Stones River was a Civil War engagement fought in Tennessee, 1862. It was a Union victory.
After Gen. Braxton Bragg's defeat at Perryville, Kentucky, October 8, 1862, he and his Confederate Army of the Mississippi retreated, reorganized, and were redesignated as the Army of Tennessee. They then advanced to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and prepared to go into winter quarters. Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans's Union Army of the Cumberland followed Bragg from Kentucky to Nashville. Rosecrans left Nashville on December 26, with about 44,000 men, to defeat Bragg's army of more than 37,000. He found Bragg's army on December 29 and went into camp that night, within hearing distance of the Rebels. At dawn on the 31st, Bragg's men attacked the Union right flank. The Confederates had driven the Union line back to the Nashville Pike by 10:00 am but there it held. Union reinforcements arrived from Rosecrans's left in the late forenoon to bolster the stand, and before fighting stopped that day the Federals had established a new, strong line. On New Years Day, both armies marked time. Bragg surmised that Rosecrans would now withdraw, but the next morning he was still in position. In late afternoon, Bragg hurled a division at a Union division that, on January 1, had crossed Stones River and had taken up a strong position on the bluff east of the river. The Confederates drove most of the Federals back across McFadden's Ford, but with the assistance of artillery, the Federals repulsed the attack, compelling the Rebels to retire to their original position. Bragg left the field on the January 4-5, retreating to Shelbyville and Tullahoma, Tennessee. Rosecrans did not pursue, but as the Confederates retired, he claimed the victory. Stones River boosted Union morale. The Confederates had been thrown back in the east, west, and in the Trans-Mississippi.
Fought over three days spanning the turn of the year, from December 31, 1862, through January 2, 1863, the clash at Stones River (sometimes called the Second Battle of Murfreesboro) marked the climax of the Stones River Campaign within the war's Western Theater, unfolding across Middle Tennessee. No other major engagement of the conflict produced casualty rates as steep, proportionally, for both sides involved. When Confederate forces pulled back on January 3, the Union claimed victory, a result stemming largely from a string of tactical blunders committed by Confederate General Braxton Bragg, though the triumph came at steep cost to Northern forces. Even so, the win carried real weight for the Union side, arriving as a welcome morale boost following the sting of defeat at Fredericksburg not long before, and it bolstered the political groundwork Lincoln had laid for the Emancipation Proclamation, a document whose existence ultimately kept European powers from stepping in on behalf of the Confederacy.
General William S. Rosecrans led his Army of the Cumberland out of Nashville on December 26, 1862, moving to confront Bragg's Army of Tennessee near Murfreesboro. Come December 31, both commanding generals had settled on identical plans, namely striking the opposing right flank, yet Bragg's troops had less ground to cover and got the jump on their enemy. A crushing offensive spearheaded by William J. Hardee's corps, with Leonidas Polk's troops following, swept over the flank held by General Alexander M. McCook. Only a determined stand by Philip Sheridan's division, positioned in the right center, kept the Union line from collapsing entirely, allowing Rosecrans's men to regroup into a compact defensive posture anchored against the Nashville Turnpike. From this consolidated position, wave after wave of Confederate assaults were beaten back, with the fighting in the cedar thicket known as the Round Forest, where Colonel William B. Hazen's brigade held firm, standing out as especially fierce. Bragg tried to keep the pressure on by committing John C. Breckinridge's division, but the reinforcements arrived too slowly, and their disjointed, staggered attacks came to nothing.
The battle flared up again on January 2, 1863, after Bragg directed Breckinridge to strike a Union position, thinly held, atop a hill east of the Stones River. Union troops fell back, drawing Breckinridge's men into what turned out to be a lethal snare. Confronted by a devastating concentration of artillery fire, the Confederate attackers were driven off with staggering casualties. Deceived, in all likelihood, by misleading intelligence that McCook had planted and by campfires Rosecrans arranged in spots where no soldiers actually stood, Bragg came to believe his opponent was being reinforced, and so he ordered his army to retreat on January 3 toward Tullahoma, Tennessee. In the aftermath, Bragg found that he had forfeited the trust of the Army of Tennessee.
Bluegrass artist Claire Lynch mentions the battle in her song "Dear Sister." The band Steeldrivers also tells of the fighting through their song "The River Runs Red."
No side could claim a clear tactical win when the fighting ended. Bragg found himself facing near universal criticism from fellow Confederate officers, and it was only Joseph E. Johnston's backing, along with Jefferson Davis's failure to locate anyone better suited to take his place, that kept him in command.
For Union spirits, the engagement carried enormous weight. Lincoln made this plain in a letter to Rosecrans, telling him that the hard-earned victory he had delivered would have left the nation barely able to survive had the outcome gone the other way. With this result, any Confederate hope of pushing into Kentucky or holding Middle Tennessee collapsed, and Nashville emerged as a secure supply hub for Union forces that would serve them through the rest of the conflict.
Rosecrans then devoted five and a half months to strengthening Murfreesboro's defenses. Workers raised the enormous earthworks known as Fort Rosecrans there, and it functioned as a supply depot until the war's end. Not until June did the next significant campaign unfold, when Rosecrans finally set his army in motion against Bragg in what became known as the Tullahoma Campaign.
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