Stone's River

On the banks of a shallow winding stream, traversing the region known as Middle Tennessee, on the last day of December, 1862, and on the first and second days of January, 1863, a great battle was fought, - a battle that marked the turning point of the Civil War. Stone's River, as the North designated it, or Murfreesboro, - to give it the Southern name, - has hitherto not been estimated at its true importance. To the people of the two sections it seemed at the time but another Shiloh, - horrifying, saddening, and bitterly disappointing. Its significance, likewise, has escaped almost all historians and military critics. But now the perspective of half a century gives it its proper place in the panorama of the great conflict. Gettysburg, indeed, may have been the wound mortal of the Confederacy. But Gettysburg was, in very truth, a counsel of desperation, undertaken when the South was bleeding from many a vein. When Lee turned the faces of his veterans toward the fruitful fields of Pennsylvania, a wall of steel and fire encompassed his whole country. War- worn Virginia cried out for relief from the marchings of armies, that her people might raise the crops that would save them from starvation. Grant had at last established his lines around the fortress that dominated the Mississippi, and only by such a diversion, was there hope that his death- grip would be shaken. The day after Pickett's shattered columns had drifted back to Seminary Ridge Vicksburg was surrendered, and the control of the mighty river passed to the forces of the North. But it was at Stone's River that the South was at the very pinnacle of confidence and warlike power; and it was here that she was halted and beaten back, - never again to exhibit such strength and menace. It was here that the tide of the Confederacy passed its flood, henceforth to recede; here that its sun crossed the meridian and began its journey to the twilight and the dark. Southern valor was manifested in splendid luster on many a field thereafter, but the capacity for sustained aggression was gone. After Stone's River, the Southern soldier fought to repel rather than to drive his foe. Yet Stone's River was almost a tale of triumph for the Confederacy. "God has granted us a happy New Year!" was the message flashed to Richmond at the close of the first day's fighting by General Braxton Bragg, Commander of the Army of the Tennessee. Two-thirds of the Army of the Cumberland had been hurled out of line, and now lay clinging with desperation to the only road from which it could secure supplies, or by which it could retreat, and to lose which meant destruction. There was reason, therefore, in the Southern general's exultation, as he waited for the morrow to give him complete success. He could not know that the army upon which had been inflicted so terrific a blow was to gather new strength out of the very magnitude of its disaster and to return such a counterstroke as would give it the field and the victory. Neither could he see that his failure here meant failure for his cause; that because at Stone's River success had not crowned his efforts, his own magnificent army was to be pressed further and further from the territory it claimed as its own; that Fate had here entered the decree, - against which all appeals would fail, - for the preservation of the Federal Union and the death of the Confederate States of America.