No Better Place to Die- The Battle of Stones River

by Peter Cozzens

  Such was the state of the army as it marched out of Chattanooga on 28 August, crossing the Tennessee River the same day. Two weeks earlier, Kirby Smith had struck out for Lexington, Kentucky, and, after skirting around the Federal garrison at Cumberland Gap, soundly defeated a Union column at Richmond that had been dispatched to oppose him. Kirby Smith's Army of Kentucky entered Lexington without further incident, where it remained until October.

  Bragg also was doing well. He had driven as far north as Carthage, Tennessee, just below the Cumberland River, before Buell decided that the Confederates did not have designs against Nashville. Moving out of that city on 12 September, he engaged Bragg in a race for the real Confederate objective: Louisville, Kentucky.

  It was a fair contest. Although Bragg was twenty-five miles nearer the river city, Buell had at his disposal the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which Bragg moved at once to eliminate as a factor in the campaign. While Joe Wheeler and his troopers tore up the line at selected points above Nashville, Bragg pushed his infantry on to Bowling Green, reaching the southern Kentucky town ahead of Buell on 14 September. He then turned his column toward the Federal fort at Munfordville, where the railroad crossed the Green River. Earlier that day, Brigadier General James Chalmers had attacked the garrison with the Rebel vanguard, only to meet with a sharp repulse. Learning of his subordinate's check, Bragg ordered the remainder of the army to Munfordville on 15 September. Buell followed, but he was too late. Bragg reached Munfordville first and, after “boldly displaying” his army, accepted the surrender of the garrison.

  A new spirit of elation infused the Army of the Mississippi as many believed the campaign to be all but won. And well they could. With his infantry entrenched on commanding ground south of the Green River, squarely across the path of the advancing Federals, Bragg held the key to Louisville. And with the fort at Munfordville incorporated into their defenses, the Confederates occupied a position of “great natural strength” that Buell could not circumvent. Accordingly, he prepared to attack.6

  But the battle everyone expected never came. For reasons that remain unclear, Bragg chose not to fight. His generals were baffled. Visiting headquarters on the morning of 18 September, Joe Wheeler had found Bragg determined to do battle and confident of success. The entire army was in high spirits. Even the aporetic Polk expected victory. But just two days later, Bragg ordered a withdrawal to Bardstown, muttering that the campaign must be won by marching, not fighting. In stepping aside, he opened the road to Louisville. Buell was surprised, Kirby Smith “astonished and disappointed.” Bragg's generals deplored the movement.7

  To a handful of trusted subordinates, Bragg explained the reasons for his action. His staff, it seems, had received information that Buell was being reinforced heavily. In reality, only George Thomas's lone division had joined the Federal army below Munfordville; nevertheless, Bragg was determined not to “expose his army to disaster, nor take any chances.”

  While Federal prospects brightened, thanks largely to Confederate vacillating, Bragg grew morose. Self-doubt and exasperation plagued him as he began to question the wisdom of the entire operation. Kentuckians were not flocking to the Stars and Bars as promised; instead, they turned a contemptuous cold shoulder to the tattered infantry as it passed. “The people here have too many fat cattle and are too well off to fight,” Bragg complained to Colonel David Urquhart, a trusted member of his staff. On 25 September, as the Army of the Ohio marched unmolested into Louisville, Bragg echoed the same feeling in a note to President Davis: “I regret to say that we are sadly disappointed in the want of action by our friends in Kentucky. We have so far received no accession to this army. General Smith has secured about a brigade—not half our losses by casualties of different kinds. Unless a change occurs soon we must abandon the garden spot of Kentucky.”8

  Bragg did not abandon Kentucky, but he might as well have. In abandoning Munfordville, he had relinquished the initiative to the Federals. As the Army of the Mississippi fell back on Bardstown to await the inevitable Union advance, the campaign lost its purpose and direction. Kirby Smith understood this and begged Bragg to turn and fight. Only a decisive victory, he argued, would draw Kentuckians to the Confederate armies. But the fight had gone out of Bragg. While Buell prepared to move on Bardstown, Bragg left his army to confer with Kirby Smith at Lexington, returning by way of Frankfort, where he attended the empty inauguration of Kentucky's provisional Confederate governor.9

  The expected Federal advance came while Bragg was away. On 2 October, Buell marched against Bardstown over three routes, while a fourth column under Brigadier General Joshua Sill demonstrated against Kirby Smith at Frankfort. Incorrectly assuming that the main thrust was against Kirby Smith, Bragg ordered Polk to concentrate at Harrodsburg so as to be in a position to slash at Sill's flank as it passed. Hardee, meanwhile, was already being pressed by the Union center, led by Major General Charles Gilbert. Turning to fight, Hardee deployed his corps along Doctor's Creek, west of Perryville. Hardee notified Bragg that he was facing a portion of Buell's army of undetermined size, and the North Carolinian responded by ordering Polk to Perryville with one division. Momentarily energized, Bragg told Polk to “give the enemy battle immediately.” His instructions reached Polk and Hardee after sundown on 7 October. Hardee, who had held his ground against a Federal push toward Doctor's Creek, was horrified. He considered it a fundamental error of tactics to give battle with only a portion of the army present, and wrote Bragg a pedantic letter admonishing the commanding general in textbook language to delay an attack until his army could be united with Kirby Smith's. Polk, who assumed command of the forces before Perryville by virtue of seniority, agreed.

  Daylight of 8 October found only Gilbert's isolated corps opposite the Confederates, but Polk and Hardee, awaiting an answer to the latter's note to Bragg, did nothing. Instead, the Federals attacked. Brigadier General Philip Sheridan seized a stretch of Doctor's Creek with one brigade in the early morning twilight and, finding little opposition, brought up his remaining brigades and held. A lull followed. Morning came and went. By noon, the remainder of Buell's army was up, and the advantage shifted to the Federals. Bragg arrived two hours later. Angered that his emphatic instructions had been ignored, he directed that an attack be made immediately. Despite the presence of the entire Union army on the field, the attack went well. Major General Alexander McCook's corps was shattered, and the Confederates gained a mile of ground before darkness put an end to the bloodshed. The Army of the Ohio passed a fitful night preparing to renew the contest at dawn.

  But Bragg had had enough. Unwilling to sacrifice his army in what he now believed was a bankrupt campaign, he fell back to Harrodsburg under cover of darkness to organize a retreat from Kentucky. Bragg really had been looking over his shoulder for some time. In late September he had dispatched Nathan Bedford Forrest to secure the Middle Tennessee town of Murfreesboro and the surrounding country from the depredations of Union foragers. And on 14 October, just two days after choosing to abandon Kentucky, Bragg ordered Major General John C. Breckinridge's division there as well.10

  With these dispositions, Bragg decided to occupy Middle Tennessee. Although he never fully explained them, Bragg's reasons for choosing this course of action are apparent. As the initial objective of the Kentucky campaign was simply the restoration to the Confederacy of a portion of Tennessee, Bragg could argue that, by securing its central counties, his campaign had succeeded. As to the choice of Murfreesboro in particular, lying as it did astride the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, it was the key to the rich Stones River Valley and, in Bragg's mind, to the equally fertile Duck and Elk river valleys. And although the area had been heavily foraged by Buell that summer and by the Nashville garrison that fall, it nevertheless offered more to a hungry army than any other part of the state.

  With the objective decided upon, the question now was whether the army could reach it. Battle losses, straggling, and desertion had devastated the Confederate infantry.
It was near collapse. Food gave out, corn brought forage-wagon teamsters a dollar an ear, and driving rains slashed at the men, clad only in tattered homespun. Stony roads, swollen mountain streams, and impassable fords slowed the march to five miles a day, forcing Joe Wheeler's rearguard to fight twenty-six actions in two weeks.

  But then, as McClellan's caution saved Lee after Antietam, so did Buell's unwillingness to risk another major battle save Bragg. Buell was content simply to see Bragg go. He broke off pursuit below Rock Castle, allowing his prey to descend the Cumberland Gap into East Tennessee unmolested. After a brief halt at Morristown, the Confederate army pressed on to Knoxville. There, on 31 October, Bragg boarded the Richmond train, intent on winning presidential approval for a movement into Middle Tennessee and on clearing himself of blame for the recently concluded fiasco in Kentucky.11

  There is no record of precisely what transpired during Bragg's conversations with Davis. It is documented that he presented a written memorandum requesting permission to occupy Middle Tennessee, and that the request was approved. It also may be inferred from Bragg's unusually good spirits upon returning from the capital that Davis had approved of his conduct in Kentucky. But he was far less successful in presenting Polk as the scapegoat for the ill-fated campaign, perhaps because Polk too was a favorite of the president. Finding Bragg's testimony in this regard to be suspect, Davis called Polk to Richmond on 3 November.12

  Davis and Polk had developed an enduring friendship while at West Point. After graduation, Davis went to serve at remote military posts in the West, while Polk resigned his commission to enter the Episcopal ministry, eventually becoming Missionary Bishop of the Southwest. Unlike the saturnine Bragg, Polk was well received by the Army of the Mississippi. His good looks and affability won over distinguished visitors like Arthur Freemantle; his courage and gentlemanly manners earned him the unwavering devotion of his troops. Private Sam Watkins of the First Tennessee, whose charming recollections are generally critical of the army high command, held the death of Polk at Pine Mountain in 1864 to be second only to that of Stonewall Jackson in terms of its dire consequences for the Southern cause.

  Objectively, Polk's record was less than spectacular. His performance as a corps commander at Shiloh had been undistinguished, and at Perryville his failure to obey orders was censurable. Yet the Bishop escaped censure, once again demonstrating his uncanny ability to emerge from a disaster unscathed. Partly by his popularity, partly by the sanctimonious air he affected when criticizing others—particularly Bragg—he always managed to deflect culpability away from himself.13

  The nature of Polk's trip to Richmond was no secret within the army. It was promulgated in Special Order Twenty-nine: Polk was to report to the Adjutant General in Richmond for “the purpose of conferring personally in regard to the state of affairs in Military Department Number Two.”

  The state of affairs was deplorable, Polk told Davis on arrival. The Kentucky campaign had failed; Bragg alone was responsible for the failure; and, above all, a change in command was imperative. On every count, Polk added, Hardee and Kirby Smith agreed. Polk concluded by suggesting that Davis replace Bragg with Joseph Johnston, who had commanded the Army of Northern Virginia until being wounded at Fair Oaks that May. His business in the capital finished, Polk traveled to his Raleigh, North Carolina, home on a leave of absence that probably was as welcome to Bragg as it was to Polk. While at home, Polk received his commission as a lieutenant general.

  Kirby Smith was the next to visit Richmond. Davis had no doubt of what the Floridian would tell him—Kirby Smith had made his objections to any further cooperation with Bragg abundantly clear. He had rejected Bragg's request for troops to join him in a move into Middle Tennessee, refusing even to return John McCown's division, which had been temporarily assigned him during the Kentucky campaign. Kirby Smith's contempt for Bragg was complete. “You are astonished at our exodus from Kentucky no doubt,” he wrote his wife. “No one could have anticipated it—Bragg's movements since taking command in Kentucky have been most singular and unfortunate.”

  Before coming to Richmond, Kirby Smith wrote Davis in terms equally critical of Bragg, intimating he would undertake no future operations with the North Carolinian. Davis tried to cool Kirby Smith's anger while at the same time implying that Bragg was in command to stay and that Kirby Smith had better learn to live with him. The president agreed that the Kentucky campaign had been a “bitter disappointment,” but reaffirmed his confidence in Bragg. Others might “excite more enthusiasm,” but given Bragg's administrative and organizational talents, they would not be “equally useful.” Davis continued: “When you wrote your wounds were fresh, your lame and exhausted troops were before you, I hope time may have mollified your pain and that future operations may restore the confidence essential to cheerfulness and security in campaign.”14

  Both Davis and Kirby Smith, then, knew what to expect from one another before their Richmond meeting. When they met, Kirby Smith made one final appeal for Bragg's removal and replacement by Johnston. Davis restated his decision to retain Bragg, and Kirby Smith returned to East Tennessee. During his return trip he met Bragg on the train. “Every one prognosticated a stormy meeting—I told him what I had written to Mr. Davis but he spoke kindly to me and in the highest terms of praise and admiration of my personal character and soldierly qualities—I was astonished but believe he is honest and means well,” Kirby Smith recalled to his wife. Once again, Bragg had demonstrated he could be magnanimous with factious subordinates and colleagues for the good of the service, a quality his detractors seldom acknowledge.

  Meanwhile, Davis neither replaced Bragg nor transferred Polk or Kirby Smith. The army was fated to enter Middle Tennessee with a high command torn by dissension. By his inaction, Davis helped sow the seeds of defeat at Stones River.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE ROSECRANS TOUCH

  JUDGING by the reaction North and South, the invasion of Kentucky was a campaign without a victor. Although that state had been saved for the Union, many Northerners considered the campaign a defeat, suggesting that the Confederacy, by regaining control of northern Alabama and Middle Tennessee, had ended with more than it had begun. The press was more direct. It labeled Bragg's retreat from Kentucky an escape and laid the blame squarely upon the shoulders of Major General Don Carlos Buell.

  When the press took aim at Buell, it set its sights on an easy mark. Unlike Bragg, Buell could not claim the protection of the nation's chief executive, nor of any other influential civilian leader, for that matter. And even more than Bragg, he had lost whatever confidence his army may have had in his generalship.

  The roots of the Army of the Ohio's estrangement from its commanding general predated Perryville and the lackluster pursuit of Bragg. They lay in Buell's contempt for the volunteer soldier and in his insistence that Regular Army standards of discipline be forced upon him. This, of course, was a fundamental error, reflecting Buell's inability to understand the western volunteer and how he might best be led. Like his counterpart in the Army of the Mississippi, he had joined up out of patriotism and a sense of duty. Although ready to give his life for what he believed, the young Illinoisan, Indianian, or Ohioan had no intention of abandoning his western distaste for authority or his spirit of self-reliance—it was to escape an overbearing government that many had moved west in the first place. Such a man would obey an order if sensible, otherwise not. And to be treated as a “mere machine,” as most felt Buell regarded them, was absolutely intolerable. As one veteran later wrote: “It was the universal experience in our late war, that the volunteer soldier could be led by justice, kindness and sympathy up to any point of excellence, but was made sullen and disobedient by what was thought to be injustice or tyranny.”1 This point was lost to Buell, but not to his army. During the hard and tedious marches about Kentucky, hundreds expressed their disaffection through desertion; the thousands who remained wrote home of Buell's severity.

  Their complaints found many a recep
tive ear on the home front. Especially receptive to these allegations was Indiana's war governor, Republican Oliver P. Morton, as imperious a politician as the war produced. It had been Buell's singular misfortune to run afoul of the powerful governor, though the conflict probably was unavoidable. Morton had long been reluctant to relinquish his hold on Hoosier volunteers, going so far as to send his own staff to attend to their welfare after they had been mustered into United States service. On one occasion, he exchanged the arms of an Indiana regiment without the knowledge of its brigade commander. Buell did what any commander worthy of his charge must do and halted Morton's meddling within the army; but in so doing, he incurred the Indianian's enduring wrath.

  Morton was joined in his opposition to Buell by the military governor of Tennessee, Andrew Johnson. Like Morton's, Johnson's enmity stemmed from considerations largely personal and selfish. Without victories, Federal authority in Tennessee was limited. And without an expansion of Federal authority, Johnson's office was an empty one—his personal authority could extend only as far as the reach of the Army of the Ohio. Eager to enlarge his bailiwick, Johnson naturally regarded Buell's June 1862 advance on Chattanooga as dilatory and his subsequent failure to pursue Bragg into East Tennessee as nothing less than treasonous—treasonous, that is, with respect to Johnson's ambitions. Buell's refusal to violate the sanctity of private property in territory conquered by his army also infuriated Johnson, who maintained that all Southerners—combatants and civilians alike—must be punished for their role in the rebellion. When Buell summarily dismissed a brigade commander who had sacked the Alabama town of Athens, Johnson, with the support of Morton, lashed out at the general's “kid-glove policy.”