Library of Congress Hazen's charge at Shiloh
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Duty was the religion of one of the Civil War's most exasperating leaders.
William Babcock Hazen was alternately described as a "soldier's soldier" and as the "best hated" man to don Union blue.
The Union hero of the Battle of Stones River, Hazen had a distinguished career before and after the war, but it was a stormy one.
"He convicted Sheridan of falsehood, Sherman of barbarism, Grant of inefficiency. He was aggressive, arrogant, tyrannical, honorable, truthful, courageous -- a skillful soldier, a faithful friend and one of the most exasperating of men," wrote his friend author Ambrose Bierce following Hazen's death.
"General W. B. Hazen ... was the best hated man that I ever knew, and his very memory is a terror to every unworthy soul in the service."
Hazen was fearless in both battle and politics. He was uncompromising in most things.
While only ranked as a colonel, Hazen was probably the most experienced Union battlefield commander at Stones River.
A graduate of West Point, Hazen went straight from the Indian wars to the Civil War.
Born in West Hartford, Vt., Sept. 27, 1830, the son of Stillman and Sophrona Fenno Hazen, was raised in Hiram, Ohio, where he met and became the friend of future Ohio congressman and U.S. President James A. Garfield.
At the age of 21 Hazen received an appointment to the Military Academy at West Point, graduating July 1, 1855, and assigned to the Fourth Infantry as a brevet second lieutenant. His initial assignment took him to Oregon and California where he saw action. He was replaced at his Oregon post by a more familiar name, Lt. Phillip Sheridan, and instructed to join his regiment in Texas.
At Fort Davis, in Jeff Davis County, he became acquainted with the Apaches.
Hazen, with a command of two non-comms and 28 privates of the Eighth Infantry, followed a party of Apaches on a march of 220 miles over a country destitute of water and grass after the Indians who had raided Fort Davis, taking 30 horses and mules.
He discovered their lodges near Guadeloupe Mountain on June 14. During the fight that followed one Apache was killed, another captured and the livestock was recovered.
During 1859, Hazen led troops from Fort Inge, another Texas border fortification, against Kickapoo and Comanche raiders. On Oct. 30, Hazen and a small party of troops sought out a band of Comanches who had killed two Texans. Hazen was severely wounded in the encounter. A lead ball passed through his left hand, fracturing his ring finger and entering the right side of his chest between the fifth and sixth ribs.
Hazen, then 29, remained in the field for four days before returning to Fort Inge, which was a two-day ride on horse back.
The musket ball was not extracted. It was still in Hazen's body at Stones River.
When the Civil War began, Hazen was back at West Point as assistant instructor of military tactics.
During this period, he gave testimony in behalf of a subordinate, George Armstrong Custer, who had been brought up on charges.
In 1862, he received a quick series of promotions to first lieutenant, then captain. Hazen recruited the 41st Ohio Infantry at Cleveland and became its colonel on Oct. 29, 1862.
After a brief stint on the Ohio frontier, his regiment joined the Army of the Ohio. By Jan. 6, 1862, he was placed in charge of a brigade, which he led into action at Shiloh and Corinth.
Shiloh was a precursor of things to come for Hazen and his brigade. Moving into action early on the second day of the battle, Hazen and the 19th Ohio charged across an open wheat field in an attempt to overrun a Confederate battery. The unit suffered heavy losses, but won public acclaim.
With the organization of the Union army in the Western Theater, Hazen's brigade was assigned to the left wing of the new Army of the Cumberland. The wing was commanded by Maj. Gen. Thomas L. Crittenden with Hazen assigned to the Second Division, commanded by Brig. Gen. John M. Palmer. Hazen commanded Palmer's Second Brigade, which was comprised of the 110th Illinois - ?Col. Thomas S. Casey, ?9th Indiana - ?Col. William H. Blake, ?6th Kentucky - Col. Walter C. Whitaker, ?41st Ohio -?Lt. Col. Aquila Wiley.
Hazen's brigade was assigned the defense of an area called by locals "The Round Forest" between the Nashville Pike and the railroad.
Colonel Hazen's Brigade was the only Union unit not to retreat on the 31st. Its stand against four Confederate attacks gave Rosecrans a solid anchor for his Nashville Pike line that finally stopped the Confederate tide at Murfreesboro. Hazen was wounded in the shoulder and was promoted to brigadier general, effective Nov. 29, for his gallantry at Stones River.
It was Hazen who discovered the body of Lt. Col. Julius Peter Garesché, chief-of-staff, Army of the Cumberland. Garesché had been decapitated by a cannon ball while riding, along with Rosecrans, to the Round Forest area. Hazen's friend, James A. Garfield, who didn't take long to become a vocal critic of Rosecrans, would soon replace Garesché as chief of staff.
Hazen's men were so proud of their actions that they erected a monument at the Round Forest after the battle. The memorial also honors the men lost by the brigade at Shiloh. The Hazen Brigade Monument is the oldest intact Civil War monument in the nation. It says, in part:
Hazen's Brigade
To the memory of its soldiers
Who fell at Stones River, Dec. 31st 1862
"Their faces towards heaven, their
feet to the foe"
The blood of one third of its soldiers
Twice spilled in Tennessee
Crimsons the battle flag of the brigade
And inspires to greater deeds
The action at Shiloh and Stones River gave the brigade the reputation of being "shock troops," meaning they were intended to lead an infantry attack often without support.
After Stones River, the brigade participated in the Union's Tullahoma campaign and saw action at the Battle of Liberty Gap near Bell Buckle.
President Lincoln pressured Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, commander, Army of the Cumberland, to move against Chattanooga. "Who ever controls Chattanooga will win the war," Lincoln said.
Rosecrans dallied, giving the Confederates time to reinforce Gen. Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee with Gen. Hiram Walker's division from Tennessee and a full corps under the command of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet from the Army of the Potomac.
Rosecrans divided his three corps, sending them in the Chattanooga area by three different routes. Hazen's brigade was again assigned to Crittenden's corps, which was to move directly into Chattanooga at Lookout Mountain. The wide front left Rosecrans' corps unable to support each other.
Hazen got caught up in the confusion that categorized the campaign as the Army of the Cumberland fumbled into North Georgia in pursuit of Bragg.
Chickamauga was a mess and a major Confederate victory. Rosecrans blamed Hazen for a delay on Sept. 18 in repositioning his troops. On the 19th, he slightly redeemed himself by collecting a battery of 20 cannons near the Poe field and ending the Confederate advance on the first day of Chickamauga.
As Rosecrans faltered, a huge gap opened in the Union army on the second day of the battle, Gen. George Thomas saved the day at Snodgrass Hill. Hazen and his brigade were there.
Thomas ordered Hazen's brigade into the line on Snodgrass Hill. The new arrivals were scarcely in position behind some low breastworks, recalled Lt. Col. Robert L. Kimberly of the 41st Ohio, "when the Confederate storm burst. The slope in front of the brigade was open ground, and in a moment this was covered with heavy masses of the enemy making for the top. Hazen's regiments were lying flat. The foremost sprang to its feet, delivered its volley and went down again to load, and the next regiment just behind rose to fire and fall flat while the third put in its work, and so on."
Thomas and his men held, preventing a total rout of the Union Army. At 4 p.m., Garfield arrived at Snodgrass Hill his horse wounded and two orderlies killed. Garfield carried orders from Rosecrans that Thomas was to withdraw immediately.
"It will ruin the army to withdraw it now," Thomas told Garfield. "This position must be held until night."
Garfield sent a message back to Rosecrans telling the commanding general that Thomas was holding off the Confederates and was "standing like a rock."
Picked up by newspapers all over the Union, Thomas quickly became known as the Rock of Chickamauga.
The Union troops withdrew after dark. Longstreet's Confederates roared with Rebel yells after discovering the escape.
"It was the ugliest sound that any mortal ever heard," Ambrose Bierce wrote, "even a mortal exhausted and unnerved by two days of hard fighting, without sleep, without rest, without food, and without hope. There was, however, a space somewhere at the back of us across which that horrible yell did not prolong itself - and through that we finally retired in profound silence and dejection, unmolested."
But the war wasn't over for Hazen and his brigade. There was Missionary Ridge, Chattanooga, Atlanta and the long march to the sea with Sherman to follow.
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