No Better Place to Die- The Battle of Stones River

by Peter Cozzens

  Watching the action from behind Cruft's position, John Palmer was moved by Donelson's well-dressed ranks, “advancing in solid lines and moving in admirable order. It was not easy to witness that magnificant array of Americans without emotion.” Cruft may have agreed, but at the moment he was more concerned with throwing a little disorder into the Rebel ranks. To that end he sent the First Kentucky into the cotton field to meet the Tennesseans before they closed with the brigade. The Kentuckians complied, but they were too late. Planting their colors firmly in the ground beside the Cowan house, Colonel John Carter and his Thirty-eighth Tennessee opened a “murderous fire” on the First, forcing it into a precipitate retreat back to its original position.

  The First Kentucky returned to find the brigade in imminent danger of collapse. A. P. Stewart's Tennesseans, rolling through the cedars in pursuit of Negley, had gained the rear of the Second Kentucky. Captain William Standart wheeled a section of his Battery B, First Ohio, to engage them, but their numbers were overwhelming. “We were now completely flanked,” Cruft despaired. “Our own troops impeded our retreat. Cannons, caissons, artillery wagons, and bodies of men in wild retreat filled the road and woods to my rear, precluded everything like proper and orderly retreat.” Nevertheless, the Second Kentucky held together well enough to drag off three of Standart's guns, while the Nineteenth Ohio rescued a fourth. For Standart retreat came not a moment too soon—only sixteen rounds remained in his caissons.3

  The withdrawal of Cruft, although a setback, posed no real danger to the army. Behind Cruft were several commands still largely intact: Captain Charles Parsons remained in his first position, a slight rise near the intersection of McFadden's Lane and the turnpike, his guns trained toward the southwest; Grose lay nearby with four regiments; behind Grose, Shephard had rallied his regulars; still farther to the rear stood Milo Hascall's uncommitted brigade.

  Thomas and Rosecrans responded to Cruft's withdrawal by sending the regulars back into the cedars to impede the advance of Stewart and Donelson and to afford Grose time to retire to a new position along the turnpike, perpendicular to Hazen. Thomas's instructions were simple: “Shephard, take your brigade there and stop the Rebels.” The regulars hurried down the turnpike to comply. As the head of the column neared McFadden's Lane the brigade halted, formed line of battle, and disappeared into the timber. They halted after fifty yards to permit Cruft's men to clear its lines. Stewart's Butternuts were right behind, and within moments the regulars’ predicament was critical. Extending only a quarter mile, the brigade front was easily outflanked by the more numerous Confederates—Donelson's Eighth Tennessee on the left, and Stewart on the right. The appearance of the Eighteenth Ohio and Eleventh Michigan, personally led into the fray by Rousseau, eased the pressure on the regulars’ right momentarily. But the weight of numbers soon told, and Shephard, thinking “it proper to order a retreat, which was probably quite long enough deferred,” began to extricate his battalions. By the time the final company cleared the wood, some four hundred regulars had fallen, including Major S. D. Carpenter of the Nineteenth United States, struck by six bullets as he directed his battalion's withdrawal.

  But the regulars’ heavy losses were not in vain. In twenty minutes of bitter fighting they decimated Stewart's brigade so completely that “Old Straight” was forced to halt at the edge of the cedars, and Maney and Anderson followed his lead. Only Donelson's Eighth and Thirty-eighth Tennessee, joined perhaps by the Nineteenth Tennessee, dared to confront the Federals on open ground. There, near the Round Forest, they found themselves quickly and hopelessly overwhelmed.

  The Round Forest indeed had become a whirlpool into which all idle Federal units were thrown. Grose fed it first, deploying the Twenty-fourth Ohio and a portion of the Thirty-sixth Indiana on Hazen's right. And when Hazen's Forty-first Ohio and Sixth Kentucky withdrew to refill their cartridge boxes, Milo Hascall detached the Third Kentucky to take their place. Ten minutes later, Hascall's adjutant returned from the front with word that the commander of the Third was dead, the regiment badly cut up.

  Realizing that he was the only general officer near the Round Forest, the thirty-three-year-old New Yorker decided to assume personal responsibility for its defense. Calling upon the Twenty-sixth Ohio to follow him, Hascall rode forward to direct the fight. A brief glance at the forest convinced him that “the position…must be held, even if it cost the last man we had.” As he explained in his report of the battle: “The line they were trying to hold was that part of our original line of battle lying immediately to the right of the railroad. This portion of our original line, about two regimental fronts, together with two fronts to the left, held by Colonel Wagner's brigade, was all of our original line of battle but what our troops had been driven from; and if they succeeded in carrying this they would have turned our left, and a total rout of our forces could not then have been avoided.”

  Hascall also found the Third Kentucky reduced to less than 50 percent of its original strength. Ten of the fourteen officers still alive were badly wounded; Major Daniel Collier, the acting commander, had been shot in the chest and leg, but remained with his regiment. Hascall deployed the Twenty-sixth Ohio to the right of the Kentuckians, brought up Lieutenant George Estep's Eighth Indiana Battery in support, and watched as the struggle raged for another hour: “By far the most terrible and bloody in my command,” recalled Grose.4

  Finally, a little after 12:00, the Confederates broke contact. They had come within a few yards of the turnpike, but lacked the numbers to take it. The Eighth Tennessee had come closest, and their effort cost them dearly. Colonel W. L. Moore went down in the first volley to strike his regiment as it passed the Cowan house. Assuming Moore to be dead, Lieutenant Colonel John Anderson took command and led the Tennesseans toward Cruft. Within minutes a withering fire had engulfed the regiment; in their haste to close with the enemy, the Tennesseans had outdistanced the remainder of the brigade, and now found themselves facing Cruft alone. Anderson paused only long enough to permit his men to fix bayonets, then waded into the Federals. Shattering Cruft's first line with the impetuousity of their attack, the Tennesseans were preparing to move on when their colonel rejoined them on foot, still very much alive. Anderson happily returned command to Moore, only to see him fall, shot through the heart, moments later. In the meantime, Cruft had given way completely, and the Eighth pursued until it encountered Shephard's regulars. Again the Eighth gave battle, and again the Tennesseans swept their front clear of Federals. Joined now by the Nineteenth Tennessee and one hundred men from the Fifty-first, Anderson pushed on into the cotton field. Here the slaughter was greatest. The regimental color sergeant collapsed badly wounded. He crawled forward, colors in hand, until a second bullet killed him. In Company D, eleven of twelve company-grade officers and noncommissioned officers fell. When Parsons and Estep opened a “perfect hail of grape and canister,” Anderson knew the time had come to retreat. Falling back to the right of Stewart, Anderson redistributed ammunition and took stock of his command. Its losses were appalling—the heaviest suffered by a Confederate regiment in any single battle of the war. Of the four hundred forty men who went into action, forty-one were dead, another two hundred sixty wounded. In all, 68 percent of the regiment had been lost. To the credit of the Eighth, not a single man was reported missing.5

  East of the turnpike, the story was the same. There the Sixteenth Tennessee and three companies of the Fifty-first fought two Federal brigades for control of the Round Forest. Colonel John Savage's Tennesseans initially struck the Federal line from the southeast, near the railroad. After changing direction to face the forest, Savage pushed forward in line of battle along the track—two companies to the right, eleven (including the three from the Fifty-first) to the left. Those on the left made contact first. A blistering fire from the Ninth Indiana, posted immediately to their front, brought them to a halt. As those to the right of the railroad emerged from a field of dry cornstalks, they too were engaged by the Hoosiers. Savage coaxed his m
en forward another fifty yards before the intensity of the Federal fire forced them to the ground.

  “The space between the two lines was now an unobstructed plain of about one hundred yards,” recalled Captain J. J. Womack, “we lying and shooting, they standing.” By noon, the commander of the Ninth Indiana noted that the fire to his front had “grown feeble,” and that “many had retired in disorder, many were killed and wounded.” Indeed many were. Lieutenant Colonel L. N. Savage was dead and Captain Womack lay unconscious, a minie ball having shattered his right arm just minutes after he had watched his brother J. B. fall badly wounded. Federal bullets had so thinned the ranks of the Sixteenth that Savage could muster no more than a skirmish line from the survivors. As standing to retreat was more dangerous than remaining among the cotton rows, Savage and his men lay for three hours until Dan Adams's brigade passed by them on its way toward the Round Forest, allowing the Tennesseans to escape. Few, however, would survive; of the three hundred seventy-seven men taken into action, Savage could count only one hundred fifty at dusk.6

  As the Tennesseans clung to the cotton field, Rosecrans advanced a regiment almost equally decimated to skirmish with them. Phil Sheridan had just that moment emerged from the cedars with what remained of Schaefer's brigade and the Thirty-sixth Illinois. Rosecrans noticed them as they searched for ammunition near the railroad. As the Ninth Indiana, occupying a critical position in the front line, was itself wavering for lack of ammunition, Rosecrans ordered Sheridan to march to its relief. Leaving the Thirty-sixth and Seventy-third Illinois behind the Round Forest in reserve, Sheridan inserted the Second Missouri alongside the Hoosiers and deployed the Fifteenth Missouri forward as skirmishers. This was too much for Savage, who ordered his men to cease firing and hold their ground from behind what cover they could find.7

  An uncertain silence now fell over the field. Rosecrans rode away to supervise the final repulse of Cleburne, and Hascall again found himself the only general officer near the Round Forest. Well aware that the lull represented only a respite between attacks, Hascall moved swiftly to bolster the Round Forest line, relieving the Third Kentucky with the Fifty-eighth Indiana, a large regiment that more than filled the space held by the Kentuckians, and placing Estep's battery and the Ninety-seventh Ohio behind the Sixth Ohio. Hazen, meanwhile, reinforced those units within the forest with the One Hundredth Illinois, an action that Hascall heartily approved. With the lines now arranged to his satisfaction, Hascall rode rearward to consult with Rosecrans, whom he found behind Rousseau's division. The commanding general accompanied Hascall on an inspection of the Round Forest line. He approved the troop dispositions, offered a few words of encouragement to the men, and was off again to another threatened part of the field. Although it was Hascall and Hazen who truly were responsible for the successful defense of the Round Forest, here as elsewhere most soldiers in the ranks were very impressed by Rosecrans: “The commanding general was, to all appearances, as cool and composed as though the battle was not going on,” wrote one.8

  The same could not be said for Bragg, who was as removed from the struggle as Rosecrans was submerged in it. At the headquarters of the Army of Tennessee, indecision prevailed. During the critical late-morning hours, while Hardee threw the exhausted divisions of Cleburne and McCown against the Nashville Turnpike and Polk delivered his piecemeal blows against the Round Forest, Breckinridge's four brigades lay idle on the east side of the river. Precious hours slipped by, and the brigades did nothing.

  Why were these units not committed to revive Hardee's flagging attack before it dissolved against the massed Union batteries along the turnpike, or at the very least sent to Polk in time to be deployed in conjunction with Chalmers and Donelson against the Federal left? Historians have long accused Bragg of a tactical apoplexy that robbed the Army of Tennessee of almost certain victory.

  But while Bragg must be held accountable for the decision ultimately to deploy Breckinridge's brigades against the Round Forest, evidence suggests that he may have offered them to Hardee, had he succeeded in wresting them from Breckinridge. The record is unclear, the more so as a result of apologia submitted to Richmond by all concerned in the months following the battle. In his official report filed 23 February 1863, Bragg asserts that “as early as 10 A.M.” he called on Breckinridge for one brigade to “reinforce, or act as a reserve to, Lieutenant General Hardee.” Breckinridge denies receiving any such order. The first mention he makes in his report of any communication from Bragg is of a “suggestion” delivered by Colonel J. Stoddard Johnson of the general staff at 10:30 that the Kentuckian move against a body of Federals supposedly to his front. Lieutenant Colonel John Buckner, a member of Breckinridge's staff and a confidant of the general, supports his account in a letter to him of 20 May 1863, during the height of the post-battle acrimony within the army high command.

  But what prompted Bragg's unusual “suggestion” that Breckinridge give battle to what proved to be a phantom force? On this Breckinridge is silent. In his report he neglects to explain why he wrote Bragg at 10:10 that “the enemy are undoubtedly advancing upon me,” and that “the Lebanon road is unprotected and I have no troops to fill out my line.” In the absence of an explanation, it may be assumed that Breckinridge's fears came in response to some message from Bragg—perhaps a call for troops to support the left—or to erroneous reports from Pegram's cavalry, which was screening his front.

  In any event, Bragg countermanded his request for reinforcements and instead instructed the Kentuckian to launch a peremptory attack on the east bank. Either unwilling or unable to inspect the ground himself, Bragg relied on Breckinridge's interpretation of events on his front. Breckinridge acknowledged the command (or suggestion) and set his division in motion. But again he was bedeviled by chimera. Breckinridge was told—perhaps by Pegram's troopers—that a heavy Federal column was moving down the Lebanon road toward his right. “I am obeying your order,” he reported to Bragg, “but…if I advance my whole line farther forward…it will take me clear away from the Lebanon road, and expose my right and that road to a heavy force of the enemy advancing from Black's.”

  Bragg was baffled. Nothing had prepared him for such information; he and his staff had assumed the entire Union army to be drawn up on the west bank of Stones River. Nevertheless, Bragg countermanded his order to Breckinridge, going so far as to sound out the hard-pressed Polk as to the possibility of detaching two brigades to reinforce the Kentuckian. At the same time, however, Bragg circumvented Breckinridge and sent orders directly to Pegram to ascertain precisely the threat on the east bank. Pegram found no Federals on the Lebanon road and only “a small body of sharpshooters” to Breckenridge's immediate front.

  Bragg was now furious. His anger persisted long after the guns fell silent, and he scourged Breckinridge in his report of the battle. Referring to the incredible messages emanating from the east bank, Bragg commented:

  These unfortunate misapprehensions on that part of the field (which, with proper precaution, could not have existed) withheld from active operations three fine brigades until the enemy had succeeded in checking our progress, had re-established his lines, and had collected many of his broken battalions. Having now settled the question that no movement was being made against our right, and none even to be apprehended, Breckinridge was ordered to leave two brigades…on his side of Stone's River, and with the balance of the force to cross to the left and report to Lieutenant General Polk.

  It was 1:00 P.M. when Breckinridge was handed this final, conclusive order. The brigades of brigadier generals Dan Adams and John Jackson, being nearer to the river, were started across the ford above the Murfrees farm. A short time later, Breckinridge led Palmer and Preston in column toward the crossing site.

  What was Breckinridge's reaction to Pegram's conclusion that his fears had been groundless? He dismisses the affair in two sentences in his report: aside from criticizing Pegram for having reported Van Cleve's dawn crossing at McFadden's Ford but not his subsequent recall
(“It is to be regretted that sufficient care was not taken by the authors of the reports to discriminate rumor from fact”), Breckinridge says nothing. His report is strangely silent with respect to his claim of a Federal threat to his right. This silence, coupled with the apparent lack of a culprit for the alleged sightings of Federals along the Lebanon road (Breckinridge chastises Pegram only for inaccurate reporting of Union activity to his front) raises an intriguing question: Did Breckinridge fabricate the report to forestall the probable mishandling of his troops by Bragg? The Kentuckian's acknowledged lack of confidence in his commanding general, compounded by a tragic incident a week earlier, suggests that this may have been the case.

  The incident in question was the execution of young Asa Lewis of the Sixth Kentucky. As related earlier, Lewis had received word from home that his widowed mother desperately needed him; ironically, he had reenlisted only days earlier. Lewis's request for leave was denied. Overcome with despair, he left camp and set out for home, only to be captured by the provost marshal and returned to his command. Given his previously exemplary record, Lewis was merely reprimanded and turned over to his company. Again he left camp, and again he was captured, this time to be sentenced to death, allegedly at Bragg's insistence. The Orphan Brigade circulated a petition pleading clemency, but Bragg remained adamant; an eleventh-hour appeal by Breckinridge failed as well. At Bragg's command the division was formed to witness the execution. “The lieutenant in command of the detail…gave the command, ‘Ready-Aim-Fire,’” remembered Johnny Green of the Ninth Kentucky, then “all was over and a gloom settled over the command.” By 31 December the gloom had deepened to a state of near mutiny.9