Video
They Retreated in Great Confusion
Transcript
You can see the cars passing down the Wilkinson pike there. And beyond that, as I said, would be Sheridan's division of the right wing. Beyond that would be Jefferson C. Davis's division. And beyond that would be Richard Johnson's division, which would be the far right extent of the Union line.
Now Sheridan and Jefferson C. Davis-- and I keep saying the "C" because we don't want to confuse him with the president of the Confederacy. When they receive the smattering of orders coming out of headquarters and understand that their job will be to hold the line, will make preparations and send out orders to their subcommanders, their brigade commanders, and regimental commanders to make preparations to have the men up, breakfasted, loaded, and in line of battle by 4:00 AM, two hours before daylight.
Further down on the right wing, though, as I said, Alexander McDowell McCook once he hears the orders to make preparations to hold for those four hours, he promptly goes to bed. He issues, really, no positive orders to his division commanders. It's up to Sheridan and Davis basically to come up with this action on their own.
His right most commander, Richard Johnson, is perhaps the most wrong man for the job at the wrong time. The men are forbidden to have campfires, less they give away their position. But here's an interesting story. Rosecrans forbids his entire army to build fires so makes the night even go more cold and miserable.
But then he has his cavalry light fires beyond the right end of his line to burn through the night to try to convince Bragg that he has more men than he really does. Now what kind of idiot actually looks at three miles long of dark, then sees maybe a mile of burning fires and think, oh, that must be the enemy down there? I'll tell you who, Bragg, or actually his commanders down there.
But as McCown and Cleburne are putting themselves into position to make sure that they are beyond the enemy line, guess what they're using as their markers. The fires. And so they are way beyond the right flank of the Union. Rosecrans snookered himself on this one, boy, because now the Confederates are even in a better position than they had been when Wharton had reported that they were just a little bit beyond. Now they're way out there.
The men go to sleep. It's a fitful one at best. And then when dawn begins to approach and the sky begins to turn that kind of gray that it does as the sun is beginning to come up, then permission is granted for the men to build fires. Union soldiers start to make them, get out their salt pork, start to put the cups on with a little coffee. And that's going to be it.
As that dawn is approaching P.R. Jones of the 10th Texas Cavalry and the boys of Ector's Texas Brigade in McCown's division will receive their whiskey ration. About half of the men will take it. The other half won't, which means the half that took it gets double. And they will get themselves in line of battle, preparing to move forward quickly and quietly as possible to get in or around the end of that line and smash into it.
Sergeant Major Lyman S. Whitney of the 34th Illinois Infantry right down at the corner where that little turn is made to kind of refuse a bit of the line will go to one of the fires and grab himself a cup of hot coffee. And then as it is his duty as the highest ranking non-commisssioned officer in the regiment, he goes out to check the skirmishers-- the men that have been thrown out ahead of the line spread out about five, 10 paces from each other with very simple orders, if the enemy starts approaching, shoot at them, that way we know they're coming.
And he starts walking up there to check the pickets. And then before long, he's nearly run over by one of the guys from the picket line running back saying, they're coming, they're coming. But he hasn't heard a shot fired. And he actually looks and sees a lot of the fellows are running back, and they're not doing what they're supposed to do.
Well, he's a little suspicious about that. He goes in and walks up to the top over a little hump in the ground. And he looks out, drops his coffee cup, because there are 11,000 men in gray and butternut advancing quietly, not firing, but at the run heading in his direction. And he turns around and goes running back to the men who are not standing at their arms or ready to fire, but are still warming their hands over the fires and drinking that grateful cup of hot coffee.
I don't really have to tell you what happens next, do I? It is a rout The Confederates sweep like a tidal wave over the top of Johnson's division.
Within minutes, thousands of men are either dead, wounded, or running for their lives as they just pound right through. In fact, Jones, as he's going through some of the remnants of the Yankee camp fires, actually notices one poor soul lying dead, sitting there next to the fire still clutching his coffee cup, which by the way, if we ever put that quote on a coffee cup, it would sell like hotcakes. I swear it would.
Another Union soldier talked about how him and his buddies go running up to their stacks of arms, they pull them off, ram in the first round, put the cap on, get ready to resist the enemy tide, only to realize that there are already 250 yards behind enemy lines. The Confederates have already passed them. And now they got to work and picked their way back to whatever is left of their regiment heading back up towards the road you see out here behind me, the Wilkinson Pike.
It is a complete and utter rout. One Union soldier in the 15th Ohio said, shortly after his unit was bashed and beaten, he turned around and ran with nothing in his head but to run for the rest of the day. The life of Johnson's division and their grit has literally been completely and utterly wiped out.
And the Confederates are now streaming in behind, pushing them, and getting in behind Jefferson C. Davis's division. So right there about even 7, 7:30 in the morning, this is looking like it is going to be a complete and war-changing Confederate victory. Because they can push these guys like we said and get them trapped away from Nashville and buckled into that bend in the Stones River, that could be the end of the Army of the Cumberland.
Imagine them not being part of the rest of this story. That would change the Civil War, wouldn't it?
But within that success lie the seeds of the beginning of unraveling of Bragg's plans. Because Johnson's boys instead of being good boys and running up kind of behind the rest of their compadres, they break off and start heading to the north and west. And what do you think McCown's boys do as they see those Yankees running for their lives?
They chase them like wolves at their rabbits, not bending in around behind the line, but heading off this way. As they do that, they were hooked up with General Benjamin Franklin Cheathem's division to their north. As they start to head that way, a gap begins to form.
Patrick Cleburne back here in support, he's supposed to be running behind McCown. And as McCown keeps swinging that door and pushing up, eventually his men are going to run out of ammunition and run out of energy. And his men would pass through those lines and keep the screws turning, keep that attack going, the momentum flying.
Because again, we said this has to happen very quickly. You have to drive these guys and give them no chance to reset somewhere behind, because you are literally driving them into themselves and helping them essentially build a defensive position if you don't take them out very quickly. But now he can't do that because Cleburne is too good a soldier. And he realizes as that gap grows, the Yankees could pour right back through and shatter the Confederate ranks.
And so he moves his men up into the side and fills the gap. By 8:30 in the morning, the Confederate reserve force has been committed. And they're still a long, long, way from home. Now they'll still be beat back Jefferson Davis's division. They'll bend Sheridan's division back until it looks just like this picture here.
And the fighting begins on the late morning of December 31, 1862 in this area known as the "Slaughter Pen" that will really begin to slow down the Confederate tide. But it was that morning of December 31, when Confederate hopes for a war changing victory were at their height-- they had crushed division, brigade after brigade after brigade of the Union Army, seemed to have their plan working just as Bragg wrote it down on paper.
But bit by bit, step by step, minute by minute as Union resistance began to increase and their own ability to coordinate and communicate and keep on task began to fall apart and, in fact, in the seeds of that seeming victory that was in the making, already the tide of the battle was beginning to turn to ultimately make this one of the most important Union victories of the war.
Description
Listen to the story of the opening hours of the Battle of Stones River and discover how a promising start for the Confederates also held the seeds of defeat.
Video filmed and edited by VIP Mike Browning.
Duration
9 minutes, 59 seconds
Date Created
12/28/2012
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