STONE RIVER.
After breakfast in a large dining-room which no fuel could heat, we went
and stood by the hearth, turning ourselves on our heels, as the earth
turns on its axis, warming a hemisphere at a time, until the wintry
condition of our bodies gave place to a feeling of spring, half sunshine
and half chill; then we clapped on our overcoats and mufflers; then two
powerful war-horses of the General’s came prancing to the door, ready
bridled and saddled; and we mounted. A vigorous gallop across the
outskirts of the town and out on the Nashville Pike set the sympathetic
blood also on a gallop, and did for us what fire in a Tennessee mansion
could not do. In ten minutes we were thoroughly warm, with the exception
of one thumb in a glove which I wore, and an ear on the windward side of
the General’s rosy face.
Riding amid stump-fields, where beautiful forests had cast their broad
shades before the war, we entered the area of the vast fortress
constructed by the army of Rosecrans, lying at Murfreesboro’ after the
battle. This is the largest work of the kind in the United States. A
parapet of earth three miles in circumference encloses a number of
detached redoubts on commanding eminences. The encircled space is a mile
in diameter. It contained all Rosecrans’s storehouses, and was large
enough to take in his entire army. It would require at least ten
thousand troops to man its breastworks. The converging lines of the
railroad and turnpike running to Nashville pass through it; and across
the north front sweeps a bend of Stone River. We found the stream partly
frozen, chafing between abrupt rocky shores sheathed in ice.
A mile beyond, the converging lines above mentioned cut each other at a
sharp angle; the railroad, which goes out of Murfreesboro’ on the left,
shifting over to the right of the turnpike. Crossing them at nearly
right angles, a short distance on the Murfreesboro’ side of their point
of intersection, was the Rebel line of battle, on the morning of the
thirty-first of December. Half a mile beyond this point, on the
Nashville side, was the Union line.
The railroad here runs through a cut, with a considerable embankment,—a
circumstance of vital importance to our army, saving it, probably, from
utter rout and destruction, on that first day of disaster. The right
wing, thrown out two miles and more to the west of the railroad, rested
on nothing. It was left hanging in the air, as the French say. An attack
was expected, yet no precautions were taken to provide against an
attack. General Wood, who had posted scouts in trees to observe the
movements of the Rebels, reported to the commanding general that they
were rapidly moving troops over and massing them on their left.
Rosecrans says he sent the information to McCook; McCook says he never
received it. When the attack came, it was a perfect surprise. It was
made with the suddenness and impetuosity for which the enemy was
distinguished, and everything gave way before it. Division after
division was pushed back, until the line, which was projected nearly
perpendicular to the railroad in the morning, lay parallel to it,—that
providential cut affording an opportune cover for the rallying and
re-forming of the troops.
Another feature of the field is eminently noticeable. The bold river
banks, curving in and out, along by the east side of the railroad, made
a strong position for the Union left to rest upon. Here, in a little
grove called by the Rebels the “Round Forest,” between the river and the
railroad, was General Wood’s division, planted like a post. On his
right, like a bolt of iron in that post, was Hazen’s brigade, serving as
a pivot on which the whole army line swung round like a gate. The pivot
itself was immovable. In vain the enemy concentrated his utmost efforts
against it. Terribly smitten and battered, but seemingly insensible as
iron itself, there it stuck.[11]
It was extremely interesting to visit this portion of the field in
company with one who played so important a part in the events enacted
there. We rode through a cotton-field of black leafy stalks, with little
white bunches clinging to them like feathers or snow. It was across that
field, between Round Forest and the railroad, that Hazen’s line was
formed. On the edge of it, by the forest, still lay the bones of a horse
shot under him during the battle.
Near by was a little cemetery, within which the dead of Hazen’s brigade
were buried. A well-built stone wall encloses an oblong space one
hundred feet in length by forty in breadth. Within are thirty-one
limestone tablets marking the graves of the common soldiers. In the
midst of these stands a monument, on which are inscribed the names of
officers whose remains are deposited beneath it. This is also of
limestone, massy, well formed, ten feet square on the ground and eleven
feet in height. It is interesting as being the only monument of
importance and durability erected by soldiers during the war.
On the south side, facing the railroad and turnpike, is the following
legend:—
“HAZEN’S BRIGADE
TO
THE MEMORY OF ITS SOLDIERS
WHO FELL AT
STONE RIVER, DEC. 31, 1862.
‘_Their faces toward heaven, their feet to the foe._’”
On the east side is the following:—
“THE VETERANS OF SHILOH HAVE LEFT A DEATHLESS HERITAGE OF FAME UPON THE
FIELD OF STONE RIVER.”
On the north side:—
“Erected 1863, upon the ground where they fell, by their comrades of the
Nineteenth Brigade, Buell’s Army of the Ohio, Col. W. B. Hazen 41st
Infantry O. Vols. commanding.”
On the west side:—
“The blood of one third its soldiers twice spilled in Tennessee crimsons
the battle-flag of the brigade and inspires to great deeds.”
From the soldiers’ cemetery at Round Forest we rode on to the new
National Cemetery of Stone River, then in process of construction. It
lies between the railroad and the turnpike, in full view from both. A
massy square-cornered stone wall encloses a space of modest size,
sufficiently elevated, and covered with neatly heaped mounds, side by
side, and row behind row, in such precise order, that one might imagine
the dead who sleep beneath them to have formed their ghostly ranks there
after the battle, and carefully laid themselves down to rest beneath
those small green tents. The tents were not green when I visited the
spot, but I trust they are green to-day, and that the birds are singing
over them.
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Footnote 11:
The right brigade of Palmer’s division had been the last to yield. The
left brigade, in command of Hazen, was thus exposed to fire in flank
and rear, and to the attempts of the enemy to charge in front. It
required terrible fighting to beat back the enemy’s double lines: it
cost a third of the brave brigade; but every moment the enemy was held
back was worth a thousand men to the main line. General Rosecrans
improved the time so well, in hurrying troops to the new position,
that, when the enemy assailed that line, the fresh divisions of Van
Cleve, Wood, and Rousseau, and the artillery massed on a commanding
point, not only repulsed them, but they were charged while retiring by
one of Crittenden’s brigades.... The enemy had miscalculated the
temper of Hazen’s brigade; and Bragg was obliged to report, as he did
in his first despatch, that he “had driven the whole Federal line,
except his left, which stubbornly resisted.”—_Annals of the Army of
the Cumberland._