No Better Place to Die- The Battle of Stones River

by Peter Cozzens

  While Wharton's troopers were netting hundreds of prisoners below the Wilkinson Pike, a prize far greater than frightened infantrymen or wounded generals awaited them near the Gresham house, where the seventy-six heavily laden wagons of McCook's ammunition train were drawn up, ripe for the picking. Only one infantry company of seventy-five men stood guard over the train, and the officer-in-charge, Captain Gates P. Thruston, was absent, having hurried to the front with two wagonloads of ammunition as the first scattered shots broke the predawn stillness. Thruston had emerged from the timber near Baldwin's position to find that brigade melting away. Surmising the “critical position of our army” and by inference that of his train, Thruston galloped back to the Gresham house, only to find everything in disarray. A group of Rebel cavalrymen were leading away McCook's supply and personal baggage trains, while a second made ready to seize Thruston's ordnance wagons. “I had no special orders and just what to do was something of a problem,” the Ohioan admitted; but orders or no orders, Thruston knew he had to do something, and do it quickly. After repelling the detachment of Rebel cavalry Thruston led the train north into the cedars above the Wilkinson Pike. Thruston, his seventy-six drivers, and their infantry escort struggled through a half mile of thickets, ravines, and fencerows before reaching the open ground south of the Widow Burris (or Burrows) farm. Here a scene equally desperate greeted them. Thruston recounted: “The whole area in rear between our right and left was a scene of strife and confusion that beggars description. Stragglers from the front, teamsters, couriers, negro servants, hospital attendants, ambulances added to the turmoil. Wounded and riderless horses and cattle wild with fright rushed frantically over the field.”

  Here too they met the Confederate cavalry in force. Faced with the imminent loss of the train, Thruston appealed to every Union cavalry officer in the area for help. Colonel Zahm responded first, sending Major John Pugh and some three hundred men of the Fourth Ohio Cavalry into line on the left flank of the train, fronting west toward the enemy. They looked menacing, but they were not up to the duty. A few well-placed rounds from Wharton's artillery scattered them, and a charge by his troopers sent them rearward “at a pretty lively gait.” Wharton next turned his guns on the Second Tennessee Cavalry, a green regiment that had been organized at Murfreesboro only five months earlier, and, according to Zahm, they broke and fled “like sheep.” This left Zahm with only two regiments, his own Third Ohio and Colonel Minor Milliken's First Ohio. But before Zahm could organize a coordinated defense, Millikin and his horsemen were off. “The very acme of Colonel Millikin's ambition had been to have the regiment make a sabre charge,” a member of the unit recalled, “and now the supreme opportunity had arrived.” Galloping across the sodden sward, Millikin slashed his way into the midst of Wharton's ranks, throwing the Eighth Texas momentarily into disorder. Close combat followed, “in which the revolver was used with deadly effect.” Deadly indeed: Milliken toppled off his horse mortally wounded, shot through the neck by a revolver-wielding Texan. With their leader down, the fight went out of the Federals (who probably did not want to be there to begin with), and they tried to retrace their steps. But Wharton had them surrounded, and over one hundred fell prisoner while trying to cut their way out.

  Thruston and his party had watched the affair. Anticipating the outcome, most of the teamsters had stampeded, leaving the wagons “high and dry” in the cornfields. Thruston and the infantrymen were right behind them. They fired a parting volley, then fled to the nearest cedar glade.

  “Matters looked pretty blue now,” Zahm admitted later in a classic bit of understatement. Zahm himself had been swept from the field with his three regiments, and the Third Ohio, finding itself alone, immediately fell back from its perimeter around the outbuildings of the Widow Burris farm. The field theirs, Wharton's troopers began leading away Thruston's wagons.

  “Happily this appalling state of affairs did not last long,” wrote Thruston. Federal cavalry launched a surprise countercharge that caught Wharton's men unprepared. At the head of the attack was Colonel John Kennett, commander of the division of which Zahm's hapless brigade was a part. Uncertain of the extent of the disaster that had befallen McCook but worried nonetheless, Rosecrans earlier had urged Kennett to gather all idle cavalry from along the Nashville Turnpike and ride at once to the right. Kennett found only one squadron of the Third Kentucky, but orders were orders, and so with this tiny column he galloped toward the retreating Union infantry.

  As he led his ragtag force across the turnpike, perhaps Kennett wondered where Stanley was and why he had done nothing to challenge Wharton's rampaging Butternuts. The answer, had he known it, would have infuriated Kennett.

  After his visit to army headquarters the night before, Stanley had returned to his bivouac and quickly fallen fast asleep. A little after midnight, he was awakened and an order from Garesche was thrust in his hand. It related Wheeler's attacks on supply trains along the Wilkinson Pike and directed Stanley to ride at once to Stewart's Creek to take charge of the defense of army trains parked there.

  Stanley arrived at Stewart's Creek an hour before daylight to find the trains safe and the commander of the guard, Colonel Joe Burke of the Tenth Ohio, hard at work on a bottle of Irish whiskey. Forgetting the threat to the Union right, which had so occupied his thoughts before midnight, Stanley dismounted and joined Burke and his chaplain for “hot punch and delicate breakfast.” Stanley was still enjoying Burke's hospitality when a courier from Garesche galloped up with word of McCook's defeat and an order to “hasten to the right and do your best to restore order.” Stanley mounted and cantered south, only to become lost in a sea of stragglers surging up the Nashville Turnpike. It was late afternoon before Stanley reached the battlefield, by which time the Confederate cavalry attack had played itself out.

  Rosecrans clearly is to be criticized for sending his chief of cavalry to do the work of a brigade commander, particularly on the eve of a major battle. Stanley, however, must share in the blame. He must have known his place was at the front on the morning of 31 December, and he should have reminded Rosecrans of this when awakened by Garesche's order.

  Back at the front, Kennett's luck changed as he rode south. Captain Elmer Otis fell in with six companies of his unattached Fourth United States Cavalry, and the Third Ohio managed to halt its retreat and rally. Kennett ordered his reinforced command to dismount behind a fence south of the Nashville Turnpike. From there they drove away Wharton's startled troopers, who thought they had seen the last of organized resistance. As the Confederates withdrew, two squadrons from the Third Ohio deployed to screen the train and hold Wharton in check while Thruston patched up the disabled wagons and reorganized the train. Train guards and stragglers were enlisted to ride the lead horses of each team, and the train creaked toward the turnpike. After evading Cleburne's artillery and a final charge by Wharton, Thruston brought his wagons safely to rest on the west bank of Stones River near army headquarters.

  Thruston's exploits did not go unnoticed. While he supervised the parking of the train, Thruston was greeted by Captain Charles Thompson of the general staff, who congratulated him on his escape. Thompson remarked that the commanding general had heard that Thruston had been captured along with the entire train. “No, my ammunition train is safe,” came the emphatic reply. Thompson left to pass the welcome news on to Rosecrans, who rode up moments later.

  “Are you the officer who says McCook's ammunition train was saved?” shouted Rosecrans.

  “Yes, sir,” Thruston responded with a salute.

  “How do you know it?”

  “I had charge of it, sir.”

  “Where is it?” Thruston led Rosecrans a few yards to the opposite side of a cedar glade, and pointed it out. “How did you manage to get it away over here?”

  “Well, general,” said Thruston, “we did some sharp fighting, but a great deal more running.”

  Rosecrans was delighted. Slapping the young captain on the shoulder, he exclaimed: “Captain
, consider yourself a major from today.” The general kept his word. Not only was Thruston cited for conspicuous gallantry and promoted, but he was appointed senior aide-de-camp to the commanding general.4

  So, even amidst the confusion and ignominy of that dark December morning, reputations were made as a select few overcame the panic that gripped the Right Wing of the Army of the Cumberland. While a weary but elated Thruston parked his wagons, some two miles to the southeast among the rolling fields and scattered thickets near the Harding house another officer was winning immortality for himself and his division. There fiery Phil Sheridan was about to hand Bragg his first defeat of the day.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE REBELS WERE FALLING LIKE LEAVES OF AUTUMN

  THE first indication Bragg had that his attack was not going as planned came just moments after McCown struck Johnson's picket line. A courier from Hardee brought word that Cheatham had yet to advance and that, as a consequence, Cleburne's right was exposed. (This was the delay that troubled Lucius Polk in the opening minutes of the battle.) Concerned but not yet alarmed, Bragg dispatched a messenger to Cheatham with a rebuke and an order to get moving. The Tennessean responded to the order, but Bragg's troubles with him were far from over. In the weeks following Stones River, Cheatham would be among the most outspoken in calling for Bragg's resignation. Throughout the day Cheatham acted rashly and recklessly, sacrificing hundreds of irreplaceable veterans in poorly coordinated charges. Apologists later attributed the Tennessean's impulsive behavior to his natural combativeness; critics, however, suggested that Cheatham, like so many of the men in ranks, was drunk. Rumormongers whispered after the battle that the general had had trouble just staying on his horse.1

  Sober or drunk, at 7:00 Cheatham moved to the attack. But instead of continuing the right wheel with a general advance of both his lines—however impractical this tactic ultimately proved—the Tennessean committed his brigades piecemeal, allowing Sheridan to deploy and redeploy his units so as to repel each attack in turn.

  Deas’ brigade, led by Colonel J. Q. Loomis, opened the action. The odds were against Loomis's Alabamians, and they knew it. Three hundred yards of open cornfields separated them from Colonel William Woodruff's three Union regiments, which lay on a ridge behind a fence. “Covered with a dense growth of rough cedars,” the Federalist position offered a clear field of fire all the way to Rebel lines. The weakest link was Woodruff's left flank, which rested in a field. Woodruff had moved three guns belonging to the Eighth Wisconsin Artillery into the meadow at daybreak, but he still felt uneasy. Woodruff explained his fears to Sill, whose brigade lay to his left, and Sill spoke with Sheridan, who ordered the Fifteenth Missouri and Forty-fourth Illinois forward from their positions in reserve. (Sheridan had detailed these regiments to Sill the night before. Not needed then, they had returned to their former positions at dawn.) Just before Loomis attacked, however, the Missourians and Illinoisans again abandoned the line, leaving Sill with his original four regiments to face the Confederates. In the front line, from left to right, were the Eighty-eighth and Thirty-sixth Illinois and Twenty-fourth Wisconsin; the Twenty-first Michigan rested behind the Eighty-eighth.

  Loomis's Butternuts slogged through the sodden field in good order, conducting a right wheel as they neared the enemy. But once within range of the Yankee rifles, the brigade separated: the three regiments on the left struck the Twenty-fifth Illinois and Eighty-first Indiana, while the remainder drifted to the north, hitting Sill's right.

  The Alabamians enjoyed early success on the left, the Twenty-fifth Illinois and Eighty-first Indiana recoiling into the woods as the Rebels neared the fence. Colonel Thomas Williams of the Twenty-fifth tried desperately but unsuccessfully to stem the rearward flow of Bluecoats. Grabbing the regimental colors, he yelled out: “We will plant it here, boys, and rally the old Twenty-fifth around it; and here we will die.” And there he did die. A bullet pierced his chest as he finished his speech, and he sank to the ground, dying instantly. Around his body and the fallen colors, the bloodletting went on. While the infantry ran, the artillerymen of the Eighth Wisconsin fought on alone until the Rebels enveloped them and their battery commander, Captain Stephen Carpenter, fell dead across a Parrott gun.

  Loomis's Alabamians were punishing Woodruff's Bluecoats, but in pressing their advantage they pushed too far. Not content to stop at the rail fence, they jumped it and darted blindly past the Thirty-fifth Illinois, exposing their left flank as they ran by. It was more than the commander of the Thirty-fifth could resist. He gave the order to fire, and his Prairie State farm boys released a volley that, in the words of the unlucky colonel of the Twenty-sixth Alabama, “raked down our lines with heavy damage to us.” The Twenty-sixth melted away, and the Twenty-fifth Illinois and Eighty-first Indiana, taking heart, counterattacked to regain the fence and send their tormentors reeling across the valley.

  On the right, the story was the same. The withdrawal of Woodruff's two left regiments exposed the right flank of the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin, a green regiment organized just four months earlier in Milwaukee. Charging up the boulder-strewn slope, the First Louisiana struck it and struck hard, first startling, then panicking the Yankees. After firing only a few scattered shots, the regiment crumbled. Major Elisha Hubbard directed his men to break contact and retire by companies, but the order was lost in the noise and confusion, and the men broke contact as it suited them.

  The collapse of the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin now left the Thirty-sixth Illinois with its right in the air. But unlike Hubbard, Colonel Nicholas Greusel was equal to the challenge; besides, he led a crack outfit that had distinguished itself at Pea Ridge and Perryville. Fixing bayonets, his Illinoisans held their fire until the Stars and Bars came within fifty yards, then unleashed a volley that slammed the Nineteenth Alabama to a halt. For thirty minutes the Illinoisans and Alabamians slugged it out, trading fire and peering through the smoke for a sign that the other was wavering. Neither regiment did, that is until the batteries of Hescock and Houghtalling were brought to bear. Then, slowly at first, Southern infantrymen began trickling rearward, dodging the sabre strokes and turning a deaf ear to the cries of their furious officers. Sensing the moment to be at hand, Greusel ordered a counterattack. The timing was perfect. The Rebel left already had disintegrated before the determined defense of Woodruff and, with Loomis struck down by a falling limb, the brigade right was without a commander. Raising a cheer and surging forward, the Illinoisans swept away the Nineteenth Alabama, pursuing it down the slope and into the cornfield until Greusel called his enthusiastic infantrymen back into line.

  The First Louisiana, meanwhile, had continued its advance against the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin. When a brigade staff officer delivered the order to retire, Captain Taylor Beatty was surprised, for his men had enjoyed only success. But it was a success dearly won, as even Beatty later admitted. Of the two hundred thirty-one men he had taken into action, only one hundred twenty-seven recrossed the valley with the Louisiana captain.

  In halting this first Rebel attack the Federals too had paid a heavy price. Sill was dead. A bullet had gored his upper lip, passing into his brain and emerging at the base of the skull. Lieutenant John Mitchell, on the staff of the brigadier, recalled the moment of death:

  At this critical juncture, a general charge was ordered which was bravely responded to. Sill sent me along the line to aid in the movement. Hurrying back, I came across the brigade adjutant; he had just seen the general's horse galloping to the rear. In our search for Sill we almost stumbled over his prostrate body. A bullet had penetrated his brain; he had tumbled from his horse without even a friendly arm to ease his fall. He lay unconscious and alone, bubbling out his last breaths through the blood that thickly flowed over his fair face and silky beard. Two stragglers were with difficulty persuaded to aid in taking his body in a blanket to a farmhouse nearby. Thus died a model of martial virtues, the gentle and chivalric Sill. This scene and its dread surroundings horrified me with war.2

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sp; Brigade command now passed to Greusel, and Major Silas Miller took charge of the Thirty-sixth Illinois, its ranks already two hundred thirty men thinner. Placing the Fifteenth Missouri and Forty-fourth Illinois into the gap created by the flight of the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin, Greusel reformed his line and awaited the next Confederate onslaught, which came just moments later. While Cheatham reorganized Loomis's shattered brigade, Brigadier General Alfred Vaughan moved to the attack over the same bloodstained and trampled earth covered by the Alabamians. “Our men would guy and jeer the Alabamians for taking the back track as they passed through our line,” recalled Private A. H. Brown of Memphis as he and his fellow Tennesseans marched into the cornfield. But the jeering stopped when one angry Alabamian pointed toward Woodruff's line and yelled: “Yes, and you'll find it the hottest place that you ever struck in a little while.” “His remark was about right,” remembered Brown.

  Vaughan's attack began inauspiciously. With Wood masking its left and Maney uncomfortably close on its right, Vaughan's brigade quickly lost its alignment as it tried to squeeze into the valley. To relieve the congestion, Vaughan directed the Ninth Texas to break off and advance with Wood. After the Texans got under way, Vaughan led his remaining five regiments forward northeast of the Widow Smith house. Stumbling up the slippery slope, Vaughan's men righted themselves at the top and attacked with a fury that sent the hapless Twenty-fifth Illinois and Eighty-first Indiana reeling from the fence a second time. With Colonel Williams of the Twenty-fifth dead, his leaderless regiment withdrew one hundred fifty paces before Captain Weford Taggart was able to rally it. The Eighty-first Indiana reappeared on its right, and the two commands fixed bayonets and charged to reclaim their positions. Vaughan did not contest their advance. Colonel A. M. Manigault, who moved against Greusel minutes after Vaughan struck Woodruff, had failed to press his attack, leaving Vaughan's right open to envelopment. Vaughan gave the inevitable command, and his Tennesseans withdrew.