No one could easily forget such scenes. “The frost, the dead and dying and the dark cedars among which we bivouacked were wild enough for a banquet of ghouls,” wrote William Preston, whose brigade lay opposite the Round Forest. In the forest itself, it was the same. Recalled Sergeant William Newlin of the Seventy-third Illinois:
Nine…were lying in cold death near us, awaiting the simple, unceremonious burial accorded a soldier on the field of battle. Some…looked as though they had just fallen asleep—eyes closed, hands at their sides, and countenances unruffled. Others appeared as if their last moments had been spent in extreme pain—eyes open, and apparently ready to jump from their sockets; hands grasping some portion of their garments and their features all distorted and changed. It was a sickening sight to look upon or contemplate, and one from which a sympathetic heart would quickly turn away.3
And there were the innumerable burial details, composed of men who barely had strength enough to stand, that worked deep into the night. “At 0100 by the light of the moon we dug a grave and laid to rest poor boys gone where there is no fighting,” remembered James Nourse, almost with envy for the dead.
For all its horror, the soldiers could endure the proximity of the dead and the groans of the dying. Harder to accept was the absence of their evening rations. Unlike their perpetually hungry foe, the troops of the Army of the Cumberland were accustomed to regular meals. When brigade trains failed to arrive during the night, many resorted to horse meat. Others, less scrupulous, rummaged the haversacks of the dead for crackers or bacon.4
The Federals could thank Joe Wheeler for their empty stomaches. Under orders from Bragg to harass Rosecrans's supply lines, Wheeler's troopers broke camp at midnight on 29 December, splashing across Stones River, then pounding north along the Lebanon road toward Jefferson. At the Jefferson Pike they turned west and rode until they neared the outskirts of town and the flickering campfires of Colonel John Starkweather's brigade, detailed to protect the army's rear. The Southerners formed line of battle at 4:00 A.M. and lay quietly in wait until dawn, when Starkweather's train appeared on the horizon—sixty-four heavily laden wagons meandering lazily into camp, guarded by fifty invalids of the Twenty-first Wisconsin. Wheeler struck while the train was still a mile outside of camp. In the melee that followed, twenty wagons were burned. Wheeler's next prey was the consolidated trains of McCook's Right Wing, parked in a field near Lavergne. Again the element of surprise was with Wheeler: charging in three columns, his men swept up four hundred prisoners, two hundred wagons, and over one thousand mules. The prisoners were paroled, the mules scattered, and the wagons burned. With two hours of sunlight remaining, Wheeler pushed his command on to Rock Springs, where they captured another brigade train. From there they descended on Nolensville, seizing a detachment of some two hundred men without firing a shot. More wagons—this time an ammunition and medical train—were put to the torch. Their appetite for plunder only whetted, Wheeler's troopers galloped on toward Franklin on the chance they might encounter more easy prey. They did. Strung out along the road were numerous Federal foraging parties heavily laden with corn, poultry, eggs, butter, and bedding—all items in short supply in the Army of Tennessee. Nightfall finally brought an end to the raiding, and Wheeler's column bivouacked five miles southeast of Nolensville. Wheeler reported his command to Bragg shortly before noon the following day, having crippled Rosecrans's supply line and prevented the brigades of Walker and Starkweather from joining the army until dusk on 31 December.5
The effects of Wheeler's raid reverberated down the Nashville Turnpike to the log-cabin field headquarters of the Army of the Cumberland, where Rosecrans and his lieutenants gathered at midnight to ponder the fate of the army. Twenty-four hours earlier, confident of success, Rosecrans had summoned his generals only to issue orders to them; now, his plan of battle foiled before it could be launched and his army nearly annihilated, Rosecrans was open to suggestions.
Eyewitness accounts of the gathering vary according to the feelings of the writer toward the participants. John Yaryan, who arrived with General Wood shortly after the council of war convened, asserts that Rosecrans queried each division and corps commander in turn whether the army should hold its ground or retreat. Yaryan neglects to relate most of their responses, but says that Rosecrans appeared listless and unaware of what was being said—that is, until he came to Thomas. At that moment he hesitated, as if to underscore the esteem he held for the Virginian.
“General Thomas, what have you to say?”
Slowly and silently, Thomas rose to respond. “General, I know of no better place to die than right here.” Having uttered these few words, Thomas walked out of the room and into the night. This, according to Yaryan, put an end to the conference.
Yaryan's story is dramatic and inspiring: the crackling fire, throwing light and casting weird shadows across the room, a dismal rain beating mournfully against a clapboard roof, an unspoken gloom almost palpable. But it rings false. Yaryan's entire account of the battle is fraught with errors of time and place; there is no reason to suppose his narrative of the nocturnal council of war is any more accurate.
Rosecrans's own version finds Thomas and Crittenden deferring to his judgment and McCook alone advising retreat. Yet another portrays Rosecrans, despising the “counsel of the fainthearted” who would turn the army rearward, as affirming his resolve to stand and fight at any cost: “Gentleman, we have come to fight and win this battle, and we shall do it. Our supplies may run short, but we will have our trains out again tomorrow. We will keep right in, and eat corn for a week, but we will win this battle. We can and will do it.”
Crittenden's account seems the most plausible, largely because of the matter-of-fact manner in which he presents it. There was some talk of retreat, Crittenden recalled, although he was uncertain who started it. As for himself, Crittenden was for staying: “I expressed the opinion that my men would be very much discouraged to have to abandon the field after their good fight of the day, during which they had uniformly held their position.”
Regardless of who said what, the opinions of his lieutenants were insufficient to sway Rosecrans one way or the other, and he decided to inspect the ground to the army's rear personally before making a decision. Asking his generals to await his return, Rosecrans and McCook rode off toward Overall Creek. Years later, McCook told Crittenden that Rosecrans made the ride to find a point beyond the creek to which the army might fall back. McCook did not say that Rosecrans necessarily intended to retreat, but his remarks imply that the general did. In any event, what Rosecrans and McCook saw ruled out retreat. All along the creek, torches flickered and danced. “They have got entirely in our rear and are forming a line of battle by torchlight,” Rosecrans suggested. McCook agreed, and the two returned to headquarters. Rosecrans ended the council, telling his lieutenants to rejoin their commands and prepare “to fight or die.”
Gallant words, but Rosecrans had erred. The torches he had seen were not those of enemy guides; rather, they were firebrands carried by Federal cavalrymen to ignite the campfires of infantrymen who, numbed almost senseless by the bitter cold, chose to flaunt Rosecrans's standing order prohibiting fires.6
There was no talk of retreat at the headquarters of the Army of Tennessee. Bragg was satisfied with the army's performance and confident that the New Year would find him in sole possession of the battlefield. “We assailed the enemy at seven o'clock this morning, and after ten hours’ hard fighting have driven him from every position except the extreme left,” he wired Richmond after dark. “With the exception of this point, we occupy the whole field.” Aside from returning Palmer's brigade to the east bank, Bragg issued no orders of consequence during the night.
Although daybreak found the Federals still out in front in force, Bragg remained certain of Rosecrans's eventual withdrawal, his confidence fed by unusually poor intelligence from his cavalry. Joe Wheeler, off on another ride around the Union rear, wired army headquarters at 1:30 P.M. that he had seen
vast numbers of wagons creaking up the Nashville Turnpike toward the capital; John Wharton, whose troopers joined Wheeler near Lavergne in the early afternoon, confirmed the general's message with a similar report of his own at 6:00 P.M.
An army in the Civil War, before it retreated, normally dispatched its wagons rearward; consequently, Bragg's conclusion that a withdrawal was imminent is understandable. But there was another explanation—that the wagons were empty, in search of provisions for the soldiers and forage for the horses, and that they would return to feed the army along Stones River. Neither Wheeler nor Wharton offered this interpretation, and Bragg appears not to have arrived at it himself until after the battle.
While the Army of Tennessee lay on its arms, Rosecrans strengthened his lines. At 3:00 A.M. of the New Year, he directed Crittenden to occupy the high ground above McFadden's Ford on the east bank. (This ground, Colonel Urquhart of Bragg's staff asserts, ultimately cost the Confederates the battle, as it set in motion the chain of events that led inexorably to Breckinridge's tragic assault the following day.) At dawn, Sam Beatty (in command of the division after a painful foot wound forced Van Cleve to leave the battle) moved to execute the order. Colonel Samuel Price crossed Stones River first, forming his brigade in line of battle eight hundred yards from the ford. Fyffe took position on Price's left, in an elevated field west of a belt of timber. Colonel Benjamin Grider of the Ninth Kentucky tucked Beatty's brigade into a hollow just below the ford, two regiments on the east bank, two on the west.7
As the day passed and the Federals entrenched, the feeling grew within the Army of Tennessee that victory was slowly slipping from its grasp. St. John Liddell tried to be upbeat. On the evening of the thirty-first he ran into Hardee. Liddell pointed out that they effectively commanded the turnpike and the railroad, and that one more Confederate attack in that sector would win the battle. But Hardee did not hear a word Liddell spoke. He mumbled his disgust with the results of the day's battle and rode away. Ed Porter Thompson of the Orphan Brigade recalled that many soldiers likewise had given up all hope of defeating the Yankees: “This gloomy New Year's day went by with the Confederate troops thus inactive; and even before its noon the golden opportunity…had passed away from General Bragg. The disposition of the troops of Rosecrans were completed…and as the Federal army had nothing to lose but everything to gain by waiting, it waited—but meanwhile it worked. The Confederate army waited, and hoped.”
The Federals waited and worked, and as they worked their hunger sharpened. Supplies trickled in throughout the afternoon, but they were too few to make any real difference. The Seventeenth Ohio lined up to receive a half pint of beans and two spoonfuls of molasses per man; the Thirty-eighth Indiana could offer its men only a quarter pint of flour per soldier. Officers fared no better. Gates Thruston dined on a few hard grains of parched corn, John Beatty found a slice of raw pork and a few crackers in his coat pocket: “No food ever tasted sweeter,” and Michael Fitch joined his colonel in a meal of steaks cut from Fred Starkweather's dead horse.8
But despite their hunger the Federals were encouraged as the end of another day found them still on the field. Some felt that Bragg had played out his hand and that time was now on their side; most praised the obstinacy with which Rosecrans held his ground. Beatty sensed this new optimism as darkness again settled over the battlefield: “I draw closer to the camp-fire, and, pushing the brands together, take out my little Bible, and as I open it my eyes fall on the xci Psalm: ‘I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in Him I will trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.’ Camp-fires innumerable are glimmering in the darkness. Now and then a few mounted men gallop by. Scattering shots are heard along the picket line. The gloom has lifted, and I wrap myself in my blanket and lie down contentedly for the night.”9
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THUNDER ON THE LEFT
THE second day of January dawned gray, cloudy, and cold, “as peculiarly dreary as the day before had been.” And the Federals remained, their lines compact and well entrenched. Bragg at last accepted that only a determined assault could dislodge Rosecrans, who showed no intention of leaving without a fight. Accordingly, Bragg searched the field for a suitable place to resume the attack. Every point his army had struck during the afternoon of the thirty-first had held firm; only Rosecrans's extreme left was untried. With this in mind, Bragg directed his trusted aide, Colonel George Brent, and Captain Felix Robertson, the obsequious commander of a battery in Withers's division, to find artillery-firing positions on the east bank from which the Federal left might be enfiladed.
Brent and Robertson rode forward of Breckinridge's picket line to discover Price's brigade on the very hill they had hoped to reconnoiter. Brent reported the disturbing intelligence to Bragg, adding his belief that possession of the hill was critical: “It commanded the entire field of battle. From this point, either the enemy's or our line could be enfiladed.”
Bragg agreed. He too was concerned that Federal artillery might use it to sweep Bishop Polk from the Round Forest, an eventuality that “involved consequences not to be entertained.” The Yankees, then, must be driven from the east bank. And regardless of what Bragg thought of Breckinridge, his was the only division available for the task. Bragg sent orders to the Kentuckian directing him to concentrate his entire command opposite Beatty. Wharton and Pegram received instructions to protect Breckinridge's right flank, and Robertson was told to take ten guns across the river to augment the Kentuckian's artillery. Bragg allowed Breckinridge to determine the hour of the assault.
Bragg's plan shocked Breckinridge. He had conducted his own reconnaissance, and the conclusions he had drawn did not support an attack. Shortly after daybreak, Captain W. P. Bramblett, whose Company H, Fourth Kentucky, manned the picket line of the Orphan Brigade, had crawled through weeds and briars to within three hundred yards of Sam Beatty's six-regiment front line. Lieutenant Lot D. Young accompanied Bramblett. For a time they watched the troop formations and artillery batteries in silence. Finally, Bramblett remarked to Young that Rosecrans must be baiting a trap for Bragg. They snaked their way back to the picket line, and Bramblett reported his findings to Breckinridge.
Bramblett's report so troubled the Kentuckian that he rode out to the picket line to inspect the enemy's dispositions himself. Accompanied by Major W. D. Pickett of Hardee's staff, Breckinridge continued beyond the pickets toward a belt of timber along the river bank; simultaneously, his assistant adjutant general, Lieutenant Colonel John Buckner, and his chief of artillery, Major Rice Graves, made their way forward of the division's right.
Pickett had run into Breckinridge while riding along the Confederate front line with Hardee and Polk. When they met, the three generals fell immediately into an earnest discussion of the tactical significance of the ground near McFadden's Ford. All agreed that a careful reconnaissance of the position should be made at once. Hardee and Polk were about to accompany Breckinridge when a courier appeared to remind them that they were needed at their respective headquarters. Hardee left Pickett to represent him. Breckinridge, Pickett, and a retinue of staff officers then cantered north along the east bank of the river until they came upon a two-story farmhouse, appropriated by the Second Kentucky as a picket post. Although the timber and brushwood obscured their view, the pop-pop of rifle fire convinced them that there were Federal pickets to their front. Dismounting, Breckinridge and Pickett edged forward to the northern limit of the wood. Beyond stretched a cultivated field several hundred yards wide that ended abruptly at the base of a small hill. Although not occupied, the hill was of sufficient size to mask any force that might be deployed behind it. The presence of Northern pickets nearby, added to the obvious tactical significance of the terrain beyond, reinforced Breckinridge's suspicion that there was a strong Union force at hand.
Meanwhile, Buckner and Graves had seen the Federals—at least that portion of the line held by Price. Graves ordered Mose
s's Georgia battery to fire a few shots at Price “to develop his strength.” Price did not respond, but Graves was satisfied that the Federals were out in force and notified Breckinridge accordingly.
At noon, Bragg summoned Breckinridge to army headquarters. Beneath a sweeping sycamore at the river's edge, the two generals conferred. Major Pickett, who was present throughout the meeting, came away with the impression that “General Bragg had already determined to make the attack, as he at once commenced explaining the order of attack.” Breckinridge listened, and as he listened his anger grew. After Bragg finished, the Kentuckian picked up a stick and illustrated his objections in the dirt. Sketching the boomerang-shaped rise north of McFadden's Ford and west of Fyffe's position, as well as the lower elevation he was to carry, Breckinridge pointed out that the disparity in altitude meant that, in falling back, the Federals would occupy a position that actually dominated his division's objective. Bragg was unmoved. No one, least of all the argumentative Kentuckian, was going to change Bragg's mind for him. Bragg now fixed the hour of the assault at 4:00 P.M., one hour before dark. As it was already 2:30, Bragg suggested that Breckinridge return to his command at once.
No Better Place to Die- The Battle of Stones River Page 22