During the Battle of Stones River, journalists representing newspapers from both the North and South were present, including one from The National Intelligencer.

Founded by S. H. Smith in Washington, D.C., this newspaper was the recognized organ of the administrations of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Polk and Fillmore, and until 1825 it provided the only printed record of congressional debates and proceedings. An outlet for many of the writings of Webster, Clay and Calhoun, the newspaper ceased publication in 1870.

An article published in the National Intelligencer following the battled focused on the character of Julius Garesché:

"On one of the days of battle before Murfreeesborough, during a critical moment of the conflict, Colonel Julius P. Garesché, chief of General Rosecrans staff was killed. There are things connected with the life and character of this gentleman, and with the years of his residence in this city, which make it fitting to allude to his death more at length than we have heretofore done, and, in a few words of special reverence to his memory, to call the attention of our citizens to the loss they have suffered in his fall.

"Of the high esteem in which he was held by the officers of the army nothing needs to be said. The grief expressed by his companions in the service sufficiently attests their appreciation of his stainless character and important services. His life in this city, to those who knew him best, seemed one continued act of charity. Prior to the war, when the duties of Adjutant-General's office were not so pressing, his evening hours were almost invariably devoted to visiting the poor and sick ... One of these we will relate.

"He learned of a family destitute of means and smitten with the small-pox. He visited them, finding the father beyond hope of recovery and one of the children dying. They were entirely deserted. Colonel Garesché visited them regularly, obtained for them the consolations of religion, stood by the bedside of the man when death closed his sufferings, and held the dying child in his arms while the priest administered baptism. Nor was this all.

"He went to three different undertakers, and each one refused to assist him to bury the dead. He applied to the city authorities, and was referred to one who conducts pauper funerals. He obtained this man's services, but defrayed the burial expenses himself, lest the feelings of the widow should be hurt if her husband was buried as a pauper at the city's expense.

"When one who had a right to remonstrate chided him for this exposure of himself and his family, this was his simple answer: 'I felt it to be my duty; I could not help it.'

"It was a splendid thing to die as he died — suddenly, in the front of the battle, in a deadly crisis of the day, fighting for a cause most pure and true; and it was proper that for such a man there should be reserved so grand a death. Yet in this there was nothing half so greatly heroic as the watching by the bedside and the burial of that wretched victim of infection and the baptism of that smitten child."