A Thousand Words a Battle: Stones River

Battle of Stones River
December 31, 1862–January 2, 1863

After the retreat from Kentucky, the morale of Braxton Bragg’s newly dubbed Army of Tennessee was low. Many blamed Bragg for failing to reclaim the Bluegrass State, although the offensive had allowed the Confederates to retake central Tennessee. In the Union army, Don Carlos Buell was replaced by the charismatic William S. Rosecrans. Under pressure from Washington, Rosecrans moved on Murfreesboro.

Both army commanders planned to attack their opponent’s right flank. The day before, Bragg met with his commanders, including St. John Richardson Liddell. The two had been friends in antebellum Louisiana. They were plantations owners, noted for their bravery and caustic sensibilities. Both men distrusted democracy, with Liddell going a step further and declaring that “the masses are ever liable to become fanatical or exacting or venal when controlled by corrupt representatives leaders, oftentimes cloaked with religion.” However, Liddell thought Bragg had been unfair to him in Kentucky. On the eve of battle, they spoke, and Bragg unburdened himself, declaring “General, I have no children. Hence, I look upon the soldiers of my army as my own—as my children.” Liddell was moved. He repeated his words to his men, one of whom said, “He has a very large family and sometimes causes his boys to be shot.”[1]

The battle opened with a furious Confederate assault. The Union right flank was broken for a time. Liddell and his men were in the front, battling Joshua Sill’s brigade, when:

Someone now told me that my son Willie was killed. I felt deeply distressed. I knew that it was a fact of war, consoling myself with the reflection that he could not have fallen on a more honorable occasion. Just then my Aide-de-Camp Bostick came up . . . and told me that my son Willie had been badly wounded in the first engagement.

Willie had fallen from his horse, and Lieutenant H. Shannon of my battery called Bostick’s attention to the fact that Willie was in the way of his battery. He should be moved at once or he would be under the flame of Shannon’s guns. Bostick rode to Willie immediately, dismounted, examined his wound, and, with the aid of some Yankee prisoners, placed him on his horse. But the horse’s head was cut off at that moment by a cannon ball. Bostick picked him up and removed him slowly to an ambulance that happened to be at hand. When Willie was in good hands, Bostick mounted the first horse at hand and pushed forward to join me.

Generous, whole-souled J. L. Bostick! How much I owe you for this favor. My son and you are both numbered with the dead in this deplorable war, and the only satisfaction I have is that your fate never could have been better. My bugler John Shlosser was shot near me and carried off the field. I escaped so easily that I could not understand why my men were shot, nor did they understand why I was not hurt! Poor fellows! They sometimes got around me for safety. But the charm to me did not extend to them and death fell in their midst without respect to persons.[2]

Bragg’s men forced back Rosecrans right flank, but they could not bust through the last line of defense. That night, Rosecrans, his uniform smeared with blood, met with his commanders. When retreat was discussed, George Thomas declared, “This army can’t retreat,” or “General, I know of no better place to die than right here.”[3] Rosecrans stood fast, repelling a major attack on January 2. Bragg, his army in tatters and knowing Rosecrans was being reinforced, fell back towards Tullahoma.

Stones River was one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Liddell, whose son died after the fighting, considered the battle “the chief turning point of the war.”[4] After that, the Army of Tennessee’s high command became completely dysfunctional. For the North, victory at Stones River came in the wake of defeat at Fredericksburg and Chickasaw Bayou, just as the controversial Emancipation Proclamation was coming into effect. Lincoln wrote to Rosecrans, “God bless you and all with you.”[5] Edwin Stanton, who disliked Rosecrans, nonetheless told him, “There is nothing you can ask within my power to grant yourself or your heroic command that will not be cheerfully given.”[6] John McAuley Palmer, one of Rosecrans’ subordinates, said, “If I was to fight a battle for the domination of the universe I would give Rosecrans the command.”[7]

Later in the war, as Rosecrans’s star fell, his victory at Stones River was forgotten, but Lincoln until his dying day considered it a victory as important as Vicksburg and Gettysburg. As he told Rosecrans, “You gave us a hard victory which, had there been a defeat instead, the nation could scarcely have lived over.”[8]

— Sean Michael Chick

Part of a series.

[1] St. John Richardson Liddell, Liddell’s Record, Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr., editor (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 106.

[2] Liddell, 109-110.

[3] Larry J. Daniel, The Battle of Stones River, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012), 172.

[4] Liddell, 115

[5] James Lee McDonough, Stones River – Bloody Winter in Tennessee, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1980), 226.

[6] The War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Volume XX, Part 2, (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1886), 306.

[7] William M. Lamers, The Edge of Glory: A Biography of General William S. Rosecrans, U.S.A. (New York: Harcourt, 1961), 247.

[8] Abraham Lincoln to William S. Rosecrans, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy Basler, 8 Vols (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ Press, 1953), Vol 6, 424.