"Stone's River: The Turning-Point of the Civil War" by Wilson J. Vance Confederate enterprise, energy, and expectation were at their peak in 1862. No other year saw the South with so promising prospects, with plans of the campaign so bold, with such resources, both latent and developed. The armies were at their fullest strength, for the flower of her youth had not yet been destroyed in battle. Want and hunger had not yet begun to chill the hearts of her people.
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On December 31, 1862, some 10,000 Confederate soldiers streamed out of the dim light of early morning to stun the Federals who were still breakfasting in their camp. Nine months earlier the Confederates had charged the Yankees in a similarly devastating attack at dawn, starting the Battle of Shiloh. By the time this new battle ended, it would resemble Shiloh in other ways - it would rival that struggle's shocking casualty toll of 24,000 and it would become a major defeat for the South. By any Civil War standard, Stones River was a monumental, bloody, and dramatic story. Yet, until now, it has had no modern, documented history. Arguing that the battle was one of the significant engagements in the war, noted Civil War historian James Lee McDonough here devotes to Stones River the attention it ahs long deserved. Stones River, at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, was the first big battle in the union campaign to seize the Nashville-Chattanooga-Atlanta corridor. Driving eastward and southward to sea, the campaign eventually climaxed in Sherman's capture of Savannah in December 1864. At Stones River the two armies were struggling desperately for control of Middle Tennessee's railroads and rich farms. Although they fought to a tactical draw, the Confederates retreated. The battle's outcome held significant implications. For the Union, the victory helped offset the disasters suffered at Fredericksburg and Chickasaw Bayou. Furthermore, it may have discouraged Britain and France from intervening on behalf of the Confederacy. For the South, the battle had other crucial effects. Since in convinced many that General Braxton Bragg could not successfully command an army, Stones River left the Southern Army torn by dissension in the high command and demoralized in the ranks. One of the most perplexing Civil War battles, Stones River has remained shrouded in unresolved questions. After driving the Union right wing for almost three miles, why could the Rebels not complete the triumph? Could the Union's Major General William S. Rosecrans have launched a counterattack on the first day of the battle? Was personal tension between Bragg and Breckenridge a significant factor in the events of the engagement's last day? McDonough uses a variety of sources to illuminate these and other questions. Quotations from diaries, letters, and memoirs of the soldiers involved furnish the reader with a rare, soldier's-eye view of this tremendously violent campaign. Tactics, strategies, and commanding officers are examined to reveal how personal strengths and weaknesses of the opposing generals, Bragg and Rosecrans, shaped the course of the battle. Vividly recreating the events of the calamitous battle, Stones River - Bloody Winter in Tennessee firmly establishes the importance of this previously neglected landmark in Civil War history. James Lee McDonough is professor of history at Auburn University, and author of Shiloh - In Hell before Night, Chattanooga - A Death Grip on the Confederacy, and co-author of Five Tragic Hours: The Battle of Franklin.
At the Battle of Stones River, General David Stanley's Union cavalry repeatedly fought General Joseph Wheeler's Confederate cavalry. The campaign saw some of the most desperately fought mounted engagements in the Civil War's Western Theater and marked the end of the Southern cavalry's dominance in Tennessee. This history describes the events leading up to the battle and the key actions, including the December 31 attack by Wheeler's cavalry, the Union counterattack, the repulse of General John Wharton by the 1st Michigan Engineers and Wheeler's daring raid on the rear of Williams Rosecrans' army. The author reassesses the actions of General John Pegram's cavalry brigade.
As a leading Confederate general, Braxton Bragg (1817–1876) earned a reputation for incompetence, for wantonly shooting his own soldiers, and for losing battles. This public image established him not only as a scapegoat for the South's military failures but also as the chief whipping boy of the Confederacy. The strongly negative opinions of Bragg's contemporaries have continued to color assessments of the general's military career and character by generations of historians. Rather than take these assessments at face value, Earl J. Hess's biography offers a much more balanced account of Bragg, the man and the officer. While Hess analyzes Bragg's many campaigns and battles, he also emphasizes how his contemporaries viewed his successes and failures and how these reactions affected Bragg both personally and professionally. The testimony and opinions of other members of the Confederate army--including Bragg's superiors, his fellow generals, and his subordinates--reveal how the general became a symbol for the larger military failures that undid the Confederacy. By connecting the general's personal life to his military career, Hess positions Bragg as a figure saddled with unwarranted infamy and humanizes him as a flawed yet misunderstood figure in Civil War history.
