards away, the One Hundred First opened fire. The stunned Confederates returned fire, but it's doubtful they hit anything, given the element of surprise and the natural cover enjoyed by the Federals. The struggle was brief. Having studied law in Murfreesboro before the war, Wood was familiar enough with the countryside to know the futility of continuing such an unequal contest deep in a cedar thicket and so ordered a cease-fire and withdrew his brigade.

  Polk received an equally warm welcome on entering the cedars. He had advanced only seven hundred yards when the colonel of the Fifth Tennessee sent word that the brigade right was engaged. Polk was incredulous. “I did not believe at first that the enemy could be so near us,” he later admitted, “having understood that we were supporting General McCown.” Riding to the sound of the fighting, Polk was greeted with a volley that unhorsed his orderly and removed all doubt as to the source of the firing. The young brigadier quickly issued orders bringing his remaining regiments across the Franklin road and into a right wheel against Carlin's flank.

  But the ten-year veteran of the regular service had forseen Polk's turning movement. Like Post moments earlier, Carlin seized the opportunity presented by the confusion in the Rebel ranks to withdraw his units to more tenable positions. The Twenty-first Illinois moved to cover the brigade right rear. Carlin pulled back the One Hundred First Ohio from its exposed position forty yards in advance of the brigade to a limestone outcrop alongside the Second Minnesota Artillery. The Fifteenth Wisconsin retired fifty yards to a rail fence and the Thirty-eighth Illinois lined up on its left.

  Advancing a second time, Polk and Wood struck Carlin's new line together. The One Hundred First Ohio wavered first as Polk, moving on the Twenty-first Illinois, gained its rear. Carlin tried to compensate, but Colonel John Alexander of the Twenty-first declined his request to bring his regiment on line with the Ohioans, pointing out that he was just as hotly engaged.

  Carlin began to despair. An ominous silence beyond his right told him Post had quit the field. Rather than see his brigade enveloped and destroyed piecemeal, Carlin decided to withdraw by the left flank. But before he could relay the order he was unhorsed, then struck by a Rebel bullet. Within minutes Carlin's entire staff was either killed, wounded, unhorsed, or engaged elsewhere, and he could only watch as the fighting raged about him and the retreat he had tried to direct began spontaneously.

  With the stubborn Colonel Alexander down and severely wounded, the Twenty-first Illinois collapsed first. Next to go was the One Hundred First Ohio. Their withdrawal, begun in disorder, deteriorated into a route as first Colonel Stem, then Lieutenant Colonel Moses Wooster fell mortally wounded. “Of course, everything was perfect confusion,” Private Jay Butler of Company B admitted after the battle in a letter home, “men and horses running in every direction and Rebels after us, firing upon us and yelling like Indians.” In their haste to escape, the Ohioans abandoned to the Rebels property more highly prized than regimental colors. Recalled Butler: “When we got back as far as my knapsack, I picked it up and attempted to carry it and did so for a quarter of a mile when I found that I was getting behind and that the bullets came nearer and thicker, so I dropped it, took out my rubber blanket and went on my way feeling very down hearted at leaving so many good and useful articles to the enemy that were fast coming upon us, such as my sleeping cap, shirts, dressing case, nice, new stockings, etc.”

  The withdrawal of the Thirty-eighth Illinois minutes later left only Hans Heg and his Fifteenth Wisconsin to cover the brigade's retreat. Heg's was a regiment recruited largely from communities of German and Scandinavian immigrants in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota. The moving force behind the organization of the unit in the fall of 1861, Heg reflected the hardihood and spirit of independence typical of its members. Leaving his native Norway to cross the Atlantic with his parents at age eleven, Heg was in California panning gold with the Forty-niners just nine years later. On receiving word of his father's death in 1851, Heg returned home to Wisconsin. The two years spent in the goldfields had apparently satisfied his wanderlust, as the young Norwegian settled down to farm, became active in state politics, and won election as the Wisconsin prison commissioner on the Republican ticket in 1859. His appearance and manners were typically Scandinavian: “Tall and straight, heavily bearded, strong and vigorous,” Heg was of a “quiet demeanor, taciturn manner, and sternness.” Drawing on these qualities here at Stones River, Heg kept his regiment intact long enough for the brigade to retire without the loss of a single artillery piece.

  While the fighting raged on around him, Heg crouched behind a small tree and listened as ball after ball struck the opposite side. He returned to the
spot after the battle to count five rounds imbedded in the trunk.

  Finally the Fifteenth Wisconsin yielded, and the victorious Confederates surged over the split-rail fence in pursuit. Some found it impossible to contain their enthusiasm. None was more ecstatic than young William Matthews, a color-bearer in the First Arkansas for whom Stones River was his first battle. “Boys, this is fun,” he yelled as the Arkansans chased the fleeing Yankees. “Stripes, don't be so quick,” advised a veteran, “this is not over; you may get a ninety-day furlough yet.”

  Twenty minutes later, Matthews's exuberance turned to agony as a minie ball shattered his arm.11

  Major General William Starke Rosecrans

  (United States Army Military History Institute)

  Major General Alexander McDowell McCook

  (United States Army Military History Institute)

  Major General George Henry Thomas

  (United States Army Military History Institute)

  Major General Thomas Leonidas Crittenden

  (United States Army Military History Institute)

  Brigadier General Philip Henry Sheridan

  (United States Army Military History Institute)

  General Braxton Bragg

  (United States Army Military History Institute)

  Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk

  (From a contemporary engraving)

  Lieutenant General William Joseph Hardee

  (United States Army Military History Institute)

  Major General John Cabell Breckinridge

  (United States Army Military History Institute)

  Major General Patrick Ronayne Cleburne

  (United States Army Military History Institute)

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MATTERS LOOKED PRETTY BLUE NOW

  FIVE Union brigades were in full retreat, and the battle was hardly an hour old. Confusion and panic gripped the men, paralyzing what few efforts were made to resist the Confederate attack west of Gresham Lane. There was no sign of McCook, nor of Johnson, nor of any leadership above the regimental—or occasionally brigade—level.

  The completeness of the Federal collapse surprised everyone, Blue and Gray alike, but no one was more shocked by its speed than Solon Marks, chief medical officer of Johnson's division. Marks had set up the division hospital at the General Smith plantation near Overall Creek the night before and was at headquarters when the battle began. The first shots sent him back to the hospital, where a growing stream of wounded were converging on the manor. Slipping inside, Marks lost himself in the grizzly work of amputation until a frightened orderly whispered that the division was falling back. Supposing Johnson to be withdrawing deliberately in accordance with orders, Marks assured the orderly that the enemy advance would be arrested long before it might threaten the hospital. Apparently calmed, the soldier went outside to attend to the incoming wounded. But a moment later he was back, insisting that Marks come and see for himself. He did, and what the surgeon saw stunned him: “As I stepped from among the buildings, where I could look to the front, I confess that I was not only surprised but paralyzed. Johnson's men were falling back as fast as their legs could carry them, in the greatest possible confusion, followed by the enemy in perfect lines of battle, outflanking them at least a quarter of a mile…. It was evident that our position must shortly fall into the hands of the enemy.”

  Marks's first thoughts were of the wounded still on the field. Confident that his brigade and regimental surgeons could manage without him, Marks mounted to ride forward. But before he could leave, his surgeons surrounded the horse, looking up at him expectantly for orders. Marks explained his purpose, then called for volunteers to remain behind. Not surprisingly, none came forward. Marks tried a different approach. Dismounting, he announced that he would stay; they could remain or leave as they saw fit. “To their credit,” Marks later attested, “every surgeon returned to his duty, and stood bravely at his post during the trying ordeal which followed. In a few minutes our troops had fallen back past our position, and we were between the two armies.” The Butternut ranks of Rains and Ector swept past, and the hospital was behind enemy lines. “Our hospital was at once surrounded by skulkers, to be found in all armies, ever ready to fall out of line of battle and wander over the field, robbing the dead and wounded,” recalled a disgusted Marks.1

  Eight hundred yards to the east, near the Gresham house, the scene was repeated. Here Carlin and Post struggled to piece together their shattered commands for a final stand. Despite their pleas, only a corporal's guard rallied around the colors. Colonel Heg fell in with just one hundred troops on hand; Major Isaac Kirby of the One Hundred First Ohio arrived with half that number. In the orchard west of the Gresham house, Lieutenant S. M. Jones was a little more fortunate. He had stemmed the retreat of the Seventy-fourth and Seventy-fifth Illinois, gathering enough volunteers to make a respectable stand. Joined by bits of the Fifth Kentucky and First and Ninety-third Ohio, the Illinoisans turned and faced forward for the last time that day.

  On came the Confederates. East of Gresham Lane, Polk and Wood rolled over the plowed fields of cotton and corn for a rematch with Carlin. A severe and unexpected enfilading fire from two artillery batteries belonging to the division of Phil Sheridan and posted on a knoll to Wood's right caused him to call a halt, although the Sixteenth Alabama kept on alone for nearly a mile before being pulled back into line. Polk, who escaped the shelling, pushed on, his left covered by Bushrod Johnson as he closed with Carlin's ragtag line.

  The final heave of resistance by Johnson and Davis south of the Wilkinson Pike hardly slowed the Confederates. Baldwin's regiments scarcely had reformed when “some general” (perhaps Johnson) ordered them to fall back. Although the order caused resentment among the brigade staff, it was for the best. As the commander of the Ninety-third Ohio noted, the brigade was outflanked on the right by McNair, whose line extended several hundred yards beyond Baldwin's toward Overall Creek. Post's men gave way at about the same time, after firing only a few ragged volleys. Left without support on his right and finding Polk in his rear, Carlin too withdrew across the pike.

  Like Solon Marks, Dr. Charles Doolittle, volunteering to stay behind with the wounded at the Gresham house, found himself trapped between the lines as his brigade disintegrated. He later recalled: “The bullets flew so thick, it seemed as if one had only to hold out his hand to catch it full of them. There were two killed in the yard to the house where I was and another in the hall. There were a great many killed along side of the fences around the house. The whole thing was one magnificent exhibition of human passion.”

  A few tense moments passed, and then the Rebels came up. The ration of whiskey delivered at dawn had gotten the better of the weary and famished Southerners, and they were in ill humor; according to Doolittle, their drinking “seemed but to increase their hatred and bloodthirstiness.” Doolittle had hoped that the arrival of their brigade commander, St. John Liddell, would help curb their anger, but he was wrong. A request that Liddell order a cease-fire, so that the wounded might be spared death in the crossfire, met with an impassioned rebuttal. After retorting that he personally would rather die than fall prisoner to the Yankees, Liddell “cursed us for everything that was mean under the sun.” Earlier, he had heaped invective upon the heads of a group of captured Federal pickets who begged the general for mercy, “telling them they were fine fellows, invading our country and then asking pardon.” Liddell had reason beyond mere antipathy to Northerners to be angry. Of the seven staff officers who began the day at Liddell's side, four already were wounded. And, just moments before Liddell met Doolittle, someone told him that his son Willie had been killed.2

  After refilling their cartridge boxes from McCown's ammunition train, Liddell's Arkansans disappeared into the timber north of the pike, much to the relief of Doolittle and his patients. In the dark and tangled cedar glades, Liddell immediately lost his way, leaving the rest of the division far behind as he veered to the northwest.

  Like
Rains's earlier detour, the drifting of Liddell's brigade demonstrates how quickly the Confederate attack unraveled amid the patchwork of murky forests, overgrown fields, and split-rail fences below the Wilkinson Pike. Units broke up and reformed as much by chance as by design, as the movements of McCown's brigades illustrate. Separated from the remainder of the division and finding his men and ammunition nearly spent, McNair halted his brigade in the orchard along the pike. While his soldiers refilled their cartridge boxes, McNair, troubled again by an illness that had left him bedridden most of the month, yielded brigade command to Colonel R. W. Harper of the First Arkansas Mounted Rifles and with McCown's permission returned to camp. As the ailing general rode rearward, the brigades of Rains and Ector chanced upon his Arkansans. Surprised to find themselves reunited with Harper, they too stopped to draw ammunition and dispatch their prisoners to the rear. Delighted to have his three brigades together again, McCown was content to await further orders.

  The temporary halt of McCown and Liddell offered the fleeing Federals no respite; instead, a new threat appeared in the form of John Wharton and his veteran cavalry. Like everyone else, Wharton had been unprepared for the speed of McCown's advance. “So vigorous was the attack of our left upon the enemy's right, proceeding first at a trot and then at a gallop, I had to travel a distance of two and a half miles before I reached the enemy rear,” he later admitted. Once clear of friendly infantry, Wharton found his way blocked by Zahm's Ohio cavalry brigade. Zahm repulsed Wharton's lead units, forcing him to call up Captain T. F. White's Tennessee battery. Zahm had no artillery with which to return White's fire, and so was forced to withdraw across the Wilkinson Pike.

  Wharton now turned his attention to the remnants of Johnson's infantry division. Wharton planted his brigade colors astride the pike, then ordered Colonel John Cox and his First Confederate Cavalry to charge the Federals. Cox's troopers faced little opposition. Whole units surrendered without a fight. The Seventy-fifth Illinois was taken en masse, but most subsequently escaped. Colonel Gibson, taken along with a portion of the Thirty-ninth Indiana, was about to surrender his sword when a detachment of Federal cavalry launched a counterattack that allowed him and the Hoosiers to fight their way out. Less fortunate was General Kirk. Badly wounded but conscious, Kirk was in an ambulance making its way rearward when Wharton struck. “Boys, get out of here as soon as possible, or you will all be captured,” he told his escort. They did and slipped away, but Kirk fell into Confederate hands.3