The Battle of Stones River gave Abraham Lincoln, precious time
By Bob Ford Special to
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The walls were closing in on the North as 1862 came to an end. The future looked bleak for President Lincoln, our devastating Civil War would be entering its third year.
If failures on the battlefield continued — with national sentiment against the war growing — something had to change. The Union needed a major, impactful, victory.
More and more eligible men were buying their way out of military service or simply not reporting for drafted duty. In the North it is estimated that 160,000 men “skedaddled.”
These men were draft dodgers by choice and deserters by law. Many followed Horace Greeley’s advice but added their own end phrase … “Go West young man … and avoid the draft.”
Home guards and conscription agents were kept busy, locating fugitives for bounty and creating local havoc of their own.
After the early December fiasco at Fredericksburg, Lincoln had one major unencumbered Army left to try and exit the year with that elusive victory. Gen. William Rosecrans and his Army of the Cumberland was on the march as demanded by the president to find Confederate Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee and engage.
It was a cold, damp trek out of their winter quarters near Nashville.
Bragg was only 30 miles south in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. His pickets saw what was coming.
On the evening of Dec. 30, 1862, both armies were entrenched, opposing one another. Some units straddling the Stones River. In some places the forces were just 300 yards apart. That night an anomaly took place as both armies prepared for battle the next day.
Music was a major part of the war effort. Bands were organized and musicians recruited to play, helping calm nerves and pass the time in camps. Attached to many different smaller units, the Union consisted of over 600 bands with 28,000 musicians. These soldiers would usually assist the hospital and/or transportation corps when not performing.
At the Battle of Stones River, both sides brought their band. On a cold December night the music could clearly be heard. The Union band played “Yankee Doodle” only to be answered by “Bonnie Blue Flag and Dixie.” Knowing what confronted all the next day with many accepting they may not see another night, hearts came together in song in a magical moment.
“They were brothers in music, each side played while hundreds of soldiers sang “Home, Sweet, Home,” described historian and Stones River Park Ranger Russell Small. This practice continued at odd times and places throughout the war, with the North finally banning that particular song, fearing it made their troops too homesick and melancholy to fight.
Braxton Bragg was hated by his troops and officers but tactically he had guts. The next day Bragg opened the fighting with a right sweep flanking maneuver, committing 10,000 men that caught Rosecrans off guard.
Bragg overran several units that morning until Gen. Philip Sheridan’s Division in the middle was able to slow him down. It was devastating on both sides, Bragg continued his attack with fresh troops at midday, inflicting and receiving heavy casualties. New battle names were given for areas of contested ground, the Slaughter Pen, Cotton Field, Round Forrest and Hell’s Half Acre.
As he did during most major battles, President Lincoln camped out at the telegraph office blocks away from the White House to receive military reports from the field.
At the end of day one both sides had been ravaged, but Bragg thought he had the upper hand.
On Jan. 1, 1863, neither armies attacked, instead they fortified and tended to the overwhelming amount of wounded. Jan. 2 would not be as quiet.
Again, Bragg struck first, unleashing former U.S. Vice-President and now Gen. John Breckenridge’s famed Orphan Brigade and other forces making up 4,500 men to take a controlling hill on the other side of Stones River. It’s 34 degrees out — these troops in wool clothes — crossed the river then had to fight in wet cold uniforms! His men achieved their objective but got the surprise of the battle once on the other side of the crest.
As the Union soldiers fled down the hill, Breckenridge was confronted by artillery Capt. John Mendenhall, who had moved his 57 cannons the night before onto McFadden’s farm in support of the Union troops.
“Now those cannons took aim at the approaching, rebel yelling Confederates.”
In less than an hour, grapeshot and cannon fire killed or wounded 1,800 southerners.
“Mendenhall’s artillery had turned a dashing charge into a deadly retreat,” lamented new friend Russell the Park Ranger.
After the barrage, the Yankees came back over Stones River and reclaimed the heights. That was the last confrontation of the battle.
Prior to the charge, one of the generals — sensing the outlandish order to take the hill — threatened to kill Bragg, maybe he should have. The Confederates withdrew, giving the Yankees and Lincoln the field and a hard fought victory he so dearly needed.
The Battle of Stones River was disastrous for both armies 12,249 Union casualties and 10,266 Confederates. Rosecrans declared victory as Bragg limped further south with a depleted force.
The brutality and cost of the battle was difficult for Lincoln to bear, but it was the triumph he needed.
In the annals of the Civil War, Stones River would warrant the highest percent casualty rate of any battle, with both sides losing approximately ⅓ of their soldiers.
Now in victory, with the Emancipation Proclamation issued, international interdiction seemed unlikely. France had outlawed slavery in 1794 and England in 1833, even though both craved the South’s cotton, it would be difficult and hypocritical to justify a southern alliance.
Months later after critical wins at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, Lincoln sent Rosecrans a letter about the significance of the Battle of Stones River.
“I can never forget … you gave us a hard earned victory which had there been a defeat instead, the nation could scarcely have lived over.”
The president had gotten through the Union’s worst period of the war. The following year brought major victories which changed the military outlook of the conflict and altered national attitudes, but Lincoln needed this one.
He could now go home, ordering Allen Pinkerton, his bodyguard, to bring up the carriage. Exhausted, he entered the White House only to be confronted by another frontal assault delivered by wife Mary Todd Lincoln,
“Where have you been?!”
