No Better Place to Die- The Battle of Stones River

by Peter Cozzens

  Problems arose almost at once. On 29 July, as Hardee left Tupelo for Chattanooga, Price wrote Van Dorn seeking his cooperation in a joint movement against Corinth to keep Grant occupied. Van Dorn declined and instead asked Price for troops to support an expedition against Baton Rouge. Price referred the matter to Bragg, who approved Price's conduct and ordered Van Dorn to cooperate with him. But Van Dorn refused to quit. This time he wrote the president, insisting not only that Price send him arms, wagons, and men, but that he, Van Dorn, be given command of any joint operation.

  Van Dorn's audacity paid off. Without consulting Bragg, Davis granted both of Van Dorn's requests. Meanwhile Bragg, unaware of this latest development, was urging Price to hasten to Nashville as Rosecrans, protecting Corinth on behalf of Grant, had sent Buell three divisions of reinforcements. Price hesitated. Despite Bragg's orders to the contrary, he felt his duty lay in northern Mississippi and in northern Mississippi alone. Any thought he may have entertained of joining Bragg left him on 18 September, when a courier from Van Dorn brought word of Davis's decision and directed Price to join Van Dorn at Baldwyn.

  Bragg's squabble with Van Dorn ended on 24 November, when Davis intervened to unite the commands of Pemberton and Van Dorn in Mississippi and Bragg in Tennessee under General Joseph E. Johnston, idle since his wounding at Fair Oaks in May.

  Johnston's responsibilities were enormous. Davis expected him to coordinate the efforts of Bragg and Pemberton so as to maintain control of the Mississippi River Valley. As Tennessee was of secondary importance to Davis, he assumed that Johnston would take from the Army of Tennessee such troops as might be needed to save Vicksburg. But this Johnston declined to do. He held that the trans-Mississippi command of Major General Theophilus Holmes could reinforce Pemberton rapidly and at lesser risk. Untold dangers awaited should Bragg be compelled to move to Pemberton's relief, Johnston wrote Richmond from his headquarters at Chattanooga. He doubted the ability of the country between the Tennessee River and Vicksburg to sustain Bragg's forces and, of more immediate concern, feared that Rosecrans might avail himself of the departure of all or part of the Army of Tennessee to march unimpeded against Lee's flank in Virginia or to Grant's assistance in Mississippi, thereby negating any advantage that might be gained from a reinforcement of Pemberton by Bragg. At any rate, Johnston argued, Tennessee would be lost.5

  Johnston's arguments convinced Davis only that the time had come for a presidential trip to the West. He would visit Murfreesboro and Chattanooga, inspect the troops and interview their generals, and then decide what to do with the commands of Pemberton and Bragg. Leaving Richmond by train, Davis arrived in Murfreesboro on Friday, 12 December, to find the army enjoying a spell of unseasonably balmy temperatures. On Saturday Davis reviewed the three divisions of Bragg's principal defamer, Bishop Polk. “It was a truly imposing scene,” wrote Captain J. J. Womack of the Sixteenth Tennessee, “and a time of rejoicing throughout the army and surrounding country.” A warm, brisk wind churned small clouds of dust as Davis and his staff rode along the lines. Polk's corps then passed smartly in review, after which the president addressed the assembled troops, perhaps hoping that his admonitions to loyal and dedicated service would have some effect on their contentious generals. During a dinner that night at army headquarters, Davis queried the senior officers as to morale within their units and Union intentions.

  The president left Murfreesboro for Chattanooga the next morning in high spirits. The troops, he wrote Secretary of War James Seddon, were in good condition and ready to fight, their officers anxious to lead them. Bragg was as downcast as Davis was uplifted. For him, the presidential visit had been a major setback. Not only had Davis failed to find any visible evidence of the discontent and disloyalty within the senior officer corps of which Bragg had been so loudly complaining, but conversations with his lieutenants had convinced Davis that Rosecrans's intentions were strictly defensive and that a winter campaign was therefore unlikely. That was all that Davis needed to hear. With any doubts as to the wisdom of his Mississippi River-first strategy removed for at least the remainder of the winter, he ordered the immediate reinforcement of Pemberton with a division from the Army of Tennessee. On 16 December, Carter Stevenson and his seventy-five hundred infantrymen boarded railcars at Murfreesboro, bound for Mississippi.6

  Stevenson's detachment prompted another reorganization of the army. Kirby Smith's command, now reduced to the division of John P. McCown, was abolished. McCown was attached to Hardee's corps, and Kirby Smith returned to East Tennessee. As Breckinridge's division had been transferred to Hardee's corps several days earlier as well, the division of Patton Anderson was disbanded, its regiments divided equally between the two corps to achieve greater numerical balance. The army was to retain this two-corps structure throughout the Stones River campaign.7

  But the detachment of Stevenson did more than necessitate a structural reshuffling. It seriously weakened the army, depriving it of nearly one-sixth of its infantry—infantry that would be sorely missed on the battlefield of Stones River.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WE LIVED LIKE LORDS

  “I do not feel quite at ease at the disposition of our troops at Murfreesboro, Manchester, and Shelbyville,” wrote Colonel Brent on 22 November. “It is a triangular position, with the apex at Murfreesboro. Polk's corps is exposed.” Bragg apparently agreed. On 4 December he brought McCown's division forward to Readyville, twelve miles east of Murfreesboro, and Hardee's corps to Eagleville, astride the Shelbyville Pike. Hardee in turn advanced one brigade up the road to Triune, and Wharton detached a battalion to protect the army's extreme left at Franklin.

  In positioning his forces so as to cover the primary avenues leading to Murfreesboro, Bragg had scattered the Army of Tennessee across a fifty-mile front, making rapid concentration difficult at best. But this latest vulnerability did not seem to trouble the commanding general or his lieutenants who, as autumn gave way to winter, with its driving rain and biting cold, came to believe that Rosecrans would make camp at Nashville until spring. For a time, Bragg even entertained the notion that the Ohioan would abandon the city and retire across the Cumberland River. So certain was Bragg that his opposite would not venture south of Nashville that he dispatched Nathan Bedford Forrest with twenty-five hundred troopers into western Tennessee to harass Grant.1

  Sharing Bragg's conviction, the men of the Army of Tennessee raised winter quarters around Murfreesboro. Typically, their shelters took the form of a simple log cabin with a square hole dug in the center as a fireplace. Crude as they may have been, the cabins were a blessing after the retreat through East Tennessee, the memory of which was still painfully acute within the army. Captain James Womack of the Sixteenth Tennessee was particularly proud of his winter home. “Spent the day building a chimney to my tent,” he noted in his diary, “which, after I finished, was a complete success. It drew finely, and made my tent as comfortable as a stove.”

  Being near to their Kentucky home, the soldiers of the Orphan Brigade fared especially well. Volunteers, dubbed “blockade runners,” were elected to run the gauntlet of Federal patrols between Kentucky and Murfreesboro at regular intervals. They brought back so many parcels of clothing and provisions that Gervis Grainger of the Sixth Kentucky later recalled that “we lived like lords.” The Orphan Brigade found the countryside pleasant too, not unlike its native Kentucky. Grainger's company made camp in a “beautiful grove” south of town, and Lot D. Young's regiment set up camp on a “beautiful little plain.”

  The beauty of their surroundings could not erase a deeper ugliness that festered among the Kentuckians. Their resentment of Bragg was growing. Unable to attract recruits in large numbers in Kentucky, Bragg had resorted to conscription to fill his ranks. Breckinridge in particular objected to the drafting of Kentuckians when the state was not a part of the Confederacy, and the rumor spread that he had threatened to resign. Bragg, for his part, grew increasingly contemptuous of the Kentuckians. The men of Kentucky were cowards,
he wrote. They had not been worth liberating.

  The smoldering feud between Bragg and Breckinridge turned red hot in December over the fate of a young deserter. Private Asa Lewis of the Sixth Kentucky had declined to reenlist when his term had expired and his regiment reorganized several months earlier. Nevertheless, he stayed on until December, when word reached him that Union soldiers had burned the home of his widowed mother, leaving her alone and without means of support. Lewis apparently appealed without success to his regimental and brigade commanders for a thirty-day furlough. He may also have had his appeal denied by Breckinridge, which, if true, certainly dilutes the purity of the general's outrage over Lewis's ultimate fate.

  In any event, Lewis deserted. Some asserted later in his defense that he had intended to return before the start of the next campaign. But Lewis was captured before he had a chance to prove his good intentions, court-martialed, and condemned to death. Bragg approved the sentence. He ignored repeated requests by Breckinridge and his officers—presumably the same who denied Lewis's request for leave in the first place—and directed that the Orphan Brigade be assembled to witness the execution on 26 December. Bragg evidently felt no remorse over his decision. Kentucky blood was too feverish for the health of his army, he was quoted as telling Breckinridge. He would stop the corn-crackers’ grumbling if he had to shoot every man. Breckinridge was furious. He retorted that Kentuckians would never be treated like slaves and that the execution of Lewis would be tantamount to murder.

  On the morning of 26 December, the Orphan Brigade marched sullenly to an open field outside Murfreesboro amidst a cold, numbing rainstorm to witness the end of Private Lewis. At precisely 12:00 noon the lieutenant in command of the detail barked the orders “Ready-Aim-Fire.” Rifles cracked, and the prisoner fell dead, pierced by eleven balls. At that moment, recalled veterans of the brigade, “General Breckinridge was seized with a deathly sickness, dropped forward on the neck of his horse, and had to be caught by some of his staff.”

  The volley that struck down Private Lewis also killed any chance of a reconciliation between Bragg and Breckinridge. From that day on, Breckinridge was implacable in his opposition to Bragg and unwavering in his suspicion that any order from Bragg committing his Kentuckians to battle was given with a view toward their destruction.2

  Although a dark cloud had settled over the Kentuckians, most of the army continued to find Murfreesboro a charming place in which to pass an idle winter. Twenty-nine of Bragg's eighty-eight regiments of infantry had been recruited in Tennessee, and many of the soldiers had family in Murfreesboro. But everybody in the army, regardless of the state from which they hailed, enjoyed the hospitality of the staunchly Confederate townspeople. Homes were opened to the troops, and kitchen hearths turned out bread and cakes for the army.

  The citizens of Murfreesboro were proud of their town and took pains to maintain it. Since 1811 Murfreesboro had been the county seat of Rutherford County, and from 1819 to 1826 it played host to the state general assembly. Murfreesboro also hosted visits by three presidents in the years before the war: Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren were given receptions by the community, and James Polk, married to a local girl, was a frequent visitor. Thus far, Murfreesboro had escaped the ravages of war. It still boasted many fine brick residences, clean white fences, and oak- and elm-shaded avenues. The macadamized Nashville Turnpike connected the town with the state capital, and two institutions of higher education—Soule Female College and Union University—continued to graduate students, although in lesser numbers than before the war.

  As the Yuletide approached and Rosecrans showed no intention of moving beyond his fortifications, Murfreesboro played host to a number of gatherings that reinvigorated its languishing social life. The premier event was the 14 December wedding of seventeen-year-old Murfreesboro debutante Mattie Ready to John Hunt Morgan, fresh from a stunning victory at Hartsville, where he had captured the two-thousand-man garrison in a lightning raid the week before. All the high command was present, and Bishop Polk donned his sacerdotal garb to perform a ceremony that started a parade of celebrations lasting until Christmas.3

  Unusually clear skies and mild temperatures helped promote the festive spirit that pervaded the normally strife-ridden Army of Tennessee. “Nothing can surpass the beauty and pleasantness of the weather,” Colonel Brent jotted in his diary on 17 December; four days later it was the same: “I feel quite cheerful and contented this morning under the balmy and delightful influence of the weather,” he confessed. By Christmas Eve the skies had become overcast, but the temperature still hovered above normal. That night, the officers of the First and Second Louisiana entertained the single women of Murfreesboro with a lavish ball at the courthouse. “It was a magnificant affair,” remembered Kentuckian Charles Robert of Bragg's escort. Four large “Bs” of cedar and evergreen—signifying Bragg, Beauregard, Buckner, and Breckinridge—adorned the walls, and the names of the victories of the two regiments hung draped in cedar over the windows. Union flags, captured at Hartsville and donated by Mrs. Mattie Ready Morgan, provided the finishing touch.

  While their officers danced and drank, the men in ranks passed the holiday simply, but not necessarily more quietly. Gambling and chicken fights were common, recalled Mississippian John Magee, who went into town on Christmas Day to have his watch repaired. Yankee whiskey netted during the Hartsville raid flowed freely in the camp of the Ninth Kentucky, remembered Johnny Green. The teetotaling Green left camp and struck out into the countryside in search of a Christmas turkey. Neighboring farms provided Green and his messmate with eggs, onions, and biscuits, but the area had been swept clean of turkeys. Undaunted, Green bought a goose and, after baking a poundcake, enjoyed a quiet dinner. Sergeant Major James Maxwell of the Thirty-fourth Alabama, on the other hand, believed that Christmas was a time for drink, and so sacrificed a bottle of fine French brandy to share a holiday toddy with his colonel.

  Those officers not invited to formal celebrations generally spent the day in much the same manner as their soldiers. Bishop Polk composed a long letter to his family in which he lamented the absence of worship services within the army. Captain Womack stayed indoors to enjoy his new fireplace and write in his diary. Reflecting on the Confederacy's prospects, he wrote: “May the coming Christmas in sixty-three find our now distracted and unhappy country reposing in the lap of an infantile and glorious peace.”4

  At Nashville, John Beatty also hoped for peace—the peace of a reunited nation. In the meantime, the Ohioan tried to make the best of a Christmas away from home: “At an expense of one dollar and seventy-five cents, I procured a small turkey and had a Christmas dinner; but it lacked the collaterals, and was a failure.” Colonel Hans Heg, the jovial commander of the Fifteenth Wisconsin, spent a more boisterous evening. Invited to a Christmas party in an appropriate schoolhouse near camp, Heg and the brigade surgeon dressed two of the soldiers as women, and the colonel made an entrance “just as if I had a lady on my arm…. We kept the house roaring for a good long time.” Heg thought his men jolly that night despite rumors of an impending advance; perhaps his merry disposition, made merrier by the free-flowing liquor, prevented him from seeing things as they really were. Colonel Charles Manderson's description of his camp that evening is far more plausible. Homesickness crept into all efforts by the men of his Nineteenth Ohio at merrymaking, until it became the “all-pervading complaint.” As Manderson observed from his tent: “The men gathered about the camp fires during the evening hours with abortive attempts at merriment, soon to be given up, and then to talk in whispers of friends and family and home. The bugle calls, holding out the promise that balmy sleep might bring forgetfulness, were welcomed; although tatoo seemed a wail, and lights-out a sob.”5

  At departmental headquarters the candles burned deep into the night, but not to light a party. After weeks of threats from Washington, Rosecrans at last had agreed to move. No longer could he justify delay on the basis of insufficient rations, as by Christmas enough food
had been gathered in Nashville to feed the army until February; nor could he attribute his inaction to fears that the Confederates outnumbered his army, as recent intelligence confirmed the detachment of Stevenson's infantry division and Forrest's cavalry. In fact, dispatches to Halleck reveal that Rosecrans knew of Morgan's intent to cross the Cumberland River as early as 15 December and that he learned of Forrest's departure before 19 December. The consensus at headquarters now was that Bragg, not expecting a Federal advance before spring, had gone into winter quarters around Murfreesboro after sending the majority of his cavalry into western Tennessee and Kentucky. As Rosecrans later explained: “In the absence of these forces, and with adequate supplies in Nashville, the moment was judged opportune for an advance on the rebels.”

  The moment was not only opportune, it was imperative. Burnside already had met with a bloody repulse at Fredericksburg, and Sherman, floundering about in Chickasaw Bayou above Vicksburg, was about to meet the same fate on the moss-choked bluffs of the same name. With one army routed and the progress of the other checked, the administration now focused all its dwindling hopes for a victory before the new year on the Army of the Cumberland. The defeat of Burnside and the frustration of Grant and Sherman had so raised the stakes that any failure in Tennessee would almost certainly result in Rosecrans's immediate removal and disgrace.

  With the hopes of the nation (or at least of those loyal to the administration) riding on his offensive, Rosecrans needed sound tactics and good intelligence. His scouts and spies failed him the latter, and the general formed his plans on the incorrect assumption that Bragg would organize his defense behind Stewart's Creek, a narrow stream with steep banks that flowed under both the Murfreesboro Pike (Nashville Turnpike) and the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad before joining Stones River at a point some fifteen miles northwest of Murfreesboro.