No Better Place to Die- The Battle of Stones River

by Peter Cozzens

  Hell began freezing over the moment the Ohioan halted in the timber. Reinforced with two regiments detached earlier in support of the division artillery, Lucius Polk's Butternuts struck Beatty's right center while the Federals were frantically building breastworks from logs and underbrush.

  Beatty initially had the upper hand. An open wood lay between the two brigades, and the Confederates, attempting to cross it, suffered terribly. Polk pushed his men forward until, convinced by the growing carpet of Butternut that a frontal assault was futile, he changed course and tried to envelop Beatty's right. Again he miscalculated. Instead of gliding unopposed past the Federal right, his men ran into the Fifteenth Kentucky, hidden behind the many limestone boulders that dotted the Federal right. The Kentuckians held until their colonel fell, but even their retreat failed to turn the tide. Anticipating their collapse, Beatty had wheeled his remaining units to the right, and they now opened with an enfilading fire that eventually forced Polk to break contact.

  The lull that followed gave Beatty time to evaluate his situation. Having noted an absence of firing from beyond his flanks during the fighting, Beatty sent one staff officer to report the brigade's position to Rousseau, a second in search of Shephard, and a third to look for Van Pelt's battery, which Rousseau had assured Beatty would support him. All three returned with the same news: There was no one left on the field but their brigade and the Confederates. “I conclude that the contingency to which General Rousseau referred—that is to say, that hell has frozen over—and about face my brigade and march to the rear,” Beatty wrote wryly, adding that he feared the prospect of pulling his men out of the cedars: “A retrograde movement under fire must necessarily be extremely hazardous. It demoralizes your men, who cannot, at the moment, understand the purpose of the movement, while it encourages the enemy.”

  He was right. Polk chose precisely the moment of Beatty's withdrawal to renew his assault. Vaughan's brigade, ordered to his support by Cheatham, joined Polk on the right. And S. A. M. Wood, whose men had just refilled their cartridge boxes, may have fallen in on his left, though reports are unclear on this point. In any event, the pressure was enough to panic the Federals and, despite Beatty's efforts at rallying them for a final stand at the northeast ern edge of the cedar brake, they swept past into the cotton field. There Beatty again tried to steady them, only to have his horse killed. “Before I have time to recover my feet, my troops, with thousands of others, sweep in disorder to the rear, and I am left standing alone.” Beatty threw a final defiant glance at the Confederates, then gathered up his sword and ran toward the turnpike to join his command.7

  Hardee now had cleared all but a portion of one Federal brigade from the thicket north of the Wilkinson Pike that today constitutes the southern limit of the Stones River National Battlefield. Only Colonel Wiliam Grose's Sixth Ohio and Thirty-sixth Indiana stood between Rains and the turnpike. Rains charged the Midwesterners.

  Grose's infantry had had plenty of time to ponder their fate. Fearing that the struggle on Sheridan's front might soon envelop his rear, the Hoosier colonel had changed front at 8:00. With Palmer's concurrence, Grose realigned his brigade so as to form a “V” with Hazen. The Sixth Ohio and Thirty-sixth Indiana constituted the front line; the Twenty-third Kentucky and Eighty-fourth Illinois, a new regiment, formed the second line; the Twenty-fourth Ohio faced northwest and covered the right rear; and Captain Charles Parsons placed Batteries H and M, Fourth United States Artillery, on a slight rise between the frontline regiments so that they had a clear field of fire across the cotton field.

  At 9:00, after Rousseau's columns double-timed past his regiments into the cedars, Grose ordered the Thirty-sixth Indiana and Sixth Ohio forward two hundred yards to better support Shephard's regulars. Assuming Shephard to be holding his own, neither regimental commander deployed skirmishers. They were wrong. Advancing blindly, their troops were wholly unprepared for the confusion that greeted them as they neared Shephard's rear. Corporal Hannaford of the Sixth Ohio recalled his surprise: “The line in advance of us, a brigade that had passed us only a few minutes before, had been crushed and beaten back, and were drifting toward us in utter confusion. Organization and discipline were forgotten; they were fleeing for their lives…and almost before I had time to comprehend its meaning, the rebel bullets were hissing all about us. We were in action.”

  Hannaford's commander, Colonel Nicholas Anderson, was equally stunned. By the time the regulars cleared his ranks, Rains was only one hundred yards away. The Rebels delivered the first volley, and Anderson's ranks quivered. His men recovered and returned the fire, and for twenty minutes the two lines traded fire until Anderson, for reasons known only to him, decided to fix bayonets and charge. But before he could carry out this reckless maneuver his attention was drawn to his left flank company, the object of a deadly oblique fire from Lucius Polk's ubiquitous Butternuts.

  Hannaford saw them too. As he turned his head toward the left, “a whistling volley of bullets came over from that new enemy, and for me the battle was over.” The Ohioan had been hit: “I remember no acute sensation of pain, not even any distinct shock, only an instantaneous consciousness of having been struck; then my breath came hard and laboured, with a crouplike sound, and with a dull, aching feeling in my right shoulder, my arm fell powerless at my side, and the Enfield dropped from my grasp. I threw my left hand up to my throat and withdrew it covered with the warm, bright-red blood. The end had come at last.” Hannaford's most immediate fear was of being trampled in the confusion. Wanting only to “die in peace,” he crawled between two large boulders, spread out his rubber blanket, and lay down—as he then imagined—to die.8

  Meanwhile, Anderson had instructed his men to about-face, fire by the rear rank, and then fall back. They emerged from the timber in good order, having held forty minutes, and reformed behind Parsons.

  For the Thirty-sixth Indiana, the story was much the same. Shephard's regulars blocked the Hoosiers’ field of fire so effectively that the Twenty-ninth North Carolina and Eleventh Tennessee were on top of them before they could fire a shot. Major Isaac Kinley, the acting commander, was wounded almost immediately, and within minutes every mounted officer but the adjutant had lost his horse. Companies A and C collapsed first, swept away with the panicked regulars; then the remaining eight companies broke contact and scattered. The last Union infantry to leave the cedars, they stopped running only after they had cleared Rousseau's batteries.

  For a moment there was silence. All eyes turned toward the timber. Lieutenant Pirtle continues the story: “As I looked on, an officer on foot, sword in hand, sprang into view with a shout; in an instant the edge of the timber was alive with a mass of arms, heads, legs, guns, swords, gray coats, brown hats, shirt sleeves, and the enemy were upon us, yelling, leaping, running. Not a shot from them for a few jumps, then one or two paused to throw up their guns, fire and yell, and then run forward to try to gain the front.”

  At that instant the batteries that Pirtle had helped place roared into action, and the cotton field was blanketed in smoke. Rains had stumbled into a hornet's nest. At least four Union regiments—the Eighty-fourth Illinois, Twenty-fourth Ohio, Twenty-third Kentucky, and, at the wood's edge, the Ninety-fourth Ohio—joined Van Pelt, Guenther, and Parsons in decimating the exposed Confederates. Rains fell with a bullet through his heart. His men held on ten minutes until—hungry, exhausted, and leaderless—they melted back into the woods. Only dead and wounded remained among the boulders and furrows of the cotton field.9

  As the survivors, now nominally under the command of Colonel Robert Vance of the Twenty-ninth North Carolina, stumbled toward the Wilkinson Pike, they encountered the equally exhausted men of Cleburne's division and learned why they had charged the turnpike alone. After prying loose Greusel and rolling up Beatty, Cleburne had discovered a large body of Yankees beyond his right. Rather than expose his already jaded infantry to a flanking fire that might break them, Cleburne pulled Johnson and Polk out of the cedars. After
allowing him time to regroup his command, Cleburne ordered Johnson to march by the left flank until he made contact with Liddell, who by this time had drifted nearly a mile to the northwest. Johnson found Liddell along the southern edge of the clearing below the Widow Burris house. Liddell yielded the front to Johnson, who ascended a small hill while Liddell reformed under its brow. Vaughan, still under orders to support Cleburne, and Polk fell in on Johnson's right. Liddell rejoined Johnson's left, and Cleburne again sent his command forward, this time toward the Widow Burrows house and the Nashville Turnpike beyond. Wood's brigade, reduced to five hundred effectives, stayed in the rear to guard the corps ordnance train.10

  The troops that had convinced Cleburne to change course belonged to Colonel Timothy Stanley. For twenty minutes following Sheridan's departure Stanley's front lay silent. Then Stewart and Anderson, supported by a converging fire from the Jefferson Flying Artillery and Humphrey's Arkansas Battery south of the Wilkinson Pike and Stanford's Mississippi and Barret's Missouri batteries east of McFadden's Lane, slammed into his line. The only instance of effective artillery support provided Rebel infantry during the battle, it devastated Stanley's brigade. Negley called the fire “most destructive.” Private Ira Gillaspie of the Eleventh Michigan said that it mowed down his comrades by the score. Even those rounds that sailed overhead took lives, recalled one veteran, as they cut tree limbs, “which, falling, crushed the living and dead alike.”

  Men reacted differently to the fire. Some hurled insults: “Why don't you come over and take us into camp?” “Hey, Johnny, step along this way, a little quicker!” “Ah, yes, very well aimed, but it never touched me.” Others prayed. James Haynie of the Nineteenth Illinois recalled the last act of one man in the ranks. “There is a five-dollar bill in my watch-fob pocket,” he told Haynie. “Take it out when I'm done for.” A moment later the man was dead.

  Badly outnumbered and flanked to the west by Manigault and Maney, Stanley's regiments wavered. The Sixty-ninth Ohio quit the field first, its colonel “so drunk as to be unfitted to command.” The remainder of the brigade collapsed more or less simultaneously, leaving three guns to the Confederates.11

  Stanley's defeat brought the battle to Colonel John Miller, commander of the second of Negley's two brigades. Only thirty-one years old, the South Bend, Indiana, native was among the most promising officers in the army. “There was not perhaps in all the army a brigade…having a commander in which it had greater confidence,” wrote headquarters clerk Wilson Vance. Although Miller's rise through the ranks would be slowed by a bullet the following June, the postwar years would find him in Washington as a powerful California senator.

  Having just received a desperate order from Negley to “hold my position to the last extremity,” Miller scrambled to realign the brigade. Positioned to receive an attack from the east, his regiments were painfully vulnerable to an assault from the south, the direction from which the Confederates were coming. Only the Seventy-eighth Pennsylvania, nestled in a limestone outcrop fifty by seventy-five yards in size, was deployed to defend against an attack from that direction; the remainder of the brigade, including two batteries of artillery, fronted the earthworks of Chalmer's Confederate brigade.

  Unfortunately for Miller, the enemy struck before he could take any corrective action. Again the guns of Barret and Stanford announced the approach of Withers's infantry. Stewart lapped Miller's right and slowly worked his way into the Hoosier's rear, while Anderson maintained pressure in front. Miller's regiments held firm until their ammunition began to run out. The Thirty-seventh Indiana wavered first. Backing out of the line, it withdrew a short distance in search of the ammunition train, and the Seventy-fourth Ohio and Seventy-eighth Pennsylvania joined flanks to fill in the interval. The Thirty-seventh returned moments later empty-handed. Its commander informed Miller that the brigade teamsters had fled at the first volley, and the men, gathering what ammunition they could from the boxes of the dead and wounded, returned to the fray.

  The Seventy-eighth Pennsylvania faltered next. Engaged on the left, right, and in front, the regiment fell back one hundred yards before Miller personally guided it back into line. No sooner had Miller plugged this gap then the Thirty-seventh Indiana again gave back. The Seventy-fourth Ohio followed. Miller chose to let them go—with Stanley gone and Stewart now entirely in his rear, retreat was inevitable. As the Twenty-first Ohio was still in line, Miller ordered its commander, Colonel James Niebling, to cover the brigade's withdrawal. Although it was their first battle, the Ohioans responded well. Armed with Colt revolving rifles, they halted the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-seventh Mississippi as they struggled across the cornfield to their front. “Give ’em hell by the acre, boys,” Niebling shouted as he rode along the line. And give them hell they did, until only the Ohioans and Stanley's Nineteenth Illinois were left on the field. Together they launched a bayonet charge that threw the Confederates off balance long enough for the brigade to break through to the Nashville Turnpike. One entire company of the Twenty-first fell captive to the Twenty-seventh Mississippi before the remainder of the regiment succeeded in cutting through Stewart's ranks to rejoin their comrades along the turnpike.

  Miller's artillery fared no better. With nearly all their horses dead, the men of Battery M, First Ohio, were forced to surrender four pieces to the enemy; Battery G, First Ohio, and Nell's Kentucky Battery each left behind one gun. Looking over his shoulder as his regiment retreated, Joseph Gibson of the Seventy-eighth Pennsylvania caught a glimpse of one tragically devoted artilleryman: “One of the last sights witnessed as we entered the cedar woods in our retreat was an artilleryman trying to haul his gun off the field with one horse, the other five having been killed. One wheel of the gun carriage had become fastened between two rocks, and the brave artilleryman was trying with a rail to pry it out.”12

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  OUR BOYS WERE FORCED BACK IN CONFUSION

  IT was noon. Six hours earlier a double line of blue had extended from Stones River to the Franklin road. Now only a tangled remnant remained to receive the eleven Butternut brigades approaching the Nashville Turnpike. Should any of them sever that vital artery, it might cost Rosecrans the battle and, conceivably, much of his army.

  Rains had lunged at the turnpike alone and met with disaster. Undaunted, Ector was about to repeat that error. His failure to support Rains had doomed the attack; now Harper's inability to keep pace with Ector was to have the same result. McCown either was unaware that the two brigades had separated or was unable to reunite them, and Ector's men stepped out of the cedars alone.

  They could not have struck a better-prepared segment of the Union line had Rosecrans guided them in himself. The units facing Ector were virtually the only fresh troops left to Rosecrans. Directly opposite the Texan, on the rise near the Cowan graveyard between the turnpike and the railroad, lay Morton's Pioneers, Stokes's Chicago Board of Trade Battery, and Battery B, Pennsylvania Light Artillery. And in a cedar glade beyond Ector's left, Sam Beatty's as yet uncommitted brigade paused to enfilade the Rebel flank.

  Raising the rebel yell, the Texans surged into the open fields. Ector's right regiments enjoyed initial success as they crested the small but commanding knoll on the west side of the turnpike that today marks the battlefield park headquarters. There they settled in to trade blows with Morton's Second and Third battalions. On the left, however, the Texans found trouble the moment they came into range. Lured by the invisibility of Sam Beatty's brigade, the Fifteenth Texas advanced some three hundred yards before its skirmishers uncovered the enemy. The Texans surged forward and chased the Yankee skirmishers another three hundred yards before running into Beatty's main line. Colonel Andrews brought up the remainder of the Fifteenth, and the two lines disappeared in smoke.

  Despite the advantages of surprise and cover, Beatty's troops were wavering. The human debris from the Right Wing that Ector had swept before him nearly stampeded them before they were able to form a line of battle. “They broke through the
lines of the brigade,” complained Beatty, “infantry, cavalry, artillery, ambulances, baggage trains, etc. in the greatest confusion, frequently separating the regiments of the brigade, threatening serious trouble.” Major Charles Manderson of the Nineteenth Ohio, in front with the Ninth Kentucky, agreed: “This scene was one of disorder and panic. Regiment after regiment swept our lines in the greatest confusion; but through it all our men preserved an unbroken front.” Nerves were less steady in the second line. The Seventy-ninth Indiana, a new three-year regiment in action for the first time, almost collapsed under the weight of the troops retreating through its ranks. Before irreparable damage could be done, Colonel Frederick Knefler wisely instructed his Hoosiers to lie down. The men were grateful, and “they clung a little closer to the bosom of Old Mother earth than they had ever done before.”

  They held on. On the other side of the field, Colonel Andrews began to despair. Looking about, he could see only his Fifteenth Texas, the Fourteenth Texas, and Federals in the cotton field. Andrews rode to Ector, who was encouraging the Fourteenth in its duel with the Nineteenth Ohio, and asked him if he knew where the remainder of the brigade was. Ector, who had followed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth, said no. At that, Andrews replied that he could not hold out much longer against an entire brigade and two batteries of artillery. Ector thought for a moment, then agreed that both regiments “had better give back.” Returning to his command, a relieved Andrews shouted the order to withdraw, only to have his voice drowned out by the clatter of musketry. Andrews tried again, those nearest heard the command and obeyed it, and eventually the entire regiment got the idea. Ector, meanwhile, shepherded the Fourteenth out of the field.