Stones River a Microcosm of Civil War
The “Slaughter Pen” and “Hell’s Half Acre” are just two of the locations on the Stones River battlefield in central Tennessee near the town of Murfreesboro that witnessed brutal fighting 160 years ago between New Year’s Eve of 1862 and Jan. 2, 1863. The Battle of Stones River (which the Confederacy called Murfreesboro), as historian Shelby Foote noted, produced more casualties than Shiloh or Antietam, yet it is little remembered. In the east, Union forces had recently been defeated at Fredericksburg, and elsewhere in the west Ulysses S. Grant was finding it difficult to reach Vicksburg along the Mississippi River. And during the midst of the Battle of Stones River, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Confederate forces under Gen. Braxton Bragg moved to Murfreesboro, which is about 40 miles south of Nashville, after the fall 1862 battle at Perryville, Ken. Bragg commanded about 34,000 troops. At Nashville on Christmas Day, Union forces -- about 42,000 -- under Gen. William Rosecrans marched south to attack Bragg’s troops. Rosecrans left nearly 50,000 troops to protect Nashville. Among the Union commanders was Gen. George H. Thomas, who would later gain fame as the “Rock of Chickamauga” for defeating a series of Confederate charges at a place called Snodgrass Hill in Sept. 1863, and for destroying the remnants of the Army of the Tennessee at Nashville in December 1864.
On Dec. 30, both armies faced each other on the west side of Stones River. The Nashville Turnpike and the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad bed cut through the Confederate right and the Union left. At dawn on the 31st, the Confederates attacked and caught Union troops under the command of Maj. Gen. Alexander McCook by surprise. The Union right collapsed. Gen. Philip Sheridan’s 5,000 troops were attacked by more than 10,000 rebels. Sheridan and his men repulsed successive charges, then retreated to a cedar forest towards the turnpike. Some Federal units lost one-third of their strength. Union soldiers described the carnage there as resembling the slaughter pens in Chicago’s stockyards, thus giving the place its name in Civil War lore.
Massive losses on both sides
Bragg next attacked the Union left at a slightly-elevated copse of trees east of the turnpike known as the Round Forest. Just behind the Round Forest, Union commanders had concentrated artillery. Bragg’s forces made successive valiant but futile charges. The Union guns broke each charge decisively. The Round Forest had earned a new name: Hell’s Half Acre. After the sun set (about 4:30 p.m.), the attacks stopped and the guns fell silent. The New Year’s Eve fighting cost the Union 12,000 casualties (dead, wounded, missing, captured), while the Confederates lost about 9,000.
New Year’s Day was quiet, except for the groans of the wounded and dying soldiers on both sides. Bragg assumed he had won a victory, but Rosecrans’ men were still on the field. The previous evening at a council of war, Gen. George Thomas dismissed talk of retreating to Nashville by exclaiming “This army doesn’t retreat.” At about 4 p.m. on Jan. 2, Bragg again went on the offensive and hurled his men toward the direction of 58 Federal guns which proceeded to cut down a third of the charging rebels.
The battle was over. Confederate forces withdrew from the field, which meant that the Battle of Stones River was considered a Union victory. But like so many Civil War battles, the actual fighting resulted in a bloody draw. Confederate casualties (dead, wounded, missing, captured) numbered 11,739; the figure for Union forces was 13,249. The casualty percentage at Stones River was second only to Gettysburg in the Civil War.
As historian James McPherson wrote in "Battle Cry of Freedom," the “outcome at Stones River brought a thin gleam of cheer to the North.” President Lincoln wired Rosecrans: “God bless you, and all with you. I can never forget . . . you gave us a hard earned victory which, had there been a defeat instead, the nation could hardly have lived over.” This was more a sigh of relief than a celebration of victory on Lincoln’s part. Fredericksburg had been a disaster just a few weeks earlier. Chancellorsville -- another disaster -- was just a few months away. Grant was still stalled before Vicksburg. Vicksburg would finally fall one day after the Union victory at Gettysburg. And Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had transformed the war from a concrete struggle over states rights to an ideological battle for freedom.
