The Battle of Murfreesboro (or Stones River, as it is also known) brought a much-needed victory for the North, but one that came at a high price. Following his failed invasion of Kentucky in mid-November 1862, Confederate general Braxton Bragg moved his Army of Tennessee into central Tennessee, where he aimed to reclaim a large portion of that state and, in the words of President JEFFERSON DAVIS, help the Confederacy “recover from the depression produced by the failure in Kentucky.” Union forces, under the command of Gen. William S. Rosecrans, countered this move by taking position around Nashville. Not an aggressive fighter, Rosecrans settled into resupplying and resting his Army of the Cumberland.
Rosecrans’s inaction quickly ended under pressure from politicians claiming that the Union war effort was moving too slowly. The December disaster at the BATTLE OF FREDERICKSBURG and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s stalled invasion of Mississippi further eroded public confidence. In response, President Abraham Lincoln and General in Chief Henry W. Halleck urged Rosecrans to move on the rebels. On December 26, 1862, he began a general advance on Murfreesboro. A cold rain fell on the Union soldiers as they marched south from Nashville. Sleet, fog, and icy roads continued to plague Rosecrans, but by December 29 and 30 his army began to move in on the rebel troops.
At 6:30 A. M. on December 31, Bragg launched a major attack, sending his left-most divisions forward with instructions to drive back enemy forces while turning to the right. The attack caught the Union troops off guard and overwhelmed them. Within half an hour, two Union divisions had been driven from the field, disorganized and demoralized. However, Bragg’s overly complex plan caused severe confusion among his troops. Federal resistance also stiffened as Union soldiers took strong positions among the cedar glades and limestone outcroppings.
The Confederates continued to fight, however, and by noon Union forces had been pushed back into a line almost perpendicular to their original position just in front of the main line of retreat, the Nashville Pike. The line along the Nashville Pike was a strong one on a slight rise in front of largely cleared fields. Confederate attacks were thrown back by rifle and artillery fire, and the Confederate advance ground to a halt in a series of poorly coordinated assaults. After a day of resting and watching Union forces dig in, on January 2, rebel troops launched an attack on the Federals’ left flank. The Confederates were beaten back, suffering heavy casualties, especially among the Kentucky units led by Gen. JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE. On January 3 Bragg retreated to a position near Shelbyville and Tulla-homa, Tennessee.
Battle of Murfreesboro, December 31, 1862 (Library of Congress)
The battle was costly. Both armies lost nearly one-third of their total forces in killed, wounded, and missing. Of the 41,400 Federal troops, 12,906 were casualties; the Rebels suffered 11,739 losses out of a total of 34,739. Union forces alone had a 31 percent casualty rate, which made Murfreesboro the war’s most deadly battle when casualties were looked at in proportion to the number of troops fighting. The forced retreat of the Army of Tennessee brought a glimmer of hope to the North and diminished some of the COPPERHEAD sentiment, but it left Rosecrans’s army badly crippled. For the Confederacy, Murfreesboro was terrible news. Bragg, never popular with other commanders, was even less so now. Bragg went so far as to offer to resign, but JEEEERSON Davis left him in control, thus setting the stage for continued divisiveness and infighting within the western CONEEDERATE ARMY.
Further reading: Peter Cozzens, No Better Place to Die: The Battle of Stones River (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990); Earl J. Hess, Banners to the Breeze: The Kentucky Campaign, Corinth, and Stones River (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).
—James Daryl Black
World History
